My favourite painting by Lucian Freud is this one:

The question I have always asked is, why did the Queen sit for it? It was done in 2001, by which time Freud’s approach to subjects was well known. Surely the Queen knew it would not be flattering. While some critics approved, many hated it (How Lucian Freud’s portrait of the Queen divided critics – UK Telegraph). After it was painted, she did not comment on it.

I have a theory. Of the many paintings done of monarchs, how many pass the test of time? Merely a handful, like this work by van Dyck of Charles I (courtesy of Wikipedia):

I believe the Queen wanted Freud to paint her because he was one of the few great living painters who could do a portrait of her, regardless of how flattering it was. It would be a painting that would last for centuries and it would be discussed and viewed, long after the many millions of images of her were lost. It was a way to establish her image in the way that it would last. It was a way of being associated with something great and long lasting and artistic. That is why I think she sat for Freud.

Lucian Freud died this week. R.I.P.

Of course this is a matter of taste and preference, but I have always thought that men should dress up as they get older. This gentlemen (from Florence, not surprisingly) is very dressed up, but it’s still smart style for warmer weather. (I am assuming it is summer since he is wearing seersucker.)

The light yellow vest goes nicely with the buttons of his jacket and the laces of his shoes, and the brown of the shoes goes well with his belt. His jacket fits well, too: little bunching, despite the angle of his shoulder, and the shirt shows nicely, too. The suit is great, but the accessories really make this guy look sharp. I could go on, but this is one well dressed man in a great looking photograph.

Shot and found on The Sartorialist, naturally. No one takes better photos of older and dapper gents than him.

You might get the impression from some journalists and politicians that the hacking scandal is a terrible things for alot of celebrities and some other poor people, but otherwise, no big deal. If so, read this CJR article. The whole thing is packed with facts that show that is a big deal. For example, this paragraph:

For starters, executives, editors, and reporters at News Corp.’s UK unit have: bribed the police; illegally hacked thousands of people’s phones, including a 13-year-old then-missing murder victim’s; tampered with evidence while the victim was still missing. They interfered with a second murder investigation; misled police and Parliament, repeatedly, when questioned about these activities; knowingly employed an ax-murder suspect who had been convicted and imprisoned for planting cocaine on an innocent woman in a divorce case; paid millions of dollars to victims explicitly in exchange for their silence; paid large sums to former employees after they had been convicted of crimes committed at the behest of News Corporation employees; continued to pay for convicted former employees’ high-powered lawyers.

And that’s just the start of what you’ll find in this article. It is highly recommended reading.

The criminality and corruption of this organization controlled by the Murdochs is astounding.

Two of my favourite pieces of advice to artists starting out can be found here in these two videos. The first one is a (NSFW) call to do something, do anything, and not get hung up on things that stop artists, especially new artists, from doing anything (‪”My Favorite Artistic Advice” Tales Of Mere Existence‬‏)

A second and related video, ‪Ira Glass on Storytelling, part 3 of 4‬‏, is part of a series. I like this one in particular because it deals with a problem you might have: that your taste surpasses your creative ability. Ira has great advice on how to deal with this.

In short, never stop creating. Create alot. Create everyday. Practice. Evaluate. Do some more.

Cisco has created a powerful infographic showing how devices, independent of individuals,is becoming the dominant factor of the Internet.  The examples here may seem remarkable now, but soon this will be commonplace.

One thing they left out is the use of QR code. While instruments are things actively participating on the Internet, QR codes allow things to be passively on the Internet. For example, trees or animals or lakes or  locations could be tagged with QR code and that QR code could be associated with a URL. In essence, any Thing that can be tagged with a QR code can also be on the Internet of Things.

See Cisco: 50 Billion Things on the Internet by 2020 [Infographic]   for a bigger image

Nicely done.

For a scalable version, see it here.

Including this interview with the Phelps twins who play Fred and George Weasley in the film. If you scroll down to the bottom of the article, you will see titled Recent and Related that points to many other articles, most of them recent. And it seems that each article gives you a different set of Recent and Related articles. There is really a treasure trove of material here: perfect for Harrt Potter fans like myself.

talk about life, death, acting and Weasley courage | Hero Complex – movies, comics, fanboy fare – latimes.com

Taken from the beautiful: poppytalk

Framed Bandannas from Martha Stewart:

Perfect music for the opening night for the last Harry Potter movie (or really, any time):

‪Frank Sinatra – Witchcraft‬‏ – YouTube

If you are like me, you enjoy a good OREO cookie, but the most creative you get with it is in how you dunk it. But if you are Judith G. Klausner, you take your creativity and make something like this:

Impressive. Go to her site for more extraordinary work.

