D.I.Y.
Cn yu rd ts?
Hendrik Hertzberg, senior editor of The New
Yorker, is a fan of TypeIt4Me. He wrote: “I’ve
discovered that this program is absolutely
great as far as writing is concerned. Having
built my data file one word at a time, I can,
for the first time, write as fast as I can think.
Or, to type those two sentences with expansion turned off: iv dscvd ta th prg s absl gr
afa wrig s ksnd. Vg blt my data file one word
at a ti, i c f t first ti wri as fast as i c tq.”
email the same (or similar) message to people
on occasion.
The key to TypeIt4Me is to start slow. Define a
few abbreviation-expansion pairs each day, and
see what “sticks.” Which ones do you naturally
remember? Which ones do you use a lot? It takes
some time to get really effective with TypeIt4Me,
but like any sound investment, the returns compound over time. I use most of the expansions
every month, whether through a misspelling, a
URL, a password, or for any other reason. My
typing is fast.
But here’s the important thing: I still add new
expansions almost every day. I am determined
to continue getting faster, more accurate, and
more efficient in my bit-creation at every opportunity. TypeIt4Me isn’t shareware that you
install, define a few things in, and then call it a
day. No. TypeIt4Me is a bit-lever — one essential
component of bit literacy — and as such it requires an ongoing commitment toward mastery.
Efficiency isn’t something you accomplish in a
day; it’s something you grow into. It’s a way
of life.
Finally, a word of warning: if you use TypeIt4Me
diligently for a few weeks and begin to realize its
benefits in your efficiency, you will NEVER — read
me, now — you will NEVER want to go back to a
machine that doesn’t run it. You will curse every
Internet cafe PC that stupidly requires you to
type every character; you will mutter under your
breath on your friends’ machines; you will be
spoiled for life. But you will have seen the light.
Isn’t that worth it?
Mark Hurst is the founder of the media company Good
Experience, Inc. (
www.goodexperience.com).
A MAKER STORY
Salad-Bowl Hacking
Pizza Huts in China have a rule: only one trip to the salad
bar. Naturally, customers heap as many items as they can
into the small bowls. But some Pizza Hut regulars have
turned salad stacking into a science, creating pillars of
vegetables that dwarf the bowls that support them. Here are
some images from a salad-bowl hacking manual written by a
27-year-old sofware engineer in China named Shen Hongrui.
Download the PDF document (in Chinese) at
www.tinyurl.com/
66vsn.
The secret to stacking a salad bowl is to begin with a stable foundation on which to construct a veritable tower of herbivorous delight.
4
!!?
3
2
1
Think of cucumber slices and pineapple chunks as bricks, and salad
dressing as mortar.
5678
To eat your creation, reverse the stacking procedure, substituting
your mouth for the salad bar.
154 Make: Volume 01
