Blogger design team, please beat yourselves over the head with Donald Norman books

I've been using the new Blogger interface for two minutes, and while I had previously promised not to like it, now I have several definite reasons to not like it.  It's very nice to have that little "Revert to legacy Blogger" button there, but since I've had some education in human factors, I will take a look around first.

What they need to remember from Norman is the concept of Affordances, usable ones.  An affordance is something that the user can interact with, usually a control. A user interface for ordinary people needs to make the user's controls visible and understandable and usable, not hidden and obscure within the user interface.

Overall it seems their intention was to make a more mobile-friendly interface, cleaner-looking and less dense. Not simpler, because the set of user controls hasn't changed much. Some of the cleanliness has come at the cost of moving controls to sub-menus...such as Blockquote and Save.

They've changed the text boxes to only show a thin line at the bottom. Typing a post title feels viscerally precarious, like standing on the ridge of a roof, compared to the enclosed feeling of a fully outlined text box. Just what a writer needs when they're trying to put words together.

I'm also not a fan of the post thumbnails; which for an image-less post is an image of the first letter in the title, only in a different font, gray, and MUCH LARGER.

In the listing of Posts, the controls are all icons except for Edit, which you get to now by clicking on the title, and which I found only by guessing.

For the Labels chooser, they have hidden the full list of labels and have put in a search-based suggestion functionality, which updates with each new character typed. So if I type in the letter "s", it gives me a list of all of the labels that contain "s", starting with "accept and transcend". Typing "se" gets me a list that starts with "exercise" and ends with "serendipity" and "sewing". So I will often have to half-type the label I want, to get it far enough up the list that I can select it without having to scroll down to it. Or I can just ignore the suggestions, and type the whole thing myself.

Previously the listing was compactly given in a box, separated by commas. It was very difficult to accurately select them on a mobile device, for sure, but at least I could see them all, with a little scrolling.

On further use, observation, and investigation, I found that I could get the whole list of labels.  All I have to do is put in two or more labels, then a comma to indicate the end of the last one, then it will throw up the whole list, apparently believing that I am now getting serious about attaching labels to this particular post. In the scroll box, I can see seven labels at a time. I have one hundred and two.

It is also sometimes putting a recently removed label at the top of the list, since I've been experimenting with putting on and taking off labels. What else is it trying to think about for itself when I'm not looking?

Book recommendation: The Complete Guide to Sharpening...

...by Leonard Lee. The copy I've been reading has gone back to the library, but it has been put on our to-buy list.

It takes on the topic of sharpening from first principles, with numerous electron microscope photographs of edges, and pages of discussion about what is happening on a microscopic level when a woodworking tool is used on wood, or when a tool is sharpened and honed.

Next comes information on tools and techniques for sharpening, including commercial and homemade jigs (guides/supports). Lee is mindful of the low-budget reader, and gives lower-cost options and recommendations on what to buy first.

In the following chapters, he gives specific and extensive instructions on sharpening every bladed woodworking tool I'd ever heard of, and some that I hadn't. Saws and bits are included.  Common household tools like hammers, kitchen knives, pocket knives, scissors, and tweezers are also covered.

Not included:  reel mowers--which are really a special case under the Scissors category, and usually need only re-alignment, rather than sharpening--and scythes.

Lee is or was a tool manufacturer, and gives a lot of hints about to recognize, care for, and skillfully use well-made tools, including how to fine-tune their sharpening for the intended purpose.

I'd consider this book for homeschooling curriculum, mainly for high school students who are strong and careful readers. The prose and pacing aren't dumbed down or drawn out. But even the photographs and diagrams are highly educational in themselves.

I found it interesting that much of the book was basically an introduction to metalworking for woodworkers.

Book review: Rework

I’ve been reading a library book called Rework, by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hanson. They are founders of a software company, 37signals, and in 2010 published this business book for entrepreneurs.

It is a fast read, consisting of a large number of pithy mini-chapters. They back up many of their points with examples of successful businesses that use those principles, giving an interesting look at how those companies operate.

