Calm Technology - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29115653 - Nov 2021 (68 comments)
Calm Technology - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21799736 - Dec 2019 (155 comments)
Principles of Calm Technology - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12389344 - Aug 2016 (66 comments)
Calm Technology - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9107526 - Feb 2015 (1 comment)
Calm Tech, Then and Now - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8475764 - Oct 2014 (1 comment)
Designing Calm Technology (1995) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7976258 - July 2014 (2 comments)
I don't even want to put IO into the device at all. Not only because it increases cost and size, but because I don't what the user having to interact. We have to find better ways to fit the device in your life, so you don't even think about it.
For example, I helped someone transfer their stuff from their old iPhone to their new one a few years ago. The way you're supposed to do it is touch your old iPhone to the new one and it'll just work. Needless to say, it didn't. I think it was about an hour of rebooting the old and new ones before it finally caught. Since there weren't any logs or settings to change or any way at all to influence the process it was more frustrating than magic.
Now, it's possible your product really is as simple as turning it on and it'll just work, in the same way a lamp is "turn on and it works", but if there's any configuration at all that the device does, please expose it to the users. Human brains are incredible at finding patterns, generally better than computers, and if there's a mismatch between the human's model of how something works and the device's model, it's best to allow the human to change the device's model
An app to my brain screams "depends on your phone and will be outdated at some point; requires picking and unlocking your phone to use it; will have updates that change/ruin it at some point".
I just want to feel a button and press it, especially for things supposed to be used in the dark while sleeping.
People's subjective experience may vary, but relying on an app objectively entails more complexity and risk exposure for the user than exposing on-device configuration.
It's quite possible that many people who say they prefer using apps do indeed experience a higher level of frustration over the full span of their usage, and are only expressing their immediate-term evaluation at the outset of usage.
There are functions managed in the app but we aim for those to be rarely interacted with. All the interactions that you have with the device should be as simple as your wireless earbuds, maybe even easier.
There is a ton of snake oil in the industry, and I see so many people building similar products, that take the language of the research papers, and apply it to absolute nonsense.
There is over a decade of research in slow-wave enhancement, Philips funds a lot of research in this space, and even had a slow-wave enhancement device out in 2018/2019.
I'm not sure if what you are asking is "are we snake oil", or "do I get people asking". But in general, I hear so many people talk about grounding mats (no scientific evidence), EMF, neuromodulation to put you to sleep instantly, and so much other garbage, that I wish people would question things more.
I wish people knew how to read a basic research paper and decide if it even says what the company is claiming. I'm amazed that a company can put up a page that says "science", with a picture of a person in a lab coat, and people go "ok, must be true".
We're on a long view of this, and while VCs are dumping tens of millions into snake oil "neuromodulation" companies, we're taking a slower approach and playing the long-term game.
I'm keen to hear your thoughts.
I strongly believe that the class of widget I'm building should stay firmly out of the user's way. The point is to forget it's there. So, as simple IO as possible.
We've had very few issues with BLE, but it is one of the things I'm most worried about as it absolutely kills the experience.
1. tES, transcranial electric stimulation, used by the Somnee sleep band.
2. acoustic stimulation (sound waves), used by the Elemind sleep band, which uses EEG sensors to determine the exact sound waves to apply.
I admit I was quite skeptical, but a brief look showed that both bands have a decent amount of clinical data backing them up, although funded by the companies (unsurprising at this point, but would be good to get some independent studies on their efficacy).
Curious if anyone has tried any of these bands and what they thought.
If you look at the research behind elemind, it is clear they designed a study to show a positive result. Somnee, less so, but it is only a single paper.
It's interesting to me you used "sound waves" to describe acoustic stimulation, which is exactly NOT what we are doing, or how auditory stimulation work (in our case).
A "slow wave" aka delta waves is the measure of the synchronous firing of neurons which is the hallmark of deep sleep and the foundation of health. It is the activity of the brain pumping the glymphatic system, which is clearing metabolic waste, and is linked to immune function, hormone response, parasympathetic response, and more.
