Amazing coincidence, 2 articles about the addictive aspect of World Of Warcraft popped up in the blogosphere yesterday:
"Life" Category
Self-timing egg
Wednesday, August 2, 2006
That may look like an idea is neat. It’s certainly unusual.
My opinion however is it’s another marketing gimmick from an industry whose actors have trouble to differentiate each other. This may appeal to hipster and gadget freak, but it won’t replace the timer.
Especially the timer beeps so you know your eggs are ready even if you’re doing something somewhere else in the house, whereas this ink, you need come back to your nest^H^H^H^H kitchen to verify the color of your eggs.
Self-timing egg: “David Pescovitz: The British Egg Information Service developed an egg emblazoned with an invisible ink label that turns black when the egg is cooked. The new eggs will go on sale this fall. From the Times Online: A spokeswoman for Lion Quality Eggs, the service’s quality assurance scheme, said: ‘We had a lot of inquiries. We said OK, this is a big issue — people can’t even boil an egg.’ “ (Via Boing Boing.)
All you need to do is decide whether you prefer your eggs soft, medium or hard-boiled, and buy accordingly.
Stiff’s Questions
Tuesday, August 1, 2006
I’ve read Stiff’s blog and I think the questions were good questions and the answers were pretty interesting.
A while ago I got an email out of the blue from someone in Eastern Europe “ (Via ongoing.)
(Poland I think?) saying ‘I hope you don’t mind if I ask you a few questions
about software.’ Then I ran across it again while looking for something in my
inbox on a plane ride, so I dashed off some answers; the person seemed
pleasant and polite.
I can’t dig his name up, but he calls himself ‘Stiff’ and his blog’s called
‘Sztywny Blog’. Anyhow, he also heard back from from Linus Torvalds, Dave
Thomas, David Heinemeier Hansson, Steve Yegge, Peter Norvig, Guido van Rossum,
and James Gosling.
The answers
to his questions are interesting.
Interspecies love: duck and chicken raise a family
Tuesday, July 25, 2006
I don’t know what to think of that. That’s odd. Interspecies love: duck and chicken raise a family: “Mark Frauenfelder: A duck and a hen on a farm outside Söderköping have found each other. The duck is now a foster-father to five chickens. Annika Stenbäck and Peter Andersson, who live at the farm, tell the daily Norrköpings Tidningar about the love birds. The birds started dating already last summer, after the duck accidentally drowned his mate during lovemaking. However, the duck didn’t spend much time in mourning before starting to date the hen instead. Soon, the hen started laying and brooding, but as the eggs were not fertilized, they never hatched. ‘So we fetched some fertilized eggs from our old hens at my parents-in-law. She got six chickens, but one has died,’ says Annika Stenbäck. During the entire brooding period the duck kept a nervous watch by the hen’s side. ‘And since the chickens were hatched he hasn’t left her side,’ says Annika Stenbäck to Norrköpings Tidningar. “ (Via Boing Boing.)
Johan Anglemark says:
Boy uses sound to see
Tuesday, July 18, 2006
Is he going to be the real-world DareDevil, or one of a mutated (with superpower) form of human being 
Life is really amazing.
Boy uses sound to see: “David Pescovitz:
People magazine profiles Ben Underwood, a blind 14-year-old who apparently uses echolocation to ’see.’ Ben, sightless since the age of 3, makes loud clicking noises with his tongue and then listens for the echo. According to the article, he can not only detect distance but sometimes the material of an object based on how soft, dense, or sharp the echo is.
Link to People, More on human echolocation here and here
”
(Via Boing Boing.)
QOTD
Sunday, July 16, 2006
Found as a description of a photo on Flickr.
I know a dear one who should reflect on this:
“Es mejor encender la luz que maldecir la oscuridad” -Proverbio Arabe“
Free WiFi spawns cafe backlash
Monday, July 10, 2006
Free WiFi spawns cafe backlash: “Coffee shops across the nation are struggling to deal with the challenges posed by free WiFi. The problem is not getting customers to come, but to leave.”
(Via Ars Technica.)
666-6666 telephone number gets a lot of calls from babies
Tuesday, June 6, 2006
666-6666 telephone number gets a lot of calls from babies: “Mark Frauenfelder:
Bruce Stewart has a good story about the time he worked as a technician for a Jesuit university in San Francisco. When the university upgraded to a new phone system, the phone company gave them the 666 prefix, which upset some of he higher ups. It was too expensive to get a different prefix, so they accepted it. Bruce’s boss gave himself 666-6666, and Bruce got 666-6667.
As you can likely imagine, there were many jokes and good times to be had with these numbers. And some weird lunatic prank calls, though not a lot. But what drove my boss crazy most of all about having that fateful number was the amazing number of ‘googoo gaagaa’ calls he received. You know, those calls you get when an infant has gotten a phone off the hook and has inadvertently dialed you up and is cooing and babbling into the phone? Well, maybe you don’t, but trust me, if you ever get a phone number with all of the same digits, you will. Apparently pounding repeatedly on the 6 button is a fairly easy thing for a baby to do.
”
(Via Boing Boing.)
It reminds me that earlier today it was:
06/06/06 06:06
My Head is rolling on the floor hiding from me
Monday, June 5, 2006
Two weeks ago I forgot my umbrella on a bus.
Today I’ve lost my USB flash-memory (1GB USB key bought last week) on the same London bus route 
This kind of absent-mindness is not usual of me, I wonder where is my head…
If you see him, could you tell him my shoulders are also a comfortable place to be.
It’s all about me: Why e-mails are so easily misunderstood
Tuesday, May 16, 2006
It’s all about me: Why e-mails are so easily misunderstood: “‘To avoid miscommunication, e-mailers need to look at what they write from the recipient’s perspective…One strategy: Read it aloud in the opposite way you intend, whether serious or sarcastic. If it makes sense either way, revise. Or, don’t rely so heavily on e-mail. Because e-mails can be ambiguous…’”
(Via digg.)
It’s so true emails are easily misunderstood. It’s even worse if you are used to speak by metaphors,irony and understatement and try to do that in emails!
It’s not easy to read between the lines in social context,
it becomes a “tour de force” to read between the lines in an e-mail (what? anyone doubt the expressiveness of a white pixel?)
This is where smilies help… sometimes and I disagree with people who see the use of such symbols as a lack of imagination, erudition or whatever.
They don’t always work because, first you can not map the infinite subtlety of body expression into a limited meaningful combination of a couple of characters.
Secondly smilies are undoubtedly associated with very informal speeches which is the area where misunderstanding do the least damage.
Reading aloud an e-mail is not practical at all unless you are a lonely Uber Nerd (in that case nobody understand you anyway whatever medium you choose) or a caveman (and you’re unlikely to have a computer down there).
One may think that the instant aspect of an e-mail exchange leads people to think less before sending an e-mail
I think it’s true (just see the number of headlines mentioning e-mail scandals in corporate world), but surprising given the asynchronous aspect of an e-mail exchange compared to Instant messaging or phone calls.
I don’t think it’s a tricky issue though:
Be very explicit when writing e-mails and don’t argue via e-mail: it’s easier and more efficient to regret and/or apologies in IM/telephone/direct contact, while everything said in e-mail is written in stone forever (and tends to leak …)
If one has to be PC, nothing is better than direct human contact.
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