Author: Ezra S F


  • It seems fairly common for sports announcers to contradict themselves. One minute, “Team X cannot catch a break,” and the next, “Everything is going their way.” During the first case, they were up by a sizable amount but a few chances in a row went bust. They were never at risk, but eventually, the other…

  • Gille believed that [UGA] Transit could not succeed without its stable of student employees. She said the campus-centered transportation is best fulfilled by students who are on campus nearly every day, not individuals in the community who rarely otherwise come in contact with the University of Georgia campus. It’s easier to acclimate hundreds of students to…

  • Weird addressing

    Email addresses are weird. Web addresses run from broadest to most narrow scope, which makes total sense to me. http is the protocol basically informing the computer how to handle the request. (Back in the 90s, we more commonly also saw ftp and mailto and gopher as protocols in links.) Next is the computer address which ideally would…

  • Ambigous Direction

    I spent far too long stuck because of the direction: “Locate the level that you want to configure.” To me, that implied going to the application or the site. Only the “ISAPI and CGI Restrictions” I wanted was not there. I did all kinds of things thinking that somehow the feature I needed was not…

  • The X

    Dear software designers. An X in the top right corner means to close the window. I get why it does not do anything. You really want me to go on the product tour. Just understand that I am easily distracted, so let me go on the tour later. (Really not at all.)

  • Magical Tech

    For a long while, I have thought Gmail was smart enough to see emails I receive and make a calendar entry. Apparently, the truth is I forgot about creating an IFTTT applet to look for emails with the group subject tag and make a calendar entry for me. It worked so well, that I guess…

  • As a self avowed loner, this research showing personal connections are important to a long life bothers me. I had hoped that Cacioppo’s writing in Loneliness that we each have differing levels of engagement that are necessary would apply. Having a lower threshold might protect against depression, anxiety, and suicide that plague men. Pinker seems to be saying that having…

  • Non-Update

    Nothing frustrates me more than the non-update. I define it as: a communication issued within the promised window of time to express the status of nothing has changed and to establish another window for an update. I am patient and willing to wait for a real update. When I see an email from someone I…

  • What makes you, you? Psychologists like to talk about our traits, or defined characteristics that make us who we are. But Brian Little is more interested in moments when we transcend those traits — sometimes because our culture demands it of us, and sometimes because we demand it of ourselves. Join Little as he dissects…