Circadian Shift

Workplace stuff:

• body language myths and realities


• elements of an effective crisis response plan


• client management skills for on-site contractors

Via Slashdot, I've learned that MIT OpenCourseWare now has actual course materials posted online. Of interest:

• Problems of Philosophy lecture notes in HTML and PDF


• Introduction to Linguistics selected lecture notes in PDF

Doodlez and 'Toonz:

• Part 15 of Get Your War On (via Blogdex)


• new drawings at toothpastefordinner


• new drawings at explodingdog (which, reportedly, was hacked on Saturday, but seems to be fine now)

We come from the land of the ice and snow From the midnight sun, where the hotsprings flow

While watching the video, I realized that although the song is about Viking incursions into Great Britain way back when (pre-Middle Ages?), it just as easily could be about the European conquest of the Americas.

[Addendum: Regarding the lyrics to "The Immigrant Song", my friend Tana writes:

Actually it is "blow". Hot springs/geysers blow like fountains.

Linkage:

• Leonardo's Laptop: Human Needs and the New Computing Technologies -- sample chapters in PDF from the new book by Ben Shneiderman (via InfoDesign)
• What's the big idea?
  "Where do creative people get their inspiration? Ted Hughes likened it to fishing, while JG Ballard thinks it has more to do with whisky. Here, psychologist Guy Claxton reveals why we're all more creative than we think, while Kate Mikhail talks to 10 gifted individuals about the source of their bright ideas."
  JG Ballard, novelist
  Peter Molyneux, computer games designer
  Camille Bidault-Waddington, fashion editor
  Bobby Gillespie, singer and songwriter
  Corinne Day, photographer
  Eddie Izzard, comedian
  Siobhan Davies, choreographer
  Peter Saville, graphic designer
  Jan Kaplicky, architect
  Mark Wallinger, artist
  (via xBlog)
• President Bush's recollections of 9/11 -- an information graphic (via rebecca's pocket), plus the story behind creating the graphic

Happen to be listening to CBC Radio One. Seems like forever and day, it's been Arthur Black in the present time slot -- what do I find now, but Brent Bambury's new show, called Go!. (Actually, I haven't heard a lot of it, because I was distracted doing my last blog post.)

Go! plays like Basic Black (Arthur's show, which had a large baby-boomer audience) updated for Generation X. In my mind, that's a good thing. I have fond memories of listening to Brent on Brave New Waves back in the 80's.

As if you hadn't figured it out already from the perma-links in my sidebar, I don't really follow the A-List bloggers. Off the top of my head, I can't even name them, but I do know that Kottke is one (as I believe are Meryl Yourish, InstaPundit, and Megnut; no linkage -- look 'em up yerself).

Anyway, I happened across Kottke's site via Pete Bevin's blog (Pete is listed on my sidebar, and I still owe him a couple of martinis), and found this handy little blurb and accompanying linkage on the symptoms of groupthink. Ever seen this phenomenon in action? You probably have.

Via another blog which I do read -- MemeMachineGo!, comes this article about executives turning to the writings of Ayn Rand to "justify" their actions. I'm not too too familiar with Ms. Rand's works -- the only one I've read is Anthem (it's short). It's my understanding that when she wrote about parasites who leach off productive society, she was thinking of big government.

Funny, when I read her description of parasites, I immediately thought of people in the managerial ranks of big business -- from the CEO who slashes jobs at a profitable company because he wants to wring more profit out of the balance sheet, to the low-level baby manager/supervisor who pushes their team to churn out as much work as possible, while doing very little of it themselves. I guess it's a matter of perspective.

Linkage, linkage, yadda, yadda, yadda....

• Crankychick's neat new insult


• Forbes has a three part feature on technology and obsolescence (via Pocket PC eBooks Watch)


• blondes are becoming an endangered species -- cf. the CTV News report (including video), plus MeFi discussion


• Neuroscience unlocks secrets of Zen garden (spotted on Follow Me Here and MemeMachineGo!)