Here’s a video of ‪Ralph Baer and Bill Harrison Playing their  Ping-Pong Video Game in 1969‬‏.  It’s a specialized box: Atari consoles and arcade games were a way off from this.

Imagine what they would think to see today’s games.

Found via Open Culture, where you can find more details on this.

It’s easy: you need to use Google Chrome and then use this extension: Extended Share for Google Plus – Chrome Web Store. Once you install that, whenever you post something on Google Plus, you have the option to Share With other sites, like LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook.

Some benefits to this:

• You can post a short post on Google Plus, share it on Twitter, and then comment on your post on Google Plus if you have more to say.
• You can share Google Plus posts on Facebook to entice your family and friends there to come and use Google Plus. 🙂
• Things you post that are of a professional nature you can post on LinkedIn, without the trouble of having to login there.

In April of 2008, this is typical of what people were writing about Twitter: Much atwitter about nothing? | VentureBeat. It starts off with the sentence:

There is a lot of talk today on the topic of no one caring about the short-form message service, Twitter, outside of a select group of insider tech people.

If any service or technology deserves recognition for being an underdog, it’s this one.

Three years later and we have the President of the U.S. (also an underdog for his current position) holding an open forum in which he takes all of the questions from people’s tweets (http://techcrunch.com/2011/07/06/all-the-presidents-tweets/). I highly recommend the TechCrunch article, and although it tends to gloss over the success that Twitter has been building up along the way, it does a great job of highlighting what is great about it.

And Twitter still is the underdog: the first thing that people said when Google Plus came out was a variation of “this is going to be bad for Twitter”. People have been betting against Twitter since the beginning. I’ll believe it when I see it.

And speaking of the President on Twitter, there is this fantastic infographic put together of the event that can be found here in its full glory. Here’s my shrunken version:

It’s hard to clean up your list of twitter followers and otherwise manage your twitter account: alot of tools that used to do that have closed up shop or now longer work. One that does still work is ManageFlitter.

I used it last night to delete over 100 people that I followed. I had around 540, and I seemed to be having problems with twitter. This tool helped me find inactive accounts and other people that I follow that don’t follow me, and made it easy to delete them. I highly recommend it.

Well according to When does crime happen? in American cities, it’s between 4 and 6 a.m. No doubt because the late night criminals are going to sleep by then, and the daytime criminals have not yet arisen.

Check out the site for more details

Over the last month these two reports have come out concerning StumbleUpon (StumbleUpon sends more traffic to US websites than Facebook — Tech News and Analysis) and Tumblr (Tumblr Now Has More Blogs Than WordPress.com). If I didn’t have a 15 year old, I would have been surprised. But I noticed recently that she has been using StumbleUpon alot, something she learned about from her friends at school. The same is true with Tumblr: it’s a trendy thing to for her friends to have tumblelogs and share things they find that way.

So far no interest in Google Plus. 🙂

Teenagers are very social, obviously, and they are also very tech savvy. If you want to understand some of what is driving use of new media on the Web, go talk to one.

And you can find it here: Daily Steal | fashionmagazine.com. I put Canadian in parenthesis because while it mentions Canadian web sites, the web sites (e.g., Zara) have American and International sources as well. It’s likely that if is a deal here, then it is a deal elsewhere.

Go! Shop! Win! 🙂

I have known about and purchased alot of flowers from The florists of Avenue and Davenport over the years, but I never knew much about them before this blogTO article by Robyn Urback came out. If you ever wondered about them, I recommend the article. And if you are looking for something nice to do this week (and you live in Toronto), why not treat yourself to a visit and a big bouquet. Afterwards you can cross the street and head over to the classic Avenue Road Diner for a bite, or wander further south and go to the Four Seasons for tea. Either way, you have seized the day in the best possible way.

For me, I typed in WG Sebald, Graham Greene and AJP Taylor. It suggested more authors. It didn’t know Taylor, but of the ones it suggested, the ones I knew and liked were very accurate. And now I want to check out the authors I don’t know. Amazing.

