Missing missives

Is the art of letter-writing dead? How long is it since you wrote a letter and sent it off to someone in the post? And is it still "letter-writing" if you type it into a computer? What about if you handwrite it on the screen of your tablet PC? And is the quality of the writing in a letter changed depending on whether it's handwritten or computed? How many drafts/how much editing would you do with a handwritten letter compared with a computer-generated tome? And does it matter - hmmm, can't remember when I last received a letter. I miss them.

Einstein shirts

There are stories that Albert Einstein did not waste his brain bandwidth on the "small stuff" - like having multiple pieces of clothing the same, so he could mix and match (well, maybe not mix and match because supposedly all the shirts were the same and all the pants were the same). Well, I think I may have had an insight into this the other day when I was reading the results of my psychometric testing (part of the outplacement services being provided to me by the company). The results suggest that because of my personality type I may be averse to doing (mundane) administrative tasks - which will come as no surprise to some people. Well, what if Einstein was the same - yes, yes, I know it's a big stretch - and what if he had all his clothes the same so he wasn't forced to make the decision about what to wear each day - so it was really decision phobia rather than good planning/management on his part? Hmm. Food for thought - which you'd have more time for once you removed all those administrative (read: domestic) tasks.

Checking out

If you have a "Do Not Disturb" sign on your hotel door, this is no guarantee that you won't be disturbed by Housekeeping. Speaking with a seasoned travelled recently (Hi Pat) he advised that hotels will sometimes check guests' rooms (he suggested after 3pm but the time would vary between hotels) so staff can verify that the guest hasn't "checked out" (a euphemism). Who knew?

When the chips are down

I hope this is one of the questions at the Trivia Night on Saturday: Which retired organic chemist and food storage technician was buried in one of his inventions - and what was it? (... Play thinking music ...) And the answer is Dr Fredric Baur, who was so proud of his invention of the Pringles Chips container that he asked his family to bury him one - and they did. Well, actually, according to Wikipedia, it was a three-way split, but we won't go there here. Dr Baur also invented freeze-dried ice cream (not to be confused with astronaut ice cream - where you just had to add milk) put it in the freezer, and then, hey presto (some time later) - ice cream. Prior to his work in food and packaging, (Dr) Baur was an aviation physiologist in the Navy doing work on the medical aspects of flight (which only just then struck me as strange ... Navy ... Boats?) In his later life, he became a compliance specialist, with a worldwide reputation in plant sanitation. But he was never as proud of his other achievements as he was of the Pringles technology. So next time you're about to pop a tube ... spare a thought for Dr Baur - without whom it would not have been possible.

Observation

While mall-crawling around a local shopping centre the other day, I was amazed at how much space a group of people had taken over. They were arranged in a huge circle , too large for them to be able to communicate effectively without yelling. How wrong I was. It all became clearer when I realised they needed to be in a big circle because they were all signing - and everyone had to be able to see everyone else so they could catch what was being "said". Our interpretation of the world really does depend on how we see things.

Public kno(w)ledge

Are you an expert on something? Need somewhere to share that knowledge? Don't want it to be Wikipedia? Well, Google's sent out a general invite for users to participate in its new Knol online encyclopaedia service. The service has been available to a select few for the last six months - which is good, because now that it's "open" albeit in Beta, there's some (mostly) health and medical content on site already. You can find out more through en.wikipedia.org/wiki/knol or through the http://knol.google.com home page where you will also find see "A knol is an authoritative article about a specific topic" and "KNOL (TM) A unit of knowledge."

Mag-net

More on animals - well, actually fish … or are they? Latest research suggests that swimmers may soon be just a little safer from shark attacks. Townsville university researchers, working out of nearby Cairns, have been experimenting with ways to keep sharks out of commercial fishing nets. They have found that magnets can repel sharks. Practical applications for swimmers and other water-sporters have not surfaced - but it's a start.

Costly cats

For all the cat lovers out there - it seems a new hybrid species is about to hit Australian shores.Called Savannah Cats, they're a cross between a domestic cat and the serval, an African wild cat. They can jump 1.8m from a standing start, don't fear water, and weigh more than 10kg - which has raised fears that they're going to be a very real threat to native Australian wildlife. Over 2,000 people have signed a petition to keep them out. If they're successful, this will be a disappointment to those who are keen to own a Savannah Cat, each of which supposedly carries a $10,000 price tag.