Our EEG headband is detecting these slow-waves (the firing of neurons), and when we detect this brain activity, at a precise point in this synchronous firing, we interrupt the brain, with a brief pulse of sound. In response to this interruption, the brain goes "hey, this is vital to my health, don't mess with me right now", and increases the synchronous firing of neurons, both in that slow wave, as well as following up with another slow-wave after, sometimes 2, even 3, rarely 4 (but it is person dependent).
A slow-wave only lasts for 0.8-1.2 seconds, so this timing is very precise, and we can see the change in brain activity immediately. We stimulate in a 5 on/ 5 off protocol, so we can see the change in brain activity within seconds. We are not comparing different nights, as we know sleep is different across nights. The response is very consistent.
If you read the research from elemind and somnee, they sound very similar, with a huge red flag. They both say "we stimulate near the peak of an alpha wave, and then you fall asleep". There is no measure of a change in the brain activity. Just alpha wave, stimulation, sleep.
I can go on and on about all the red flags, but you can read about elemind here - https://neurotechnology.substack.com/p/avoiding-neurotechs-t...
I found the Somnee headband unbearably uncomfortable, and it didn't do anything for me.
You mention acoustic stimulation as "sound waves" and that's where I wanted to clarify the whole "listen to a 120hz sound and it will improve XYZ".
As far as I am aware, all of this sound waves stuff and interacting with brain waves at certain frequencies is nonsense. A brain wave is a human construct for how we visualize the electrical activity of the brain, just like an EKG is a visualization of electrical activity of the heart.
You'd never say "we're interacting with your heart wave at this frequency", right?
I have many bug-bears with the industry as a whole, and it is a bit terrifying to me that I'm working in this space surrounded by so much nonsense.
We don't fund studies. The scientific principles of what we are doing has been known for about 10 years now. But it is difficult to do, and Philips have a TON of patents around this space - they fund a lot of the research.
However, we support researchers who are already looking into this space because we have the best technology (well, waiting to be proven but we have advanced beyond the protocols of Philips and Dreem).
I hope that helps understand where we're at, and maybe how we differ. I'm happy to answer any more questions.
There are a bunch of research papers on our website, as well as some very basic descriptions of how it works. https://affectablesleep.com
We haven't had too many issues with BLE, but I think the UI of the mobile app needs to clearly communicate the connection state, and not just "connected/disconnected" but more of "last connection, the device will ping in x seconds" so the person knows the device will be looking for the phone.
We have a few tricks up our sleeve, as we're like Santa (we know when you are sleeping, we know when you're awake), and seeing as the headband is only used for sleeping, we can have an open connection when you are awake, and then go into low power mode when we detect you've closed your eyes, and then we can ping on a more reasonable schedule.
GDPR, however, also covers other things like your storing user's data, but that is separate from cookies. Cookies are stored on user's device.
Cookies not requiring consent :
- "technical" cookies: for session, saving some user preferences (consenting to cookies or not, language etc.)
- cookies used for load balancing or to protect against fraud
- cookies used to save a cart or used to invoice some service
- usage statistics cookies IF the data is anonymous
Is my understanding of that situation wrong?
Edit Reference:
> If not sold within a year, the law would make it illegal for web-hosting services to support TikTok, and it would force Google and Apple to remove TikTok from app stores — rendering the app unusable with time.
https://www.npr.org/2024/04/24/1246663779/biden-ban-tiktok-u...
It isnt, why should I care?
My take: if a law and it's enforcement almost universally lead to a worse outcome, the burden is on the lawmakers and enforcers to do better. You can yell about the websites all you want but being mad at most of the internet at once is a losing game.
If they didn't have ads that track me, then they would have no need to ask my permission to use cookies that track me.
There is no requirement so seek permission for other cookies needed to run the website. Quite why some readers of a technical news site (!) are still confused about this is bizzare.
In short, blame the scummy adtech industry. Not the legislation that gives us our privacy.
It's full of easily digestible insights on attention and context, with excellent examples and clear explanations. It’s almost philosophical in its apparent simplicity.