Given that it didn’t know Taylor, I think it may be limited to fiction authors.

Here’s my summary: Gnod Summary

I’d be interested to know what anyone else’s results were.

It’s the 10-day Foodie Adventure that’s featured by Right Some Good. It’s at the end of August, 2011, and it will feature some great chefs preparing meals like this:

in various locations in Cape Breton (including my home town of Glace Bay). Cape Breton is great to visit any summer, but if you love great food, this may be the extra reason to get you to book your trip today. In the meantime, follow the link above to see what I am talking about.

From time to time I talk to people about trolls, and among other things, there is a frustration and desire to do something about righting the wrong caused by trolls. I know, partially from my own experience, that that is wrong and you must follow one of the main guidelines of social media: Don’t Feed the Trolls.

An example of that can be seen here in this interview with this horrible woman known as Tamtampamela (Exclusive: The Japan Quake YouTube Troll Explains Herself – Technology – The Atlantic Wire).

What does she say?

“This is going to make me sound like a really bad person,” she began. “But I was kind of excited that all these people were angry because I am a troll and I enjoy getting a reaction out of people.”

Reaction is exactly what she got.

First off, it makes her sound like a bad person because she is a bad person. She would merely be an unknown loser if it wasn’t because she managed to get so many people riled up because they took her to be sincere but messed up. Instead, she’s a borderline sociopath. She has no guilt or remorse or doubt about any of the things she did. You could argue with her in her troll role and it would not have made a difference. Worse, you would have been just adding fuel to the troll’s bonfire. Best to let it go cold and let her and her kind be.

I watched a couple of her videos part way, and the visceral reaction I had for the first one was rage. Then I skipped over to the second one and laughed and thought: troll. Sure enough, she was. And I stopped watching her and laughed her off.

I do think she is a good vaccine for people who believe you can fight trolls and win. You can’t. Read about her and you should see why.

And an fascinating study of Girl Talk too. What is Girl Talk? Well, it is the stage name of Gregg Michael Gillis, who is a master of the mashup. An d what I like about this site is you can follow along and see just how many sources he uses to make each track. It’s incredible for me. Mashing up Jimmy Smith, Cream and Notorious B.I.G. is just one of the eclectic mixes you’ll find here.

Girl Talk – All Day | toob

I should highly add that alot of the lyrics are NSFW. Alot! I recommend earphones.

Over at Open Culture they pulled this clip of Peter Falk from the film, Wings of Desire.

The man next to him is an angel that cannot be seen by Falk or the man behind the counter, but Falk senses that he is there. (Actually, Falk’s character was an angel who became a human, so perhaps that is why he has that awareness.)

What I like about this clip is how Peter Falk shows some of the joys of being alive. (The real life Falk apparently could draw as well).

There’s alot to like about this site, The Other School of Economics. It has a nice layout and a good design, for one thing. More importantly is the content itself. As it states in its manifesto:

“The Other School of Economics” is a (counter)-reference to the ‘Chicago School of Economics’. Reclaiming the agenda back, and creating a hub to articulate and shape some new ideas.

Well worth a read.

Give Me Something To Read is curation at it’s best. As it says, it’s “A hand-picked selection of the finest articles and essays saved with Instapaper“, and they are fine. What’s more, if you are busy, you can save them using Instapaper and read them later.

Give it a try. Perfect for summer reading.

Seeing this great outfit in The Sartorialist (Prada, Milano) got me thinking about plaid.

Specifically it got me thinking about all the various types of plaid there are. I know alot of them, but for a great list, I turn you over to Alexander West’s site is a run down of the various patterns in men’s shirts (and suits, for that matter): Know your shirt fabric patterns | A Shirt Style Guide.

Now that summer is coming, the Madras plaid will be everywhere in men’s wear. But this windowpane plaid in this photo looks great too.

P.S. Glen plaid is short for Glen Urquhart plaid, the place where it came from.

 

From Index : Pam et Jenny where you can see more of them.

With 50+ Personal Productivity Blogs You’ve Never Heard of Before (and about a dozen you probably have). I found this some time ago and likely one or two (or ten?) of them have disappeared. Alot will still be there. There must be one or two that could help kick start your productivity and get you back on track. Good luck.

Is What Katie Ate. And not just because of this divine looking chocolate cake:

The photos are great, but everything about it is awesome. Take a look.

