A Prominent Solar Prominence does not do justice to an larger-than-Earth-sized cloud of gas trapped above the sun in its magnetic field. Just an incredible picture.
Archive for March, 2004
Ben picks up the riff with a note that
Productivity in the Service Economy sees Jakob calling for 200,000 clones of him. Well sort of, anyway. I agree that usability should be a wider, deeper discipline.
Metronomy Desktop Marketing gives away a free PC with ads that play every 20 minutes. Too painful for me I think, but it won’t be long before there’s a hack. Watch this space.
Math in the Movies looks at bit like the phyics version.
El Reg has a nicely thought through article on the fact that album sales are growing in both the UK and Australia. This basically means that most people are buying more albums if downloaders aren’t buying anything. More likely: everyone is buying more because the unit price has got more sensible. I’ll buy five Naxos CDs without thinking about it because they’re a fiver each and I know they’ll be good quality and worth having. The same would be true of pop CDs if the unit price dropped.
GHOST TOWN is a pictorial and excusably odd English record of a trip on bike back through the Chernobyl dead zone. Very, very interesting.
How to increase your weblog’s popularity according to an internet gurus.
From the “what on earth possessed me” department. Why would anyone say “OK, sure, sounds like a nice plan” to doing late evensong (6:30pm) in Guildford Cathedral on a Sunday evening? It’s a slightly scary building, also known as the house on the hill for a) its commanding position and b) its resemblance to a cross between Amityville and Deep Thought. Bonus: saw some singing chums I haven’t seen for six years and we were “the best visiting choir we’ve seen in a long time” according to the vicar. So not all bad, just bloody tiring for a Monday morning.
Some relatively inexpensive ways of cooling your PC more effectively. Time for a new PC first - my current one is six years old. Respect to the old codger.
Free hotkey scripting tool (I use Macro Express, but this looks like a neat OSS alternative). Motherboard monitor helps you check if your poor overstressed box is running too hot.
Markdown looks like a neat solution to the markup / readability discussion.It has a few benefits over Wiki formatting, but then Wiki formatting is far more widespread. Hmm. Time to move the blog over to one of these, but which?
Seems to be in the air today: have a look at a water soaked gummi bear and some freaky shots of aerogel.
Interesting proposal for doing More science timelines
More timelines of scientific endeavour. I always like to see how far back they can go and still feel credible.
Some good thoughts about why OSS isn’t being adopted by IT managers. We’ve got to address all of these in the next six months of LAWs.
Blue Shirt Society is for me. [Confession: I have a blue shirt on today]
By joining the Blue Shirt Society, you are affirming your identity as a go-getter, a “mover and shaker”, and a true maverick. People will immediately recognize you as the no-nonsense, jet-setting, rule-breaker that your blue shirt tells the world you are.
Plain English Campaign reports on the worst phrase ever. “At the end of the day” wins it. Time to tighten up my language. I tend not to use phrases like these very often, but then I am a consultant, so the occasional one slips in.
ColorMatch Remix is yet another colour picker.
Seven tests for quality web content are exactly that. I’m not sure that a promotional site necessarily has to exude serenity (not much of a call to action there) but otherwise these are really good. They certainly work for me and my interaction with things I want to read.
