Category Archives: General

LinkedOut?

Yesterday evening, I accidentally tapped a button on my iPad screen. At least, I guess I must have done, because emails started coming back from all those who had accepted my LinkedIn invitation. Eh?

Yes, it turns out that I had accidentally spammed a couple of hundred people asking for a connection. I think it was everyone in my Gmail contacts who was on LinkedIn but not already connected to me. I know you can do such things, but I would never dream of performing so crass an operation deliberately.

And this is all very embarrassing. There are some I know well and would be delighted to connect to: I just hadn’t got around to it yet. But there are many more whom I scarcely know at all, and I can just imagine them scratching their heads and making the same sort of face that I make when complete strangers ask me for a connection. And then there are those I know in a completely different social context: the wife of a casual acquaintance who is probably wondering why on earth I connected to her and not her husband…

All of which makes me ponder: have I ever actually had any benefit from my LinkedIn account (which I’ve had almost since the service started)? I can’t think of any. There have been one or two people who have sent me useful messages, but I’m not hard to find elsewhere on the net, and frankly would much prefer to receive such communications by email. And then there was all that endorsement craziness a little while back.

No, the only positive thing I can really say about LinkedIn is that it doesn’t annoy me as much as Facebook. But then, I do occasionally get some benefit from Facebook.

So I suspect that the right thing to do is to close my account. And yet, as I come to that conclusion, I think of all those distant acquaintances who, having received my annoying message, sigh and say, “Oh well, I suppose I’d better link to him”, and click the button, only to be told that my account is no longer there, so I’d pestered them in vain. Argh!

You see, I can’t win. Social gaffes threaten at every turn… Help! I’m LockedIn…

Possibly-related posts:

Sign of the times

After a weekend clear-out, we’re giving away a couple of dumbbell-type exercise weights, and an old HP Deskjet printer, on our local Freecycle list.

Seven people immediately expressed an enthusiastic desire for the gym accessories.

Nobody was interested in the miracle of modern printing technology.

Possibly-related posts:

The food is best from Budapest

Hungarian Mangalica Salami

This is, in my opinion, some of the finest salami yet created by mankind. I’m sure it’s the finest at my local Waitrose, anyway. It’s… well… creamy.

If you’re a salami enthusiast, ask yourself when you last described one as creamy. If it wasn’t recently, give this a try. Goes nicely with mozzarella in a salad.

Possibly-related posts:

Pub Facts no. 1

I learned a couple of interesting technology statistics in the pub last night, and I feel it my duty to pass them on, so that you too can astound your friends at your weekend dinner parties. I'll post them separately, as a cheap ploy to increase impact and heighten suspense.

OK. Here's the first:

  • The rate at which ARM processors are being produced is approximately middle C. (around 260/sec).

Hum it to yourself for best effect.

Thanks to John Biggs of ARM for that one.

 

Possibly-related posts:

When a child is (unexpectedly) born

Wow. Just seen what, to me at least, is a surprising statistic.

Approximately half of U.S. pregnancies are unintended.

source

Possibly-related posts:

Duelling protectors

Evernote sent me an email telling me to reset my password because of their security breach.

My spam system filtered it out.

Mmm. C'est la vie moderne…

 

Possibly-related posts:

Efficient Caffeine

Richard has his cafetiere workflow nicely optimised, both for time and energy.

Possibly-related posts:

Change the world with your DVD drive?

Researchers at UCLA produced graphene supercapacitors — an amazingly efficient electricity-storage medium — using a standard DVD burner.

“The process is straightforward, cost-effective and can be done at home,” El-Kady said. “One only needs a DVD burner and graphite oxide dispersion in water, which is commercially available at a moderate cost.”

More info here.

Possibly-related posts:

The Subscription Dilemma

money

Ten years ago, I wrote a piece for the IEE Review entitled “If You Love Your Data, Set it Free”, where I warned that Microsoft and other similar companies were experimenting with a subscription-based model of software.

This is a perfectly reasonable way of running the IT economy, but it has an important implication. If your data is stored in a proprietary format tied to one software package, as much of it probably is today, you may not have access to it if you don’t keep paying. Do you want to finish working on that book you started a few years ago? Sorry, that will cost you. In such a world, it’s worth asking yourself who actually owns your creative work…

Well, it’s taken a while, but Microsoft and Adobe are now actively pushing the subscription-based ‘Office 365’ and ‘Creative Cloud’ respectively. If you go to their web sites, it’s getting harder and harder to find a traditional buy-and-install product.

Software prices have been dropping dramatically recently, and it must be hard to persuade people who are used to paying under a fiver for the latest iPad app that it’s worth dropping hundreds on the latest Office or Creative Suite, however good those may be. This is particularly true if they already have an older copy. I’ve never felt a desire to upgrade my Office 2008 or Photoshop CS3, but I don’t use them very often. However, my wife, who uses Word all day, every day, also has no reason to upgrade, and in fact would probably view it as a retrograde step. So they had little choice. When you can’t innovate enough in your product, you have to innovate in your marketing.