The GAP did alot more ads like this, but this one surpasses them all to me. I think it is the combination of the great song, fantastic dancing, and very attractive dancers. It also does something very well for an ad, and that is not only convince you of the coolness of GAP’s clothes, but they demonstrate how easy it is to move and live in them.

Have a lovely one.

YouTube – Gap Commercial – Khaki soul

Ok, not quite the Internet, but a fascinating look at the world network that existed over a century ago. Even in 1901 there was an extensive cabling and interconnecting of the world for communications. No doubt this was very impressive back in the day too.

(Map from sc-tech: A Map of Undersea Cables from …1901 !)

Including winning some prestigious awards, as listed here: Glen Breton Wins Prestigious Awards | Taste of Nova Scotia. I wrote about them before, as they were being harassed by whisky makers in Scotland. I am glad to see they stuck it out and are doing well.

Sure, there are great single malts from Scotland. That goes without saying. But now you can get one from a local distiller. Would make an excellent Father’s Day gift, if you haven’t bought one already. (It can be found at the LCBO for sure.)

This Italian group’s site has some fascinating Recession Design (2009-2010), that, even if you hate it, have to admit it is pretty ingenious. There’s a PDF as well that you can download that provides some designs on how you could make the items you see in the images that come with the site. I think it may be too functional for alot of North Americans, but the aesthetic is not that different from alot more high end, modern Italian furniture. Take a look.

It is surprising the number of articles that I come across that use wood pallets in creative ways. Here’s 5 more. (I like this in particular)

I find the more rustic the approach, the better it works. See the rest of the ideas here: 5 Uses for Wood Pallets in the Home | Apartment Therapy Los Angeles

I still love Joni Mitchell’s live version best, but this is really good.

This video is charming in itself:

But what I also like about it is that it shows that computers and the Internet are really a part of everyone’s life now. And that is something that I think is great. Everyone benefits from that. Including Frank and Rita, who are now, well, famous!

YouTube – Did you hear a click?

Anyone that sends out professional emails can blog about their profession. This is something I tell others all the time. Still, while I blog and tweet alot, not alot of it relates to my profession. I thought I should change that. I decided that if I am going to advise other people to do this, I should do it myself.  Therefore I set up this blog: The Ghost Chair – My thoughts on IT, over at Posterous.com. I linked it to my twitter account bernie_michalik. Anything blogged will be referenced on that twitter account. I hope to blog there once a week about professional matters that I might discuss with clients or colleagues. Nothing is confidential or in violation of IBM’s employee guidelines. Now, if someone wants to follow me professionally, they can. My other twitter accounts and blogs are more experiments and personal. This new blog and twitter account will be more formal.

It’s called the Ghost Chair for two reasons. When I was doing more Web 2.0 work, our team had a blog called The Orange Chair in which we talked about social media and other Web 2.0 related activity. That blog is defunct now, but I liked how the title of this new blogs relates to the title of that old blog. I also like the Ghost Chair that Phillippe Starck designed. I am a huge fan of Starck, for one thing. And I like that chair because it combines the new and the old effortlessly. It is also something of a virtual chair that is transparent, yet still present. That relates to alot of the work that I have done in IT. I thought it was a great symbol for the blog. Hence the name.

I still plan to maintain my other blogs, etc. But I hope to post to this new blog at least weekly for the next year. Thanks, as always, for reading this.
 

This article, Daily Quick Cleaning Checklist in Real Simple led to a brilliant article mocking it, here: Clean the Whole House in 30 Minutes? We Tried It | The Stir. I agree with the Stir article: the times listed in Real Simple are unrealistic, to put it mildly.

Having tried and failed with the list in Real Simple, I came up with some other approaches that I thought might work better, room by room.

The kitchen: the trick in the kitchen is to keep it clean while you are making meals. This is tiring, but it also saves you time. So if you have the energy, first put away clean dishes. (Actually, before that, if you need to boil water for pasta or vegetables, start that now. The water will be boiling and ready by the time you need to do other things). This gives you more room to move. If you find yourself spending too much time moving things around, get rid of some of your dishes. It’s easy to accumulate dishes, but if you find yourself taking time every night moving dishes around to put other ones away, then either give away some things you have or store them some place else. Have your daily dishes in a spot that makes them easy to put away.

Second, get rid of dirty dishes. Put them in the dishwasher or in the sink of soapy water.

