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# Nathan's Possibly Interesting web site

## Sitemaps
- [XML Sitemap](https://nzeldes.com/sitemap_index.xml): Includes all crawlable and indexable pages.

## Posts
- [A Blintze’s worth of effort!](https://nzeldes.com/2026/10/a-blintzes-worth-of-effort/): A very relatable trail sign.
- [Memento mori!](https://nzeldes.com/2026/09/memento-mori/): An unusual meerschaum pipe...
- [Obsolete media: 35 mm negatives](https://nzeldes.com/2026/07/obsolete-media-35-mm-negatives/): Another medium bites the dust...
- [A quantum elevator](https://nzeldes.com/2026/06/a-quantum-elevator/): Poor signage design at a train station
- [Wonderful chaos](https://nzeldes.com/2026/04/wonderful-chaos/): A visit to the new V&A Storehouse
- [Many numbers, little clarity](https://nzeldes.com/2026/02/many-numbers-little-clarity/): I was riding an elevator in a public building, and on its wall I saw the amazing control panel shown here. It had a large number, presumably the floor we were on, and it had two arrays of numbers, one on a screen and one in a keypad.
- [A neat innovative thermometer](https://nzeldes.com/2026/01/a-neat-innovative-thermometer/): Today medical thermometers are electronic contraptions that come in various forms and are easy to use and easy to break - as disposable as most everything seems to be of late. When I was a kid medical thermometers were glass tubes with a thin line of mercury running up on a scale inside it, terminating in a mercury bulb that you'd stick under your tongue, or in your armpit, or worse. They worked extremely reliably, because they relied on a basic law of physics, and lasted forever so long as you didn't drop them on the floor. And they all looked the same - nobody messed with a winning design.
- [Smart signage!](https://nzeldes.com/2025/12/smart-signage/): Was waiting to board a plane at Ben Gurion Airport. Boarding was by zones, which is a sensible idea but usually involves some confusion as to which zone is up... PA announcements can get drowned in the general hubbub.
- [The droll sarcophagi of Peki’in](https://nzeldes.com/2025/11/the-droll-sarcophagi-of-pekiin/): Museum visits never lack for cool stuff! So here is a sighting from a recent visit to the Israel Museum in Jerusalem.
- [Board games go way back!](https://nzeldes.com/2025/11/board-games-go-way-back/): We've all enjoyed playing board games - Timeless ones like Chess and Checkers, and more modern ones like Monopoly and Risk.
- [Crazy airport cartographers](https://nzeldes.com/2025/11/a-map-from-hell/): Was trying to get to my plane at Dulles International airport in Washington, DC. There are a number of terminals, and a train connecting them. So we got on the train, expecting it to do the usual thing - run in a (topological) circle, or maybe back and forth along a line, between the terminals and perhaps a rental car lot. And there was a map on the carriage wall...
- [Gone with the wind](https://nzeldes.com/2025/09/gone-with-the-wind/): Two car features that are no longer with us...
- [The hidden downside of surge protectors](https://nzeldes.com/2025/09/the-hidden-downside-of-surge-protectors/): Lately the electrical system in my home got in the habit of shutting down unexpectedly. This did not happen by some faulty appliance tripping a fuse; we soon found that it was the Ground Fault Circuit Interrupter (GFCI, that anti-electrocution safety device) that was deciding to trip, but when we reset it the power stayed on. Weird!
- [Welcome Commonsense Design blog!](https://nzeldes.com/2025/09/welcome-commonsense-design-blog/): My Commonsense Design blog has been active since 2008, sharing my views and observations on product design and the occasional off-topic thought. To my delight, it created discussion when readers cared to share their comments and critique.
- [The degradation of the clothespin](https://nzeldes.com/2025/04/the-degradation-of-the-clothespin/): The humble clothespin is a ubiquitous item that has been with us for generations; and it is simple enough that you'd think it's reached the point if utmost reliability. And yet, it seems that it is in fact very unreliable: clothespins break, they fall apart, they need constant replenishing... but I seemed to remember that long ago, when the world was young (well, at least when I was), this wasn't the case.
- [Form, function and confusion](https://nzeldes.com/2025/03/form-function-and-confusion/): See this water tap.
- [Snuggle up!](https://nzeldes.com/2025/02/snuggle-up/): We all buy LED light bulbs these days (remember the days of CFL and tungsten filament bulbs?). And we buy them in little cardboard boxes made from dead trees. You have skinny single-bulb boxes, and you have twice as wide two-packs. So imagine my surprise when I saw the in-between box at the left  in the photo:
- [Let there be light!](https://nzeldes.com/2024/12/let-there-be-light/): Eating at a restaurant can be a romantic occasion, but restaurants seem to feel that justifies keeping a low lighting. Which is fine for romance but annoying when you need to peruse the menu.  However, this one restaurant in Milano solved the problem!
- [Go ahead, confuse us all!](https://nzeldes.com/2021/08/go-ahead-confuse-us-all/): Here are two boxes of vitamins I take, separated by a few months in production time, newer version on the right.
- [Bad, bad UI design!](https://nzeldes.com/2021/03/bad-bad-ui-design/): Here is a screenshot from my Lenovo ThinkPad computer. The computer was running a self-test using the incorporated Lenovo utility, and I tried to abort this test by exiting that utility.
- [Washington Sabatini’s impressive calculator](https://nzeldes.com/2021/03/washington-sabatinis-impressive-calculator/): Here is one impressive calculating device: Washington Sabatini’s reinforced concrete calculator.
- [Creeping featurism: SLR cameras, yesterday and today](https://nzeldes.com/2021/02/creeping-featurism-slr-cameras-yesterday-and-today/): The photographic camera is one of the great inventions of the 19th century, and is quite a simple idea: take  a light sensitive surface, put a lens in front of it, add the ability to control exposure time and aperture, and you’re all set. And for more than a century, that’s what cameras were all about. But not anymore.
- [Slide rules for a new century](https://nzeldes.com/2020/11/slide-rules-for-a-new-century/): The Tavernier-Gravet company was France's premier scientific instrument maker at the end of the 19th century, and it stayed abreast of the latest developments in slide rule design and production when it entered the 20th century. In this this new article on my History-of–Computing site I illustrate some of their problems and solutions as they transitioned into the new century.
- [Genaille’s calculating rods](https://nzeldes.com/2020/10/genailles-calculating-rods/): When my kids were at school they were taught addition with colored wooden rods. Well, a century earlier two innovative Frenchmen - Henri Genaille and Edouard Lucas - invented a system that does rapid multiplication and division using much more sophisticated rods, and I have in my collection a box of these ingenious calculation aids.
- [A math table from Napoleon’s time](https://nzeldes.com/2020/07/a-math-table-from-napoleons-time/): Monsieur C.-F. Martin was a retired naval clerk, and evidently he had developed a great love for painstaking calculation. Just see this 100x100 multiplication table and units conversion tables he published at the beginning of the 19th century, to help his countrymen deal with the switch from the old Empire weights and measures to the newfangled metric system introduced after the French revolution. This interesting document is described in full in my latest History-of-Computing article.
- [Lalanne’s glass slide rule](https://nzeldes.com/2020/05/lalannes-glass-slide-rule/): So what do you do if you want to give a computer to every child, and the computers of your day are made of expensive boxwood? Why, you invent a cheap slide rule made of Glass! Leon Lalanne did, in 1851. Read all about it here!
- [Jacob Zedak’s wooden slide rule](https://nzeldes.com/2020/04/jacob-zedaks-wooden-slide-rule/): What’s so special about a wooden slide rule, you ask? And indeed, for most of their 3½ centuries of existence -- until the arrival of plastics -- the material of choice for making slide rules has been wood... but that is the case with straight slide rules. Circular slide rules, by contrast, were almost exclusively made of metal, and later of plastic. Yet Jacob Zedak chose wood as the raw material for his take on these disc-like calculators; and he used plywood, which wouldn’t be used even in a linear rule.
- [The Data Scaler Proportional Rule](https://nzeldes.com/2020/03/the-data-scaler-proportional-rule/): The Gerber Variable Scale, described here, is a thing of beauty and elegance, admirable for its ingenuity and craftsmanship. It is also a “one of a kind” device, or so I thought until my unexpected sighting on eBay of the “Proportional Rule” made by the Data Scaler corporation of Westfield, Massachusetts.
- [Three Controllers – and their Grandpa!](https://nzeldes.com/2019/12/three-controllers-and-their-grandpa/): Read the full article about this mysterious giant Controller on my HOC web site.
- [Pretty as a picture](https://nzeldes.com/2019/06/pretty-as-a-picture/): The circular slide rule developed around 1920 by Jules Arnault and Louis Paineau comes in a wooden frame, to give it durability and ease of use; but it is so pretty you can - and I did - hang it on your wall!
- [The spirit of a fractal!](https://nzeldes.com/2019/06/the-spirit-of-a-fractal/): Here is a photo of the Jerusalem central bus station, a large blocky building at the entrance to the city.
- [Badalamenti’s Factorization slide rule](https://nzeldes.com/2019/01/badalamentis-factorization-slide-rule/): One of the strangest slide rules in my collection, this ingenious Italian device from the 1950s allows you to factorize numbers into their prime factors in an instant. Just move the "Bull's eye" cursor to the number you wish to examine and the crisscrossing lines and symbols line up to give you the answer.
- [Solving the machinetta’s bug](https://nzeldes.com/2018/09/solving-the-machinettas-bug/): I was at this coffee shop and saw the two machinettas. Of course I didn't buy one - as coffee lovers, we have all the machinettas we need at home - but I did notice how the pair represents two different  solutions to a small but important design bug that the classic machinetta had subjected coffee drinkers to for ages.
- [A homebrew Single Sideband transmitter](https://nzeldes.com/2018/02/a-homebrew-single-sideband-transmitter/): This new article on my Possibly Interesting site is strictly for radio amateurs and other geeks: a photo-essay depicting circuit and construction details of the SSB transmitter I'd built a long time ago. What makes it interesting (other than the nostalgia of vacuum tubes, that is) is the prevalence of improvised, scavenged and military surplus components - necessitated by the paucity of the component supply (and funding) in the Israel of those pre-internet, pre-Startup Nation days.
- [Meet a Mathematical Inventor!](https://nzeldes.com/2017/12/meet-a-mathematical-inventor/): This is Jaen-Antoine Lafay's Hélice a Calcul, a rather unusual logarithmic slide rule. But Lafay himself, its inventor, was just as unusual, not to say quirky... a fascinating lone innovator waging war on an indifferent world.
- [Lieutenant Brenske’s Marsch-Zirkel](https://nzeldes.com/2017/05/lieutenant-brenskes-marsch-zirkel/): In the days before GPS, Google Maps and Waze, people used maps; and to figure how long it would take to get from A to B on a map, you could make excellent use of a Marsch-Zirkel, or march compasses... like the lovely device described in this new article on my History of Computing exhibition.
- [Mind the footprints!](https://nzeldes.com/2017/03/footprints/): An important element of everyday product design that is all too often ignored is the footprint of an object.
- [A Googie Kerosene Heater!](https://nzeldes.com/2017/02/a-googie-kerosene-heater/): Kerosene heaters are smelly, require much maintenance, and are dangerous if used carelessly; on the other hand they create a lot of heat, are independent of utility feeds, and for us older folks they actually have a nostalgia evoked by the conditioned association of the kerosene smell and the pleasant warmth of years past. Be that as it may, they are seldom seen today, and those that are around are mostly stored for backup in case of winter power outages. They also tend to be bulky and ugly...
- [A most unusual slide rule](https://nzeldes.com/2016/12/a-most-unusual-slide-rule/): The Baines slide rule is one of the most unusual ones in my collection, because of the metal contraption on its back that moves all its parts in unison. Here it is:
- [Russian Roulette!](https://nzeldes.com/2016/10/russian-roulette/): Clearly marking tool and instrument controls is always a good idea, but it becomes vital where safety is at stake. And if there is one control where safety is definitely at stake, it is the safety catch!
- [The ancients had it right](https://nzeldes.com/2016/09/the-ancients-had-it-right/): These days the preference for shoddy, cheap, use-and-discard products is all over the place. Here is an example:
- [Cornell’s Calculator in a Book](https://nzeldes.com/2016/04/cornells-calculator-in-a-book/): Some of the most fascinating items in my History of Computing collection are the one-of-a-kind, undocumented ones. The latest such addition to the collection is a calculator hidden in a book-like case, that has no mention anywhere that I could find.
- [Innumeracy in the skies](https://nzeldes.com/2016/03/innumeracy-in-the-skies/): Was on a United flight enjoying my coffee (such as it was), when I noticed the text on the paper cup.
- [The original Alice](https://nzeldes.com/2016/01/the-original-alice/): Say "Alice in wonderland", and the image that comes to mind (well, at least in the generations that used to read books) is a little girl in a tidy Victorian knee-length puffed sleeve dress with a pinafore, and long blond hair - the girl in the image at right. This comes from the famous illustrations by John Tenniel, a successful professional illustrator that Carroll retained to illustrate the book. The illustrations by Tenniel became iconic, although they bear no resemblance to Alice Liddell, the lead character's namesake, who was not blonde in the least.
- [A beautiful instrument](https://nzeldes.com/2015/08/a-beautiful-instrument/): This Barometer was made in Florence some 100 years ago, and served my late grandfather, first in Italy, then in Israel; it ended up on my wall, a family heirloom to delight the heart of any engineer.
- [A wonderful idea for defusing a child’s fear](https://nzeldes.com/2015/05/a-wonderful-idea-for-defusing-a-childs-fear/): I was sitting in the lobby of the Shaare Zedek hospital in Jerusalem, and I noticed on the chair next to me a small booklet someone had discarded there. An idle look turned to admiration as I examined it and realized what it was.
- [Another triumph of improvisation!](https://nzeldes.com/2015/03/another-triumph-of-improvisation/): New on my Possibly Interesting web site: Cloning a Vibroplex bug, where I describe the venerable Vibroplex semi-automatic telegraph key - and the improvised clone I made as a young radio amateur.
- [Definitely a good idea!](https://nzeldes.com/2015/02/definitely-a-good-idea/): Form follows function!
- [How many engineers?](https://nzeldes.com/2015/01/how-many-engineers/): See the mechanic working on my Renault Clio.
- [An elegant hydraulic calculator](https://nzeldes.com/2014/11/an-elegant-hydraulic-calculator/): Robert Owen Wynne-Roberts, MICE (Member of the Institution of Civil Engineers), FRSI (Fellow of the Royal Sanitary Institute), was a talented civil engineer. He passed away in 1935, but at least one result of his engineering talent abides: the Wynne-Roberts hydraulic calculator, a specialty circular slide rule for computing flow in water pipes and sewers.
- [Form and Materials: swords of yesteryear](https://nzeldes.com/2014/11/form-and-materials-swords-of-yesteryear/): Form follows function; but often both must follow the available materials.
- [A truly uncool armrest design](https://nzeldes.com/2014/10/a-truly-uncool-armrest-design/): Back from vacation, having flown a Boeing 737. This lacked the personalized screens seen in longer haul craft but it had a headset jack and a set of volume and channel controls for each passenger. The controls were set in the armrest, in easy reach of the passenger, like this:
- [A curious slide rule design](https://nzeldes.com/2014/09/a-curious-slide-rule-design/): For some reason, inventors in the first half of the 20th century thought that incorporating a slide rule into a mechanical pencil was a great idea. In reality, these combination devices were of dubious utility, gives their low precision as calculators... but they are certainly ingeniously designed.
- [How cool is that?!](https://nzeldes.com/2014/08/how-cool-is-that/): Evolution has crafted some amazing design solutions to the problems of life, and I never have enough of their elegance.
- [Ingenious design sighting at Heathrow](https://nzeldes.com/2014/06/ingenious-design-sighting-at-heathrow/): Here is a bit of outstandingly smart design I saw in Terminal Five at London Heathrow airport.
- [My Dad’s tin suitcase](https://nzeldes.com/2014/05/my-dads-tin-suitcase/): My father, God rest his soul, was a young physics student when Israel's war of independence broke out, and he was among the defenders of the Jewish Quarter in Jerusalem's Old City. When the quarter fell to the superior forces of the Jordanian Legion, he was taken prisoner and spent 9 months in a POW camp near Mafraq in Transjordan.
