Circadian Shift

Staying in The Hovel is sucking all ambition out of me.

C'mon, Adele, we're going out.

Summer is here, which means Mr. Oscillating-Fan-Which-Doesn't-Oscillate-Quite-Fully-Anymore is getting a workout. In case you hadn't guessed, The Hovel does not have air conditioning.

Meanwhile, Mr. "Web Usability Guru" Jakob Nielsen weighs in with his two cents on information foraging.

Scott from Rare 1980s MP3 of the Week reports that the RIAA has been leaning on him and the provider that hosts his files. Which means that you can say goodbye to yet another fine source of retro tunage.

Blake from thefirstcut also received some nasty edicts from the RIAA, although I believe he had already made the decision to discontinue weekly MP3s for other reasons. He's now pondering the merits of doing a weekly web-broadcast of synthpop goodness, which somehow falls beyond the reach of the RIAA's grasping claws.

I don't know if I should take down The Outpost now as a pre-emptive measure, or just wait for them to bloody well come and find me.

Search Google News for items about the RIAA.

Currently at #2 on blogdex is an article titled "The Final Irony".

Should that whet your appetite, feel free to wander in Silva Rhetoricae: The Forest of Rhetoric.

The News in Pictures provides linkage to all sorts of 'photo of the day' and news pictorial sites. Getting a high speed internet connection is your own responsibility.

Stumbled across PublicDomain4U, which has a selection of MP3s -- blues tracks, mostly -- of recordings which are now in the public domain.

Now all I need is some bourbon.

Note to self: Techquila.com papers on Topic Maps, including business case for using them, and topic map patterns for IA.

Likely of interest to my fellow Torontonians for the most part (oenophiles in other parts of Canada may also wish to take a look) is this GTAB entry on Books, Food, Books about Food.
...
Addendum: Oops. Wee goof on the direct link to the post (thanks to Lilly for the heads-up). Is fixed now.

This one's pretty cool because it makes use of background images and includes a feature to use the menu to identify which page the user is on:

Uberlink CSS Rollovers

(Via Neurotech.)

This week's featured download on Torchomatic is the single version of B-Movie's "Nowhere Girl". I have the extended version on vinyl (and I might have an MP3 of it, stashed away somewhere), but according to Simon, the single mix is hard to come by.

Should you wish to sing along while you wallow in melancholic nostalgia, the lyrics to "Nowhere Girl" are here.

Thanks to "N" for sending this link:

In Learning, Short Nap Is as Good as Night's Sleep
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Research has shown that people need a good night's sleep in order to perform better on a number of tests that measure different skills. Now new findings suggest that, in the case of a visual test, a short nap does the job just as well as hours of nighttime z's.
U.S. investigators found that people who took a 60- to 90-minute nap after practicing a task that tests visual perception skills improved their performance just as much as if they had gotten a full night's sleep.

The BBC also covers the story and includes linkage to related news items.

Wasn't as productive yesterday as I ought to have been. Gotta work on that.

Have run across the Everything Post-It® website (via this blog), which documents all the wonderful productive things that one can do with Post-It® Notes.

Presumably, 3M approves of this usage of its trademark, unlike the unfortunate Post-It Gallery (which I mentioned here), which will now be known as The Little Yellow Gallery. Hey, 3M: your loss.

Meanwhile, for your downloading enjoyment:

• 3M's officially sanctioned line of Post-It® Software Notes; the 'Lite' version is free
• NoNags's selection of Remind - Note - Schedule Freeware
• Download.com's assortment of Notepad Replacements

So many links. So little time.

• Darwin magazine has an excerpt from the new book Netslaves 2.0: Tales of Surviving the Great Tech Gold Rush; however, sadly, the Netslaves website is history
• FastCompany outlines its 7 Habits of Spectacularly Unsuccessful Executives; quote: "It's not easy to become as disastrous a boss as Dennis Kozlowski, Jean-Marie Messier, or Jill Barad -- but you can, if you work at it. And here's the best part: Each of the qualities that you need to be a spectacular failure is widely admired in today's business world."
• there's a somewhat brief article over at Builder.com titled "Understanding information taxonomy helps build better apps"; of course, there are diagrams
• Day-Timer.com (yes, the people who make all those sleek-looking personal organizers) has a stash of articles about time management (if that link doesn't work, look at the bottom of the home page)
• lastly, two neato blogs that cover employment and job search issues: emblog and Don't Feed the Monkeys

Need to do some work on other websites.