Now you have room to start cooking. If you brought home groceries, put away food that will spoil. Then start cooking. As things as cooking, clean out your fridge and cupboard of things you no longer need or want. Give the fridge a wipe, then store the non-perishable groceries that you have.

Speaking of giving the fridge a wipe, have the day to day cleaners in the kitchen, along with rags or sponges. You don’t want to have to retrieve them: that takes time and energy. At a minimum a spray bottle of all purpose cleaner and a good sponge will help with the basic cleanup.

Have a sink of soapy water ready for anything that can’t go in the dishwasher. As you finish with something, you can either wash it right away or at least place it in there to make it easy to clean later.

Is there any way you can cook for more than one day while you are cooking? If so, that will save you on the amount of time you are cooking and cleaning pots and dishes tomorrow or the next day. Try that.

The dining room: if you have kids, make sure they pick up their own toys before they eat or watch TV or do anything with friends or anything fun. Also have them set the table or tidy up the table, chairs, etc. Consider rewards, since let’s face it: cleaning sucks for kids, too. If they don’t clean up, you can get their stuff in the Sweep. (see below).

When you serve food, use a tray and bring a big bowl and food containers. Why? At the end of the meal, store leftovers from the meal right in the containers at the table. Then scrape any compostable material right in the bowl and dump in the compost (or garbage if you don’t have it). Finally, use the tray to bring it all in with one trip, versus three or four. No place to put the tray? Leave it on the floor during the meal: it’s your family, not the Royal Family.

If you can, have cleaning products in the dining room too. Or have it in the kitchen and bring it in with the tray. You can give everything a wipe after the meal is done.

The bathroom: like the other rooms, have cleaning products standing by. If you have no room for them, then bring them with you at night when you go brush your teeth. Brush your teeth, floss, etc., then give everything a wipe down.

The bedrooms: if you can, get a nice duvet or comforter to make bedmaking a breeze. Clothes lying around? Put away the clean ones right away, of course. Think about what you want to wear before you do in the morning will mean you have less clothes lying around. Also, make your bed before you get dressed, to encourage you to keep the room tidy, and also have a surface to lay clothes out.  Dirty clothes? We’ll get to those in a minute.

The living room and things in general (or, The Sweep): one way to keep the living room and other rooms neat and tidy is The Sweep. Grab a basket (e.g. laundry basket) and some rags/sponges and cleaning products. Go through the living room and other rooms and sweep up books, papers, clothes, toys, etc. Spot clean as you go. At the end, dump off the dirty clothes in the laundry area, reshelve books, stack (or toss) papers, and have a common area for kids toys and put them there.

Other general tips:

Have space to store stuff: tidying takes time because it takes too much time to put things away. Create spaces to put things away, and have those spaces easy to access.

Have space to store cleaning stuff: the less energy it takes to get cleaning supplies, the easier it is to clean. If you have very little space, organize a bucket or bin with a handle full of cleaning stuff and rags. It will make it easier to clean.

Don’t let things build up: that just makes jobs harder. The flip side to this is waste. Running the dishwasher every day even if it is 3/4 full or less will likely save you time, but waste energy. Likewise, you may find yourself with cleaning products all over the place. But the thing you are trying to save is time. You need to balance the waste of one thing vs another.

Make it enjoyable: cleaning and tidying is likely not fun for you (it isn’t for me). But try to make it so.  Put on good music. Have a drink you like to drink. Make it a workout. Talk to someone while you are doing it. Sing a song. Whatever it takes. Also, think about how much easier it will be to find things or do other things if it is clean and tidy.

Get others to help you: this is obvious, but still.

Have less stuff: if all the stuff you have means you spend alot of time taking care of it, is it really worth it. At the very least, move it out of the way of your daily path in order to streamline your life. Also, use up stuff. Do you really need all that food in your pantry? If you bought paper napkins, why aren’t you using them? Etc.

Prioritize it, but don’t make it your first priority: you want to keep the place clean. But you don’t want to spend all your time doing it. Also, you have other more important responsibilities. Therefore, look for shortcuts. Simplify your meals. Timebox your cleaning effort: if you are pressed for time or tired, give yourself a period of time and clean as much as you can in that time, then acknowledge you need to move on and do it.

Make it worthwhile: when things are the way you like it, take time to appreciate it. Hey, if you don’t, then you are missing out a big reason to spend all that time and energy.