Brandon Notices

Why do straws have stripes? I don't see how they are useful.

Somebody at the Lynnwood Goodwill must have a sense of humor. In the books section, unfortunately, the science books and the "science" books are shelved together (a book by Carl Sagan is five books away from one by Sylvia Browne), but at least the "woo woo" sign provides some warning. It appears to be pieced together from parts of other signs.

Whenever Facebook makes a major update, usually to the layout, I notice many people joining "Bring Back the Old Facebook" groups on Facebook. I feel that these people's protests are usually a bit hasty, and that they haven't given the new layouts a good chance. Some of Facebook's changes over the years have been good. I'm a fan of the combination of the Wall and Mini-Feed on everybody's profiles, because everything is tied together more chronologically. (What you did and what people wrote to you used to be in separate lists on your profile.)

But I've been a user on Facebook for nearly four years, and I have had enough time to think about the various changes that have been made to the site. And in some ways, I want them to bring back the old Facebook.

Now, it seems much more difficult to find people on Facebook. There used to be a great feature where you could list your classes, and then see who else was also taking those classes. It was a great way to find classmates if you needed to discuss something for a class. Or if you didn't know your friend's name, you could just browse through your classmates. Facebook removed this feature when they introduced applications. They said that somebody would certainly create an app for it, but without a default standard, it's no good. Recently, I was trying to find one of my classmates on Facebook, but I wasn't sure how to spell his last name. I guessed a half dozen times before I finally got it right.

Facebook has also removed most of the advanced search options. You can search for somebody by name, and narrow it down by school or location, but that's about it. I'm pretty certain you used to be able to narrow search results down by age, religion, relationship status, etc. Now, you can't filter results like this. It makes it harder to find the sort of people you might be looking for. That's not a good thing for the most popular social networking site.

In your profile, you used to be able to click on something in your favorites lists—such as a movie title. Then, Facebook would take you to the search results for that movie, and it would show all your friends who also listed that movie. Then, it would show other people in your network, too. It was fun to see who liked the same shows, movies, and books as I did. (Now, instead, it's more likely to take you to search results listing fan pages for the movie or book, made by random users.) Facebook even had a sort of game on the site about favorites. It was called the Friend Game, and it would present you with somebody's favorite movie, song, quotation, or something else, and you had to guess whose favorite it was. That was a fun game; it's too bad it's gone now.

I'm sure I'm not the only one to complain about this last point: There is too much clutter on Facebook now. Ever since the introduction of applications and fan pages, it seems that some certain percentage of my friends seems determined to join every application, become a fan of every possible silly thing, and fill my News Feed with irrelevant stories. It's a neat idea that someone playing a zoo game could ask their friends to feed it while they're away from the computer for a few days, but I just don't care about some stupid digital baby tiger. There used to be the option in the News Feed to have certain types of stories appear less frequently—like I could have pictures of my friends appear less often—but there is no option like this anymore.

Over time, Facebook seems to have become a bit easier to use, and more people are on it than ever. It's just a shame that Facebook has removed such great social networking features.

Is one who sews called a "sewer"? This is on the display for the Polder Reversible Tabletop Ironing Board, at Costco. When "sewers" is accompanied by the places "dorm rooms" and "apartments," I have no choice but to assume that "sewers" must also be referring to a place.

This sign is on the inside of the window at Starbucks. I think it sounds funny. It reads as though the safe is protected by some kind of time-travel machine, or something that can otherwise affect the flow of time.

This is probably the most frustrating electronic device I've ever tried to use: the Totes Shower Clock Radio.

I removed it from the package and couldn't even get the battery compartment open. I hurt my thumbs trying to turn the knob and pull on the door. I'm not sure if I wasn't turning the knob hard enough, or if I wasn't pulling on the door hard enough, because I had to ask my dad to open it for me. It's very easy to remove after the first time, but I have never had so much trouble just to get batteries into something. And the trouble didn't stop there.

Setting the clock was more difficult than opening the battery compartment. The clock's buttons didn't even seem to depress when I pushed them. Maybe this has something to do with waterproofing the device, but it didn't even feel like the buttons were designed to be pressed. I had to put all my body weight into pressing them. I physically exhausted myself and hurt my thumbs trying to press them. When I finally thought I had set the time, I was disappointed to realize that I had set the date instead.

