ego.istic.org

I did something very silly at work today. It was very windy, and my desk is at the end of the window where the string that pulls the blind up and down is. The wind blew the string and it managed to catch itself so that it was draped over the corner of my monitor, with the pull at the end covering the corner of the screen. Without even thinking, I batted at it to dislodge it back to its usual place.

The silly thing is, my hand was on the mouse at the time, so I batted at it with my mouse pointer. It took me three or four goes of whacking it out of the way before I realised why this could not work. It was a few minutes before I could stop laughing enough to explain to my by then spooked colleagues what had occurred.

The incident left me not only worried that I am going slowly insane but also concerned that real life could do with a more intuitive interface—more intuitive to compscis, anyway.