PC Mechanic, New Article

Posted: 26 Apr 2011 03:00 AM PDT

Recently I walked into a department store where roughly a third of the property was under renovation. As such, they had to move a few departments to other locations within the store while the renovations were taking place.

Several signs were printed out and posted that directed people where to go – and every single one of them was in largest-possible-size-for-8.5×11-sheet Times New Roman.

Sigh…

TNR is the "Derpy derp derp I dunno how to select a font derpy derpy doo" maneuver. It’s almost as bad as using Comic Sans. Don’t do it.

This is what you need to remember about the TNR font:

It’s a serif font. This means the little tails (the serifs) are best suited for close-range reading – not for signage.
At a distance, those tails do in fact blur the letters. This means you have to walk closer to the sign just to read it, completely defeating the purpose of the sign in the first place.
A sign using an 8.5×11 white sheet with black TNR text is guaranteed to be ignored, even if its in plain sight for everyone to see. This is a psychological thing where somehow we’ve been conditioned to ignore anything with TNR on it over the years. Don’t ask me why this is because I don’t know – but it’s true. If you want your sign ignored, black TNR on white paper is guaranteed to make that a reality.

If you’re going to make a sign, use Arial Bold, Arial Black or some other sans-serif font. It will be easier to read, get more attention and get the job done properly.

It also helps if you use ‘loud’ paper (bright yellow, bright green, bright orange, etc.) Signs are supposed to get attention, so loud-paper use is OK.

Post from: PCMech. Helping Normal People Get Their Geek On And Live The Digital Lifestyle.

Don’t Use Times New Roman To Make Signs

Should You Start Calculating Fuel Price By Mile?

Posted: 25 Apr 2011 07:00 AM PDT

The price of fuel in the Tampa Bay area of Florida (where PCMech is based) is around $3.75 per gallon at the time I write this. Depending on where you are in the world, you’re either going to say that’s really cheap or really expensive. However this is not an article about the price of fuel but rather but rather lessening the psychological impact the price has on you.

The vast majority of people determine when to fill up a car with fuel by means of the fuel gauge and nothing more. If you change this to filling the fuel when you reach a certain number of miles on your trip odometer, you’ll know how much you’re going to spend and furthermore won’t have to spend as much.

Determining how much you pay per mile in fuel cost is easy to do. It’s the price-per-gallon divided by your average MPG.

"But I don’t know my average MPG."

No problem. The next time you fill up, reset your trip odometer to zero. On the next fill-up after that, divide the trip odometer’s figure by the gallons you put in your car. For example, if you have 250 miles on your odometer and it took 12 gallons of fuel to fill the tank, 300 / 12 = 16.7, so your average MPG for that 250 miles driven was 16.7 MPG.

Now you take that MPG figure and divide it by the current price-per-gallon to determine price-per-mile. Using the above example, at the current per-gallon price of $3.75 in Tampa Bay, 3.75 / 16.7 = 0.22, so price-per-mile is $0.22.

Once you have the price-per-mile figure, you now have a much better idea of what you’re going to spend at the pump. At $0.22, you know that every 50 miles will cost you 11 dollars, meaning every 100 is 22 dollars, every 200 is 44 dollars and so on.

The idea here is to fill up based on your trip odometer reading and not the fuel gauge needle.

If you made a decision to fill the tank every time your trip odometer hits 100 miles, paying $22 at the pump is a lot easier on the nerves compared to filling the tank when it’s almost empty (which can easily be over $50 these days).

While it is true your gas mileage will suffer slightly from carrying around the extra weight of the fuel, you do in fact save money by filling up more often. If you make a habit of filling every 100 miles, you won’t spend as much should the price of fuel go up, nor will you spend as much should the price go down (unless the price bottomed, which is unlikely).

Another perk to filling up this way is that you don’t have to hunt and peck around for the lowest price-per-gallon. If the station 5 miles from your house is $3.85 per gallon while the one 10 miles from your house is $3.75, you fill up at the $3.85 station because when only filling 100 miles worth of fuel, that additional $0.10 per gallon won’t be noticeable. For 5 gallons worth, it means you’re only spending an extra 50 cents in total.

In closing, no this will not increase the MPG of your car. In reality it will probably stay the same. The goal here by knowing price-per-mile and filling every 100 is to calm nerves. You won’t be spending as much at the pump each time you go there, and have the option of using other fuel stations that have slightly higher prices knowing you probably won’t be spending more than 50 cents extra in total.

Post from: PCMech. Helping Normal People Get Their Geek On And Live The Digital Lifestyle.

Should You Start Calculating Fuel Price By Mile?