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“As about 50,000 Blue Peter badges are awarded to kids every year, the turn of a generation could pass with the details half a million kids being captured on a database.”
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“We have never persecuted anybody in Zimbabwe” from the try-the-other-one-it’s-got-bells-on department…
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Glad this issue is finally getting some real media attention
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“Microsoft does not compete on the merits. Microsoft doesn’t let users choose … it chooses itself what users will have as product.”
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“A tiny, three-wheeled car that could help solve city congestion has been demonstrated at the University of Bath.”
My mate Matt’s (very cool) PhD project is getting some airtime
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“The Tammar Wallaby might just hold an answer to the dilemma of super bugs.”
I heart biomimicry
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“Those of us who care about the future of the planet need to reclaim this moment from those who would have people think that our biggest challenge is picking the most stylish vegan shoes.”
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“Boss! Look Busy!” — LOL. Last time I remember seeing a “boss button” on a game was easily 10 years ago!
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“The site lists many well known companies, and their equivalent geographical numbers.”
Nice idea — gets you numbers that you can use free landline allowance on -
“It’s really scary to turn down most (the average) of what comes your way and hold out for the remarkable opportunities. Scary to quit your job at an average company doing average work just because you know that if you stay, you’ll end up just like them.”
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Check out Scott’s new “Live Search” feature on the top right — very cool!
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Saul’s written a great post talking about all the web-based products he uses to support his company. Some interesting new products I hadn’t seen before and even more interesting rationale for some of the choices.
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“Your computer wastes as much energy being a space heater as it does computing, because most computer power supplies are less than 50% efficient. Want to cut your desktop’s power use by almost half, help it run cooler, and make it more reliable?”
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“I just Flickrbombed”
Eric’s inventing funky new words again
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“Our technological civilisation has formed an abstraction layer that largely hides the immensely complex economic and technological machinery that provides these marvels.”
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Love the image!
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Nice list — especially good if you’re looking for options in a certain category
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Apparently wildlife is thriving in the area around Chernobyl
“Now it’s typical for animals to be radioactive – too radioactive for humans to eat safely – but otherwise healthy.” -
Too many CDs kicking about? Build a CD lamp! I must say, it looks very cool.
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“In our world, most subscriptions are free. No problem, so long as we remember to communicate that clearly.”
Drew makes a very good point — we need to be aware of the “traditional” meanings of these words we’ve coopted -
“Most of Alex’s classmates – including some of the boys – wore bows in their hair in protest until ordered to remove them by the principal.”
Terrible story, but nice to see the other schoolkids supporting her right to dress how she wants. -
This is an absolutely lovely, heart-wrenching story. What particularly struck me is that the gender bias strikes at different stages — tomboy girls have a lot more trouble later on (tweens and teens), whereas lads have huge issues from even toddler stage
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Exactly what it says on the tin.
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Stuff to think on. I get asked about SEO a lot by randoms (usually small business owners) and the advice I almost always give is just: put good content up there, update as often as makes sense and try to use someone who knows about web standards.
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Funky little wallets, card holders, wristbands and things. Might need to get one of the cardholders when my gaffer taped YP railcard holder eventually dies out.
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“There’s really no reason why Microsoft couldn’t do what Google is doing, apart from a couple of decades of bureaucratization and a brand people think of as ruthless and old school rather than progressive and “not evil.”"
I was on the phone to my Mum yesterday and we basically both ended up bitching about the NHS, particularly when we compare it to the South African medical landscape (which, to be fair, we paid for, but still found to be higher quality for less than 11% of our earnings).
What occurred to me when we were having this conversation, is that a lot of the NHS’s problems (e.g. treatment taking a long time, high cost, etc) come about as a result of emergent behaviours because of the rules put in place. For instance, the fact that every practice has been tasked with “keeping costs down” means that for anything expensive, GPs would rather refer someone to a hospital than treat them locally. That way, the eventual cost for the treatment lies in another cost centre.
Another obvious example is the ubiquitous treatment of budget allocation by most government departments — i.e. the “use it or lose it” principle. Because there is no generic, effective measure by which the GOOD use of a department’s budget has been used, the only real metric is whether it was used up/whether they ran out. This is what results in the emergent behaviour of the “last quarter scramble”, when departments will buy all sorts of shit, just to finish using their budget.
