Christopher Mackay’s Blog

This afternoon, I opened my freezer for some Chapman’s ice cream (Heavenly Hash, which is excellent, by the way), and it was a bit soft. So, I thought, why not make the freezer a bit colder? Then I remembered why not; the keystone cops of usability had designed my freezer.

My newish GE fridge/freezer (freezer on the bottom, which is brilliant) has very clearly-labelled dials to guide me when setting the temperature in the fridge and freezer. Clearly-labelled and completely useless. It goes from 1 to 9. 1 to 9 what? When I studied physics, I would’ve gotten a failing grade for leaving out the units of measurement. Is 1 colder or warmer than 9? Is it measuring the amount of effort the compressor’s putting into it or the resulting temperature? I’m sure it’s completely obvious to the designer(s), much like the internationally-meaningless circle/bar symbols that represent on/off, but it’s beyond me.

I guess I’ll just have to spoil my ice cream to find out.

Live 8 is happening. And Pink Floyd himself organized it. If you’re in Canada, be sure to visit MakePovertyHistory.ca and sign up to let Paul Martin (and your MP) know that you’d like him to help end poverty in Africa.

Update: Pink Floyd’s renditions of Breathe and Money were great. According to Rolling Stone, they also played Wish You Were Here. Thank God CTV covered all of Motley Crue and left out what Ben Mulroney Himself described as “the most anticipated moment of Live 8″…

I’m assuming there’s a Pink Floyd fan among the crew in London, as there was an extreme zoom-in on Battersea that was pulled-back to reveal the band playing in Hyde Park. A nice touch.

If you’re a Mac user, you might also like to let music.aol.com know that their choice of streaming Windows Media means that you’re one of tens of millions who can’t watch. Thanks, guys. (In case you’re wondering, yes, Windows Media Player for Mac does exist, but it doesn’t support in-line video, streamed video, DRM’d video, Microsoft’s latest video compression/decompression algorithms, or — as far as I can tell — video.)