Work better
How to Work Better
by Fischli/Weiss (1991)
- Do one thing at a time
- Know the problem
- Learn to listen
- Learn to ask questions
- Distinguish sense from nonsense
- Accept change as inevitable
- Admit mistakes
- Say it simple
- Be calm
- Smile
Sine Wave Speech
First listen to the "whistle" sounds on the page (link) - then listen to the clear-speech. Then finally, listen to the whistles again.
This is an example of perceptual learning, and you will be able to perceive new sine-wave speech sentences more clearly.
Convenience
Starbucks Arcaffe is like that crazy ex-girlfriend you still get together with:
You hate yourself for going back, but the familiarity makes it convenient, and until you find something better, it’s all you’ve got.
Derived from Blank is Like Blank
PNGout
pngout is a command line tool developed by Ken Silverman for optimising PNG files losslessly. I've been using it for a while and in fact, I haven't found anything that performs better than it. Even with the default options, it optimised some of my PNG's by up to 50%.
For those who don't know, Ken Silverman is the programmer that created the game-engine for Duke Nukem 3D. Silverman received lots of praise from John Carmack - which says a lot because Carmack is co-founder of ID Software and lead developer for games like Doom and Quake (he also wrote what is likely the fastest inverse-square-root function, but that's a topic for another day).
For those not comfortable with command-line, even after reading this tutorial - there's an IrfanView DLL available.
To run with default options:
pngout.exe png-file-original.png png-file-output.png
pngout is available from http://www.advsys.net/ken/utils.htm
Masaru Emoto
Emoto claims that prettier (or uglier) water-crystals can be formed by directing human speech or thoughts on water-droplets before being frozen.
Emoto claims this can be achieved through:
- Prayer
- Music
- Attaching written words to a container of water
The formation of the crystals seems to depend on the positive/negative nature of the words used on the droplets.
Gravatars
Gravatar: Derived from 'avatar' - Globally Recognized Avatar, is basically an avatar image that follows you across the web when you comment on gravatar-enabled blogs using a unique e-mail address.
Interesting, because this would imply that anyone could use your gravatar if they knew the e-mail address you used to sign-up for the account. So if you're going to sign up for one, I'd suggest using an e-mail address not known to anyone else.
If you have a blog of your own, take a look at the full implementation guide.
If you already have a wordpress blog, the easiest is to upgrade your installation to the latest available version (Version 2.5 comes with the functionality built-in - this only means gravatars will get more popular). Blogger hasn't implemented it yet - although it should only be a matter of time before they do.
You might have to do some tweaking if you developed your own wordpress theme:
The syntax is:
function get_avatar( $id_or_email, $size = '64',$default = 'http://url-to-default-avatar' )
This example uses the user's e-mail address to retrieve the gravatar at 80x80 pixels (add to comments.php):
<?php echo get_avatar( get_comment_author_email(), '80' ); ?>;