A German, a Brazilian and an Indian, all three student volunteers, walked towards the conference office the day before a conference. As it happened, the student volunteer chair had had some trouble reaching the venue, and there were no specific instructions for the volunteers at that time. Nobody else had any information or any plan to hand out either. (Turns out they did, but our protagonists did not know at the time.)

The German noted this and wondered how they could be so ill-prepared and without a plan just one day before the conference. The Indian remarked that they might just be running late and here’s hoping that everything would be fine and dandy by the next day, the day of the conference. The Brazilian said, oh well, if they don’t have anything for us to do, we’ll just go to the beach and have fun instead.

While this anecdote might not have had the punchline you might have been waiting for, (especially given the clichéd setup), it’s a nice illustration of how cultural upbringing shapes our thinking in the most trivial of incidences in life.

Since Facebook won’t provide you a way to opt-out of Beacon, their intrusive advertising platform, here’s how you can prevent them from harvesting data about you from other sites.

For Safari, first install the excellent PithHelmet plugin that lets you block sites, pages, cookies, and advertising with excellent granularity. It is not free, but well worth the $10. Go to PithHelmet preferences, right within Safari’s preference dialog.

In the next step, you’ll need the following Matching Pattern. Here it is for copy/paste convenience:
.*facebook\.com\/beacon.*

For Firefox, I refer you to Nate Weiner’s original post that inspired mine for Safari. He also has a detailed analysis of why Beacon is a privacy nightmare with no means for users to opt-out completely. The ‘No Thanks’ button only prevents the information from being displayed, but Facebook still logs and preserves it, and may do with it as they please (according to their terms of use).

I ask you, the blogosphere, to enlighten me on the best way to eat Pringles that does not involve a bowl. The Pringles can is one of the iconic designs of modern times — uniformly-shaped potato chips in a tube — that seems to value form over function.

Let’s admit: eating chips is a secondary task for most Americans. These are snacks people munch on when they’re doing other things. Thus, these chips should be easy to grab with one hand and have the other hand free for the television remote, steering wheel or keyboard/mouse. At the same time, it is important that chips don’t spill, or worse yet, crumble in your hand. So what’s the best way to eat them without needing a bowl? (because using a bowl would just be weaseling out of this problem into one already solved in The Textbook.)

The first few chips are easy. (Isn’t that the case with everything? :) ) They’re within the grasp of your fingers, so it’s no different than plucking a few chips from a bag. It’s after the top few disappear that the problem starts. Should I force my hand into the can? Should I invert the can so the chips fall out into my hand? Should I tilt the can ever so slightly and tap on the side to have the chips exit one by one instead of stampeding all over themselves?

I’ve tried to dig in with my hand to get to the next few, but my hand is too big to fit inside the can, and it’s probably not a good idea anyway. I shudder to think of the day I’m in an Emergency Room with a Pringles can wrapped around my wrist, with $200/hour doctors cutting off an embarrassing roll of cardboard from the one organ that distinguishes men from apes. No, excavating anything but the top few is a job for professional archaeologists.

I’ve tried inverting the can with the lid on, so (I hoped) the chips would all accumulate on the lid, and then I could simply open it up and eat a few. The problem is, the quantum stable state for potato chips is a pile of crumbs. Inverting the can gets all the crumbs to the bottom of the can, and when the lid is opened, that’s what comes out first.

I’ve tried tilting the can at a precise angle and knocking on the side until the top few chips make their way slowly out the door. This sometimes works, but takes a long time, and very skillful knocking/tapping/flicking to get the right number of chips out of the can. Often, you’ll spend five minutes tapping unsuccessfully, then, out of a burst of frustration, you’d tap just a little bit harder, and have Pringles rain upon you. No go.

Dear Mommy taught me to search the Web before posting random questions to total strangers, so I did my homework. Here’s an innovative method of eating Pringles, but I’m no chopsticks ninja. And eating chips with chopsticks vaguely reminds me of the Seinfeld episode with George eating Snickers with a knife. You get the point, sort of.

So my question to you is, what’s the best way you’ve found to eat Pringles out of a can without spilling any crumbs, using a minimum number of hands to do it? A second, deeper, question, from my obvious position as a design and HCI person is, why has such a design resisted change over so many years despite being so hard to eat from?

A video from Apple’s 1984 Shareholders’ Meeting seems appropriate today.

I received the following email a few minutes ago, with fake headers and the works, and is formatted exactly the same way as the regular email we get from these folks. It’s probably viral marketing for the upcoming game, Portal, releasing November 23, 2007. Lots of references to it in the text.

1. UNDERGROUND HALLOWEEN ADVENTURE
2. BOBBY FISCHER – ENDED THE SOVIET CHESS HEGEMONY
3. SELECTING YOUR CABLE COMPANY IN BLACKSBURG
4. PI EATING CONTEST
5. POSSIBLE BAG BAN
6. DONALDSON-BROWN LOCKS TO BE CHANGED
7. ODD – OPEN DOOR DAY
8. MICROSOFT VISTA SERVICE PACK DEMO
9. WEEKLY SPEAKER SERIES
10. REGISTRATION FOR DEAN’S FORUM ON HEALTH, FOOD AND NUTRITION
11. STUDY PARTICIPANTS NEEDED

1. UNDERGROUND HALLOWEEN ADVENTURE
A Halloween tour of the steam tunnels beneath campus will be offered for the first time this year to four groups of eight people on Oct. 29th and 30th. Sign-up for each of the four tours will begin on Monday, October 22nd, and continue until all places are taken. Interested parties should contact Richard McCoy at 231-3200 for more information.

