January 2012
1 post
October 2011
2 posts
Why did Steve Jobs always wear the same thing?
I’ve just listened to a Mixergy interview with Jonathan Fields on the subject of dealing with uncertainty. (Note the interviews are only free to watch for a few days, though you may find them later on the podcast feed.) This bit made something click:
So everything that happens, all the mundane stuff in their life around, they created a process, it becomes completely ritualized. They...
September 2011
2 posts
Kindle Pricing
It’s an often used marketing ploy: you give the customer 3 choice to help them make the middle decision.
Kindle
Kindle Touch
Kindle Touch 3G
“hmm, the Kindle is only $79. Maybe I will get one. Why not, at that price?” Impulse purchase.
“Kindle Touch is only $20 more, and I get that extra functionality. Would be silly not to. It’s not like I’m getting the...
United States risk killing an innocent man tonight
Apparently emails are being blocked, but this is an email that I at least tried to send to the people who are risking executing an innocent man tonight; legally; in the United States of America where is still considered acceptable to commit capital punishment.
Some in my country want to reintroduce it, but I think enough people are against it that we won’t return to such a barbaric...
June 2011
1 post
Things I did today
Learnt to fly
Swam in a pool of lava
Had a date on the moon
Chatted with a cross dresser
Went to a live gig
Drove a Ferrari
Took a cab ride and didn’t pay (feel bad about that)
Swam with sharks
Danced in a room of naked people (I was one of the few who stayed dressed)
Had sex twice
Only after that did I find myself a free detachable penis
Sat on top of a floating rabbit
Waited...
May 2011
2 posts
There IS a market for tablets
Quoting from: There Is No Tablet Market:
There is an growing notion that it is impossible to compete with the Apple iPad. The tablet market isn’t a tablet market. It’s an iPad market and it is largely limited to Apple. Does that mean that PC makers have to surrender?
And:
Would it matter, if there was a perfect Android-iPad clone? Would you buy it? My arrogant prediction: You won’t and if...
“Art is not like other culture because its success is not made by its audience....”
– Banksy ‘Wall and Piece’
April 2011
2 posts
What does 50% in AV actually mean?
Therese Coffey, the Conservative MP for Suffolk Coastal, has kindly been responding to me in a discussion on the Alternative Vote (AV). It started with this tweet from her:
Bbc continues to pump rubbish that to win with AV requires >50% of vote when its own R5L test showed you didn’t. Bias? #no2AV
To which I responded:
Of course a candidate needs more than 50% of the vote....
March 2011
1 post
They is a Firewoman
From a Seth Godin post:
If a well functioning adult puts in sufficient time and the effort, she’ll succeed.
This continues to wind me up.
Back in the days when we were more sexist, we may have said such things as ‘how many policemen are currently on the beat’ or ‘how dangerous is it to be a fireman?’. But then we became more politically correct and now we call them...
December 2010
4 posts
“Most startups are in “informed pessimism” and heading to a “crisis of meaning”....”
– How New Ideas Almost Killed Our Startup
US State Department Unleash Weapon of Mass...
From the Guardian again, because their live blog doesn’t have permalinks:
5.30pm: With perfect timing an email arrives from Philip Crowley at the state department:
The United States is pleased to announce that it will host Unesco’s World Press Freedom Day event in 2011, from 1-3 May in Washington, DC.
Ironic? Read the next paragraph from the press release:
The theme for next...
The Culture of Mistrust
The Guardian report:
Hill says Iraqi leaders are careful to avoid harsh criticism of Saudi Arabia’s role for fear of offending the Americans, Riyadh’s close allies. But resentments simmer below the surface.
Diplomats insist that their job has to be done in secret. Their argument is that this secrecy allows them to be frank and honest. What it actually leads to is lies and...
Clusterloops
While Wikileak stories seem to be focusing on Russia today, another story from late last night caught my attention. The Guardian reports (with my emphasis):
British and American officials colluded in a plan to hoodwink parliament over a proposed ban on cluster bombs, the Guardian can disclose.
According to leaked US embassy dispatches, David Miliband, who was Britain’s foreign secretary...
November 2010
2 posts
“In this sense, most of the media commentary on the latest round of leaks has...”
– Julian Assange and the Computer Conspiracy; “To destroy this invisible government”
The First Time
The Smiths were one of those bands that were active when I was a kid. We’re all born into an existing culture and for a while it’s just there, being taken for granted. The radio played them and I must of heard them hundreds of times without really paying attention. For all I knew I was born with these songs in my head.
Then one day, during my teens after I’d started paying...
October 2010
5 posts
“Our story begins with the Orient, not merely because Asia was the scene of the...”
– From the preface of The Story of Civilization: Our Oriental Heritage by Will Durant.
I’m hopping all over the place in my history studies at the moment, but rarely have I hopped back to before Ancient Greece and then only really to Egypt. Time to see what I’ve been missing.
