Archive for the 'Irritants' Category

About a year ago, we picked up a 46″ Sony Bravia LCD TV (KDL46XBR2). Generally, a gorgeous monitor that has loads of inputs and, thus, has become the all-signal-switchbox for the various game consoles, media players, and computers that may be hooked up at any one time.

Great picture and generally easy to use. Amusing, too, that the manual came with a GPL license notice with a hyperlink to download source. Turns out that the UI is implemented via Linux (and, yes, Sony has a whole “source distribution center“).

However, it is not without its flaws and some of them are just so embarassingly stupid in terms of the concious Industrial Design choices made.

Click on through for the gory details.

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David Byrne has written up his first trip to IKEA and his conclusion that it is largely like a big video game, what with the codes and the odd pockets of design, etc…

One soon realizes that one of the goals of this “game” is to decide which cabinets, in which wood or wood-like material, would, could or should be combined with which counter materials, and then to match them to a particular style sofa and upholstery, and finally, to select the color and texture of floor material that would coordinate best with all the above.

That is just level 1. It is relatively easy. Especially when you could give a rat’s ass about “design” and are all about “comfort” and “functional”.

The food level is really a bonus level; opt-in for energy points.

Level 2 — the stock room– is particularly vicious in how it plays off level 1: You must choose items that are actually in stock to win.

Christine and I have consistently failed on this level — walked out with no more credits… no more patience… no product in hand… game over…

To add to the complexity, certain products can only be ordered on the weird-ass maze-like walkthrough showroom. If you ask for said products down where all except these special bonus products are stocked, you’ll get mocked by the helpful staff. Mocked for at least 2 life points (2 of us shopping — game over after that).

Level 3 is comparatively easy: Assembly. To their credit, IKEA does deliver relatively high quality mass-produced furniture and the assembly instructions are better than any I have encountered while the end product is certainly quite solid.

I have yet to tackle purchasing and installing an entire IKEA based room. Sounds like a boss level of awesome magnitude. Given the utter failure (and occasional humiliation) involved in finding stuff that is actually in stock, I might never play that particular video game again.

Yeah, I have said that before. Sigh.

Once again, LED technology has evolved. This particular flashlight has 9 superbright white LEDs powered by 3 AAA batteries. In this case, it appears to be mostly an efficiency-at-this-brightness issue in that the previous generation LEDs of this brightness would generate considerably more heat (and not last 20 hours on 3 AAA batteries).

But, WAIT! What is this warning!!

This product and/or its packaging contain a chemical known to the State of California to cause cancer, birth defects or other reproductive harm.

OH NOES!!! Except that it is utterly useless. The State of California enacted Proposition 65 back in 1986. Entitled the “The Safe Drinking Water and Toxic Enforcement Act of 1986″, the law was designed to require notification when Bad Stuff was present in any given environment.

Of course, it has been horribly abused and certain jackassery legal outfits have built entire businesses out of extorting money out of legitimate businesses through prop 65 threats and suits.

There is even an official web site with FAQ.

So, of course, clarifications of the stupidity are ever present everywhere but in California. For those of us that call CA our home, we are used to seeing stupid Prop 65 warnings on everything from cans of foaming goo to etched into a window on hotel entrances to stuck on the side of the occasional garbage truck. A sort of legal graffitti that is as ignored as the stupid “massage cheap” and “earn money at home” phone post signs.

But the rest of the world needs some clarification on this seemingly scary notice. And, thus, you’ll see that the above scariness is immediately followed by:

NOTE: Only California law requires that this warning be given to the consumer. This warning is only required by the State of California and is not based on this product or its packaging causing exposure to hazardous chemicals over those allowed by any law or statute. Again this law is NOT based on exposure, it is based on content, even when the content is in full compliance with safety standards set by the Federal Government. There are NO regulated chemicals used in this products in a way to create an hazard to the public. We are sorry for any confusion or concern regarding this warning that may have caused.

I’m sorry, too.

Net Neutrality is a subject of major discussion amongst the neterati. For good reason. The presence of Net Neutrality guarantees that any network connection — residence, business, cable, DSL, satellite — can send traffic without restriction or different levels of dependability based on protoocol or destination. The absence of NN means exactly the opposite; there may be restrictions based on protocol, destination, or anything else the service provider might decide should be singled out.

And, of course, one of the non-neutral models involves the customer paying extra money to gurantee levels of service for certain protocols or features.

The funny thing is that none of this is new. We have been in a non-neutral world before. And it sucked. More on that in a second.

Why is this such a big deal?

- residential DSL and cable modem companies have oversold their bandwidth such that they cannot meet the contract or marketing promises they have made

- those same service providers are pissed off that commodity generic bandwidth is perfectly excellent for carrying products like Vonage or Skype [telephony] or any of the myrida of multimedia streaming or downloading solutions. They want a cut of that.

But none of this is a new issue. We have been here before. Slightly different form, but same impact on the customer.

Full details after the break…

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Low maintenance groundcover plants that are willing to grow in poor soil with little irrigation are generally quite welcome in most areas.

And the plant pictured certainly looks pretty damned healthy for something growing in hard pack clay and gravel with no water and zero protection from the blazing hot sun.

Better yet, look at how it is spreading so nicely to cover the ground while maintaining an extremely low growth habit. Looks like it might even be a really pleasant ground cover for paths or walkways.

Closer inspection reveals that it even has these really pleasant little yellow flowers!

Cute, even! And it is covered in them!

How can anyone not love this plant?

But, wait, what is this?

Every one of those little yellow flowers turns into a seed pod. The fruit of the vine, if you will.

