Category Archives: One-link-ers
More Health Care info….
Wow, this health care stuff is complicated. Let’s check out some charts. Informational graphics by our politicians are designed to make it all clearer, right?
There’s an article pointing to some charts here….Ezra Klein – When Health-Care Reform Stops Being Polite and Starts Making Charts and over here…. Political Chart Wars: Health-Care Reform Obfuscated by Infographics.
They include this doozy:
(yes, I hotlinked the images in this post, yes I’m against that, yes, I’ll fix that later.)
Hmm, charts by idiot politicians, maybe not a good idea…
I also have to admit, I was amused by the Democratic comeback:
So now that everyone’s had fun trying to make readers blind by putting bright colors on a dark grey bakground, maybe we should let an actual information/graphic designer give it a shot. This one’s called do not fuck with graphic designers.
The letter below the image pretty much says how anyone in charge of presenting accurate and understandable information feels about that monster you see above. You can see the full pdf here and, OMG, it actually makes a bit of sense.
Now, if only any of them were indicative of a simple health care system….
With thanks to Joe Lanman on this thread of the IXDA discussion board.
Can Do
Via Scott McCloud on Twitter (and numerous others before him, by the looks of things) Can Do – And the Pursuit of Happiness Blog – NYTimes.com. An interesting comic (of sorts, the Times calls it an illustrated blog), in this particular case about Benjamin Franklin. The rest of the entries post once a month but I haven’t had a chance to read them yet. Worth checking out
Chroma-Hash
Check this puppy out:
Chroma-Hash Demo — just type in a username and two passwords… you’re not actually registering, it’s just to show behavior. Note the lack of a submit button.
Now, personally, I could care less about hiding a user’s password when they log into a site. I think it’s a waste. I’ve taken too many calls from people who swear they’re entering their passwords correctly when they either a) set them up incorrectly in the first place or b) screwed it up and don’t realize it. Masking passwords in the privacy of my own home or on my own secure computer in my office or whatever is a deterrent to registering and logging on. It’s not quite the waste of a two-factor password system set up as a series of questions, (I’m looking at you, every-goddamned-bank-in-the-country) but these are my personal biases. And if you’re in a situation where you are forced to access secure/personal accounts in an insecure environment (like, I’ll acknowledge, banking) they might not be quite the waste that they are on, say, a badly-drawn sporadically-updated comic/blog site.
All that being said, I doubt we’re going to get rid of the *****ing passwords (heh, literally) any time soon.
So Chroma-Hash struck me as an awesome way to give users a visual representation that their password is typed correctly or incorrectly.
Then it struck me that one of my favorite passwords is really ugly when hashed… and my immediate reflex was to change it to something prettier.
Thinking of registration, I’ve been to plenty of sites that have that little bar next to them that show how secure your password is. If this color doohicky could be tweaked to show more-secure passwords in colors that combine into generally-more-pleasing sets, it could also encourage the use of secure password combinations. And I don’t see any downside to that.
Never Gonna Give Your Teen Spirit up
Via twitter, this will totally confuse your inner teenager. Especially if you’re currently in your early 30s.
Timing is everything
xkcd – A Webcomic – Estimation.
Truer words have never been spoken.
Tales of a 33-year-old green belt
So. Sewing.
When I joined Tang Soo Do, I was issued a uniform, and because I am obese (as the squeaky voice on the Wii Fit likes to announce to the world every time I use it) and Tang Soo Do uniforms aren’t sized for chicks shaped like fireplugs, I needed to significantly hem that uniform.
Being a white belt of unsurpassing optimism, I promptly bought a sewing machine.
Now, here’s the thing. I’ve sewn before – enough when I was in my teens to decently hem a pair of pants or fix a cuff or patch a knee or any of the other things someone at 5’2″ tall and klutzy would likely need to do. I know how to use the iron to press the seams, turn a corner by keeping the needle in the fabric, and sew in a straight line.
Or, at least, I did.
The hemming of my white belt uniform could definitely have gone smoother, but I figured hey, I’m a beginner, and I’ll re-learn how to sew while I learn all this awesome martial arts stuff.
As a green belt, I’ve gained just a touch of wisdom. Or rather, I have gained the ability to recognize that I need the ability to recognize a mistake when I’ve made it. The mistake I made tonight was listening to my inner white belt. She said that I’d improve on my sewing by sewing with every uniform upgrade. She said that by the time I’m a black belt, hemming my own uniforms would be a practiced skill.
She LIED.
See, it turns out that hemming uniforms once every year and a half doesn’t make you a seamstress any more than doing a side kick every three months makes you a martial artist.
I started hemming two green-trimmed uniforms at 9:00 tonight, and I just finished 10 minutes ago. 4 hours to hem two pair of pants (badly) and sew on a total of six patches. I didn’t even bother hemming the sleeves after botching the pants and pulling out more seams than I swore I sewed in. My sewing machine is full of demons. Every 15 minutes or so the thread would break or the sewing on the underneath with the bobbin string would just go haywire and I’d end up pulling out stitches. It took me 10 minutes to figure out how to put the bobbin back into the machine after it emptied and I had to refill it — I was holding it backwards. You’d think the phrase was “cursed like a seamstress” not “cursed like a sailor” the way I went about the task.
God bless all those who really can sew, and more importantly, enjoy it. I do not think I will become one of those people in the next two years, or twenty. If I’m going to get eye strain staring at tiny strings, I’d rather do so tying a knot to hold a hook onto my fishing line. There’s more bobber to me than bobbin.
Tonight was a subtle reminder that as a green belt I must learn to recognize those things I cannot do, without sacrificing the unbridled optimism of a white belt to try those things I might be able to do, but have never tried before.