Now, the subscriptions are not extravagant (at least compared to these companies’ traditional prices). If I used the software on a regular basis I wouldn’t mind paying. The problem is that you’re not just paying for upgrades, you’re paying for continued use. If you stop paying, you don’t, as in the past, continue happily using your current version. You get dramatically reduced functionality, in the case of Microsoft, or none at all, in the case of Adobe. So this is not a decision to pay for ongoing updates, it’s a commitment to continue paying indefinitely unless you want to go through the process of exporting all of your documents to some other format. The issue is particularly acute since these are apps into which you are likely to pour a large amount of your creative output, something you’re unlikely to want to discard. If you want to keep upgrading your software to the latest version, the pricing isn’t bad. But what you’re losing is any option about whether or not to keep upgrading.

So, on the one hand, this spurs me on to even greater enthusiasm for open file formats. And on the other, it makes me wonder about upgrading my copy of Office. Why? Well, it looks as if I won’t have the option very much longer of buying Office 2011, which, though already two years old, may be the last version for which I only have to pay once…

Possibly-related posts:

  • Adobe Creative Shackle As anyone who uses Adobe software seriously will know, the...
  • Jaguars are faster Since upgrading my elderly Powerbook to ‘Jaguar’, the latest version...
  • OpenDocument In a little over a year from now, all official...
  • [untitled] I’ve just downloaded the latest build of OpenOffice.org, the Open...

A most sinister thread…

One of the things we try to do here at Status-Q Labs is to reduce the amount of frustration experienced by our fellow men and women in their daily lives.

Take, for example, the case of reverse threads. This is not, as you may suppose, an advanced mode of needlework, but rather the practice of using screw threads which turn clockwise to undo or loosen, and anti-clockwise to tighten, something that observant readers will detect as being contrary to the natural order of things. There are good reasons for using these — also known as left-hand threads — in situations where the normal use of the the device would tend to cause it to unscrew of its own accord.

However, there are few things more frustrating than not knowing that the thing you're trying to unscrew is, in fact, tightening up, especially if it's old or rusted or damaged and you expect it to be somewhat tricky anyway. Here are a few situations where I've encountered reverse threads in normal life: remembering these may improve the level of your future happiness and avoid some skinned knuckles and unwarranted expletives.

  • Left-hand bicycle pedals. These are screwed into the crank with a reverse thread. Which is a little strange, if you think about it, because their rotation on their spindle is clockwise, but there are other effects at work. More information here.
  • Gas cylinder valves. This is for safety, rather than mechanical reasons. Combustible gases, such as the propane or butane you might connect to your caravan or gas barbecue, use left-handed threads, so you can't accidentally connect them to things expecting an inert gas. This is a good idea, but I can't help wondering how often frustration has caused people to start hitting spanners attached to explosive cylinders with heavy objects…
  • Drill chucks. I had to replace the chuck on my hammer drill recently because the jaws had seized up. It screws onto the main spindle of the drill with a standard thread, but is held in place there by a bolt which goes the opposite way. (I guess you only need this on a reversible drill!) Incidentally, even when you know which way the threads go, chucks tend to be fairly firmly fixed, and I might not have managed it if my friendly local hardware store hadn't shown me the allen key trick.

So there you go. Lodge those in your little grey cells and one day, I promise you, you'll thank me!

Anyone know any other situations where the unsuspecting might encounter left-handed threads in normal life?

Update: Lyndsay Williams pointed me at this Wikipedia page, which lists under 'Handedness' a few other places where left-handed threads are used. My favourite is that lightbulbs on the NYC Subway used to have reverse threads, so you couldn't steal them and use them anywhere else!

 

 

Possibly-related posts:

Short, sharp and to the point

Beginners in photography can (understandably) get confused by the fact that big numbers mean small apertures, or that shooting 'wide open' implies a small depth-of-focus. I liked this mnemonic from Chris Orwig on a recent This Week in Photo podcast:

Imagine you're shooting a line of people. If you want one person in focus, use f/1. If you want all 16 in focus, use f/16.

Nice and simple.

 

Possibly-related posts:

Healthy eating

Just checking some labels this morning.

  • Waitrose 'LOVElife' high-fibre farmhouse multiseed loaf. Calories per slice, before butter or any other toppings: 130.
  • Waitrose Generously Coated Dark Chocolate Ginger Biscuits. Calories per (substantial) biscuit: 122.

I rest my case.

 

Possibly-related posts:

Feeds

RSS  RSS feed

Categories

November 2024
M T W T F S S
 123
45678910
11121314151617
18192021222324
252627282930  

© Copyright Quentin Stafford-Fraser