Category: Time

Done for You: Stitch Kitty from Wild Ginger Software

This is an interesting concept, and I hope they do well.

There are several small independent companies making and selling sewing patterns. But a sewing pattern takes more than just templates to use when cutting fabric. There are sewing instructions, sewing diagrams or photos, lists of recommended fabrics, recommended notions, instructions on assembly order, instructions on seam allowances and whether seam allowances are included on the pattern pieces, needle and thread recommendations, stitch setting recommendations, and more.

Stitch Kitty is a (new? relatively new?) program from Wild Ginger software, which helps with all of that. It’s called a “professional guide sheet generator.” I have not heard this term before, not in sewing, and not in any other craft where patterns are sold.

I haven’t bought Stitch Kitty myself and I haven’t tried it. I’ve used sewing patterns in the past, but I’ve never tried to create one myself. I think their sample sheets look nice. I read through the software description. It sounds like Wind Ginger worked very hard to think of every variation a customer creating a sewing pattern might want, but I don’t have enough experience to judge.

I’m back where I started: this is a really interesting concept. I hope they do well.

Slow Is Smooth, Smooth Is Fast

Computers and Software

I’ve had computers where I could hit six key combinations in quick succession. And then I could watch it all be executed smoothly — and correctly! — over the next twenty seconds.

I’ve also had computers where I had to watch the monitor after every single key press. I wouldn’t like the results if I got too far ahead of what the computer was doing,

Hardware devices with lots of buttons tend to fall into the second category: get too far ahead and it will take me longer than if I’d gone the device’s speed to start with. Most remotely hosted services seems to fall into this second category too. And most smart phones are in this second category.

Business Practices

Then there are other mental processes where rushing makes things slower in the end. The classic phrase “I’m writing you a long letter because I didn’t have time to write a short one” is an example of this. There are legions of corporate memos sent in haste, legal documents filed in haste, emails addressed and sent in haste, where time-consuming mistakes were made which probably could have been avoided if there had been less haste.

Hand Crafts

My last set of examples today is hands-on processes like sewing, welding, woodworking, and dozens of other hand crafts. “Measure twice, cut once” is a common statement in almost all of them for the same reasons I wrote about above. Measuring twice takes much less time than buying more fabric or wood or metal or whatever else I was using.

Why Am I Writing This?

Mostly, I write this blog for myself, but I write about the problems I see people have with technology. I write about the recurring themes I hear in what people say and in what they ask me for help with. I write this blog for everyone who says “I just want it to work.” Part of making it work, and this goes for all types of its, is knowing the speed of the technology and respecting that. Fixing something broken is almost always slower than slowing down enough to not mess up in the first place.

The Person Doing the Job Is As Important As the Job

Is It the Tool, Or Is It the User?

It’s as important to use a tool which fits the person doing the job, as it is to use a tool which fits the job.

I started this blog for a number of reasons. One of them is to get more familiar with WordPress in its current form.

And I have found I like the WordPress post editor for editing. I hate the WordPress post editor for composing. It’s not local, it’s hosted on a server somewhere, so sometimes there is a slight delay between me typing and the letters showing up on the screen. At times this is maddening.

More frustrating is trying to navigate between paragraphs using the keyboard. Sometimes the arrow keys work great in the post editor. Sometimes the arrow keys don’t work at all, even when I know there is more text to see if I could just get the screen to keep scrolling down.

I’m By Myself, So If It Works For Me, Then It Works For Me

The last couple of weeks I’ve started composing posts in a program that runs on my computer. No internet connection needed, navigation in the document is simple. Then I cut and paste it into the WordPress post editor and finish editing there.

That works much better for me.

I am sure there are writers out there who love the post editor. And that is the point of this post: sometimes who is doing the job and using the tools is as important, or even more important, than which tools are being used.

This is part of a larger theme I repeatedly see, confusing the How with the Goal and the Why. If my Goal was to learn how to use the WordPress post editor, inside and out, then using a separate program for composing would be admitting defeat. If my Goal instead is learning how to use WordPress efficiently, and it’s more efficient for me to use a separate writing program for composition, I think that’s fine.

What If It’s Not Just Me?

Writing this, I have newfound sympathy for someone supervising a group of creators. Yes, as long as each person gets their part of the job done, then how much do tools matter? But if they have to work together, they’ll need a common framework to talk to each other. If it’s expected that absences can be covered by co-workers, then common tools are essential.

Am I Looking In the Wrong Places?

For tasks such as editing photos or video or graphics, I see many tutorials on how to set up workflow. I don’t see nearly as many tutorials for how to set up workflow when it comes to writing, or to blogging. I’m not sure if I’m actually seeing a lack, or if I’m not looking in the right places.

Great Power Brings Great Responsibility

Yes, it’s trite. It’s also true.

