It could be something awesome like this:
Thanks to Mark Littlewood for the link
Make your corporate video stand out!
March 29th, 2014
Objects in the viewfinder may be closer than they appear
March 27th, 2014
Is that the 18-55 f/2.8 you’re using? Looks tasty…
Practise good wiki hygiene
March 26th, 2014
Katie Cunningham has written a great article entitled ‘Your wiki is a dump‘, outlining what goes wrong with wikis, and how to fix them.
I have seen this over and over again. Wikis need work, and they need someone with the guts (and/or the authority) to take a set of shears to them on a regular basis. If you have that, you can have a great resource. If not, you can have a nightmare.
The Watcher in the Water
March 25th, 2014
Tilly and I were walking yesterday on a nice meadow near the gates of the old Mines of Moria – very peaceful, no other hobbits around – when suddenly a terrifying tentacled creature rose from the depths.
It reached out for us, fixing us with a ravenous, menacing eye as it opened its gaping maw…
We ran for our lives… stopping only to capture a couple of snaps for Status-Q, of course.
Breaking good
March 25th, 2014
I keep hearing about research that shows how your life will be dramatically shorter and more problematic if you spend too much of it sitting in front of a computer.
Some of this, no doubt, is encouraged by the manufacturers of the standing desks, and even treadmill desks, which are to the young entrepreneurs of today what the Aeron chair was to the dot-com startups of yesteryear.
But whether or not you believe the more worrying claims of reduced life expectancy, I think we can agree that it’s not a bad idea to get up and stretch your legs from time to time. Maybe have a bottle of chilled water, if you’re from California, or a nice cup of tea, if you’re British.
So I’ve been rather taken with a little Mac app called BreakTime, which will pop up and nag you when you’ve been working at your computer for too long at a stretch. You can choose the time periods: mine requires me to have a four-minute break after 56 minutes, for example, and you have some control over how persistent it will be: are you allowed to dismiss it before the four minutes are up? It also makes sensible decisions if you leave the machine of your own accord first, and resets the timer when you return.
I find, to my surprise, that I really like it: I’ve put it on all my machines, and what it highlights is just how difficult it is to keep track of time myself. I’m amazed how quickly an hour of sitting still can fly by when I’m deep in concentration. Even if I do little more than stand up and tidy some things off my desk, I’m sure it’s a good discipline.
There are several other similar utilities out there, but BreakTime works well for me. Recommended.
Update: Tim Green, on Facebook, pointed out Workrave, which does something similar for Windows and Linux. I’m linking to it here because, of course, you can’t search Facebook – even your own history (something I still find incomprehensible).
They’re everywhere…
March 25th, 2014
…and it’s impossible not to take pictures of them…
Password pain
March 22nd, 2014
Regular readers will know that one of the things I’m currently working on is the Pico project, which is trying to find a long-term replacement for passwords.
I learned an interesting statistic yesterday from Angela Sasse: we recently passed the point at which more passwords are entered on mobile devices than on traditional computers, and that, on average, entering a password on a mobile device takes three times as long as on a laptop or PC.
This would seem to confirm our belief that the need for Pico, or something like it, will become more and more apparent over time.
Good times ready to roll
March 16th, 2014
For me, there is nothing quite so evocative of happy adventures to come as the sight and smell of freshly-Nikwaxed walking boots.
Metadata is data too
March 15th, 2014
The MetaPhone project has some great examples of what you can deduce just from phone call records.
Excerpt:
Participant B spoke at length with cardiologists at a major medical center, talked briefly with a medical laboratory, received calls from a pharmacy, and placed short calls to a home reporting hotline for a medical device used to monitor cardiac arrhythmia.
Participant C made a number of calls to a firearm store that specializes in the AR semiautomatic rifle platform. They also spoke at length with customer service for a firearm manufacturer that produces an AR line.
Mistery
March 14th, 2014
Wandlebury woods were magical this morning.
Hidden meaning?
March 9th, 2014
At first I thought this was just a nice seat that had been installed for the purposes of enjoying the view. But now I suspect it may also say something in Japanese… 🙂
Aero-worship
March 9th, 2014
If you’re a fan of the Aerobie frisbee-like device, or the Aeropress coffee maker, or, like me, both of them, you’ll enjoy Zachary Crockett’s fine article about how they came into existence, and about Alan Adler, their inventor. Nicely done.
Many thanks to Hap for the link.
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