April 2010
115 posts
Cellphone Payments Offer Alternative to Cash -... →
We’ll talk more when there’s a device that can take cash off and put cash onto the CEPAS cards. I wonder if it’s architectured as a fully on-line processing system.. are the buses all permanently on-net? No? Good.
It would be nice if I could get money off your card, then load it onto mine – but I suppose we’d need a way to withdraw money from those cards as well.
“The other factor contributing the the overzealous airport feel is that now...”
– rubinc in nyc! » Department of Homeschool Security and they don’t even have cameras in the classrooms!
If anyone I’m supposed to turn in work to tomorrow yells at me for not trying or not bothering to complete work I think I’m just going to fall over and die because I’ve tried my utmost best and I’ve pushed mind body and soul way beyond my comfort (ha) zone and it’s just never good enough for you so too bad because I’ve gone crazy already.
x_x
“The telephone was an aberation in human development. It was a 70 year or so...”
– The Nine Types of Text Messaging Monsters
(via rickwebb) (via jayparkinsonmd, madeleinepascal)
Thom's Guide to VR →
duncandavidson:
Thom Hogan has forgotten more about Nikon equipment than most of us will ever know. Over time, he’s given out bits and pieces of advice about using Nikon’s VR (Vibration Reduction) lenses. Here, he collects it all into one place. It’s interesting reading and the advice should apply in large part to Canon’s IS lenses as well, though some of the numbers may be different on the...
“There is no reciprocity: men love women, women love children, children love...”
– Anonymous (via uppingthetempo)
Happy 30th birthday, Post-it notes →
austinkleon:
The Guardian talks to Geoff Nicholson, the guy at 3M who pushed Post-it notes:
One final burning question: why canary yellow? “There just happened to be some yellow scrap paper in the lab. Creativity and inspiration are when you see an accident and recognise its value.”
Filed under: Post-it notes.
“Did you know that there are 333 squares of toilet paper on a roll? (…)...”
– SQ
Today’s brief encounter with the keyboard courtesy of Sorrows has reminded me that I haven’t had any extended time with my piano recently.
I still remember attending a large residential camp in a strange and unknown place, and sitting down for nearly an hour in the hall and just letting my fingers and my mind wander through the misty forests. Playing mindless stuff that’s just...
I’ve been feeling very used recently with all this asymmetry in relationships.
People who have almost never helped me and I don’t talk to can somehow think that they can pick up the phone and call for tech support anytime. The last time that happened, I was in the middle of an essay. The second last time, I was at a wake.
There are also fair-weather friends (who are around when...
Cory Doctorow Verbally Abuses 99-Year-Old iPad... →
nostrich:
“Apparently Ms. Campbell is happy inside Apple’s walled garden,” Doctorow said after being ejected from the Mary’s Woods Retirement Community for haranguing the nonagenarian for a full 45 minutes on the moral imperative of open systems, digital rights and steampunk subculture.
I fell in love with Moltz while reading this.
Wonderful.. satire? The best critique of Doctorow’s,...
WatchClever trick to peel a potato quickly in Japan. (via Google Video)
“Fail the test, save the world.”
– ZXP (seen on facebook)
“Photoshop’s Content-Aware Fill. Finally we have actual witchcraft in an Adobe...”
– What Stu would say if you stopped him on the street and asked him what he finds compelling about CS5. ProLost Blog - Adobe CS5
Randomness
In a burst of serendipity, I’ve recently heard quite a few people talk about how there’s an element of randomness in decision-making – especially when it involves people making a judgement about meeting criteria, rubrics, or whatever.
I suppose it is more comforting than “it’s okay you are all winners” or “you made it past the prelim rounds! that’s...
“The idea that humans, for all their technological might, could be put in their...”
– The Economist - After the volcano: Earthly powers (via marco)
Deturl: Bookmarklet to Directly Download Videos... →
Now that KeepVid.com is being dodgy and has a Java applet that wants permissions.. this is the next best alternative.
“On the other hand, you have different fingers.”
– Variously attributed, but someone on false dilemmas and polarity. It’s not all black and white, but on the other hand..