Not having to do repetitive routine tasks by hand is one of the benefits of technology.

An obvious example is using a spreadsheet program to create and calculate spreadsheet numbers, instead of having to write everything by hand. And then not having to rewrite everything by hand because one of the starting number changed.

A less obvious example is being able to model unsolvable math problems. Back in the 1990s I was told there were heat transfer problems which engineers and mathematicians had not been able to solve with calculus. Those same problems could be solved by a computer program modeling heat transfer over thousands and millions of small volumes.

However, with great power comes great responsibility.

That same computer will do other things we ask it to do, like delete every file we have. There was an article in The Register, “Automation is great. Until it breaks and nobody gets paid.” It was published on April 14, 2023 and written by Simon Sharwood. It is part of The Register‘s ongoing “On Call” series where readers write in with stories of tech problems they’ve had to fix.

Even more enlightening than the story was the comments section. There were quite a few comments in there about former co-workers who had written something “simple” which had very not-simple repercussions.

Technology is great and saves a lot of time, but only if it’s used responsibly and wisely.

How It Fits Together, How It Moves

It’s just as important to figure out how things move together, as it is to figure out how they fit together.

It’s also a lot more difficult. When things aren’t moving correctly, it’s easy to see. My computer doesn’t boot up, my kitchen appliances don’t work, my sewing machine doesn’t sew. These are all things that happen when things don’t move together correctly.

Intended movement isn’t usually shown in user manuals or service manuals either. I suppose in some cases it might be a trade secret. In other cases it might be something difficult to document. Seeming odd or arbitrary troubleshooting in user and service manuals often seems to be focused at getting parts aligned to move the way they’re intended.

Timing in software is an entire other black art.

Slowing Down to Speed Up, Writing Edition

I listen to some small business and entrepreneur podcasts. One of the phrases I frequently hear is “slow down to speed up.”

I’ll be honest, I typically hear that right before the host explains why they fought that idea when they first heard it, before having to learn it the hard way. And by “hard way,” I mean by repeated painful experience. Anyway, I’ll get back on topic.

Slowing down to speed up also applies to writing. I used to wonder why there were so many different types of notebooks and stationery. For that matter, why were there so many different types of accounting ledger books?

In both cases, writing something down and then rewriting it somewhere else in a different way helps focus the mind.

For writing, I’ve seen guidelines which say there is a creative mode which runs fast and often a bit too free, then there is the editing mode. These are different parts of the brain, and trying to switch in and out of editing mode while ostensibly being in creating mode doesn’t work that well.

I’ve tried that with writing and it does work. I’m still not fully in the habit. But each time I get a little bit better are remembering to let it flow first and then go back and correct later.

I’m also finding it helps to do that with money. I don’t write down every cent of every transaction, but I’m starting to create a list of regular expenses, pulling the information from multiple other places it’s recorded. And it is helping me focus on what I want to keep and what I’m fine letting go.

Why am I writing this on a blog about making technology work for you?

Technology has created so many time-saving services, it’s erased the friction which used to exist. So we all, myself included, want to let the apps and programs and whatever do it all for us. When we do that, we convince ourselves we’re going faster and faster. But we’re planning and considering less and less.

A re-read and rewriting of a good idea is better than writing it hurriedly fifteen times. And it will be fifteen times because we’re moving so fast we forgot what we already wrote.

An inventory and accounting of what classes and guides and books have already been purchased is better than purchasing more variations of the same thing. But it’s faster and feels faster to just buy more of what has already been purchases.

Slowing down to go faster is a real thing.

TAS: Tool Acquisition Syndrome. The Struggle Is Real.

I heard the term Tool Acquisition Syndrome on some welding or woodworking podcast. It’s witty and descriptive. “Shiny Object Syndrome” is a similar term I’ve heard in entrepreneur and small business podcasts.

Both terms describe the tendency to buy more tools. Usually this ends up delaying a project: the tool must be bought, arrive, be unpacked, the manual read, and so on.

I’ve found one of the counters to TAS is to look through all the things which can be done by the tools I already own. Many electronic devices can do a surprising number of things.

Once in a great while there will be a great sale on a tool I don’t actually need. I’ve purchased some really interesting tools that way. But generally, I don’t need to buy new tools, I already have what I need.

The Easy Way Is Usually Mined

Last week I wrote about human-machine interfaces and how difficult it is to make an interface which is intuitive to use.

One of the promises of modern software, smart devices, and development, and software frameworks is how much easier it will make things.

But does it really?

One examples I run into a few times a year is a scoring program for a kids’ competition. The competition is archery, there are multiple age brackets, types of bow, and clubs. Each round generates anywhere from 20 to 40 scores per competitor who competed that round. There are two software programs I’ve heard of which are written to keep track of all this for competitors (and more importantly, competitors’ parents and coaches).