- [The little details… bless ’em!](https://nzeldes.com/2014/04/the-little-details-bless-em/): When I was QA manager in an Intel fabrication plant I had this Honda Acura ad copy stuck to my cubicle partition:
- [Independence Day pins: a case study in deteriorating design](https://nzeldes.com/2014/03/independence-day-pins-a-case-study-in-deteriorating-design/): Unlike the US, Israel doesn’t celebrate its Independence Day by sending its president to fight invading aliens in huge spaceships (our presidents are too advanced in years for that). We do, however, have other traditions, and one of the earliest of these has been for the Jewish National Fund to issue each year a small lapel pin celebrating the young state’s birthday. Since my childhood these would be sold for a small donation to the JNF's activity, and I've kept some of them and bought some others later, making a nice little collection.
- [Five Intel chips that changed the world](https://nzeldes.com/2014/02/five-intel-chips-that-changed-the-world/): Check out the new article in the History of Computing section of my Possibly Interesting Web site: Five Intel chips that changed the world.
- [Cherubs and Technology](https://nzeldes.com/2014/01/cherubs-and-technology/): I wrote recently about the batch of WW1 postcards left by my great-uncle Ettore... and while the cards described in that article focus on hate propaganda, there was also one postcard  that is quite endearing, and here it is:
- [WW1 Propaganda: a sinister form of art](https://nzeldes.com/2013/12/ww1-propaganda-a-sinister-form-of-art/): New on my Possibly Interesting site: Heroes and Barbarians, Propaganda postcards from the Great War.
- [Longer is better!](https://nzeldes.com/2013/12/longer-is-better/): So here is a wonderfully useful tool from Shachihata: the Artline 710 Long Nib Marker.
- [Funky pumpkin!](https://nzeldes.com/2013/11/funky-pumpkin/): Was in Germany and saw these in a supermarket. The thing is called Bischofsmütze - which means Bishop's hat, although there's something vaguely oriental (Islamic oriental, I mean) about it.
- [A small difference](https://nzeldes.com/2013/09/a-small-difference/): Here we have two glove compartments. The one on the left is from the Renault Clio; the other from a Mazda 3. They serve the same simple function and - not surprisingly - look pretty much the same, if you ignore the nice touch in the Mazda's, that places the latch closer to the driver.
- [A new biological theory: the Aerial Cat!](https://nzeldes.com/2013/08/a-new-biological-theory-the-aerial-cat/): You may have heard of the Aquatic Ape theory, which deduces from our hairless skin that our ancestors had gone through an ocean-dwelling phase. Well -- here is my new theory: that the common cat, Felis catus, evolved from a flying creature!
- [An amazingly ingenious retro kitchen item](https://nzeldes.com/2013/08/an-amazingly-ingenious-retro-kitchen-item/): Here is an item I saw on the wonderful Nostalgia Online site. They have a large collection of vintage kitchen utensils, most of which I do recall from my childhood, and many of which I run into as I rummage in flea markets in search of computing history items. However, this one I've never seen before, and the ingenious way it solves a real problem simply blew my mind.
- [Closing a time loop](https://nzeldes.com/2013/07/closing-a-time-loop/): Many, many years ago when I was a teenage geek, I was green with envy at the Coil Winding Calculator that an older friend had access to in his university lab. It was an extremely useful device - a cardboard slide chart that allowed you to compute the parameters for winding a coil of a given inductance (trust me, when you homebrew your own ham radio gear, that's something you really need to do).
- [Writing in an unknown tongue](https://nzeldes.com/2013/07/writing-in-an-unknown-tongue/): See the hilarious street sign.
- [Duh!](https://nzeldes.com/2013/06/duh/): Here is a street sign from Tel Aviv's Ramat Hachayal area, a vibrant hi-tech hub. The sign hangs on a building at Hanechoshet st., as stated in English.
- [Splash!](https://nzeldes.com/2013/06/splash/): Beauty can sometimes appear in the most unusual places.
- [Form follows dysfunction](https://nzeldes.com/2013/06/form-follows-dysfunction/): So we had to ship some parcels overseas, and we were given these forms to fill at the post office.
- [The Lawyers’ Balloon](https://nzeldes.com/2013/05/the-lawyers-balloon/): One can hardly imagine a more fun child's plaything than a toy balloon. These have been around in various forms since the middle ages at least, and are as pleasing to today's children as ever. And they generally look like the balloon in the illustration below, from the classic children's book, beloved by generations of Israeli children, "Tale of five balloons".
- [Two primordial hunters](https://nzeldes.com/2013/05/two-primordial-hunters/): One of the most famous sculptures made in Israel is "Nimrod", created in 1939 by Itzhak Danziger.
- [An unusual business card design](https://nzeldes.com/2013/05/an-unusual-business-card-design/): Unusual business cards are not rare; many companies and individuals try to deviate from the traditional white rectangle design in the hope of standing out from the crowd. But today I was handed a card that goes far beyond this. Here it is:
- [Sugar and Trees](https://nzeldes.com/2013/04/sugar-and-trees/): One seldom gives much thought to the humble sugar packet seen in coffee shops (unless one is a sucrologist, at any rate) but there's an interesting observation related to its design.
- [Timeless Dice](https://nzeldes.com/2013/04/timeless-dice/): Some designs never change...
- [Excellent human engineering in the Small Calculator](https://nzeldes.com/2013/04/excellent-human-engineering-in-the-small-calculator/): A century ago Gilbert Small, of Waltham, Massachusetts, invented a compact pocket calculator that is small, effective, and designed with special attention to usability.
- [A smart design in a lowly paper napkin dispenser](https://nzeldes.com/2013/03/a-smart-design-in-a-lowly-paper-napkin-dispenser/): We're all familiar with the spring-loaded paper napkin dispenser to the right. Every low-priced restaurant and diner has these; you'd think it has hit a sweet spot of stable cost and performance. After all, it works, doesn't it?
- [A new contraceptive?](https://nzeldes.com/2013/03/a-new-contraceptive/): See this product which I found at a hardware superstore. Looks useful enough for organizing stray cables in the home. But it has another unexpected function.
- [Where is our sandbox?](https://nzeldes.com/2013/02/where-is-our-sandbox/): Something caught my attention in this children's playground in our neighborhood, where my kids used to play long years ago.
- [Simplicity before Greed](https://nzeldes.com/2013/02/simplicity-before-greed/): Most cafeterias sell water to their thirsty customers in plastic bottles full of mineral water. The water is no better than the tap water in most countries, its environmental impact is dubious, and of course it turns a tidy profit for the business. As a customer I find it annoying to pay for one of the most common molecules on my planet, but hey, there are bigger problems and like all of you I pull out my wallet and forget about it.
- [That’s progress for you!](https://nzeldes.com/2013/01/thats-progress-for-you/): Check out this humble black marker pen.
- [Tactile sidewalk strips – now in Jerusalem!](https://nzeldes.com/2013/01/tactile-sidewalk-strips-now-in-jerusalem/): I've written before about the use of tactile sidewalk strips to help the blind, as seen in Japan. Well, now we have them in Israel too! I was walking under the Calatrava bridge in Jerusalem, and saw this:
- [A building that looks the part](https://nzeldes.com/2013/01/a-building-that-looks-the-part/): Here is the Physics and Mathematics faculty building in Bashkir State University, in the city of Ufa, capital of the Republic of Bashkortostan, Russia.
- [Broken remnants of past skylines](https://nzeldes.com/2013/01/broken-remnants-of-past-skylines/): I happened to look up and noticed this against the evening sky:
- [A lovely 18th c. gauging slide rule](https://nzeldes.com/2012/12/a-lovely-18th-c-gauging-slide-rule/): The art of Gauging and Ullaging,  i.e. assessing the quantity of  liquor, beer or malt in a barrel in order to tax it properly, used to be an important application of mathematics, and resulted in the development of some intricate computing devices over the last few centuries.
- [Most amazing pencil case ever](https://nzeldes.com/2012/12/most-amazing-pencil-case-ever/): This is the Ashtanur pencil case. Once you see it, you can't help wanting one: it is simply too cool!
- [Right Door, Left Door](https://nzeldes.com/2012/12/right-door-left-door/): Here is a photo I snapped in a kitchen area in a company I visited. See what's wrong?
- [Weirdest napkin ring design ever?](https://nzeldes.com/2012/12/weirdest-napkin-ring-design-ever/): I was at a fancy home and kitchenware store and saw the box in the photo here, containing – it says on the front – “Salt & Pepper Napkin Rings”. This sounded weirdly intriguing, like “Oregano & Thyme Spark Plugs”, so I took a closer look. Turns out this is one of the stranger design ideas I've had the pleasure of meeting.
- [A new way for elevators to crash](https://nzeldes.com/2012/11/a-new-way-for-elevators-to-crash/): When Elisha Otis invented the 'safety elevator' mechanism in 1852, elevator crashes have become a rare event indeed. But these days "crash" has a new meaning, which Otis couldn't have foreseen. Consider the elevator in the photo, from the Azrieli towers in Tel Aviv. It has a wonderful new control system with a large computer screen to tell you what's going on.
- [A cozy home for lost baggage](https://nzeldes.com/2012/11/a-cozy-home-for-lost-baggage/): Every seasoned traveler knows the drill: you go to baggage claim, everyone's bags arrive except yours, and you start running around to try and locate it. If you're lucky, you end up finding your suitcase standing, forlorn and confused, with a few other bags in some corner or another. How it got there nobody can tell, and you don't ask.
- [Stupid tape measure!](https://nzeldes.com/2012/11/stupid-tape-measure/): Here are two retractable tape measures. The one on the left is a classic by Stanley, the other, made by Panyi,  clearly a cheaper clone. Looks the same, works the same... except for one small difference.
- [Guest post: Elevator button usability](https://nzeldes.com/2012/11/guest-post-elevator-button-usability/): Today we have a guest post from our loyal reader George Trudeau of Hyannis, Massachusetts.
- [How to make headlamps expensive](https://nzeldes.com/2012/11/how-to-make-headlamps-expensive/): Here are the headlamps of two Mazda cars. On the left, a Mazda 323 from the first half of the past decade, the other a Mazda 3 from the second half. Both fine family cars.
- [Elisha Kally’s wondrous calculator](https://nzeldes.com/2012/10/elisha-kallys-wondrous-calculator/): New article on my History of Computing site: Elisha Kally's water flow calculator, a sophisticated network calculator based on the Hazen-Williams formula.
- [All shine, no legibility](https://nzeldes.com/2012/10/all-shine-no-legibility/): Here is the control panel of a counter-top cold/hot Tami 4 water bar. Push a button - you get hot water. Push another - here's a refreshing cup of cold water.
- [Humorous details in everyday design… bless them!](https://nzeldes.com/2012/10/humorous-details-in-everyday-design-bless-them/): Form, they say, follows function... which leads to many utilitarian everyday products. But every now and then you run into a design detail that shows inspired abuse of this principle: some unknown designer decides that the product also needs to be lovely, or unconventional, or humorous.
- [A weird sight indeed](https://nzeldes.com/2012/10/a-weird-sight-indeed/): I saw the... whatever... below in Hackney, London, and can't resist sharing it with you.
- [The HP150 Touch Screen: a cautionary tale](https://nzeldes.com/2012/09/the-hp150-touch-screen-a-cautionary-tale/): Not all cool ideas are actually good.
- [An extinct keyboard layout](https://nzeldes.com/2012/09/an-extinct-keyboard-layout/): While taking in the wonderful Israel Perosnal Computer Museum in Haifa I came face to face with the Intelligent Systems Compucolor II, a bizarre 1977 home computer built into a repurposed 13" TV set.
- [One comment on the Samsung vs. Apple litigation](https://nzeldes.com/2012/09/one-comment-on-the-samsung-vs-apple-litigation/): Now, I hate litigation, and like many would rather have companies focus on innovating for the greater good; also, I happen to like Android a lot. Nevertheless, I think many criticizers of Apple in its recent victory over Samsung are missing a key point.
- [How the Slide Rule got its Cursor](https://nzeldes.com/2012/08/how-the-slide-rule-got-its-cursor/): A new article on my History of Computing site traces the evolution of the straight slide rule over its 3 centuries of service.
- [Peugeot’s breakthrough in Crystallogrpahy](https://nzeldes.com/2012/07/peugeots-breakthrough-in-crystallogrpahy/): One of the first scientific facts you learn as a child is that snowflakes, those lovely art creations of nature, have a six-fold symmetry. And they do; the properties of water molecules see to that. Hence the standard symbol for snow (and freezing, and cold in general).
- [Form contradicts Function!?!!](https://nzeldes.com/2012/07/form-contradicts-function/): Sure thing, Form should follow Function... but some designers haven't heard of that. Like the Sony designers responsible for the two weird design choices below.
- [Heterodontus Portusjacksoni](https://nzeldes.com/2012/06/heterodontus-portusjacksoni/): The intense pressure of natural selection has given us many magnificent examples of optimized design in nature. Here is a lovely case: the dentition of Heterodontus Portusjacksoni, the Port Jackson shark. I saw these jaws at a nature museum and just had to snap a photo...
- [How not to design a sign](https://nzeldes.com/2012/06/how-not-to-design-a-sign/): I came upon this well-meaning sign at a university guest house. Can't fault its call for responsible behavior, but what were they thinking when they created it?
- [Education and Fun in a boxful of seeds](https://nzeldes.com/2012/05/education-and-fun-in-a-boxful-of-seeds/): Children in Oregon can enjoy giant redwood forests... but here in the holy land a semi-arid climate and millennia of human abuse force us to make do with less. Still, the humble grasses, weeds, wildflowers and thorny shrubs that we do have make an exuberant comeback every spring; and they remind me of an unforgettable nature study assignment given us by my elementary school teacher long ago.
- [At last, a sensible exit sign!](https://nzeldes.com/2012/05/at-last-a-sensible-exit-sign/): Those depressing multi-story parking structures are an unavoidable part of a driver's life... and they can get quite annoying when you need to find your way out of one. Sure, there are signs. Here, for example, is one garage that takes no chances on our missing the exit, and advertises it bilingually and redundantly:
- [Your mother should know!](https://nzeldes.com/2012/04/your-mother-should-know/): A friend pointed me at this image, which seems to have gone viral online:
- [Grace Hopper as Susan Calvin](https://nzeldes.com/2012/04/grace-hopper-as-susan-calvin/): Rear Admiral Grace Hopper (1906-1992) was one of the legendary pioneers of computing in the 20th century; among other achievements she had written the first compiler. Here is a well-known photo of her with some colleagues at the console of a Univac-1 computer back in 1957.
- [Where are our car windows going?!](https://nzeldes.com/2012/04/where-are-our-car-windows-going/): Something weird is happening to car designers.
- [Android vs. Palm: the lost art of keeping it simple](https://nzeldes.com/2012/03/android-vs-palm-the-lost-art-of-keeping-it-simple/): Back then we had the Palm Pilot. It had a gray lo-res screen and minimal capabilities. No wireless, no GPS, no games, just basic PDA funcfions. Compared to the android phone I use now it was like a stone ax. And yet, that old Palm had a key attribute that is long lost: simplicity of use.
- [Indoor chair, outdoor chair](https://nzeldes.com/2012/02/indoor-chair-outdoor-chair/): I was in the campus of the Academic College of Tel Aviv and l noticed a little courtyard with a nice deck and some garden furniture. What caught my eye was that the chairs were tilted against the tables.
- [Target practice](https://nzeldes.com/2012/02/target-practice/): We all know these automatic coffee machines: you place a paper cup under the nozzle, hit a button, and out comes a flow of some sort of coffee or chocolate drink. The machine at right is a good example.
- [Form follows Function](https://nzeldes.com/2012/01/form-follows-function/): Form follows Function, as we all know... but function can change, leaving the form out of context.
- [Food labeling we’d like to see…](https://nzeldes.com/2011/12/food-labeling-wed-like-to-see/): Most food products have nutrition information labels that tell you in minute detail what they contain, from calorie count to milligrams of Sodium. All very edifying, to be sure, but boooring!
