I find myself in absolute agreement with Jonny. Halloween sucks. And should be positively fought against. I like bonfire night - the whole burning revolutionary stuff is good.
But I don’t understand trick-or-treat. Turn up at a neighbour’s door and threaten them and walk away with candy. Brilliant lesson for the kids. We still have the egg remains stain on our front door from when we were in the kitchen eating dinner and didn’t get to the door in time for the impatient kids of Whitehall Park. Never going to open the door again, no siree.
It took us several days in Boston (we went for an extra-long weekend ahead of a work trip for Caroline) to come to grips with US portion sizes (e.g. get a starter to share and then hope you can fit the main in; absolutely no chance of pudding). There is research to show that there has been a marked acceleration in portion size (e.g. 100 calories more in standard croissant, 200 more in a bagel). Our next question was “does anyone actually use the doggie bags they all take from restaurants?” and the answer is apparently so (although not in Europe).
nine out of 10 Americans eat leftovers at least once or twice a week, while nearly 20 percent enjoy repeat feasts three to five times a week. One in three (33 percent) belongs to the “leftover lunch bunch,” toting last night’s dinner to work at least one to two times a week for a reheat-and-eat lunch
Interesting draft of a talk for Intellect on public sector IT.
I can’t be bothered to repeat the statistics, but these are amazingly large / high definition photographs, and very impressive.
Nice idea for six-word stories. They are a bit like the literary equivalent of smells - very evocative without you being quite able to place them. I liked:
Tick tock tick tock tick tick
I think it is cool that we are still finding out things like this: a substantial proportion of nutrients in the Amazon basin come from one feature in the Sahara.
1) A visual explorer of the Enron email networks as revealed by the trial documents.
2) How do do Pop Art the easy way. I must learn to do graphics packages - they just don’t work the way my head does.
Yeeks. I’m not sure I could be bothered with all of the kerfuffle needed for real calorie restriction for 10 extra years. Bring on the longevity pills.
Joel’s take on phone interviews. I take a similar approach: you kind of know pretty rapidly what your instincts are - it’s then a question of “Prove me wrong” if your instinct is no and “Show me the money” if the instinct is yes. And agreed - people who appear unable to ask questions / have a discussion about a job don’t cut it.
Jonny is absolutely right. There’s a style that the European wine manufacturers can display that is perfect. From tastings in Bordeaux aged 24 (what the hell a) did I know and b) could I afford) to Franciacorta in Italy (I’m sorry we can’t show you around, we have all of Italy’s major wine critics in for a 20-bottle tasting - can I open you a couple of bottles to try? Just the one, I’m driving!) you know that they are at ease with what they do and that style will win out over volume. It might take some time, and some of them may disappear, but that’s not the driver.
Nice shot of two galaxies collding.
Published by Tom on 24/10/2006
in IT.
My hosted FTP server doesn’t restart after a system restart. There are two options to try - firstly to set up monitoring in WHM (Service Configuration >> Service Manager >> Monitor). Second is to restart the FTP server after the server finishes starting up.
I’d like one of these 4ft long maps, only they appear to be £180! No way, Jose.
Surely it must gall Scientologists that £23m of their contributions (are they called tithes?) went on buying a building, let alone the cost of fitting it out and running it? Same with the Sally Army, whose enormous HQ near the wobbly bridge is equally poor taste. Question on Scientology: how is the L-Ron-only room built?
[Update: more crazy goodness on the opening ceremony]
I love knots. Here’s a massive resource for knot-fetishists everywhere.
Two different approaches to the number of deaths in Iraq explained and evaluated. It’s the first time I’ve seen the two sets of numbers discussed rationally and effectively. Why can’t the broadsheets (what is the new collective term for their smaller sizes?) provide this kind of analysis?
Published by Tom on 23/10/2006
in IT.
A new (to me) Excel Gantt tool that looks useful. I’m still using the conditional formatting option for most day-to-day options, though.
Praise be! This is so obviously the right idea - an open pan-London smartcard system. Not that I use trains much, but it would make life so much easier (97k options to 21, for a start). Given how much I use it as near cash (pay-as-you-go with auto top-up), I wonder how much Oyster theft there is?
Published by Tom on 23/10/2006
in IT.
Very nice Treo-optimsed Google maps application. I still like Vindigo because it’s all local and you don’t need a network connection. I guess there’s a five-year window for this kind of delivery and after that we’ll be all wired all of the time.
Published by Tom on 22/10/2006
in IT.
You need a plugin to make getting custom fields into posts as easy as pie.
