14 May 2004: zygomatic smile
flipsockgrrl @ gmail .com
This week:
Friday
The Non-Verbal Dictionary defines terms for non-verbal communication (body language etc), from Adam's-Apple-Jump to Zygomatic Smile.
Making your web site accessible to people with a disability can also help search engines find and index your pages, an aid to other search engine optimisation activities.
The University of Melbourne's annual July Physics Lectures sound interesting: a look at the world of physics as it was understood one year before Einstein published his theories of relativity.
- 2 July: The 19th Century world wide web: the electric telegraph, relativity and the eccentric Oliver Heaviside
- 9 July: The emergence of atoms: Brownian motion and the physics of large systems
- 16 July: Light waves in the luminiferous Aether: real stuff or 19th Century delusion?
- 23 July: The ultra-violet catastrophe: the red hot emergence of quantum mechanics
Tip: turn up early to get a good seat, 'cos these lectures are always popular.
14 May 2004 | top of page
Thursday
Information technology has produced lots of sniglets. Since recovering from our 1980s faxcination, we've all learned the joy of screen spasms and learned that making friends with the alpha geek is a good career move. Think I'll go for an execuglide in my new chair... [more sniglets]
IT security requires initial effort and long-term maintenance. Here's how to make a business case and get funding and support to protect your organisation's data.
The amount of new stored information in the world grew by about 30 per cent each year from 1999 to 2002, most of it stored on hard disks. The amount of printed information is increasing, and most original information on paper is produced by individuals in office documents and postal mail, not in formally published titles such as books, newspapers and journals.
"[T]he class of correspondents in the field has been far below what it ought to be, for it has really required some sacrifice of self-respect for an honorable and just man to enter the field and submit to the imposed restrictions... there has not yet one appeared of sufficient prominence and distinguished ability to designate him as the 'Historian of the War.'"
Million-to-one odds happen eight times a day in New York City. The "Bible Code II" is simply a collection of 'postdictions' arising from our propensity to find patterns in almost anything.
You've got the big rubber band to hold your mobile to your head (for handsfree operation). Now here's the latest gadget for drivers who like to communicate on the road. (nods to Richard Palmer via the flite list at work)
In a scary world, the last friend is the cuddly toy. They cannot run away: insanity is their only escape. Your mission: psychoanalyse and help these distressed creatures. (requires Shockwave)
A slump in the number of students studying natural history at university is posing difficulties for the British Natural History Museum. Though attendances continue to grow, the museum's academic publishing record and ability to attract top researchers are endangered.
Globalisation versus the rebel: rock music was founded in a spirit of spontaneity and self-expression; now you're more likely to hear it in Pepsi ads.
Stanislaw Lem says the current spate of space exploration "is not development but militarisation, pure and simple. Moreover, it has nothing to do with the Universe... What really counts is the speed of information transfer. Should a stock exchange go bust someplace in Hong Kong, the whole world will learn about this within two seconds. I am not an expert on economics, but this is what globalisation is all about. As for space, it will be the domain of astronomers, astronauts, astrophysics, and so on." (via BoingBoing)
13 May 2004 | top of page
Fish
We
moved office this month. The fish seem to be settling in.
These are the scared weird little guys, a collection of male guppies, black neon tetras, black widow tetras, glolite tetras, red phantom tetras, one snail and a catfish of indeterminate species (it looks rather like a Corydoras adolfoi but I'm no expert).
The scaredies live on my desktop in a 33 litre tropical tank. The shrubbery is fake.
Next we meet Arthur, a black moor goldfish who lives on Claire's desk. Arthur has a snail and a blue plastic fish to play with. As you can see in the photo on the right, he likes to scrape the gravel off his black plastic filter. We think he has ambitions to become a gardener. The eggs on the left are made of glass, not Arthur.
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On Tania's desk you can meet Curious George Magellan (below left) and Othello, two Betta splendens males, otherwise known as Siamese fighting fish. One visitor to the office today thought we were being cruel, keeping them in small lidded aquariums, but these guys actually like to be in small, cramped, slightly murky bodies of still water with plenty of shrubbery (or in Othello's case a plastic cave) to lurk under.
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13 May 2004 | top of page
2004 flipsocks:
17 Dec: the
sock has flipped
10 Dec: anything anywhere any time
3 Dec: instant
flattery
26 Nov: the steamroller
of branding
19 Nov: fried
v rice
5 Nov: the page
with no name
29 Oct: and then
there were none
22 Oct: filled
with naughty laughter
15 Oct: get
souls and disconcert the public
8 Oct: ooh,
aah, ooh
1 Oct: pinch
and a punch
24 Sep: design
is the new art
17 Sep: footsteps
of Aeneas
10 Sep: slow
art, viral aesthetic
3 Sep: I
can see your house from here
27 Aug: forever
blowing bubbles
20 Aug: jargon
for the digital age
13 Aug: beautiful
plumage, the Norwegian blue
6 Aug: brokenated
terribility
23 Jul: Alice
underground
16 Jul: color-coded
2 Jul: for
so long treated as nouns
25 Jun: looking
for love, echidna-style
18 Jun: joy-to-stuff
ratio
11 Jun: fun's
fun but a girl can't dance all night
4 Jun: pink dinosaur
28 May: two
people every minute
21 May: incompitnce [sic]
14 May: zygomatic smile
5 May: mailbox
30 Apr: bananaguard
23 Apr: mmmmmWAH!
15 Apr: playtime
8 Apr: googlewhack
2 Apr: we
wish to inform you...
18 Mar: daffy dills
12 Mar: echo
chamber
9 Jan: refund profologies
Also on this site:
articles:
who
is geoffrey ebert?
testing
for the fun factor
chicken
at the (higher education) crossroads
crawford's theory of interactivity
froghunting
home-page
real-estate wars
the eagle
has landed
listmania:
must-reads
for web people
recent reads
pop-culture
quotes
neology:
they shoulda been words
recipe:
lemon and
rosemary risotto
reviews:
Written
In Blood by Chris Lawson
The
Salmon of Doubt by Douglas Adams
Without whom (web):
frankenstein
journal (Chris)
tbn97 (Troy)
webster's encyclopedia [sic]
science playwiths
(Peter)
neroliwesley.com.au (Neroli)
Fraser
Jonathan
Maverick IT network consultants
(Rick)
Look! There's a castle!
(Brent)
Cairns Corporation (Gerald)
Homosapien Books (Julie and
Bruce)
Southern Sky Watch
(Ian)
Panda's Thumb (Ian again)
ABC Science-Matters
(official)
science-matters (unofficial)
chisig
Bovios
Disinfo.com (Alex Burns)
Lee Battersby
Little Malop Gallery
Digest of Usability Resources and
News (Dey)
WooWooWoo (Andrew)
Without whom (also):
Ramona P Lovechild
Dombardo
Katherine with a K
Katherine (no relation)
Catherine
Teresa
Corey
Claire
Claire (no relation)
Helsbels
Iain
Toby and Jann
Andrew
Paul, Warren, Dr K and The New Reality
Stephen
Tania
Trevor
