Wide and ultrawide monitors and laptop displays.
Yeah, I know most of the customers are using their computers to watch movies, but if you have to work with the darn thing, you'll be better off with more vertical real estate.
There's a reason books have had that format since before Gutenberg.
And then there are applications - browsers, wordprocessing tools, etc. - that add a giant overhead at the top because they need to have stilish buttons or tabs (Firefox for one) so that you are left with a handful of looong lines to read (especially on website that are not adapting to the browser's width).
Bring back the 4:3 laptops!
Wide and ultrawide monitors and laptop displays.
Yeah, I know most of the customers are using their computers to watch movies, but if you have to work with the darn thing, you'll be better off with more vertical real estate.
There's a reason books have had that format since before Gutenberg.
And then there are applications - browsers, wordprocessing tools, etc. - that add a giant overhead at the top because they need to have stilish buttons or tabs (Firefox for one) so that you are left with a handful of looong lines to read (especially on website that are not adapting to the browser's width).
Bring back the 4:3 laptops!
Use half the screen for one app, use the other half for another app. Very handy for development to have the datasheet and code in view at the same time.
Wide and ultrawide monitors and laptop displays.
Use half the screen for one app, use the other half for another app. Very handy for development to have the datasheet and code in view at the same time.
The problem is that a 15 inch widescreen laptop is now equivalent to two 9 inch 4:3 laptops side by side.
And then there are applications - browsers, wordprocessing tools, etc. - that add a giant overhead at the top
Yep. Reminds me of this I posted once before:
"Turn on the TV news and so often there is this stupid banner across the bottom of the screen, actually blocking something that you want to see. Even more stupid, this banner is often raised from the bottom somewhat so it blocks even more of the screen than it's vertical size would dictate."
This kind of thing ->
News agencies, when reporting an event, use the same word or phrase over and over and over again. Several examples, during the 1991 Gulf War our ears got worn off hearing again and again about “columns” of tanks. And 9/11 getting continually referred to at the time as “ground zero.” And now whenever something happens, reporters are not “at the scene”, they are “on the ground.”
"Columns of tanks" is how a lot of tanks in single file have been described ever since there were tanks.
Before that, we had "columns of cavalry", & "columns of infantry."
That said, journalists really do like to overuse terms.
Two that freak me out are :
"In country".
and
"Ahead of" instead of "prior to", or if they really
have to be elephantine, "in the leadup to".
The verb: to Google
Such as: "Google the Battle of Kursk". Rather than: "Search the web for the Battle of Kursk".
(
Yea, it was pages ago, sorry...)
Humans like to re-invent words/meanings. That's just like saying we need to '
Hoover' the carpet. (Brand name).
Or to take a '
Zerox' (copy) of that document. (Brand name, but less used these days).
Well, at least "Zerox" is not a registered trademark of the Xerox corporation. The word "xerography", from the Greek word for dry, is not intellectual property.
Pet peeves? I have many. Here are a few:
Technical documentation. Much of it is poorly written and does not convey a complete and accurate description of the part. This is especially true for complex parts like microcontrollers, and the "remedy" often suggested is to look at the example code or use the vendor libraries. This is nonsense--the documentation itself should be complete and accurate without recourse to other materials like source code. A related peeve is that often these manuals are written by someone for whom English is not their first language. The result is a mess of typos and confusing phrasing. Sometimes these issues even obscure the meaning of the text, or make it incorrect. Many of these companies have offices in the US and should have a native English speaker go over the documents and correct the mistakes. ST is a big offender here--some of their technical documentation reads like it was written by an eight-year-old.
Chip errata. Some vendors don't mind releasing parts with dozens and dozens of nasty errata. A good example was the Microchip PIC32MZ EC. The errata sheet for this part was almost eighty pages long and even fundamental things like the crystal oscillators didn't work. Took Microchip a year to fix some (but not all) of these bugs and release the EF parts. Some vendors never fix certain errata--stepping after stepping of the part gets released with the same errata there year after year.
Vendor websites. Some of these make you jump through hoops to download datasheets and other documentation, sometimes to the point of requiring you to wait for an email from them containing a download link. Others (like Broadcom) won't provide documentation at all, or require NDAs. Oftentimes these sites are so poorly organized as to make it very difficult to find information on their products.
Development Boards. Some vendors like to put too many external peripherals on their boards (accelerometers, SDRAM, LCD displays, microphones, audio codecs, etc) to the point where it's difficult to find a combination of free pins to implement something you need. Some of these vendors don't even bother to break out all of an MCU's port pins on accessible connectors, or, in many cases, only have "Arduino compatible" connectors on the board. Many MCUs have a separate power domain intended to be powered by a battery in case of a power failure, but most vendors don't bother making the Vbat pin accessible to users. ST has the right idea with their STM32 Nucleo boards. These typically only have a few LEDs and a button, but every port pin is broken out to a connector. Another peeve related to dev boards: vendors never seem to provide enough ground and Vcc connection points on their boards.
