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Arm-garters optional

Quick post/app review (I’ll get back to more substantive stuff soon, I promise. I’m just a little otherwise occupied right now…)

Last week, my work computer got its symantec update. I already strongly dislike the antivirus: it makes my computer run slower, especially when using a flash drive, CD, etc. Plus, c’mon: it’s in my best interest to be careful what I download, so I am careful as a matter of course. I really don’t think the symantec is doing anything other than slowing down my work. That’s not the point, though. The point is that with the new update came a new menubar icon, which I can’t remove, and which is in color! UNACCEPTABLE.

What in the monkey pants is this?!?!

What in the monkey pants is this?!?!

I can deal with an unusable icon. But not one that is yellow when all my other icons are b/w. It attracts my eye. It bothers me. It’s like a piece of lint on a perfect black suit. Or a squashed bug on a parquet floor. I know, I know, I’m an unreasonable neat-freak. Be that as it may: I had to do something about this state of affairs.

Enter: Bartender. I had looked at this little app before but had decided $15 was too much for its service. Symantec made me change my mind. Think of Symantec as a skeezy bar patron, and Bartender as a muttonchopped, old-timey hatted, INTIMIDATING fellow.

Men with facial hair.

Honestly, any of these gentlemen would do.

Symantec has been unceremoniously kicked out of the bar. And the “bottles” I actually use at the bar have been arranged *just so*, with labels facing out. (To take this out of the metaphor and actually tell it like it is: Bartender allows you to show the menubar items you want in the order you want, hide those you want to hide in a secondary bar, and hide others completely if you don’t want to see them.)

Refreshing!

Refreshing!

As I said, $15 is pretty steep, but for the pleasure of keeping my desktop clean and distraction-free, it’s a price I’m willing to pay. Now if only Bartender could provide me with a nice 30 year tawny Port, or maybe a lambic beer… Sigh. My visit to Paris isn’t that far away, so no complaints!

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On sitting

So far in this blog, I’ve focused on tech, pedagogy, and related miscellany. Not today. Today I wanna write about what I actually study: urbanism. So if you’re not interested, just skip this entry. If you are, maybe you’ll learn something. I bet you won’t look at benches quite the same way.

I was in NYC a few weeks ago, and spent a good chunk of my Sunday walking the High Line. You’ve probably heard of it, dear reader, since it’s undoubtedly the most famous park of our era. Hipsters can’t stop talking about it. Neither can planners, developers, politicians, business owners, and pretty much anyone interested in public space. Don’t worry, I won’t wax poetic about it. Plenty of others have done so already. There’s also some halfhearted critique, if you want that. No, what I want to discuss is much more prosaic: seating.

Anyone who knows me knows I’m a big fan of William H. Whyte. After all, he did some amazing, cutting edge observational research of behavior in public spaces. I admire him for that alone. He also understood the importance of good seating. And I, for one, love to sit. [yeah, yeah, I know. Sitting's bad for you blah blah blah. Sue me. Sitting is fun. It makes chatting and eating and reading easier, which are all things I like to do.]

Anyway, Whyte passed away a few years ago, but I bet he would LOVE the High Line. One of the things that struck me this time around is the sheer variety and awesomeness of the seating in that space. To badly paraphrase what Whyte posited, seating is one of the most important ingredients for successful public space, but getting seating right is harder than you may think. The default seating type is the park bench, but it’s really not a good solution. Indeed, park benches are usually about three people wide. But you hardly ever see three people on a bench, because (1) it’s uncomfortable sitting thigh-to-thigh with a stranger (2) it’s terrible for conversation for more than two people and (3) if a bench is full, you can’t eat lunch or do anything that requires a flat surface. Instead, Whyte held the moveable chair above all other seating: it can be changed to suit your needs. But of course that’s not really ideal everywhere either, particularly for a linear park like the High Line. In some locations you want to make sure people who are sitting don’t impede the flow of pedestrians. Plus, they do tend to get stolen.

So, what to do? Whyte liked the low wall as a solution, especially curvy ones. This allows for groupings but also privacy, and is great for conversation or as a surface for your everything bagel with lox (we are in NY, remember?)