I noticed that much of their contrarian business advice would translate well to the home environment, so I went back through it with that in mind and ended up with a couple of pages of notes.

Most of the ideas in the book were things that I am already doing:  keeping things simple and flexible and mindful, creatively using and re-using what you have, doing quick prototypes and testing, taking adequate time for rest and recreation, doing things just “good enough” to reach the goal, doing work that is meaningful, looking beyond current fads, and so on.

What is helpful for me now is the idea of using big markers to sketch out ideas, to prevent being pulled down into the details too soon. Also, their assertion that in business you will learn more from successes than from failures.

Some quotes from the book:  “Culture is the byproduct of consistent behavior.”  “The environment has a lot more to do with great work than most people realize.”  “Inspiration is perishable.”

The book’s copyright page is at the end; I found that unhelpful as I was trying to find the year of publication.

Overall, I found the book worth reading.

Looking back at coronavirus, and how it ties in

It’s now long enough since the state started opening back up that the predicted eruption of cases toward a late June or early July peak should have begun. I’m not seeing it yet in the graphs; new positive tests per day, hospital beds, and ICU beds are all basically flat.

I think that the protests may not have much of a net effect on the spread of the virus locally.  Thousands of people were out protesting and rioting, but hundreds of thousands were sitting at home under curfew. Less shopping went on overall because of stores being closed or destroyed, but there was possibly a higher concentration of people in the fewer open grocery stores; some stores were having whole shelves emptied out as people bought food to donate.

Floyd’s April 3 positive test was interesting, because at that time tests were scarce, and commoners were only tested if symptoms were present. From my post from just before Minnesota shut down, I’m reminded that he may have needed to have been exhibiting “severe symptoms“ to have been tested.

I was also sick around that time, but not tested, and my breathing isn’t great even now, although in my case mild seasonal allergies and extreme pregnancy are factors.

I just watched the New York Times’ compilation of videos around the arrest and restraint, until it froze up on me. What the video shows well is the sequence of main events from multiple perspectives. What it shows poorly are the real-time length of each event, and the flow from one thing to the next. The video is about half as long as the whole thing actually took to play out.

Minimalist country style

While on vacation, I read a book called Country Wisdom, by David Larkin. It is a collection of interesting tidbits, not a comprehensive guide.

One of those tidbits was that thatched roofs were really only practical in damp climates; the moisture was needed to keep the fire risk down. That is why the American colonists didn't use them much.

Another one, that I have been thinking about off and on ever since, is that early American country interiors were much more sparsely furnished than most of us believe. The idea of them being cluttered came from a collector, who crammed as many items from his collection as he could into interiors to be photographed. I want to say that this was in the early 20th century, and that the guy's last name started with B, but I'm not sure now. From records of property made at time of death, it can be shown that people's household goods were functional and not plentiful in those days.

Cozifying

I've been working through some of the Creating a Cozy Life printables from Sallie Borrink. The worksheets are especially helpful. She has written them so that you can quickly get to the heart of your challenges, and then start generating creative solutions. She also has calendars and pages of household reminders, in pretty designs. She's a very encouraging person, and she is always finding interesting ideas.

I've also been working through Myquillyn Smith's new book, Cozy Minimalist Home:  More Style, Less Stuff, in our living room. The book is good, although I am wondering about a couple of the editorial decisions. Anyway, she has a whole method to it, starting with "quieting" the room by taking out all but the most basic furniture, and then living with it for a few days, to let the room "speak" to you.

In our previous house, I would not have been able to do this; there simply wasn't any spare space. Everything necessary was there, but nothing extra. In this house, though, we have a lot of "swap space".

What my living room said was that it needed a lot of little repairs--which I have mostly completed now. The other thing that came out of it for me was a feeling of despair--this is the BEIGE-EST ROOM EVER, in a long series of rentals, and for me, it's the color of never yet being able to buy a house, and to paint the rooms with actual, real colors of my own choosing.

But God has provided this rental house for us to live in, so I'll do the best I can here.

I have some strategies for dealing with excessive beige that I'll share later this week.

