my favorite thing i’ve learned in college is that way back in ancient china there was this poet/philosopher guy who wrote this whole pretentious poem about how enlightened he was that was like “the eight winds cannot move me” blahblahblah and he was really proud of it so he sent it to his friend who lived across the lake and then his friend sends it back and just writes “FART” (or the ancient Chinese equivalent) on it and he was SO MAD he travels across the lake to chew his friend out and when he gets there his friend says “wow. the eight winds cannot move you, but one fart sends you across the lake”
i googled this bc i desperately wanted this to be real, and guess what…it is.
the dude’s name was su dongpo (also known as su shi). his original poem went like this:
稽首天中天，
毫光照大千，
八風吹不動，
端坐紫金蓮
(Humbly bowed my head below all skies Minutest lights shine through my deepest bounds Immovable by strong winds from eight sides Upon purplish gold lotus I seated straightly by the low mound) (x)
on which his friend wrote “放屁” (fart, literally), and you know the rest.
The Hubble Space Telescope (HST) is a space telescope that was launched into low Earth orbit in 1990 and remains in operation. Although not the first space telescope, Hubble is one of the largest and most versatile, and is well known as both a vital research tool and a public relations boon for astronomy. The HST is named after the astronomer Edwin Hubble, and is one of NASA’s Great Observatories, along with the Compton Gamma Ray Observatory, the Chandra X-ray Observatory, and the Spitzer Space Telescope.
With a 2.4-meter (7.9 ft) mirror, Hubble’s four main instruments observe in the near ultraviolet, visible, and near infraredspectra. Hubble’s orbit outside the distortion of Earth’s atmosphere allows it to take extremely high-resolution images, with substantially lower background light than ground-based telescopes. Hubble has recorded some of the most detailed visible light images ever, allowing a deep view into space and time. Many Hubble observations have led to breakthroughs in astrophysics, such as accurately determining the rate of expansion of the universe.
This isn’t a story about a client from hell, but I know for a fact that it is advice that comes from dealing with them.
When
I was studying 3D animation and visualization, we did customer projects as a
part of our education. For each project we had a tutor, someone who worked in
the industry and knew the ropes. This is legitimately one of the lessons one of
our tutors gave us:
Tutor:
In our company, we have what we call an “Ugly
Red Blob” method. When a design has been finalized, and it’s time to send it to
the client for final review, the last thing we do is we add a big, red blob
somewhere in the design. The client will look at the mock-up and say: “Okay,
that’s good, but take out that red blob, it doesn’t work with the rest.” The
client gets a feeling that they’ve contributed to the design in a significant
way, and we can get on with our work, without the client trying to micro-manage
every font and color.