And every one of those little seed pods breaks apart into four or five sections, each with quarter inch spikes.

While the spikes are semi-hard when green (hard enough to puncture skin), they turn iron-hard when dry. The design of the little seed pod sections is such that they spikes point up.

How hard are they?

Hard enough to go through bike tires, thin soled shoes, people feet, animal skin, and — even — small car tires.

And they hurt likely bloody hell. Typical to thorns like this, the surface has some kind of irritant on it that causes the puncture wounds to be extremely painful.

Roger and I have been on a personal vendetta to eliminate this evil plant wherever we find it. It is one of the few plants that I might actually consider using chemicals on.

As you can see in the picture, this ground crawling vine can get to be quite large. That isn’t even the largest one we have eliminated in the area.

Tribulus terrestis is an invasive species that has gained a foothold across most of the warmer climates of the world. It is the bane of bicyclists and open shoed hikers.

Recently, I ran into a nasty patch of it on one of the trails in Cupertino that I ride my bike to work on. Obviously, an infestation of puncture vine along a public walkway can be very painful and unpleasant to folks using said path.

I contacted Cupertino Parks and Recreation and they had the plant eradicated within a day! Very impressive!

Update: As the summer wore on, a couple more sprouts popped up here and there. Cupertino Parks & Rec eliminated them in short order. Clearly, they keep an eye on outbreaks! Nice!

So, I was all set to go see Frank Miller’s new flick 300 as I heard it was a completely spot on documentary of the Battle of Thermopylae. I mean, Frank is clearly one of the best documentary directors of our times as he so accurately put down a good chunk of Batman’s life story and Sin City was a milestone docu-drama of inner city criminal activities.

But now I learn that Miller may have diverged from the truth in the telling of 300?

And now the Iranians, gays, lesbians, Persians, brown people, handicapped people, and others are offended by the inaccurate, gross categorical, mistreatment of their particular groups within 300’s plot?

And….

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I have been a my.yahoo.com user for a long long time (a decade maybe?? Not sure — a very long time). It gave me a nicely configurable portal through which I could monitor weather, market status, business events, and a bit of entertainment all in one page.

My original layout was 2 columns; a narrow column on left with a list of stocks I care about followed by a bit of weather and some of the photo feeds. The right hand, wider, column contained a set of headline summaries.

With this layout, I could make the window as narrow as I wanted with the only lost information being the right hand, least useful, bits of the headline.

With the “upgraded” layout, the WIDE headlines are on the left and the stock crap is on the right. Stupid. But the worst design sin is that there is now this big bloody fracking square advertisement at the top of my right hand column.

Without scrolling, the information that I care about in my right hand column is now pushed off the bottom of the window. Instead of a banner ad that was outside of my customizable content area, I now have to deal with a non-rectangular content area when laying things out the way I want.

Upgrade? Yeah, sure, I’ll take an upgrade. Google’s personalized homepage is looking like a damned fine upgrade, thanks.

What happens after someone heads out of the courthouse after an arraignment hearing for an extremely visible, supposedly newsworthy, set of charges?

There is a press conference. Attorney is present. Lots and lots of inane questions followed by nothing but “no comment” responses.

Not any more. The two dudes charged with a bunch of mass hysteria security theater trumped up bullshit charges just had the best post arraignment press conference ever.

Instead of no comment, the entire interview is a discussion of hair styles throughout the 20th century. Every question is turned away or turned back to hair.

Instead of “No Comment”, you get “That isn’t a hair question and we are really here to talk about hair.”

Brilliant.

Drudge is carrying this video under the headline “suspects mock media”.

Well, DUH! Given the choice of saying “no comment” or making fun of the media for persisting to ask questions that they know can’t be answered, I am damned happy to see someone stand up and indirectly point out the utter and completely inane stupidity of the reporters on the scene.

Update: Pings turned off because the asshole content ripping spamming bastards seem to really like this post.

If someone starts selling reasonably priced ATHF LED advertisement kits, I’d buy in a heartbeat. Can’t be hard to build; just a bunch of LEDs with a bit of a driver circuit to shut the crap off in the daylight.

The reality impaired scaretardos that have now arrested and charged one of the makers with something like “conspiracy to build a hoax device or placing a hoax device with purpose of creating mass hysteria” disgust me.

Sadly, though it would seem that even a half assed lawyer should be able to show that there was no intent to either induce mass hysteria or create a hoax terror device, I fully expect that the completely corrupt asshats leading the domestic terrorism jihad will be able to make whatever charges they can come up with stick. Jail time for LED boy.

Of course, this does raise a question: Can “we the people” bring a case against the overreacting dumbasses for “inciting mass hysteria” by turning every fracking out of place light, candle, or farting high school student into an act of potential terrorism?

Hell, even by writing this pointless little bit of disgusted venting, I fully expect I’ll end up on some federal watch list somewhere. Oh, wait, there is that fear & hysteria thing again — if more than 3 of you feel the same way, we might just have a case on our hands.

But I digress. Anyone selling kits yet?

Taking a break from the Mexico write-up for a moment…

So, by now most have seen this story of:

- hunter shoots duck

- hunter puts duck in fridge without first cleaning it

- 2 days later duck moves when wife opens the fridge

How does this story end? Obviously, the hunter finishes the job and enjoys a fine duck dinner.

Nope. Instead, the duck has now been subjected to some further traumatizing and likely very expensive “specialized treatment”. Only a 75% chance of survival and will likely never be returned to the wild. Who pays for the medical expenses, exactly? More importantly, why?

I think I’ll have to grill some duck this week.