+ kindle from 2010 - laptop - phone - Ipad (but it's still much calmer than my computer or my phone) + Harmonica (musical instrument) o Amplifier (I use it with my harmonica through a mic) - Linnstrument (musical instrument that requires computer or ipad connection) + Pencil and paper + Paper books o Handwritten notes on Ipad - Notes in obsidian o Nintendo Switch + Paper dictionary (for language learning) - Dictionary + Claude AI on my phone
What I think is also important though are tools which can embrace this and work with existing technology. The modern smartphone is simultaneously a great tool and an enormous distraction. There exist no device which offers the tools I genuinely need without all of the distractions.
On one hand, we're both distractible people, and it'd probably be better if we could leave our phones behind on certain family outings and trips.
But on the other hand, there's definitely times where you really need your phone on said outings: for directions, for business info, to call people, to book things, etc. It's just hard to get the necessities without bringing along everything else.
https://www.calmtech.institute/calm-tech-certification
https://www.calmtech.institute/blog/tags/calm-tech-certified
The daylight computer looked interesting too; but its website undermines the message it seems to give. I wanted a price and to order and could do neither, but there were long paragraphs about how revolutionary it was, with left to right and up-to-down transitions.
- AirThing View Plus: "This is placeholder text. To change this content, double-click on the element and click Change Content." Supposedly this has seven sensors, but only displays two values. How does that work? The values are displayed as numbers, too. A bar chart with green, yellow, and red sections would "calmer"
- Daylight Computer - Placeholder text again. No specs. What does it actually do? Writing only? Web browsing? Dark grey on off-white text, which looks like low-end E-Ink.
- Time Timer - looks fine, although everybody else's timers count down counterclockwise. How much does it cost? If it's $10, great If it's $100, come on.
- Unplug - if you need that, you have other problems.
This is disappointing. It's like the junk that used to be advertised in the magazines that were provided in airline seat backs. These are all non-problems or easy hits. They need something more useful, such as a more usable TV remote or home control unit or car infotainment system. Those all run from bad to worse.
I've run into "simple interface" people a few times. One was a guy who was plugging his book about how clever their design for a seat-back entertainment system was. He had a model of four typical users and how they'd use it to pick from a rather short list of alternatives. I'd already read the book. I said, why not just have a channel selector knob? Then it comes out that the thing had a payment interface for pay per view. That wasn't mentioned when they were explaining how simple it was.
A few years ago, there was someone who wanted to build a GUI for some common Linux tool to promote their design shop. I suggested tackling Git, which really needs a GUI. That was too hard.
This goes way back. In the 1930s, there was a thing for radios with One Knob. Here's a 1950s TV ad for that.[1] There was a long period during which radios and TVs had a large number of knobs to be adjusted to get decent results. That was finally overcome.
My favorite simple interface is General Railway Signal's NX system.[1] This is the first "intelligent user interface", from 1936. What makes it "intelligent" is that, when a train is entering the interlocking, the dispatcher selects the incoming track, and then all the possible exit points light up. They pick the desired exit and push its button. The system then sets up the route, setting the signals and switches. Conflicts with other routes are detected, so this is safe. If there are alternate routes, NX can route around other trains. The previous technology was that the dispatcher had to figure out which switches and signals to set themselves. There was interlocking to prevent hazardous setups, but the lever machines couldn't plan a route.
This kind of UX design is really important and usually botched.
As I'm not sure if you're arguing for or against... I am generally pro digital for radios and TVs, and automatic seek is nice - but I've had it in (analog) car radios that the .05 or whatever resolution wasn't good enough, so a good old potentiometer knob helps.
But ever since I'm not sure if the best UX design exists. People have different problems to solve, and apparently "my favourite radio station has a weak signal" is one of them. Never had this problem with TVs auto-scanning for stations.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuned_radio_frequency_receiver
When I want to put on headphones to do chores around the house I pick up my 2006-era iPod. No wireless pairing to screw with, no distracting notifications, just a library of music I've already listened to a hundred times so I can just think, which of these albums am I in the mood for, and choose. The interface is simple to navigate because there's just not much to navigate, and IMO that goes a long way to have a predictable experience that never introduces frustration.