The radio has nice volume, but it doesn't seem to tune anything in very well. The tuning dial is very touchy, but I haven't been able to get anything that wasn't very noisy and staticky. I couldn't get anything at all in the AM band except for a loud buzzing tone.

The mirror seems like a clumsy addition. The manufacturers intend for you to hang the device on the showerhead, but unless your showerhead is at eye-level, you won't be able to see anything in the mirror except for the ceiling's reflection. If you're able to hook the shower radio onto anything lower than the showerhead, then you could use the mirror.

I received this from my parents as a Christmas present. I've asked them to return it. I don't recommend that anyone try to put up with this shower radio. I've posted a similar review on Amazon.

There are some fundamental problems with the QWERTY keyboard, mostly because of how it was designed. The keys were arranged the way they are to prevent the typewriters' typebars from jamming together—commonly used letter pairs were arranged on the keyboard so that the typebars wouldn't collide and get stuck. That said, there doesn't seem to be much rhyme or reason to the way the keys are arranged on the keyboard. Have you ever noticed where T, the most commonly used consonant, rests on the keyboard? You have to reach all the way up there!



There's QWERTY on top and Colemak on the bottom.

Colemak was released in early 2006; I've been using it for a year and a half. The keys are in a more comfortable arrangement: many of the most frequent letters—E, T, A, O, I, N, S, H, R, D—are all on the home row, so you don't have to move your fingers far. According to Wikipedia, "the 'top twelve' letters comprise about 80% of the total usage," so this is sort of a big deal. All of the symbols are in the same place, except that O is where the semi-colon is in QWERTY, but I never felt that I used the semi-colon that often anyway. Some of the letters are in the same place—in fact, except for N being switched with K, the entire bottom row is the same. This is very nice, because frequent keyboard shortcuts which benefit from muscle memory and proximity to the control key, like Ctrl+C (copy), Ctrl+V (paste), and Ctrl+Z (undo), are in the same place. The Caps Lock key becomes Backspace. Since this feature isn't available yet in Windows Vista or 7, I can't vouch for how much of a good thing this is, but it must be a relief from having to reach my right pinky to the awkwardly distant Backspace key.

One of my favorite things about the Colemak keyboard is that it can be used to type international characters by turning the right Alt into an AltGr key. This is especially useful for me because I'm a student of German, and it helps me type the foreign letters that aren't on my keyboard. To type an eszett (ß), you type AltGr+S. To type ä, ö, or ü, you type AltGr+D (for the umlaut) and then a, o, or u. AltGr+E is é; AltGr+N is ñ. If I want to type an em dash (—), I type AltGr+Shift+hyphen. I love em dashes. There are combinations for cent, yen, pound, and euro currency signs. There are also some special combinations using the backslash. AltGr+\ then D gives the degree symbol (°). AltGr+\ then T gives the trademark sign (™). It's very nice to be able to type these characters without having to resort to the Character Map, or even without having to move the position of my hands.

Learning Colemak didn't take as long as I thought it would, but it was of course a bit disorienting at first. I started without incremental lessons. I just printed out a layout of the keyboard, color-coding the keys which are typed with each finger, and referred to the chart when I wanted to type a letter. Typing was slow at first. I did this during the summer, when I didn't have a lot of important homework to type. I'd say I was up to pretty good speed after a few days or a week, but this was over a year ago, so I can't say for sure.

Now that I know Colemak, QWERTY seems awkward to type, especially the letters T and P. I am a little more prone to making mistakes while typing in QWERTY, especially when I try to type S or N. Looking at the keyboard helps me remember that I need to be typing in QWERTY; otherwise, I get a bit confused.

I suggest Colemak to anyone who is capable of touch-typing, looking for a more comfortable keyboard, and wanting to easily type international letters and special characters. If you want to try it out or read more information, go to colemak.com.

Yesterday, I was at the Meridian Cost Cutter in Bellingham. I was a bit surprised to see that within the grocery store was a small dollar-store section. They had shelves of merchandise including cheap toys, housewares, pet stuff, and food—all for just one dollar! They also had a few shopping carts filled with junk. Inside them, my cousin found some water balloons in horrible shape.



The balloons were disintegrating! They were dried out, and parts of them were flaking apart! I suspect these balloons were cheaply made; do normal balloons ever get to this point? I wouldn't buy these to use as water balloons, not even for a dollar! They'd probably break apart instantly... or possibly melt into a colorful slime. Also, the label has "balloons" misspelled.