Archive for November 2008

Please remove the poo from your fingers

In Quotes on 18 November 2008 tagged germs, hygiene, illness with Comments Off

In the toi­lets of a ser­vice sta­tion Dr Val Curtis is waging a one-woman war on dirty hands that spread dis­ease:

Curtis, the dir­ector of the Hygiene Centre at the Uni­ver­sity of Lon­don, a co-founder of the Global Part­ner­ship for Hand­wash­ing with Soap, and all-round hand-washing afi­cion­ado, has not col­lated the final res­ults yet. But even the most dis­gust­ing elec­tronic mes­sage she could think of, “Soap it off or eat it later”, has failed to eli­cit a scrum for the soap. “I think what we need to do next is put up a poster with a big photo of poo on it,” she sighs.

Just in case any­one needed any fur­ther encour­age­ment (!) to wash their hands:

Absentee num­bers have plummeted at one school, George Watson’s Col­lege, in Edin­burgh after it intro­duced man­dat­ory hospital-style hand­wash­ing for all its pupils in January.

I do have to admit to hav­ing pre­vi­ously thought that the com­puter labs at uni could do with a decon­tam­in­a­tion cham­ber at the door. I’m not bothered by dirt in the slight­est, but germs are another mat­ter alto­gether given my com­plete lack of any­thing approach­ing a func­tion­ing immune sys­tem, and you only need to look at the state of the mon­it­ors to deduce the state of the key­boards. Maybe I’ll just bor­row that poo poster…

Never let your hamster drive your car

In Hamster, Websites on 18 November 2008 tagged fritzy, Hamster, photo with Comments Off

“No mat­ter how much they insist, never ever let your ham­ster try to drive your car.”

I don’t see why not — it would be totally cute. In fact, it would prob­ably look some­thing like this…

Outliers may well be excellent, but they still skew your results

In Quotes, books on 16 November 2008 tagged malcolm gladwell, Quote with Comments Off

This idea — that excel­lence at a com­plex task requires a crit­ical, min­imum level of prac­tice — sur­faces again and again in stud­ies of expert­ise. In fact, research­ers have settled on what they believe is a magic num­ber for true expert­ise: 10,000 hours.

This extract from Mal­colm Gladwell’s next book, Out­liers invest­ig­ates what it takes to become the best. In short, it appears to be tal­ent, drive, time, prac­tice — and a massive amount of luck.

Column inches

In Quotes on 16 November 2008 tagged column, guardian, Quote with Comments Off

The pre­vi­ous even­ing, my wife had presen­ted me with one of her quarterly assess­ments of my pro­gress as a human being, and the res­ults were, as they so often are, disappointing.

Tim Dowl­ing makes me read his whole column out loud, Sat­urday after Sat­urday. I sus­pect his wife may be the most amazing/terrifying human being known to mankind.

Fritzovision

In Hamster on 15 November 2008 tagged fritzy, Hamster, video with Comments Off

Every day on my way to uni I pass a char­ity shop. Out­side it on Tues­day, was a big box full of ham­ster toys and, des­pite the fact that I was already late, I headed in and nabbed it for Fritz. In the end it turns out that I paid £7.50 for about £100 worth of ham­ster won­der­land (there was a huge amount of Rota­stack stuff that I might one day set up as a cage but in the mean­time will just make tube mazes with. It’s like Lego for ham­ster own­ers.) includ­ing a ham­ster car. If you’re won­der­ing what a ham­ster car is, exactly, let me tell you: it’s a device for mak­ing humans happy. Wit­ness exhibit A:

 

Clearly, ham­ster cars are the best things ever. Clearly, mak­ing films of ham­sters is an excel­lent way to avoid work­ing. And clearly, I giggle like a maniac.

Email Standards Project

In Design, Websites on 11 November 2008 tagged Design, email, standards, webdesign, Websites with Comments Off

The Email Stand­ards Pro­ject works with email cli­ent developers and the design com­munity to improve web stand­ards sup­port and access­ib­il­ity in email.

Our goal is to help design­ers under­stand why web stand­ards are so import­ant for email, while work­ing with email cli­ent developers to ensure that emails render con­sist­ently. This is a com­munity effort to improve the email exper­i­ence for both design­ers and read­ers alike.

As someone who churns out spam opt-in email news­let­ters as part of their job, I can assure you that this is way over­due. (via swiss­miss)