So what’s my point? My point is, that instead of employing all these management consultants who fail to build anything useful, the government/NHS should be employing some game designers/theorists. The important thing is not what the rules are, but what emergent behaviour they will result in.
DISCLAIMER: First, I am not a game designer. My knowledge of game theory is not extensive, but when I was doing AI-related research, I got enough of a taste to at least vaguely know what I’m on about. Second, I’m not a part of the NHS — and I apologise if I get some things wrong. My point is not to speak harshly about the PEOPLE in the NHS, but to question the structure/rules.
As some of you may have noticed, either from the link on the sidebar or through my Flickr photostream, Elly and I run a little tribute site on the side. As the tagline will tell you, it’s “Dedicated to the gastronomic decadence of Newcastle’s most wonderful cafe”. On it, we have been attempting to consume and document every item on the Belle and Herb’s menu — and making pretty good progress.
That is to say until last weekend, when we arrived at the cafe with my family, only to find a completely new menu! Not only had they completed revamped, adding a number of new items so that the goalpost is now FAR in the distance (yum!), but they’d also put our blog address on the new menus!
So, basking in this recognition, I thought I would encourage those of you who might not have seen it yet to go over and look at the site. Don’t worry if you don’t live anywhere near Newcastle — just view it as another reason to come and visit us sometime!
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I love the conspiratorial way that the Bloglines team still shares its new features
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Some people doodle in meetings — Matthew writes himself notes in a code that even he can’t understand!
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“If you find yourself 100% in favour of one of the above positions and 100% against the opposing viewpoint, I’m afraid you may be borderline psychotic.”
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“At the moment, I seem to be combining Getting Things Done (process), with Kaisen (philosophy) and the 80/20 principle (decision making), and it’s having a better effect than when I was trying each of them exclusively”
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Scott’s posted his review of the first episode of the new Doctor Who series. I think he’s right, the Oh my God! I’m a CHAV!’ line is going to be a strong contender for Best. Line. Ever.
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Interesting little case study in which the author of 3 “for money” blogs and one personal blog finds that the best (and most profitable) is in fact her personal blog — because it’s HER
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Andy’s taking his design company, Stuff and Nonsense, back to being independent again
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“And underneath both the shiny-new-ness and the usefulness of all these googly things — and the services I use that are part of the yahoo empire as well — is that basic uneasiness about not quite owning myself when I use them.”
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“On MySpace, noone can hear you scream”
ROFTL!
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“If you hate your workout, then try something different.”
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“Adactio — for men” I love the look on Jeremy’s face here… Too funny!
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“I built a potato battery out of 500 pounds of potatoes.”
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Not sure what the real message is: either some subjects are really easy, or students taking those courses are really being screwed on the fees side.
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“Poorly-drawn cartoons inspired by actual spam subject lines!”
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The First Law of Productivity: The importance of a task is inversely proportional to its likelihood of being accomplished.
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“A bit of a departure from what usually goes up around here, I know. But staying on-topic is so 2004.”
Dave talks about his coffee-making obsession. He’s a little … obsessive. But it’s sweet really
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“Eventually, you’ll notice that one of the summer interns you hired is bringing in donuts on Friday morning and selling them for a buck. And I can only hope that you won’t take his profits and use it for a party he’s not invited to.”
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Nice comparison of various video sharing services
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Interesting to see the measures that the Chinese government is insisting on to limit excessive gaming. Quite clueful given the domain…
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“It seems that, for people with ASD, paying attention to a face is much harder to do and doesn’t have the same effect.”
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“If you never learn to be here for this particular moment, you’ll remain a sleepy captive to every anxiety, fantasy, or unintentional habit that’s ever popped into your life. And that, my friends, is a crappy way to go through life.”
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Jon has a nice writeup explaining the rationale and development process for his cool and groovy new logo — nice one!
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I want the exact same thing that Tom is describing — a way to convert all my old photos to digital via some sort of conveyor belt scanning (preferably for negs)
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Tom’s written a more detailed followup to his initial post on TV distribution models. Very interesting thoughts and I must say I tend to agree with him — we’ve been doing this by failing to keep up with TV and just buying box sets for years!
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“Tom Coates: Right. Okay. So basically what you’re saying is that you found the same things entertaining as a labrador would have.”
Elaine has tagged me and so I feel I should complete the meme…
WHERE WAS I…
1 Year Ago?
This time last year I was busy writing up my dissertation, as part of my final year at Bath. Or to be a little more exact, I was struggling terribly with pain from my RSI and getting very very frustrated with NOT being able to finish all my code to my satisfaction, nor get through the dissertation fast enough.