The problem comes when they are both a tool and an entertainment device, as they are inseparably linked together.
Meanwhile Apple has had to wipe away their tears at such harsh treatment with their gigantic piles of cash.
To this day I don’t understand why we have half a dozen automakers creating sleek vehicles that take care of things automagically but in computers it’s just Apple. Where’s the Audi and Lexus of computers?
I appreciate this but it doesn't seem like it belongs in a certification about calmness per se. Even annoying tech should be clear about the extent to which parts are replaceable.
In my mind, repairability, "calmness," accessibility - it's all separate.
I remained skeptical for a long time. Then I got one. I absolutely love it. In particular, the ability to have multiple notebooks with me and cross-linking via tags. And "infinite pages" lets you insert space in the middle of a page or continue moving down without having to worry about physical page sizes. I can also screen-share the tablet with the desktop app to draw diagrams on zoom calls.
Admittedly, it is only incremental over a spiral notebook and a bic pen. But they do that incremental thing pretty well, particularly because of their focus on the "calm tech" aspects and lack of mainstream ecosystem to track upstream.
Obligatory mention that the Luddites weren't against technology in general, they were against technology that was causing them to lose their livelihoods (while the country was already in the midst of an employment crisis and economic downturn due to a trade war (and real war) with Napoleon's Europe).
Links in text are called references. These can be internal within a document or codex, or external, referencing third-party works. Either case is far less subject to linkrot than URLs have turned out to be.
One of the killer concepts of a bullet journal is the use of indices and spreads to provide an interlinked and searchable reference. If you go back in time, there are numerous journal and commonplace book organisational schemes.
Pages can be easily rearranged using a removeable binding (three-ring binder or various other options), or by using an unbound format such as index cards (the original database solution).
Data can be entered into a computer through scanning and handwriting recognition, though this is admittedly slow, cumbersome, and inexact. On the other hand, you may want friction between your paper-based and electronic data systems.
I do not mean URLs, though, I mean locally linking from one page or notebook to another. It's internal references on steroids, and is much more useful to me than my collection of paper notebooks and references were
I'm a BuJo afficionado too! I'm still adapting it to my e-ink note-taking system, starting to get there via folders and notebooks instead of one big notebook, and its exactly why internal linking is so useful!
That way the BuJo reads as: index, calendrical pages, spreads/references (at the end).
The advantages are non-electronic storage with ready reference. You can only access the current year's BuJo generally (unless you're where your archive is kept), but current references should be readily available on you (e.g., addresses, current information, calendar, etc.). You can only lose the current journal should you misplace it, and the information won't leak out readily as it can from digital storage.
For an index-card system, look up Zettelkasten if you haven't already. Very robust and useful indexing systems have been at the heart of academic and commercial research for over two centuries now, and the systems developed are quite powerful. Digital systems are more powerful still, but have their own downsides: loss or corruption, data exfiltration, and devices which may not be convenient to use in all circumstances.
With a BuJo or Zettelkasten, information capture is possible by carrying a few index cards with you and jotting notes. You have capture, can file these into your journal (or an indexing system, or a loose-leaf binding), and don't risk losing the rest of your archive in the process. The lack of digital distractions is its own powerful benefit.
okay. so don't do those things.
for me, that's what "calm tech" is all about - it's not just notifications and distractions, it's all the desire for more features, and for software to solve all problems. sometimes we can just not have features, and keep some problems, instead of trading our problems for the problems that more features bring.
This to me is calm tech, because that’s all it does: note taking. If your definition is such that only pen and paper meets it, that’s not a very useful definition for tech IMO
But also Android makes it something I’m not very interested in. The Fujitsu device is also running Android.
I'm glad I'm not the only one who experienced that! Such a fascinating experience, though really quite upsetting at the time. Doesn't happen now with my PIN-locked e-ink device.