• timelinescience -- one thousand years of scientific thought (via Neat New Stuff on the Net)

*yawn* G'morning. Slept a bit longer than I intended to. Oh, well.

There were 29 pieces of spam waiting for me when I went online. Joy.

Linkage:

• recipes based largely on canned goods -- as it turns out, they're not necessarily good recipes (via Fark)


• Similarities between the United States and the Roman Empire -- interesting, and instructive (future empire builders take note) (via MeFi)
  bonus companion link:
  • The Secret History of Lead -- this neurotoxin fried more than a few brains in Roman times; a couple millenia later, and it's still around (via abuddhas memes)


• an excerpt from the new Dilbert book -- more of it available to DNRC members


• a few words on motivation for writers

Crazy, but that's how it goes
Millions of people living as foes
Maybe it's not too late
To learn how to love
And forget how to hate
Mental wounds not healing
Driving me insane
I'm going off the rails on a crazy train

What I did enjoy watching was The Good Girl, which I caught today at a matinee screening. Had a nice blend of humour and pathos, and a reasonably satisfying ending. Jennifer Aniston was really good as well -- no trace of that Friends character of hers to be found.

In the mood for retro synth pop? Try downloading tracks by Ladytron and Adult. (with a period at the end of the name). You'll swear it was 1981 all over again.

Didn't get around to mentioning this before, but on Sunday I went to go see Spirited Away, the Japanese anime film currently enjoying a long anticipated North American release. Supposedly this was the most popular movie ever released in Japan and the couple of reviews I read/heard beforehand were glowing.

I'm sorry, but it really didn't do much for me. Yeah, there was a lot of magical stuff, and of course it had a happy ending, but I found myself irritated by the constant implausible plot twists. Good storytelling does not mean you throw in every single idea you come up with and leave it in, regardless of fit. As far as the visuals were concerned, I enjoyed the eye-candy in Osamu Tezuka's Metropolis a lot more. Oh well.

(And, can I say that I get really irritated when websites like the one for Spirited Away will automatically send you to their Flash version of the site if they detect that you've got the Flash plug-in installed. Just because I've got it, doesn't mean I automatically want to use it -- I'm bloody well on dialup, fer cryin' out loud. Let me decide if I want plain vanilla HTML or the badass bloated Flash version.)

Interesting, given that I mention below that Dooce is back, word now comes (via this MeFi post) that a journalist has been fired after his employer found the blog he'd been writing under a pseudonym (nb. NYT article, registration required, blah blah).

Should also mention a blog I found yesterday, written by a former employee of a large software company based in Washington state. I, fortunately, never found myself targetted to the same degree as she describes, being tormented by her boss-from-hell, but I certainly saw myself, and the sort of frustration I was feeling, back when I was working at my soul-crushingly evil corporate job, pre-tech days. I think I was a lot more angry (at least towards the end) than she seems to be, but the hurt and sense of helplessness were there too.

Sometimes you've just got to bail when a job starts eating you alive. No paycheque is worth that kind of torment.

Oh, neat -- free downloadable Elvis Costello tracks.

Er, not quite. Turns out that the downloads, offered by the Sunday Times in the UK, will also run something that installs Windows Media Player 9, which includes DRM (Digital Rights Management) technology.

Caveat emptor. (Is there a Latin word for "download"?)

Dooce is back. (Thanks to blamb for the tip.)

As you may or may not know, Dooce is the chick who got fired from her job for what she wrote in her blog. She is, by far, the most famous example of this happening, but I've been told that even two of my fellow GTABs have found themselves in deep yogurt at work as a result of stuff they've posted in their personal blogs.

Seeing as I'm currently among the ranks of the disemployed, I don't have to worry about offending any present work colleagues, but I do occasionally wonder what impact some of my rants would have on future employment prospects. I don't intend to link to this from my resume site once I get that damn thing updated, but it wouldn't be that hard to find me here through a Google search.