- [Wayda go, Logan airport!](https://nzeldes.com/2011/11/wayda-go-logan-airport/): We veteran road warriors know the drill: go thru security, then hunt for a power outlet to recharge our computer at as we wait for our flight. This often involves scouting the terminal halls hoping to find the occasional wall socket intended for the janitor's vacuum cleaner, hoping there would be a vacant chair near it. Of course, these are scarce, and as likely as not to be taken by a fellow traveler.
- [Bike stuntmen, Munich awaits you!](https://nzeldes.com/2011/10/bike-stuntmen-munich-awaits-you/): I've already addressed pedestrian crossing signals in Germany, but here's a truly surprising one, which I sighted in Munich.
- [Plug and Gag, Take 2](https://nzeldes.com/2011/10/plug-and-gag-take-2/): A while ago I took HP to task for their tendency to fill your hard disk with hundreds of Megs of software when all you need is a printer driver. I am happy to report that they've improved their ways... sort of.
- [Nothing new under the sun](https://nzeldes.com/2011/09/nothing-new-under-the-sun/): Everyone knows that sport fans can get violent in their excitement... there is even a Wikipedia article listing violent spectator incidents in sports. This being an aspect of human nature, it is not surprising that the custom of berating and clobbering the opposite team's supporters goes back to earlier times. Still, I was quite amused when I saw this fresco in the archeological museum of Naples:
- [Cool innovation in a parking garage](https://nzeldes.com/2011/08/cool-innovation-in-a-parking-garage/): I was trying to find a parking spot in the parking garage under the Ramat Aviv shopping mall in Tel Aviv; this is a difficult task much of the time. But it was made very much easier because I discovered they have a truly wonderful system.
- [A thorny design problem](https://nzeldes.com/2011/06/a-thorny-design-problem/): And now, a tip of the hat to a nifty solution to the oldest design problem of them all: how do you spread your genes?
- [The abused art of form design](https://nzeldes.com/2011/06/the-abused-art-of-form-design/): People who design forms never cease to amaze.
- [A friendly sign](https://nzeldes.com/2011/06/a-friendly-sign/): We all know the usual "Private Parking" no-parking signs: stark red and white, with wording in fat letters forming threats of the sorry fate - towing, usually - awaiting violators. They're designed to jar and scare the thoughtless driver. Nothing pretty about these signs, and usually that's exactly the intent of their owners.
- [Lavazza’s confusion](https://nzeldes.com/2011/05/lavazzas-confusion/): I was visiting an office where they had one of these delightful Espresso machines, an Espresso Point by Lavazza, and tried to make me a cup.
- [Sic transit gloria mundi](https://nzeldes.com/2011/05/sic-transit-gloria-mundi/): In a world of rapidly advancing technology it is the fate of any given product to go down from the latest and greatest to a commodity in a few years. The fancy box my first electronic calculator came in probably cost more to make than an entire calculator costs today - and today's unit, though far more powerful, is sold in an ignominious blister package...
- [Another ridiculous serving suggestion](https://nzeldes.com/2011/04/another-ridiculous-serving-suggestion/): I've discussed before the silliness that results when overcautious lawyers and thoughtless designers cooperate to create silly "serving suggestions"... and here is a lovely new example.
- [Every comfort for the Baby Executive!](https://nzeldes.com/2011/03/every-comfort-for-the-baby-executive/): Note how this chair has the same impressive mesh seat popularized by Herman Miller, as well as fancy faux leather padding on the back. This is a great executive chair... for babies, of course. No baby exec would enter his Rolls without one of these! :-)
- [How do you say “Plug and Play” in Russian?](https://nzeldes.com/2011/03/how-do-you-say-plug-and-play-in-russian/): We got this new Samsung flat panel TV, and when I first turned it on it went straight into a "first time setup" sequence. The first question that appeared on the OSD (On-Screen Display) was which language I wanted for the OSD; I started scrolling among the options, and my finger slipped and hit the "enter" button when the option "Russian" was selected. The OSD obediently changed to Cyrillic script, and presented me with the next setup dialog. In pure Russian. Yay.
- [Hats off to ancient Egyptian medicine](https://nzeldes.com/2011/03/hats-off-to-ancient-egyptian-medicine/): Egypt today has its problems, but a few millennia ago the land along the Nile was a center of power, technology and culture. We all know of its monumental achievements in architecture; what is less widely known is that the Egyptians had a very advanced medical knowledge.
- [The chimeric camels of China](https://nzeldes.com/2011/02/the-chimeric-camels-of-china/): In times of old,  intrepid European explorers who ventured into remote countries like China or Africa would return with travelers' tales of amazing creatures such as have never been seen. And apparently such wonderful animals still exist in far away lands, reflected in the meager evidence that filters back. Take this sighting...
- [Now, that is one UGLY dino…](https://nzeldes.com/2011/02/now-that-is-one-ugly-dino/): Here is a skull that used to belong to a smallish plant-eating dinosaur, and as he doesn't need it any more, it is on display at the Museum für Naturkunde in Berlin.
- [Design hidden in a Hanukkah lamp](https://nzeldes.com/2011/01/design-hidden-in-a-hanukkah-lamp/): Here is a brass Hanukkiah, a 9-candle Hanukkah lamp, that we got in the seventies. It was made by Maskit, the pioneering maker of folklore-inspired clothing and art items in Israel's early years.
- [An ingenious feedback loop](https://nzeldes.com/2011/01/an-ingenious-feedback-loop/): The 65 km trip from Jerusalem to Tel Aviv used to take two days on a donkey from biblical days to the 20th century. Then it went down to 3 hours by car in the fifties, then 2 hours, and finally below 60 minutes on the Highway 1 six-lane freeway. Then people bought more cars, and we're back to 2 hours in the rush hour...
- [More signage silliness](https://nzeldes.com/2011/01/more-signage-silliness/): I was in a shopping center and I saw these two signs on different floors, pointing out the emergency stairs' entrance.
- [Only a smile](https://nzeldes.com/2011/01/only-a-smile/): I wrote before about the impact of a cheerful nature on the customer service experience. Well - here is another example.
- [Pedestrian crossings in antiquity](https://nzeldes.com/2010/12/pedestrian-crossings-in-antiquity/): The "zebra" pedestrian crossing with its rectangular stripes is all too familiar. According to Wikipedia, it was introduced after WW2; but its roots appear much earlier in history...
- [Cave Canem!](https://nzeldes.com/2010/12/cave-canem/): The ancient Romans were amazingly like us...
- [The future is here! Sort of…](https://nzeldes.com/2010/12/the-future-is-here-sort-of/): I was watching 2001: A Space Odyssey again. Such a contrast to today's special-effect-based space operas... an incredible movie by two giants, and not a bit of CGI in it, either (Sigh...)
- [Tomatoes and the laws of Thermodynamics](https://nzeldes.com/2010/12/tomatoes-and-the-laws-of-thermodynamics/): When we spent a while in the US in the eighties I was amazed and amused by the silly warning "serving suggestion" found on food packaging. I mean, what were they afraid of... a flood of lawsuits by people that opened the soup powder sachet and failed to extract a steaming soup tureen?...
- [Apple world domination 2: Cool packaging!](https://nzeldes.com/2010/11/apple-world-domination-2-cool-packaging/): I was in an appliance store and noticed a stack of boxes containing Kenwood mixers. All other appliances were in ugly white or brown cardboard boxes with some text printed on them; but these mixers were housed in sleek boxes like this:
- [Convergent evolution of nonsense monsters](https://nzeldes.com/2010/11/convergent-evolution-of-nonsense-monsters/): The idea of a time traveler messing up the present by changing the past is a Sci-Fi staple, and is used to good advantage in Ray Bradbury's 1952 short story, "A sound of thunder". Bradbury's subtlety is sadly lost in the 2005 movie of the same name; here, silly looking monsters run amok in the perturbed present of the movie. If you haven't watched it, you may wish to save your time for something better.
- [Creative eco-design at Kibbutz Neot Semadar](https://nzeldes.com/2010/10/creative-eco-design-at-kibbutz-neot-semadar/): I spent a weekend with family in Neot Semadar (Shizafon), a Kibbutz in the Negev desert in the south of Israel. And I mean desert: he place is searing hot in the day, cold at night, and all around is sand, rock and the majestic desolation typical of deserts anywhere.
- [Signage and confusion](https://nzeldes.com/2010/10/signage-and-confusion/): People who design signs ought to be careful, because thoughtless signage can so easily lead to confusion...
- [What positronic brains are really made of](https://nzeldes.com/2010/09/what-positronic-brains-are-really-made-of/): There is a progression in the components of electronic computers. In the forties and fifties they were made of vacuum tubes; in the sixties, of transistors; in the seventies and later of increasingly dense silicon chips. And in the future, according to the vision of SciFi master Isaac Asimov, there will be positronic brains, small enough to fit in a robot's skull, and they will be based on the interplay of positronic potentials in a platinum-iridium matrix. But wait... according to Hollywood, there will be something else.
- [Apple World Domination: the iPhone Refrigerator](https://nzeldes.com/2010/09/apple-world-domination-the-iphone-refrigerator/): Apple Computer's incredibly talented design team has had a major influence on the design of contemporary mobile electronics: just visit a cellular phone store and you'll see how all the companies are scrambling to copy the iPhone's sleek look and feel, both the hardware and the software.
- [One key to great customer support](https://nzeldes.com/2010/09/one-key-to-great-customer-support/): This morning my notebook's battery died an ignominious death, and I had to hurriedly procure a new one. Not a good start for the day.
- [Preferred Parking for TNG!](https://nzeldes.com/2010/08/preferred-parking-for-tng/): I parked at an Intel plant in Israel, and was delighted to note some conveniently located parking spaces marked "Expecting mother".
- [The moat in Ben Gurion airport](https://nzeldes.com/2010/08/the-moat-in-ben-gurion-airport/): There is no place quite like Israel, and this is reflected in many design decisions made in this country. For instance, consider the Arrivals Hall at Tel Aviv's Ben Gurion International Airport, which is designed around our family-centric cultural attitude.
- [Coffee or tea, Milord?](https://nzeldes.com/2010/08/coffee-or-tea-milord/): Here is a screenshot from the form you fill to join the El Al Frequent Flier club. The form has the usual fields (take my word for it, you to whom Hebrew is Greek), but the one that drew my attention is the Title field preceding the first name. This uses a drop-down box, which presents a very comprehensive set of options: there's Mr and Mrs, There's Dr, there's Prof and Rabbi (hey, this is El Al), and there's even Adv and Judge. But the one highlighted in the screenshot is - get this - Lord.
- [The dawn of the BlackBerry era](https://nzeldes.com/2010/08/the-dawn-of-the-blackberry-era/): Cross-posting this from my work site... a look at the original Blackberry from 1998, a winning design with different functionality, different constraints and a quite different usage model from today's designs. Read all about it here!
- [Generation Y Fruit!](https://nzeldes.com/2010/07/generation-y-fruit/): Edible fruit have been on this planet since the Cretaceous, but they know how to move ahead with the times.
- [Cool graphic, bumpy ride…](https://nzeldes.com/2010/07/cool-graphic-bumpy-ride/): I was in a building where someone decided to give the signage a modern look, and I saw this sign outside a restroom. The people have this angular look, with slanted heads - why not? Anything for effect...
- [A computer for every child, 1909 style](https://nzeldes.com/2010/07/a-computer-for-every-child-1909-style/): Check the new article on my History of Computing exhibit: a century old teaching aid from Germany, with the added twist that it anticipates today's well known slogan: "To each pupil his own counting machine!"
- [A vestigial organ in a power tool](https://nzeldes.com/2010/06/a-vestigial-organ-in-a-power-tool/): We all know about vestigial organs in living creatures, such as the useless vermiform appendix that gives many people a bad time. These were useful in earlier releases of our body plan, but are now just along for the ride.
- [Memories,memories…](https://nzeldes.com/2010/05/memoriesmemories/): I was shopping at Office Depot, and next to the checkout line they had this bin full of cheap items on sale. And in it, thrown carelessly with less decorum than potatoes get at the grocer's, were blister-packaged Flash memory cards.
- [Eyjafjallajökull and preventive maintenance](https://nzeldes.com/2010/05/eyjafjallajokull-and-preventive-maintenance/): I never dreamed I'd be blogging a post with the word Eyjafjallajökull in its title...
- [A Lego Surprise](https://nzeldes.com/2010/05/a-lego-surprise/): I was busy putting the basement in order and found a box of much used Lego pieces going back to the kids' childhood, and in it I found - as is - what you see in the photo.
- [Another lost shape](https://nzeldes.com/2010/04/another-lost-shape/): I was visiting a print design firm and noticed a pile of freshly printed business cards that had the shape of a rectangle with one corner cut off diagonally. I was delighted: this must clearly be the card of some IT professional who wanted to play on the shape of the IBM punched card, right?
- [Little Big Biscuit](https://nzeldes.com/2010/04/little-big-biscuit/): You need to speak Hebrew and French to detect the hilarity of this photo:
- [Chimney sighting](https://nzeldes.com/2010/04/chimney-sighting/): Here is a striking photo I snapped in Tubingen, in southern Germany, showing a building with a tile roof... bearing a weird pattern:
- [All staplers are not created equal!](https://nzeldes.com/2010/04/all-staples-are-not-created-equal/): Continuing the theme of using the right tool for the job, here's my take on a tool that is everywhere: the trusty old stapler.
- [Language in the making: the Hebrew Typewriter](https://nzeldes.com/2010/03/language-in-the-making-the-hebrew-typewriter/): A while back I was visiting the wonderful Museum of Business History and Technology in Wilmington, Delaware, which has countless typewriters, that incredible device that will soon be completely forgotten. Among these faithful servants of the authors of yesteryear I saw the device in this photo.
- [The fading memory of arithmetic](https://nzeldes.com/2010/03/the-fading-memory-of-arithmetic/): Isaac Asimov once wrote a SciFi story named The feeling of Power, in which a future age has become so accustomed to computers that the rediscovery of how to calculate sums with pencil and paper - or in one's head - is considered a major breakthrough.
- [Good fitness advice](https://nzeldes.com/2010/02/good-fitness-advice/): Saw the panels below by an elevator. The left one is the familiar elevator control; the one on the right, however, uses fake buttons and reads: "Before you press, think of your health - use the stairs!"
- [Fast food, fifties style](https://nzeldes.com/2010/02/fast-food-fifties-style/): We have a McDonald's in downtown Jerusalem (of course!), but within spitting distance of it there is another kind of fast food restaurant, one that is dear to the hearts of the city's old time residents. It is the Ta'ami restaurant.
- [RosettaStone posts a blooper](https://nzeldes.com/2010/02/rosettastone-posts-a-blooper/): Was looking up RosettaStone, that Rolls Royce of computer-based language teaching tools. They have a nice web site with demo videos and all - very handy. And they had a video there promoting their system, and as it zipped past something seemed wrong. I rewinded a bit and there it was: my native Hebrew language, in a pattern that made no sense at all. It took a second to resolve: they had the hebrew word for Succeed - written backwards, left to right.
- [Neat! A shopping cart with a magnifier!](https://nzeldes.com/2010/02/neat-a-shopping-cart-with-a-magnifier/): We were in a large drugstore in Germany, when I noticed that all the shopping carts had a large magnifier lens attached to them, like this:
- [The rebellious envelope](https://nzeldes.com/2010/02/the-rebellious-envelope/): Every child knows that postage stamps are affixed to the top right corner of the envelope. You lick the stamp, and you press it to the envelope at that corner. And it stays there. Or does it?...
- [No pigs in the dishwasher!](https://nzeldes.com/2010/02/no-pigs-in-the-dishwasher/): These days vendors have become masters of  trivial warnings, as seen in coffee cups that warn us their content is hot, and countless other examples. Recently I ran into an amusing case.
- [How to keep your submarine straight](https://nzeldes.com/2010/01/how-to-keep-your-submarine-straight/): I was visiting the Intrepid museum in NYC (an aircraft museum housed in a retired aircraft carrier - a real treat!) and they had, as a bonus, a fifites-era submarine, the USS Growler, moored alongside the carrier. So I had to see that too (of course).
