The labels on Samuel Smith's beer bottles are examples of how design can evoke all sorts of associations. They all conjure a collective sense of an England from history; a past that may not have actually existed but one we collectively understand.
On another note most of their beers are vegan. Recommended.
I've never been quite satisfied writing with a pen. The black lines of fresh ink are a pleasure but I invariably ruin nibs by dropping them during idle moments when my attention wanders. A biro is simply a make-do gesture toward satisfying the immediate need of making a note. Recently I've switched to using a pencil. It takes me back to primary school; I remember the leads being too hard, the paper too thin. Today I have the luxury of writing with an implement of my choosing so am trying out both a 2B and 3B Tombow MONO 100. It makes handwriting a joy.
I wear glasses all the time; I've never tried contact lenses as there weren't any suitable for my eyes years ago. As such I'm always on the lookout for lighter specs that are comfortable to wear all day. Back in late 2008 I saw this post on Cool Tools about Eyephorics which led me to the Swissflex website. Despite emailing Swissflex and getting no response I eventually found that Frames in the Lanes right here in Brighton carries the range and bought a pair a year ago. They are amazing and are the most comfortable glasses I've worn. They are entirely plastic and use no metal or screws. Mine weigh only 9g and have nosepads that conform to the shape of your face; with most glasses it's pretty typical to end a day with red pressure marks on your nose as it is difficult to get the fit exactly right, none of those problems here. Highly recommended.
My musical listening history is dotted with artists who went from being the next great inspiration to just having one early album as the defining moment in their career. The mark of the true artist is not one of a discrete act of creation, but of development and ascendency. The Kleptones had that one great album, A Night at the Hip-Hopera, an exercise at once both thematically complete and diversely eclectic. This was an album so popular it was stolen from the hi-fi while it was playing at our house parties. What marks them out is that they have built on this success with each subsequent release.
Their latest work, Uptime / Downtime, scoops up a great armful of my most favourite tunes for a hug that delights as much as it surprises with a continuation of the double album concept of 24 Hours. As my friend Joe would say, so retro, so future... to a point where the vital feeling I had when I first listened to these old friends is recaptured in these multi-layered self-referential slices of pop (culture). The Kleptones are successful at recycling the inherently disposable into something greater than the sum of their parts; making the tunes that really meant something into genre and time-spanning dancefloor fillers, whether that floor is a club or your own front room.
If reading an 83-page Apple patent application isn't your bag then at least skim this summary: Apple exploring wireless system for quantifying the unquantifiable over on AppleInsider. The "sprawling patent" talks of "sensing systems" that collect data about what happens to objects as they move through space and time. Although the article doesn't use this term Apple are essentially applying for patents on a variety of types of spime, one of those technologies that, like the barcode, will have both a sudden ubiquity and a profound effect on how we view the world of manufactured objects that surrounds us.
If you want to indulge in a little further reading on what's coming next then try When Blobjects Rule the Earth. If your interest is sufficiently piqued follow-up with Shaping Things; both the speech and the pamphlet are by Bruce Sterling who coined this particular neologism. In fact I believe spimes first appeared, but were not referred to as such, in his 1998 novel Distraction, which is well worth a read.
I start with a clean white Google search page, I have Adblock Plus installed and use Readability to bring the content I find to the fore without any distractions. Add quietube and I'm all set:
"... watch web videos without the comments and crap..."
More of my time is being spent preparing reports on what people are talking about on the web. There are a number of companies offering tools that do this kind of thing. The way they work is by identifying keywords in a dataset and pulling out pertinent information around the word(s) such as date of mention, where it occurred, on a webpage fitting what kind of recognised format, etc. This data is then presented in the form of a 'dashboard', i.e. a few charts, possibly with some sort of 'score' attached. I prefer to work with the actual data retrieved by a crawler for particular keywords rather than use an automated summary as I want to be able to check the accuracy of the underlying information. There doesn't seem to be an offering out there that doesn't provide some sort of bell-or-whistle that tracks 'influencers' or 'emerging trends' or promises the dreaded ability to analyse sentiment... however:
Algorithm-based sentiment analysis doesn't work accurately
If it were possible then natural language processing would allow me to have a friendly chat with Google when I wanted something and not have to parse my requests into a few pithy search terms. The reason sentiment analysis is a key part of tracking is that most of us who use these tools would like to believe the promise that they can discover when people are saying good or bad things about the topic we're interested in. Unfortunately this knowledge is not perceived as valuable enough to have a real live human read and assess every mention that has been discovered so inaccurate methods are employed in an attempt to achieve useful results. Conversations on the web are human conversations with all the nuance and multiple meanings afforded by the language used and the context in which the conversation occurs, e.g. correctly identifying sarcasm is at present an impossible challenge for a computer. If you're looking into using one of these tools then ask these questions of the supplier:
Dashboards and scorecards are only as good as the data that lies behind them so if you can't see the actual data or easily compare 'scores' across multiple keywords and understand what the differences mean you should run a mile. I've been through and am still going through trying to make monitoring work effectively and am currently working on an efficient way of working out sentiment that is not subject to the flaws outlined above.
I picked up on this bookmarklet via a post on Matt Haughey's blog. I read a lot of webpages daily and this tool transforms that experience into something almost pleasant. It was created by arc90 and strips out the text of whatever page you are viewing and formats it so it's easier to read. Being able to get rid of all the clutter to get to the content I actually want to see makes me very happy. The image below compares a page from Wired.com against the Readibility version so you can see what I mean:
You can tweak the style to suit yourself when you create the bookmarklet. Perfect! Reminds me of the layout suck.com used back in the days of low resolution displays. Also, if you use Safari and sync your bookmarks with your iPhone you can use it on that device too:
'Readability' in Safari on an iPhone
Go treat yourself right now. Arc90 assures us it works in most modern browsers.
