Things I Didn't Expect To Work, But Do

• Self-checkout counters. They're in almost all supermarkets now. I thought their cost + increase in shoplifting + reluctance of people to bag their own shopping would curb their popularity.
• I didn't expect automatic taps would save water, but apparently they do.
• Did you know they can remove the "ball" part of the hip joint for cats and other 4-legged animals and the animal can still function almost normally?

Flip-Flop

Theories / urban legends that have been repeatedly proven/disproven, or whose opinions change drastically.

Saturated fats bad, trans fats good. Saturated fats bad, trans fats worse.

People swallow 8 spiders a year

People listening to War Of The Worlds on radio thought it was true, causing mass hysteria. Nope. Effect was greatly exaggerated.

Woman sues McDonald's because she gets burned by hot coffee. Sue-happy Americans, need for ridiculous/obvious warning labels, etc. Turns out she had 3rd degree burns and was hospitalised for 8 days. Also, McDonald's has had numerous complaints about their coffee being too hot.

Stanford prison experiment - to prove there are monsters in everyone, take people, assign some as prisoners and some as jailers, see jailers abuse their power! Meant to show how normal people did evil during the Holocaust. Later proven that their methods were unfair and meant to encourage their conclusions. https://www.reddit.com/r/askpsychology/comments/3k8ob0/is_the_stanford_prison_experiment_taken_seriously/

Vacuum cleaners - first they used reusable cloth bags. Cloth bags are messy and unhygienic! Use disposable paper bags! Now paper bags are not environmentally friendly! Use reusable bags!

Government HDB apartment blocks in Singapore - in old blocks, rubbish chutes were shared and located in public areas. Then they switched to individual chutes in each household. Now they're back to communal chutes again.

Misnomers

Ok, I couldn't find a word for what I'm talking about here and was going to call them "false descriptive names", then I found out they're called "misnomers". Knowing the correct term makes searching for more and being found much easier.
Plants And Animals

• Seedless watermelon (they aren't really seedless, they just have small seeds. Why can't they be truly seedless like grapes?)
• Peanuts are neither a pea nor a nut. 
• The tarantula hawk is neither a tarantula nor a hawk.  
• "Blue" and "yellow" when describing dogs.

Objects

• Stainless steel (not really stain-proof)
• Basically anything -proof. Waterproof, bulletproof, shockproof, etc.
• Also, any physical substance that claims to be pure. You can only really say contaminants are below the level of detection.
• Volkswagen's DQ200 Direct-Shift Gearbox, which is said to use "dry" clutches, which aren't really dry and still use oil, although less. 
• Dry and sweet when describing wines (not really dry or sweet in the conventional sense, although the words dry and sweet could have different meanings)
• Sandpaper contains neither sand nor paper.
• Lots of "dry" things - dry cleaning, dry cell batteries 
• Pencil leads aren't made of lead any more 
• Decaffeinated coffee isn't caffeine-free
• Free size / one-size-fits-all

Others

• Ironically, most countries with "democratic" in their name - The Democratic People's Republic of Korea

Good Enough Technologies

Is there a level of technology that is "good enough", or will we always demand faster, bigger, higher resolution? The following technologies' successors aren't doing too well, which might be an indicator that they've reached "good enough" status:

• iPhone 4 - if you don't listen to Apple and look around, a lot of people are still using 4 and 4s. Probably because the 5 doesn't have that many more features, and the 4/4s are already very good.
• 802.11g - 802.11n is a mess.
• Windows XP - still in demand, actually.
• USB 2 - most devices sold are still USB 2. USB 3 ports are listed like they're an optional feature, not a necessity, like power steering on rental cars was.

Fancy Names For Common Objects

• Solitaire diamond rings
• Still mineral water (as opposed to sparkling)
• Subway's "fresh" sandwiches (as opposed to toasted)
• "Prime" lenses, which really mean "no zoom" 
• "Inaugural" = first

Things We Continue Doing For No Good Reason

I read somewhere that a railroad track width is based on the width of 2 horses' rears. This in turn influenced the size of the space shuttle.

Somewhere else, a company's supervisor would write "0" on the front page of every report, because that was the way it had always been done. Nobody had any idea what it meant. On investigation, it meant there were 0 air raids that day, a practice started during a war.

Another one, an experiment: a bunch of monkeys in a room. The room had a comb of bananas hanging over a ladder. Every time a monkey climbed the ladder to get the bananas, the experimenters would spray all the monkeys with cold water. Eventually, all the monkeys learnt not to try to get the bananas. Replace 1 monkey. The old monkeys would prevent the new monkey from getting the bananas. Continue replacing monkeys until all the monkeys are new. They would stop any monkey from climbing the ladder, but none of them knew why. Here it is in comic form:

This post is to collect things like these.

