“Putting [Lotus] Notes on iPhone is like getting out a piece of exquisite Wedgwood china and using it to serve a steaming pile of dog shit. Have you ever seen Notes? It’s not software, it’s a form of punishment. Companies that use Notes have to staff not only a help desk but also a suicide prevention centre — it’s that bad.” From The Fake Steve Jobs diary, via Memex 1.1.
How & Why Wonder Books were… wonderful!
I’m currently writing an essay to explain what I mean by “middle class values”, but I’ve been sidetracked into childhood memories about cows (don’t ask!) and rediscovering one truly wond’rous part of my childhood: the How & Why Wonder Book series.
If you can point to one thing that made me the geek I am today, it’s this series of books.
Each one was just 48 pages long, and the illustrations were usually paintings — pretty corny by today’s standards. But they really did create a sense of wonder for the Science and Technology which was unfolding in The Space Age. The first one was issued in 1960 and they ran well into the 1970s.
Looking through the lists put together by collectors intabits and Joe Roberts, I reckon I had at least 23 of the titles.
My favourites were The How & Why Wonder Book of Planets and Interplanetary Travel (insanely optimistic, in hindsight), Rockets and Missiles, Atomic Energy (no nuclear waste here, just atomic trains!) and The How & Why Wonder Book of Robots and Electronic Brains — man, there’s a whole essay in that last title alone, eh?
I bet my mother still has them stashed away in a cupboard somewhere.
The world’s population explosion
Yeah I just said that it’s the wrong sort of day for numerical analysis. However I stumbled across these numbers and had to draw a graph immediately.
The world’s population reached 1 billion people in 1804. The second billion was added by 1927. And so it goes. In 1999 we hit 6 billion, and current estimates are that we’ll hit 7 billion in 2013.
You all know the drill from here…
A small proportion (us Australians, Americans, Europeans, Japanese and some others) chew up the vast majority of the world’s resources and are dumping our shit everywhere. We know we need to stop. But those other billions reckon they’ve had the rough end of the pineapple for too long and now it’s their turn.
And we’re surprised when they get stroppy about it.
Heath Ledger spikes my website, Day 4
Hmmm… I predicted yesterday that traffic would increase again across the weekend, but it hasn’t so far. Saturday’s traffic was actually the lowest of the four days since I started The Heath Ledger Experiment.
No theories yet. Let’s look again tomorrow and see what happens with the Sunday traffic (which will include hits from Saturday in the US, thanks to the Earth being round). A sunny Sunday isn’t right for numerical analysis.
As before, the figure for the last day only includes traffic from midnight to about 4am. And the number in the top-left corner of the graph isn’t relevant, as it’s “hits” — which includes all the pieces on a page as well as the page itself.
Hey patty! Looks like you’ll lose your bet!
When I gave my predictions for 2008, I said Barack Obama would become President of the USA. patty disagreed, and we made a bet. Given that Obama won the South Carolina Primary yesterday, I reckon I’m well on the way to winning. Better warm up that olive oil, patty!
Olivia Newton-John Down Under
And as one final Australia Day tribute before the clock strikes midnight (if I type fast enough), here’s Olivia Newton-John’s Tutta La Vita, the feel-good opening number to her musical tour of Australia called Olivia Newton-John Down Under. Enjoy! The Royal Australian Navy will never be the same.