Rats! Another Big Idea

Originally published 25-03-2008

I had A Big Idea yesterday. This is bad because it reminds me of my deficiencies. I am not a risk-taker. I've never second-mortgaged the house to invest in a dream of riches. I'm lazy, seldom managing to avoid the lure of a nap. I'd rather...

An interesting post from Ton Zilstra, on his first edit to Open Street Map, prompted me to do the same. I have two main motivations. One is that checkins on my stream use OSM and I like the idea of giving back. The bigger reason is that those checkins are often not very accurate, at least with respect to the place, rather than the pure location, and I thought it would be good to know how to add places even if they become visible only after the event. More generally, I want a better understanding of geographical information and how to use it.

I haven't seen that video of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez dancing her ass off, and nor will I, but kudos to Wired for using it as a peg on which to hang a good story about copyright, mash-ups, fair use and the like.

I cannot remember when I started following Bonnie Ohara's Instagram feed or what originally led me there, but I was thrilled for her when she announced that she had been asked to write a book. I was even more thrilled a little while ago to discover that the book -- Bread Baking for Beginners: The Essential Guide to Baking Kneaded Breads, No-Knead Breads, and Enriched Breads -- had become a runaway success.

These two posts by John Naughton really need to be taken together.

First, Sovereignty – Brexit style:

Sovereignty, n. The untrammelled right to do self-harm.

And then, six days later, Self-harm in a chart:

But John doesn't seem to draw the conclusion I do, which is that if the prediction of job losses comes about, a lot of people in the least affected areas might actually think justice had been done to the elitist wankers.