- [A wave of the hand](https://nzeldes.com/2010/01/a-wave-of-the-hand/): We all know the paper towel dispensers that you crank to get the required length out. The more sophisticated ones dispense with the crank action and use an electric motor actuated by a proximity detector: wave your hand in the air in front of the machine and out comes the preset length of paper with a satisfying whirring sound. Hygienic, neat, and foolproof.
- [A neat switched mains plug](https://nzeldes.com/2010/01/a-neat-switched-mains-plug/): Many small appliances can benefit from an off-device mains switch, and these are often put on the power cable, or - more rarely - on the wall outlet. But in a trip to Germany I witnessed a nice twist on this theme: putting the switch right on the 220V mains plug at the end of the cable. This was done without in any way increasing the size of the standard plug; and of course it means you could retrofit such switches to any device by replacing a plug, a simpler operation than replacing a wall outlet or messing with the cable in between the device and the plug. Nice product!
- [What is the Brain like today?](https://nzeldes.com/2009/12/what-is-the-brain-like-today/): Anyone interested in the Brain – that ultimate piece of high technology – has seen the true but overused statement that each age in history sees the brain as analogous to the latest current technology: the ancients thought of it as a hydraulic system, our grandparents as a telephone exchange, our parents as a computer...
- [The demise of Tinkering, Take 2](https://nzeldes.com/2009/12/the-demise-of-tinkering-take-2/): I've lamented before the disappearance in our time of the Tinkerer, that fix-everything general technology expert of ages past. I ran into a demonstration of how far he's gone the other day when shopping online for a new bluetooth hands-free cellphone car kit (my old one conked out, and fixing it would of course have cost more than buying new - another sign of our times).
- [Newark airport signage… one more time!](https://nzeldes.com/2009/11/newark-airport-signage-one-more-time/): We saw that Newark Liberty International airport has some serious problems keeping its electronic signs straight... here, and here. Well, here's a third and (for now) last installment.
- [Grand Prize for Engrish](https://nzeldes.com/2009/11/grand-prize-for-engrish/): We've discussed Engrish before... it's always hilarious, but this one beats them all. Read it through!
- [Shrinking print magazines](https://nzeldes.com/2009/11/shrinking-print-magazines/): I discussed the growing obesity of our paperbacks before... and now, a look at our print magazines, with show the exact opposite trend.
- [More silliness at Newark](https://nzeldes.com/2009/11/more-silliness-at-newark/): We saw how the electronic boards at Newark Liberty airport made the ridiculous omission of adjusting for the Daylight Savings move. Evidently this is not an exception: something is very wrong with that airport's electronic signage.
- [Mr. Babbage’s marvelous engine](https://nzeldes.com/2009/11/mr-babbages-marvelous-engine/): In the US, where I just gave a lecture at a conference on Information Load and Overload, and of course I found the time to visit the wonderful Computer History Museum in Mountain View. This is always a delight, but this time they surpassed themselves: they demonstrated the newly built Difference Engine #2 in action!
- [A time lapse at Newark](https://nzeldes.com/2009/11/a-time-lapse-at-newark/): Had to take a flight out of Newark airport on the morning after the move from daylight saving to winter time. The preceding evening I took good care to set my alarm clock and wristwatch back the required hour, and took off to the airport in the morning. And when I got there, I was amused to see the many and wonderful electronic displays that are all over the place all showing an hour late.
- [Evolution of airplane movie technology](https://nzeldes.com/2009/10/evolution-of-airplane-movie-technology/): Flying to the States on a Continental 777, my favorite jetliner, alternating my attention between my notebook and the video screen in the seat back in front of me. The latter is a new model, fitted to every seat in the cabin. The technology has been evolving ever since I stared flying to America back in the eighties.
- [Headup wordpress plugin –  add semantic browsing to your blog!](https://nzeldes.com/2009/10/headup-wordpress-plugin-add-semantic-browsing-to-your-blog/): I've mentioned the headup publisher widget before. This nifty add-in identifies entities (places, people, companies, books, etc) mentioned in a site it's installed on, marks them up with a dotted underline, and when you mouse over them a small pop-up comes up with information, news, photos and videos about that place/person/whatever.
- [We aren’t all noobs!](https://nzeldes.com/2009/10/we-arent-all-noobs/): One gripe I have with the help systems in many consumer software applications: they're written with the assumption that we users are all clueless newbies.
- [The delight of postage stamps](https://nzeldes.com/2009/10/the-delight-of-postage-stamps/): Just got a letter from the UK, and it had this colorful stamp on it.
- [Thoughtless signage in lovely Florence](https://nzeldes.com/2009/09/thoughtless-signage-in-lovely-florence/): My relatives returned from a trip to wonderful Firenze, and shared some terrible experiences trying to get their rental car back to the rental office in that ancient city's dense traffic. Which brought to mind my own experience in the matter some years back.
- [Couch potatoes vs. Movie theaters](https://nzeldes.com/2009/09/couch-potatoes-vs-movie-theaters/): One sign of the times is that movie halls are closing one by one around us, victims to the surge in electronic alternatives. We know this from direct observation - they really are closing - but I had an unexpected demonstration of this fact in a TV ad.
- [Chained skeleton](https://nzeldes.com/2009/09/chained-skeleton/): Was filling up the car at a gas station when I noticed a bicycle chained to a signpost at the corner. Well, part of a bicycle...
- [Japan 2: Optimized asymmetric staircases](https://nzeldes.com/2009/09/japan-2-optimized-asymmetric-staircases/): More from Amir's visit to Japan:
- [Japan 1: Tactile sidewalk strips for the blind](https://nzeldes.com/2009/09/japan-1-tactile-sidewalk-strips-for-the-blind/): Amir is back from Japan, and sent in some interesting photos attesting to that country's outstanding and different ways of solving life's daily problems.
- [Smart timing of the windshield wipers](https://nzeldes.com/2009/09/timing-the-windshield-wipers/): A piece of thoughtful design on the Renault Clio:
- [Out of the Box billboard technique](https://nzeldes.com/2009/08/out-of-the-box-billboard-technique/): Our supermarket provides a large billboard for public use, where people post the usual mix of personal ads of all kinds. So many of them, in fact, that any one ad is likely to get drowned or covered by other ads before the day is out.
- [Bless old style artisan shops…](https://nzeldes.com/2009/08/bless-old-style-artisan-shops/): We needed a standing lamp for the living room, and went shopping. We started with some of the larger lighting stores around town, and found a great many lamps, mostly imported from China. Like most manufactured goods today they were inexpensive and looked like they would do the job - for a while. The workmanship was usually shoddy and of course there was nobody to tell that I prefer the on/off switch to be just at this height, and I need a longer electric cord, and would love it if the lampshade were just a bit wider...
- [Coffee cans and Bees](https://nzeldes.com/2009/08/coffee-cans-and-bees/): Recently Elite, a major manufacturer of chocolate, candy and coffee in Israel, launched a campaign to prepare us all for "the same beloved familiar taste in a new packaging". Every instant coffee can had a sticker heralding the change, then the new cans came out with stickers extolling it.
- [Poor error message design in a car](https://nzeldes.com/2009/08/poor-error-message-design-in-a-car/): This morning I get in the good ol' red Renault Clio, put it in reverse and start backing out, when the car emits a persistent beep.
- [A noble piece of hardware!](https://nzeldes.com/2009/08/a-noble-piece-of-hardware/): Engrish is all around us; here is a recent sighting that made my day.
- [Let’s add Interrupt capability to customer support systems](https://nzeldes.com/2009/08/lets-add-interrupt-capability-to-customer-support-systems/): I'm sure this happened to you: you call the support number of your bank/phone company/whatever, go patiently through all the Interactive Voice Response (IVR) menus, get shunted to an "all agents are currently busy" music, waste long minutes listening, and finally get a human to talk to. You explain your request, and the agent politely says "Let me put you on hold while I find out the information". Before you can protest, you're back on the music!
- [A solution to the energy crisis?](https://nzeldes.com/2009/08/a-solution-to-the-energy-crisis/): A few days ago I saw this interesting setup on the wall in a medical center.
- [And another On/Off power switch symbol!](https://nzeldes.com/2009/07/and-another-onoff-power-switch-symbol/): We've seen much diversity of On/Off Power switch symbols here and here... and there's more.
- [Google Mail attachment guidelines: tell it like it is!](https://nzeldes.com/2009/07/google-mail-attachment-guidelines-tell-it-like-it-is/): I sent a friend an email with an attached Zip file. It bounced, with a message from "System Administrator" that read
- [Where Computing meets Pseudoscience](https://nzeldes.com/2009/07/where-computing-meets-pseudoscience/): Just posted a new article on my History of Computing site: Biorhythmic calculators.
- [Here, try the headup publisher’s widget!](https://nzeldes.com/2009/07/here-try-the-headup-publishers-widget/): I've blogged before about headup, Semantinet's semantic search add-on for Firefox. Well, the creative folks at Semantinet are forever doing new things (one reason I like working there, despite the traffic jams between Jerusalem and Herzliya :-), and the latest is the headup publisher's widget.
- [It takes guts to be a side mirror](https://nzeldes.com/2009/07/it-takes-guts-to-be-a-side-mirror/): The other day I noticed a car whose side mirror had recently undergone some major trauma, losing its mirror and outer casing, ignominiously showing its guts. Here:
- [A thoughtful little feature in my text editor](https://nzeldes.com/2009/07/a-thoughtful-little-feature-in-my-text-editor/): I needed hard copy of a paragraph from a long text document, so I opened it in my trusty old editor (Programmer's File Editor by Alan Phillips, a powerful freeware editor I use in lieu of the pitifully rudimentary Windows Notepad). I selected the paragraph and opened the Print dialog, recalling that there was an option to only print the selection. The option was there, a radio button sandwiched between those for All and Lines from ___ to ___ . I moved to click it - and realized it was already selected for me.
- [Parking lot design snafu](https://nzeldes.com/2009/06/parking-lot-design-snafu/): Here is a photo from a parking lot. As you see, one parking spot has been mutilated - apparently, as an afterthought - by sticking two poles in it.
- [Help is also about what can’t be done](https://nzeldes.com/2009/06/help-is-also-about-what-cant-be-done/): Working in Adobe Photoshop CS4, and I just bumped into a menu item I needed that is grayed out. This does happen: Photoshop has a huge wealth of commands and capabilities, and many depend on the context - for example there are things you can only do in RGB color mode and not in Indexed color mode, and so on.
- [Tweeting in a dream](https://nzeldes.com/2009/06/tweeting-in-a-dream/): Tonight I had a dream where I was going through some boring paperwork at some public office and the guy behind me in line asked me if I knew what Twitter is all about. Ever helpful, I took out my Nokia smartphone and showed him how I tweet. I don't remember what I posted, and my Gravity client only displays outgoing tweets from the real world, so we'll never know.
- [A loop of helpful helplessness](https://nzeldes.com/2009/06/a-loop-of-helpful-helplessness/): I called someone in the US and he wasn't at his desk; the system helpfully informed me that the guy was not available but that I could
- [Automated customer service…](https://nzeldes.com/2009/06/automated-customer-service/): My account on a social networking group froze me out, so I wrote their support an email explaining that I can't log in, with details of how this came about. I got a wonderful reply indeed:
- [More disempowered power sockets](https://nzeldes.com/2009/06/more-disempowered-power-sockets/): A couple of weeks ago we saw a poorly designed twin mains socket. Whoever designed that one wasn't very bright, but he was a genius compared to the person who mounted the socket strip we see here:
- [Polaroid photography is back from the dead!](https://nzeldes.com/2009/06/polaroid-photography-is-back-from-the-dead/): I recently saw  the movie Memento, whose protagonist had his ability to form long term memory destroyed by a brain trauma. The guy remembers his early life but any new memory fades in minutes. Unfazed, since he is out on a mission of vengeance, he compensates by writing notes to his future self on scraps of paper and as tattoos on his body; and when he meets a person he takes out his Polaroid camera, produces a photo, and - before he forgets - writes on its back notes like "Don't believe his lies" or "He's the one. Kill him!"
- [History in the making: Google Wave unveiled](https://nzeldes.com/2009/05/history-in-the-making-google-wave-unveiled/): As someone who spent a large chunk of  lifetime working on improving knowledge worker effectiveness, especially around computer mediated communication and  collaboration, I can barely contain my excitement.  I've just sat through the lengthy video of yesterday's unveiling of Google Wave in the I/O developer conference. Not only have the good folks at Google integrated the most central processes of Computer Supported Collaborative Work - Email, IM, Shared document editing, Discussion boards, and more - into a single tool; but they've upgraded their underlying paradigms - which had changed very little in decades - into a dynamic, vibrant usage model that takes advantage of the latest Web 2.0 concepts (and then some).
- [Tweet tweet, I’m on Twitter! (Oh, frabjous day!)](https://nzeldes.com/2009/05/tweet-tweet-im-on-twitter-oh-frabjous-day/): Yes - after a long time saying I draw my line at "real" blogging, I've taken the plunge and set up on Twitter.
- [Disempowered Power Socket](https://nzeldes.com/2009/05/disempowered-power-socket/): Here are two mains power sockets from around our home. One is a standard grounded 220V socket. The second is obviously much better: in the same space, for the same trouble, it takes two plugs! In the USA this is of course standard practice; all wall socket panels have two sockets. Here, though, this is less common, perhaps because our plugs are larger. So - isn't that twin socket neat?
- [Vanquishing those pesky Torx screws](https://nzeldes.com/2009/05/vanquishing-those-pesky-torx-screws/): We live in an age of throw away technology, and for me, the silver lining of this has always been to take old products apart before trashing them. It's fun, and it's instructive to see how computers, home electronics, even the occasional appliance are built inside. And of course, you may bring to light gems like the 10-platter stack from inside a 1980's PC hard drive, shown below.
- [Tesseract – an action comic for the ultimate geek](https://nzeldes.com/2009/05/tesseract-an-action-comic-for-the-ultimate-geek/): New on my Possibly Interesting site: a weird superhero comic spoof that I drew when I was studying Mathematics in College. It follows closely the style of 60's Superman comics, but it takes place entirely in the domain of geometrical figures (and no, at that time I hadn't yet read Abbott's Flatland). Lost for years, it had surfaced in a drawer of old stuff, and I figured I might as well share it: if you, too, were a comics fan, and a geek to boot, you may enjoy this.
- [More waste of time](https://nzeldes.com/2009/05/more-waste-of-time/): Last year I reported on the inefficient design of a teleconference system, as far as respect for the user's time is concerned.
- [A feast of technical illustration](https://nzeldes.com/2009/05/a-feast-of-technical-illustration/): A picture is worth a thousand words - when it is a good picture. There is a huge gap in effectiveness between the best and the worst illustrations you see in technical and scientific publications. The trick is to convey the essence of what's being shown, whether it is a machine, a building or an anatomical detail of some biological specimen, without drowning it in the irrelevant; and it gets trickier when you're dealing with cutouts and other means of showing inner details of complex systems. Many illustrators never get the hang of it...
- [Tiny phone, humongous software](https://nzeldes.com/2009/05/tiny-phone-humongous-software/): I already praised my Nokia E71 smartphone, that marvel of miniaturized power. Well, today I tried to update Nokia PC Suite, the software that runs on my notebook to allow it to sync with the smartphone.
- [Car LED signs and the brotherhood of drivers](https://nzeldes.com/2009/05/car-led-signs-and-the-brotherhood-of-drivers/): Driving on today's highways can be an aggravating (and dangerous) experience, and it doesn't help that you can only communicate with the other drivers around you by honking your horn - not exactly a medium conducive to feelings of brotherly love.
- [Humanity’s victory over rust!](https://nzeldes.com/2009/04/humanitys-victory-over-rust/): Sometimes we need a reminder to realize the triumphs of Science and Engineering that went into the most common everyday objects. Take our ubiquitous stainless steel cutlery: what was it like when this recent addition to materials science - and our dinner table - suddenly made rust a non-issue?
