Weblog van Spruit
Goal in life: Create order, think lateral.
Sunday, November 09, 2008
Garden shed <> computer system
Not such an obvious statement when you put it under an angle.
Ever found yourself going to get the leaf-blower from your garden shed, but you need to move a bike, another bike, the lawn mower, some sack and an old carpet? In the process bumping your kneecap on an old curtain rail (pointy end of course). Garden sheds tend to be stuffed and the funny thing is, when you move to a bigger house, with a bigger garden shed, after a while it is again ... stuffed. Garden sheds are filled up to and beyond their limits, which makes them ... user unfriendly, time consuming and slow.
Computer systems are also often filled up to and beyond their limits, which makes them user unfriendly, time consuming and slow. Regularly there is a new break through in new hardware or smarter protocols. Computer systems get a lot more storage, can transfer information faster (internally or between systems) and can do more calculations per second. It is like finding a free corner in a garden shed: the industry immediately stuffs it with new functionality. Only take a look at the system demands for running the Windows operating system over the years. If you ran Windows 3.11 on your current computer it would fly.
Do not use your computer system like you use your garden shed, would be my suggestion. Maybe use only 60% of the resources and keep it pleasurable to work with. When resources grow there is of course no problem of using more, but keep a threshold. But this seems unlikely, because garden sheds have been around for hunreds of years and that one is not even solved yet. I'm doing the garden shed first.
Stuffed garden sheds are an annoyance. Why are they stuffed when it is annoying? Because not stuffing it is worse? Not stuffing garden sheds has the consequence that you cannot keep some of the stuff. Why is that bad? You need it later? Probably not. It is a lot of work to throw stuff away? Not so much. People are greedy and want to have as much stuff as possible? Probably, but purely emotional and makes no sense.
So to liberate yourself, do not fill up your garden shed completely, such that it stays user friendly. Computer industry ought to do the same... (with computer systems, not garden sheds ;-)
Off to clear out my garden shed...
*lunch*
...The greedy nature of man also has an important upside though. Instead of only using 60% of a garden shed a human is more inclined to find out how to be able to stuff even more in a garden shed while maintaining usability and how to build bigger garden sheds. This has led to a lot of progress in garden shedding...Labels: computer, garden shed, user friendly
comments []
|
