> Technical writers: documentation by example is good only for newbies skimming through. People familiar with your product need a reference and exhaustive lists, not explanation for different fields spread over 10 tutorial pages. Focus on those that use the product day in and day out, not solely on the "onboarding" procedure.
I agree. We all would benefit by giving more exposure to documentation frameworks such as https://diataxis.fr
https://nakashimawoodworkers.com (new commissions around $7K-$15K for a coffee table, $20K-40K for dining table, plus shipping; older Nakashima pieces are highly valued in the art world and sell anywhere between $15K-$300K)
Edit: Also, to echo what someone mentioned below, if you're interested in solid wood furniture you should find a local woodworker.
Another edit and thought: I used to own a lot of IKEA furniture and as I've gotten older, have slowly replaced those pieces with items from Knoll, with custom pieces from local woodworkers, with a few pieces from the studios listed above. A lot of people are commenting on the cost, and yes they're expensive and could be considered luxury goods.
But if you like art and design and you care about quality, you save for what you want to buy. I wanted to be surrounded by great craftsmanship, so instead of buying "stuff" and instead of spending money on lots of subscriptions and services, or constantly upgrading phones and computers, I buy one piece of nice furniture every year. I believe the more you appreciate the things around you, the more they begin to influence your own work, and your sense of place.
I regularly see a lot of IKEA furniture on the side of the road and in dumpsters. I think this is the difference between buying "things" and having "possessions" but that's a discussion for another day.
This is precisely why I'm so infuriated so many people (me included until recently) aren't aware of the excellent alternative manufacturers like Mazda are offering in their cars, their Command Controller:
- no touch screens
- no embedded screen below the dash, instead screen is at instrument cluster height
- in center column, where your hand natural can rest, a palm-sized wheel:
- tactile feedback on rotation
- multi-directional shifts (cardinal & diagonal)
- pushing/clicking wheel is selection/confirmation
- finger tips buttons surround wheel with shortcuts:
- navigation (either CarPlay/Android Auto nav app or GPS)
- music (either radio or CarPlay/Android Auto currently playing music app)
- favorites (can be radio, satellite, etc.)
- home (one click -> CarPlay Home, double click CarPlay Dashboard with map & media)
- back
I've seen myriad folks passing judgement on these systems because they've lived with touch screens in cars for a very long time. I was lucky to skip that entire generation going from a minimal LCD digital screen straight to a Mazda with this system. It took a few weeks to feel comfortable, but not once did I ever feel as insecure as I have in a vehicle with an touch screen located below the instrument cluster line.
I think we've numbed ourselves to the routine distraction of touch screens which (generally) bypass most people's ability to mentally map physical buttons to specific actions. It's obvious as has been mentioned in this thread that touch screens are a massive cost saving (initially at least) and vehicle production timeline trick.
The huge missing story for touch screens is user experience and safety. The Mazda input system does take some time to learn, and it does divide my attention when I use it, but it has trained me to be more sparse with my interactions with the multimedia system and to rely far more on voice input control whenever I absolutely need to input data into the system (music selection, route finding, text response, etc.)
This isn't even getting into the surprisingly well-designed software and hardware intermingling that Mazda has accomplished between the instrument cluster (which features one central LCD gauge that mimicks the two real physical gauges that surround it) and the multimedia operating system navigation.
Here's some references for folks who find it interesting and are interested hardware/software design for safety in vehicles:
You are required to have internet access to setup something like the UDM-Pro. After it is setup you can create a local admin account and disable remote access.
Here is how:
1. Login with your online account credentials and password
2. Choose system settings
3. Choose advanced
4. Disable Remote Access
5. Confirm that "Transfer owner" won't be available if you disable remote access.
The issue in general is that the UniFi stuff can be crappy and buggy, but it SUCKS LESS then any other complete solution for a home / small enterprise there at the price point.
I personally used to given them a strong recommendation and even now that is a recommendation with some footnotes. They have been growing to fast and the SW quality has gone down. Being on the latest release is not always the best idea.
To be fair in my I have had many conversation with Cisco that started with "no, not the latest GA, but what is the latest proven STABLE GA."
I recently discovered the https://openlibrary.org/ by The Internet Archive. On the face of it, their "about" page[1] sounds appealing (not least because it resonates with my open source values):
One web page for every book ever published. It's a lofty but achievable goal.
To build Open Library, we need hundreds of millions of book records, a wiki interface, and lots of people who are willing to contribute their time and effort to building the site.
To date, we have gathered over 20 million records from a variety of large catalogs as well as single contributions, with more on the way.
Open Library is an open project: the software is open, the data are open, the documentation is open, and we welcome your contribution. Whether you fix a typo, add a book, or write a widget--it's all welcome. We have a small team of fantastic programmers who have accomplished a lot, but we can't do it alone!
"Over the years, we’ve seen app adoption steadily rise, across all industries and company sizes. This year, the average number of apps per customer reached 88: that’s a 6% increase from 83 apps a year ago, and a 21% increase from 72 apps three years ago. And now 10% of our customers deploy a substantial 200 apps or more. When we look at customers that have been with Okta for more than four years, they deploy an average of 190 apps."
Odds are, a good chunk of those are free but if the average subscription cost is $10/month => $10/month * 12 months * 88 apps => $10560/year aka well within the estimate cited.
Slightly tangentially related, for those of us who are into gardening and coding, there is a plant monitor made by Xiaomi called Xiaomi Flower Care that will monitor moisture, light, temperature, and soil fertility. It works over Bluetooth and can be purchased on Amazon for as low as $8 per probe but the vendors will often charge around $25. You see a lot of rebranded ones but they're all the same from Xiaomi. It works with their iOS (and presumably Android) app. Someone has released a SDK for it:
My plan is to use that and build a Raspberry Pi to monitor my plants. And later on maybe control the watering system.
Anyways, it's a nice cheap plant monitoring option. It was really helpful when I was trying to figure out why my plants were turning yellow. People were mostly telling me that I was either over watering or under watering, etc. Then the probes all told me that my soil has no fertility left so I just added some organic 5-5-5 fertilizers and my plants are doing great again. The nerd in me love checking the data every day but would ideal build a Raspi server to sync and display some graphs some day (using a Prometheus endpoint perhaps?)
If anyone has good advice on how to control a set of water valves using Raspberry Pi, please let me know! I know about GPIO but I would like to have a bus of some sort so I can add more valves in the future if needed. Maybe a USB solenoid?
There are better landfill technologies from Japan[1][2], Shanghai recently switched[3][4] to them. But they still require careful sorting of the garbage, removing dangerous and easily decomposable organic materials. So maybe it is time for the US to learn from Japan?
I agree. We all would benefit by giving more exposure to documentation frameworks such as https://diataxis.fr