(no subject)

[ironymaiden]

really?

i'm sure GPS knows all about what intersections are easy to use, and what landmarks are nearby. and what color the house is, and where it's best to park...and you're an asshole who would rather play with your toy than make use of the intelligence being handed to you. and according to Google Street View my lovely apartment is a pile of construction materials and/or a hole in the ground.

today i was in a meeting that involved a co-worker entering info into a laptop, with the display projected on the wall. he can't shake typing "shoudl" instead of "should". that's because Word and Outlook automatically fix transposed letters. great for solving common errors seamlessly, terrible for muscle memory.

if i was less tired i would draw a more careful connection here. as i'm about to fall asleep they seem to be intertwined.

Comments

[mimerki.livejournal.com]

I turn off the transpose autofix for just that reason. I'll fix it via spellcheck if I don't catch it immediately but there's some program I run where I haven't found that autofix and it keeps fixing things just as I'm backspacing to correct them.

The problem with directions is that most people give very poor ones, or don't supply what turns out to be the most necessary piece of information. But a GPS won't necessarily help with that either. And at least one of the online map/directions things gives directions to my house that are not so much incorrect as poorly planned.

So yeah, what you said.

[steve98052.livejournal.com]

I definitely agree with the bad directions thing. Once someone gave me directions to their house with about 40 different turns described, by way of assorted landmarks. The directions were correct, but ridiculously redundant. They could have simply told me, "Stay on Snake Boulevard for about 15 miles. It twists and turns a lot, but as long as you stay on it you'll be fine."

Some people give directions that remind me of the Laurie Anderson song "Big Science":

Hey Pal! How do I get to town from here?
And he said: Well just take a right where
they're going to build that new shopping mall,
go straight past where they're going to put in the freeway,
take a left at what's going to be the new sports center,
and keep going until you hit the place where
they're thinking of building that drive-in bank.
You can't miss it. And I said: This must be the place.

I hadn't really thought about the auto-correct thing. I normally switch off the one that turns vertical quote marks and apostrophes into angled ones, which always get mangled in e-mail. But switching them off all over seems like good practice, since it helps avoid develop habits that cause inconvenience when one does without the auto-correct.

[e-bourne.livejournal.com]

I find GPS to be mixed blessings. For one thing, they nag. (Turn left in 800 yards. Turn left in 400 yards. Turn left) Which inspire me to do completely the opposite of what they suggest. I'm just that way. (Oh, you want me to turn left? What about if I turn right? How about that? What do you think now? Yeah, have to recalculate, don't you?)

Second, I'm a landmark person. I prefer knowing I should go to the Subway and go left, then head for the Arco station at the corner and go three doors down.

And finally, I've noticed that when M uses the GPS, he for sure then never learns the way. I think that's bad. We should learn.

[varina8.livejournal.com]

For me, using GPS in a rental is like being a passenger; I don't pay attention to the landmarks and can't find my way back on my own.