The WS4 could be a great thing to give someone you know who likes to spend alot of time in the great outdoors. What does it have, besides the time. Well this: Altimeter, Barometer, Compass and Thermometer. Not bad.
Alas, I am not an outdoorsman. But I think it would also make a great gift for geeks as well. Ahem.
Then you must read this: Going Deep for the Cheap in New York – Frugal Traveler Blog – NYTimes.com
Lots of good advice here.
I was really surprised by this article in the NYTimes.com because it is saying that even with the same workout done the same way, your heartrate could be higher in the evening than the morning. The article goes on to discuss why this could be. It’s fascinating in itself, but as someone who trains mostly later in the day but runs early morning marathons and other long distance races, it’s also concerning. I train with a heart rate monitor, and my tempo runs are based on my heart rate later in the day. When I run the race, I am assuming my heart rate is going to be the same for the same effort. But in fact, to get the same heart rate in a morning race, I might have to be running alot faster. This sounds like it could be a good thing, but you could also end up over-exerting yourself and not having enough strength in your legs to get to the finish line.
The net of it is, if you are going to run a morning marathon, do some long distance and tempo runs in the morning as well to have a better understanding of what pace you should be running at come race day.
Why should you beware? Because it appears what they are recommending is that you be alot more open with your data. That is certainly the case with me. For my settings, I restrict my settings to “Only Friends” for most people. For my photos, I restrict that mainly to close friends and family. However, what Facebook advised is essentially making most of that open to others beyond that. So, if your old settings were locked down like mine are, pick “Old Settings”.
Facebook is making this look like they are offering more Privacy, but what they really want (need?) you to do is open up for their own benefit. I think you should pick what works best for you.
I also didn’t like that I needed to have to move my mouse over an Old Settings radio button before I could see my old settings. They could have made it alot more obvious. I suspect most people will have a hard time with the panel and pick settings that don’t work for them.
That’s just me. You need to decide for yourself what your privacy settings should be. I just don’t see Facebook being all that helpful in that regard.
I think Phoenix is great. And I absolutely love Paris. So I have been to the blog, LA BLOGOTHEQUE, quite a few times recently because they have a number of great videos of Phoenix performing live on the streets of Paris, as if they were wandering street musicians.
Here’s one of them, but I recommend you go to that site to see all three. I picked this video because it shows their set up nicely. I thought it was pretty cool how the Tivoli device was connected to the keyboard, too.
Go see the rest. If you understand French, check out the rest of the site. It appears well done.
While they say it has nothing to do with global warming, the fact that there is a giant iceberg heading towards Australia is pretty incredible, especially when you thinking that, according to CNN.com,
“A massive iceberg — more than twice the size of New York’s Manhattan island — is drifting slowly toward Australia, scientists said Wednesday.
The iceberg, measuring 140 square km (54 square miles), cleaved off an ice shelf nearly 10 years ago and had been floating near Antarctica before commencing on its unusual journey north.”
Twice the size of Manhattan!! Not quite 2012, but still, very striking.
Recently I started using Google Wave. I like it, though I think it will take a while before it takes off.Using it, I found myself using other Google tools again. Tools I hadn’t used in awhile. Here’s some notes on that:
Google Desktop: actually, I never stopped using this. I find it essential for finding information on my computer quickly. A great tools. Love it.
Gmail: I still use Gmail from time to time, but I have been using Yahoo Mail for some time, and I find I like the UI better, plus all my “stuff” is there. Like it, but like Yahoo more.
Google Reader: I think Reader is a good tool. I tend to use a desktop feedreader, Feedreader. I like that too, but I am thinking of switch to Google Reader. I like it.
Google Calendar: I started using Calendar again. It’s a good tool, and the more I play with it, the move I like it. I will write more about this, but I think I love it.
Google App Server: I played around with this, but it seemed not ready for prime time. I am meh when it comes to this.
Google Maps: I like Maps, but I have had errors with it. I always check both it and Yahoo maps. I also like the APIs for Yahoo maps better.
