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I may just be exceptionally lazy or as I like to think of it
exceedingly efficient, but I find myself not using more
than
two buttons on my microwave. If I throw in a veggie
sausage, I don't bother with punching the 4, then moving
my finger to the 0, then over to the start. No, I just hit
44
start. See the time and attention span savings? That's a
whole (looking for 0 button) and a (re-aiming finger)
saved.
Is my sausage a bit overdone? If I ever know the correct
number within 4 seconds I need to start eating fewer
sausages and find something better to do with my life.
Of course I can never be the **absolute genius** that
invented the "add 30 seconds" button (a feature I will
surely have on my next device). Or the
**underappreciated
visionary** that created the timer dial (sadly a feature
that
is waning in popularity, perhaps due short
mechanical life compared with buttons). But I hope this
idea can save you all a (very) little time.
The Exp bar is simply a touch sensitive strip below your
keypad for advanced and lazy users. It ranges from the
trivial Exp(1) = 1 second to the perhaps excessive Exp(9)
=
8103 seconds. For my veggie sausage I'd jab somewhere
around 3.7 on the scale, the display reads 40.447s
and
it immediately starts cooking (no Start button, please).
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Annotation:
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//Exp(9) = 8103 seconds// Useful for reheating brussels sprouts. |
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I've membrane switches, so timing tends to be :23, :45, 1:23, 2:34, 3:21, 3:45 ... poke and slide. |
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I'd suggest a formula of (15*2^x) seconds with x
going from 0 to 5. This gives you six buttons, with
timings of 15s, 30s, 60s, 2m, 4m, 8m |
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My rice-cooker regularly wants a 13 minute setting,
so can we add a couple of extra buttons on there
please? |
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I do like dials on things, be they microwaves,
radio-tuners or volume knobs. I particularly like
those free-
wheeling dials that are velocity sensitive, so a
fast twist to the right will jog the value more
quickly
than a gentle turn for more fine-tuned adjustment.
Thinking about it, there is an alternate
"spin-and-wait"
paradigm I have on my mouse scroll wheel - where
you press a button to disengage the "clicker"
and then give
it a flick to spin like a flywheel, and scroll all
the way down the text of whatever License
Agreement I'm
currently ignoring. I quite like the physicality of
spinning a weighted wheel, stepping back and
letting the
spin get you to where you want to be, setting-wise.
On a microwave, replacing the regular dial
with a big naval free-spinning valve-wheel (what
are those things called?) might be a nice way to
go. |
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Does it help that 13 is in the Fibonacci sequence? |
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Could do - it depends on how much rice I'm cooking!
I've been trying to get the perfect "omurice" and
currently a cupful of rice for 13 minutes seems to be
the sweet spot. |
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What I think we can all agree on is that whoever
invented the recipe-specific buttons on a microwave
should probably be taken out and gently reeducated. Imagine a hob where each
ring/burner has 30 settings, one for fried eggs, another for boiling water,
another for soup, another for asparagus and so on forever. A nightmare
scenario. |
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Take it from us, that doesn't work. You need to go with the random, violent beatings. |
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Time doesn't exist except in your mind. So wing it...a warm
bun nonetheless. |
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But reality is still here, right ? |
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Someone should really answer [wjt]. |
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Yes, as far as we can tell reality is still here. Sorry for leaving
you hanging for a few days on something so important. |
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Maybe it wasn't for a few days |
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