🐍🩶🐢

Ah, so I really did mean the 10 & 2 for figuring out that positioning of the seat/wheel only. I absolutely agree that 10&2 is a terrible position for driving. 9&3 is much better.

I read an article a while back on how to position the wheel, as it is especially a problem for women. Airbags can absolutely kill you and I spent some time readjusting everything to make sure the airbag would not deploy in my face or too close to my chest. Adjusting the seatbelt height thing is also really important, but with breasts the damn thing still drifts to where it shouldn’t. Just not as bad.

Absolutely check with the women in your life about this as a lot of us don’t think about it until we get in an accident and the airbag and seatbelt do more damage than the crash. I am lucky I have only had a minor crash once with no airbag deployed. There are ways to get pedals adjusted by the dealership or swapped with longer ones. I assume mechanics can probably do it too, but I personally do not know how that all works.

I don’t have much experience with manual, but I do have severe ADHD. From my experience, it takes about 6 months of driving every day before your brain does most of it automatically. It is really awful at first having to constantly think about every step. Couple random anecdotes that may help. My assumption is you are driving on the right:

1. Drive barefoot or with minimalist shoes. You can really feel the car and road this way. Flip flops are a no no. All it took was them getting caught in the pedal once to never do it again.
2. Leave lots of space in front of you in high traffic situations. If you are sitting in the far right/exit/slow lane a lot it will help other drivers get around you. If it is a mulilane highway, it may be safer to stay in the middle lane until it is time to exit.
3. Look left first. Oncoming traffic hitting your driver side door is bad.
4. If you ever ever doubt when looking both ways, just look again. People can wait.
5. People get mad or do stupid shit. It is ok. We stop being rational people once “time” enters the equation. At some point, getting mad at other drivers all the time makes you a worse driver. Learn to just let shit go.
6. Try to space yourself where you don’t create blindspots for yourself or others.
7. Position your side mirrors properly. If you can easily see you car door, they are pointing in too far.

Adjust your seat and steering wheel. You want the steering wheel far away from your face. If you have an adjustable steering wheel, this will be a lot easier. There is a little lever you can pull to unlock it.

1. Unlatch the wheel and push it completely away from you.
2. Adjust your seat first so you can reach the pedals and feel in control of run. Test how it feels to push the brake, clutch, etc.
3. Now, adjust the steering wheel. Put your arms straight out. You want your wrists to touch the “10&2” position of the wheel.
4. Keep the steering wheel as low as you can, but still see the instruments, and make sure there is plenty of space between you and the very deadly airbag. You do not want it hitting your face and it needs enough space to deploy to properly protect you
5. Make final adjustments as needed and recheck your mirrors.

Eh? I have definitely gone around topless in NY a couple times and wasn’t bothered over it. To be fair, it was Pride. To be extra fair, it was almost 100 and everybody was dying. I do remember a couple times on the news where they would have to remind the police in NYS that it is legal on a couple roasting summers. I am definitely not the best at keeping the bits well covered in general. Still far better up here than when I used to live in Texas.

It was the SCADA view right? A lot of SCADA software is basically running on top of windows, though you typically would never see the desktop. Ignition at least is cross platform, but that is because the server is Java and Jython. A big part of why things are running on windows is due to OPC, which was traditionally all DOM and .NET. It is basically a standard communications protocol and is what allows your HMI/SCADA to communicate with PLCs. Otherwise, you use proprietary drivers and native PLC specific protocols.

SCADA programming/design is kind of an art and is usually written by an either an overworked engineer or someone who had far too much time on their hands. You basically build screens using specialized software, hook up buttons and UI elements to PLC signals, and pass some signals from the UI to the PLC. They are all heading in the Edge/iot/cloud/web based/techno-babble direction these days…

Ignition, programming software is free!: https://inductiveautomation.com

Some other random ones I have seen or used in the past: https://www.siemens.com/global/en/products/automation/simatic-hmi/wincc-unified.html https://www.aveva.com/en/products/intouch-hmi/ https://www.rockwellautomation.com/en-us/products/software/factorytalk/operationsuite/view.html

Thank you for answering the question! I am genuinely both trying to make a point and still be open to try new things. To me, there seems to be a real downward turn on UI/UX in a lot of applications these days, corporate included. When they mentioned the bit about supporting corporate, I have a hard time believing they will get very far with that customer group right now.

I really wish software, especially FOSS, would stop making the UI the afterthought. I try to keep a holistic view when designing things and everyone has a seat at the table. I wonder if projects are boxing themselves in and making it harder for the UI teams to properly integrate, and vice versa? I will happily take criticism and ideas from pretty much anyone, especially outside my immediate teams.

I am pretty out of the game on that as I spent quite a few years doing controls engineering instead. I am back in Software now and I feel old and a little lost. I graduated back in 2012 and we didn’t have all of these crazy developer roles and more specialized degrees. They were trying to get a Game Design program started when I graduated, and it was supposedly a mess for a few years.

But my question is about the user experience and UI. I can run a docker script, but I care about the thing I can see and interact with.

All I read is Marketing Tech Speak that sounds no different than anything else that gets advertised in my face. At work, we use Teams. It is a pain sometimes when it gets a little buggy, but integrates into SharePoint/OneDrive and the noise suppression in meetings is pretty awesome. At home I use discord or GChat because that is where all my friends are. I don’t assume I have privacy on any of these platforms and they all work on my phone and computer.

How is the user experience? Ultimately, give me privacy, but if the user experience and UI don’t give any improvements over the corporate ones, I will have to try it some other time.

Yes. Even if you get bitched at. Decent people will just ask more questions until they get what they need from you. Better to give more information than none. Try your best.

