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Is the Toilet Free?

madebymany.com

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Re: Is the Toilet Free?

#3

That animated background header is making me very motion sick. Ugh.

Similarly, on this meta side conversation, the 3D model of a simple box falls in the "because we can, not because we should" category. I scroll with the mouse wheel, and it was captured by that model viewer the moment it scrolled by.

Enjoyable article, though. Sounds like their solution and its optimistic locking may be susceptible to a race condition, however.

Re: Is the Toilet Free?

#4
I love projects that have a hardware and a software piece like this one does!

The features seem to have gone through a progression based on the hardware available.

The initial thing, a red/green light, could have been done entirely through simple logic built just with transistors and passives. The next iteration, a web-based yes/no, could have been satisfied with an Arduino and Wifi/Ethernet shield, or maybe an Electric Imp. The final phase, tracking duration by toilet, the menu bar helper, etc, requires either some backend infrastructure (if using an Arduino or Electric Imp) or the Raspberry Pi.

The animated header, giant video, and annoying spinning model almost lost me though.

Re: Is the Toilet Free?

#6
post #3

That animated background header is making me very motion sick. Ugh.

Similarly, on this meta side conversation, the 3D model of a simple box falls in the "because we can, not because we should" category. I scroll with the mouse wheel, and it was captured by that model viewer the moment it scrolled by. Enjoyable article, though. Sounds like their solution and its optimistic locking may be susceptible to a race condition, however.

Everything beyond the red/green light falls into the "because we can, not because we should" category.

Does anybody really need a menu bar icon to show them the toilet status? Does this company or its employees benefit in any way from toilet occupancy statistics?

Re: Is the Toilet Free?

#7

That animated background header is making me very motion sick. Ugh.

Yes. Do we really need a 4MB animated GIF for this? The fact that they had to host it on Dropbox instead of their own site should have been a hint that it might be overkill.

I'm just wondering where Instagram comes into play. When I try to go back, it tries to go back to Instagram, which instantly puts me back at the site. Why?

Re: Is the Toilet Free?

#9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. Do we really need a 4MB animated GIF for this? The fact that they had to host it on Dropbox instead of their own site should have been a hint that it might be overkill.

I'm just wondering where Instagram comes into play. When I try to go back, it tries to go back to Instagram, which instantly puts me back at the site. Why?

That was used to host the picture of the Lego model, which is odd because other, larger, images were hosted on their S3 storage.

Re: Is the Toilet Free?

#10
post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Similarly, on this meta side conversation, the 3D model of a simple box falls in the "because we can, not because we should" category. I scroll with the mouse wheel, and it was captured by that model viewer the moment it scrolled by. Enjoyable article, though. Sounds like their solution and its optimistic locking may be susceptible to a race condition, however.

Everything beyond the red/green light falls into the "because we can, not because we should" category. Does anybody really need a menu bar icon to show them the toilet status? Does this company or its employees benefit in any way from toilet occupancy statistics?

The hacker mindset is to do things just because they are possible. Efficiency and benefit are rarely as important as the pure joy of creating or doing things just because you can.

Ruthless efficiency comes into play once you are the owner of a company, but for the engineer the real joy comes from just making stuff.

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