Read me?

'Reading the paper' by State
Library of Victoria Collections
under a CC license

This time, I'll stay clear of food science and, for a change, I'll start with the bottom line:

We live busy lives, we do a lot of necessary or not-so-necessary things, most of which compete for our attention. That is why reading has become so difficult. That is why reading (long articles) online doesn't really stand a chance!

Here, I got it out of me. So now I can start again, the normal way this time. But I promise to keep it short. I have to.

I met a friend the other day and, at some point during our conversation, just after starting the 2nd pint, if I recall correctly, I vaguely mentioned something about this blog. The response I got was shockingly honest: "Yes, I know you blog but I haven't read any of your posts." That was the point I started thinking "Hey, you are supposed to encourage me or, at least, discourage me in a gentle way and you have just done neither". Instead of speaking my thought, I took another sip of my beer and said nothing.

The truth is that we get easily distracted. It is not a new thing. After all, distraction is nothing more than an attention shift from what we currently do onto something else. In our cave times, lying on the grass and getting distracted by the sound of animals fleeing at the sight of a hungry tiger could have been a life saver. This is certainly different to reading an article online and getting distracted by a twitter notification but the underlying mechanism remains the same.

There have been studies on that, both academic and informal, such as that on Slate. There are indications that the way we read and interpret, itself, is changing. Some of the observations, such as word/ page scanning, apply to both online and printed media. Regardless, they all seem to converge to the conclusion that keeping our attention on long online articles is tough. Some studies move onto providing advice for content developers (well, in this case, that is me). In brief, the things to do are:

• Put important things on top
• Use emphasis in a way that facilitates page scanning
• Keep it short and simple, avoiding unnecessary web design bells and whistles
• Use photos/ videos/ media contextually related to the text

I promise I'll try to stick to those rules. Although I'm not sure if all of those can be followed every single time. I may give it a try on a post on acrylamide in food.

And for those of you loyal enough to stay undistracted till the end, a great presentation from Apollo Robbins, pickpocket, magician, security consultant, etc. If you want subtitles (in many languages) visit TED.

When old ideas would be just fine

"System power on off switch"
by Dhanu under a CC license

My car had a flat battery the other day. Again.

It's that kind of problem that is simple to understand, quick to realise and easy to solve. But it's annoying. Very annoying. And it really makes you wonder: why cars - all cars - can't have battery indicators; the kind of battery indicators that actually indicate how much juice (and life) the battery still has.

Yes, I know, top end models have it. Newer models, from 2006 onwards, are increasingly featuring things like that. But why does it have to take soooooooo long to have things like that in a car? The charge level indicator is something that every consumer appliance with a rechargeable battery has been equipped with the last few decades. It's nothing too sophisticated. It's an old idea. And if one thinks of modern consumer electronics, such as mp3 players, laptops, etc., one can see that, nowadays, there are much more sophisticated - and precise - ways to predict remaining battery usage time. Judging from the prices of such devices, the electronics in question can't be too expensive.

So why does the car industry ignore that? I understand that a flat battery happens once every 3-4 years but it is still annoying and as a problem it seems extremely easy to prevent (two factors involved: low amount of energy stored in the battery and/or reduced capacity of the battery to store energy). True, the car industry would need to adapt the circuits in question to the specifications of the battery and the consumption patterns of their cars. To be fair, that does involve some work, since - unlike mp3 players - cars have a very wide spectrum of power needs. The immobilizer circuit, for instance, doesn't take too much power to run, but the ignition on the other hand, does. Also, it's the temperature span the battery operates under. Most mp3 players spent their working lifetime indoors or in a pocket heated by the body temperature; car batteries are not that lucky. And on top of that, the automotive industry typically needs to test everything for reliability, both individually and as a whole. But still, how hard can it be?