Question

You're walking over a bridge and you find a pile of clothes, a pair of glasses and a note which says "can't take it any more!" You look over the side of the bridge and see someone in the water. What would you do? Would your (a) dive in and rescue them; (b) leave them be or (c) something else? I'm not sure what I would do because it presents something of an ethical and moral dilemma. Should a person be free to commit suicide? If so, should that be dependent on them being sound of mind - forgetting for a moment that some would say that even contemplating taking your own life all but guarantees that you're not. This scenario happened in a small Australian town earlier this week when a young man dove 10 metres from a bridge into a river to rescue an elderly woman, even though she attempted to fighting them off, even trying to force them both underwater at one stage. She is recovering. So how was he to know if the woman was serious about taking her life - or if her actions were a "cry for help"? Or shouldn't it have mattered? I'm not sure about it and definitely not sure about what the "right" course of action would have been - especially having read reports of people who have survived jumping from San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge. Seems that most of them, on the way down, wished they hadn't jumped. There may not be any cut and dried answers for this one. Although perhaps the real question, as reported by The Daily Examiner, was asked by Mrs Shipley, one of the people who helped the two from the water: "What is going on in this woman's life to make her jump off the bridge, doesn't anybody care about her?"

Cafe set

Sometimes, at the end of the day, there's nothing quite like retreating to your favourite coffee shop to sit, sip and watch the world go by. Alas, my regular coffee shop closes at 5 so I've had to search out another in the area and I have to say, it just isn't the same. The coffee isn't as nice (or perhaps it's just different) but it's warm, light and there's free internet (well, there's free internet at the other place as well but only until the person with the unsecured router finds out!) All in all it's fitting the bill after a day in which I realised how hard work it is learning a new skillset so you can look for another job!

Toodledo

While searching for a "to do" application to use with the iPod Touch I found one which synchronises with a web-based program called Toodledo. This means you can run it on the Touch and make updates as necessary - but it also means you can make changes on the web version - using a real keyboard and with a choice of lists and contexts (important if you are working David Allen's "Getting Things Done" method) and then sync these back to the Touch for offline reference.
Toodledo is available in free or paid versions, is configurable, and is simple to use. And you can just use it as a web app if that's what you want to do - and then print out your to-dos from the site.

Low Tech

Earlier this month, five months after Steve Fosset was declared dead following his disappearance in Nevada last year, a search team is on its way to look for him. The difference this time is that they're actually going rather than scouring satellite images as was done at the time. Yes there were surely physical searches back then, but it seemed the only searches we heard about were of people scanning images for plane wreckage that could be measured in tens of pixels.
Other technology in the news: pilgrims heading to World Youth Day (not to be confused with the email of Pope Benefict XVI surfing on the tray of a ute aka utility aka flatbed and promoting World Ute Day) are reported to have left their iPods at home - so they could focus their full attention on the festivities and not be distracted by the technology.
Sent from my iTouch

Bad Apple

Not really but it certainly is not helping me be "good". Of course I'm talking about Apple's new Application Store which allows you to download games and other applications directly to your iPhone or, if you don't have one, to your iPod Touch via WiFi and, for ease, you can also elect to do it with "1 click" so basically it's as easy as it could be to purchase through the store (similar to iTunes). The problem is there's too much good stuff on offer - and while lots of it is free, or costing only a nominal fee, all those little bits add up. Seems like every day I get another invoice copy from Apple and while I love being able to do this, it may be time to deactivate "1 click" so it's not as easy to buy (on impulse). The other problem is that each app eats up a little more of the Touch's memory and while 16GB seems a lot, by the time you've loaded music, videos, photos and PIM data, and a dozen applications, it goes pretty quickly. And yes, Cro-Mag (racing game), Trism (block strategy) and Sudoku are timewasters but the Touch interface makes them very fun to play.

It's no joke

We've all heard the cautionary tales about a traveller who goes out one night, is drugged, and wakes the next morning, worse for wear, in an ice bath, with rudimentary stitches covering the wound where one of his/her kidneys used to be. This is an urban legend according to Snopes.com and America's National Kidney Foundation. But if it wasn't, discovering the work of organ thieves has just become a little harder. Why? Because surgeons have worked out how to remove a kidney through a person's navel. I'm not quite sure how they do it - because I was fairly sure there were organs between the bellybutton and kidneys which would make it difficult - especially if you're working through the navel - but they've done it. It makes kidney removal much easier and has hastened recovery rates. It will change the way people approach operations - similar to the way that the removal of gall bladders has changed over the years - first from requiring a sizeable cut, then able to be done through three small incisions in the abdomen, and now, they too (or it), can be taken out through the navel. The good news about this, and the great hope, is that people will now be more willing to donate a kidney - thereby boosting organ donation rates.

