fresh thoughts

How James Blunt Tweeted From The Afterlife

Mon, 28 May 2012 21:02:02 +0300

As I’ve always believed: Be critical, research facts, don’t just believe everything you read.

June 25, 2009: James Blunt Dies of Cardiac Arrest

May 8, 2012: James Blunt Tweets About It

If this seems like bullpuckey to you, good. It’s a story about bullpuckey detection.

When I was in elementary school, I learned you could open a web page in Microsoft Word, edit some of the text, and word would generate an HTML file that, when opened in the browser, would look exactly like the original, except for the changes you made.

So I used to pull a Ctrl+S on cia.gov, add some words, and “prove” to my friends that I was actually a secret agent. Albeit a poor secret agent, because I was revealing my identity to Keegan and Tom, but still.

It’s a fun trick to pull every once in a while, because some people don’t know that HTML can be changed and layouts forged.

When Michael Jackson and Farrah Fawcett died in 2009,

Read More

mirfaan: Greatest wedding proposal ever: the lip-dub Cory...

Sun, 27 May 2012 12:41:31 +0300

mirfaan:

Greatest wedding proposal ever: the lip-dub
Cory Doctorow, boingboing.net

Isaac wanted to propose to his girlfriend, so he enlisted over 60 friends to stage a Busby Berkeley street-show lip-dub extravaganza ambush. What follows is five minutes of heart-stoppingly sweet and romantic wedding proposal. I mean…

Live 60-person lip sync proposal. Hotsauce

Amazing proposal video.

thisistheverge: The Listening Machine turns Tweets into music,...

Sat, 19 May 2012 16:16:51 +0300

thisistheverge:

The Listening Machine turns Tweets into music, literally

The Listening Machine is an experimental art / music project by Daniel Jones, Peter Gregson, and the Britten Sinfonia chamber orchestra. The “machine” is an automated system which takes a selection of 500 Twitter accounts in the United Kingdom based around several different categories, such as technology, arts, and business.

Awesome experimental project.

"There are those who accept things as there are, and there are those who rise up to change."

Mon, 14 May 2012 09:06:11 +0300

“There are those who accept things as there are, and there are those who rise up to change.”

- Unknown

Interesting little article showing some dangerous things we were...

Wed, 09 May 2012 10:02:34 +0300

People in charge have all the answer

Learning ends when you leave class

The best and brightest follow the rules

What the books say is always true

There is a clear, single path to success

Behaving is as important as good grades

Standardized tests measure your value

Days off are more fun than class

Purpose of your education is your career

Interesting little article showing some dangerous things we were taught in school.

gjmueller:

9 Dangerous Things You Were Taught In School

4000

Mon, 07 May 2012 09:27:48 +0300

That is how many tweets I’ve created. It’s taken a couple of years, and I think there’s some excellent content (shared from other sources) in those tweets.

I enjoy Twitter and I think it’s a great platform for networking, learning, keeping up to date with news and industry, as well as creating a voice for yourself.

You may not enjoy Twitter, that’s fine. But if you do, get me @NateKettles

Keep rocking!

We often think we have “choice” when buying...

Tue, 01 May 2012 15:43:43 +0300

We often think we have “choice” when buying products. As this picture shows, it is unfortunately not always true.

Photo

Fri, 27 Apr 2012 17:31:31 +0300

The Future Of Work Maria, yammer.com There’s been a lot of talk...

Tue, 24 Apr 2012 10:34:00 +0300

The Future Of Work
Maria, yammer.com

There’s been a lot of talk about the future of work. But what exactly is it? Although the future is tough to predict, especially at the speed with which we are all moving, there are some common elements that have started to emerge. A…

curiositycounts: Simple, tasty explanation on the differences...

Mon, 23 Apr 2012 22:51:17 +0300

curiositycounts:

Simple, tasty explanation on the differences of User Experience vs User Interface

(via)

futurescope: MIT Predicts That World Economy Will Collapse By...

Sun, 08 Apr 2012 13:15:58 +0300

futurescope:

MIT Predicts That World Economy Will Collapse By 2030

Forty years after its initial publication, a study called The Limits to Growth is looking depressingly prescient. Commissioned by an international think tank called the Club of Rome, the 1972 report found that if civilization continued on its path toward increasing consumption, the global economy would collapse by 2030. Population losses would ensue, and things would generally fall apart.

The study was — and remains — nothing if not controversial, with economists doubting its predictions and decrying the notion of imposing limits on economic growth. Australian researcher Graham Turner has examined its assumptions in great detail during the past several years, and apparently his latest research falls in line with the report’s predictions, according to Smithsonian Magazine. The world is on track for disaster, the magazine says.

