Category: Web

Anti-mega Outboard Brain (a blog with a great title) has an interesting post on Ubicomp (i.e. ubiquitous computing), suggesting user desires (“I want my music collection available at all times, wherever i go”) and plotting out what exists and what doesn’t on the way to attaining that goal. AMOB does a better job at explaining than I do, so read the entire post.

Ubicomp isn’t a box you will buy from your local electronics retailer, plug in, and switch on. It’s lots of really small pieces loosely, sloppily joined – glued together.
Take the idea of “I can communicate with people wherever I am” – surely a big part of ubicomp. I know this technology isn’t everywhere (ubiquity is here, just not evenly distributed), but I think that it’s safe to say the mobile phone has pretty much made this a reality.

When I was a kid I wanted to make habitrails for my fishtank, hoping to allow my fishies to travel from one tank to another. A few things got in the way: I didn’t have a second tank. Many years later, some enterprising person has invented…the Fish Highway. At last my dreams can come true!
By way of J-Walk

Following up from my post on those NYC Greek coffee cups, Boing Boing posts a ceramic cup that looks like paper coffee cup. Too cool, and, when filled with coffee, bloody hot.

Guardian reports on what I’ve often suspected. The French stay slim not through dieting, low-carbs, or a, like, totally awesome cardio workout, but because they don’t eat as much, not as often, eat real food, and enjoy their food. Simple, really. The article is dryly witty though not without the usual generalizations. It’s also not mentioned in the article what is said in the comments: smoking also keeps you slim.

Mimi Spencer takes a look at French women’s eating habits
A recent survey conducted by the French government’s Committee for Health Education (CFES) found that eating is still very closely linked to a national heritage of consuming good food for pleasure. In France, 76 per cent eat meals they have prepared at home; the favourite place to eat both lunch and dinner is in the home, with 75 per cent eating at the family table. In the UK, by contrast, we like to eat our meals (a) standing up, (b) in front of Coronation Street , (c) at a desk while catching up on emails or (d) by the side of the M40.
Whereas the French typically spend two hours over lunch, we bolt down our food in the time it would take them to butter a petit pain. Nutritionist Dr Francoise L’Hermite believes that the French secret is to sit down with friends or family for a meal, and to eat three times a day at regular intervals. She points out that the French don’t eat in front of the television, and they eat slowly, enjoying both the food and the company. How very civilised.

In the lunchroom, I listened to two obese coworkers talk about the great new holiday drinks at Starbucks, while they drank their Diet Dr. Pepper and ate their microwavable, processed “Lean Cuisine.” Sigh.
By way of City Comforts

This blog by neomarxisme is a good read of one English speaker’s experience in Japan, and especially the Japanese music industry. Ten years ago when I lived there there was no writing at all on how pop music worked, now there’s blogs such as these. Looks like I lived there during the last golden age.
Ahhh well.

Treasure Box is a beautifully designed Flash puzzle game. It’s not too hard, really, and the point is mostly to check out the weirdo art of its creators, who I assume is an art collective called Nanahiro. Check out the animation called Mimi as well.

You may know that I love subways and/or “the underground”. For anyone who’s been to my place, you will see a large framed map of the London Underground that’s been on my wall since 1991. It’s sort of essential to have it nearby, like a talisman of sorts. Here’s a neat little blog entry over on Design Observer about that other classic subway map, Mr. Vignelli’s Map of New York.

No trip to Taiwan would be complete without the ever-present Betel Nut Girls, the puddles of red chaw-spit on the sidewalk, and personally being offered a betel nut by my father-in-law. The whole thing is terrible for your teeth, and you can guarantee nobody will want to kiss you. Plus, the tree’s shallow roots leads to major hill erosion and mudslides. Oops! Read all about the little chewy bastard here.

Apparently this story has been around since 1995, but this is the first time I’d read it. Man Deposits Junk Mail Check. The bank cashes it. Quite a hilarious and long story with many twists and turns. The title “Man 1 Bank 0” gives you only a small indication how this ends up.

As blogged on BoingBoing this morning, this keychain remote will turn off all TVs in a room, regardless of make.