Category: Random

• Paul Hammond has a new weblog, since the collapse of Paranoid Fish’s servers
  If you can fight your way through the baroque, over-the-top, rich design excess it’s worth reading! Arf!
  (categories: paulhammond)

• Downtime on Flickr
  Cal walks us through a graph and exposition on recent Flickr downtime
  (categories: flickr graph statistics)

• A boy and a girl flirt via the name of their iTunes shared libraries
  Of course we only have his word for this. She could have thought he was a maniac.
• Controversy over the Indonesian “hobbit”
  Some people are claiming that the evidence points to diseased humans
• Fontsmith on the bespoke typeface they created for the Channel 4 re-brand
  Very nice, very stylish. Disappointingly not available for the rest of us
• The National Archives release a spy handbook given to Russians in the UK
• Monotype’s Flash articulation of Neo Sans
  Looks like a really elegant and beautiful modern technologist’s typeface

• Delicious Gatherers of the Month
  The people who have spotted new links first, in order of how many links they’ve spotted.
  (categories: delicious)
• Heroes of atheism merchandising from the Secular Society
  Not terribly well illustrated, but pretty sweet nonetheless
  (categories: atheism god secularism merchandise)
• People make cartoons with strip creator and I’m in em…
  Funny world, isn’t it. I’m not even going to SXSW. Although I wish I was…
  (categories: sxsw cartoon comic tomcoates)

• An interesting overview of some webloggers’ responses to an article on the evolution of religious belief
  I’m quoted, although I’m not sure that it’s the bit I’d have used to represent my position.
  (categories: god weblog)
• Americans have insincere smiles
  British people are apparently just better or something…
  (categories: smiling behaviour)
• Mr Webb’s tapping into Powerbook accelerometers
  And using the whole machine as an interface for controlling iTunes
  (categories: itunes accelerometers haptic interface haptics)

• Mind Hacks live at Foyles – March 23rd 2005
  The cult starts here. Mind my words.

• seti@home style distributed software is being planned to look for extra-solar planets
  And if you’re one of the people whose computer finds one, you get to name the little bugger. Sweet…
  (categories: seti planetarysystems astronomy exobiology planets software distributedcomputing)
• Using CSS to make e-mail addresses harder to harvest
  Of course it wouldn’t take an enormous effort for spammers to figure out what’s going on here and rebuild their spiders to compensate – if enough people do it to be valuable
  (categories: spam css email)
• Interesting-looking DAB radio walkman from Sony
  I wonder how much it costs. It looks pretty sweet. I wonder if there will ever be radios in iPods…
  (categories: ipod audio radio music dab sony)

• Engadget review of the Siemens SK65
  I was interested in this phone because of the intriguing way they’ve integrated a QWERTY keyboard into it – but it sounds like the rest of the phone is a bit lacking
  (categories: mobilephones phones siemens design)
• An interesting job is going over at Headshift
  Social Software consultant, you say… Hmm…. Interesting…
  (categories: socialsoftware headshift consultancy)

So my colleague Matt Webb is about to abandon me in the BBC and is now trying to work out what to do next. Maybe you guys can help.

This feels like my most significant decision for the past decade, and the one that will most shape my life for the coming ten years. I’ve no idea what to do. Last time I tried to make a decision was last year, but then the book came along and I did that instead. Before then there was another offer too good to refuse. This time I really have to decide, the time is right, because even if I decide to keep to the status quo, this time that means I’m staying in industry, pretty much for good. And whatever happens now is significant because of my age, and because the subjects I’m interested in are coming to fruition both with people and technology, and because of all kinds of other externalities (funding bodies and so on)… But I can’t work it out, and I need to make a decision, I think, in the next few weeks–not only which way to turn, but which college, what focus, which subjects.

If you’re thinking of employing Matt, then obviously you could send him an e-mail offering him work and stuff. Or – and I think this is a much much better idea – you could send me an e-mail with details of the opportunity and I’ll make sure he gets it… in the end… as soon as I’ve checked that it wouldn’t be more appropriate for a person of slightly wider girth experience instead… er… or something… cough… nothing to see here…

Anyway, good luck old chap. You’ll be much missed, impossible to replace and work will not be as much fun without you. Think of me fondly while you’re out there in the real world, and send me a postcard occasionally.

• Terrifying graphs of the decline in life expectancy in some major African countries
  The article puts this at the door of HIV/AIDS, although I haven’t read the supporting material so couldn’t state for certain that was the case