Thursday 11 December 2008

11 November 10

“Pride cometh before a fall.” A saying that is often used when people, such as me, are crowing or presenting feelings of smugness. Sure as eggs is eggs it's true but it is, as I discovered this morning, actually a misquotation from the Bible which says (Proverbs 16: 18-19):

Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall. Better it is to be of an humble spirit with the lowly, than to divide the spoil with the proud.
Yes, I was proud of having reduced the time between “read and save as draft” and the actual publication of the item on the blog but “destruction” is too strong a word for the feeling of failure at having not maintained the impetus.

Enough of me – let's get to the important things.

Antipodr via MakeUseOf
Have you ever wondered what is on the opposite side of the earth? This online tool lets you type in your location and find out the exact opposite point on other side of the world.
Straight through from Kettering brings me out in the Pacific so even if I survived the heat of the earth's core I'd drown!

via Arts & Letters Daily - ideas, criticism, debate on 25 October
From Amazon.com directly to into your hippocampus. You won't have to read War and Peace, you'll just download it into your brain. Something like that... more

Use The Internet To Save The World via MakeUseOf.com by Tina on 14 November
The Internet is a tool for many things. You can use it to organise your life, educate yourself, socialise, promote your business or just waste time. All of these topics have been covered extensively on MakeUseOf. Today I want to show you how you can use the World Wide Web to help save energy and resources which in turn will save you money and preserve the environment.

Dewey Decimal System Name Meme via Phil Bradley's weblog on 11 November
What DDC number are you? Yes, it's a pointless silly quiz, but how many quizzes are based on Dewey?

Study on how spammers cash in via BBC News Technology UK Edition on 10 November
Spammers get one response for every 12.5 million emails they send and still make big profits, suggests a study.

Computer code via BBC News Technology UK Edition on 6 November
Bletchley and the origins of the computer age

Botanicalls Kit - find out when your plant needs watering via Twitter alerts to your mobile phone via The Red Ferret Journal by Nigel 7 November
The new Botanicalls Kit lets you get "water me" alerts from your plants via Twitter alerts to your mobile phone. That's right, you can now have a sort of weird 21st century digital conversation with your flora at all times of the day or night.

Pomegranates, Not Poppies for Afghan Farmers via Latest news from our site on 21 November
Kandahar is famous all over Afghanistan for its high quality pomegranates, which are now being exported to different countries with the help of a US initiative by the US Agency of International Development that hopes to find an alternative to opium-producing poppies for farmers in the impoverished nation.

via Arts & Letters Daily - ideas, criticism, debate on 20 October
Many scholars think media manipulate the masses, turning ordinary people into emotional mobs. They never see themselves in the mob... more

brand tags via Phil Bradley's weblog by philipbradley
This is just really interesting. It's a site that displays brands on the screen for you (like Canon, Google, Costco and so on) and you add in a word or a phrase to describe what it means to you. Almost entirely pointless, yet engaging at the same time. It’s interesting to see what the image says – I [Phil not me] did one for a product I didn’t know called “dippin dots” and tagged it as “fish”. In actual fact it‘s an ice cream company of some sort. Some companies need to be concerned – “Capital One” had as some seriously large/common/popular tags “annoying”, “barbarians”, “crooks”, “debt” and so on. There's also a pit one brand against another game, which is great if you're feeling annoyed and want a release of tension!

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