Geeky

Should clicking a link open a new tab (or window)?

January 25, 2011

Deep philosophical musings have once again been prompted by a reader, who complains of losing the way when following links from my posts. They open in the same window, and lead to distractions that move further and further away, and then they realize they can’t get back to where they started, right here. This is [...]

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Two kinds of messing about come together

January 16, 2011

This morning on Facebook I leaked that I had “two kinds of messing about commingling to produce … something rather wonderful”. And finally, the results are in. Not wonderful, but not bad either. Messing about number 1: making Dan Lepard’s Black Pepper Rye bread, in quantity. There’s not a lot I have to add to [...]

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iPhone App madness

January 2, 2011

Theodolite is one of those things that makes me wish I had a use for it. And an iPhone to use it on.

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Spreading myself around

November 15, 2010

I may regret this, but having learned to spread little goodies to followers through Google Reader, I thought I would send them back here to The Mother Ship. Over there, below the Random Photograph. To do that, however, I have to make them available to all and sundry, rather than just to my friends and [...]

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It’s a bear. Got that? A friggin’ bear. Not a raccoon.

November 15, 2010

Here’s a nice, sprightly, startling lede from the review of a new book about pandas. It is one of the more startling revelations in Henry Nicholls’s sprightly history that we still have no idea how many giant pandas there are currently living in the wild. Fewer than 2,000? More than 4,000? Perhaps odder still, there [...]

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Sterile pest does advanced mathematical modelling

November 10, 2010

They therefore asked the US Environmental Protection Agency for permission to dispense with the refuges and instead begin releasing sterile moths, which then conducted mathematical modelling that showed such a strategy could indeed work. SciDev.Net has the scoop on smarter moths, and don’t even think about editing it now; I have the screenshot.

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Writing fast on small devices

November 3, 2010

The 8pen: Writing fast on small devices. I watched the video, and as someone who learned Graffiti on a Palm, it seems to me that this could fly. Wonder when it might be available for my non-Android non-i phone.

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No need to seek elsewhere?

October 13, 2010

After whinging a bit about not being able to keep up here, and contemplating some other platform, I did a bit of looking around and was reminded of this WordPress feature, which I seldom used before: Press It « WordPress Codex. It does make a quick posting pretty easy. Maybe all I need to do to [...]

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Web of Stories: YouTube for the rest of us?

September 20, 2010

People tell me that they can lose hours on YouTube. I don’t get it. Sure, there are millions of good things there. But they are buried among squillions of not such good things. I seldom find anything of stunning interest just by goofing around. So I was pleased, astonished, surprised and delighted to find myself [...]

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Weird hack, or what?

September 16, 2010

Seth Roberts, he of the Shangri La diet, has a blog. I see it in my RSS reader. I was amazed to see a post that seemed to have been, er, penetrated, thusly: So I went to the blog post itself. And lo! all those nasties were invisible. So I checked the source, and they’re [...]

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Find your ice cream

August 12, 2010

I forgot to mention in the account of my ice cream oddysey that as a public service I had created a Google Map of all the places on the original list. I hope it helps someone find what they are looking for. View Gelaterie in a larger map

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When someone gets it, they get it

August 2, 2010

[T]o put it in one bleak sentence, no medium has ever survived the indifference of 25-year-olds. That’s Clay Shirky, explaining to Decca Aikenhead in The Guardian why the print edition of The Guardian (and presumably just about everything else) will be as anachronistic as a telegram in 15 years and gone for good in 50. [...]

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What my phone needs now

August 2, 2010

Someone, please invent an app that I can send an SMS to, which will redirect incoming calls to a number I specify. Yes, I left my phone at home.

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Uh oh

May 18, 2010

iPad with Neo as keyboard. Maybe a folding Matias would work too? It will? Uh oh.

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Keyboard love

April 20, 2010

Clickety clackety click. Yes indeedy, I’m firing on all cylinders here, and the room resounds to the rat-a-tat of my spiffy new keyboard. It’s a Das Keyboard Model S Professional UK and I love it to bits. As a typewriter, it’s the best. Not just the noise but the spacing, pitch and feel of the [...]

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Getting to simple

April 12, 2010

Alan Siegel swam into my consciousness with a Tedtalk on simplicity. I was intrigued enough to seek out his company blog, one of the least corporate blogs I’ve ever seen, which makes sense. There, today, I read a great post about unpacking text to get rid of complexity. Here’s the sequence: “We bring innovative ideas [...]

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It’s so big! And so cheap!

April 7, 2010

I’m still reeling from a purchase last night: a 1Tb hard drive for 109 euros. First, who would ever have thought that I would need a 1Tb hard drive? And secondly, who would ever have thought that I could get one for chump change?

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Food news (new series) 20: Eats

January 19, 2010

Start: 95.4 Last week: 89.5 This week: 89.3 New(ish) year, new approach. No more attempting to number by week, and no more beating myself over the head if I miss a week. the Art of Eating is my unmissable periodical, the most intelligent, informative, well-written publication on food available anywhere. It looks good too. I’ve [...]

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Back with a rant: How is a printer like a DVD player?

January 10, 2010

Answer: If it is one of many HP models, it is “regionalized”. Ink cartridges you buy in one country won’t necessarily work in a printer bought in another country. That completely blows chunks. I’ve wasted the better part of a day, not to mention five cartridges (I think), discovering that ink bought in the US [...]

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Mobile phones make it work

November 17, 2009

Ok, so this morning’s idle fantasy has all the hallmarks of a sixth-form debating society also-ran. But like many crazy notions, maybe it isn’t completely crazy. One reason why sending US$ 2.50 to one of the hungry billion is so appealing is that it is direct. You have money, you send money, they spend money. [...]

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The software ate my homework, honest

October 14, 2009

That’s it. I’m officially calling it off. My long-standing love affair with ecto is officially over. ecto is what is known as a third-party blogging client. A bit like email software, it lets you write a blog post while offline and then upload it when you’re happy with it. Last night it ate a long [...]

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Gummed to death

September 23, 2009

An unsolicited email from The Information Portal for the Public Sector promises amusement: “We can’t be anti everything!” The UK Government’s new Energy Adviser, David MacKay, gives a sound bite-free overview of the sustainable energy debate Love the exclamation point. Love even more the toothlessness of Mr MacKay’s overview. Or should that be overbite? Ah, [...]

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Gutta percha snaps back

September 18, 2009

I did have my hopes too high, but they weren’t dashed, just satisfied in a different way. I expected pecha kucha (which Dan Pink pronounces p’chatchka, making it sound just a little bit Yiddish) to be about ideas, about putting over a point of view, about stimulating an argument. It can be, clearly, but last [...]

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Gutta percha, pecha kucha, what’s the difference?

September 17, 2009

I’ve read scads about pecha kucha and how the discipline of presenting ideas within the constraint of 20 slides at 20 seconds each can unleash a torrent of creativity. Now I’ve got a chance to see for myself. The University of Washington’s Design in Rome programme is giving it a go this evening, and I [...]

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