Uncategorized
My new filing technique is unstoppable
It should come as no surprise that, as both an IA and a music snob, I keep my ID3 tags pretty much immaculate. Correct spellings, title case throughout, even proper diacritics, until they were ruined by the iTunes v7.7 update.
As part of my curatorial approach, I classify for optimal findability - which means, since I [...]
Reboot10
The concept of “free” was, in retrospect, a little incongruous with Copenhagen. Although, according to the locals, Denmark is the cheapest of the Scandinavian nations, £6.50 for a pint is still something of a sting. Plus, of course, there was the irony of the Free Beer, released under a Creative Commons licence but which, at [...]
Occam’s Razor
In the 14th century, friar William of Occam thought up a maxim that, in my opinion, should be drummed into the public from an early age.
Entities should not be multiplied beyond necessity.
Or, to paraphrase:
Of two equivalent theories or explanations, the simpler one is to be preferred.
This is known as Occam’s Razor. And why [...]
Erase errata
Regrettheerror.com have posted a list of the year’s best apologies and corrections in mainstream news. Some highlights:
A headline on page 1 on Saturday should have made clear that Oregon Health & Science University will be studying the effects of meth, not cooking it. - The Oregonian
A listing in Sunday Calendar said hot dogs would not [...]
December bookmarks
A few sites that have caught my eye:
Wingmap - new Flash-based site for finding European flights. They don’t do everything right (date selection is particularly clumsy) but it’s always interesting to see a new approach.
Semiotics for beginners - Daniel Chandler’s book available in full on Aberystwyth University’s website. Heavy going (certainly not for beginners) but [...]
2006 in review
To celebrate the new design, premature meme banality. Feel free to ignore.
- What did you do in 2006 that you’d never done before? Explored.- Did you keep your New Years’ resolutions, and will you make more for next year? My only resolution was to have more fun. Not sure whether I kept it.- Did anyone [...]
Fixes and improvements
I’ll be updating the layout of the blog over the next few days, and fixing a few things (such as archives - should now be back to normal, the new Blogger beta broke them). Sorry if things don’t look quite right for a bit. The new “add to del.icio.us” feature doesn’t work right yet. Maybe [...]
Stop - scammer time!
A fun day. A bit of wheeling, a bit of dealing. Listed my old phone on eBay only for it to be ‘bought’ by our old friend, a Nigerian “419″ scammer. Not a particularly good one either.
Obviously I caught it, reported it etc, but now I’m struck by a more interesting thought. Would the scammer [...]
Mobile TV - not quite yet…
Just upgraded to a Nokia N73. Very nice it is too. I’ve pretty much come to expect good usability from Nokia - I loved their older phones and they do an admiral job of keeping complex phones as simple as possible.
Anyway, it being a 3G handset, Orange are desperate to foist 3G content on me. [...]
"Copyright is fundamentally socialist"
Mick Hucknall makes a fool of himself on Comment Is Free. No need to add my own analysis, the comments suffice rather nicely. Poor Mick. Poor Cliff, too.
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