Author Archives: devin
Samsung Knack keypad
My grandparents recently took a leap into the 21st century by signing up for a cell phone. I’ve had my iPhone long enough that I had forgotten how ugly and painful the majority of cell phones really are! Invariably, the worst cell phone offenses come from the keypads. My grandparents ended up with a Samsung [...]
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The Crosswalk Button
As I was crossing the street today, I remembered the crosswalk buttons on my street in Davis. I think they’re really great because they give you so much feedback. You can’t help but know what’s going on. When you press it, it kinda clicks. And it makes a beep. And the light flashes. And it [...]
Cisco Clean Access
Here at my university they use this network authentication system, Cisco Clean Access. It’s meant to be easy for everyone–the administrators and the users. And, if all you ever do is pull up Firefox and browse the web, it’s not that inconvenient. The trouble is that as nearly as I can discover, there are only [...]
iPhone Brightness Settings
So my friends with iPhones keep asking why mine is so dark. Until today I had no explanation. Maybe the screen is defective? The backlight? As evidence that I hadn’t messed anything up, I opened the brightness control to show them that “Auto-Brightness” is turned on. Apparently “Auto-Brightness” doesn’t mean that it’s fully automatic. Honestly, [...]
The Iron
I had a thought while I was ironing the other day. You see, I always want to press harder on the iron to get wrinkles out. This must be a common instinct, because I’ve seen irons with warnings not to press too hard. This is because the pushing doesn’t do so much good as the [...]
Finding me
If the very nice GoingToRain.com can figure out what city I’m in, how come I have to tell Ikea.com and Volkswagen.com what country I’m in? They must have a lot of people in the US shopping for furniture in Kuwait. Yeah, that must be it.
Paper Towel Dispensers
Apparently it’s a lot harder to make a paper towel dispenser than I would have thought. No matter what the format, it’s a pretty simple task: pull a paper towel. In my bathroom travels I’ve seen a lot of different dispensers, but none seem to be as simple as they ought. But this one is [...]
Advanced Search
Searching is one of the most important activites for users of any large website. I’m always glad to see a big, obvious search box on the first page I hit. Of course, sometimes you need to search for something a bit more specific. That’s where “Advanced Search” with all of their extra search options help [...]
Where’s that wall wart?