Really, though, I'm not that worried. If a potential boss is web-savvy enough to find me here, I figure that's a good thing. And, frankly, if someone is uptight enough about what I write here that they would toss my C.V. in the circular file, they're probably not the sort of employer I want to work for anyway.

From reading some of the stuff I post here, you might think that I have a problem with authority figures. I don't; I have a problem with incompetent authority figures. Managing people is a tough thing to do, and I have a great deal of respect for people who can do it well.

But I've seen too many people substitute a style of petty autocracy (or some other sociopathic behaviour) for real leadership ability, and those are the sorts of people that I'd like to smack upside their heads. Even worse are those who not only can't lead, but don't even display any sort of competency in whatever sort of workplace discipline they should nominally be practising.

I think that the majority of people out there want to do well at what they do, but often that sort of competency and craftmanship isn't rewarded in the workplace. Instead the spoils and perqs go to the suck-ups and backstabbers, and even people who are otherwise decent folk can get sucked into that game. This sort of mentality is wasteful in the short term, and harmful in the long term.

I'd like to think that there are workplaces out there where people do collaborate and support each other. My last place of employ was the closest I'd seen to that ideal. Sure, it wasn't perfect -- there were personality clashes, and a few people that caused you to wonder what the hell they were doing there -- but by and large the company culture was designed to be supportive, employ positive reinforcement, and basically help everyone become the best that they could be.

Maybe the next job I take won't be quite on that level, but I'd like to think that someday I'll work in a place like that again.

Arrrrrgh! Via Fark comes this link to an article about the return of suits to the workplace. Quote:

"Business casual" is fast becoming another casualty of the dot-com bust. Many securities firms loosened their dress policies during the technology boom, as Internet companies lured financial services employees away with promises of stock options and a more relaxed work environment....

....But many Internet companies have since crashed, and the casual workplace environment they glorified is falling out of favor.

Venerable business wear retailer Brooks Brothers, which was hurt by the dress-down revolution, welcomes the trend back to suits.

"It's been coming for a while," Geri Corrigan, a Brooks Brothers spokeswoman, said of the revised dress codes. "People are getting serious with the economy and the job market the way it is."

The business casual codes may have been abused, Corrigan suggested. "It was supposed to be dressy casual, but it got so relaxed that people also may have gotten relaxed in their work attitudes," she said.

Grrrrrrrr.

Scenes from Pulp Fiction, starring The Simpsons. (Via Digital Ed.)

Ah, Sunday morning, and I've got Jazz.fm91 on the stereo. In the 9am to noon slot is a little show called "Cafe Jazz", featuring the sort of noodley, smooth, EZ-listening jazz that Kenny G fans might listen to if they were feeling "edgy" (stuff like Spyro Gyra, Pat Metheney, or Chuck Mangione).

Fortunately, this stuff rarely sullies fm91's playlists during the rest of the week, but on Sunday mornings it works very well. Makes for good brunch music.

OK, confession time here: as much as I may now diss mid-70's to mid-80's "fusion-lite", this was the stuff that led the way for me into discovering jazz. The first jazz record I ever bought was Weather Report's Heavy Weather (on vinyl, natch). Around the same time, I also listened to "New Age" music, a la George Winston or Andreas Vollenweider.

No doubt, as I type this, the Cool Police are on their way to my apartment to haul me off to "Questionable Taste Prison".

I've had a very full day, to the point of now being -- in the words of Kenny Rogers -- too tired to sleep.

Dragged myself out of bed at 9.30am in order to drag myself out to Scarberia (specifically, the Scarborough Town Centre LRT station) for 11.30. Simultaneous temporal and geographic dislocation -- yikes. Destination: the Toronto Zoo with other GTA Bloggers.

As events transpired, Rannie, Jay, Jay's daughter Jayden, and I were the only hardy souls that made the trip. What the hell -- we had a great time, even if by the end of the day we were all ready to drop. I love the zoo. You'd think Jayden, being five, would be the dawdler holding everyone back. Sad to say, often it was me. At one point, I was so entranced watching the gibbons in the African pavilion that I didn't even hear Jay, who was standing right beside me, tell me that they were leaving. Oops.

