Confusability

How Nerdy?

I am quite nerdy.

Found via Stephen Luttrell.

And here is my advanced nerd score:

I don't think I'm really that nerdy.

Disorderly by Design

What do these three things have in common?

• The Trap
• A Perfect Mess
• The Agile Manifesto

They are all part of the undeclared war against Taylorism and it's allies. Rather than worrying about how we can Get Things Done more efficiently we should be slowing down and making some space in our lives to allow magic things to happen.

It's not revolutionary, it's not even a movement, but it could be a bump on the road that helps wake us up.

Favorite search requests for 1Q2007

Inspired by Adam Greenfeld

The following strings were used to find pages on usabilityviews.com during the first three months of this year. Comments have been appended.

- avoid the mouse
use a keyboard

- the war of the ghosts
searching for false memories

- history of the applause
the sound of two hands clapping

- computer can be best friend
woof woof

- create one leg table
it's called a bird table

- dylexic
oops

- how long is too long to wait for a website to load
one mississippi, two mississippi, three mississippi, four mississippi

- what is the internet used for
answering silly questions

- computers versus humans
2 - 1

- wise people admit their mistakes easily
yes no

- why is that thing beeping
because you haven't taken the battery out

YouTube circa 1944 - Calling Blighty

Calling Blighty

Bill: Cheers mate. Well, my dear, hope both you and the baby are in good health, as I am, pretty fit.
Remember me to them all at home…just longing to get home.
I’d like a bit more mail, though…

Play video

One of the ‘Calling Blighty’ series of films made by the Army Film Unit in India to provide visual messages from British Armed Service personnel to their relatives and friends back home. This one was shown at the Classic Cinema, Southampton on 30 April 1944 for an invited audience.

Time...

Time heals nothing. It merely re-arranges our memory.

What not to do today

Thing's you shouldn't do on New Years Day:

• Don’t wear shoes which have a hole in them or financial problems will stay with you the whole year long.
• Don’t wear new clothes on this day.
• Don’t sweep the floor, else you’ll sweep a friend away.
• Don’t do any washing, as throwing out water on this day is considered unlucky.
• Don’t remove the ashes from the fire or take a burning ember from one house to another.
• Don’t let the fire go out.
• Don't make any money deals as money made on New Years Day will only bring bad luck
• Don’t carry any debts over into the New Year.
• Don’t pay out any money on the first Monday of the New Year.
• Don't poke a neighbours fire.

Have a fulfilling 2007

Electronic Echoes and Angels

For the past few years I have been visiting Leslie Harpold's Advent Calendar.

I was a bit upset when I saw that the days had stopped being "opened" up last week, but today I found out that Leslie had died and no more doors would ever be opening on her advent calendar.

Thank You Leslie

Think of "The IT Crowd" as a British live action version of Dilbert

It's good to laugh at yourself sometimes. After watching the first two episodes of "The IT Crowd" last night I decided to make time to watch it again next week.

This sitcom follows the lives of three employees in the IT support department of a company run by a maniacal character played by the anarchic Chris Morris.

There were some great geeky touches like the o'reilly animals on the wall, the RTFM t-shirt as well as the posters promoting open source and fair use.

However, I do think that some of the characterisation may be over the top. There was a scene where "Moss" had his amazon books delivered to his desk. He had ordered both the adult and children's versions of the latest Harry Potter book so that he could compare the texts to make sure that they weren't different. Now who would be pedantic enough to do something like that?

You can watch the episodes online and get some useful links from the website.

Remember how exciting the world was when you were eight!

Jenna will be 8 on September 30th and Unca Rage wants it to be her best birtday ever.

When I was eight I still believed in magic, so why not join me and help make this a birthday that Jenna will never forget.

All you have to do is send her something from her amazon wish list.

I try and make sure I do one nice thing every decade so this covers me until 2015.

Isidore of Seville: parton saint of the Internet

4th April is the birthday of Saint Isidore of Seville, the proposed parton saint of the Internet.

Isidore's most important work was his encyclopedia, the Etymologiae. The work takes its title from the method he used in the transcription of his time's knowledge. The encyclopedia as a whole was a huge compilation in 448 chapters, devoted to transmitting a condensed epitome of the learning of antiquity. The depository of classical culture in Isidore's compendium was so highly regarded that in a great measure it superseded the use of the individual works of the classics themselves, and many were not recopied and are lost. The book not only was the most popular compendia in medieval libraries but was printed in at least 10 editions between 1470 and 1530, showing Isidore's continued popularity in the Renaissance. Until the 12th century brought translations from Arabic sources, Isidore transmitted what western Europeans remembered of the works of Aristotle and other Greeks, although he couldn't understand Greek further than single words. This work was much copied, particularly in the medieval bestiary.