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Five posts since last weekend didn’t show up properly in the feed, so if you’re following by RSS or LiveJournal, you probably missed these:

(For the record: the GMT timestamps were set to zero. It seems to be this problem, probably triggered by turning on the XCache-based object cache last weekend. I’ve applied a patch, so let’s see if it works.)

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Central City is big. You just won’t believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it’s a long way down the road to the chemist’s, but that’s just peanuts to Central City. (With apologies to Douglas Adams.)

It’s an old post, but I just found the Absorbascon’s take on Central City, looking at the wide expanses depicted in Carmine Infantino’s Silver-Age drawings of the Flash’s hometown.

What is this vast complex? The National Science Center? NIH? STARLabs HQ? No. It’s Barry Allen’s back room. In his APARTMENT. In your house, this sort of room is barely big enough to hold the Cybex machine you don’t use. In a Central City apartment, it’s about the size of a bowling alley.

On a related, but more serious note, letterer Todd Klein has posted a 4-part study of the Flash Logo from 1940 through the present day: Part 1 · Part 2 · Part 3 · Part 4. With his insider knowledge, it’s far more thorough than the study I did a few years ago. (via Wallyoeste)

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It’s clear that a lot of people don’t actually read web pages before they respond to them. They’ll do things like…

  • Contact someone with a similar name, even when it’s clearly the wrong sort of organization — say, a student writing club and not the bookseller that’s been causing them problems.
  • Ask a blogger for a job application for a company mentioned in the post.
  • Ask unrelated tech support questions on a blog post because they used the wrong search terms for their problem.
  • Ask for help creating Flash animations on a forum dedicated to the Flash super-hero, then get indignant when people have the gall to point out that they’re in the wrong place.

Now, usability guru Jakob Nielsen reports on a study showing just how much people don’t read. In the average visit, users only read 28% of your text if you’re lucky. You have to drop way down — to 111 words — just to count on visitors reading half of it.

Depressing, but it explains so much. And it suggests there’s a benefit to highlighting key phrases. If they’re only going to read ¼ of the text, you may as well make sure it includes the important stuff.

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Mark Pilgrim, in The Day the Music Died, points out what happens when DRM meets market failure.

On August 31, Microsoft will turn off the servers that validate their “PlaysForSure” DRM system (this predates the system they use for the Zune). This means that anyone who has bought music that uses PlaysForSure will not be able to transfer it when they upgrade or replace their computer, or get a new music player.

It won’t be an instantaneous death like DIVX was, or like a subscription system, because it doesn’t phone home whenever you try to play a track. But it’ll be a lot faster than simple technological obsolescence. I can still play my old VHS tapes until my VCR breaks down (and then I could probably still get it fixed if I really wanted to), even though I don’t think I’ve seen a pre-recorded tape in a store in years.

This is also why I prefer to check Amazon’s MP3 store first, before going onto the iTunes Music Store, and then prefer DRM-free iTunes Plus to standard iTunes tracks. Given their current position, Apple isn’t likely to get rid of iTunes anytime soon, but if they ever did, I’d be in the same boat as people who purchased PlaysForSure tracks. (Though I’m hoping they’ll move the entire catalog away from DRM long before that happens.) Whereas since Amazon’s tracks are plain, ordinary MP3s, they could abandon the business tomorrow and I’d still be able to play the tracks for as long as I can find software that plays MP3s.

(via ma.tt)

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Yes, I’m shocked as well. 🙂 This morning I had to go into the Department of Motor Vehicles for the first time in several years, and was surprised to find that they’d actually worked out a very efficient system for handling people as they came in. I don’t know if this is standard across the California DMV, or if it’s specific to the Laguna Hills office, but I was impressed.

It’s a 2-stage system, starting with a single line, then a set of take-a-number queues running in parallel.

  1. Everyone starts in a single line leading to a “Directory” desk. The clerk at this desk handles initial questions and hands out the appropriate forms.
  2. You fill out the forms, then go back to the desk without standing in line again.
  3. The directory desk assigns you a number in one of several queues, depending on the type of service you need (ID, license, registration, testing, etc.).
  4. They call your number and send you to an open window.

The thing that impressed me was step 2. They have you fill out the forms before they assign you to a queue. That means that you won’t get caught half-way through the form when your number is called, so clerks at the windows don’t have to wait around while you finish filling things out. That means they can handle more people in the same amount of time.

The only problem I noticed with this part of the system was that it wasn’t clear where to go if you had an appointment.

Well, that and the occasional clueless visitor. I felt really stupid after marveling at the simple optimization, then discovering when I got to the window that I’d missed a section. 😳

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Reusable Cover Art in Historical Novels: A Gallery. A lot of them are clearly using classical paintings, but some of them are photographs or even modern-style art. What’s especially interesting are the covers which used the same source material, but altered it subtly: adding a headband or a pendant, replacing a bedframe, etc.

The Rap Sheet has even more examples.

(via Colleen Doran)