Zonk A lizard.

Dustibro The unused parts of a house that collect junk and dust.

Paxst / Paxed Present and correct hours ago and keen to start. eg “Come on! We’ll be late! No you can’t clean the crumbs from the toaster! I’m Paxst.”

Your free daily drip-feed of thought provocation is now available.

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A Cognolog is five small suggestive paragraphs drip-fed one per day. The purpose is to encourage imaginative and critical thinking and also to provide topics for conversation and exploration.
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Basic usability that has stood the test of time

One of the first Delphi programs I wrote way back in 1996 was a general purpose menu that didn’t close when you’d picked an item. Some people would call this a program launcher but because it was always available I used mine for a lot more. Every computer I’ve had since has used this as my main start point.

Looking at the screen shots below you’ll see the basic tree structure … but then it gets a bit fancy. As just described clicking on a heading opens or closes it: Very simple and obvious. Now programs or documents can be dragged from say Windows explorer onto the heading for permanency or run with a double click. Then it gets interesting…

Screenshot

• Coloured shapes are used for immediate recognition. This is used all day every day so they become familiar landmarks – even if they are abstract.
• Special blobs are used for special purposes
  • Keyhole password protected and encrypted tree. Under this heading are my passwords etc.
  • Spark is a URL
  • Hand is a local directory
  • Play button is a timer. I work freelance and charge by the minute so this is essential
  • Bell Alarm Not shown
• Various textures are available to relieve the monotony of looking at the same thing month after month. Just for the sake of it I implemented a transparent window. (In the illustration the parrots are the wallpaper.) Coupled with this is the 3-d effects of different border shading.
• If the menu is 90% overlaid by other windows it appears on the taskbar for convenience of getting it back.

So not only does the Sticky menu have cool features but it is one of those tools that is indispensable once you’ve tried it. So if it is so brilliant, why doesn’t everyone use it? Because most people will put up with an awful user experience because they don’t know any better.

Nowadays when a lot more is done on the web there’s a related issue. I collect bookmarks all the time but find difficulty organising them. I suspect that what a lot of people would like is a home page that can be edited with ‘bookmarks’ on the fly. As it is I have to jump into my editor hack some HTML then test. OK for me but beyond the ordinary person.

1. Ask if you’d like to try it out. It only works on Windows and because it has grown from small beginnings when I was first getting to grips with Delphi it isn’t really designed for general release. On the other hand if you think it might be worth rewriting from scratch in whatever system you like then that sounds like a good idea to me.

It appears that NASA have $4M for prize competitions but not enough competition ideas. Well at least they’ve come clean and said so; inviting ideas for challenges. I’ve fixed that for them here. The challenge starts from wondering along these lines.

What struck me about the submission form was that there was no place to put the description of the challenge. You had to say how it would be measured etc. but no space for the core matter. So they’d given it to somebody to try then… Presumably not. A bit of a poor show when you’re asking for ideas to miss out the “what is your idea” bit.

Here’s a very simple idea: Create a club for people with 14th and 15th century buildings. Typically owners and occupiers are proud of their building, detective work and structural discoveries. When they come across interesting items they enjoy sharing them. If they want advice or some expert knowledge then the club might be able to help by putting people in touch and having a directory of respected experts. Taking good care of a bit of heritage, even if it isn’t listed, is a serious responsibility for which mutual assistance would be welcome. Between them the members of the club would have a lot of experience dealing with practical, legal and financial problems which would be an important resource.

So for usefulness of calling on group experience, and the pleasure of sharing and discussing with similar house owners, this club could be a real benefit.

There are few things so satisfying as hearing how the roads are jammed and the trains are cancelled when you work at home. Oh dear how very sad. Shall I have another coffee before strolling upstairs? The small bedroom still has nursery wallpaper from over 20 years ago but so what – it’s as good as any other. In that 20 years I’ve made my self at home if you like with various experiments to improve that bit of life that others call work.
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As far as I’m aware there is no measure of how difficult a road is to cross.

Of course pedestrians don’t merit any consideration as the motor car must have priority. Now of course all sane people understand very well that roads, far from enabling transport are often a barrier to travel. The more the traffic is sped on its way, the more the volume the worse the conditions for the poor pedestrian.

One way to highlight the needs of pedestrians is to measure this barrier effect. In simple terms the Fox barrier score is a number representing the number of times the road can be crossed in one hour. Suppose on average you have to wait for one minute before being able to get across and it takes 15 seconds then the score would be
1 hour / 1min 15 seconds which is 3600 / 75 = 48. The higher the score the easier it is.
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Some trees grow from the top of their central stem and in a suburban setting simply grow too tall. This invention strangles that growth by being a restrictive collar in acting like a tourniquet put on at roughly the height the tree is to be limited to.
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Problem

Suppose you come to visit my café and leave your umbrella in the elephant’s foot umbrella stand at the door while you partake of some dainty comestibles. When departing your mind is on other things and you forget your umbrella until half an hour later the heavens open!
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