Damn, I'm pretty sure I had more to say when I started this post, but I've lost it. Why don't you go read MetaFilter instead?

Take me on a roller coaster Take me for an airplane ride Take me for a six days wonder but don´t you Don´t you throw my pride aside besides What´s real and make believe Baby Jane´s in Acapulco We are flyin´ down to Rio

Via MetaFilter I've discovered PopCult Magazine. Like the name would imply, it's about pop culture. Sample articles:

• the death of good magazine graphic design (the link cited by MeFi)


• a compendium of wittily biting Elvis Costello lyrics


• someone's re-examination of their record purchases in the 70's


• an exotic beverage taste-test


• reviews of new breakfast cereals (including the two Simpsons cereals)

Went and added another file to Circadian Shift: The Outpost:

• "How to Not Get Your Ass Kicked by the Police" by Chris Rock

How "indie" am I? Not very. (Via gak.)

i am open-minded!




How indie are you? test by ridethefader

You're pretty knowledgeable about music in general. You like indie music, sure, but that's only part of it. You'll listen to any old shit as long as it sounds good to you. You're not snobby about music at all, you just like what you like. How boring. Curiously, this makes you popular with the opposite sex.

I sometimes tune in to campus radio, so I'd like to think that I'm not completely and utterly clueless, but I'll just as often listen to jazz or the good ol' CBC.

Right now I'm listening to a bunch of tracks from The Damned, The Buzzcocks, Richard Hell and the Voidoids, The Stooges, and Generation X, which I downloaded from Punkrockers.com. Gotta love the oldies....

Groggy. Must leave hovel before noon.

Linkage:

• "Urban Moron"


• September issue of Fast Company

Pocket PC e-Books Watch brought to my attention the latest tome by Faith Popcorn, along with Adamn Hanft, called Dictionary of the Future. Some sample definitions:

Karaoke Managers -- those who get ahead by lip-synching the wisdom of others.

Admirenvy -- the common condition of admiring something -- or someone -- and being envious at the same time.

Free-Range Children -- new generation of kids raised without over-programming.

While lying in bed this morning, another long ago conversation with my brother came to mind. Today's skill-testing question:

Is it possible to use the word "literally" in the figurative sense?

After yesterday's dining disappointment, today I indulged in some take-out from Swiss Chalet. I got the chicken sandwich dinner, with fries and an extra thing of sauce. Took the top of the bun off the sandwich and poured the entire thing of sauce that came with the meal in it. Ate the sandwich by dunking it into the other vat of sauce prior to each bite. Then consumed the fries, which were lovingly submerged by the forkfull into the sauce before eating. Mmmmm. I think I just consumed 10-12 ounces of Swiss Chalet sauce with my meal. I think I just shaved another three days off my total lifespan, but it was worth it.

I had a craving for a curry chick pea roti for "dinner" (lunch, really). That, and my caffeine levels were low, so a Cherry Bomb Jolt was in order. I wandered up to Food Depot for the roti, and there were none -- no chicken, no goat, no beef, no chick pea, no nothing. Next stop was Gaby's Variety, where I found Cherry Bomb Jolt the last time I was in there. Alas, no Cherry Bomb to be found, just regular Jolt. So, I had to content myself with that, plus one of my usual frozen entrees for dinner.

Ran across some quick blurbage about Gen X and Starbucks. Can I just say I get rrrreealllllyy cranky when some idiot journalist refers to 20-somethings as "Generation X". Real Gen X-ers were in their 20's a over a decade ago. Douglas Coupland himself is now 40. Wise up, already.

I do agree with the bit about the ridiculous terminology that Starbucks uses for its beverage sizes. I usually ask for a "really freaking huge" whatever, and get what I want. (However, there is one Starbucks, down at Yonge & King on the edge of the financial district, where they simply do not understand anything other than Starbucks-speak. I've wanted to smack 'em upside the head whenever I've gone in there.)

