Month: January 2021

I love my toilet seat.

Some product are so well designed that they bring delight every single time you use them. My toilet seat is a slow-close toilet seat. That means I don’t have to worry about it slamming down with an ear-splitting BANG! I don’t have to lower it with anxious care. Just give it a tip and it floats … gracefully … downward like an autumn leaf dropping noiselessly onto still water. I always HATED that bang, so it makes me happy every time, knowing blissful silence will prevail.

I know there’s nothing especially novel or groundbreaking about my slow-close toilet seat. You probably have one too. I only mention it as an example of delightful design. But now I’m going to give you some news you really can use.

Friends, this is the Canary Corrugated Cardboard Cutter, designed by a Japanese super genius and shipped to your door for less than ten dollars. Of course, it’s only useful if you happen to have a lot corrugated cardboard sitting around. What’s that, my friend? You DO have a lot of corrugated cardboard sitting around? Because every single thing you’ve purchased since last March, from your yoga mat to individual slices of cheese, comes packaged in corrugated cardboard? And your garage is stacked from floor to ceiling with the stuff?

In that case, my friend, this product is going to change your life. It makes me blush to pitch it like a copywriter in heat, but I’m only saying this because I want my joy to be your joy. This cutter has, as of this writing, 2402 five-star ratings on Amazon. In the comments people have written love poetry to it.

In my pre-Canary days, my wife would ask me to break down boxes for recycling and I would dread the chore. Even with serious box-cutter razor blades, it was slow work, stressful on the hands and wrists. Not to mention the ever-present threat of slicing an artery. The folks at the recycling center frown on cardboard that has been dowsed with jets of hot blood.

The Canary is so cleverly designed that it presents no danger of blood-letting, yet it is effortlessly lethal to the box. I wield it like a tiny lightsaber, burning through cardboard sinews and joints. Then I stare at it in admiration, wondering how it manages its work so well. It is almost a pleasure to dispatch a big box into the tasty flakes that my recycling bin can ingest. As with the toilet seat, an erstwhile source of stress recedes and you are deposited into a quieter, a brighter world. A saner world. Pray enjoy it before you become accustomed!

Buy it here: Canary Corrugated Cardboard Cutter

The box it ships in will be the last box you open without it.

I enjoyed this Long Now talk by open source researcher Nadia Eghbal. If you can’t be bothered to read her book, here’s a good summary of what she’s learned.

TL;DR: Nobody got into software because they love maintenance.

Related: Nobody ever became a teacher because they love grading.

I love one of the stories she ends with. She quotes someone who says that being a maintainer is like the movie “Good Will Hunting”, but in reverse: you start out as a respected genius, and you end up as a janitor who fights with strangers.

One of the ideas she mentions is that “maintainer” is not such a great word. We might be better off using a word like “steward”, something that acknowledges the community-centric work of dealing with lots of people to manage a valuable public resource.

The distinction between making and maintaining gets at the point that open source is really two things. One is a static artifact. Here it is. You can have it. It’s my gift to you. The other is a service. I’m using your code, and I expect you to keep it up-to-date, fix any bugs, add my favorite features, and so on. We perceive the code as an object, but we consume it as a service. Intrinsic motivation is sufficient for the giving of the gift. That’s an event. But providing a service is a job, an ongoing obligation. And that demands extrinsic motivation. I didn’t sign up for that. For that, you need to pay me.

I don’t mind throwing you a party, but I won’t pump your gas.