- [Use consistent terminology, WebEx!](https://nzeldes.com/2009/04/use-consistent-terminology-webex/): Used to be, at the beginning of every (face to face) meeting ten minutes would be wasted on getting the slide projector going. Today many meetings are virtual, but the same time is still wasted while people try to log into the shared meeting workspace...
- [The Sweep Hand and the concept of Time](https://nzeldes.com/2009/04/the-sweep-hand-and-the-concept-of-time/): I met a guy who had an old Swiss chronometer watch, a self-winding mechanical one. As I looked at it, admiring the fine workmanship, I suddenly noticed a detail that used to be taken for granted: the thing had a seconds hand that was moving around the face of the watch.
- [Gotcha, Google translator!](https://nzeldes.com/2009/04/gotcha-google-translator/): I was checking some French using Google translator, and discovered that - contrary to my French teacher's insistence  back in high school - "La langue Francaise" means "English language"!
- [The confused calendar of my E71](https://nzeldes.com/2009/04/the-confused-calendar-of-my-e71/): Here then is my sleek Nokia E71, and I really like it overall. But nobody's perfect, right?...
- [Roman technology rocks!](https://nzeldes.com/2009/04/roman-technology-rocks/): Yesterday I went to the annual conference of the Israeli Society for History and Philosophy of Science, an eclectic event if ever I saw one. Lectures covered such diverse issues as the possible role of quantum effects in neuronal microtubules in creating consciousness (yes, Penrose's conjecture); blog writing as a therapeutic tool for adolescents with social and emotional problems; the development of the Theremin; and a lot besides. It was so much fun that I joined the society then and there!
- [FameLab again!](https://nzeldes.com/2009/04/famelab-again/): Last year I posted about FameLab, the science communication competition organized by the British Council in the Jerusalem Science Museum. Well, here it comes again, and today I'm a judge again. Like before, we get treated to a group of fine young students presenting diverse scientific subjects in only 3 (yes, three!) minutes each. Fascinating!
- [A proud Wikipedian!](https://nzeldes.com/2009/03/a-proud-wikipedian/): Yesterday I was at a meet of the Israel Innovation Forum hosted at IBM, and over coffee I notice this guy whose name tag reads
- [Those conservative business cards…](https://nzeldes.com/2009/03/those-conservative-business-cards/): Business cards have been around for a long time - very long, if you count visiting cards - so we should not be surprised if they tend to have an innate inertia to them. Still, business has changed so much in recent years - isn't it time that the cards paid attention?
- [Dumb icons](https://nzeldes.com/2009/03/dumb-icons/): The idea with the use of graphic icons as controls in web pages and applications is the they are a compact, fast way to represent an action. And that they do, very effectively, subject to one condition: the icon's image should represent the action in question (Duh!)
- [IVR woes: good idea – poor execution](https://nzeldes.com/2009/03/ivr-woes-good-idea-poor-execution/): I was trying to reach the customer service of a company just now. There I was, listening to the endless music of an IVR system, punctuated by the usual happy reminders that I am oh-so-appreciated by them and they'll get to me real soon (liars!), when something happened. The recording declared that they were very busy so if I could leave my name and number they'll get back to me. No option to keep waiting.
- [Standardization of charge indicators (Not!)](https://nzeldes.com/2009/03/standardization-of-charge-indicators-not/): These days we all have at least half a dozen gadgets whose batteries require charging, and they each come with their own charger (incompatible with all the others, of course). Now, I won't push for standardizing the chargers - can't aim that high - but here is a more modest goal: can we please standardize the status indicator LEDs on them?
- [Web site redesign!](https://nzeldes.com/2009/03/web-site-redesign/): My loyal readers know that in addition to this blog I maintain Nathan's Possibly Interesting Web Site, where I share my history of computing collection, software, and various articles. I built it some years ago as a personal web site, and am happy to have it as just that.
- [My blogging passes the immersion test!](https://nzeldes.com/2009/02/my-blogging-passes-the-immersion-test/): A few days ago I was at the IEC history of computing museum where they also exhibited their progress in map making - from old blueprints and paper maps to modern CAD and GIS software. They had there an old 1960's map that caught my eye - a 1:50,000 topographic map by the Israel Survey Department. These were the best you could get when I was a kid hiking around the country; every house was correctly shown as a black dot of the exact right shape, and every hill and gully were visible in the contour lines.
- [Blast from the Past](https://nzeldes.com/2009/02/blast-from-the-past/): Today I had the pleasure of attending the opening of the Computing and Communications museum of the Israel Electric Company. The IEC has been around for almost a century and has kept pace with computing advances since its early days; curator Dlila Shapira did a great job rounding up some lovely vintage pieces from the "big iron" era and later.
- [Little Big KVM switch from LevelOne](https://nzeldes.com/2009/02/little-big-kvm-switch-from-levelone/): I have a desktop and a docked notebook on the same desk, which I never use concurrently, so I decided to reclaim precious desk surface by keeping only one screen, keyboard and mouse and switching them between the two machines with a KVM switch.
- [Sygnet handsfree design flaws, part 2: Control overloading](https://nzeldes.com/2009/02/sygnet-handsfree-design-flaws-part-2-control-overloading/): Back to my Sygnet Bluetooth Handsfree Carkit model BTS600. We saw its problem with cloaking the controls and indicator lamps... but on top of that, the people at Sygnet played a trick that is becoming very common in this digital era: they overloaded the controls and the lamps.
- [Sygnet handsfree design flaws, part 1: Control cloaking](https://nzeldes.com/2009/02/sygnet-handsfree-design-flaws-part-1-control-cloaking/): When I got my Nokia E71 smartphone, I also bought a hands-free device for it: the Sygnet Bluetooth Handsfree Carkit model BTS600. This actually works quite well - it wirelessly identifies the phone on my belt when I get in the car, and until I leave the car all calls are routed to this device. Throw in voice recognition based dialing, and it's convenient indeed.
- [The considerate envelope](https://nzeldes.com/2009/02/the-considerate-envelope/): I was interviewed recently by the Columbia Journalism Review for an issue they were putting together about Information Overload, and as promised was then mailed the hardcopy magazine in a manila envelope.
- [Semantinet’s headup](https://nzeldes.com/2009/02/semantinets-headup/): Well, many friends asked to stay current on my adventures outside the cubicle farms, and though it's early days, here is one thing I've been up to: I spend one day each week working with a start-up called Semantinet.
- [Holes, Honesty and Hand cream](https://nzeldes.com/2009/02/holes-honesty-and-hand-cream/): "Truth in advertising" sometimes seems an oxymoron, and the cosmetics industry is hardly where you'd expect to find much of it. So hats off to Neutrogena's Norwegian Formula hand cream, whose statement on the tube that it "instantly relieves dry or chapped hands - just a dab needed" is absolutely correct. They claim it was devised from the experience of Nordic fishermen with the effect of fish oils; be that as it may, I can attest that this formula really can handle chapped skin that would laugh at your usual hand lotion.
- [In case you plan any reinforced concrete work…](https://nzeldes.com/2009/01/in-case-you-plan-any-reinforced-concrete-work/): Check the latest addition to the History of Computing exhibition at the Possibly Interesting web site: Michaelis's concrete calculator (well, actually, Kvasnicka's version of it).
- [The unexpected advantage of VHS tape over DVD](https://nzeldes.com/2009/01/the-unexpected-advantage-of-vhs-tape-over-dvd/): For the last couple of years I kept saying I'm not buying a DVD recorder until the VCR dies. Well - the VCR died, so I went and bought a DVD recorder. In fact I bought a dual-mode unit that has a VCR and a recording DVD in the same box.
- [Adobe Photoshop’s little infamy](https://nzeldes.com/2009/01/adobe-photoshops-little-infamy/): It's hard to speak ill of Adobe Photoshop. Even its painful price tag is well justified by this application's incredible power, which I've been barely scratching in my many years as a faithful user. Still, there is one inexplicable sin its designers have committed.
- [Quality, pure and simple](https://nzeldes.com/2009/01/quality-pure-and-simple/): Quality is an elusive attribute, but you usually know it when you see it. For my part, I keep around a small memento that captures it very well, and comes from my years - long ago - as a forensic scientist. My main job at the time was around electron microscopy of invisible evidence, but there was also, at the other end of the complexity spectrum, a lot of straightforward examination of picked and mangled locks. I and my coworkers had ample opportunity to study the locksmith's domain, and it was then that I put on one ring two simple cylinder lock keys from long forgotten origins that I felt capture the gap between high and low quality. Here they are: one made by Corbin and one by Nabob. Can you tell which is the better quality one?
- [The opposite of Human Engineering](https://nzeldes.com/2009/01/the-opposite-of-human-engineering/): The key idea of Human Engineering is to design the product to fit the humans using it. Makes sense? Sure does, but there are also cases of the opposite approach; Select the human to fit the task or the product!
- [No, I don’t know anyone in the Ashmore Islands!](https://nzeldes.com/2009/01/no-i-dont-know-anyone-in-the-ashmore-islands/): Two of the least pleasant-to-use GUI controls are the scrollable list box and its cousin the drop-down list, especially when they have many items listed. Of course, that's exactly when they are indispensable... you can't use radio buttons for 50 choices, so if you need to let the user choose a state of the union, a drop down list is inevitable. Likewise for countries of the world, or for their currencies.
- [Water ashtrays?](https://nzeldes.com/2009/01/water-ashtrays/): I was waiting for a Cappuccino at a coffee shop and asked the girl making it to also give me a glass of water. An incongruous conversation ensued:
- [The demise of Tinkering](https://nzeldes.com/2009/01/the-demise-of-tinkering/): The progress of engineering over the years has brought us many triumphs of human ingenuity, but it has left quite a bit of roadkill behind. One species driven to the brink of extinction is the Tinkerer.
- [New year, new freedom!](https://nzeldes.com/2009/01/new-year-new-freedom/): First, wishing all readers of this blog a superb new year. May it be far better than the last one, yet worse than the one to follow it.
- [Nokia E71: 40 years of progress in handheld devices](https://nzeldes.com/2008/12/nokia-e71-40-years-of-progress-in-handheld-devices/): I just got me a Nokia E71 smartphone. It looks like a particularly well-constructed gadget, though I reserve judgment until I've used it a while - stay tuned!
- [Butter and common sense](https://nzeldes.com/2008/12/butter-and-common-sense/): These days food products come with lots of information, as mandated by our well meaning consumer protection laws. Information, however, does not always enlighten us.
- [Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra](https://nzeldes.com/2008/12/darmok-and-jalad-at-tanagra/): Had this strange deja vu at an IBM HRL seminar... I met there the CTO of PopTok, a start-up with a product that allows you to use short video clips from your favorite movies, TV shows, and music videos in your online conversations on Facebook or IM chats. So, if you wanted to express anger, you could use a short clip of King Kong throwing a tantrum; and so on. The clips provided come from well known movies that have become a part of our popular culture.
- [Multi-device remote controls](https://nzeldes.com/2008/12/multi-device-remote-controls/): Used to be, a TV set had a remote control (used to be, farther back, it didn't; but that's prehistory). These days, however, everything has a remote control; indeed, I can't wait for someone to create a tiny remote control for the larger remote control itself! :-)
- [Where have all the cradles gone?](https://nzeldes.com/2008/12/where-have-all-the-cradles-gone/): In the early years, when portable electronic devices were considered wonderful miracles of technology, they used to come equipped with cradles. These would at a minimum charge them - the case with the "dumb" cellular phones of the day - and later also provide cabled connectivity to a computer, as in the early Palm Pilots. The cradles were meticulously designed to be functional as well as good looking; I remember a cellphone I had that had a two-slot cradle - one for the phone, the other for charging a spare battery. And it was indeed utterly convenient to plop or push the device into the cradle before bedtime and forget it until the next morning.
- [The ideal fly repellent solution](https://nzeldes.com/2008/12/the-ideal-fly-repellent-solution/): There are many solutions that claim to repel flying insects; some even work.
- [A gentler car horn?](https://nzeldes.com/2008/12/a-gentler-car-horn/): Car horns are designed to be earsplitting; if the driver in the next lane starts to swerve into your path, you want to be able to alert him with a blast he won't mistake. For such safety related uses, the high volume and jarring tone are justified.
- [A really poor choice for a freeway logo…](https://nzeldes.com/2008/12/a-really-poor-choice-for-a-freeway-logo/): The Menachem Begin expressway is one of the better engineering projects built in Jerusalem in recent years, providing a rapid path for driving across much of the new city. It has cut my commute time to work by 70%...
- [An alien twist on the On/Off Switch symbol](https://nzeldes.com/2008/11/an-alien-twist-on-the-onoff-switch-symbol/): My post about the evolution of the On/Off Switch symbol turned out to be very popular with this blog's esteemed readers. So, here is a second serving on the subject. This time, something completely different...
- [CardScan continues to amaze!](https://nzeldes.com/2008/11/cardscan-continues-to-amaze/): A few months ago I wrote about the surprisingly good customer service I received when my CardScan business card scanner died. Well, this was no accident, it seems.
- [Making LCD monitors crisp](https://nzeldes.com/2008/11/making-lcd-monitors-crisp/): I went to shop for a widescreen LCD monitor. I went from one large store to another; each had at least half a dozen candidates, and it was amazing to see how poor the images on them looked!
- [Ergonomic keyboard or Snake oil?](https://nzeldes.com/2008/11/ergonomic-keyboard-or-snake-oil/): Was at Office Depot and noticed a keyboard on sale that was touted as the Anti-RSI keyboard from A4Tech.
- [World Usability Day 2008](https://nzeldes.com/2008/11/world-usability-day-2008/): Today, Nov. 13, is World Usability Day, sponsored by the Usability Professionals' Association.
- [Polycom under siege](https://nzeldes.com/2008/11/polycom-under-siege/): The triangular Polycom conference phone is a familiar device; in many companies there is one in every conference room. It is so familiar that few give thought to its miraculous ability to transmit high quality sound from one roomful of jabbering humans to another. In fact, this involves some pretty sophisticated technology for echo cancellation and noise filtering; to quote the Polycom site, "Automatic Gain Control intelligently adjusts the microphone sensitivity based on where participants are seated in the conference room"!
- [What’s in the box?](https://nzeldes.com/2008/11/whats-in-the-box/): Care to guess what delightfully well-designed product is hidden inside this elegant 5 inch long metal case?
- [Amazon fighting infuriating packaging!](https://nzeldes.com/2008/11/amazon-fighting-infuriating-packaging/): Ordered some books today and was surprised to find on the Amazon.com home page a message from Jeff Bezos telling of their new initiative to alleviate "Wrap Rage" - "Amazon Frustration-free packaging". Apparently they plan to recruit leading manufacturers to put an end to clamshell blister packs, steel-wire ties and excessive cushioning materials.
- [The tachometer – the most useless car component…](https://nzeldes.com/2008/10/the-tachometer-the-most-useless-car-component/): Modern car dashboards have numerous indicators and controls. Some are necessary: without a fuel gauge, for instance, we'd be in frequent trouble. Others are optional but quite useful: the rear collision warning beeper is a good recent arrival. But one indicator is totally unnecessary, yet present in a great many car models: the Tachometer, or engine RPM indicator.
- [LCD TV screens: can’t they just switch on?](https://nzeldes.com/2008/10/lcd-tv-screens-cant-they-just-switch-on/): One problem with CRT-based television sets and computer monitors was that they took a long moment to turn on, because of the inherent necessity to heat up the filament of the picture tube. How fortunate, then, that the new generation of flat screen displays does not have a filament, allowing them to turn on practically instantly.
- [The infamous Caps Lock key](https://nzeldes.com/2008/10/the-infamous-caps-lock-key/): Everyone knows that the QWERTY keyboard layout sucks, because it carries a legacy from the early typewriter days; still, we're all locked into its use and live in oblivion of what we're missing. But we have another legacy from mechanical typewriters that is hard to forget because it bites us daily. i REFER TO THE cAPS lOCK KEY.
- [Plug and Gag: hardware that thinks it’s software?](https://nzeldes.com/2008/10/plug-and-gag-hardware-that-thinks-its-software/): These days nobody is surprised to see a software product expect tens or even hundreds of free Megabytes on the disk - a far cry from the frugal eighties, when entire operating systems would fit on a floppy or two, but this is life and we accept it philosophically. But when a piece of Hardware makes similar expectations, I begin to be annoyed. And increasingly, they do.