I added a new weather widget to the sidebar (you have to scroll all the way down to see it). But I'd rather not contemplate what I'd do when the temperature hits freezing.

Eatonweb has added a new feature to its blog profile pages -- a list of similar blogs, based on what keywords each blog has as part of its profile. My profile has a list of similar blogs leaning heavily in the "information" and "architecture" categories. (BTW, thank you so much to whomever is taking the piss out of me in my Eatonweb rating -- I guess I should make more posts about my cat, my friends, and what I did in school today.)

Via this profile of a blog that appeared in my "similar" list, I've found OfficeBoy, which has some nifty links relating to workplace culture, management, communication, etc. I especially liked the pointers to the page of links on creativity and innovation plus the article and audio piece on consultants who help you fire your employees.

Linkage:

• Oooeeee!! It's Marshmallow Fluff: the amorphous marshmaloid substance in a jar. (Via BlamBlog.)


• Punkrockers.com offers MP3s and video clips from seminal acts of the original punk revolution. (Via Portage)

Still not a heck of a lot to say for myself. Hence, some linkage:

• George Bush writes a letter the cut 'n paste way


• Simple Ways to Relieve Stress -- nothing new here, but it seems like we always need to be reminded to do this stuff (via Woodster.com)


• A Meta-Taxonomy for Diagram Research -- symbolic abstraction to the Nth degree (via InfoDesign)


• The Blog Glossary (via blogdex)


• Web Services' Idées Fortes -- "powerful ideas (idées fortes) that... describe how Web Services will change the fundamental nature of distributed computing"


• A bad job interview can reveal what a company is really like -- of course, if you need the money, you might take the job anyway....


• Massaging Your Skull: Craniosacral Therapy -- "the bones that make up the skull (cranial bones) move and flex in response to the pulsing of fluid in the brain...."


• Think Before You Delegate -- learn from PHB (pointy-haired boss -- cf. Dilbert) behaviour

Now that Star Wars: Attack of the Clones is running in the repertory theatres, I finally got around to seeing it this evening. I thought the battle scenes were interesting for the array of whacked-out machinery used -- I wonder if George Lucas took some inspiration from Leonardo da Vinci's notebooks. And Yoda -- that is one bad-assed little muppet. As for the rest of the film, eh, whatever. I could've done with more Ewan McGregor and less Hayden Christensen. Oh, well.

Here's some linkage for ya:

• September issue of First Monday


• Four Reasons Why You Don't Exist -- a synopsis (via abuddhas memes)


• latest installment of Get Your War On


• Bob Boyd's kitty is possessed


• "Look Ma, no hands!"


• Get a Chinese name -- input your English name, birthdate, and other criteria, and get a new name in Chinese characters (via Follow Me Here)

I know, I said I was going to take the weekend off. Evidently, I lied.

Still really don't have much to say, but I did want to mention that I've set up another site to complement this blog. Circadian Shift: The Outpost will largely serve as a place to park graphics and other stuff, since I can't host any of that on my free Blogspot account. (And yes, The Outpost is located on a free server as well -- I'm too damn impoverished to buy server space at the moment.)

There's a song that I mentioned in my inaugural post on this blog, that I absolutely love and is hard to find anywhere. I heard it once on CFNY back in the 80's and it haunted me for years. I never heard it again until finding it online just a few short months ago. However, my source seems to have his server offline more often than not (there were a few other files that I spotted on his site that I didn't download when I had the chance), so you really can't find this song anywhere. And since I mentioned it, my blog shows up if you run a Google looking for this song -- more than a couple people have followed that trail here, only to have it go cold.

