Author: Lloyd Morgan
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The Two Words for Tea: “Tea if by sea, cha if by land”
The World Atlas of Language Structures (WALS) chapter on Tea tells us that the word you use for ‘tea’ is highly influenced by ancient trade routes. Specifically, whether your country first got tea via the Silk Road (by land, originating from inland China) or from sea imports (by sea, originating from Dutch ports in the…
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Subway Maps of Roman Roads
Sasha Trubetskoy is a “geography and data nerd” who makes data visualisations and maps. His Roman Roads project styles the Ancient Roman road network as modern transit maps. That’s the full Empire, as of ca. 125 AD. Trubetskoy also made similar maps for Britain, Italy, Gaul and Iberia. I recommend clicking through and reading about…
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The Three Important Response Time Limits
There are three important response time limits in user interface design, and this has remained constant since 1968, says usability guru Jakob Nielsen. Those three time limits? Chess, anyone? It’s worth also looking at Nielsen’s Powers of 10, detailing further time scales of user interaction. My summary:
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“If you like to play [computer game], then try [book]”
If you like to play [computer game], then try [book]. That’s the simple premise of a post from the imitable Powell’s Books, back in 2018. In Console-free camping, for a bunch of popular computer games, they recommend a book you might like. The list, for posterity (non-commission, non-tracking links to Powell’s):
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Intentional Delays in Apple Chess (so you don’t feel so bad)
The source code for Apple Chess reveals the intentional inclusion of a time delay in the computer making its moves. As a comment in the source explains: Taking a rudimentary look at the code, it looks like kInteractiveDelay is for computer-human game modes (so an intentional delay to make us feel better), while kAutomaticDelay is…
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Paper Aeroplanes for Young and Old
Being a father to two six-year-olds means that I spend a not-insignificant amount of time folding and colouring paper. Paper aeroplanes are an infrequent but not unusual sight in the house. For those times, Fold ‘N Fly is my go-to website, offering “a database of paper airplanes with easy to follow folding instructions, video tutorials…
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Perceptions of Probability and Numbers
Back in 2011 I wrote about “words of estimative probability“; the quantitative ranges we apply to ambiguous words and phrases, based on Sherman Kent’s research for the CIA in the 1960s. In 2015, Reddit user zonination duplicated the study using /r/samplesize. His resulting post in /r/dataisbeautiful made the longlist for the 2015 Kantar Information is…
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The (Edited) Latecomer’s Guide to Crypto
On March 20, 2022, the New York Times published a 14,000-word puff piece on cryptocurrencies, both online and as an entire section of the Sunday print edition. Though its author, Kevin Roose, wrote that it aimed to be a “sober, dispassionate explanation of what crypto actually is“, it was a thinly-veiled advertisement for cryptocurrency that…
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Cooking for Engineers, Geeks, and the Impatient
The vast majority of new and original cooking content feels like it comes from YouTube, with few original developments happening on independent sites (although I’ll happily be corrected here, as Wadsworth Constant certainly applies to the vast majority of cooking videos, too). Meanwhile, the long-running joke of a rambling, sombre life story complementing a simple…
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Side-by-Side Car Comparisons
Car Sized is a simple web app that lets you compare car dimensions and designs from a street perspective. Front, back and side by side. As a frequent car renter, this site’s been incredibly useful for my last few holidays. It’s also just fun to do some comparisons, like this Ford F-150 against my last…