June 2008
30 posts
“Until last year the oldest living company was a Japanese construction company...”
– The 100 Oldest Companies (via azspot)
Also, Businessweek has some coverage about Kongo Gumi, a 1400-year-old business that met its demise in 2006.
Adium X 1.3b5
The newest incarnation of the Adium 1.3b line has a switch to MSN-Pecan, a newish libpurple plugin that supports personal messages. Phew. Now, those half/half MSN display names will finally make sense.
Oh, and it does Facebook chat nicely now.
androo.com | Sector Monitor Application →
Pretty information/interaction design.
Urgency
This strange concept of ‘sense of urgency’. Is it also known as enthusiasm?
I have gotten rid of Google Notifier (for Mac) for the past few days, and it’s made a difference. Next, to cut down on MSN, and I’ll be halfway there.
The attack on capitalism excessive no-life continues.
The hypocrite clause
unalone:
This is something I feel ought to be posted publicly. It’s something that we all believe in anyway, and if it’s said out loud, maybe we could even have it accepted commonplace.
It’s called the hypocrite clause, and it works like this. Whenever you make any sort of statement, you append it silently on to the end of each statement. It reads as follows:
”, unless I feel like it.”
That’s...
Roundabout
I knew it would come back to bite me eventually, but still.. the self-inflicted procrastination has prompted my stress levels to shoot up to record levels.
“What is important is seldom urgent and what is urgent is seldom important.”
– Dwight D Eisenhower
Awaiting Your Response →
419 scam, uniquely Singaporean! Now the persona is ‘an [ex] external auditor’ for UOB. I’m amused.
“However, there’s another appeal to the Macintosh: the absence of choice.”
– The Apple Boutique | Oliver Steele
“MOE’s centrally run GEP is only available in Anglo-Chinese School (Independent)...”
– Adapted from Ministry of Education, Singapore: Programmes, Gifted Education Programme, abbreviations removed.
Flowering « News from Cfleesia →
Look what the cats dragged in. For some reason or another, my blog has ended up being the newest arena for that feud. I am not pleased.
An Under-Appreciated Fact: We Don't Know How We... →
And yet in every one of these processes and diagrams there is a box which basically says “write the code”, and ought to be subtitled “(and here a miracle occurs)”. Because the process underneath that box is very simple: read the problem, think hard until a solution occurs to you, and then write down the solution. That is all we really know about it.
Visitors
Only 20% of my first few visitors came from my WP.com blog. They’re almost entirely Safari on Mac and Firefox on Windows users, with one each of Opera and iPod Touch.
“Why does it take so long to get a big-corporate IT person to do anything useful?...”
– Comment from: The Post Money Value: How to make a corporate butt pucker (via peroty)
“And lastly XHTML is an application. Where HTML is markup.”
– Don Ulrich, on Why HTML [b-list].
Follow-up: Things I have learned about XHTML [b-list]
“Your parents pay school fees for you to get homework.”
280Slides →
I don’t quite see how this is better over SlideRocket other than that it doesn’t require Flash.
There’s always SlideShare and plain ole PDFs for distributing slide decks you’ve authored on a more regular slideware app. When I don’t feel like making it convenient for people I export my Keynote files as videos (or if they insist, PowerPoint files without embedded...
Plainview →
A free Mac app, nice for presenting websites or other in-browser stuff (Flash?) in fullscreen, without lousy toolbars, window changing or slides.
Planimeter →
The American Mathematical Society explains the mathematics of surveying – this installment on the planimeter, a tool I’ve never seen before. Quite cool.
DESKTOPOGRAPHY 2008 →
Mostly nice wallpaper.
midsummer's day
biteofpythias:
spending the day apart from you feels like the longest day ever… oh wait… it really is the longest day of the year. well in that case see you when i see you.
While we’re on lunar calendar mode, my birthday is always around 端午节, so sometimes I don’t get cake.
The cake is a lie. Awww.
First thoughts
A tumblelog is seriously much lower maintenance than a regular blog. Maybe less formidable. The editor box is smaller, and behaves in Safari. It has 11 buttons, and underline is not one of them.
I like.
And I haven’t started reblogging yet. Oh my.
PS whoever says that tumblelogs can’t take long posts is bluffing. Tumblr isn’t a CMS but hey, this post isn’t short.
PPS...
Comments?
To add a return channel or not?
“Smart people have codified systems of responding to an incident on the ground,...”
– Chua Mui Hoong. “Over-relying on rule books is also complacency.”
Taxes
Taxation in the US is seriously crazy, particularly income tax and the concept of withholding. My brain hurts from reading the Wikipedia articles.
A top bracket of 35%, on worldwide income? Whoa.
Now I see why they have tax professionals. The urge to bitch about IRAS’ myTax portal and peripherals is suddenly lessened. I’ve been helping with (e-)filing for the past few years and...