- [Cappuccino for two](https://nzeldes.com/2008/10/cappuccino-for-two/): One of the small pleasures of life is sharing a fine Cappuccino on a weekend morning at home. The only difficulty is, you need a way to produce one, and we don't have a professional machine at home like they have in a proper coffee shop. We do have the means to make strong espresso - one half of the Cappuccino story - but what of the milk? We had a battery-operated propeller thingy that was supposed to beat milk into a froth, but it left much to be desired.
- [Snagit 9 vs. FastStone 6: Simpler is better!](https://nzeldes.com/2008/10/snagit-9-vs-faststone-6-simpler-is-better/): Compare this to Photoshop: powerful and feature rich, but its UI is simple, with minimalist icons in monochrome…
- [In case you didn’t know…](https://nzeldes.com/2008/10/in-case-you-didnt-know/): And now, a nice sighting from Pil and Galia.
- [The other side of those Road Reflectors](https://nzeldes.com/2008/10/the-other-side-of-those-road-reflectors/): We all know the raised reflector buttons on the lane divider lines of a freeway. They have white or yellow retroreflectors embedded in their edges, so that at night they shine right back at you in the light of your car's headlamps. Safety and beauty in the same simple device.
- [The arrival of modular computer design](https://nzeldes.com/2008/10/the-arrival-of-modular-computer-design/): Check Piercing the unknown, a new historical exhibit at the Possibly Interesting web site!
- [Elegant design in the back of a Remote Control](https://nzeldes.com/2008/09/elegant-design-in-the-back-of-a-remote-control/): Sometimes one runs into elegant design in humble places…
- [Square is beautiful!…](https://nzeldes.com/2008/09/square-is-beautiful/): Sometimes you find elegant design in the places you least expect it.
- [Something is wrong with our Notebook LCD screens, part 3](https://nzeldes.com/2008/09/something-is-wrong-with-our-notebook-lcd-screens-part-3/): And now, following Parts 1 and 2, here is the last installment...
- [Can you guess what this device does?](https://nzeldes.com/2008/09/can-you-guess-what-this-device-does/): They say that form follows function. So - take a look at the form of this strange device, which stands about a meter tall. Can you guess its function?
- [Something is wrong with our Notebook LCD screens, part 2](https://nzeldes.com/2008/09/something-is-wrong-with-our-notebook-lcd-screens-part-2/): We discussed the recent trend that is eliminating the optimal resolution in notebook computer screens. Another undesirable trend is the move to widescreen displays. These days it is almost impossible to buy a notebook PC with the traditional 4:3 screen form factor; all new models boast a "wide" screen with a 16:10 form factor such as WXGA (1280x800) and WSXGA (1680x1050). In fact Lenovo, makers of the Thinkpad I use, have just proudly declared that they're dropping all 4:3 screens in their new line of notebooks.
- [Something is wrong with our Notebook LCD screens, part 1](https://nzeldes.com/2008/09/something-is-wrong-with-our-notebook-lcd-screens-part-1/): The first aptly named "laptops" had small, low-contrast monochrome screens that had "eye strain" written all over them (well, not all of them did - the Grid Compass, in 1982, had a lovely bright orange-on-black display). Then came the first color screens, like Passive Matrix and DSTN, which were also pretty poor; and the  screen grew slowly in size, though there was still much plastic surrounding it. And finally Active matrix TFT screens achieved affordable prices and became the standard, and their size attained the width of a the keyboard while resolutions reached 1024x768. We were at a sweet spot, with notebooks whose keyboard and screen were so good that one could use them ergonomically without even wanting an external screen. For anyone who grew through the earlier clunky technologies, this was notebook nirvana.
- [Watch the beauty!](https://nzeldes.com/2008/09/watch-the-beauty/): These days, every product and service come with scary warnings intended to cover the maker's back side in case you harm yourself. Electrical appliances warn you not to drop them in water (Duh!), restaurant menus tell you you can die by eating their food (not here, thank God, but in the US they do), coffee cups tell you their content is hot, an so on ad nauseam.
- [How to complicate instructions](https://nzeldes.com/2008/09/how-to-complicate-instructions/): We already saw how overuse of pictorial instructions can be confusing. Well, I just ran into a wonderful victory of this trend. I passed a large office copier - the Konica 7222 - and here is what I saw on its document feeder:
- [One hand!](https://nzeldes.com/2008/09/one-hand/): Here is an absolutely trivial product feature that turns out to be very nice. This is the latch release for the more recent IBM (now Lenovo) Thinkpad notebook computers.
- [A fishy contraption](https://nzeldes.com/2008/09/a-fishy-contraption/): While touring the Spreewald in Germany we came upon the strange device in the center of this photo. In fact we saw many of them while punting in the canals of this "Germany’s Venice".
- [The real thing, in cross-section](https://nzeldes.com/2008/08/the-real-thing-in-cross-section/): Learning what makes things tick is a major pleasure for a techie... read my opinionated view on how one should teach the structure and function of objects, whether natural or technological, in the latest article on my Possibly Interesting web site.
- [Tools 4: The right tool for the job](https://nzeldes.com/2008/08/tools-4-the-right-tool-for-the-job/): A major cause of accidents and frustration is trying to use the wrong tool for the job.
- [Babylonian memory technology](https://nzeldes.com/2008/08/babylonian-memory-technology/): A gem I saw in a museum recently: this is a large cuneiform-inscribed cylinder, maybe 3-4 inches thick, which describes the building activities of king Nebuchadnezzar (better known in the bible for his opposite exploit when he destroyed Jerusalem in 587 BC).
- [Engrish on a camera LCD screen protector](https://nzeldes.com/2008/08/engrish-on-a-camera-lcd-screen-protector/): I bought a screen protector for the LCD display on the back of my Nikon D40, and I just have to share the wonderful text on the back of the package, which reads:
- [Where old projectors go to die](https://nzeldes.com/2008/08/where-old-projectors-go-to-die/): I was visiting a hospital, and passed by a seminar room where my eye caught the items in the photo, sitting on a custom stand in the corner.
- [The importance of Exuberance in User Experience](https://nzeldes.com/2008/08/the-importance-of-exuberance-in-user-experience/): Photoshop rules, and gets more powerful and more useful with every new release... but it will never recreate the joy of using Deluxe Paint.
- [Hi-Tech Toothbrushes](https://nzeldes.com/2008/08/hi-tech-toothbrushes/): The first mass-produced toothbrush was made in England by William Addis in England, around 1780. His idea was to attach bristles to a stick, and make a little brush with a long handle, to allow one to brush one's teeth. You'd think that's all it takes; you'd think the toothbrush would remain just that, a brush on a straight stick...
- [Automatic car window controls](https://nzeldes.com/2008/08/automatic-car-window-controls/): Electric car windows have become the norm these days; and one feature on them is "Auto", where you can open or close a window all the way with only a momentary push on the actuator button. A useful feature, too.
- [Invisible writing on medicines](https://nzeldes.com/2008/08/invisible-writing-on-medicines/): Here is a box containing some medicine. As the law requires, it has the lot number and expiration date clearly marked. Well, OK, not clearly... in fact, the information is barely visible at all. The law, one can guess, says nothing about the information having to be Legible.
- [Speciation and Competition in Berlin’s traffic lights](https://nzeldes.com/2008/08/speciation-and-competition-in-berlins-traffic-lights/): Speciation, in evolutionary biology, is the splitting of a species into two different sub-species that cannot interbreed; it is one of the engines powering evolution. One mechanism responsible for this is the appearance of a physical barrier that cuts part of the species off from the rest, as when tectonic activity creates an insurmountable rift or mountain range, or an island breaks off from the mainland. The creatures on either side of the barrier evolve independently, resulting in such wonders as the dwarf elephants that used to exist on mediterranean islands, or the diverse finch species of the Galapagos.
- [Ultimate clarity, take 2](https://nzeldes.com/2008/08/ultimate-clarity-take-2/): Remember those gloves with utterly superfluous instructions? Here is a new contender for "most unnecessary instructions".
- [A crash on the U-bahn: Windows and Non-PC applications](https://nzeldes.com/2008/08/a-crash-on-the-u-bahn-windows-and-non-pc-applications/): I was in Berlin, where they have a subway system that, though it dates back to 1902, is as effective as it is pleasant (part of this last may have to do with the fact that the tunnels are close to the surface, so there is less of the "going down to the bowels of the earth" feeling you get in systems like that in London; you descend a few steps down - or, in some cases, up, as some areas have the train above street level - and you are ready to travel).
- [Great service for a CardScan!](https://nzeldes.com/2008/08/great-service-for-a-cardscan/): The day I left New York to fly back to Israel I bought, on an impulse, a CardScan business card scanner at Best Buy. I'd received all these cards from colleagues at the IORG conference, and the thought of typing all the details into my computer was depressing...
- [A brush with Ford’s Human Machine Interface (HMI)](https://nzeldes.com/2008/07/a-brush-with-fords-human-machine-interface-hmi/): We rented a Ford Galaxy minivan for a day. Nice car, if you need the space. And such sophisticated controls... way too sophisticated for its own good, or for its users', if you ask me.
- [Communicative alarms](https://nzeldes.com/2008/07/communicative-alarms/): I already shared my animosity towards car alarms. Since these are not going away anytime soon, the question becomes, how can we improve them to reduce the pain they cause the general populace? Same thing for house burglar alarms, that have the tendency to trigger - rigthly or wrongly - when the owner is on vacation in Hawaii...
- [Tools 3: How to test a tool?](https://nzeldes.com/2008/07/tools-3-how-to-test-a-tool/): Another thing worth knowing is how to test a tool before you buy it.
- [Coffee and Waste](https://nzeldes.com/2008/07/coffee-and-waste/): Back from NYC... I already reported on the big stuff I saw there; and here is a small but annoying thing I also saw.
- [Lick-and-Stick stamps endangered?](https://nzeldes.com/2008/07/lick-and-stick-stamps-endangered/): In 1840 Sir Rowland Hill introduced postage stamps to the world, giving us an effective postal system, and a fascinating collecting hobby. The Penny Black, of course, had to be licked to affix it to letter - it was a stamp, wasn't it? That's how a stamp should behave!
- [King of the skyscrapers](https://nzeldes.com/2008/07/king-of-the-skyscrapers/): Still in NYC, following the auspicious IORG launch, and took the opportunity to visit the Empire State Building.
- [Information Overload Research Group launched!](https://nzeldes.com/2008/07/information-overload-research-group-launched/): Quite off topic, but how exciting! After months of preparation, the group I co-founded is now alive and kicking!
- [Backlit cellphone keys – not such a good idea!](https://nzeldes.com/2008/07/backlit-cellphone-keys-not-such-a-good-idea/): Have you had the experience, as a child, of discovering the optical properties of oiled paper?
- [Pillboxes and Clay balls: inside and outside](https://nzeldes.com/2008/07/pillboxes-and-clay-balls-inside-and-outside/): I recently bought this box of vitamins, and noticed it had a life size outline of the pills' actual size. This makes sense, since the box is "safety sealed for your protection", so people can't see what's inside before they buy.
- [Car parts designed to smash up, take II](https://nzeldes.com/2008/07/car-parts-designed-to-smash-up-take-ii/): We saw how Our car had a turn indicator lamp in the side trim, where it was vulnerable to damage. Even more interesting is the turn signal on some newer cars, which is put on the most smash-worthy part of any automobile: the side rear view mirror. And not at the base of the mirror like in this red Citroen C4; but at its outer edge, as in this blue Mercedes!
- [Intelligent freeway signage](https://nzeldes.com/2008/07/intelligent-freeway-signage/): In recent years the freeway system in Israel is applying some pretty good leading edge technology (including truly transparent wireless toll collection that is still missing in many countries I visit).
- [The left-handed staircases of the Kerrs](https://nzeldes.com/2008/07/the-left-handed-staircases-of-the-kerrs/): When we toured Scotland we visited an ancient building with a curious design feature: it had a staircase that ran in a counterclockwise spiral, opposite to the standard design.
- [Tools 2: Choosing your supplier](https://nzeldes.com/2008/07/tools-2-choosing-your-supplier/): So, if quality is critical, how do we find the best tools?
- [A pure waste of time](https://nzeldes.com/2008/06/a-pure-waste-of-time/): Just got off the phone at a teleconference meeting hosted by some service in the USA. I was impressed by the logic of the automated system, which went something like this:
- [Tools 1: Quality matters!](https://nzeldes.com/2008/06/tools-1-quality-matters/): Of all the everyday objects you will own, Tools deserve a place of honor, since they are the ones you use to make other objects. In fact, tools are arguably what distinguished our hominid ancestors from the animals. For my part, as a maker of things for pleasure and work, tools - the workshop kind - have been my lifelong possessions and companions, so I will blog about them for a bit.
- [An uncommunicative printer](https://nzeldes.com/2008/06/an-uncommunicative-printer/): We got this new HP LaserJet M5035 multifunction printer/copier at my workplace that is very sophisticated and capable. It has a high res touch screen that it uses to accept our commands and to tell us what's going on.
- [Sluggish response in our Home Electronics](https://nzeldes.com/2008/06/sluggish-response-in-our-home-electronics/): The Sony Mini-stereo on my desk has excellent sound, which is the main thing I suppose; but it has some annoying misfeatures. Take this one: what do you think happens when you hit the "Open CD Tray" button? If you said "The CD tray opens", think again. Eventually it does, but first, the display switches to say "OPEN" and this word blinks a few times. Then, after 2-3 seconds of deliberation, the tray opens - making the display totally redundant (we can see that the tray is opening, Can't we?!)
- [Mazda 3 evolution, take 1: Sometimes they listen!](https://nzeldes.com/2008/06/mazda-3-evolution-take-1-sometimes-they-listen/): Recently I replaced my old Mazda 3 with the new model. The two are practically identical - why mess with a good thing? it's a fine car! - but there are some minor differences, and I'll be blogging them now and then… they afford us a peek into the design team's thinking processes.
- [Mini, Maxi, Silly](https://nzeldes.com/2008/06/mini-maxi-silly/): As a conscientious techie I do what many car owners don't: I check the oil and other fluids in our cars once a month, rain or shine. But our latest car, the 2007 Renault Clio, seems determined to foil this good intention.
- [Ode to a round knob](https://nzeldes.com/2008/06/ode-to-a-round-knob/): "O knob, thou whose perfect roundness doth . . ."
- [Water cooler improvement – just don’t cool!](https://nzeldes.com/2008/06/water-cooler-improvement-just-dont-cool/): Many times, a small change in a design makes a product a lot better.
- [Fit, misfit and unfit](https://nzeldes.com/2008/06/fit-misfit-and-unfit/): Our kitchen light fixture started to char its plastic housing, so we went and bought a new China-made one, equipped with two concentric fluorescent lamps like its predecessor. It was only later, after much climbing ladders and drilling holes overhead, that the problem appeared: try as we might, fitting the two lamps seemed impossible to do. Then it became clear that it actually was impossible!
- [Computerized humans, take 2](https://nzeldes.com/2008/06/computerized-humans-take-2/): Recently I discussed how workers at customer call centers can turn into computer-like zombies. The other day I stood face to face with such a person.
- [Polymer banknotes are here!](https://nzeldes.com/2008/06/polymer-banknotes-are-here/): Until now, we had paper money, and we had plastic - which meant credit cards. Well, now the distinction is blurred: as of April, Israel joined a growing list of countries that have plastic paper money!
- [If you need to speak to someone, live…](https://nzeldes.com/2008/06/if-you-need-to-speak-to-someone-live/): I'm getting to like the Lenovo blogs more and more. Consider this sentence, from an early version of an About page they had:
- [Coffee-to-go elegance](https://nzeldes.com/2008/06/coffee-to-go-elegance/): My friend Jeff pointed out to me a novel implementation of a coffee-to-go carrying device, in use in a coffeeshop chain in Germany. The assembled device in use is actually less elegant than the usual little tray-with-handle cardboard carriers we've had for a long time; in fact you can't even plop this one down on a tabletop at destination; you have to unload it with care. What makes this one worthy of mention in the elegant design category is a different aspect.
