Why the CATBus schedule handout is confusing

The photo shows a detail of the Red Route for the Clemson bus. I added the numbered blue circles to correspond to my comments.

1. Centering long lines of text makes it hard to read the information. Since we generally read from left to right, our eyes need a visual cue on where to start from the left. Left-aligned text helps create a visual guide for our eyes. Centering the text removes that guide. Also, using ALL CAPS on the text makes it even harder to read the information. In another route, the ALL CAPS font are squeezed into what looks like Arial Narrow -- an even harder font to read especially in cramped spaces.
2. The guide uses unnecessary effort to explain the regular and variant schedules, causing a lot of repeating information (eg, observe the repeated Mon-Thu info across Fall, Spring, Summer, and Holiday). This could be simplified by just listing the regular service common to all seasons, and then adding the exceptions in a separate section. 
3. Long lines of text make it hard to follow the timings at the right side of the table. Using alternating row colors can help us read that information more easily.

Below is a snapshot of one page of the whole schedule (taken from the CATBus website). Notice anything?

1. Too much real estate in the handout is devoted to a map that's not very informative. The most useful sections -- the schedules -- are relegated to about 20% of the paper. 
2. The dimensions of the guide are not very portable: 28.5" x 22" (72.39 x 55.8 cm). It's almost like a tourist map with confusing folds. The schedules themselves could be printed on a strip of paper that could be folded and fit in a purse or wallet. 

Like I said in a previous post, I appreciate the CATBus service. It's free! But lots more could be done to help visitors and students to use the service.

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See also: The (absence of) bus stops

The (absence of) bus stops

I'm thankful for the CATBus, because it's a free bus service (CAT stands for Clemson Area Transit). However, there is room for improvement.

The photo above shows the Hendrix bus stop at Clemson University. It was taken during a very hot summer day 40º C (104º F). Buses stop at 30 minute intervals on weekdays and every hour on weekends. Since the bus was late, people were baking under the sun. Note also the number of people waiting versus the only available bench. Most of the stops have no shade (imagine if it rains).

Within the university, bus stops are marked with small, hardly noticeable signs. Outside of the university, the signs are less prominent and sometimes absent.

To visitors, the bus stops seem random. And on occasion, the stops are arbitrary. At Greenville, I missed the Greenlink bus (a shuttle that links to the CAT Bus), because I waited at a different spot. It turned out the afternoon bus driver stopped at a different spot from where the morning driver stopped. I asked people at Clemson in Greenville, but nobody knew the right bus stop. There were no signs either.

I called the Greenville station and their advise was to wait where I was dropped off -- which is what I did and why I missed the afternoon bus in the first place. So the morning driver stopped at a different location than the afternoon driver, and no one knew, not even the folks at the terminal. So I had to wait 2 hours for the hourly shuttle. The Greenlink bus is not a free service.

The CATBus offers a free handout of the schedules and the stops -- but the publication and information it contains are not designed to help people unfamiliar with the territory. I am trying to come up with a redesign of the handout, but that's for another day.

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See also: Why the CATBus schedule handout is confusing

How not to design toilets

This photo, which I took from a mall in Metro Manila, says it all. As Stan Lee would have said, "'Nuff said."

The Origin of Jejenese (or, Jejenomics)

Image from: journalism.co.uk

Just a thought.

The standard mobile phone keyboard contains the following character clusters:

A B C

D E F

G H I 

J K L

M N O

P Q R S 

T U V

W X Y Z 

Reading from left to right, we assign a value of 1 on the leftmost character and increment it by 1 as we move to the right. We do this for each row and return to 1 when we start a new row.

Thus:

A = 1

B = 2

C = 3

D = 1

E = 2

F = 3

...

W = 1

X = 2

Y = 3

Z = 4

With me so far? 

Good. Next.

Lets call the numbers "letter weights". A letter weight is the number of taps on a key you need to display a letter. Example: to type a lowercase 'c', we need to tap the 2 key three times. 

To display a number 5 in a Nokia phone, you need to press the 5 key for about half a second. Knowing that, we assign a number weight = 1.5 for numbers.