Google Docs: I am more of a Zoho fan than a Docs fan, but I tend to like both of them, but I don’t use either one nearly enough. I like it though
Picasa: I thought it was ok, but I like flickr better. Alot. I also just like using Facebook.
iGoogle: I find iGoogle invaluable. I use it as my dashboard. I check my Internet mail, todos…all kinds of things. Love it.
Google itself: I like Google, but I don’t like the result. I like Clusty.com better for better searching.
Youtube: I like YT alot, though I don’t do much with it. I am starting to like Vimeo.
Google Notebook: I was using this for awhile, but my use fell off. Perhaps I need to revisit it.
Other Google things I have used:
Google pages: I still have some up there, I think. Haven’t checked in awhile. I liked it. It was a good place to play around with web pages.
Google Mashup tool: I looked at this, but I didn’t think it provided much value for what it did. I guess others felt the same, for it is discontinued.
It’s important to have good quality passwords. Including a combination of upper and lower case letters, numbers, and punctuation marks in your password will make for a tougher password than a simple word (w1Nt.e!r is a much harder password to break than winter) . However, remembering such passwords can be difficult.
To achieve this, one approach is to use email addresses as passwords. Many email addresses contain underscores and numbers and all of them contain the @ sign and periods. If you use email addresses as passwords, your passwords will automatically be more secure.
Now obviously you should not use a easy to guess email address as your password. You don’t even have to use a real email address: me@myT0ughPassw0rd.heck.ya.times.1000 will also work well. The challenge is to have a password you can recall with one that is harder to break. This approach helps with that.
Anyone who uses Facebook should know that it’s Privacy Day at Facebook. What this means, according to Mashable, is that it will be more straightforward to change your privacy settings. You may not think much about that now, but you should. For Facebook is working with Google to make more Facebook content searchable. You might think all those photos and other things you’ve posted there are private, but you may be in for a surprise later when it all suddenly shows up on a Google search.
Perhaps a good resolution for the new year’s is to change your privacy settings there (and think about that in general).
I am experimenting with the posterous interfaces to wordpress and twitter. Let’s see how they work.
TIME magazine does a good job of answering the question in this title, The Stolen E-Mails: Has ‘Climategate’ Been Overblown? Highly recommended.
The short of it is yes, it has been overblown.
If you are a skeptic of global warming, good for you, if you apply the same skepticism for anything you hear from the scientific community. Good scientists are skeptics themselves, and challenging what scientists put forth makes for better science.
If you are convinced that global warming caused by people is true and terrible, then I think this setback is actually a good thing, even if in the short term it may not seem that way. I believe this is true, namely, that “climate scientists and advocates will need to rethink how they engage with critics. Judith Curry, an atmospheric scientist at Georgia Tech, wrote in a much-discussed blog post that researchers need to make climate data much more open and transparent, and that scientists need to be wary of falling into what she calls “climate tribalism.”” I am a strong proponent of open data and open systems, and trying to close down the discussion leads to bad science and bad politics. I hope the climate scientists come at this with even more rigour and more force. The forces against them are going to be there whether or not they are open and practice good science or closed and practice bad science: the aim should be for more transparency and more research.
The blog, LA BLOGOTHEQUE, has some great footage of Phoenix live in Paris. You really ought to see the site if you are a fan of Phoenix and/or Paris.
Here’s a taste:
If you have a blog, especially if you blog on topics that might be personal or political or contentious, then you may run into trolls. If you are going to blog seriously, then you need to know how to deal with them. This article will help: How To Handle A Troll, and Beat Them at Their Own Game.
While this article is aimed at usenet users, for bloggers, alot still applies. However, one thing I would recommend is that you moderate all your comments. It helps to nip trolls in the bud. Also, I am not sure I care to beat them. I am happy just to see them move along.
On March 24th, Dietmar Elger is coming to the AGO to speak about Gerhard Richter. As the AGO describes,
“Noted curator Dietmar Elger has written the first biography of Gerhard Richter – a foundational portrait of this artist and his profoundly influential oeuvre. With full access to Richter and his archives, Elger offers unprecedented insight into Richter’s life and work. Elger explores Richter’s childhood in Nazi Germany; his years as a student and mural painter in communist East Germany; his time in the West during the turbulent 1960s and ’70s, when student protests, political strife, and violence tore the Federal Republic of Germany apart; and, his rise to international acclaim during the 1980s and beyond. Richter has always been a difficult personality to parse, and the seemingly contradictory strands of his artistic practice have frustrated and sometimes confounded critics. In this talk Elger presents a Richter who is far more candid and vivid than ever before.”