- [Don’t you miss Borland’s no-nonsense EULA? (sigh)](https://nzeldes.com/2008/05/dont-you-miss-borlands-no-nonsense-eula-sigh/): Every commercial piece of software we use comes with an End User License Agreement (EULA), which we all merrily accept without reading. After all, who has time to read a rambling document of barely decipherable legalese that we can't do anything about anyway? Sometime I do glance through them, and my blood pressure shoots up (the part I like best is where it says "Some states do not allow the exclusion of , so the above exclusion may not apply to you", which essentially says "we will abuse you all the way, but if your state prohibits this we will abuse you a little less"). :-(
- [Divide and Conquer!](https://nzeldes.com/2008/05/divide-and-conquer/): We like our cars to have large glove compartments, but when we cram stuff into them we can't seem to find anything (a problem especially while driving). I recently drove a Chevrolet Optra, and it had an obvious solution: a divider, to split the compartment in two, like this:
- [The amazing Posographe](https://nzeldes.com/2008/05/the-amazing-posographe/): A riddle: what's rectangular and flat, can fit in your pocket, and can calculate six-variable functions?
- [Human or IVR? A reverse Turing Test!](https://nzeldes.com/2008/05/human-or-ivr-a-reverse-turing-test/): I discussed a while ago how Interactive Voice Response (IVR) systems are being designed to be more human like. Well, the reverse is also sometimes true, with human operators becoming more and more computer-like. Consider:
- [Aesthetics and Design: Boeing’s LAR rule saves the day](https://nzeldes.com/2008/05/aesthetics-and-design-boeings-lar-rule-saves-the-day/): Passing through an airport I bought the book "Boeing 777: the technological marvel" by Norris and Wagner. This gives many fascinating insights into the novel design methodologies that went into the 777, my favorite jetliner. It also introduced me to one of the ugliest airplane designs ever to disgrace a designer's sketchpad.
- [The Ear and the iPod: a perfect fit!](https://nzeldes.com/2008/05/the-ear-and-the-ipod-a-perfect-fit/): The wonders of the natural world are many, and the living body includes countless amazing features (and, admittedly, some not-so-amazing ones as well). Today I give due homage to a piece of truly elegant design: the perfect match of the outer ear to the iPod's earphones!
- [The growing obesity of our Science Fiction](https://nzeldes.com/2008/05/the-growing-obesity-of-our-science-fiction/): Fact is, most paperbacks published recently tend to be much longer than the "Pocket books" of the fifties. They can easily exceed 400 pages, where their predecessors ran happily to 200 or so. And the sad thing is, this does not make them better. The three fat books in the pile at left are certainly good - but the other pile contains absolute classics like Bradbury's The illustrated man, Clarke's Childhood's end, and Asimov's I, Robot (the wonderful short story collection, not the silly movie); the others, by such masters as Sturgeon, Heinlein, Blish and Wyndham were likewise influential and a joy to read.
- [Cars should be seen but not heard](https://nzeldes.com/2008/05/cars-should-be-seen-but-not-heard/): The constant roar of traffic makes many a city center noisy. Then you drive home to your quiet suburb, where traffic is less of a problem… but cars still make their presence known there. Apart from the infamy of car alarms , each time a neighbor parks a car, or gets into one, you hear the multiple bleeps of the remote controlled electric locking system.
- [Worth a thousand words?](https://nzeldes.com/2008/05/worth-a-thousand-words/): Greg Bear's hyper-imaginative Sci Fi novel "Eon" brings its protagonists to a parallel reality whose highly advanced post-humans use Picting to communicate; that is, they project in mid-air sequences of holographic icons to convey their thoughts.
- [Buildings designed for Software Engineers](https://nzeldes.com/2008/05/buildings-designed-for-software-engineers/): With the wonders of Google Maps at our service, we can get some interesting insights. Take the photo below, also viewable here. This is the older part of the Microsoft campus at Redmond, where much of the software in the computer I'm writing this on was developed.
- [A glimpse of the venerable NCSA Mosaic browser](https://nzeldes.com/2008/05/a-glimpse-of-the-venerable-ncsa-mosaic-browser/): Dominic Tramontana has posted an interesting analysis of how the Reload glyph varies between browsers; take a look! Dominic asked me to post a screen shot I have of NCSA Mosaic, the first graphic web browser developed in 1993 by Marc Andreessen.
- [The evolution of the On/Off power switch symbol](https://nzeldes.com/2008/05/the-evolution-of-the-onoff-power-switch-symbol/): We all know the symbol with a vertical line in a circle: it identifies the On/Off power switch. It occurred to me that this familiar symbol is evolving in a bizarre fashion.
- [A REAL switch for the wireless radio](https://nzeldes.com/2008/05/a-real-switch-for-the-wireless-radio/): In the old days electronic gear had on/off switches that were actually physical devices with two positions, like the light switch on a wall. Nowadays these have become a rare sight: with everything computerized, most state switching is done by pressing pushbuttons and keys, with the switching done by the logic circuitry or microprocessor.
- [The Duomo of Siracusa: the ultimate Reuse](https://nzeldes.com/2008/05/the-duomo-of-siracusa-the-ultimate-reuse/): Reuse is good, right? And the notion conjures in most of us an image of linking code modules. Which is why I was astounded to run into the following case, while touring the beautiful island of Sicily.
- [Car parts designed to smash up!](https://nzeldes.com/2008/04/car-parts-designed-to-smash-up/): Last year we traded in our old Clio, and got the latest model. Nice car, as before, and it looks like the design engineers at Renault have been busy thinking of ways to improve it. Like the side molding on the doors: the new car has a turn indicator lamp right inside it!
- [Emergent misfeatures: more than meets the eye](https://nzeldes.com/2008/04/emergent-misfeatures-more-than-meets-the-eye/): Any wise consumer checks the specification of the purchased item in the store, in order to know what he's getting. Unfortunately, this does not guarantee a happy deal...
- [Bialetti’s Brikka: only one extra piece!](https://nzeldes.com/2008/04/bialettis-brikka-only-one-extra-piece/): All coffee lovers know the classic Italian "Machinetta", or Moka pot, that 3-piece stovetop espresso maker: not a competition to the professional espresso machine of a coffee shop, but good for a fast, concentrated caffeine fix at home. These have been around since their invention in 1933 by Alfonso Bialetti, and we have a number of them at home in various sizes (hint: go for the stainless steel ones, they don't corrode and last forever if you don't burn the plastic handle).
- [Smart parking lot design](https://nzeldes.com/2008/04/smart-parking-lot-design/): Parking lots try to cram as many cars in as they can (the ones that charge you to park do, anyway) and so it often happens that you exit the car only to find you've overstepped the white line. If you're conscientious like me, you get back in, restart the motor and wiggle the car the few inches required to fit in your own space. The problem is that you can't really see the lines in the last stages of the parking maneuver...
- [Boundary-crossing innovation: antennas in your skin!](https://nzeldes.com/2008/04/boundary-crossing-innovation-antennas-in-your-skin/): Technology innovation often happens serendipitously, and the kind I like best is when something from one knowledge domain triggers an analogous design in a completely different field. I mean, inventing a plane with wings because you notice that birds have wings is OK, but not a huge leap (the real leap of the early aviation pioneers was ignoring the flapping of bird wings). It's more interesting if you observe how fish swim and end up inventing sliced bread!
- [The Eject button: Location, location, location!](https://nzeldes.com/2008/04/the-eject-button-location-location-location/): Here is our Toshiba DVD player. It works well enough, but its design does make you wonder...
- [LCD Monitor adjustment blues](https://nzeldes.com/2008/04/lcd-monitor-adjustment-blues/): So we've made the move to flat computer screens, which have many advantages over their bulky CRT ancestors; but the vendors pulled a fast one on us when it comes to the controls for adjusting the screen's image.
- [Artsy design is not enough!](https://nzeldes.com/2008/04/artsy-design-is-not-enough/): The trendy-looking kitchen tool in the photo, made by Koziol, is called "Mia" for some reason. Its purpose is to test Pasta: the frilly head is surprisingly adept at scooping (and holding) a few pieces of short Pasta (penne, fusilli, etc) out of the boiling water; and you use the hook at the other end to fish a strand of spaghetti. Then you can bite them to see if they're underdone or just right (that is, "Al Dente", not overcooked and mushy!) And the ring may be for measuring one-serving batches of uncooked spaghetti.
- [Schizophrenic books](https://nzeldes.com/2008/04/schizophrenic-books/): See the book on the left. It's been around for centuries, issued by countless publishers, translated into many tongues... and no one ever doubted what it was, because it has a name: Macbeth.
- [Car window wiper mystery](https://nzeldes.com/2008/04/car-window-wiper-mystery/): This one has been bothering me for years: why don't all cars have rear window wipers?
- [FameLab!](https://nzeldes.com/2008/04/famelab/): Off-topic it may be, but I had a delightful experience last week judging in a round of the FameLab competition organized by the British Council in the Jerusalem Science Museum. This international event strives to encourage scientists to communicate their work and their excitement about it to the public; young scientists (mainly graduate students) were invited to present a scientific subject of their choice - in three minutes sharp.
- [Keyboard light: no more groping in the dark!](https://nzeldes.com/2008/04/keyboard-light-no-more-groping-in-the-dark/): A humorous video review from CNET on the Lenovo Design Matters blog (yep, these guys have a blog where their designers interact with their users - a commendable idea!) compares the Thinkpad X300 to the MacBook Air. Nicely done - take a look.
- [A lesson from a blue hairdryer](https://nzeldes.com/2008/04/a-lesson-from-a-blue-hairdryer/): One day the ladies in the household decided they've had it with our handheld hairdryer, which was indeed weak and ailing. So I went to buy a new one, and decided to follow my first principle for tool acquisition: always buy the most professional, high-quality tool you can afford - it will repay the expense many times over!
- [Intriguing objects at Possibly Interesting site](https://nzeldes.com/2008/03/intriguing-objects-at-possibly-interesting-site/): Do you recognize the glass object in this photo? If not, you may want to check "Prey to Oblivion", the March article on my Possibly Interesting web site, which has a bunch of everyday objects that were quite familiar a century ago but are now all but forgotten.
- [User-centered design: a serious lapse](https://nzeldes.com/2008/03/user-centered-design-a-serious-lapse/): And now, from the murky past, a serious lapse in designing for the intended user...
- [Timeless designs last forever](https://nzeldes.com/2008/03/timeless-designs-last-forever/): We humans have this obsession with designing new products, even though many of them die out after a while (some, mercifully, after a very short while!) However, every so often a design is found that is simply so good and sensible that it stays around for a long, long time.
- [Why Photoshop and Mapmaking don’t mix](https://nzeldes.com/2008/03/why-photoshop-and-mapmaking-dont-mix/): Map making is an ancient art, and a great deal of ingenuity has gone over the years into how you can draw the spherical surface of the Earth on a flat piece of paper in a way that still makes sense. That's where all those map projections like Mercator's come into play. More recently, to my dismay, I see in the media a much less sensible practice: drawing flat pieces of terrain onto a sphere.
- [Paying all over again: non-transferable accessories](https://nzeldes.com/2008/03/paying-all-over-again-non-transferable-accessories/): I upgraded recently to a Lenovo Thinkpad T61, from an IBM T42. Good road warrior that I am, I had the T42 accessoried to the hilt, notably with a bunch of extra batteries to last me through the long flights across the Atlantic. Since the new machine was also a Thinkpad, you'd think I would simply reuse the accessories in the new machine, right?...
- [Whatever happened to black ink?](https://nzeldes.com/2008/03/whatever-happened-to-black-ink/): When Johannes Gutenberg gave us the printing press in the 15th century, he also invented a suitable ink to go along with it. His ink was a glossy black, and the idea of printing books in black on white paper has remained ever since, because that is by definition the highest contrast you can get, hence easy to read. Millions of books have appeared since Gutenberg, spanning a huge range of subjects and world views, but they did not differ in ink color one bit as the centuries came and went.
- [Retrograde evolution of Post-it note packaging](https://nzeldes.com/2008/03/retrograde-evolution-of-post-it-note-packaging/): Everyone uses the 3M Post-it note, and it's often used as an example of the role of serendipity in product development - and of the wisdom of maintaining a corporate culture that encourages and empowers the pursuit of such serendipity.
- [Fighting back against shrieking car alarms](https://nzeldes.com/2008/03/fighting-back-against-shrieking-car-alarms/): A particularly heinous bit of bad product design are ear-shattering car alarms.
- [Smartphone Holsters can stop time!](https://nzeldes.com/2008/03/smartphone-holsters-can-stop-time/): I got this new Smartphone recently. A couple of weeks later, I find my analog quartz watch is off by five minutes. I take it to have the battery replaced; a week later, same problem: it's a few minutes out of whack. I send it to be repaired (it's a good quality Seiko under warranty), and switch to an El Cheapo spare watch I have, which at first seems to work fine; but in a few days, it's also off. I try another watch - Swiss, this time - same problem duly appears after a while.
- [I managed to browbeat an Interactive voice response system!](https://nzeldes.com/2008/03/i-managed-to-browbeat-an-interactive-voice-response-system/): Interactive voice response (IVR) systems are notoriously annoying. As the joke goes, "For a list of all the ways that Technology has failed to improve the quality of your life, please press 3"…
- [Hats off to a cardboard box](https://nzeldes.com/2008/03/hats-off-to-a-cardboard-box/): And now, a moment of respect for a truly elegant bit of intelligent design: The humble but ubiquitous cardboard boxes in which we buy chewing gum and candy - the ones that latch closed so they won't spill their content when we leave them in our pockets, purses, or glove compartments. The trick is in the flap A, which latches into the depression B in the photo below.
- [Don’t forget the Remote Control’s usability!](https://nzeldes.com/2008/03/dont-forget-the-remote-controls-usability/): When you see an ad for a piece of consumer electronics, you seldom see a close up of its remote control. In fact, most people ignore the lowly R/C when making a buying decision. Yet this little item is the main way we interact with our TVs, VCRs, and so on; and a its usability, or lack thereof, is going to impact our user experience many times every day.
- [Mighty Mouse: the best XY input device out there!](https://nzeldes.com/2008/03/mighty-mouse-the-best-xy-input-device-out-there/): So many XY pointing devices have been developed over the years... I've used light pens, graphic tablets, trackballs, touch screens, joysticks, touch pads, trackpoints, even that weird HP desktop machine, the HP-150 from 1983, where you pointed at the screen and your finger intercepted IR beams crisscrossing the raised screen bezel (this last failed miserably - how could they ignore fatigue from repeatedly raising the arm to touch the screen?!)
- [The ultimate clarity](https://nzeldes.com/2008/03/the-ultimate-clarity/): Adding clear instructions is part of good product design, right?
- [Can’t they hire ONE Englishman to proof their manuals?](https://nzeldes.com/2008/03/cant-they-hire-one-englishman-to-proof-their-manuals/): Everyone's had their laughs with instruction manuals written in Engrish; indeed, they can get quite hilarious. What bugs me, though, is the fact that these are seen not only in low quality products from second-rate or nameless producers. I can understand how a product that costs a couple of bucks would not have a manual written to the editorial standards of the Britannica... but what about leading vendors that produce expensive, top-quality consumer products?
- [Invisible buttonware](https://nzeldes.com/2008/03/invisible-buttonware/): One evening a neighbor knocks on my door. She just got a new cellular phone, and she has a basic question: which key does she press to accept an incoming call?
- [The first post](https://nzeldes.com/2008/02/the-first-post/): A new blog... like a newborn baby: you have high hopes for it, but you can't really imagine what it will turn out like. You just have to nurture it as best you can, then wait and see.

## Pages
- [Wonder Book photos](https://nzeldes.com/wonder-book-photos/): Here are some photos from Wonder Book & Video in Frederick, Maryland. What a book lover's paradise! It rated entry into my bookmarks collection.