Now, a "word weight" is the total of the letter weights in a word.

Example: 

"dito" has a word weight of 9. That is (d=1) + (i=4) + (t=1) + (o=3)

Compare this to "d2" with a word weight of 2.5. (d=1) + (2=1.5)

The average texter will have their autospell feature turned off. In the absence of autospell, the goal of a frequent texter (eg, jejemon) is to conserve key-taps. This means using characters that have the lowest weights possible. 

Let's test this theory on Jejenese words and compare them with normal spelling.

"jejeje": word weight = 9

"hehehe": word weight = 12

"eow p0h" is the Jejenese equivalent to the geek greeting "hello, world" (note that that's a zero between 'p' and 'h'). It has many variants in jejenese, but this most basic form represents a more jejenomic way of spelling an otherwise weighty "hello po". I'll leave it to you to do the math to compare its word weight with "hello po".

Why is the phrase terminated with an 'h' if the Jejenese really wanted to conserve? I have to theories on this anomaly.

One, the phrase used to be spelled "eow p0" but p0 might be read as p-zero, so the 'h' was added to emphasize that it's to be read as "po".

Two, after a while, Jejenese needed the equivalent of signature flourishes (or poetic license, if you may), so the 'h' was added as an embellishment.

Anyways, this is what happens to a bored and stressed out Silicon Carne.  :)

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This post was quoted in a thesis written by Joseph Cataan at the UP College of Mass Communication. Link: Read at Scribd.

From Motorist to Commuter: 3 Conditions to Convert Me to Use Public Transportation

MMDA recently proposed a new car coding scheme that would increase the car ban from once to twice a week. No wonder Dan Brown saw Manila as the gate to hell, despite its being purportedly Catholic (but that's another story). As expected, motorists protested this and cursed MMDA.

I actually like to take public transit. But in Manila, I hate taking the bus and train. Buses stop everywhere and it takes forever for me to get to Point B. Taking the train is also hell, especially at rush hour in MRT. Some stations have no proper ventilation and there are no schedules that would help me plan my commute. I am sure this is why motorists would rather pay high fuel prices, risk the hypertensive-inducing stress of driving, and incur expensive maintenance fees for owning cars, than take the bus or train.

I think that people like me would be willing to cooperate with MMDA, so long as commuting becomes painless in Manila. And for that, we need these systems-based solutions to be in place.

First, improve the bus transit system. Rid the streets of illegal buses. Revoke licenses of  notorious violators (including those who do not give monthly salaries to drivers and conductors). Enforce schedules and routes. Implement a bus rapid transit (BRT) system which would include making the stations comfortable and able to big enough to accommodate the volume of passengers.

Second, improve the light rail system. Decommission the small carriages of MRT and replace them with large cars that could take on the volume of passengers at EDSA. Connect MRT to the LRT line. Implement the single ticketing system among the three lines and also with buses.

Third, improve the security in the mass transit systems. Self explanatory.

Sort these things out and you will convert me and others like me. I enjoy commuting actually. Trains and bus schedules are the first thing I study when I am in a new city. I am easy to convert. So MMDA, instead of looking only at the symptoms, for once, deal with the root causes of why we favor motoring over commuting.

Why "Online Libel" Misses the Point

'Freedom is not worth having if it does not connote freedom to err. It passes my comprehension how human beings, be they ever so experienced and able, can delight in depriving other human beings of that precious right.' -- Mahatma Gandhi, 1931

There's something wrong about the concept of 'online libel'. A story published in traditional media goes through a gauntlet of revising, editing and printing/broadcasting. When it gets printed, it's permanent. It also takes a large amount of effort and money for the aggrieved to refute what gets printed/broadcast/published. 

Hence libel in a way seeks to rectify the permanence by forcing the media establishment to admit it did wrong and to retract its statement in the same venue, at their own expense. It is a way to enforce fairness. 

Individually produced blogs, Twitter accounts and FB pages do not have the same mode of production. Content in online media is ephemeral and can easily be retracted/revised. You could easily set up your own blog, FB page and Twitter account to make counter-claims to defend yourself. 