The high line sorta kinda uses that as a jumping off point, and then has lots of variations on the theme. Wanna sit and watch the crowd? Face the water? Nap? Eat lunch with a dozen friends? Make sketches in your moleskine by yourself while watching taxicabs? Play with three year olds away from spiky vegetation? Stay away from the three year olds but close to the hungover revelers? Sit in shade? Sun? Partial shade? Close to trees? Close to buildings? Close to plants and buildings and facing water and the crowd but in a place that’s relatively quiet? Yeah, the High Line has ALL of those options.

I managed to not get a pic of these lounge chairs on my last trip. They may be my faves in the whole place.

I managed to not get a pic of these lounge chairs on my last trip. They may be my faves in the whole place.

More impressively, the huge crowd that I encountered this time around – unsurprising on a warm spring Sunday – still left lots of available seating and areas of relative quiet. And the crowds moved well, with few bottlenecks, even at the amazing ice cream sandwich cart. (Full disclosure: I had the Morticia, and it was scrumptrulescent)

Considering the High Line is maybe 50 feet wide at its widest point, and the sheer number of people – many clueless tourists that go there on a daily basis, I’m still a little in awe that it all works.

andikappa's High Line Seating album on Photobucket

Next post, I promise to get back to tech and/or pedagogy. But seriously: sitting. It’s important. Think about it.

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Lights! Camera! Uh, no thanks…

Anecdote ahoy! (It’s relevant, I promise)

When I was a PhD student, I took a statistics course on questionnaire design. Content-wise, this was one of the best courses I’ve ever taken. I still refer to readings semi-regularly, and learned lessons I’ve been applying on every survey – and there have been MANY – I’ve designed and/or implemented since.

Terrible format AND in Comic Sans?!? EPIC FAIL.<a href=

Terrible question AND Comic Sans?!? You have learned nothing. Nothing!! Pic Cred

Format-wise, well, let me explain. The two professors who taught the class were teaching the same class at UMD – where I was – and UNC at the same time. This meant that one week they would be on-site and the next they would be teaching remotely from Chapel Hill. The course was also pretty big in both locations: maybe 40 students in each classroom.

Luckily, since the course was in the statistics department, it had at its disposal the most high-tech classroom available. The classroom had three screens at the front (one for the powerpoint, one showing the prof, and one showing the other classroom), was studded with microphones to pick up questions, and had a very robust internet connection. This was back in the early 2000s (the aughts? Have we ever figured out how to refer to that decade?) but honestly I don’t think there would be a substantial difference in equipment today.

Anyway, with all that technology to ensure good interface between professor and students, what did I think? In brief: yech.

Or maybe blerg is better than yech.

Or maybe blerg is better than yech.

Let me elaborate:
I’m not exactly a blushing flower, but I never spoke to either professor during the entire semester. Yes, there were microphones, but that just made it really awkward to be in the class. Any shift of the chairs was also picked up, as were classroom noises from UNC. Speaking up just felt much more intimidating than it usually does. You had to have your ideas completely worked out and then speak like you would at a Starbucks drive through. Result: no one spoke.

Plus, since we were in two different classrooms, there was no community building among the students. All that technology meant we were focused on the screens, not each other. Trying to make conversation with someone at UNC was pretty much impossible, but that didn’t stop us from fretting about how we looked and sounded to them. As a prof, I know very well that the person up front sees much more than students think they do (seriously, kids, don’t sleep in class. And don’t text. I can tell. Really.) But there’s a difference between having a single prof looking out at you and knowing there’s a camera on you at all times. People worried wayyy too much about how they looked, which is not a very good match with being studious. Not fun.

The result of all this is that no one asked clarification for anything. No one felt comfortable asking their neighbor, either, lest that conversation be picked up by the microphones. The class was just painful. I saw some students leave because they were coughing or sneezing. Again, these weren’t freshmen but graduate students, most in their late twenties and thirties. In other words, people who in theory at least are pretty confident. Still, it felt horrible all the time in there, and not because we were studying sadistics.

Why do I tell this story? Well, with all current the talk of technology as a magic bullet in teaching, I think it’s pretty relevant. Being able to ask questions, not just of the professor but of each other, is to me a cornerstone of teaching. As far as I can tell, the technical solutions for that remain pretty dismal. Yes, you can learn a lot in that environment. No doubt. And the discomfort isn’t really that big a deal. I’ve learned in worse environments (ask me about that sometime!)

But all I can think is how much more we could have learned in a traditional classroom. The answer, I’m afraid, is quite a bit.