- [Privacy policy](https://nzeldes.com/privacy-policy/): Last updated: 6 October 2025
- [Blog](https://nzeldes.com/commonsense-design-blog/): The Good, the Bad and the Ugly of everyday product design
- [IFS Lab, the free fractal generator](https://nzeldes.com/ifs-lab-fractal-generator/): A freeware IFS fractal creation tool
- [Cool History-of-Computing sites](https://nzeldes.com/hoc-links/): A list of sites devoted to the history of computing
- [Legal stuff](https://nzeldes.com/legal-stuff/): How you may use this site's content
- [About](https://nzeldes.com/about/): About Nathan
- [History of Computing](https://nzeldes.com/history-of-computing/): An exhibition of historical computing artifacts
- [Home](https://nzeldes.com/): The Home Page
- [Miscellany](https://nzeldes.com/miscellany/): A variety of articles I wrote about things I find interesting.

## Portfolio
- [The funky IRMO calculator](https://nzeldes.com/article/irmo/): A weird but powerful machine tool calculator
- [The moving event horizon of tech history](https://nzeldes.com/article/history-of-technology/): Fading memories of past innovation
- [Lessons from building a tongue drum](https://nzeldes.com/article/tongue-drum/): When woodworking meets acoustics
- [War and Peace](https://nzeldes.com/article/war-and-peace/): An unusual demilitarized slide rule
- [Deciphering the “textile” slide rule](https://nzeldes.com/article/braiding-sliderule/): A unique hand-made industrial calculator
- [Before Lego](https://nzeldes.com/article/mobaco/): The Mobaco construction system
- [A tiny spiral slide rule](https://nzeldes.com/article/pfiffikus/): The Logomat Pfiffikus 2001
- [It’s all in the holes](https://nzeldes.com/article/punched-cards/): Computing with punched cards
- [Beads, beads, and more beads!](https://nzeldes.com/article/beads/): Mankind's longest-running computer platform
- [Mine!](https://nzeldes.com/article/mine/): The ones I've used myself
- [Otis King’s calculator](https://nzeldes.com/article/otis-king/): Compact precision at its best
- [An arithmetical ruler](https://nzeldes.com/article/cheshev/): A simple but nifty calculation aid
- [Steward’s M.T. Slide rule](https://nzeldes.com/article/stewards-mt/): Thoroughly confusing!
- [The Bassett Adder](https://nzeldes.com/article/bassett-adder/): Compact, lightweight, and a pleasure to use
- [Vizzini’s Calculating Table](https://nzeldes.com/article/vizzini/): A minimalist calculator from Italy
- [A cheater’s slide rule](https://nzeldes.com/article/cheater-sliderule/): A relic of past dishonesty
- [Mario Loffredo’s elastic calculating scale](https://nzeldes.com/article/loffredos-scale/): A lost precursor of the Gerber Variable Scale
- [Other worlds than ours](https://nzeldes.com/article/other-worlds/): A 19th century take on Exobiology
- [Shrinking Megabytes](https://nzeldes.com/article/shrinking-megabytes/): Evolution of the Hard Disk
- [The Sliding Gunter](https://nzeldes.com/article/sliding-gunter/): A fascinating transitional device
- [Stephenson’s little adder](https://nzeldes.com/article/stephenson/): Agents wanted!
- [Alpina or Curta?](https://nzeldes.com/article/alpina-or-curta/): Battle of the handheld calculators
- [A sense of wonder](https://nzeldes.com/article/sense-of-wonder/): Some "Wow!" moments from my life around computers
- [Small Blue Planet](https://nzeldes.com/article/sbp/): The impact of Apollo 8 on our planetary self-image
- [Courvoisier’s spiral slide rule](https://nzeldes.com/article/courvoisier/): A neat solution to the turn problem
- [My take on the Marble Run concept](https://nzeldes.com/article/marble-run/): Fun to build, fun to play with!
- [You did WHAT on a Commodore 64?!](https://nzeldes.com/article/improc/): Oh, yes, I sure did.
- [A new mathematical robot](https://nzeldes.com/article/eniac/): ENIAC, in real time!
- [Building a Roubo Workbench](https://nzeldes.com/article/workbench/): A woodworker's rite of passage
- [Blue Velvet](https://nzeldes.com/article/adix/): The lovely Adix calculator
- [The Fractal Bug](https://nzeldes.com/article/the-fractal-bug/): A fascination - and a free fractal generator
- [Sabatini’s magnificent calculator](https://nzeldes.com/article/sabatini/): Even Mussolini was impressed!
- [Real Bookmarks from True Favorites](https://nzeldes.com/article/bookmarks/): Vignettes of some cherished bookstores
- [Beautiful Digits](https://nzeldes.com/article/digits/): Numeric displays of yesterday
- [A medley of Homebrew Projects](https://nzeldes.com/article/medley/): Nostalgia from a wonderful hobby
- [A lovely gauging rule](https://nzeldes.com/article/everard/): An Everard style 18th century slide rule
- [The perceptive art of Giuseppe Novello](https://nzeldes.com/article/novello/): Little known, but well worth knowing
- [A calculator hidden in a book](https://nzeldes.com/article/cornell/): A truly intriguing device!
- [Kaufmann’s Posographe](https://nzeldes.com/article/posographe/): A mind-blowing mechanism for exposure calculation
- [Growing up in Electronics](https://nzeldes.com/article/homebrew/): A wonderful hobby, on a shoestring
- [“Iron Felix” meets the Odhner calculator](https://nzeldes.com/article/ironfelix/): Two pinwheel calculators compared
- [Elisha Kally’s water flow calculator](https://nzeldes.com/article/kally-hazenwilliams/): Made by one smart water engineer!
- [Slide rules for a new century](https://nzeldes.com/article/taverniergravet/): Tavernier-Gravet’s evolving slide rule technology
- [Piercing the unknown](https://nzeldes.com/article/pluggableunits/): IBM pluggable units
- [Humanity’s victory over rust!](https://nzeldes.com/article/stainless/): A personal history of stainless cutlery
- [Meet E. W. Fritchley](https://nzeldes.com/article/fritchley/): A human connection across time and space
- [Sbernadori’s aerophotographical slide rule](https://nzeldes.com/article/sbernadori/): Serving the Royal Italian air force
- [The Watkins exposure meter](https://nzeldes.com/article/watkins/): Light metering, 19th century style
- [The ingenious Ifach adder](https://nzeldes.com/article/ifach/): A carry mechanism with no gears!
- [The weird Logarex Typ-01](https://nzeldes.com/article/logarex/): A most unusual circular slide rule
- [The Silver Jubilee Sinclair Sovereign](https://nzeldes.com/article/sovereign/): The Rolls Royce of pocket calculators
- [Troncet’s OTHER calculator](https://nzeldes.com/article/totalisateur/): The Totalisateur dial adder
- [Heroes and Barbarians](https://nzeldes.com/article/heroes-barbarians/): Propaganda postcards from the Great War
- [Numeri Mundum Regunt](https://nzeldes.com/article/omnimetre/): Sexton’s Omnimetre
- [The calculation of MADness](https://nzeldes.com/article/radiacs/): Nuclear blast slide rules from the cold war era
- [Oh, no! Can Tesseract save the plane?](https://nzeldes.com/article/tesseract/): A rare action comic for the ultimate geek
- [Chairman Mao’s guidance](https://nzeldes.com/article/maosr/): A politically conscious slide rule from China
- [Build your own airplane!](https://nzeldes.com/article/hoffman/): The Hoffman Airplane Calculator
- [The Professor’s calculator](https://nzeldes.com/article/rhsmith/): The R. H. Smith helical slide rule
- [The real thing, in cross-section](https://nzeldes.com/article/realthing/): How to teach what makes things tick
- [The Jeffers Calculator](https://nzeldes.com/article/jeffers/): Keeping farm animals healthy through a nutritious diet!
- [The Pose-Marre pen slide rule](https://nzeldes.com/article/posemarre/): An elegant device of mysterious origins
- [Bloch’s Gewicht-schnellrechner](https://nzeldes.com/article/bloch/): A mechanical nomogram for weight calculations
- [The Ross Precision Computer](https://nzeldes.com/article/ross/): Accurate to five decimal places!
- [Torsion wire delay line memory](https://nzeldes.com/article/delayline/): A forgotten storage technology
- [The Genaille-Lucas financial rods](https://nzeldes.com/article/genaille/): An ingenious way of calculating with sticks
- [Martin’s huge multiplication table](https://nzeldes.com/article/martin/): A tool from the time of Napoleon
- [Lalanne’s glass slide rule](https://nzeldes.com/article/lalanne/): An unusual but sensible choice
- [Jacob Zedak’s wooden slide rule](https://nzeldes.com/article/zedak/): Very nicely made!
- [The Data Scaler Proportional Rule](https://nzeldes.com/article/datascaler/): A Gerber Variable Scale clone
- [The Controller slide rule family](https://nzeldes.com/article/controllers/): All four of them!
- [Pretty as a picture!](https://nzeldes.com/article/arnault-paineau/): The Arnault-Paineau calculator
- [Badalamenti’s factorization slide rule](https://nzeldes.com/article/factoring/): Well, not exactly a slide rule...
- [Meet a Mathematical Inventor!](https://nzeldes.com/article/lafay/): Jean-Antoine Lafay's Hélice a Calcul
- [Lieutenant Brenske’s Marsch-Zirkel](https://nzeldes.com/article/brenske/): Navigation in the days before Waze...
- [A slide rule with a Wow!](https://nzeldes.com/article/baines/): An ingenious and unusual form factor
- [Wynne-Roberts’ hydraulic calculator](https://nzeldes.com/article/wynneroberts/): A nifty little calculating device
- [Three “pencil” slide rules](https://nzeldes.com/article/pencilsliderules/): The perfect gift for the calculating geek!
- [Five Intel chips that changed the world](https://nzeldes.com/article/intelfirsts/): When Intel enabled the personal computing era
- [The small Small Calculator](https://nzeldes.com/article/small/): A full-fledged slide rule 5 cm in diameter
- [Victorian Virtual Reality](https://nzeldes.com/article/panorama/): Mesdag’s Panorama
- [How the Slide Rule got its Cursor](https://nzeldes.com/article/cursors/): Three centuries of innovation
- [A homebrew Single Sideband transmitter](https://nzeldes.com/article/ssb-rig/): A photo-essay for ham radio geeks
- [The gentleman and the carpenter](https://nzeldes.com/article/jointrules/): Two Coggeshall variants compared
- [Leib Stern’s slide rule](https://nzeldes.com/article/stern/): An unusual slide rule from an unusual source
- [Krüger’s calculating pencil case](https://nzeldes.com/article/kruger/): A computer for every child, 1909 style
- [Gunter’s rule](https://nzeldes.com/article/gunter/): One step before the slide rule
- [Webb’s Adder](https://nzeldes.com/article/webbadder/): One curiously shaped calculator!
- [Biorhythmic calculators](https://nzeldes.com/article/biorhythm/): Where computing meets Pseudoscience
- [It’s a wonderful Life!](https://nzeldes.com/article/life/): Conway's Game of Life — and a Freeware implementation
- [The Dimensator](https://nzeldes.com/article/dimensator/): Michaelis's reinforced concrete calculator
- [The Ken+Add, inside and out](https://nzeldes.com/article/kenadd/): Small adder, big quality
- [Hand wired Memory!](https://nzeldes.com/article/handwired/): What passionate hobbyists did back in the day
- [Farmar’s profit calculator](https://nzeldes.com/article/farmars/): It slides, it rolls... and it calculates!
- [Locke’s “pocket” adder](https://nzeldes.com/article/locke/): Well, at least it's pretty!
- [Black Gem](https://nzeldes.com/article/gemadder/): The Golden Gem adding Machine
- [The Xeroxed calculator](https://nzeldes.com/article/xeroxcalc/): Ugly it was, but extremely useful!
- [Just a couple of relays](https://nzeldes.com/article/relays/): Shades of the ASCC!
- [The bare bones Hemmi 22](https://nzeldes.com/article/hemmi22/): As simple as it gets!
- [Joe Gerber’s pajamas](https://nzeldes.com/article/gerber/): A truly ingenious device!
- [Thacher’s monster slide rule](https://nzeldes.com/article/thacher/): Over nine meters of logarithmic scale!
- [Chesterman’s Cattle Gauge](https://nzeldes.com/article/cattlegauge/): Don't buy a cow without it!
- [Psychrometric slide rule](https://nzeldes.com/article/psychrometric/): A relative humidity calculator
- [Illustrated Natural Philosophy](https://nzeldes.com/article/ganot/): The charm of 19th century scientific illustrations
- [Stephens’ “Supremathic”](https://nzeldes.com/article/supremathic/): A completely different circular slide rule
- [ El Calculador!](https://nzeldes.com/article/calculador/): A Spanish multiplication aid
- [Glass and Paper?!?](https://nzeldes.com/article/alku/): The ALKU glass slide rule
- [Homemade hydrological slide rule](https://nzeldes.com/article/hydrological/): Handcrafted with amazing workmanship
- [Enter the Altair!](https://nzeldes.com/article/altair/): And the rest is history...
- [A bill full of holes](https://nzeldes.com/article/punchedbill/): An electricity bill from the mainframe era
- [A Victorian “Calculator”](https://nzeldes.com/article/roppcalc/): A must-have for the enterprising farmer!
- [Software by the yard](https://nzeldes.com/article/dectape/): Punched paper tape storage
- [Chenevier’s memento](https://nzeldes.com/article/chenevier/): An unusual pocket reference from the 19th century
- [Fowler’s Universal Calculator](https://nzeldes.com/article/fowlers/): A circular slide rule from Manchester
- [Cloning a Vibroplex bug](https://nzeldes.com/article/vibroplex/): Another triumph of improvisation!
- [A computer with a dial](https://nzeldes.com/article/dialcomp/): Building a computer in 1967
- [The first PDA](https://nzeldes.com/article/newton/): The Apple Newton MessagePad
- [Mahogany and Celluloid](https://nzeldes.com/article/mahogany/): The K&E model 4053-3
- [Hard Fonts](https://nzeldes.com/article/hardfonts/): Before inkjet, before laser...
- [Ivory sector](https://nzeldes.com/article/sector/): Earlier than the slide rule...
- [Odhner Pinwheel Calculator](https://nzeldes.com/article/odhner/): Carrying fine childhood memories...
- [Yiddish radio geeks of a bygone world](https://nzeldes.com/article/judischer-radio-amateur/): A glimpse of Warsaw's radio amateurs in 1926
- [The Correntator slide adder](https://nzeldes.com/article/correntator/): A simple adder with a neat trick
- [Not a Toy!…](https://nzeldes.com/article/kesadd/): The Kes-Add pocket adder
- [An Aluminum CPU](https://nzeldes.com/article/flightcomp/): A classic air navigation computer
- [Magnetic core memory](https://nzeldes.com/article/corememory/): Ahhh, the memories...
- [The Why and How of HOC collecting](https://nzeldes.com/article/whyhowhoc/): Computer History as a hobby
- [Prey to Oblivion](https://nzeldes.com/article/oblivion/): Everyday things that no one would recognize today
- [A visiting card](https://nzeldes.com/article/vcard/): A tiny memento from the past
- [Ingenious simplicity](https://nzeldes.com/article/elegance/): Everyday objects of elegant design
- [A virtual Cabinet of Curiosities](https://nzeldes.com/article/curiosities/): Interesting, or curious, or just lovely
- [A stroke of serendipity](https://nzeldes.com/article/gravetlenoir/): Gravet Lenoir Soho slide rule
- [A curious Hybrid](https://nzeldes.com/article/hybridcalc/): A rare transitional device
- [The incredible Curta](https://nzeldes.com/article/curta/): A triumph of miniaturization
- [The enigmatic Spirule](https://nzeldes.com/article/spirule/): Best way for finding a root locus!

## Categories
- [Bad design](https://nzeldes.com/category/bad-design/)
- [Design history](https://nzeldes.com/category/design-history/)
- [Design principles](https://nzeldes.com/category/design-principles/)
- [Good design](https://nzeldes.com/category/good-design/)
- [Improvement](https://nzeldes.com/category/improvement/)
- [Odds and Ends](https://nzeldes.com/category/odds-and-ends/)
- [Uncategorized](https://nzeldes.com/category/uncategorized/)