Well, after that kind of build-up, I guess it might be possible that you won't be as taken with the song as I was, and I guess I'll understand, but really, I hope you'll like it. Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you:

The Roaring Boys -- "House of Stone"

I was waiting for so long
Took my chances but they?d all already gone
But there?s nothing I can do
Nothing I can find to prove my love to you

Now that song comes again
And I still remember you saying
Young boy afraid to risk for love
To take a chance
No light, no love will ever grow
Inside your house of stone

Walking in the streets I go
Where you?ve been I?ll never know
Let the music fill this room
Can?t you see that I still depend on you

Now that song comes again
And I still remember you saying
Young boy afraid to risk for love
Your chance will pass
No light, no love will ever grow
Inside your house of stone

Now that song comes again (oh, no, no)
I will still remember you saying
Young boy who could not ask for love
Your chance has passed
No light, no love will ever grow
I will build a house of stone

Ya, I been quiet. Been dealing with a minor family emergency, among other things. Here are some links:

• Says who? Says God.


• October issue of New Architect magazine


• GigaLaw


• Driving over Jakob Nielsen -- an oldie but a goodie

The other day, I was out at Bloor & Bathurst and I noticed a guy out walking with his black labrador retriever.

Now, black labs are hardly an oddity in The Annex (are people who have houses 'round here required by law to own one or something?), but this dog seemed different. He didn't so much walk as bounce down the street after his owner. I watched him moving along, head bobbing up-and-down furiously, and something didn't add up. Then I realized -- one of his front legs was missing.

He was such a sweet looking doggie. I wondered if he lost his leg when he was pup, or if this was a more recent mishap. Does he remember what it was like to run on four legs? Does he miss it? Does it make him sad or frustrated? Do other dogs notice, and how do they react?

Well, he seemed happy enough, bounce-bounce-bouncing along after his owner down the street. I had the feeling that he doesn't brood or rage against the universe over what fate dealt him. He just goes on, wagging his tail, moving forward as best as he can.

Sometimes, I think I'd like to be a black labrador retriever.

I fired up my Linux box for the first time in weeks and took a look at my blog page on it. Egad, it sucks. Damn Netscape. I know I should give this thing a makeover, but frankly it's not a priority for me -- I still have to get my resume and portfolio site updated first.

Via Follow Me Here, I found this quiz on classical composers. I got 10 out of 11(I did not know which Viennese-born composer died at age 31, most likely of syphilis).

Haven't done much listening to classical music lately. My copy of DJ Kicks by Thievery Corporation has been in my CD player the last few days. It's a tasty blend of down-tempo jazz and funk, with a good helping of East Indian tabla thrown in to boot. Very nice. [nb. The silly people at Amazon have put up the track listing and samples from Sounds from the Thievery Hi-Fi on the DJ Kicks page by mistake.]

Oh, neat: you can learn logic with Beavis and Butthead. Also check out the philosophy and linguistics links. (Gracias, Fark!)

I'm all lost in the supermarket I can no longer shop happily

I don't usually have a list, but I have some general idea of what I need to get before I enter the store. When I pass through those automatic doors, however, it seems like I have instant temporary amnesia. Today is no exception.

It certainly doesn't help that the first thing you hit when you walk in is the deli and fresh produce section. The deli's cheese counter is particularly deadly for me -- oh, look, a big wedge of Brie.... and there I am, transfixed like a drooling lobotomy patient....

Eventually, I can tear myself away from the paté and the chevre avec herbes, but then I have no recollection of what I'm there for. So, I wander up and down the aisles, and some aisles (like the cereal aisle, and the one with the canned salmon and crackers) I'll wander through at least twice.

Sooner or later I compile an assortment of groceries that I vaguely recall needing. The trick is to gather enough stuff to get the minimum to collect Air Miles, while not getting an amount that's too damn heavy to carry home. Additional trips up and down the aisles are often required. Then comes the checkout....

I can't "read" checkout lines for shit. The express line is often quite long, whereas other lines are temptingly shorter. Number of patrons vs. number of items means.... Aw, hell, I'll go for the express line (1-16 items).

(As an aside, I have more than once "accidentally" gone in the 1-8 item line with 9 items -- I always seem to end up with 9 items for some reason. There is, no doubt, a place in hell for people like me.)