The study, initially completed at MIT, relied on several computer models of economic trends and estimated that if things didn’t change much, and humans continued to consume natural resources apace, the world would run out at some point. Oil will peak (some argue it has) before dropping down the other side of the bell curve, yet demand for food and services would only continue to rise. Turner says real-world data from 1970 to 2000 tracks with the study’s draconian predictions: “There is a very clear warning bell being rung here. We are not on a sustainable trajectory,” he tells Smithsonian.

Is this impossible to fix? No, according to both Turner and the original study. If governments enact stricter policies and technologies can be improved to reduce our environmental footprint, economic growth doesn’t have to become a market white dwarf, marching toward inevitable implosion. But just how to do that is another thing entirely.

[via] [more] [picture credit: Linda Eckstein]

I always thought the economy has to collapse/crash at some point. The foundation is shaky to say the least. However, I do hope that we (and our governments) can change and adapt to try avoid this somehow.

"Tired of staring at a computer all day? Well, go back a 100 years and you’d have been working in a..."

Sat, 07 Apr 2012 10:10:24 +0300

“Tired of staring at a computer all day? Well, go back a 100 years and you’d have been working in a grueling factory all day. Go back another century and you’d have been tending a field all day. Go back 500 years and more than half of your children would have died before the age of five. And yet you’d *still* be using all kinds of human-made objects and systems. As we read yesterday, humans may have been deploying fire for 1 MILLION YEARS. No matter how far back you go, you’ll find us shaping our environment. It is technology all the way down.”

- Alexis Madrigal, on why the alternative to 21st-century technology is not “nature” but some other technologically-mediated reality.

(Also, read Lindy West’s excellent essay on the subject.)

Comforting.
(via futurejournalismproject)

Spoke about something similar to this with a friend today....

Thu, 29 Mar 2012 15:54:07 +0200

Spoke about something similar to this with a friend today.

“Measure success correctly…
not by your car or your paycheck,
but by your life and relationships -
the things that really matter don’t cost anything, but they take hard work.”

Photo

Wed, 28 Mar 2012 21:12:23 +0200

ilovecharts: What The Internet Knows About You And How To...

Wed, 15 Feb 2012 18:10:51 +0200

ilovecharts:

What The Internet Knows About You And How To Protect Yourself

This is one of my favorite Q&A’s I’ve ever done for Forbes. This morning, I exchanged emails with Sarah Downey, the author of the FTC complaint against people search website, BeenVerified.com, regarding Internet privacy, people search sites, background checks, Facebook and how to protect your online identity. There is A LOT to learn in there!

Worth your time to check this out.

quickmeme: Rasta Science Teacher This is funny..

Mon, 09 Jan 2012 23:18:31 +0200

quickmeme:

Rasta Science Teacher

This is funny..

UCT IS Textbooks wanted

Tue, 03 Jan 2012 10:12:44 +0200

Hello!

I am continuing my studies at UCT this year with a post-grad diploma in Information Systems. A typical student, I need to try save money everywhere I can, so I am hoping to either borrow or buy from you or someone you know.

The books:

Object-oriented Systems Analysis and Design Using UML by Bennett, Simon; McRobb, Steve & Farmer, Ray.

Images of Projects by Mark Winter and Tony Szczepanek.

Strategic Information Systems Management by Grant, Hackney and Edgar.

Please let me know if you have these books or see them floating around. Much appreciated!

Image by Yunhee Cha (location: http://cwvantage.com/?p=753)

Incredible time-lapse video through a snow globe.

Thu, 22 Dec 2011 11:57:15 +0200

Incredible time-lapse video through a snow globe.

futuramb: The Graph That Proves Economic Forecasters Are Almost...

Wed, 14 Dec 2011 23:29:49 +0200

futuramb:

The Graph That Proves Economic Forecasters Are Almost Always Wrong - Derek Thompson - Business - The Atlantic

There are a few lessons to glean from the Surprise Index, which I was only made aware of this week. First, predictions are often reported as news. They’re not. They’re predictions, and they’re almost always wrong. Full disclosure: I’ve been as guilty as anyone for breathlessly passing along predictions without the qualifying them as conjecture. Second, to be fair to the analysts, sometimes the first draft of the economic figures aren’t any better than the predictions. A great example: We initially estimated GDP falling 3.8% in the last three months of 2008. Instead, it fell nearly 9%. That’s a horrible miscalculation that had a real impact on decisions made by Congress and the Federal Reserve to fix the economy. I wonder what the Economic Surprise Index would say about first readings of GDP and unemployment numbers.

mirfaan: My favourite piece of tech of all time - Twine :...

Wed, 07 Dec 2011 22:14:23 +0200

mirfaan:

My favourite piece of tech of all time - Twine : Listen to your world, talk to the Internet (by Supermechanical)

This is not only awesome, it is a taste of the things to come in the tech industry.