If you go to the site, you can buy tickets now. Being a big Gerhard Richter fan, I plan to.
I love this video! Why? Well, it’s got:
YouTube – New Pornographers – Your Daddy Don’t Know
and if you want to see the original: YouTube – Toronto – Your Daddy don’t know
Fun!
NYC is great for many reasons, not the least of those is the famous pastrami on rye sandwiches that you can get there. And Montreal is equally famous for it’s smoked meat on rye. Now Montreal’s famous sandwich is coming to New York, and it’s stirring things up (Between the Rye, Pastrami’s Canadian Rival – City Room Blog – NYTimes.com).
Whatever else is said in the article — and if you want to know the ins and outs of these two famous sandwiches, you should read it — I think that New York is lucky to have such a great addition to all the good food found there. Enjoy! (In moderation, of course. :)) If you are in the vicinity of a place that serves such a sandwich, I say: take a break and enjoy one.
It is not easy running for President of the U.S. or the leader of any country, in general. It’s a demanding job. So why do I say it is easy? Well, I got the idea from this chart:
Look at Ronald Reagan’s approval rating. I think this is representative of alot of leaders, and it basically boils down to this: if you want to be elected or re-elected, the economy has to be good and you have to be scandal-free. If you can manage that, your popularity will be high enough to get re-elected. If you can’t, then you don’t get re-elected. Now that’s very hard, because it is very hard, if not impossible, to control the economy. And it can be very hard to keep all your staff scandal free. Which also makes the job easy, once you realize that much of getting rehired (i.e. re-elected) is out of your hands! Sure, you can do alot of things. But getting re-elected is mostly about the economy and scandals.
This sounds almost too hard to believe. According to TPM, Drug-Makers Paying Off Competitors To Keep Cheap Generics Off Market.
Indeed:
Over the last few years, drug-makers have embraced a startlingly simple tactic for fending off competition from generic brands: paying them off. In a nutshell, the company that holds the patent on a profitable drug strikes a deal with the maker of the cheaper generic brand: you hold off on marketing your generic for several years, and in return, we’ll give you a share of our profits on the drug.
So common have these deals become lately that they’ve been given a name: pay-for-delay. The approach — a textbook anti-competitive tactic — is worth billions to drug-makers, because it essentially allows them to buy more protection than their patent confers.
That was made more or less explicit by Frank Balsino, the CEO of Cephalon, which makes the sleep-disorder drug Provigil. In a 2006 interview, Baldino trumpeted recent deals with four generic drug-makers that kept generic versions of Provigil off the market until 2012, declaring: “We were able to get six more years of patent protection. That’s $4 billion in sales that no one expected.”
Whatever the reason for this — good, bad, or indifferent — it adds up to greater costs to the consumer and the organizations that insure them. It also sounds like abuse of the patent process. To say the least.
Here’s something to help you get through the middle of the work week.
The Pogues, Christy Moore & The Dubliners- Irish Rover @ the Dubliners 25th year show on RTE on perform Irish Rover.
$11? $50? Or $20,000? If you guessed the last answer, you’d be correct. For this Olivetti typewriter, a well designed machine in its own right, is worth so much more because it used to belong to Cormac McCarthy. A good story about McCarthy and his Olivetti typewriter can be found (at this somewhat punnily titled article) here: No Country for Old Typewriters – A Well-Used One Heads to Auction – NYTimes.com
Find out more. One way you can do that is by learning more about joinred.com.
See Fight Aids In Africa, Aids Awareness – JoinRED Fight Aids
According to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), it has produced 600,000 to 1.6 Million Employed by Stimulus according to the WSJ.com, as well as boosted the GDP.
You may argue with the cost/benefits of such stimulus, but it appears to be doing what it should be doing, which is create short term jobs and stimulate the economy. And jobs, especially in the U.S., are certainly needed.
