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.
So, I was treated to two dozen fantastic presentations on subjects as diverse as celestial mechanics, protein reactions in cells and the lifestyles of dinosaurs; delivered by talented young people just as diverse in their styles and approaches to communicating their knowledge. Winners will get to compete at the next level, and will be treated to a communication skills workshop that will help them develop their skills.
What a wonderful way to promote science!
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.
Interestingly, the reviewer mentions one favorite feature of mine in the 
recent ThinkPad notebooks that many users may be barely aware of: a little white LED in the screen’s frame that illuminates the keyboard. This is useful for when you work on an airplane at night and prefer to leave the overhead reading light off (whether out of consideration for your co-travelers or for your battery life - in the dark you can work at the screen’s minimal backlight intensity).
This LED in itself is a great design idea, but I’m even more impressed by how you turn this lamp on: you depress the Fn key and the PgUp key together. Why is this impressive? Because these two keys are located diagonally at the opposite corners of the keyboard; this means you can find them - by touch - in absolute darkness, which is where you’re at if you need a light in the first place.
Incidentally, this is how I discovered this feature during one long flight - I was groping to find the Fn key combination for increasing the backlight level, hoping to have the screen itself illuminate the keyboard, and I accidentally hit the right keys. And there was light!
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!
I asked the appliance store guy for his best tool, and he offered me a sturdy blue unit that, he said, was what professional hairdressers (sorry, hair styling artists) use. The wattage on the label was indeed higher than any I’ve seen before. I brought it home proudly, only to discover the next day that it was no good to anyone there.
This was a new one for me: how can a tool that professionals prefer be useless to an amateur? In my world of engineering and DIY projects, this would be unthinkable. What difference can it make? A hairdryer is a hairdryer, after all.
Here’s the difference: the hairdryer is a hairdryer, but the hairdresser uses it to dry hair that is on someone else’s head! When you dry your own hair, the dryer must be short enough to fit between your hand and your skull; when you dry someone else you can just step back. The professional tool was longer, not much but just enough to make it awkward to use on oneself.
So, a lesson: always keep an open mind and challenge your own assumptions on the way a design fits its intended use. These errors seem obvious in retrospect - always in retrospect…
