Fortnightly Mailing

A three month trial of FriendFeed

For every post in Fortnightly Mailing there are probably four or five items that I do not get round to writing up, or decide not to bother with. For the next three months I am intending to use FriendFeed to make informal notes about these items. You can keep an eye on these by subscribing to this public RSS feed, which also includes links to the posts that make it into Fortnightly Mailing. (So far I am very impressed with FriendFeed, which is intelligible and flexible.)

The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work

Picture: Richard Baker. Source: http://www.alaindebotton.com/work_photographs/gallery_index.htm

I've been gripped by Alain de Botton's The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work, learning from it and laughing in equal measure at de Botton's take on events and on the jobs investigated and observed. At one level de Botton's basic argument is that work with all its quirky absurdity saves us from thinking too much about death, as well as keeping us out of greater trouble, giving us a sense of mastery, and putting food on the table. At another, he provides a set of sharp insights into globalisation and the modern labour process. I think a lot of 16 year-olds would gain a lot more from it than from conventional careers classes.

Macintosh OS X on a netbook for £400 - Guest Contribution by George Roberts

OK, I don't think you can call it a "Mac netbook" but this is how I got Mac OS X 10.5.6 to run on a Dell mini 9. It was easier than I thought.

Jeff Han's multi-touch, mult-user eight foot wide display/interface

In the continuation post below is an impressive 4 minute video of Jeff Han demonstrating his company's eight foot wide multi-touch, multi-user display/interface, and you can read more about touch screens in this 4/9/2008 piece in the Economist. An early prototype for the screen was developed by Han at New York University's Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences. Once you've got the general idea from the video, skip to the final minute for Han's insights into the difference between 2-dimensional and 3-dimensional interfaces.

With thanks to Dick Moore for pointing out the video.

Love the brain you are with

I made this diagram for a talk last month, based on Richard Sennett's description in The Craftsman of a thought experiment by the evolutionary biologist John Maynard Smith. Its point? Evolutionary change is very slow when compared to cultural change. Cultural change is very slow when compared to technological change. Don't get too carried away with recent technological developments. In effect, "love the brain you are with".

@Tickler: a way of slowing email flow and keeping your inbox to zero

I've relied for years on a 43 folder "tickler" system in my filing cabinet (with one folder per month and 31 folders for the month I am in) where I put papers, tickets, bills, letters-to-be-answered etc relating to different days of the month and the months ahead.

A few days ago, a chance discussion with a friend about email workload and the "frenzied" nature of some email exchanges, led to us devising a tickler system for email, shown above.  In the continuation post below I describe the problem, the contribution that @Tickler can make to controlling it, and how.

A comprehensive carbon footprint calculator

www.google.co.uk/carbonfootprint/about.html, which adds a carbon footprint calculator to your Google desktop, if you have one, is worth a look. Have your gas and electricity bills ready for the assessment. The tab that is added to your desktop is a comprehensive one and you could imagine a range of other issue-based services being made available in a similar way. An organisation's learning environment, for example.....

Education not a universal 'good'

Source: British Humanist Society

Here is a timely piece by Donald Clark - Education not a universal 'good' - concerning the harm done by religious indoctrination, and its malign influence world-wide.

Let's have more technical problems at the BBC

Checking the BBC web site I was impressed with what I took to be a new, clean, unfussy look, only to notice that bbc.co.uk is suffering technical problems. So we've not seen the last of the the overcomplicated BBC home page.

Studs Terkel - a moving obituary

I'm rarely moved by reading the Economist. This obituary of Studs Terkel, who died on 31 October, was an exception.