This week the great TC from T-Nation takes you through his Glitter Gym in San Diego. He doesn’t name the gym, but I believe it is in La Jolla. If you can get past the blinding gold text on black background, the article is titled Where it Rains Doughnuts and Boobs.
One of his stories was frighteningly similar to one of mine. From Tales From the Glitter Gym – Locker Room Edition:
Thats a Hand Dryer! – You may never forget to bring your own towel to the gym after hearing this tale. When I entered the locker room, I thought I saw out of the corner of my eye some dude drying his hands at the hand dryer.
When I exited the locker room, I saw what he really was doing.
He was standing on his tip toes and positioning his junk up to the dryer. After leaving the shower, he didnt have a towel so he was aiming the hand dryer at every part of his wet body. I got the hell out of there before he turned around to dry his backside.
From TC’s article this morning:
Don’t Hair-Dry Your Balls. Why can’t I walk into the locker room of my gym without being greeted by the sight of some old bastard, one foot on top of the counter, crotch spread wide like a model in a Hustler photo shoot, using a portable hair dryer on his balls? It’s ghastly. Not only that, it makes the room smell like the cheddar-cheese covered popcorn my Nana used to make on her old potbelly stove and it makes me feel nostalgic and sad.
Use a towel on your nads, or maybe do a little manscaping, for Chrissake. Less hair would allow you to dry faster, possibly saving others from having that terrible vision loaded forever onto their mental hard drive.
This is common? Oh no.
TC is a great writer. I’ve been reading him for over a decade. It is sad that his phenomenal web site has such a hideous web design. TC, if you are reading this post, imagine your writing on a clean readable site like the WSJ or Mike Industries.
Rachel
Mar 9, 2009 — 9:01 am
Unfortunately, I was eating breakfast (yogurt) while reading this. 🙂
TigerAl
Mar 9, 2009 — 9:41 am
..and I may never be able to keep food down again 🙂 I don’t like to shower in gyms either..too many people with boundary issues!
Andrew
Mar 9, 2009 — 12:59 pm
Bright text on a dark background is actually easier on the eyes (when reading a monitor). Check out High Contrast Mode in Windows some time. It actually makes it a lot easier to read everything, but some websites and applications don’t properly support it. I sometimes turn it on when I have a head ache, anyway.
MAS
Mar 9, 2009 — 3:16 pm
When it comes to U/I, I look to see what the best and brightest are doing. Companies like Adobe, Yahoo!, Google, M$ and Apple do research on colors, fonts and lay-outs. I have yet to see them return from the lab to offer anything that resembles the T-Nation design. People *strongly* prefer black text on light backgrounds with decent spacing between the lines.
TigerAl
Mar 9, 2009 — 3:01 pm
It seems to be a matter of preference: http://www.weiqigao.com/blog/2004/04/17/using_black_on_white_fonts_in_white_on_black_web_pages.html#comment1176411153462
I have a hard time reading light text on a dark background when I’m tired but I had a legally blind friend who always had his monitor set to a dark background with light colored text because that was the only way he could see what he was working on (interestingly, he was a user-interface designer).
TigerAl
Mar 9, 2009 — 5:26 pm
There is probably much more to the “best and brightest” company sites than just color and space. Check out this link to the site of a well-known usability guru and Google consultant, Jakob Nielsen, and his advice on blog usability: https://www.nngroup.com/articles/weblog-usability-top-ten-mistakes/
He also has a review on Kindle 2 that you may find interesting.
MAS
Mar 9, 2009 — 5:59 pm
Back in 2000, I read Jakob Nielson’s Designing Web Usability book. Between him and Jeffrey Zeldman, I’ve learned enough in the past 14 years not to put small yellow text on a black background. 🙂
TigerAl
Mar 9, 2009 — 6:31 pm
I might have known..your sites do not have any of the design flaws on his list 🙂