Burnout need not be permanent

My response to this article on Millennial burnout:

Try taking a regular Sabbath. And think about taking some sort of sabbatical; a working sabbatical if need be. (I have a book on that.)

What they'll give you is a chance to step back, gain perspective, and rest, which will at least help you to make better choices with your time, and to be more efficient in the things that you do choose to do. But even better, they can give you a chance to become acquainted and connected with your Creator. These things are especially important for those who have little margin for error in their lives.

I should take my own advice today, and take a break from working on my living room.

Book review: Wary Meyers' Tossed and Found

The full title is Wary Meyers' Tossed and Found:  Unconventional Design from Castoffs. The book is a few years old now, but still good.

Authors Linda and John Meyers present a wide range of items for the home, made or remade, mostly using salvaged materials. (There were a couple of jobs that they sent out to professional fabricators.) Together they are "Wary Meyers". John formerly worked for Anthropologie designing window displays; I've been told these displays are extremely creative, but I've never seen any for myself.

Anyway I found this book wildly inspiring, as well as informative, although annoying at a couple of points.

I'll start with the elements that make this book one that I can highly recommend:

1.  Their examples of creatively using and re-using materials, from brand-new plexiglass and fabric all the way down to pool noodles and a piece of wood pried from an old sofa's weathered skeleton.

2.  The sketchbook drawings showing all the brainstorming that takes place before they choose an idea to pick up and carry through with.

Seriously, these are well worth seeing, but if you can't, you can easily do something similar yourself:  Take a sheet of plain paper, turn it sideways, and make a bunch of little sketches at first while you play with different ideas for a material (turn off the internal critic for a while); then make larger and more detailed sketches as you close in on what you actually like and want to build. Having the paper be wider horizontally than vertically does a lot more than you might think for broadening your thinking.

3.  At a couple of points, they give hints for knowing when to stop working on a project; how to avoid overworking it. For me, this usually isn't a problem, as my children ensure that I can barely get anything done, let alone overdone, but it is still good to know what to watch out for. Their examples were a chair, where they painted the seat but later regretted also painting the rusty legs, and a (faux) mantel made out of scrap wood, which they regretted painting white, liking the mix of wood tones better.

The points that were annoying to me mostly are a matter of envy on my part:  they were able to go all over the place (childfree), buying and scrounging all sorts of things, and then to spend hours and hours and hours putting them together in new, creative ways, and eventually they were even getting paid to do that and write about it. They have a great deal of design knowledge; there are allusions in the book that are going right over my head.

Not a full book review: Rustic Elegance, by Ralph Kylloe

I leafed through this book at the library to drool over the pictures, and skipped over the text. It features a number of uber-rustic cabin palaces, all by the same architect. The primary elements of the look are dry-stacked rough stone and tons of rustic wood, paired with elegant and expertly-arranged high-end furnishings. What most of these rooms lack, therefore, is color and light; it is a very cave-like style. Too depressing for full-time occupation without a few modifications.

But there are a few interesting ideas that I took away from it. One is that now I think my basement room needs a boulder or two! It is definitely a cave sort of room. Another is that you can glue chunks of wood to almost anything.

Review: The Pattern Making Primer

My "word" for 2016 is Integrity. Some things that have come together recently for me under that theme:  Ezra 4, Daniel 10, this post by Sally Clarkson, and the discussions of vocation in Dorothy Sayers' novel Gaudy Night.

So, I have been working toward a coherent policy of how I will approach doing reviews here. It is a work in progress, but it is coming along. One important point is that I have no connection whatsoever with the publisher or authors of the book.

The Pattern Making Primer, by Jo Barnfield and Andrew Richards, published by Barron's:  I bought my copy for the cover price, $23.99, at JoAnn Fabrics. I had been wanting a good pattern drafting reference book for some time, so I was willing to pay the cover price and not wait for a coupon. My copy is kind of a hybrid between hardcover and softcover; the cover is flexible, but sturdier than most softcovers.