The Modulator notes that foreign investment in the U.S. is declining.

I've just been really damn sick and tired of the way that certain factions in the U.S. have taken advantage of that country's economic might to further a political agenda, using their purchasing power to basically beat the rest of the world about the head with a stick.

It's somewhat of a relief to see that it works both ways.

• CEO Express -- a humongus portal thing
• Weblog Kitchen -- "a Wiki about research in weblogs, wikis, and related hypertext technologies"
• The World Time Server -- find out what time it is, anywhere in the world
• exercises for getting creative (via a UsabilityNews article, as spotted on the biztechportalthing)

A few items on dysfunctional workplaces crossing my radar:

• an item which aired on the CTV News last night about stress in the workplace and dealing with a bad boss -- unfortunately, there's no write-up, just video, and it's in Windows Media format, so unless you can somehow play WMV files on your 'puter, you're SOL
• a BBC News item with more information about the study mentioned in the CTV piece, concerning how dealing with a bad boss can increase blood pressure and lead to stroke
• this week's HBS Working Knowledge has an article on Psychology, Pathology, and the CEO
• an article on benefits and drawbacks of competition between co-workers (via BostonWorks: The Job Blog)
• and, lastly, this Wired piece on how computers help and hinder worker productivity (via, um, I forget)

Addendum 25 June 2003 -- The CBC picks up on the bosses and blood pressure story, and has an interview with the woman who headed up the original study.

Font junkies will probably want to check out The Dingbat Pages, which offer oodles and oodles of freeware and shareware dingbat/symbol/glyph fonts for all your whacked-out design needs.

(Link via ReachCustomersOnline.com.)

Did some Googling about, and scared up a few links about business uses of a wiki:

• Been using a wiki for business collaboration... -- a blog post with a nice list of bullet points outlining benefits and drawbacks
• Business Use of Wiki -- a brief tale of deploying a wiki, and a few observations on the results/effects
• wiki-thoughts -- a blog offering "Thoughts on Structured/Unstructured and Shared Information Management using Wiki and other emerging technologies"
• WikiWeb's What's a Wiki page, which lists some possible business uses for wiki

BTW, Bloki rolled out some new features, including spiffy new layouts (I gave my Bloki a new look), a new toolbar, and a folder tree to make organizing your pages easier. Yay!

(One small goof, though -- the "homepage" link takes the user to the main Bloki home page, and not my Bloki home page. Hopefully that'll be fixed soon.)

(Addendum: Goof #2 -- there's no easy way to get to the blog portion of the Bloki from the wiki portion)

Symptoms of coffee deficiency

You are a blue-blooded netizen, my lonely friend:
you probably dream in technicolour VR Gibsonian
cyberporno, read faster than superbabies hooked
on phonics and may even strive to separate
yourself from the Instant Messaging masses by
contributing to the content and structure of
the Internet. Thou art digerati, yo.

Are You Plugged-in to the Internet?
brought to you by Quizilla

Yeah, but will it get me job?

In no particular order:

• Brain scan activity linked to shyness in children (via the biztechportalthing)
• New Frontiers in the Identity Theft War (ditto)
• Savant for a Day -- "people undergoing transcranial magnetic stimulation, or TMS, could suddenly exhibit savant intelligence -- those isolated pockets of geniuslike mental ability that most often appear in autistic people" (New York Times article; free registration required) (via blogdex)
• A brief introduction to Filipino folklore and mythology (also via blogdex)
• chromewaves.net's Cover of the Week -- weekly MP3 downloads for you music junkies

Yet another excuse for my "inability" to get out of bed at a decent hour:

Is There An Unexpected Price For Late Night High Tech Excitement?
June 17, 2003 -- Bethesda, MD -- Recently released research claims that playing lots of video games improves some types of visual functioning. Before rushing to your computer or buying more games, consider another new research finding. Newly published results suggests that performing an exciting video display terminal task fitted with a bright display suppresses the nocturnal changes in melatonin concentration and other elements of our biological clocks. In other words, playing an exciting video game at night with a bright display backlight might just be the physiological cause of a poor night's sleep.