Anyway, once I'm in the checkout line, my brain kicks into hypervigilance mode. Tonight, the ol' neurons seem particularly keyed up. (The fact that I'm wearing a T-shirt that has a picture of a caffeine molecule on it is purely coincidental.)

There's two people in line in front of me. The woman at the front of the line has her stuff on the conveyer belt. I wait at the back, with my fully loaded basket, ready to put my stuff on the belt. The woman in front of me, however, is clutching her groceries to her chest as if her life depends on it. She does not put them down.

I have never displayed any telepathetic abilities before, but perhaps tonight will be different. I proceed to transmit thought-beams:

put your groceries on the conveyer belt.... put your groceries on the conveyer belt.... * put * your * fucking * groceries * on * the * goddam * conveyer * belt * !!!!

Argh. Brief confusion as the woman in front of clarifies that those are not her groceries, and presents her item -- a single head of Romaine lettuce -- for purchase. And it would be a simple enough matter to handle, except Ms. Lettuce Head proceeds to enquire about a bag of groceries she bought and mistakenly left behind at the checkout counter last Tuesday. Bloody hell....

I know. It's only a supermarket checkout line and there's really no rational reason why I should feel the urge to deploy the "fist of death" upon my fellow Dominion patron. But all I wanna do I buy my groceries and I resent having to expend any extra mental effort to do so. I don't drive, but I think maybe I understand just a little bit where 'road rage' comes from.

Anyway, I am home now, having purchased my groceries without incident, and there are once again consumable foodstuffs in my fridge. I've even had a bowl of The Simpsons (aka. "Homer's Cinnamon Donut") breakfast cereal to celebrate.

(Actually, I tried eating the stuff straight out of the box yesterday and wound up with greasy residue on my hands. Damn good thing I usually have Shreddies or Mini Wheats for breakfast.)

If you aren't reading MetaFilter, you should be -- interesting linkage here and here.

Hopefully you'll be familiar with some of this already, but here's a handy article on hotel fire safety; much is applicable to dealing with a fire in any tall building. Thanks to Cranky Chick (who relates her own sad anecdote of a family killed in a fire) for the link.

Well, I've drifted back into waking up at 1pm. Which, arguably, is still an improvement over waking up at 6pm.

Am listening to CBC-One's Definitely Not the Opera. But, this is weird -- they've run the exact same thing in both hour 1 and hour 2 of the show. According to the site, today's program was to include:

This week on DNTO!

New host Sook-Yin Lee goes on an anthropological adventure through the streets of Peg City!

Between 1 and 2:

-Stephanie Dumet debunks the theory that with September 11th came the death of irony.

-A DNTO exclusive live concert featuring Toronto beat meisters, the New Deal.

-On the film front, the celebrites! the paparazzi! the elephants! We get behind the scenes of the Zanzibar international film festival.

Between 2 & 3:

-DNTO discovers how a mild mannered speech writer became an unwitting porn star.

-The Last Picture Show, we explore the last of the dying days of ye olde 35mm porn theatre.

-And we feature a DNTO exclusive live concert from Ottawa songwriter Kathleen Edwards.

And I know there's no shortage of 'September 11th' related content running on just about every available media channel right now. The New York Times is running a fairly lengthy piece titled "The Height of Ambition", about the building and eventual demise of the World Trade Center. (Thanks to MeFi for the link.)

Yes, I'm still awake.

While lying in bed not sleeping, an old conversation that I had with my brother came to me: where does helium come from? Or rather, more specifically, how does someone gather up a bunch of helium and put it in a pressurized tank (like the kind you use to inflate balloons)? Given that helium is an inert gas, it's not like you can isolate it from any compound substances. So how do you gather up all the little 'He' molecules? Inquiring minds want to know.

I've been neglecting to post on thebiglist of late. Finally got around to putting up a list of my favourite songs by Elvis Costello.

[Addendum: Duh! No sooner than immediately after posting this, it occured to me to run a Google on "helium", which yielded a nice little explanation on where helium comes from.]

