February 2011
2 posts
Beards for Ben
This morning I was asked if I had stopped shaving to raise money for cancer. Embarrassingly, I had not. I look terrible with facial hair, always have, but that didn’t seem to be enough reason to dig my razor out of the suitcase.
Then it hit me. Sometimes we have to do things we aren’t comfortable with in order to do something good.
Our friends Ben and Cathy have been battling...
January 2011
1 post
Clara Mae Simons (Aug 25, 1914 - Jan 22, 2011)
Natalie and I went to bed at 11:30 last night. Neither of us slept very well. There was a pit in my stomach the size of a small watermelon. As I tossed, the melon turned as if to continually make it’s presence known. Even the quiet comfort of Grandma’s bed couldn’t lull me to sleep.
At 1:30am I heard Grandma’s phone ring. Grandpa’s footsteps downstairs were...
September 2010
1 post
“Try as I might, I will never be able to bring myself to use this word to mean...”
– Professional writers discussing the word Share.
From Apple’s built in Thesaurus.
“Edwin Land, inventor of the Polaroid camera, once said that his method of design...”
– Fred Brooks, author of The Mythical Man Month.
August 2010
2 posts
Princess Jasmine
A Sultan’s daughter is not called “Princess.” Rather, they are known as “Sultanic Highness.” Shame on you, Disney.
Source: Wikipedia
Update: After asking around, it appears they are also known as “Amira”/”Emira” or “Turkish Prenses.”
July 2010
1 post
“The man or woman snoozing in a chair with a magazine or book is a person who was...”
– William Zinsser in his book, On Writing Well.
June 2010
1 post
“The experience of using Microsoft Sharepoint is just like deciding to build a...”
– Jared Spool
May 2010
1 post
Facebook Privacy Issues Spark Internal... →
The fact that anyone would post a picture of them drunk, passed out on the floor of a dorm room, covered in cheese-whiz is amazing to me. You wouldn’t post your credit card number to your facebook page, yet some people are sharing information which can be even more damaging to their future.
Zuckerburg clearly wants people to be more public. Fine, but if you offer privacy settings, enforce...
April 2010
2 posts
“You cannot not communicate. Every behaviour is a kind of communication. Because...”
– Paul Watzlawick’s First Axiom of Communication
“Take things away until the design breaks, then put that last thing back in.”
– Alan Cooper, About Face
March 2010
5 posts
“Edward Tufte has been appointed by the Obama administration to oversee the way...”
– Jonathan Penn
“It is a mistake to look too far ahead. Only one link in the chain of destiny can...”
– Sir Winston Churchill
“Any man who tries to be good all the time is bound to come to ruin among the...”
– Niccolo Machiavelli
“The effectiveness of a research report is inversely proportionate to the...”
– Wilkens’ Law
“Take away my people, but leave my factories and soon grass will grow on the...”
– Andrew Carnegie
February 2010
3 posts
Yamaha Recalling Pianos
Yamaha has recalled 20,000 pianos due to a problem with the pedal sticking, causing pianists to play faster than they normally would, resulting in a dangerous number of accidentals.
The sticky pedal also makes it harder for pianists to come to a full stop at the end of a piece, making it extremely risky for audiences.
Appreciating and Perceiving Beauty
A man played six Bach pieces on a violin for 45 minutes in the Washington DC Metro Station on a cold January morning. During the time he played, approximately two thousand people passed through the station. Of those, only six people stopped and listened, and then only for a very short while. The greatest levels of enthusiasm were displayed by young children, several of whom tugged on their...
The Microsofting of Apple →
This guy doesn’t get it. If Apple is gaining market share, it’s because the experience people have with their products surpasses the products of others.
Take the iPad, which instantly shed the moniker “Jesus tablet” once it saw the light of day. It’s a blown-up iPod Touch, rolled out not to be insanely great but to give Apple an entry in the netbook derby.
Apple is in the business of creating...
January 2010
1 post
A simple rule that made me lose 5 pounds in a...
I vowed to start taking better care of my health last November. I’m not obese, fat, portly, flabby, or gross by any stretch of the imagination, but I wasn’t living a lifestyle that made me feel healthy.
I started a real exercise regimen in December, but prior to that I made a simple dietary rule for myself. This rule on its own was responsible for my losing 5lbs in a month. It’s not super...
December 2009
2 posts
WatchI just wanted a vector rectangle with an 8.5x11 ratio. This UX workflow is horrible, when they made it so easy to do as a raster layer. Did I miss something here, or is this really the best way to do it?
Feed Reader Overload
I’ve observed an interesting pattern in the way I keep up with RSS feeds.
When I have few items in my feed reader, say less than 10, I jump in and read them all. Interesting or not. This means I waste my time reading articles which aren’t interesting to me, because there’s just not a whole lot to read.
The logical next step is to subscribe to more feeds, and ones which are more targeted to my...
May 2007
1 post