Marco.org: Serving Gzip-compressed pages with PHP →
I’ve had nothing but problems with PHP’s built in zlib.output_compression feature: the most common issue is that it holds connections open for a very long time, introducing long delays (and largely negating the point).
But using mod_deflate in Apache achieves the same thing with none of the negatives, as far as I’ve seen…
The GV Mobile Ticket is pretty clever. By using an SMS to deliver six blocks of alphanumeric characters, with human-readable details after that, it can be scanned and validated directly by a kiosk at the entrance. This works around the problems of dealing with sending/receiving MMSes or requiring cellular data access to deliver 2D or even 1D barcodes. Nicely done, as long as it works on phones...
After some time to think about it, I’m still quite mixed about the guy who stole people’s stuff. Taking things left in plain sight isn’t that much worse than rummaging in bags to find things to steal in my book, but maybe someone decided there was some line that the latter crossed to merit a police report, expulsion, and no (?) subsequent quiet re-admission as an instance of...
The iPad, the Kindle, and the future of books →
marco:
Two quotes that I found interesting:
“Bookstores return about forty per cent of the hardcovers they buy…”
“There are now an estimated three million Kindles in use…”
And it’s a great article about the publishing industry today as it relates to Amazon, Apple, and Google.
Let’s see what happens in a year’s time, when Apple renegotiates its contracts with the publishers..
“Do third world countries have infrastructure like here? (…) Have you been...”
– Someone when asked where development aid money goes and ought to go
“In Japan, however, uniforms are everywhere. Even people who don’t have to...”
– Japan: some impressions - Charlie’s Diary (a really old essay from 2007 that someone dug up and mentioned, but you mightn’t have seen it yet, hmm?)
I never knew that I can get a hell lot of REM sleep even when I sleep at 1am. I had so many dreams this morning, nice and not so nice, that I’ve lost track.
Wanted to write about the ones I still remember but I didn’t have any time nor thing to write on the whole day and now I’m really tired and about to KO.
There’s yet another strange fundraising activity of some sort...
52 Weeks of UX: Design for Delight →
“Even if it is true that the average man seems most comfortable with the commonplace and familiar, it is equally true that catering to bad taste, which we so readily attribute to the average reader, merely perpetuates that mediocrity and denies the reader one of the most easily accessible means for aesthetic development and eventual enjoyment.” - Paul Rand
It’s the little thing beyond...
Let's see your Aunty or rather Uncle Agony skills....
thesecondstar:
why uncle agony? flirt with the person who is flirting with my lalala-love of my life how confusing
Ask me anything
That is so wrong and yet so right at the same time. (Draw the relationtree!)
New York an Insurance Lab on Skyrocketing Rates -... →
jayparkinsonmd:
We’re living in the future here in NYC:
New York’s insurance system has been a working laboratory for the core provision of the new federal health care law — insurance even for those who are already sick and facing huge medical bills — and an expensive lesson in unplanned consequences. Premiums for individual and small group policies have risen so high that state officials and...
The past offers many opportunities to learn from.
The problem is that we are always fighting the last war, crisis, or problem.
From flu to earthquakes to volcanic ash – it’s all the same.
Meanwhile, if the next flu epidemic is as bad as the spanish flu, everyone’ll go “oh, they’re crying wolf again” (optional), and then the WHO and all the ministries everywhere...
“The problem with cats is that they get the same exact look whether they see a...”
– Paula Poundstone (via simko)
Twelve little thoughts worth saving
IKEA friends Singapore newsletter April 2010:
Spend more time than money on your kids
Hug them every day
Let them play
Make sure to talk with them
Tell them you love them
Let them climb, skip and run
Let them discover music and singing
But never force them
Let them use their imagination and creativity
Praise them throughout life
Let them share your world… and share their world
...
“By placing an order via this web site on the first day of the fourth month of...”
– FOXNews.com - 7,500 Online Shoppers Unknowingly Sold Their Souls to GameStation on April Fool’s 2010. This is the awesomest prank this year.
“We’ll be having a teleconference tomorrow… It has to be a...”
– Twitter / Gareth Brading: Quote from Eurocontrol HQ 