I see reMarkable says[1] you can use it without a subscription, but I'm not confident they won't pull the rug under my feet.
[1] https://support.remarkable.com/s/article/Using-reMarkable-wi...
That being said, my girlfriend loves her Supernote too, so there's plenty of alternatives.
I'm a sucker for high-quality materials and thoughtful aesthetics. Metal / glass over tacky plastic.
Being an "excellent offline device" also matches one of my core requirements.
The keyboard folio was also better for the RMPP since I often experienced loose contact with the one on the BTUCP when I used it on my lap (flat surfaces were good once I set it up). Otoh, the material used in the BTUCP was much better since the RMPP one uses a polyster weave which often leaves me with slight goosebumps. Additionally, the keyboard folio isn't a feature I use often.
I really can't talk about the others so for all I know, Scribe or supernote might be a lot better. RMPP does have a 90 days no questions asked return policy if you want to try it out (though I'm not sure how much that's worth).
Thanks for mentioning these other devices. I used to have a Kindle Paperwhite (I see it is different than Scribe), butI lost it. I'll explore the other options.
Has no Blue LEDs: Pass
Has a Blue LED: Fail
Edit: Honorable mention for text boxes that silently eat newlines.
Having to use duct tape to prevent an appliance from lighting up my entire room at night is egregious.
Black nail polish is more elegant! I've said it before and I'll spread the word for as long as I live!
The blue ones are just so much brighter, and many of them seem to have a flicker, too.
https://www.thelightphone.com/blog/light-iii-design-manifest...
e: There's adb command to change the refresh rate: `adb shell settings put system min_refresh_rate 10.0`. Unfortunately my phone seems to have locked possible refresh rates to 60/90/120, any other values don't do anything. If someone wants to try this, there should be "Show refresh rate" setting under developer options which helps to detect if the adb command was successful or not.
The criteria seem to be "attention, periphery, durability, light, sound, and materials". Very broad. It looks like it even addresses openness and repairability with "an instruction booklet with a list of replacements and compatible parts", something I really care about, but how does it relate to calm?
Maybe it will be clearer when the certification document is out.
You are going to find the attention grabbers really fast of course, that's the idea, but if you are like me, the list is relatively short. Smartphone, PC, and that's about it, you may have a TV and a couple of device with annoyingly bright blue LEDs, but now the things that aren't: toaster, coffee machine, kettle, washing machine, dryer, fridge, various tools, hairdryer, etc... These things are not so different from how they were 40 years ago in terms of attention grabbing. In fact, many have improved by being less noisy. Oh, and I don't have that bright red alarm clock radio anymore.
We have barely begun to address the sharp edges of social media, mobiles and more. We will get there, a calm UI and backgrounded tech (hint AI won’t do it magically we need to intentionally give up selling ads every second) but democracy helps.
if you have a system where you can dynamically dial resources up and down to find an optimal output, that's a high value system. I think understanding this balance is how aesthetic properties translate into value.
Now 99% of my window is the text I'm editing (two lines reserved for modeline and minibuffer). Nothing pops up or makes its presence known until the moment I need it. Tabs are a good example. I often have close to a hundred files "open" in Emacs but I don't need to know about them until the moment I'm ready to switch to one.
I was 10 years ahead of VS Code taking off but when I look at that I still see a bunch of useless distractions taking up valuable screen space.
RMS -vs- Doctor, on the evils of Natalism:
http://www.art.net/studios/hackers/hopkins/Don/text/rms-vs-d...
I do a thing, and there's the popup "hey, you did a thing!" Stop it...
Nope. That’s not at all what the problem is. The problem is that when you implement features that respect the users attention an engagement metric dips slightly. And a shot caller notices. They roll the feature back. Because at the end of the day your calm means fuck all to the pursuit of endless growth.
Sure it’s nice to push bunch of nice UI patterns but I imagine most of the “certified” products weren’t going to be attention hogs anyways. A positive outcome from something like this would be if governments started requiring these kind of certifications like they do for accessibility.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Weiser
https://donhopkins.medium.com/an-empirical-comparison-of-pie...