Now, the list of 10 great gifts under $50, includes glass bowls, throws, and other fine things. But frankly, they had me at Tiffany’s!
Sure, you can get a cheaper deck of cards than these, but how many gifts can you get from Tiffany’s that is under $50 that will actually be useful? Not many, I say. But hey, whether it’s this or something else on the list, I believe now your Christmas shopping — and mine — just got a bit easier.
Good luck!
More reasons to be proud of Canada! According to this Expat Experience Report 2009 by HSBC Bank International, Canada ranks #1 in terms of ranking by expats. As the surveys says, Canada “scored well across all categories, with ‘making expat friends’ the only category where it was ranked outside of the top ten. It scored in the top three for setting up utilities, making local friends and joining community groups.”
To be fair to other places like the UK, Canadian accomodation tends to be newer. And Canadians — most people, actually — likely work less than those in places like Hong Kong. Needless the say, the UK, the US, HK, and many of the other places are great places to live or move to for all sorts of reasons.
That said, I was still delighted (but not surprised) that Canada came in first. Now if it only didn’t get dark so early in the wintertime. 🙂
Check out the report: it fairly comprehensive.
My 13 year old is a fan of Polyvore, where users of the site can “play fashion editor and create collages featuring pictures of clothes, accessories and models from across the Web”, according to NYTimes.com. What caught my attention was this:
Founded by three ex-Yahoo engineers, Polyvore has been focused on getting people to visit the site. It seems to be working. Polyvore had more than 835,000 unique visitors in June, almost 25 percent more than the traffic to Style.com, run by Vogue, and InStyle.com, according to Compete, a Web analytics firm. It is also far bigger than the Web sites of Lucky and Harper’s Bazaar. While other fashion magazine sites have been struggling to hold an online audience, Polyvore has tripled its traffic in the last year.
Not only is it getting traffic, but it is getting it using highly interactive approaches. I believe this is the future. I don’t think sites can just demonstrate content (or worse, locked in Flash content). I think the sites that allow the user to take control of the content will be the ones that succeed. If that’s true, Polyvore should do well. Let’s see.
No matter how important you may be in the role you perform or the job you do, your kids see you mainly as a dad. Watching this video of President Obama Pardoning the White House Turkey, what I noticed after awhile is the response of his kids. It made me laugh, because they are being typical kids! They’re patient for a little while, but even though the speech is short, you can see them getting bored and fidgety very soon! Others in attendence might thing: oh, we get to see the President and visit the White House. For kids, they may be thinking: c’mon Dad, stop talking and pardon the turkey already!
Although we don’t participate in Black Friday in Canada, some retailers like Apple have good prices for Canadians, too. There aren’t great deals at the One-Day Apple Shopping Event – Apple Store (Canada), at least not that I can see, with the exception of the Nike + iPod Sensor, which is now $18.00 “Was $25.00 Save $7.00”. That’s around a 28% saving. If you need one, or you want a second/backup one, today’s a good day to get it.
Well. What to say. I guess first, for those of you who don’t know, the “journalist” trying to interview Sarah Palin is actually the great Canadian comedian, Mary Walsh. While I think the “protection” Sarah Palin has in this video is ridiculous, I have to say it’s a good thing Mary Walsh didn’t get to pin her down. Although, as you can see in the video…
Way to go, Mary! You make me proud to be a Canadian.
The Huffington Post has more here: Palin Tricked By Comedian Again, Says Canada Should Drop Public Health Care (VIDEO)
Kashmir Hill is a journalist writing on how she uses Facebook for reporting. If you use Facebook, you’d be smart to read this. Even if you don’t think journalists are interested in what you are up to, others may be. They may use the same techniques to find out more about you; even things you think are private, or protected by certain privacy settings.
Take heed.
Sadly, Phil Agre, who suffers from manic depression, has abandoned his apartment and his job and has disappeared, according to the All Tech Considered, Technology News And Culture Blog from NPR. If you weren’t involved with the Internet in the 1990s, you may not know who he is. But like alot of people back then, I was a big follower of his famous mailing list, Red Rock Eater. I agree with NPR, when they say:
“Agre’s online influence reaches far and wide – which makes it all the more surprising that he could have gone missing for such a long time without more people noticing. He was the publisher of the Red Rock Eaters News Service, an influential mailing list he started in the mid-1990s that ran for around a decade. A mix of news, Internet policy and politics, RRE served as a model for many of today’s political blogs and online newsletters.