Lastly, traditional libel cases almost always involve the publisher too, which gives the author the resources needed for defense. This is almost always not going to happen in 'online libel'. Are they going to sue Facebook, Google, Twitter, and YouTube too because they 'published' the offending articles? Most likely not. In that case, the author is left to fend for herself.

Maybe the online libel provision will force online content producers to be more prudent and to check facts before they post something potentially damaging. But it will harm freedom of speech more by scaring ordinary people into subservience.

The Legislature couldn't grasp the concept that online media is a conversation between equals, rather than a one-way communication from the powerful media owners to the powerless consumers. Online media self-correct far more easily and quickly than traditional media. 

Passing this law and other similar ones -- like for example the criminalization of "camcording," which used to be a neutral term -- shows how detached our lawmakers are from the real world. In the age of social media, they are still struggling with outdated, outmoded concepts of media production and consumption. 

I'm very disappointed at how our lawmakers behaved in this debate. Sen. Sotto acted with impunity, using his position of power to get back at his critics. Sen. Cayetano washed her hands, saying she read her portion of the bill and left the rest for the others. PNoy said he read it thoroughly and found nothing wrong with it. 

These events just show that our current batch of politicians do not understand the age of social media. The first set of politicians who grasp the issues and make the right stand will win over the netizen voters. After all, we are a young population and the internet is occupied by us.

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Other opinions: 

• Electronic Frontier Foundation's take. "In the Philippines, where the Internet is free from censorship, President Benigno Aquino III recently signed into law the Cybercrime Prevention Act of 2012, a troubling development for free expression."
• Forbes Magazine opinion. "Now, as someone who has been the target of many a vicious attack from commenters or forum posters, I can understand frustration with the nature of online anonymous criticism. But to actually try to make such a thing illegal? You wade into dangerous waters that anything resembling freedom of speech will likely drown in. " 

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Wrote this previously in a Facebook status -- because I couldn't see where my link to Notes went after FB's overhaul. Posting it here, with some amplifications after the initial comments and questions from friends.

Remembering Tang Ben

I'm interrupting the normal IT stuff in this blog to remember my father, Tang Ben, who unexpectedly passed away last September. I'm doing this because some of his grandkids never got to meet and know how kind, funny, and inventive Lolo Ben was.

Tang Ben knew how to cook. He had several killer dishes in his repertoire, but my favorite (my wife's too), was his asadong manuk. Asadong manuk was reserved for special days -- fiestas and birthdays. He would marinate the chicken in toyo and kalamunding for a day. Then, the chicken would go through an elaborate process of sauteeing and braising and frying. 

Whenever he served it, the dish never lasted long on the table. So he would set aside a half-chicken or more for me and Data. 

Tang Ben said he learned to cook when he worked in his aunts' carenderia. I think what really distinguished his cooking style was his inventiveness. He would experiment a lot -- sometimes with undesirable results. We'd be honest with him when this happened, and he always took it in stride. His strength was learning from his experiments and doing better every time.

We used to have long lunches and dinner, with the elders lingering at the table, telling all sorts of stories. "Peace time" stories were a hodge-podge of prewar and, confusingly, war stories. One of the favorite recurring stories then was about the old toilets, which were elevated outhouses with a hole on the floor and a long stick. The stick's purpose was to push away the pig who would wait downstairs for your number 2 (gross!).  

When Tang Ben was going to school at Calulut as a kid, so he told, whenever it would rain, he had no other place to seek shelter so he would crawl into one of the open niches in the cemetery along the way.  Tang Ben used this story to explain why he was sensitive to spirits (and he had firsthand ghost stories to tell!).

All lunches and dinners would always have a round of jokes or real-life funny stories. But those are for future blog entries.

One of my earliest memories as a child were of him using a trick to make me go to bed. He would lift a small part of the kulambo, making it look like a tent, and would tell me, "Camping! Camping! Quick!" And I would rush to bed, crawling inside the hole.