Actually, sometimes going through every single step on how you ended up with the issue solves it… Done that a few times.

Long tangent, but I got the Edge or whatever stupid expensive version they have for the extra triggers/levers underneath. I have really small/short palms and don’t have the reach to push all the buttons properly. I wouldn’t be able to play Elden Ring at all without them. I roll and use potions with the levers instead. Even then, it is still painful after a while and some of the contortions I have to do at times can be annoying.

I have the issue of barely having enough “wrap” with my palm and pinky to grip around the hand things that are angled down a little too much. I absolutely despise that the dpad is one of those rocker pieces underneath instead of individual buttons. I will accidentally do a direction I didn’t intend because I rocked the down button too far to the right. It is because the controller still isn’t straight when I hold it. lt is partially rotated in my hand so I can get a little more reach upwards and it makes the dpad usable. Having to compensate the direction of joysticks is super fun. I basically have to death grip the controller with my right pinky and tightly squeezed palm to keep it stable.

When that accessible controller came out for the Xbox I was super bummed it wasn’t for all platforms yet. Doesn’t help I would need to have 2 kits to be able to have separate sides like joycons. Joycons have been my favorite controller of all time as I can comfortably hold them. I tried making a proof of concept sort of gel/shredded memory foam cover, which did help, but it didn’t solve the severe pain in my palm, especially the area under my pinky that I use to death grip the controller. After seeing the glove Martina made after she cut off her pinky, I want to try and make a glove next to take the pressure off, improve grip, and sort of brace/support the part of my hand that I keep hurting.

It sucks that accessories keep getting more expensive. I haven’t had any issues my my edge, but you bet I would be utterly infuriated if it didn’t last when it is almost half the price of the console itself. I have some mechanical keyboards and those things can really get up there in price too. Ergonomic mice are not exactly cheap either. I hate having to use a trackball but so far the only comfortable one is that Logitech one and I have to use the extra angled base it comes with. I game with it.

That blows. I never had a ps4, so I don’t know the whole deal about modding/rooting it. It is crazy that some of these devices have “fuses” that can brick your device if tampered with. It is my device dammit.

https://www.plctalk.net

The stack overflow of PLC programming.

The arrogance of Kent is ridiculous and he sounds like a man-child throwing a neck beard flavored tantrum whenever someone questions the bullshit reality that doesn’t actually exist. This isn’t some dumb application you can run into the ground because you can’t play well with others. This is the fucking linux kernel, and if you can’t fathom how bad it is to throw random “fixes” at the last minute instead of waiting for the next development cycle, you are the problem. I see that shit all the damn time in corporate environments and I am sick of arrogant programmers who can’t understand processes, why they exist, and why they need to be followed.

Once I got the right configuration on Obsidian, I like it. I had already embraced markdown beforehand, so “fixing” it to work properly was an immediate requirement or I wasn’t using it. It only took 2-3 plugins and a small custom css file. I don’t need an editor hiding the markdown syntax or anything other than a mono spaced font.

I get that paper thing. I just lose it eventually. Go go ADHD.

Since I refuse to have Teams and Outlook start on boot, I may have accidentally forgotten to open my email for 6 weeks… Most people just send me a message on Teams anyways.

Also, spam from HR. I am sorry, but your bullshit emails on senseless activities is not being read and immediately binned. The amount of spam emails I get from people in the company is astounding. At my old job I may have taken great joy in reporting each one of them as spam out of spite.

Yeah, I have Russia and a few other countries blocked on my network. That is a no-go for me personally.

No idea about which specific type of business it is, but keeping that history long term can have some benefits, especially to outside people. Some government agencies require companies to keep records for a certain number of years. It could also help out in legal investigations many years in the future and show any auditors you keep good records. From a historical perspective, it can be matched to census, birth, and death certificates. A lot of generational history gets lost.

Companies also just hoard data. Never know what will be useful later. shrug

Well, since you may be forced to use it, here are some utilities to make it better: Rectangle Pro - 200% necessary. $10. Worth every penny. Cleanshot X Homebrew AltTab iTerm2 Oh My Zsh Karabiner Elements may be useful if you need macros/key bindings.

Also, this is cross platform, but giving a shout-out to Obsidian. With a couple plugins, it is a fantastic notes app that is markdown based.

There are plenty of things that are irritating in OSX, but there is a lot I like after using it for a while. Most of the irritations are gone with the above utilities. Unlike Windows, I didn’t have to spend a whole bunch of time debloating the OS and advertisements are not shoved in my face. I probably turned it off, but I don’t have a damn digital assistant shoved in my face either. Both Linux and OSX (which is Unix) have very clean interfaces. As someone with severe ADHD, an overly distracting UI will stress me out. A lot.

I do have some rather strong feelings about what they are doing with permissions in the Sequoia beta, but I also get what they are trying to achieve. iOS though is torture. I will say that for my iPad that it has improved a lot in 18, but I have 0 desire to ever have an iPhone. iPad is still ultimately hindered by the OS. The iPad Pro has an absurd amount of power, but the restrictions in iPad OS hobble what it is truly capable of.

If it helps, you can at least use any USBC charger you want now. I love my M1 air, but have some similar ranty feelings about the older models from 10-15 years ago. I hope you at least give it a chance. I don’t think I could ever go back to Windows. It is Mac or Linux for me.

Took me a minute to find it, but thanks. However, I still can’t seem to change the text size and I feel like it isn’t very accessible. I couldn’t get the text size buttons to work on the webpage either. At least I could zoom in and scroll everywhere. I am using Vivaldi.

It is utter cancer on my phone and I can’t read the white on yellow.