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In my usual spirit of always wanting to try an alternative way of doing something - partly in hope that the alternative might be better, partly due to my latent hipster gene trying to express itself - I have always been curious about LaTeX. It's a big commitment, though, and until now I had lacked data to drive my decision.

Somebody (shockingly, they are in Germany) has done a scientific comparison of LaTeX vs Word.

So it turns out that a specialised tool is really good at a specialised task, while a jack-of-all-trades tool does better at general tasks. Big whoop.

The interesting question to me would be a breakdown of how many Word users know how to use even fairly basic features. The style sheet functionality seems to be a mystery even to people who really should know better.

People complain a lot about Word being obtrusive, and there is definitely truth to that complaint: try nesting tables, or trying to pad them, or doing two-column layouts that don't flow, and then come back and tell me about Word - but only once you stop swearing and twitching, please. However, many of the complaints that I hear tend to be more about people not knowing about a feature in Word, or not using it properly.

Part of that problem is of course due the design and usability of Word itself, but it's noticeable that all of the alternatives to Word run into the exact same problem of complexity, as soon as they get past the basics. It's often said that 80% of users use only 20% of the features of software - but Word is the perfect example of the fact that everybody has a different 20% subset that is critical to them.

Anyway, while it looks like LaTeX only really shines for mathematical equations, since LaTeX users appear to be happier, I may yet have to give it a go.

Watch this space…

I went to buy some lunch today to eat at my desk, because it's a short week and I'm busy and shut up don't judge me. I got back from my 15' trip to find my MacBook Air fairly propelling itself off the desk with its fan, uncomfortably hot to the touch, and minus 30% of the battery life expectancy that it was showing when I left.

This is why people hate those management agents that corporate IT departments foist on them.

I have this unkillable process (running as root, natch), which creates its own undeletable user account and does Cthulhu only knows what horrible things to the filesystem. Now I don't have a problem with my employer keeping tabs on their machine that is currently assigned to me. Even if you assume all users are honest, someone might make an honest mistake that winds up endangering corporate data. What I do object to is when that process of keeping an eye on things gets intrusive.

This is why I first did the BYOD thing, after all. Unfortunately as Macs went from niche to ubiquitous, the Security Solutions came to the Mac too.

Maybe it's time to go back to doing the VM dance, with the clunky corporate environment sandboxed safely away in a VM that can be shut down when I don't want to deal with its overhead?

Advertising gets meta:

The "Idoru" reference in jwz's title there is sneaky, but what this reminds me of is actually "Virtual Light":

He said he couldn't tell the difference anymore between the 'programs' and the 'commercials,' whatever that meant.

I'm going to go ahead and assume that anyone reading this blog is already familiar with those books.

It's the personal touch that makes the difference.

Our local IT person came round looking for an external optical drive. Seems the new generation of corporate-standard laptops has finally ditched the internal optical drive, but she only has optical media to install the OS. Of course the only optical drive we could find speaks eSATA, and the new laptop doesn't have that either.

(Now of course with USB Type-C arriving there will be three interfaces to worry about…)

I no longer own a machine with an onboard optical drive. When my sister (who also owns no optical drives) asked me to rip the CD that came with a (paper) book to MP3 for her, I had to dig out an old internal drive from the Pile Of Stuff That Might Be Useful Someday, hook it up with a USB-to-ATA bridge, and download a bunch of programmes to rip and encode the data - because of course I didn't have any of that installed either.

This used to be, not a daily activity, but probably a weekly one on average for me - and I didn't even take note of the last time I did it. I will remember this time because it was such a hassle, but otherwise I might have completely forgotten. One day my kids will find my old CDs and ask me what they are, and be amazed at the clunkiness. Meanwhile I still remember how amazing CDs were compared to tape cassettes. Nobody will remember CDs fondly, though, precisely because they weren't clunky.

Imperfections are what sticks in the memory and stirs emotions. People go to a lot of trouble to make iPhone apps that simulate the imperfections of old cheap or disposable cameras - [Lomography](

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lomography "Lomography")

, [vignetting](

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vignetting

"Vignetting"), and so on.

The slick, digital CD will slip into the past and out of our memories as smoothly as it arrived.

Predictably and depressingly, people are making fun of RSAC's new "no booth babes" policy.

