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Friday, April 16, 2004 |
When I last bought I car, I thought "95% of the time, I will be the only person in this car, maybe I should get something small and economical." But all the small cars I tried--Neon, Corolla, Galant, a few others I can't remember--were just not that comfortable. I'm 6'-2", 215 pounds--so large-ish, but hardly huge, especially by today's standards--but I would always bang my head getting in, or my knee felt jammed against the door, or my head brushed the ceiling. I wound up buying a Taurus.
But I keep thinking--why don't they make a small car with a disproportionately large driver's seat? Put the room where it is likely to be used, instead of dividing it symetrically. Of course, a really clever design maybe would allow equalizing the space where necessary (except I'm hard pressed how the steering wheel could be re-centered).
10:54:04 PM 
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(From Cringely): Google's "technology extends beyond development all the way to operations, which is almost unknown in the software/Internet space. Google has figured out the best computer power per dollar of investment. They've also realized they cannot and should not scale their support linearly with the number of servers. They've introduced better system management tools and better automation, but with a business objective in mind...They invested in their data center operations from the start while most companies invest as little as possible [my italics] and pay more after the fact.
Most companies (including Microsoft) have about a 25-to-one server-support ratio, but Google does not have 4,000 people tending their 100,000 servers. This means they can deploy a HUGE application less expensively than anyone else."
So Google, like Toyota, well understands that it is not just the sexy stuff--design, marketing, product development--that is required to build a corporate body for the ages. Those things may be enough to have a modest success, and eventually be acquired. But somebody has to build infrastructure, too, and if they do that right, if gives them enormous grasp and power. I actually think Google has that in common with MicroSoft (Wal-Mart is another example).
10:36:46 AM
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I have become so totally habituated to the keyboard that I don't really even consider composing longhand as an option. For instance, I had some time to kill while waiting for a meeting to start, and thought of a blog item I wanted to write. However, I just couldn't bring myself to write it out longhand, only to have to later re-type it! I'll do a bit of outlining longhand, if I must, but that's about it.
10:11:37 AM
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I love PhotoShop's cropping tool. I am surprised so many other programs still just offer plain vanilla cropping (drag the marquee, select crop). Both the convenience (drag, click Enter), and the flexibility (being able to tweak the marquee) are wonderful. The shading thing is a very nice touch, as is the free rotation option.
In general, Photoshop seems to have very nice keyboard shortcuts. Who ever heard of selecting a tool by pressing "c"?
Until now, I had been of the firm opinion that home-printing of digital photos was not the way to go. Cheaper and easier to just upload to Wal-Mart for $0.26 per print. That's fine if you have standard-size prints. But now that I am a crop-master, my prints are all custom-sized. Better to put a few of them on an 8.5 x 11, or on 5 x 7 with a border. (Or often better to not print at all, and just display on screen. But they do look so much better printed.)
Plus, the economic of printing are a bit better than I thought. On a cost per square inch basis, 8 x 10 is cheaper than 4 x 6. In addition, I realize it is always possible to find photo paper on special, usually buy one get one free. So it is half as expensive as I had thought (if only they had those specials for ink!).
10:00:57 AM
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© Copyright 2005 Erik Neu.
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