One program is an Excel spreadsheet with a bit of macros and VBA programming. The other is a tablet-based app.

Hot and New

The tablet-based program is “simpler” and “easier” and its fans describe it as simpler and easier. I have not looked at it closely, but questioning people who have used it or been present at matches where it has been used, I’ve found out a bit about how it works. The tablet-based app won’t work without an internet connection. So some major part of it’s functioning does not take place on the tablets.

An internet connection with multiple devices requires a router. All routers have a finite amount of connections they can handle at one time. How the router handles more devices talking to it than it has channels to talk depends on the router and the devices.

In addition, because the tablet-based app is “simpler” and “easier,” and unspoken is the always present belief that technology is magic and always makes things better, paper scorecards are not used. Score are entered on the tablets. I don’t know the exact interface for the competitor to confirm yes, that is their score. But I have heard from multiple parents and coaches that scores can be lost if a judge or competitor presses the wrong button on the screen. I’ve even heard that multiple competitors’ scores can be lost if a wrong button is pressed on the screen.

Assuming all goes well, the score will be sent to wherever it is processed. Entered scores can be accessed via the internet with anyone with an internet connection. So people present at the match can look up scores on their smart phone.

Old and Busted

Now I will discuss the old, difficult, outdated Excel spreadsheet method. Scores are written down by judges on paper scoresheets. The competitors get to see their scores and agree to them before the scores are sent to the scorekeeper.

The scorekeeper must have a Windows PC with Microsoft Excel running on it. The scores are entered by hand. The Excel spreadsheet does have an option to compute what has been entered. When it does so, it creates a page in the spreadsheet which is formatted to be printed on 8-1/2″ x 11″ inch paper. The paper gets posted when a new copy with new scores is printed.

If Microsoft Excel is running locally on the Windows PC, then no internet connection is required. It is not possible to lose all scores for a competitors’ round by hitting the wrong button on a screen; the paper scorecard still exists, regardless of how many buttons are pressed on which screens.

“We started telling our kids to keep track of their own scores”

A parent in this sport told me their club started telling competitors to keep their own copies of their scores. They said this at matches where the newer, simpler tablet-based app was being used. They said this because there were so many problems with the tablet-based app losing scores. And once a score was lost, it was unrecoverable because there was no paper copy.

Technology is not magic. “There’s an app for that” is not the answer to everything. The easy way is usually mined.

The Simpler It Is, The Closer You Look, Part 2

Humans do not think like machines. Machines do not process information like humans.

Which is obvious, yet the results are often not considered.

Making a machine interface that is intuitive to humans is really difficult. Presenting complex information in way that is easy for humans to read is really difficult. Here are some of the things which have to be considered:

  • How is the information organized?
  • What information are we talking about? Are we presenting flight schedules or grocery shopping lists?
  • Do regular users and new users have different concerns?
  • Do we need to emphasize if anything has changed from last time?
  • How can the information be presented so the expected reader can easily find what they think is most important to find, while also letting the publisher or organizer highlight what they think is most important to present?

Those issues are things I came up with just thinking about it as I’m writing this. There were and still are whole entire disciplines and professions devoted to this.

When I find something which is intuitive to use, whether it’s gas pump prices, a website, or the dashboard of a car, I try to stop and admire what was achieved. I also try to see what I might learn. If there’s a lot of information shown in an intuitive and easy-to-understand manner, someone put a lot of work into that.

The Simpler It Is, The Closer You Look, Part 1

The simpler a physical operation or technology seems to be, the closer I’ll be to worrying about material properties.

Every physical thing eventually goes back to a natural material. Even “synthetic” materials such as plastics, nylon, or viscose, eventually come from a natural material. And natural materials vary.

Whether a natural variance will affect the end use is often hard to predict. A few years ago Consumer Reports took a close look at gluten-free foods and found that one of the hidden dangers was arsenic poisoning. Many gluten-free foods contain rice flour. Rice is grown in different areas with different soils; and rice has a tendency to absorb arsenic from the soil (if the soil has arsenic; some soils don’t).

I used rice as an example, but every other natural material has equally unexpected variances somewhere. When I buy a good such as quilting cotton, there’s an unseen army of people I’m depending on. Someone grew the cotton, harvested it, processed it, and spun it into thread. Someone else took that thread and wove cloth out of it at a set width and tightness of fabric. And then someone after that dyed or printed the cloth.

The further I go back in any chain of assembly or manufacture or processing, the closer I’ll be to taking a very close look at physical properties in the material itself. If I have to do that, then I’ll probably start learning about how to specify those properties when buying, and how to test for those properties, and how often I’ll need to test.

The simpler it is, the closer I need to look at everything.