Technology, Books and Other Neat Stuff

Today's strange eBay auction is the M4 in Berkshire. Currently a bargain price at only £101.

[link from codepope]

... is an excellent piece by pdcawley on trust, and what it means to build trust relationships.

A must read.

...exists.

Björk's third solo album Homogenic is one of my favourite records. For me, it's the point where she found her voice, and her dark vision was encapsulated in a whorl of light. All the songs are powerful, but there's one that stands head and shoulders above the rest and has to be played loud. It's the profoundly moving ( Bachelorette )

Dave Winer seems to think so.

I'd actually disagree with him. What's broken is the technology he's using to download his mail. POP3 isn't designed to handle the types of message we send today, nor the volumes of mail we tend to leave on our ISP's servers. Instead, we should be encouraging ISPs and end users to move to something more suitable: IMAP4. That way we can use mail clients that filter mail, handle server side folders, and all in all, get a much more effective tool for handling our mail.

You will soon be able to become a famous rock star, by buying a "Crossroads Pact" on eBay from Doktor Snake.

"Doktor Snake claims that, during the 1990s, a number of now high-profile rock singers and musicians consulted him about performing the Crossroads Rite before they became famous. He says confidentiality prevents him from revealing their names."

But off all the places for vodoun, would you choose Norwich?

...or rather on not using it and on why he considers it to be bad.

Some interesting thoughts on design and presentations. And a nifty cartoon. It does make we wonder why, back in the Scient days, we would oftne actually provide a PowerPoint-based deliverable to our clients. How many second phase projects were lost because of the inherent problems in using slideware for information delivery?

"In a business setting, a PowerPoint slide typically shows 40 words, which is about eight seconds' worth of silent reading material. With so little information per slide, many, many slides are needed. Audiences consequently endure a relentless sequentiality, one damn slide after another. When information is stacked in time, it is difficult to understand context and evaluate relationships. Visual reasoning usually works more effectively when relevant information is shown side by side. Often, the more intense the detail, the greater the clarity and understanding. This is especially so for statistical data, where the fundamental analytical act is to make comparisons."

...well, they would be with their metabolisms!

Boing Boing points us to a web site documenting a humming bird nest from construction to hatchlings. The young chicks are about a quarter of an inch long. I saw my first humming birds last year, while staying at my friend Rick's place in San Francisco. Wonderful little creatures. Beautiful little blurs of wings that darted from flower to flower in the trumpet vines.

(the site's a little slow at the moment.)

My LiveJournal Sitcom
Bringing Up sbisson (TNN, 8:30): sbisson (Rachel Weisz) lets therealdrhyde (Ryan Phillippe) borrow a wallet to impress a daughter. Soon afterwards, adela_terrell (Frank Oz) breaks flickgc (George Takei)'s old 100-meter-dash record, but nobody sees it happen. Also, malwen (Isabella Rossellini) buys combs instead of dental piks, ruining frostfox (Eric Bogosian)'s day. Later, childeric (Bruce Campbell) and coalescent (Omar Epps) perform slapstick at a forest. At the same time, ramtops (Wil Wheaton) burns gthompson (Jamie Lee Curtis)'s pants. Presented in HDTV.
What's Your LiveJournal Sitcom? (by rfreebern)

So I fall in with the herd again...

And this is me. Apparently.

With another major email virus doing the rounds, I'm surprised to not have received a copy. I'm not sure whether that's down to the filters I have running (though there's no sign of anything in the logs), or else I have an email circle that's generally clued up or are using safe mailers.

But then there all the PR email lists I'm on.

Not sure why I've escaped at all...