Suddenly it seems that all my friends who are using their Facebook status updates to count down to something (be it a holiday, the arrival of a new puppy or seeing their other half again) are using the arbitrary unit of ’sleep’ instead of the more traditional ‘day’ or ‘hour’.
What happens if, like me, you take the occasional nap in the evening? Or if you press the snooze button a couple of times in the morning?1 Does that count as two of these ’sleeps’? Does time move quicker? No.
It’s not cute. It’s not clever. It’s wrong. Stop it.
1 I’m considering purchasing a SnūzNLūz alarm clock to help me stop doing this.
“Bad artists copy. Great artists steal.”
- Pablo Picasso
Imitation is rife. Apple may just have been inspired by Braun design from the ’60s and ’70s for the iPhone calculator, iPod and G5 tower. The Apple vs. Microsoft vs. Xerox GUI copyright lawsuits are well known.
Over the past couple of years I’ve noticed more and more pieces of PC software that try to achieve one thing: make the PC behave more like OS X. The application notifiers Growl and Snarl. The application enhancers Quicksilver and Colibri. The window managers Expose and Exposer. Unsurprisingly not one of them quite match-up to the Apple versions.
Now after years of mediocrity it seems that the PC manufacturers have finally realised that good design will set them apart. The days of the big beige box are thankfully long gone but until very recently the aesthetics of the offerings from Dell, Gateway and the like have been distinctly poor. Dell have upped their product design staff to 90 (from just six a few years ago) and are already receiving plaudits from the industry for their efforts.
In this years Microsoft CES keynote Bill Gates boldly predicted that we’ll be relying less on the keyboard and mouse in the next five years. Gosh Bill, do you really think so? What a revelation! Take a look at some bleeding-edge design concepts for some examples that might just make it to market over the next few years.
Something was very familiar about the Love Mattress I saw on BuzzFeed the other week. I knew that I’d seen it somewhere before but as it was still a prototype I couldn’t think where and it certainly wasn’t going to be found on any of my favourite shopping sites.
Eventually I remembered where I’d seen it (or at least seen a possible source of inspiration). I submitted the link to BuzzFeed to let them know about the cuddle mattress in this xkcd comic.
This is a brilliant recent example of why I love Slashdot. You just don’t get this level of humour in the comments on Digg (or any other community-driven aggregator for that matter). Slashdot is also inhabited almost exclusively by nerds and geeks which makes for some fascinatingly educated and insightful discussion. Until the StupidFilter is fully implemented and actually deployed on Digg, YouTube et al. I’m sticking with Slashdot.
Of course keeping on top items of from several important news oriented sites (and entertainment like xkcd and I can has cheezburger) becomes a lot easier with the use of RSS but when relying on these feeds alone you do miss out on the interaction element and fun of the comments.
I have to say that I’m beginning to dread the Christmas and New Year period. Let me be more specific. I’m beginning to dread Boxing Day and the first of January.
For the past few years December 26 seems to bring some kind of major incident somewhere in the world. Hundreds of thousands of people have died due to catastrophic earthquakes, tsunamis and mud slides. The killing of Benazir Bhutto (and many others in the aftermath) was the day after Boxing day.
On a more personal and of far less devastating consequences, the first day of the year has variously seen my skis stolen, friends going AWOL and just when I thought nothing was going to happen this year, the end of the current tennancy and closure of the Puzzle Hall Inn in my home town for the foreseeable future was announced at a “hair of the dog party”. This unique public house was once described in a national newspaper (alas, I can’t remember which or when) as a bar that everyone should experience before they die.
Increased local competition and invariably the smoking ban (which was cunningly circumvented on New Years Day by dint of the bar holding a private party) have been blamed by some. I think it has much more to do with changing public attitude to the culture of the local bar and downright greed of local councils and pub companies. New environmental health legislation also recently put pay to the weekly curry night that had spanned 16 years and 45,000 curries.
The bar will probably open once again but a unique place such as this needs a special character running it. If nobody is found who can make it work then I would think it’s a fair bet that the building will be demolished and the land sold for housing as is seemingly de rigueur these days.
A few tears were shed that night (and it was a long night - the last person left at 0530 the next morning) but there was some fun thanks to the musicians Kirk McElhinney, Becky Taylor and others who played at the hugely popular live music nights and festivals.