The Computer for the 21st Century:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CkHALBOqn7s
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28351064
DonHopkins on Aug 29, 2021 | parent | context | favorite | on: Computers should expose their internal workings as...
Natalie Jeremijenko: LiveWire, Dangling String; Mark Weiser: Calm Technology, Ubiquitous Computing
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calm_technology
>Calm Technology
>History
>The phrase "calm technology" was first published in the article "Designing Calm Technology", written by Mark Weiser and John Seely Brown in 1995.[1] The concept had developed amongst researchers at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center in addition to the concept of ubiquitous computing.[3]
>Weiser introduced the concept of calm technology by using the example of LiveWire or "Dangling String". It is an eight-foot (2.4 m) string connected to the mounted small electric motor in the ceiling. The motor is connected to a nearby Ethernet cable. When a bit of information flows through that Ethernet cable, it causes a twitch of the motor. The more the information flows, the motor runs faster, thus creating the string to dangle or whirl depending on how much network traffic is. It has aesthetic appeal; it provides a visualization of network traffic but without being obtrusive.[4]
[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20190508225438/https://www.karls...
[3] https://web.archive.org/web/20131214054651/http://ieeexplore...
PDF: http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~./jasonh/courses/ubicomp-sp2007/paper...
[4] https://web.archive.org/web/20110706212255/https://uwspace.u...
PDF: https://web.archive.org/web/20170810073340/https://uwspace.u...
>According to Weiser, LiveWire is primarily an aesthetic object, a work of art, which secondarily allows the user to know network traffic, while expending minimal effort. It assists the user by augmenting an office with information about network traffic. Essentially, it moves traffic information from a computer screen to the ‘real world’, where the user can acquire information from it without looking directly at it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natalie_Jeremijenko#Live_Wire_...
>Natalie Jeremijenko
>Live Wire (Dangling String), 1995
>In 1995,[9] as an artist-in-residence at Xerox PARC in Palo Alto, California under the guidance of Mark Weiser, she created an art installation made up of LED cables that lit up relative to the amount of internet traffic. The work is now seen as one of the first examples of ambient or "calm" technology.[10][11]
[9] https://web.archive.org/web/20110526023949/http://mediaartis...
[10] https://web.archive.org/web/20100701035651/http://iu.berkele...
>Weiser comments on Dangling String: "Created by artist Natalie Jeremijenko, the "Dangling String" is an 8 foot piece of plastic spaghetti that hangs from a small electric motor mounted in the ceiling. The motor is electrically connected to a nearby Ethernet cable, so that each bit of information that goes past causes a tiny twitch of the motor. A very busy network causes a madly whirling string with a characteristic noise; a quiet network causes only a small twitch every few seconds. Placed in an unused corner of a hallway, the long string is visible and audible from many offices without being obtrusive."
[11] https://web.archive.org/web/20120313074738/http://ipv6.com/a...
>Mark Weiser suggested the idea of enormous number of ubiquitous computers embedding into everything in our everyday life so that we use them anytime, anywhere without the knowledge of them. Today, ubiquitous computing is still at an early phase as it requires revolutionary software and hardware technologies.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17353666
DonHopkins on June 20, 2018 | parent | context | favorite | on: Philip K. Dick: A Visionary Among the Charlatans (...
Mark Weiser once told me that Ubik was one of his inspirations for Ubiquitous Computing.
https://web.archive.org/web/20060220211305/http://www.ubiq.c...
>Ubiquitous computing names the third wave in computing, just now beginning. First were mainframes, each shared by lots of people. Now we are in the personal computing era, person and machine staring uneasily at each other across the desktop. Next comes ubiquitous computing, or the age of calm technology, when technology recedes into the background of our lives. Alan Kay of Apple calls this "Third Paradigm" computing.
https://blog.canary.is/from-tesla-to-touchscreens-the-journe...
