Category: Microblog
Just my day to day ramblings!
If you’re a programmer or designer, then you’re not like most people. Just because you change your settings in apps you use doesn’t mean that your users will, unless they are also programmers and designers.
Do users change their settings? » UIE Brain Sparks
I change settings on everything I use, and one of my favourite things is getting a new program just so I can look through the settings. They’re right, I’m not like other people 🙂
Apple conditioned us to forget about terminals and command-line interaces. Apple conditioned us to forget about floppy disks. Apple conditioned us to forget about parallel ports and adopt USB. And now Apple is conditioning us to rethink the way we scroll our content, but also, the need for disc drives and physical media.
Before you set scrolling back to the “old” way, think about this.
BBC Worldwide have published their Annual Review for 2011 which highlights Doctor Who as one of the ‘most valuable’ brands, largely responsible for the corporations commercial success.
Doctor Who was also the number-three TV series purchased globally on iTunes in 2010/11.
Wow! Very good news for Doctor Who fans: looks like it will carry on for the foreseeable future!
Doctor Who Online – Doctor Who Boosts BBC profits in the 2011 Annual Review
My new order of importance for things to read when I’m on the web:
My new order of importance for things to read when I’m on the web:
Twitter, Google+, Tumblr, Facebook, RSS reader, Reddit.
What’s yours?
Why Harry Potter Should Really Be All About Hermione Granger
Why Harry Potter Should Really Be All About Hermione Granger
And when Snape assigns homework, Harry is all, “Wah-Wah, there is sport tomorrow, fulfilling my responsibility will be so hard.” MEANWHILE Hermione is MOVING ****ING TIME so she can take more classes. Because girl knows SOMETHING is happening and she needs to STUDY THE EFF UP.
Focusing is about saying no. And when you say no, you piss people off. But the result is truly great products.
Steve Jobs, 1997
Jean-Luc wishes he could play WoW with us.
Happy birthday Jean-Luc!
Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works. Anything that’s invented between when you’re fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it. Anything invented after you’re thirty-five is against the natural order of things.
Douglas Adams, “The Salmon of Doubt”
Apple is now the largest mobile phone manufacturer by revenue
Apple is now the largest mobile phone manufacturer by revenue
Based on revenue, Apple is now the largest mobile phone provider in the world, surpassing even global leader Nokia.
Human beings are perhaps never more frightening than when they are convinced beyond doubt that they are right.
Laurens Van der Post
Overcoming Bias : Opinion Warning Signs
Overcoming Bias : Opinion Warning Signs
Signs that your opinions function more to signal loyalty and ability than to estimate truth.
Some great ones here, and they pretty much sum up conversations with religious people:
- You have little interest in getting clear on what exactly is the position being argued.
- You find it easy to conclude that those who disagree with you are insincere or stupid.
- You are reluctant to change your publicly stated positions in response to new info.
- You care more about consistency between your beliefs than about belief accuracy.
- Your opinion doesn’t much change after talking with smart folks who know more.
- You find it hard to list weak points and counter-arguments on your positions.
Shh! Sleeping.
Every person in this room has more access to information and scientific knowledge and what is now basic common sense than the authors of the Bible and the Koran. In fact, there’s not a person in this room who has ever met a person whose worldview is so narrow, just by the sheer time in which they appeared in history, as the worldviews of Abraham or Moses or Jesus or Mohammed.
Sam Harris
Something worth remembering. Jesus didn’t even know the germ theory of disease, and thought it was demons that causes all disease. This is someone people look up to as the son of God?
Words That Don’t Exist in the English Language
L’esprit de escalier: (French) The feeling you get after leaving a conversation, when you think of all the things you should have said. Translated it means “the spirit of the staircase.”
I often feel “The spirit of the staircase”!
Text and email are polite invitations to a conversation. They happen at the speed and leisure of both the sender and the receiver. In stark contrast, when you get a phone call, it’s almost always a convenient time for the caller and a bad time for the recipient, who I refer to as the “victim” because I insist on accuracy. My philosophy is that every phone conversation has a loser.
Science is an ongoing process. It never ends. There is no single ultimate truth to be achieved, after which all the scientists can retire. And because this is so, the world is far more interesting, both for the scientists and for the millions of people in every nation who, while not prefessional scientists, are deeply interested in the methods and findings of science.
Carl Sagan, from the introduction to the mass market edition of Cosmos
You know why Harry Potter is a phenomenal book series?
Because it addresses SO MANY THINGS and attempts to explore them:
- Gender roles (in which this book series destroys them)- In this series you have a HUGE burly man (Hagrid) who treats animals like they are his children, cries publicly, shows his emotions, KNITS IN PUBLIC, and gardens. You have Mrs. Weasley who is the major mother-figure for Harry but who fights just as hard in the final book as the men even though she’s “just” a housewife. She kills Bellatrix for crying out loud!
- Racism and privilege– The full-blood, half-blood, muggle-born aspect runs throughout the whole series and is meant to be seen as a type of racism. Hermione is a muggle-born but her abilities far surpass her peers’ and Neville, who is a full-blooded wizard is expected to be a better wizard simply from his ancestors, is one of the worst in his classes.
- Classism- The Malfoys vs. the Weasleys.
- Ageism– Harry isn’t taken seriously because of his age (in fact it actually helps him obtain the fake locket with Dumbledore because he isn’t seen as a “real” wizard due to his age) and neither is Dumbledore. Dumbledore’s age becomes an issue for the news and people start to question whether or not he’s gone senile when he and Harry claim that Voldemort has returned.
- Speciesism– The treatment of House-elves, centaurs, giants, and other magical populations are seen as beneath wizards and Hermione tries to take steps to fix that with S.P.E.W.
- Education– Hagrid was expelled and so he’s seen as uneducated and Malfoy calls him a servant, a savage, etc. But he’s able to earn a position as a teacher at Hogwarts and overcome his lack of an education. Fred and George are the same way, they drop out of Hogwarts and become successful joke shop owners, the implication being that they were not ever really suited for a traditional education (they were not traditional learners and that’s okay). Or when Harry becomes the DADA teacher during Order of the Phoenix, he chooses to teach it hands-on while Umbridge has them write lines all class period. This book explores different learning styles and shows that there are many different ways to learn a subject.
- Ableism– Neville’s parents live in a hospital because they experienced severe brain damage after being tortured by Voldemort for information. We see them in Order of the Phoenix and it’s through those chapters that we not only understand Neville better but we find out that he isn’t ashamed of them nor does he feel he should be.
- Sexuality- This book portrays a gay relationship, (even though it is not brought up within the canon ever): Grindelwald and Dumbledore. JK Rowling stated this shortly after the final book came out, that’s how we know this.