IDEs. Many of these are based on Eclipse, which in and of itself is okay, but vendors can't resist adding every plug-in and add-on under the sun, and the effect of this crud is to slow everything down to a crawl. Another IDE peeve is the "wizards" often provided to create new projects. There never seems to be an option to create a bare-bones project with nothing except the start-up code--the only options create projects that pull in lots of unwanted crap that needs to be deleted. Do vendors think professional embedded developers always start a new project as a "blinky" app? Hint: we don't.
Some general peeves:
DVDs and Blu-rays that have previews that can't be skipped or fast-forwarded through. People who create these should be boiled in oil.
Drivers who don't indicate when turning or changing lanes. Drivers who use their windshield washers in moving traffic (this usually happens right after I get my car washed). Drivers who throw burning cigarettes out the window.
People who don't use its/it's and your/you're properly in a sentence.
Wide and ultrawide monitors and laptop displays.
Use half the screen for one app, use the other half for another app. Very handy for development to have the datasheet and code in view at the same time.
The problem is that a 15 inch widescreen laptop is now equivalent to two 9 inch 4:3 laptops side by side.
...and at super high resolution everything becomes tiny.
Then you have go into windows to magnify it.
Madness!
4K resolution on small screens (ie smaller than a ping pong table )
Try to explain to a cop that traveling at a 'high rate of speed' is not illegal or measurable with his equipment.
The diode symbol getting bastardized like this:
What other things are there?
I saw your post and wasn't planning to respond but I'm done with this POS set of calipers. They use a single LR44. There is no power switch and they run 24/7. A battery will last maybe 6 months or so. I go to use them and they are dead. Peeves me right off. Ran out of button batteries tonight, so I fit it with some AAs and a couple of Si diodes.
I saw your post and wasn't planning to respond but I'm done with this POS set of calipers. They use a single LR44. There is no power switch and they run 24/7. A battery will last maybe 6 months or so. I go to use them and they are dead. Peeves me right off. Ran out of button batteries tonight, so I fit it with some AAs and a couple of Si diodes.
Sometimes the manufacturers are stupid enough to install the batteries in these before shipping. You take home what you think is a brand new set of calipers from the shop, open up the battery compartment and find it is already heavily corroded from battery leakage.
Any product made of, or featuring, silver-colored or silver-painted plastic. To me, nothing screams cheap and nasty as loud as a silver-colored plastic crap. It makes decent products look like crap and crap products 10 times more crappy (see what I did here?). Any designer who ever thought "let's make this plastic thing silver as it makes it look more premium, metal-like" should have their head examined. Seriously, it should be penalised.
Worse than silver for actual use: black lettering on black background for connectors, etc., on electronic gear.
Any product made of, or featuring, silver-colored or silver-painted plastic. To me, nothing screams cheap and nasty as loud as a silver-colored plastic crap. It makes decent products look like crap and crap products 10 times more crappy (see what I did here?). Any designer who ever thought "let's make this plastic thing silver as it makes it look more premium, metal-like" should have their head examined. Seriously, it should be penalised.
Yeah, chrome inside door handles on Hyundai Accents from a few years back--------the chrome layer started to peel off within a year.
The chrome layer is actually electroplated on plastic using a graphite layer, so is an interesting technique, which I remember seeing on toys when I was a kid--------they peeled off, too!
Hyundai changed to a dull metallic surface on the later Accents.
In the late 1960s, early 1970s, some car manufacturers used a metallic layer inside a transparent plastic external trim.
Over time, UV would make the plastic break down, water would enter & corrode the thin metallic layer, & the trim would look like junk!
I have no idea why anyone in their right mind would waste hard earned money on a "hot water heater"
I saw your post and wasn't planning to respond but I'm done with this POS set of calipers. They use a single LR44. There is no power switch and they run 24/7. A battery will last maybe 6 months or so. I go to use them and they are dead. Peeves me right off. Ran out of button batteries tonight, so I fit it with some AAs and a couple of Si diodes.
I have a set of remote controlled mains switches, whose remote control used to drain its 9V battery in no time when sitting idle on my desktop. It fell down once and the plastic bent enough to keep the battery from making contact unless I squeezed it in my hand before pressing the buttons. It's been years since I replaced the battery.
Enabling the battery only before use should be mandatory in all handheld devices of this kind.
A thin isolated support with both faces metallized should go between one pole of the battery and the battery holder's contact, the terminals should be connected to a switch that gets automatically closed when the remote is held. Works a charm with my remote.
EDIT: I don't know how, but I managed to put in more typos than lines.
Try to explain to a cop that traveling at a 'high rate of speed' is not illegal or measurable with his equipment.
"You were accelerating at a rate of XYZ miles."
Do I have the stones to tell the cop that the derivative of acceleration is jerk?
Try to explain to a cop that traveling at a 'high rate of speed' is not illegal or measurable with his equipment.
"You were accelerating at a rate of XYZ miles."
Do I have the stones to tell the cop that the derivative of acceleration is jerk?
Don't argue with the Cop. Save it for the judge.