2. BOBBY FISCHER – ENDED THE SOVIET CHESS HEGEMONY
Monday, Oct 22, 5:30-7:00 in Williamsburg Rm, 7:00-8:00 in Haymarket Theater in Squires Center The man who ended the Soviet chess hegemony by defeating Boris Spassky will speak at Virginia Tech. A reception will precede his presentation at 7:00pm. Robert James “Bobby” Fischer is a United States-born chess Grandmaster who in 1972 became the only US-born chess player to become the official World Chess Champion. Fischer’s victory during the Cold War caused a great interest in chess and is responsible for the swelling of members of the World Chess Federation.

3. SELECTING YOUR CABLE COMPANY IN BLACKSBURG
Sometime between Tuesday, Oct 23 08:00am and next Friday, Nov 2 7:00pm in Room C in the GLC Are you interested in purchasing a subscription package from your local cable company? Presenters from NTC Communications Comcast Digital Cable and Cox Communications will talk about the different internet, phone and cable packages available and answer questions about rates and programming.

4. PI EATING CONTEST
Tuesday, Oct 23, 7:00pm in Room F in the GLC the VT Math club is sponsoring a Pi festival. Approximately 3,141 pies will be available for sampling. They will include but are not limited to Apple, Banoffee, Banana cream, Blackberry, Blueberry, Cheesecake, Cherry, Chestnut, Cream, Custard, Grape, Lemon meringue, Peach, Pecan, Pumpkin, and Rhubarb. In addition, at 7:30 there will also be a pie eating contest. The first contestant to eat an irrational number of pies will receive a hand-carved Penrose triangle.

5. POSSIBLE BAG BAN
Due to the heightened security of many university campuses, a possible ban of all bags on campus may be implemented in the next two weeks. Backpacks, duffels, shoulder-bags, and purses may soon join the list of items prohibited on campus. This measure has been proposed since it has been pointed out that bags may be able to conceal already illegal items. An unlikely supporter of the ban is the campus Health and Safety Department as it would also alleviate the troubling phenomenon of overweight book bags that commonly lead to health problems later in life. Acceptance of the proposal will be decided by the campus Board of Directors later this week.

6. DONALDSON-BROWN LOCKS TO BE CHANGED
It has come to the attention of university security personnel that many graduate students have access to the GLC 24 hours a day. In order to remedy this threat to campus security, all doors to the GLC will have their locks changed between Monday evening and Tuesday morning. In addition, Donaldson Brown dorm rooms will also have their locks changed on a short rotation. You may need to request a new room key from your Residential Fellow.

7. ODD – OPEN DOOR DAY
To help promote social interaction amongst the graduate students, Thurs, Oct 25, will be open door day. Graduate students on campus are encouraged to keep their door open and meet their neighbors as well as their Residential Fellow if they have not done so already. We are aware that the doors in the GLC rooms close on their own, this is why you have been provided with doorstops. Use them! Hopefully open door day will become more routine and no longer considered odd.

8. MICROSOFT VISTA SERVICE PACK DEMO
Wednesday, Oct 24, 6:00-7:00pm in McBryde 666, Microsoft will be giving an exclusive preview of service pack one for Vista. In response to the massive number of problems, compatibility, and stability issues in Vista, Microsoft has spent the past year fervently addressing these issues in the much anticipated service pack 1 (SP1). Representives from Microsoft will demonstrate the features and stability changes of SP1, such as the newly bolstered DRM software. This update and others in SP1 that will be demonstrated should help provide Vista users with new enhanced reduced functionality.

9. WEEKLY SPEAKER SERIES
Friday, Oct 26, 4:00-5:00pm in Room F in the GLC Faculty speaker: Dr. Henry Warren – Physics, on Structure of the Proton. Graduate students and faculty from across the university present weekly their teaching and research passions in a casual, coffee house atmosphere. Free coffee and pastries served from 3:45pm.

10. REGISTRATION FOR DEAN’S FORUM ON HEALTH, FOOD AND NUTRITION
Registration for the Nov 5 forum is now open. This forum will showcase health, food, and nutrition efforts in research, extension/outreach, and teaching currently underway at McDonalds, Kraft Foods, Monsanto, and LuthorCorp. Register by Sunday, Oct 28 if you plan on attending the event. Sponsors will showcase the health benefits of the latest developments in GMOs, growth hormones, preservatives, artificial sweeteners, hydrogenated oils, flavoring and texturizing food additives. For more information, including registration links, and to view the Forum agenda, please visit http://www.mcvideogame.com/index-eng.html

11. STUDY PARTICIPANTS NEEDED
A graduate student researcher working on behalf of Aperture Science is seeking highly-motivated individuals in good physical condition between the ages of 18-25 for her study. Participants will be asked to perform complex tasks. The entire study should last a minimum of 3 hours and moist, delicious cake will be served upon successful completion of the test. For further information or to sign up to participate, please contact Glados, glados@aperturescience.com