Gap iFrame Fail
I wasn’t even going to say anything about Gap’s new logo, but when I went to check it out on their website I found myself distracted by a popup message:
No, I didn’t know that, so I clicked through to investigate and got:
Yes, the EU version of the site in a tiny iFrame.
To be fair, this is just a bug (for some reason they have an iframe within another iframe as you can see...
Ubuntu Update Manager Messages
Here’s something you’d never find on Windows or Mac. This is part of a description of changes made during a regular operating system update on Ubuntu:
Some idiot thought it’d be a good idea if device mapper didn’t respond to “add” events, like those during boot. Take their change out back and shoot it in the head. LP: #561390.
The link is for the issue...
Think Different. Think Linux.
Apple’s Think Different advert… this one…
… is a very apt advert for Apple itself. Apple really do upset the status quo, they do think different, they do change things. Many of the people who use Macs do too.
But we all know how Apple like to control. Think Different speaks to creative people who want the freedom to be creative and change the world, but Apple...
Put Down that Coke and Sugar Pie
Jamie Oliver a few years ago started a campaign to get British schools on track with their school meals. He received a lot of resistance (more from adults than children) but his energy and love of food and respect for the kids is amazing. That, and helped because he’s on the telly, meant he’s been getting stuff done, getting more people to get behind his mission and our kids are...
September 2010
9 posts
WatchSwallowed by sandstorm
“With academics, you’re looking at something that politicians have some...”
– Ben Goldacre - The Coming Brain Drain
WatchKeegan Meegan Press & Bindery. (Vimeo page.)
“Don’t confuse legibility with communication.”
– David Carson in the ‘Helvetica’ film.
“I was in Disney World recently, specifically the part of it called the Magic...”
– In the Beginning was the Command Line by Neal Stephenson
Britain Declares War on Germany →
“At 11.15am, the news that the country is at war is communicated to the population of the United Kingdom. Chamberlain’s famous words are followed by government announcements warning that air raids are expected to follow quickly.” — original BBC broadcast from 3rd September 1939.
August 2010
21 posts
“The Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias in which an unskilled person makes...”
– Wikipedia
Barefoot shoes try to outrace the black market →
Unsatisfied customers, unaware that they bought fake shoes from counterfeiters, have started returning the bogus copies to Vibram itself (often using the fake Vibram return labels provided by the counterfeiters).
Fake return labels! How incredibly cheeky is that?
Pencil Tip Micro Sculptures - wow! →
boagworld:
This just boggles my mind. How the hell is that even possible?
Girl quits her job on dry erase board, emails... →
How neutrality locks in the web's 'Hyper Giants' →
Google would, of course, be insane not to use their size to their advantage. It’s what all corporations do. It’s why I don’t like massive corporations. If you have big feet, you can’t help but step on others’ toes.
Google Against Net Neutrality
A summation of the press release for the Google/Verizon policy proposal on net neutrality:
1. They want to enforce net neutrality on the existing Internet.
2. They want to use the same infrastructure to support a premium prioritised internet which basically means point 1 is bollocks.
3. They won’t even pretend to support net neutrality on the the mobile internet. Mobile internet services...
Addict
I never feel the need to drink more than a couple of pints. I don’t smoke cigarettes; I don’t smoke a pipe. I don’t take drugs; sometimes, but rarely I take an aspirin if my head doesn’t feel quite right. I like sex a lot, but I don’t need to think about it all day and all night. I’ve rarely gambled because I lost a tenner once and that wasn’t something I...
1 tag
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (quick thoughts)
On the book; I’ve not seen the film. No plot spoilers.
The characters made decisions that I thought were stupid, but I bought their motivations for doing so (people do stupid things in real life too). The story was mostly sound and neatly structured; although it lead to a relatively slow ending that I wasn’t too interested in. The whole book is actually paced quite slowly, but that...
Google Wave
So Google Wave is dead.
I was those who were excited about the potential of Google Wave when it came out. I understand the issues with email and the goal of replacing it with something more powerful and flexible seemed like a solid idea. A crazy and audacious goal perhaps, but that just made me like it all the more.
Yet I never even tried Google Wave. I heard too many reports that it was...
“Once he had the Mac address, Kamkar then showed how it was possible to use a...”
– Warning! You can be found and Hacker demonstrates how | Geek with Laptop (via mikecane)
Sherlock (contains some spoilers)
I loved the first episode of Sherlock. I liked the second, but I lost the love. Why the difference?
The most annoying part of the episode was how pathetic the police are. Ideally I’d have liked to see Lestrade develop as a character in some way. Instead we got another detective who may as well have been replaced by a cardboard cutout for all the good he was doing. Sherlock is supposed to be...
1 tag
"WikiLeaks must be stopped"
Marc A. Thiessen for the Washington Post writes:
Let’s be clear: WikiLeaks is not a news organization; it is a criminal enterprise.
[…]
Assange seems to believe, incorrectly, that he is immune to arrest so long as he stays outside the United States. He leads a nomadic existence, operating in countries such as Sweden, Belgium and Iceland, where he believes he enjoys the protection...