MemeMachineGo! has posted some links to good sci-fi reading on the web.

Dammit, why am I awake?

Was watching television earlier this evening. My mind started to wander, one thing led to another, and with a little help from Google, I managed to scare up some interesting reading. Behold, some links (watch my brain play connect the dots):

• C.S.I.


• Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs


• another article correlating Maslow's Hierarchy with information needs


• Practical Steps for Indentifying Client Information Needs


• Using Information Scent to Model User Information Needs and Actions on the Web (PDF, 208 kB)


• Information Foraging & Information Scent: Theory, Models, and Applications (PDF, 3.26 MB)


• Do Your Links Stink? Techniques for Good Web Information Scent


• The Hunter Gatherers of the Knowledge Economy: The Anthropology of Today's Cyberforagers (nb. free registration required to access)

Why do the two most recent posts on InfoDesign link to articles that are three years and one year old, respectively? Oh, well. Just in case you missed them the first time:

• XML and the Second-Generation Web
• Signs of the times -- "New York airports were among the most confusing in the world,'' said Paul Mijksenaar, a 57-year-old Dutch designer who has been brought in by the Port Authority to re-do the city's obtuse airport signs. "There was no system. They resembled - how do you say it? - the apocalypse.''

Was late in checking my weekly e-mail from HBS Working Knowledge. Interestingly, this is one of this week's articles:

What Can Business Schools Do to Avoid Bad Apples? -- "New students are arriving on business school campuses for the first fall term since the flood of management malpractice disclosures hit the headlines. For this reason, it is perhaps a good time to solicit creative ideas about how leading business schools that mint a high proportion of senior executives in large organizations can identify and weed out candidates whose personal values suggest potential long-term risk to themselves and to business in general."

Am attempting to make the transition back to regular day-person hours. Was awake, dressed, and out of the hovel by shortly after 11 this morning. Am meeting some friends for lunch tomorrow, which entails being out of here by noon.

My brain is a tad fuzzy. Hopefully, the situation will improve.

Weird -- I went to sleep around 1.30am and woke up around 6.30. And what is this? It's still dark outside.

Via Slashdot comes this article titled "Why do cell phones make us stupid?" Or, maybe the question should be, "why do stupid people use cell phones?"

I'll admit that I've been pondering getting one of the evil devices. I've resisted thus far, on the reasoning that I don't even like answering my regular phone. However, now that I'm supposed to job-hunting (really), it would be a good thing to have. And also, if I wind up doing contract work, it would also be good to have.

I bought a new answering machine yesterday, but I have yet to hook it up. The incoming-message tape on my old monster (nearly 14 years old) has jammed, and I can't unjam it. The new one is all digital, and it cost half of what I paid for the old one. Ain't technology grand?

Y'know, most people who come across my page via a search engine are usually looking for something fairly benign -- usually MP3s, sometimes the Sony Vaio system that I once mentioned that I saw in a store and thought was cool. But, as for the sad piece of work who came in looking for this, well, I really don't know what to say.

I've been in bed most of the day with a headache. I was in bed most of yesterday with a headache. Goddamit.

Natalie has posted a pic of a truly disturbing piece of sculpture on her site. I feel obliged to say something witty, but it ain't gonna happen.

Here is Google's directory of links on postmodernism. Draw your own damn conclusion.

Went and re-visited the blog I cited yesterday (although really it was less than five hours ago) in linking to an article on procrastinating students.

Catfish on the Table posts some interesting linkage -- at least I find it interesting, as may others of the writerly persuasion. The author also has a number of his short stories online; I haven't read any yet, but will probably give a few of them a whirl (always good to see what others are writing).

One of Catfish's perma-links goes to a page of Resources for Writers and Writing Instructors. It's a varied, yet not unwieldy, list of links to a number of useful sites and pages. (However, I don't see any links to pages on dealing with writer's block -- for shame!). If you've nothing better to do, check out this Glossary of Rhetorical Terms with Examples.