>One year earlier, in 1998, Mark Weiser described it a little differently, stating that, “Ubiquitous computing is roughly the opposite of virtual reality. Where virtual reality puts people inside a computer-generated world,” Weiser asserted,“ubiquitous computing forces the computer to live out here in the world with people.” This wasn’t the first time someone broached the idea of IoT. In the early 1980s, students at Carnegie Mellon’s Computer Science department created the first IoT Coke machine. Author Philip K. Dick wrote about the smart home in the 1969 sci-fi novel Ubik, and four decades before, inventor and engineer Nikola Tesla addressed the concept in Colliers Magazine. In an amazingly prescient 1926 interview, Tesla said,
>"When wireless is perfectly applied the whole earth will be converted into a huge brain…We shall be able to communicate with one another instantly, irrespective of distance…and the instruments through which we shall be able to do this will be amazingly simple compared with our present telephone. A man will be able to carry one in his vest pocket."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubik
“Five cents, please,” his front door said when he tried to open it. One thing, anyhow, hadn’t changed. The toll door had an innate stubbornness to it; probably it would hold out after everything else. After everything except it had long since reverted, perhaps in the whole city … if not the whole world.
He paid the door a nickel, hurried down the hall to the moving ramp which he had used only minutes ago.
[…]
“I don’t have any more nickels,” G. G. said. “I can’t get out.”
Glancing at Joe, then at G. G., Pat said, “Have one of mine.” She tossed G. G. a coin, which he caught, an expression of bewilderment on his face. The bewilderment then, by degrees, changed to aggrieved sullenness.
“You sure shot me down,” he said as he deposited the nickel in the door’s slot. “Both of you,” he muttered as the door closed after him. “I discovered her. This is really a cutthroat business, when —“ His voice faded out as the door clamped shut. There was, then, silence.
[…]
“I’ll go get my test equipment from the car,” Joe said, starting towards the door.
“Five cents, please,”
“Pay the door,” Hoe said to G. G. Ashwood.
[...]
“Can I borrow a couple of poscreds from you?” Joe said. “So I can eat breakfast?”
“Mr. Hammond warned me that you would try to borrow money from me. He informed me that he already provided you with sufficient funds to pay for your hotel room, plus a round of drinks, as well as —“
“Al based his estimate on the assumption that I would rent a more modest room than this."
David Rosenthal (one of the makers of NeWS) is married to Mark's widow Vicky, and he just emailed me that while cleaning out his office he ran across a couple of old VHS tapes labeled "Don's NeWS demos" that he's going to digitize for me! I hope they include a recording of Mark's SunView SDI game for which he implemented pie menus while snowed in at home with a Sun workstation during the January 22 1987 Blizzard of Discontent.
From: mark@markssun.cs.umd.edu (Mark Weiser)
Subject: pies in sunview
Date: January 24, 1987 at 02:12:37 GMT+1
To: don@mimsy.umd.edu
I used the snow to hack pies into sunview. It works now without walking menus.
Will have walking over th weekend.
-mark
https://donhopkins.com/home/archive/c/mark-weiser/sdi/
https://donhopkins.com/home/archive/c/mark-weiser/sdi/piemen...
I'd love to get this running again in a 68K Sun 3 emulator with SunOS 3.2!
Do we already know each other in real life, or should we begin? Say hi! Email is in my profile.
Here's another old email from Mark that I cherish, from just before he left UMD for PARC:
From: mark@markssun.cs.umd.edu (Mark Weiser)
Subject: paper
Date: February 25, 1987 at 06:24:52 GMT+1
To: don@gyre.umd.edu
Leave it (a) on my sun keyboard, (b) in my second floor mailbox,
(c) at the bottom of a pan of hash brownies. I'll be sure
to find it in any of those places.
-mark
I figured he was just any another software developer. Kind of an understatement, mom. Wish I still had those, but it was a school account all those decades ago.
I read the pie menu code and implemented it as a final project in Turbo PASCAL that year.
Would have been a very interesting new direction for them to expand in.
Its hard to find these kinds of devices but i have to believe there's a market. I can't be the only one.
Happy for any input (don't think VC is the route to go).