One of my favourite Emacs keystrokes which made its way into bash and is now supported in most places in Mac OS X is Ctrl-T. It transposes the two letters around the cursor. This is one of my most common typos, and it’s very handy, if I accidentally type ‘tihs’, to put the cursor between the i and the h and press Ctrl-T.
It seems patently obvious to me that the most sensible place to carry a cellphone is on my belt. However, I have to admit that doing so is not likely to reinforce my reputation for sartorial elegance. I’m not enough of a geek to be impervious to the scoffing glances of others, but too much of a geek to wear a jacket on a regular basis that would cover the phone up. So I need to find an alternative before people start asking, “Is that a Bluetooth-enabled tri-band Nokia with embedded camera and hi-res colour screen in your pocket or are you just pleased to see me?”
I started to think about other ways I could carry my phone, and thought I had hit on a good solution. A New York company got there before me.
[Original Link] The latest accessory for the iPod is a BMW.
While I’ve now seen several Segways, I still don’t own one. This may mean that I’m gaining a certain amount of sanity in my old age, because there’s no doubt that I’d like one. This is partly because I love toys, but mostly because I think it a beautiful bit of engineering. Three years ago, I met Dean Kamen at a conference where he was demonstrating his balancing ‘iBot‘ wheelchair – the predecessor to the Segway – and I thought it one of the most inspiring examples of engineering I’ve ever seen.
It can balance on two wheels and is incredibly stable. The idea is that people in wheelchairs shouldn’t have to be lower than everybody else. It can go up stairs, too. iBots are expensive, though – at $29,000 they cost more than a nice car – and I’ve heard that it was partly the desire to reduce the cost of the technology that made Dean think of a mass-market product like the Segway.
Just back from an exhausting whirlwind tour of the States. Meetings all over the place, many at short notice.
London – Atlanta – Seattle – San Francisco – Portland – Seattle – L.A. – Cincinatti – London
in one week. Admittedly, my knowledge of Cincinatti only covers gates B10-B23, but it was still a lot to squeeze in. We were lugging heavy demo kit around with us as well.
Quite apart from the exertion, I don’t like travelling that way. Some of those cities I know well, but for others this was my first visit, and it seems somehow disrespectful to be in Atlanta, with all its history, or Portland, with its mountains and coastlines, and see nothing more than a conference center or airport hotel.
I’ll have to go back. In the meantime, it’s good to be home.
[Original Link] When you’ve been running a blog for a few years, one of the advantages is that if you don’t have anything particularly inspiring to say, you can point back to how interesting your life was a couple of years ago.
This is a perfectly respectable process, I think; most media indulge in it in some shape or form – replaying golden oldies, running “Where are they now?” articles, etc
But I wasn’t saying anything very interesting two years ago, either, so this post is about something I found amusing then. A friend of John Naughton’s made some notes on an EasyJet flight. John put them on his blog, and I pointed to them on mine. Perhaps my nostalgia is getting a little too vicarious!
Yesterday, my father (in England) called my father-in-law (in the US) to thank him for his part in keeping Britain free 60 years ago. I’m ashamed that it never occurred to me to do the same.
May those of us who are so ready to criticise what America has done since Vietnam never forget what it did beforehand.
[Original Link] Robert Cringeley says he’s found a major disruptive technology. It’s a $70 wireless router. But that’s not all… Thanks to John for the link
[Original Link] Apple’s iTunes Music Store is selling over 3 million songs a week. And it’s still only open to people with a US credit card…
[Original Link] Three things that get my goat:
All of which are components behind this report that Cambridge University is thinking of building three more colleges.
[Original Link] Jakob Nielsen was talking about .NET taking over the world because it would enable micro-payments.
© Copyright Quentin Stafford-Fraser
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