Headlights are too bright nowadays

I was thinking all the excess glare I was getting at night from headlights coming towards me, especially on realtively dark roads, was a result of my cataracts.

Well now that I've had cataract surgery in one eye (and there is a fantastic improvement in my vision, generally, I could not have imagined seeing so much more) I see it isn't so.  While the eye with the new artificial lens gets far less glare than the other, there is still considerable glare from headlights on darker roads.

I think car headlights have simply gotten too bright, and this is a serious problem which should be fixed.  You can see that the headlights on older cars, with original non-halogen incandescent bulbs, are far less bright.

Perhaps there should be several levels of brightness, not merely 'high' and 'low', with the middle levels automatically chosen based on ambient brightness.

It also doesn't help that cities ubiquitously are trying to save money by not installing streetlights and/or not maintining them.  Likewise with lighted street signs.  Cities should not be playing with our safety this way.

Samsung Galaxy's Inaudible Default Ringtone

My lady friend was calling.  She had gone straight to my home from work (despite previously saying she would wait for me to call and then come over, don't hurry, etc).  She left a phone message and a text message.  She finally gave up waiting and went to her house.  I was busy navigating and making those often tough even though highly constrained decisions in a supermarket.  Trying to figure out what kind of doggie treat would be best for her daughter's dog.  Why is the smallest box of Milk Bone (tm) four pounds?  And I completely missed her call.  I got home only to find those messages on my phone.  I called, and she angrily told me to forget having her come over that night.  Why hadn't I answered her call?  Only after my worst begging did she relent and come over.  I was successful, fortunately, but it was a close call.  The next day I went into surgery.  I would have felt terrible had this date not worked out, and it nearly didn't.

The culprit was the highly ignorable default ring tone of the Samsung Galaxy S4.

Samsung apparently picked this ring tone because it sounds cool, and that's how they want people to think about Samsung.  We're just as cool as those other guys, they're always trying to remind us.  Well thanks, guys, for putting your corporate image promotion above my needs.  (Putting corporate image promotion above user needs is the underlying drive in many of the things I hope to criticize here.  It happens all the time.)

The whole point of a telephone ring tone is to be audible.  Coolness is second.  A ring tone has to cut through the fog, rise above the Muzak (tm) and crowd noise, so you will not miss that critical call.

What does the trick IMO is the plain old fashioned Bell System (tm) bell.  (Those Bell System people of long ago came up with the best answer for then-available technology, and much of their design is still the best, never excelled, and typically not even equalled with far more advanced technology.  Only by holding the feet of fools and marketing directors to the fire can we go forwards.)

I had to go through nearly all of the default selections in the Samsung/Android before getting to Chime, the one that seems best to me.  I figured the one I wanted would have Bell in the name.  Chime looks like it's going to give a wind chime sound, exactly what I'd like least.  Maybe they're trying to obscure the legacy of this bell sound by calling it chime.

Why Computer Critical

This blog will take a critical look at all things computerized, and technology in general.  I'd already started writing down a few of my gripes about smartphones in another of my blogs (VeryDeepLeft), but it was obvious such gripes, while consistent with my world view (I'm critical of everything...and especially those things you are not supposed to critical of), was off topic in a blog primarily about things political.  So this blog is an extension of the critical worldview into the realm of technology.

I am no luddite*, in fact I am quite often an early adopter, I use more diverse technology than most people can even imagine, and I've been programming computers for a living for 35 years in scientific and engineering applications.  In my work, my goal is to make things work, to do what people want, without being limited by the limitations or inconveniences of the ubiquitous bad design of computer languages, operating systems, etc.  I hold my nose and do what needs to be done.  In contrast, other computer programmers I have known simply refuse to do anything that doesn't suit their aesthetic preferences, which can often be quite fine.

(*Btw, Luddites were very fine people, skilled weavers and such, who objected to generally poor quality goods produced by early industrial technology, as well as how it was putting them out of work. You could say I do strongly sympathize with their position.  But I don't oppose new technology, that battle has been lost, I merely believe it should be done correctly in the fullest sense.)

But this is not to say that bad design doesn't bother me greatly.  It does, and that's why I've started this blog, to call out bad design in technology wherever I see it (which is basically everywhere), not in the hope that people will pull back to another kind of life, singing campfire songs, say (though that might be nicer than what we have now in many ways), but that future designers will do better, and not have their best ideas squashed by incompetent management either.

So this blog is being written in the hope that things can and will be made better, as soon as possible.  It is my intent that all the ideas presented here be freely available and actually used by all, including even greedy corporations (so long as they don't patent them so others can't use them).  I explicitly declare all the new ideas presented here (if there are any) to be in the public domain, and use is strongly encouraged by all.

I have been inspired by many others who have previously a critical eye at the usability of technology.  The book The Inmates Are Running The Asylum is an eye opening book, for example, though I don't necessarily endorse the solutions author Alan Cooper suggests.  I'm fond of the ideas of Edward Tufte with similar qualifications.  And so on.