dammitcoetzee

Yes, that's right. The little rollers were on an axle that extended a bit further terminating into a spoked disk which sat in the middle of an optical detector and emitter pair. It used some tricks to figure out when the mouse was going forward and when it was going backward (quadrature), but mostly it just counts the pulses of light it sees and turns that into displacement coordinates.

EDIT: Wikipedia has a pretty good picture of this and a better explanation: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mouse_(computing)#Mechanical_mi...

I agree, but, have you looked at the cars today? I can honestly not tell the difference in silhouette between a mustang and an acura these days. You can stick as much chrome on the outside of the thing you want in different patterns, but they are the same car.

It's not that I don't know that the Leica isn't a super great camera, but the fact that they tried to make something to a higher design goal than, "it should just work" carries some weight. Just working is very important, but you can go past it. There were tons of mp3 players that just worked before the ipod. Arguably my rio mp3 player worked and sounded better than the ipod. however, the ipod was something that resonated with people. When you put soul into something your soul responds. I hate saying metaphysical junk like that, but anyone who has experienced a truly well designed object or seen a to a perfectly executed musical performance knows this feeling.

I mean, design these days is boring and unenriching. Go to amazon and search for water filtering pitchers. Do any of those inspire you? Are any of them beautiful? Are any of them even nice to use? If you read the reviews they are full of, "it filters water alright, but": the lid is awkward, the handle cracks off after a few months, the old version had more thought in it, the edges of the plastic are sharp, etc.

Something can fully and completely fulfill it's primary purpose and still be poorly designed. Still be a joyless disposable object.

I think there's too much focus these days on what you can get for the money, and not what you can get.

You have one life, why fill it with particle board and Chinese plastic smell? Why not save up and buy things that last. That bring joy to your life and enrich it. Why buy a three dollar Chinese screwdriver with an imprecisely cut point that strips every fifth screw, when for ten dollars you can get a precision cut, tempered, and coated american made screwdriver that feels weighty and good in your hands. That doesn't strip those screws and makes your job a little more joyful.

America needs to bring back the craftsman and the appreciation for craftsmanship. The LVL1 hackerspace in Louisville just moved into an old factory and I am constantly stunned by the workmanship that went into that old building. The architect filled the place with light using angled windows, but it doesn't get hot. Even the wood floors are beautifully made (and this was for factory work).

Surrounding yourself with crafted things allows you to think on a higher plane. You know what is possible because you are surrounded with it.

If you surround yourself with cheap replaceable junk you become capable of crafting and expecting only cheap replaceable junk. That's why I can buy so much expensive furniture off craigslist for pennies. People have lost the ability to tell that that slightly scuffed up dresser couldn't be purchased for under eight grand new.

Everyone's mentioning this separate process business and subtle engine differences web developers compensate for and I never experience. However,I really don't care about all that. Chrome is just nicer to use: one search/url bar, few buttons but all purposeful, can drag and split windows easily. Best browser. Only recently annoying thing is it asking me to sign up for some sort of sync constantly. I have no idea why I'd ever want to do that. When I load up Firefox I'm just overwhelmed by how much stuff there is. If someone made a chrome-like Firefox I'd use it no problem.

I keep forgetting I have it installed. It's grand when a post like this comes up.

From the kickstarter: "The core of the motor is sealed and protected with an epoxy coating and it uses high-performance plastic bearings in place of steel bearings that rust in saltwater."

I assumed all those things in my hypothetical example application of the scientific method to a decision. I'm not really certain what you're getting at?

The article linked above already goes into some detail as to how to use this to simply evaluate an idea. I was just expounding on another possible use just to show how invaluable this is. Heck you can even use it in relationships. You can tell if someone is lying. You can use it to tell if people like you. You can even use it to lose weight. I'm using it right now to see if I need to drink more water daily or if something else is wrong. It's basically a super power.

How is the scientific method not used for this always? The scientific method and way of thinking is probably the most useful thing you can ever master. Science allows you to set up a question and then set up an experiment in such a way that you cannot lie to yourself about the result. For example, let's ask the question: Is my business doing well?

