So what’s wrong with the bike?
missing a metal bar behind the chain
What happens when you ask people to draw a bike (2016)
161–170 of 191 posts
Re: What happens when you ask people to draw a bike (2016)
#162Earlier quoted context omitted.
Most people can accurately trace a line drawing, but can't accurately copy it by eye. Try it for yourself and you should see that your manual dexterity isn't a meaningful bottleneck in your ability to draw. Drafting tools might well be a crutch, but they were considered essential in the days when engineering drawings and technical illustrations were routinely done by hand. If you need to use a spline to draw smooth c…
By the same token, if you need a computer to draw [this or that] so what? Or for that matter, if you need to hire a trained draftsperson to do it, so what? > Most people can accurately trace a line drawing, but can't accurately copy it by eye. Yes, tracing a line drawing has much more direct feedback. The correct line is right there, and there is no need to synchronize imagination with hand movements. (Untrained peop…
> That doesn’t make piano playing an “almost entirely audial skill, with almost trivial mechanical skills” involved.
I'd say it does. I have terrible hand-eye coordination but can play piano at a decent level (whereas I'm distinctly bad at e.g. tennis). Playing a piece I already know on the violin on the piano (or vice versa) is a much simpler exercise than learning a new piece from scratch.
Re: What happens when you ask people to draw a bike (2016)
#163Earlier quoted context omitted.
As odd at is - this[1] design has a couple elements that have been reproduced in the real world. While the exact 2wd system shown in the rendering would have some real issues, 2wd mountain bike systems do exist. They can rely on impressively strange chain routing[2], a system of gears and internal shafts[3], or just an electric hub[4] (which is admittedly, not really the same thing). As far as the one-sided frame goe…
2wd on a bicycle is just plain silly. Weight and friction are such huge disadvantages to overcome. Even on a mountain bike extra traction from the front seems like a very limited benefit. I think Yamaha and Ohlins made a hydraulic motorcycle 2wd prototype. There the loses and weight aren't such a big deal. My understanding was that the extra material you have to add to strengthen the suspension sort of negates any we…
> 2wd on a bicycle is just plain silly. Weight and friction are such huge disadvantages to overcome.
Chains are pretty efficient (otherwise we wouldn't use them in the first place) and the weight difference would be tiny for a normal-weight person. If you've ever skidded in rain or ice 2wd seems like it could make sense.
Re: What happens when you ask people to draw a bike (2016)
#164If you scroll down, the designer has produced images that match some of the ideas from the sketches. They are beautiful and mesmerizing. At first I thought he had actually built out the physical bicycles from the sketches, but it turns out they are just computer renderings. Nonetheless it shows the power of "mistake" driven design, to generate novel ideas.
As odd at is - this[1] design has a couple elements that have been reproduced in the real world. While the exact 2wd system shown in the rendering would have some real issues, 2wd mountain bike systems do exist. They can rely on impressively strange chain routing[2], a system of gears and internal shafts[3], or just an electric hub[4] (which is admittedly, not really the same thing). As far as the one-sided frame goe…
I have a Strida ( http://www.strida.com/ ) which is one-sided on each wheel. It rides just like a regular bike, and means you don't have to take the wheel off to change a tube.
Re: What happens when you ask people to draw a bike (2016)
#165If I sum up : a guy "pesters" (good way to make sure people do a bad job !) a lot of people to draw a bike, selects the 50 most flawed drawings, and HN commenters conclude "people are bad at drawing bikes"?
The experimental process is flawed on so many levels I'm amazed anyone is jumping to a conclusion besides "That's some funny looking bikes here!". Something the author reckons by refraining to conclude anything himself.
Re: What happens when you ask people to draw a bike (2016)
#166What happens when you ask people to make a mobile friendly website?
Most web design has been corrupted by mobile-friendly concepts. It's nice to finally see a site that isn't made crap by giant buttons, whitespace, and thin vertical scroll.
Re: What happens when you ask people to draw a bike (2016)
#167That's odd I noticed this on some vector art just two minutes before seeing this story. https://www.cyclotricity.com/uk/custom/mix-match-your-own-co...
Not to mention the magic drive train.
Re: What happens when you ask people to draw a bike (2016)
#168Earlier quoted context omitted.
> try drawing the simplest of all forms: a straight line My high school algebra/geometry teacher, Fr. Arnold Perham, taught me this crucial skill almost 30 years ago and I use it frequently still and teach my own students how to do it. The trick: put your chalk/pencil/marker at the start of the segment; then look at the other end of the segment and keep your eyes there ; and then draw the line. It's like magic.
Huh, this sounds strongly related to target fixation. Look at your target and your body 'knows' how to go there (or throw there, or...) The classic example is if you're riding a motorbike and you start worrying that you're going to run wide, or hit a tree, or whatever, so you start staring at the side of the road, or the tree... and that's where you go.
Also in tennis: look there the ball should go, not at it as you hit it.
Re: What happens when you ask people to draw a bike (2016)
#169Earlier quoted context omitted.
You conflate geometry and topology * . The topology of the human hand is right in front of you to examine. A lettuce leaf is like a disk plus a wavy boundary and noise. Broccoli is a tree. A bicycle is topologically complex object with high genus. A bad drawing of a hand can still has the right connectivity, it could be smoothly deformed into a realistic hand. Not true for most of these bicycle drawings. * using "top…
> it could be smoothly deformed into a realistic hand. It's probably a good thing that this isn't what defines a drawing as good. A bicycle frame has a couple straight lines and that's about it. A hand, or broccoli, has complex compound curves all over the place. Ask any artist to draw a bicycle and it'll probably end up pretty good. Ask any artist to draw a hand and there's a good chance it'll not end up good, even…
They just need to pull the Escher trick and draw a hand that can draw hands.
Re: What happens when you ask people to draw a bike (2016)
#170Earlier quoted context omitted.
> There are huge differences in drawing ability, but going from "I can't draw" to "I can draw quite well" takes days, not years Maybe for some people, but not everyone. I have developmental dyspraxia, a.k.a. developmental coordination disorder. I'm never going to be good at anything that requires fine motor control. Maybe at best I could get the first few strokes of a drawing to look good, but after that it's going t…
There are a number of excellent artists who have cerebral palsy or tetraplegia. If you have limited fine motor control, you can paint or draw in large-format using gross movements. If you shake or twitch, you can work in mosaic, collage or pixel art. If you can't grasp objects, you can use a typewriter to make pointillist drawings.
To be fair, I've recently gotten into typesetting anime fansubs, and I've found it to be highly rewarding.
It doesn't require any fine motor skills, as it's all done in a really janky scripting language called ASS. I can do all kinds of four-dimensional text transforms just by writing code, and I've been able to produce some wonderful-looking effects.