Cycling again…
Updated on Sunday, October 23, 2022
…after a five year break and while it’s true that you don’t forget how, your knees can stop being quite so flexible. I’m eyeing up the dog’s glucosamine laced treats quite enviously.
I Thought He Came With You (ITHCWY) is Robert Ellison's blog.
Better Paperless
Updated on Thursday, November 12, 2015
I've just spent several hours scanning and then shredding tedious statements, medical documents and other nasty paperwork. This is even after I've gone paperless with as many companies as possible. Very tedious, not to mention a monumental waste of time and money.
The companies that are paperless vary in what gets stored, for how long and in what format. And if I ever need some statement from years ago I may not even still have an account. I seem to change medical insurance at least twice a year at the moment.
How about a common standard for pushing paperless whatevers out to a third party storage service? These could go directly to Evernote, SugarSync, etc and bypass the post-scan-shred cycle of doom. Just send a PDF, a date, a summary and maybe a service type. Make it easy (or mandatory) to opt in when signing up to each new bank account, health insurer, wireless carrier, etc. Make the world a slightly greener and slightly less boring place.
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(Published to the Fediverse as: Better Paperless #etc #paperless #evernote #sugarsync We should have a standard to send junk-ish mail directly to the cloud service of your choice. )
LEGO, now for Girls
Updated on Friday, February 24, 2017
LEGO Friends is “The new LEGO theme – for girls!”
So I guess the current sets not for girls include Alien Conquest, Architecture, Atlantis, Cars 2, City, Creator, Harry Potter, Hero Factory, Heroica, Kingdoms, Mindstorms, Ninjago, Pirates of the Caribbean, Pharaoh’s Quest, Prince of Persia, Racers, Spongebob Squarepants, Star Wars, Technic, Toy Story and World Racers.
I know they’ve tried this before, but still, how about LEGO Vikings: The new LEGO theme – for Danes!
Misogynistic plastic peddling marketing weasels.
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(Published to the Fediverse as: LEGO, now for Girls #etc #lego #girls #denmark Should there be LEGO sets marketed as being specifically for girls? )
Section 8.2.3.2
Updated on Saturday, October 1, 2022
8.2.3.2 Installation of kitchen or food preparation facilities The installation of a kitchen in premises where the number of staff exceeds twenty requires that proper heating arrangements for those who like pies of high quality are made. Where the number of staff exceeds 50 this should be an aga. (See Chapter 2, paras 2:5 and 2:6.)
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(Published to the Fediverse as: Section 8.2.3.2 #etc #pies The installation of a kitchen ... requires that proper heating arrangements for those who like pies of high quality are made. )
Grape Plasma
Updated on Saturday, September 24, 2022
Gill found these instructions for making plasma in a microwave by carefully cutting up a grape and then nuking it. I finally got around to trying it yesterday, and it’s awesome. Even better than microwaving a light bulb in a glass of water. Check it out:
Making plasma in a microwave!
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(Published to the Fediverse as: Grape Plasma #etc #grape #plasma #microwave #video Video of grape plasma in a microwave (be careful if you try this from home). )
Cam of Fortune!
Updated on Friday, February 24, 2017
My first and last foray into being a TV production company. Tragic that this never got made…
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(Published to the Fediverse as: Cam of Fortune! #etc #letters #cam #cams #channel4 A proposal for the ultimate STEM game show, unfortunately rejected by Channel 4. )
Toys
Updated on Friday, February 24, 2017
Kate has a VTech Move & Crawl ball. From the name you can guess it’s supposed to help encourage crawling. Actually she was terrified of it for a couple of days, and now she likes to pick it up and interrogate it.
I can’t wait for her to get bored and move on to a BigTrak. The ball is going to get some spray paint and be reincarnated as Sargent Major Zero:
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(Published to the Fediverse as: Toys #etc #vtech #bigtrack #terrahawks My abandoned plan to turn a VTech Move & Crawl ball into Sargent Major Zero. )
Circles
Updated on Friday, February 24, 2017
I just got on Google+, and the Circles concept definitely moves the ball forward, but my heart sinks a little at having yet another disconnected social identity. It’s been said before, but it’s worth saying again – social networking needs to be an open, core internet standard like email. You can live on Facebook, Google, Twitter, wherever but your social graph should be independent of any specific service.
I don’t mean this in any (well, OK, a little) granola crunching open source way. Companies should compete to the death on their social graph implementation and added value. But the actual data on who your friends are should belong to you and should be both portable and interoperable. I should be able to friend someone on Google from within Facebook and share core items in both directions. If I get fed up of Facebook I should be able to move my graph and central identity elsewhere.
We’ve got OpenSocial, strangely not mentioned in the same breath as Google+, and Open Graph which is open for things but not people. Also FOAF, XUP, and other possible foundational standards. Of course the barriers here aren’t technical.
Altly wants to be Pepsi to Facebook’s Coke. I’m waiting to see what it tastes like, but it doesn’t sound like they’re itching to change the game.
Diaspora is an interesting project, but running instances (pods) of a social network is the wrong level of abstraction.
Of course ‘owning’ the graph is tremendously valuable and it’s hard to see Facebook giving this up anytime soon. If Google really don’t want to be evil they should use Google+ to liberate us from the tyranny of walled social gardens. Unless it turns out to be another Buzz or Wave in which case it’s down to us.
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(Published to the Fediverse as: Circles #etc #google #facebook #twitter #socialgraph #opengraph #opensocial #foaf #xup #altly #diaspora #buzz #wave Did the Google+ Circles concept revolutionize social networking, and what we should have instead. )
International Date Line Longitude, Latitude Coordinates
Updated on Thursday, June 30, 2022
I’ve been working on an update to Catfood Earth. Several people have asked me to draw the International Date Line on the time zones layer but I’ve struggled to find a decent source for the coordinates of the line segments. I finally ended up manually digitizing the version of the line that appears on Wikipedia. The original is licensed as Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported so I’m making the coordinates below available under the same license:
| Longitude | Latitude |
|---|---|
| 180.0000 | 90.0000 |
| 180.0000 | 75.0000 |
| -169.2500 | 67.7356 |
| -169.2500 | 65.0189 |
| 170.0500 | 52.6863 |
| 180.0000 | 47.8353 |
| 180.0000 | -0.9000 |
| -159.6500 | -0.9000 |
| -159.6500 | 2.9000 |
| -161.8500 | 2.9000 |
| -161.8500 | 5.0000 |
| -155.9500 | 5.0000 |
| -150.6500 | -7.8000 |
| -150.6500 | -10.0000 |
| -156.0500 | -10.0000 |
| -156.0500 | -7.8000 |
| -178.0500 | -7.80000 |
| -172.7500 | -15.0000 |
| -172.7500 | -45.0000 |
| 180.0000 | -51.1815 |
| 180.0000 | -90.0000 |
This looks great for Catfood Earth. Please take the coordinates with a pinch of salt if you’re designing a cruise missile guidance system or something.
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(Published to the Fediverse as: International Date Line Longitude, Latitude Coordinates #etc #internationaldataline Longitude and Latitude Coordinates for plotting the International Date Line, Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license. )
Apparently you can’t build an alternative to Facebook without Facebook integration…
Updated on Wednesday, May 19, 2021
Text: We are working on an Alternative to Facebook. Thanks for reserving your username, we will email you when Altly launches. 1,096 people like this. Be the first of your friends.
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(Published to the Fediverse as: Apparently you can’t build an alternative to Facebook without Facebook integration… #etc #altly #facebook Altly prepares to launch an alternative to Facebook... and it has a Like button! )