A layman's approach will almost certainly be evaluated on a subjective/emotional basis. i.e. "We are doing something great!" "Everyone is happy." "I have so many customers" "Funding is in!" "I got a great review on tech crunch three months ago"

A more scientific approach is to first define the question in such a way that it can be measured. So let's say a business that does well does three things:

Does not lose money, Has happy customers(low support calls/emails, high reviews,product is used), Has happy employees (low turnover, gets quality work done (measurable by issue tracking)

Now you can say: Does my business meet the requirements for a successful business. If no, write down those numbers. That is now your control and baseline.

It is time to experiment. It's best not to change more than one thing at a time in science so you know exactly what the effect is vs the control.

Lets say you realize you're losing money and your customers aren't happy. You do some research and come to believe (not know) that it's because the login screen is incredibly awkward. Google analytics shows that the bounce rate for the front page is huge so there's some data to back this up. It's time to form your first hypothesis.

My business isn't doing well because the login page is so incredibly awkward. If I fix the login page the business will do better.

Remember that both the "awkward" and "do better" while subjective declarations have actual metrics to back them up: bounce rate on analytics and the previously defined metrics for a good business.

Now you do the experiment defined earlier: fix the login page.

Now you collect data. If your bounce rate goes down, your customers are happier and start paying the monthly fee. Then you have solved your problem and you know with a very high degree of certainty how you have solved your problem.

Now let's say you looked at the data at the end of this experiment and noticed a decrease from the control you set a while back. Well, obviously that was not the problem (or at least not 100% the problem, part of science is knowing how certain to be about things) Maybe next you can define the problem as: the site is buggy, issues aren't resolved quickly. If I observe my employees I can see that they spend a lot of time staring at the 98inch projector screen I set up in my 'cool office' instead of coding. Now you can do a trial run of turning off the projector on some days vs others and seeing if the work goes up, stays the same, or goes down. Or you can discuss the problem with your employees and see if they have input. Then define the experiment using that; just don't forget to actually measure something objective at the end of the day.

This way of thinking is invaluable. You can drill down exactly to the problem core. Waste less resources. Argue less. Most importantly you can actually sit down at the end of the day and prove that you have solved a problem with actual data that cannot be easily disputed, and if you've really done it right the experiment can be repeated and have the same result each time.

"While running a business profitably is arguably as difficult as any other profession, almost anyone is allowed to give it a try, whether they are qualified or not. It is like an inalienable right, available even to the foolish, the young, and the senile." My favorite quote.

I don't want to tag anything. I want to tap the screen under two times to take a photo then have the software do everything else.

phone on -- unlock to homescreen --> tap icon --> take picture

Without OCR or any sort of integration/budgeting this is essentially a folder full of pictures of my financial information on someone else's computer. There is no value add.

Once I start tagging stuff, that's too much work. I might as well just toss the receipt and then figure it out whenever I try to balance my accounts in ynab like I do right now.

I want this, I've been wanting this for the past four releases of Excel. Excel is a great tool for engineers. It gets the subpar results fast, while code, matlab, and DBs get's the fantastic results slow, which I hardly ever need.

What I would have liked is a book that presented the bad arguments in a neutral and fun way so that I could recommend it as a neutral and fun way to learn about these things for anyone. A sort of coffee book primer on logical fallacies.

What I got is a bunch of back-handed cartoon insults towards the groups the author dislikes.

Still nicely done though, and the pictures are great.

calling it: Next significant windows will be windows WX.

That's the most windows phones I've ever seen in one picture.

It took me two solid afternoons of work to determine this. I just had such a mental block to the whole concept. I think I was also just used to being able to hold an entire project in my head so it was new to me to have so many large projects that most of it started to pour out of my ears. Here's an embarrassing blog post about it. http://dammitcoetzee.com/2014/05/overwhelming-task-managemen...

much coin

This is a terrible website.

Cool, but whoever filmed their video should be fired. I've never seen anyone actually get real people to cross uncanny valley before. Thoroughly creeped out. Haha.