Oh, you brave freedom fighters, snarking away in defence of… what, again?

If you can't see the problem with hiring women as eye candy, I can't really help you. Sure, as hackers we all look at policies and processes and think about the failure modes, and the fact that RSAC phrased the ban as clothing guidelines leaves the obvious opening of "wait, are you trying to ban my shorts/utilikilt/mankini? OPPRESSION!!11ELEVENTY!".

This is completely missing the freaking point. I can’t say it better than this:

Also there are people who think “plz wear business casual to our business conference” is a feminist conspiracy against freedom 😒😒😒

— badidea 🪐 (@0xabad1dea) March 26, 2015

As I reported a while ago after my own uncomfortable trade show booth experience, it turns out that hiring booth babes doesn't even work - so you are demeaning women for no reason. And make no mistake, you ARE demeaning women by doing this. Whether it's the traditional booth babe in a skimpy outfit, or the newer variety of miniskirted presenter who only knows a script, you are insulting both the women you hire for this idiotic job, and all the other women who are there as professionals with a job to do.

I suppose I should know better than to expect anything from humanity, and IT people in particular, but still. Grow up.

I finally had the chance to see the new Smart forfour in the metal - and my, it's a bland, ungainly thing.

Lest we forget, the original Smart car, retroactively named the "fortwo", was a design that embraced its tradeoffs and compromises.

Designs that have the courage of their convictions are the ones that stand the test of time. Compare the original Fiat Multipla with the bland face lifted version that replaced it.

Original: definitely challenging, but the designers were trying to do something new and different, and the aspect of the car reflected this. Three-plus-three seating is still unique today, and on top of that, the car still fits in a "traditional car" footprint. No wonder these were instantly popular as taxis - one more seat in a car with almost the same exterior dimensions!

The updated version toned down all the quirks, becoming so instantly forgettable that I'm surprised owners didn't forget they owned a car. I imagine queues of confused Multipla owners back at the Fiat dealership: "I could have sworn I owned a car, but I can't for the life of me remember what it looked like!".

People defend courageous designs; the original Multipla and the first Smart have their partisans, but nobody will stand up for their unworthy descendants. If you're going to do something, do it all the way. By trying to please everybody, you guarantee that you will excite nobody. And once you cede that high ground, it's a race to the bottom on price, and there will always be someone hungrier and more desperate.

Instead, define what you stand for, and stand behind that definition with everything you do. This is how you gain and keep customers, by doing something that you and your customers care about. If your design shows that you don't care, guess what? Your customers won't care either, and next time they'll buy a Hyundai or some other interchangeable "appliance" car.

Sending out this Facebook campaign on the day after Apple announced the Watch is a brave¹ decision, indeed.

Let me know how that works out for you, Huawei.

Part 1

Dear pedestrians, if you have decided that you can't take it any longer and you are going to end your lives by throwing yourselves under a moving vehicle - may I suggest choosing a train, bus, or articulated truck, rather than my bicycle? And if you are not trying to kill yourselves, maybe you should stop crossing the road with your back to traffic and without looking!

At least one person does this every time I ride through town. The problem is that when I'm riding through town I often have my son on the back of the bike, so I can't relieve my feelings through swearing - or not out loud, at least. Also, because my son is on the bike, I am much more aggrieved at attempts to harm the two of us than I would be if I were alone, plus the bike itself is correspondingly less manoeuvrable with the extra weight high over the rear wheel.

Remember: look both ways before crossing the street. Today the worst that happened was that a cyclist got cross with you. Tomorrow, the silent vehicle you didn't hear and didn't check for might be an electric car, and you end up lying in the road all mangled while cyclists ride past, pointing and laughing.

Part 2

Those markings on the side of the road indicate a bicycle lane. The metal uprights are intended to keep cars out of it. Well done on squeezing your car in there regardless, forcing cyclists out into the main road to avoid you. Now you've achieved that, could you at least check your mirrors before pulling a U-turn out of your newly-created parking spot?

I hope the smack I gave your front quarter-panel left a dent. SMIDSY¹, indeed.

Conclusion

I am going to fit air-horns and strobes to my bikes, and start wearing knuckle-dusters and steel-toed boots when I'm riding.