The book covers how to make slopers (master patterns) for dresses, how to use the slopers to make muslins to test and correct the fit, and then how to use the corrected slopers to draw up a variety of patterns, including shirts and skirts and even capes. Basic sewing and drawing knowledge are assumed, but the book does contain many sewing tips, as well as hints about how clothing is designed and manufactured commercially.  There is also a short chapter about starting to sell your clothing designs. The book reads like a textbook--the authors seem to be college teachers in some sort of fashion-technology area--and it tends to terseness rather than verbosity.

There are many illustrations, all well-done, although the graph paper background behind the line drawings is sometimes distracting. The illustration for how to place a sleeve in a garment before sewing them together is particularly good; it clarifies one of the most confusing situations in sewing. (The sleeve, right side out, gets put inside the garment body, which is inside out, and then they are sewn together...somehow it all works out in the end.)

The valuable parts of the book, for me, are where it gives the general shapes of pattern pieces, how to work from them to create different clothing styles (different shapes of sleeves, for example), and how to draw (and sew) pesky pattern details like seams, collars, cuffs, pockets, and facings. Also useful is the section about diagnosing fit problems from the patterns of wrinkles that show up when the garment is worn. There is a chapter about "rubbing off" patterns from existing clothing. The book takes a low-tech approach; minimal tool sets for pattern making are listed and illustrated. The book has almost convinced me that I need a tracing wheel.

Being only a primer, the book does not go into as much depth as I would like for my sewing in the long term. The sloper patterns are provided only in small, medium, and large, and in a scale that will be very awkward for most people to enlarge to life size. There is almost nothing about pants, only a brief example of using the skirt sloper to make a pattern for culottes. (Pants are much harder to design and fit.) There is nothing about maternity patterns, or other extremes of figure, although enough information is given to enable one to make some good guesses. There are some links to pattern software, but no other information is given about how to go beyond hand-drawn patterns. The business information is helpful, but is only the barest bones of a beginning for someone who actually wants to do it.

The book seems to be a Western Hemisphere issue of a British book. Measurements are given in both inches and centimeters, but there is no U.S.-specific information about the fashion industry--if I remember right, U.S. clothing sizing is not standardized, but U.S. pattern sizing is. Looking at my commercially-created patterns (none of which are recent), the sloper sizes provided in the book don't correspond exactly to U.S. standard dress pattern sizes, but would be about size 10 to size 16.

Overall, I like the book very much, and have consulted it several times already in thinking about future sewing projects. Making your own patterns is an interesting intellectual challenge, almost mathematical, and this book is a good starting point if you want to take that road.

Pants and purging and perusing

A lady at church gave me a couple of yards of light fleece. I drew up pants patterns based on sweat pants my kids already had, and then made five pairs of pants for them.  Very simple, back side same as the front side, zigzag stitch throughout.  I re-used elastic from their old pants for the waistbands. But sometimes the elastic is stitched in too well to make getting it out worthwhile. I like pattern drafting, and my children are constantly growing, so I usually draw up a new pattern every time.

I had enough fabric left over to make one small dress. And to lengthen the pants for one child who wanted his pants longer.

Since then, I've been working on the first task of moving, which is a huge purge to minimize the amount that needs to be moved. I try to keep things decluttered as we go, but there is always more that can go out the door. This week I have been working on cleaning behind and under as many pieces of furniture as possible. It is amazing how many toys and odd objects find their way back into the dust bunnies.

I have been reading Tsh Oxenreider's Organized Simplicity. My reaction (after one reading) is mixed. It felt like the book was aimed at people living large and complicated lives in McMansions; as a writer I understand the temptation to write to a straw audience, but it made it difficult for me to meet the book where I actually am. I have been working for a long time on a simpler and more efficient lifestyle, and never had anything very big in the first place, so I have already picked most of the low-hanging fruit that she is offering her readers in this book. Still, there were several interesting ideas and organizing principles that I took note of. The appendix of recipes for homemade cleaning recipes and personal care products is very good, and includes many that I use myself.

But I differ with her on washing windows; instead of newspaper, I have a scrubber and a squeegee. With a towel (to wipe the squeegee and window edges) and some warm water with a little dish soap in it, I can wash the windows very quickly. It's very similar to washing the car's windows at the gas station, now that I think about it...treat your home like a car.