Incredibly Niche Readership
Sep. 16th, 2012 09:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rinueI tried to find a regularly updated "bad charts" blog today, through the simple expedient of Googling "bad charts blog," but no luck. I found a lot of great individual entries calling out any number of publications for doing things like making pie charts that add up to 12% instead of 100%, or adding a bunch of graphics to make data "pretty" but illegible. Alas, no weekly or even monthly bad chart rants. I want the Louis Black of charts, or barring that, the Nate Silver, but it seems there is no such person. I put this blog post out there in the hopes that somebody might think "I would like to start a bad charts blog," would run the same search, and could find this entry, and know they are guaranteed at least a readership of one. This one. Me.
As you can maybe tell, I am feeling adrift in the face of contemporary user interface trends; I just didn't want to search that, because people get religious about Apple and I avoid discussions containing the word "Apple" in the way other people lament political posts on facebook.
But seriously, I am used to precise, deliberate interactions and a high level of control. I'm not saying that has to be the only way. I like messing around in a new program, and I usually find my feet pretty quickly. But when you start hiding commands from me so it looks slick, I get angry. I don't want less buttons. I want clearer buttons, arranged intelligently. I don't like having to find three different places to uncheck "curly quotes" in Microsoft Word before it's actually unchecked. I don't like it when a program "learns me" so that only my most frequently-used commands are displayed. I don't like that I have to be playing a song before I can adjust certain audio drivers, not because I need to listen to the song, but because I can only get to the setting through an invisible menu I get by right clicking on the "song is playing" icon.
I don't like that to change into silent mode on my phone, I can't go through the "phone" menu or the "audio" menu or the "volume" menu; I have to tap the top of my touchscreen (incidentally, I don't like touchscreens; don't like the lag, don't like the imprecision, don't like how easily my ear selects things when the screen is supposed to be locked), in a place where there is no button or icon, which I am supposed to have magically guessed. (It is also not something I found by scanning the user guide that came with the phone. I think I was supposed to go to a website and watch a video?)
Plus work is about to force me to use Internet Explorer for basically no reason. (Reason: they want all the computers to be standard and identical. Counterargument: my computer is already nonstandard in terms of hardware.) Maybe it's great; I haven't used Internet Explorer in ages. I'm pretty sure it's not great, though. I'm pretty sure it's going to be slow and deceptive and popup-ridden and make it unnecessarily harder to do my job. So now I have to decide how much I actually care about this, because although I am totally willing to circumvent chain of command in almost any situation, I don't go against heads of organizations to which I belong. It's rarely worth it unless there is a chance I can replace them, which most of the time (and certainly in this case) I (1) can't (2) don't want to.
This is one of those places where my Machiavellian, Realist, long-game-playing, deferred-gratification assumed persona comes into conflict with my Steve Jobsian (which yes is part of why he is my nemesis), binary, amplified, reactionary emotional life.*
Meanwhile I am ill/queasy/stomachachy and therefore also tired, but I have painted my nails green like in The Big Lebowski (which I didn't realize until after, because it looks different in the tube) and spent the morning (insofar as I consider afternoon to be morning) picking raspberries at the town farm.
* The one that makes me unpleasant to work with if I'm at all tired, unless you are comfortable with hearing "no I hate that" as a response to basically all questions, which is at least clear feedback, right? Except that I actually can be persuaded much of the time. It's dumb. This is just one of those things. Perhaps you never realized I am a master of emotional regulation, in that I have had to master it and it is not remotely instinctive. I don't even have an easy time finding words for what I feel beyond "I hate this" or "I'm fine" at most times. Which is why I normally have to disappear for a while and write about it, and sometimes use a thesaurus. It was very exciting for me to recently come across the word "alexithymia," although also horrifying and it makes me want to hide because possibly I am wrong about it and that is the worst when you self-diagnose and just start throwing things around and muck them up so they don't mean themselves anymore.
As you can maybe tell, I am feeling adrift in the face of contemporary user interface trends; I just didn't want to search that, because people get religious about Apple and I avoid discussions containing the word "Apple" in the way other people lament political posts on facebook.
But seriously, I am used to precise, deliberate interactions and a high level of control. I'm not saying that has to be the only way. I like messing around in a new program, and I usually find my feet pretty quickly. But when you start hiding commands from me so it looks slick, I get angry. I don't want less buttons. I want clearer buttons, arranged intelligently. I don't like having to find three different places to uncheck "curly quotes" in Microsoft Word before it's actually unchecked. I don't like it when a program "learns me" so that only my most frequently-used commands are displayed. I don't like that I have to be playing a song before I can adjust certain audio drivers, not because I need to listen to the song, but because I can only get to the setting through an invisible menu I get by right clicking on the "song is playing" icon.
I don't like that to change into silent mode on my phone, I can't go through the "phone" menu or the "audio" menu or the "volume" menu; I have to tap the top of my touchscreen (incidentally, I don't like touchscreens; don't like the lag, don't like the imprecision, don't like how easily my ear selects things when the screen is supposed to be locked), in a place where there is no button or icon, which I am supposed to have magically guessed. (It is also not something I found by scanning the user guide that came with the phone. I think I was supposed to go to a website and watch a video?)
Plus work is about to force me to use Internet Explorer for basically no reason. (Reason: they want all the computers to be standard and identical. Counterargument: my computer is already nonstandard in terms of hardware.) Maybe it's great; I haven't used Internet Explorer in ages. I'm pretty sure it's not great, though. I'm pretty sure it's going to be slow and deceptive and popup-ridden and make it unnecessarily harder to do my job. So now I have to decide how much I actually care about this, because although I am totally willing to circumvent chain of command in almost any situation, I don't go against heads of organizations to which I belong. It's rarely worth it unless there is a chance I can replace them, which most of the time (and certainly in this case) I (1) can't (2) don't want to.
This is one of those places where my Machiavellian, Realist, long-game-playing, deferred-gratification assumed persona comes into conflict with my Steve Jobsian (which yes is part of why he is my nemesis), binary, amplified, reactionary emotional life.*
Meanwhile I am ill/queasy/stomachachy and therefore also tired, but I have painted my nails green like in The Big Lebowski (which I didn't realize until after, because it looks different in the tube) and spent the morning (insofar as I consider afternoon to be morning) picking raspberries at the town farm.
* The one that makes me unpleasant to work with if I'm at all tired, unless you are comfortable with hearing "no I hate that" as a response to basically all questions, which is at least clear feedback, right? Except that I actually can be persuaded much of the time. It's dumb. This is just one of those things. Perhaps you never realized I am a master of emotional regulation, in that I have had to master it and it is not remotely instinctive. I don't even have an easy time finding words for what I feel beyond "I hate this" or "I'm fine" at most times. Which is why I normally have to disappear for a while and write about it, and sometimes use a thesaurus. It was very exciting for me to recently come across the word "alexithymia," although also horrifying and it makes me want to hide because possibly I am wrong about it and that is the worst when you self-diagnose and just start throwing things around and muck them up so they don't mean themselves anymore.
