Usability Testing

The reason for usability testing on websites is well known, isn't it? It's to get the site seen through the eyes of someone who is not familiar with it, and to see what they make of it.

I think anyone could do a lot worse than read a great book on the subject. It's Don't Make me Think by Steve Krug.

If you want to dip your toe in the water, you can do usability tests at Five Second Tests and Feedback Roulette.

You can have your site looked at by other visitors and you give back to the community by testing other people's sites.

Just like it says in the name, Five Second Tests show you the site for five seconds and then the site disappears from view.

And it has taught me a big lesson.

The lesson is that if I don't know in an instant what the site is about, then those five seconds go by in a flash.

I spend those five seconds trying figure it out what the site is about and I just don't 'see' anything else on the page.

Being Paid For Advice

At a party, a doctor is commiserating with a lawyer.

He says that wherever he goes people ask him for medical advice.

The lawyer agrees and says he has the same problem - people are always asking him for legal advice.

The doctor asks him how he deals with it, and the lawyer says that it's simple - he sends the person a bill and pretty soon the word gets around and it stops.

Next morning the doctor gets a bill from the lawyer.

What They Did With The World

They broke it
so that they did not care so much
when it was destroyed
Little by little
animal by animal
specie by specie
they killed it
Then like murderers
they hid the bodies
in a graveyard
made of the world

Stoat Or Weasel

Stoats are stoatally different and weasels are weasely distinguishable.

Stoats are bigger - but a big weasel can be as big as a small stoat.

And female stoats are smaller, so it terms of size, they are easily confused with weasels.

Stoats have a black tip to their tail - but you will be lucky to see it when the animal crosses the road or track in front of you.

Stoats sometimes turn all white in winter, whereas weasels do not - but that is not going to help you distinguish them in summer.

So How? Stoats are slinky and bounce along. Weasels zip along like little rockets.

The New Makeup

I saw a Japanese painting that had been painted on glass.

It was painted on the back of the glass, which meant that the artist painted the foremost features first. Then he/she painted the parts behind. How clever and how difficult.

The painting on glass gave me the idea for future makeup.

A person will dial in their preferred makeup and the machine will make a sheet of clear plastic with the makeup on it - with the finest detail nearest the sheet and the layers built up to the foundation creme.

The sheet will be moulded to the shape of that person's face. Lasers will scan the face to do that. They won't need to scan every day, just now and again as the face ages.

The machine will place the sheet on the person's face and the heat of their face will transfer the makeup in a second.

All you have to do is peel off the plastic sheet and voila! - makeup all done.

It will be a flop at first because people like to do their own makeup - in the same way that people liked to do their own cooking.

But then people will become hooked and it will take off big time.

There will be portable versions in cars and self-service versions in the ladies' rooms of swanky hotels and restaurants.

And everyone will be happy.

Here's a song by Donal Fagen about the future:

Qatar

Qatar is on the Persian Gulf, with a land border with Saudi Arabia.

• It is about one twentieth the size of Great Britain.
  
• It is the world’s richest country per capita.
  
• It has the world’s third largest reserves of natural gas and reserves of more than 25 billion barrels of oil.
  
• It created the Al Jazeera news network.
  
• It has investments of hundreds of billions of dollars in Western companies.
  
• It will host the 2022 FIFA World Cup.
  
• The Al Thani family has ruled Qatar since the mid 1800s.
  
• When the Ottoman Empire conquered and ruled Qatar from 1871, the Al Thani family forced through semi-autonomous rule.
  
• The British took over in 1916 and withdrew its military in 1968.
  
• In 1968 Qatar joined with other States to form what became the United Arab Emirates but then quickly broke off from the other States.
  
• It exports to Japan, South Korea, India, Singapore, and China.
  
• It imports from USA, UEA, Saudi Arabia, UK, Japan, China, Germany, Italy, France
  
• Its major military supplier seems to be France, although the USA may have provided a defence shield against possible attack from Iran.
  
• The US and UK share an airbase in Qatar.
  
• Adult literacy is 96%
  
• Unemployment is less than 1.5%
  
• Most Qataris follow Wahhabism.
  

An article of September 7th 2014 in the New York Times describes international accusations that Qatar funds and supports Al Qaeda in Syria, the Taliban in Afghanistan, Hamas in Gaza, the Muslim Botherhood across the Middle East, and Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.

South Korea Abolished The Crime Of Adultery on 26 February 2015

Until South Korea's Constitutional Court ruled on 26 February 2015 to abolish the crime, adultery was a criminal offence in South Korea and had been since 1953.

A report in the Korea Times says:

The first adultery case involving celebrities was in 1960 involving actor Choi Moo-ryong and actress Kim Ji-mi. The couple were in a relationship outside of marriage. In 1970, a local TV station famously aired video footage of the well-known actress Chung Yoon-hui in a jail cell for committing adultery.

The JD Journal quotes five of the nine justices on the court as saying:

It has become difficult to say that there is a consensus on whether adultery should be punished as a criminal offense. It should be left to the free will and love of people to decide whether to maintain marriage, and the matter should not be externally forced through a criminal code.

As the headline in the New York Times article has it,

Adultery Is No Longer an Affair of the State in South Korea.

What good headline, with the unspoken link to 'affairs of the heart'.

As for actual numbers, The Guardian reports that:

In the past six years, close to 5,500 people have been formerly arraigned on adultery charges - including nearly 900 in 2014.

But the numbers had been falling, with cases that end in prison terms increasingly rare.

Whereas 216 people were jailed under the law in 2004, that figure had dropped to 42 by 2008, and since then only 22 have found themselves behind bars, according to figures from the state prosecution office.

The maximum sentence for the offence under the law was two years. That said, South Korea was not the only country to have criminalised adultery Taiwan’s Criminal Code Article 239 provides that "married spouses who commit adultery be imprisoned for up to one year."

The Backdrop To The Creation Of The Offence In 1953

The Korean War lasted from 25 June 1950 – 27 July 1953. I can't help but wonder what relationship there is between the origin of the statute and the Korean War.