I was also still reeling from my first SXSWi and really trying to understand how it had changed my outlook on life and (perhaps more severely) the impact that would have on my future job satisfaction.
5 Years Ago?
I was working punishingly long hours in a hotel near Leicester. I was averaging around 90 hours per week, starting a banqueting shift at 11am, working through until 3pm and then taking an hour off before starting a 12 hour bar shift (4pm-4am). All this was in aid of saving up money for university, which I would start in September. Given that it is Easter week, I was probably looking forward to working ridiculous hours and getting double-time on the public holidays. Also, at this time of the morning I had probably just arrived at work and was having a large coffee (made half milk, 4 sachets of coffee, 4 sachets of sugar) in a pint glass.
There were some good people there and I enjoyed working with them, but if I’m honest, at this stage I was probably still very home-sick and wishing I could be back in South Africa.
10 Years Ago?
I was a couple of months in to my first year of high school, at Rhenish. It was very exciting, not only because I was living away from home for the first time (as a weekly boarder), but also because I was being taught by English-speaking teachers for the first time. The primary school I had attended close to my parents’ house was overwhelmingly Afrikaans-speaking and so even the “English” classes tended to be taught by vaguely bilingual Afrikaners. This was not a problem, per se, except that it’s difficult to respect a teacher who can’t spell as well as you when you’re 10
Things were generally going well, especially since the new school provided a chance to turn over a new leaf. I’d been a freak and particularly sullen in primary school; high school gave me the opportunity to be a little more positive and living with people day-in, day-out meant it was really difficult to keep up the angry/sullen facade all the time. This was really the beginning of my learning to talk to anybody, anywhere. A lot of the girls I was at school with I still regard as great friends, even if I am crap at keeping in touch now I’m out of the country, and I must say I miss them.
So Who Am I Tagging?
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Look carefully — Jeb Bush has actually said something SENSIBLE for once!
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I love Stef’s custom indoor rainbow. I need to leave more CDs lying around belly up!
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Matt makes some interesting points about the social classifications on Flickr. My personal experience is the opposite — I’m using Flickr more as a way to keep up with friends’ lives and the great photography is a side-benefit
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Some lovely examples of great architecture here
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“Several Hollywood corporations have finally admitted that the real reason they built digital restriction management (DRM) software into PVRs and DVD players was to stop geeks from turning their recording devices into back-alley combat machines.”
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“Boot Camp lets you install Windows XP without moving your Mac data” — NICE. And how fast was that!
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“PDFLab lets you split and join PDF documents as well as insert images and blank pages.”
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The Tories must really hate that the real election campaign is between different people in the SAME political party here in the UK.
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I never thought the Libdems would end up with a leader who’d make me miss the ginger drunk…
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Neutrinos have mass!
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“Foetal Programming” is one of the scariest terms EVER.
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This report reminds me of a Dylan Moran skit where he says “Never mind the security questions, I want to know that YOU aren’t going to let my luggage out of your sight!!”
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37signals appear to be minting it. I wonder whether the transparency about the revenues will help their public image, or make them even more resented
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Fintan’s new Q&A site looks like it might take off for GCSE students in the UK
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Matthew makes an interesting point here : “I own part of their online reputation.”
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Very entertaining illustration of the Mac switch experience
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“Both of which appear to be utterly batshit insane.” — Ben Hammersley reflects on the MySpace and Friends Reunited acqusitions
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“The Professional Comfort Zone is a state of mind where, after a certain amount of accomplishments, you feel you have reached enough of your long-term goal that you no longer need to work as hard and intensively on getting there.”
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“Users use tags to hack the UI. Tagging isn’t just metadata; it’s metadata you can use.”
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“The Doctor has now started ringing me up and singing me songs”
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“Norah Vincent spent 18 months disguised as a man” — that’s some pretty hardcore research! Looks very interesting from the extract, though
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I want the Datahands. Apparently they’ll make my RSI all better.
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Tom has a nice roundup of some recent business-related blog posts
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Maxine reflects on our little shooting trip in Austin this year, as well as questions that guns in general raise for her
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“Given the recent ruling that Google must hand over all emails — including “deleted emails” — in a Gmail account when ordered to do so, we offer this modest proposal for a new feature…”
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Some truly beautiful manmade cityscapes