I was influenced by Agre, too. I became a fan of the Red Rock Eaters list in the 90s, and encountered online references to it almost on a daily basis. I was always excited to see one of my articles or projects cited in it. With Agre’s curation, RRE reached thousands of Internet researchers, policymakers and some of the first bloggers. Agre had established a sizable online network and knew how to use it – so much so, he even published a how-to guide on using the Net to strengthen your professional relationships.”
I started my own list, Smart People I Know, due in a large part to the influence of Phil Agre and RRE. Eventually it turned into this blog.
I hope they find him safe and sound, soon.
The American Prospect points out a stupid comment made with regards to the colour of the gown that Michelle Obama wore recently, namely, AP said:
First lady Michelle Obama chose to wear a gleaming silver-sequined, flesh-colored gown Tuesday night to the first state dinner held by her husband’s administration.
Now if you look at what I underlined and then you look at this photo:
You can see it is not “flesh” colored, at least when it comes to the skin tone of Mrs. Obama. AP should know better.
AP mistakes aside, what this article did point me to was this page on the history of Crayola Crayons. I found it fascinating to see how they started with 8 basic colours in 1903, only to expand out to 48 colours in 1949. At that time, they retired Prussian Blue to Midnight Blue based on requests of teachers, and they replaced Flesh with Peach in 1962, “partially as a result of the U.S. Civil Rights Movement”. Later on, the replaced Indian Red in 1999 with Chestnut. And in 2003 they replaced a number of other, less controversial, colours.
So there: I think it is entirely accurate to talk about the peach-coloured gown of Michelle Obama.
I am curious though about the controversy about Prussian Blue, since I believe Prussian Blue is still a paint colour that artists use. Was there some anti-Prussian sentiment that drove this change? Regardless, the Crayola page is interesting to anyone who has used one of their crayons (which is Canada and the U.S., probably everyone!)
What do you get when you spent 440 hours with Lego? Well, in this example, you get a near perfect reenactment of a scene from The Matrix, redone as Lego.
If you go to the site dedicated to this, you can see just how accurate it is and how it was made.
I think this is impressive.
As dashing as he is here, he could be deadly in the ring. He is one of the greatest fighters of all time, and now there is a biography on Sugar Ray, nicely titled, ‘Sweet Thunder,’ by Wil Haygood (Review – NYTimes.com). If you know a boxing, sports, history or biography fan in your family, this could be a superb gift. It’s a great story from many different angles, and you don’t necessarily have to be fight fan to appreciate the life and times of this man. Check out the review, then head on over to Amazon or your favourite book seller and pick up a copy.
(Photo from the review, The Times of London).
Mint has published some charts that show a consumer comeback story here: Black Friday 2009 – Black Friday Sales Numbers Walmart, Best Buy, Target | MintLife Blog | Personal Finance News & Advice. This is good news overall.
What I find interesting as an aside, though, is that Mint, because it has access to alot of personal data, could potentially be a source of economic information that is unique. For example, they could aggregate information about saving and spending patterns and start making predictions better than others. And it wouldn’t have to be intrusive. People could allow for their data to be aggregated in exchange for better services.
The Muppets perform Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen.
Awesome is too weak a word. 🙂
The list found here, DIOSA | Communications: Twitter Best Practices for Nonprofit Organizations, is aimed at nonprofit organizations using Twitter, but I’d add that any organization could benefit from reviewing this list and putting these best practices into action. Anyone advocating the use of Twitter within an organization would also be well advised to incorporate these practices into their proposal.
A great list. Found via Twitter, of course!
Canada Post – Holiday Seasons Mailing Dates are here. Avoid the rush (and additional expense) and check it out.
I get vertigo when I see these photos of the rings over famous cities (about 1 minute into the video). Still, it’s cool. You have to see it!
(YouTube – What Earth Would Look Like With Rings Like Saturn – found at AndrewSullivan.com)
Smart People I Know 