E-reader programs like Kindle's iOS app

E-ink e-readers turn by pages because e-ink screens take too long to refresh, making scrolling unnatural. There's no good reason for programs on LCD screens to turn by pages. It's disruptive and irritating if you're trying to compare something 2 lines apart, but on different pages.

iOS apps with iCloud backup

The following apps automatically backup your data to iCloud (or is it Game Center?) - progress and saves are transferred to new devices:

• Cut The Rope
• Infinity Blade 2
• Temple Run (backs up high scores but not purchased powerups)
• Tiny Wings

Notably, the following apps do not:

• Angry Birds
• Angry Birds Seasons
• Angry Birds Rio
• Angry Birds Space (all last checked 1 Oct 2012)
• Gravity Guy
• Trainyard
• Trainyard Express
• Where's My Water

Autocorrect annoyances

I find Autocorrect extremely annoying. Sometimes I wonder if it's designed to be as frustrating as possible while remaining useful enough so people use it.

• If you enter ANY punctuation or number, it remains on the punctuation keyboard. EXCEPT FOR THE ' CHARACTER. For apparently no reason, they decided once you enter ' you shall return to the abc keyboard.

• Sometimes it tries to correct perfectly correct words, used in the expected context.

Let's say you're trying to type "laptop". You type "lap" and it can guess what you want to say. But let's say you type too fast and already typed "lapt"

Whoops! Where did the suggestion go? Ok so backspace:

It just doesn't make any sense.

I put "cbn" as a shortcut for "Coming back now!". Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. Not working seems to only happen the first time I type it in Messages.

Undo would be a big help, but it usually doesn't work. iOS is supposed to have shake to undo, but that erases a huge chunk of text - DON'T USE IT. Let's say you're typing a long word, like "iOS is an abomination". It corrects it to abdominal. Now you have to delete abdominal and type all over again.

27 Mar 14

Really, Autocorrect?

Missing iOS apps

What happened to Cut The Rope Holiday Gift? The equivalent of Angry Birds Seasons, it's no longer on the App Store. "what happened to cut the rope holiday gift" is even a Google autocomplete string, but there are no real answers.

AVPlayer by ePlayWorks was my favourite iOS video player. You could adjust playback speed, colour, WiFi upload/download, and even play some formats VLC couldn't. It's just gone from the App Store now.

iPhone 5 musings

My questions, and answers I've found, on the iPhone 5.

• Can the Lightning connector support the weight of the phone upside down? Yes, no problem, it can even hold it horizontally, at least when it's new.
• Is there a lightning to HDMI adapter? http://www.engadget.com/2012/09/14/lightning-to-hdmi-and-vga-cables-incoming-says-apple/ Soon.
• Since the inlay is matched out of 725 to the case, will repair shops have replacements?
• Can you cut the nano SIM from a micro SIM? http://gadgets.ndtv.com/mobiles/news/everything-you-want-to-know-about-nano-sim-being-used-in-iphone-5-266771 No, but you can convert a nano SIM upwards.
• What happens in countries that Apple doesn't have Maps for yet? Apparently every country the iPhone is sold in has Maps, I haven't heard of Maps not being available for any countries.

Things better than Earth Hour

Some initiatives I don't get. Like Earth Hour. It's always seemed to me that lights use relatively little power compared to other appliances, so what's the point of turning them off for only an hour? Instead of being negative, this year I calculated what else you can do and how much more energy it saves.

Assuming you have 1000 W of lights - that's a huge amount. The only way you can use this much in your home is if you use incandescent bulbs - turning them off for 1 hour saves 1 kWh (3.6 MJ). But switching to energy-saving fluorescent bulbs, which only use 25% of the energy, would save you 0.75 kWh every hour. That's 6 kWh every day - assuming you use your lights for 8 hours a day.

Ok maybe you're more environmentally conscious and already use fluorescent bulbs. Maybe you're only using 250 W on lighting - then you only save 0.25 kWh.

• Turning off your computer will save 3 kWh overnight, and 15 kWh over the weekend. That's 12 times as much saved, every day.
• Reducing your shower by only 1 minute, assuming your water is only heated by 10C, saves 0.1 kWh - and 10 litres of water. A hot shower is 40C and water coming in may be as low as 10C, so 10C of heating is really low.
• Your car uses about 1.3 kWh per km, and you can save even more energy by adjusting your thermostat.

Antivirus brands not to buy

I use antivirus to protect me from viruses, spyware and pop-ups. ALL POP-UPS. INCLUDING THOSE FROM THE ANTIVIRUS COMPANY.

 Avira has 3 ads selling the same thing - Antivirus Premium 2012

This welcome pop-up isn't that bad, but this also came up with ads for subscriptions that I didn't capture.

Things people do on purpose now that people in the past avoided

• Fading, scratches and dust in photos (Instagram)
• Vignetting 
• Ripped and faded clothes
• Wholemeal 
• Mechanical watches 
• Vacuum tubes