Bear necessities

A few years ago the Sydney Film Festival showed a film called Project Grizzly. It was a very quirky program and we were sure it was a mockumentary (even though I don't think that term had yet made it into common usage). It detailed the story of Troy Hurtubise, a North American who was building, and testing, a suit that he could use to commune with bears. He had made a few versions of the Ursa Suit, each with slightly different attributes, and you can see some of them in this YouTube clip. One of the earliest working versions has just been put up for auction in Toronto. According to a report in Engadget, the starting bid was $500 but the suit would need to attract way more to meet the debts Troy has amassed in living his inventing dream. Even though the Engadget article was posted a couple of weeks ago, I couldn't find anything online about whether the suit sold - but if you want to learn about Troy's other suit - a bullet-proof exoskeleton for use in war zones, and his fire resistant paste, you can visit the Troy Hurtubise page on Wikipedia.

Picture this

Have a picture of the Sydney Opera House that you really like - and want to enter in the House in Focus competition that's currently running? The winner's photograph will be exhibited at the Opera House and they'll take home a HP TouchSmart PC. To upload your photo and vote for your favourite go to the Opera House's website and click on the House in Focus link. Entries a moment ago were up to nearly 2,000 - and some of them are good, very good. It's well worth a visit - and a vote. (A hint: clicking on the photos will bring up the first set of 100; to proceed, go to the last thumbnail using the scroll bar - and click on the last thumbnail to show the larger image and reveal the VIEW MORE link - selecting this then shows the next 100.) The competition closes 30 July - so snap to it.

It is done ...

... Big Brother 2008 Australia is done and not even Pamela Anderson's appearance on this series was enough to prevent the ratings slides. So not good has it been that Channel TEN will not pursue it next year and unless another broadcaster comes to the party, the show will be lost from our shores. (Was that an excited cheer?) It's perhaps fitting that a show which has traditionally had a young demographic will go out with the final series' winner being a 52-year old grandmother. Have to admit the series was always unpredictable.

Figures

I would have loved to have been in the US last week for the annual Venthaven event. Held 16-19 July this year, if it isn't already, Venthaven should be a sought-after destination for anyone with the slightest interest in ... wait for it ... Ventriloquism. The Venthaven website is copyright with a notice asking people not go reproduce it which is why I haven''t just copy a slab of it across to show here. But the site's definitely worth a look if you like dummies - although word is that they prefer to be called figures.

Blade runner - update

Some time ago I blogged about Oscar Pistorius, South African Paralympic athlete who had been prevented from participating in the Beijing Olympics. Well, since then, Oscar won the right to try out, but, unfortunately he failed to meet the qualifying time in his final bid last week - even though he ran a personal best in the attempt. Surely Oscar is truly indicative of the Olympic credo Citius, Altius, Fortius ... or, in other words, "Faster, Higher, Stronger". As suggested on the official Beijing Olympics site (available in French, Spanish, English, Mandarin and Arabic) "These three words encourage the athlete to give his or her best during competition, and to view this effort as a victory in itself. The sense of the motto is that being first is not necessarily a priority, but that giving one's best and striving for personal excellence is a worthwhile goal. It can apply equally to athletes and to each one of us." Great job Oscar! You are truly an inspiration, especially given the amount of opposition you faced.
Oscar is now concentrating on his preparations for the 2012 Olympics.

Paperless

While printing out the nth copy of a document the other day for review and proofing, I pondered the paperless office which was supposed to have been the "way of the future". All of our documents and other communications would be in digital format, and we would never have to print anything again. Hmmm, not necessarily so, I thought as I watched sheet after sheet emerge from the printer - this couldn't really be considered a "paperless" office. But, as luck would have it, just as I thought that (okay, okay, I did say it aloud), the printer stopped ... out of paper ... and I realised, that, indeed, the "paperless office" had come to pass - because I was totally and utterly out of paper. Sometimes, you know, it's just a matter of interpretation!