(Link via apostropher, via The Modulator.)

The Harry Potter marketing juggernaut is just way out of control:

Mail Carrier Says She Was Fired For Delivering Harry Potter Book Early
Kenia Cooper said she was just doing her job when she picked up the daily mail from the Westport post office where she worked, sorted her deliveries and left. But inside the stash was a single copy of the new Harry Potter book that had slipped past whoever divided up the mail.
The book was marked with a notice that said not to deliver it until June 21, but Cooper apparently didn't see it...
The mail carrier eventually got the book back, but not without repercussions. Cooper was told to go home and not to return...
The post office claimed Cooper was only suspended, and that something like this likely wouldn't warrant firing. Union leaders were out of town and unavailable for comment.

Fired, suspended, whatever -- she's being disciplined because one precious copy of some children's book accidentally slipped into the hands of one customer a few days early. Somebody needs a smack upside the head.

(Link via Pocket PC eBooks Watch.)

• The Post-It Gallery -- artwork done on Post-It notes (via blogdex)
• Robot Tairiku -- make your own robots out of paper from these printable designs (via MetaFilter)

Addendum 20 June 2003 -- The Post-It Gallery is due for a re-naming, as the folks at 3M are less than thrilled with the site's usage of the name-sake product. An ironic quashing of a perfectly good creative outlet from a company that built its name on making innovative products, don't you think? Somewhere, a Vice President of Something-Or-Other needs a smack upside the head.

Via the biztechnewsportalthing:

• The Good, The Bad, and the Blogly -- "So what makes a blog good?" Sure, there's a lot of A-list navel gazing, but also a few nuggets to be gleaned. The Dave Winer essay which prompted the post has some good reference linkage (scroll down) to basic explanatory articles to what blogs and wikis are.
• The Limitations Of Linux -- "But there are costs and technical limitations associated with Linux that don't typically make headlines. Customers say these include a lack of mature development tools, too many Linux variants, acquisition costs for more sophisticated versions of the software and lack of applications for small and medium-sized businesses."
• Myths of Moore's Law -- "The basic rule -which states that the number of transistors on a chip doubles every 24 months - has been the guiding principle of the high tech industry since it was coined by Intel co-founder Gordon Moore in 1965.... Still, most people manage to mangle the rule, one way or another."
• Applying for a Job III: The Cover Letter FAQ -- Third in a series; again, no ground-breaking information here, but a refresher doesn't hurt
• No More Origami for Stolichnaya -- "Though the (new) campaign does not have a theme, the print and outdoor ads, featuring photographs of fun-loving friends smiling over glasses of Stoli, might as well be titled 'Dude, where's my vodka?'" (NYT article, registration req'd)
• Specialization Is the Rage -- Say goodbye to vertical integration; yeah, whatever (NYT article)
• Scientists grow decaffeinated coffee plants -- This just seems so wrong

Well, the search engine hits are just a-rollin' in, thanks to my post which mentions Deloitte Consulting's 'Bullfighter' software. Guess we hit a nerve.

For those of you who would enjoy more of the same, a bit of Googling helped me scare up the following linkage:

• The Web Economy Bullshit Generator -- destined to become a classic of our age
• Despair.com -- I have an severe aversion to the words of Aristotle, thanks to one parasitic waste-of-space team leader who used to crib slogans out of the Successories catalogue, put them up on other people's cube walls (not his own), and think that this behaviour passed for "leadership"; Despair.com is the antidote
• buzzword bingo is another classic of our age; some related links:
  • BetterWorkplaceNow's bingo card generator
  • another bingo card generator that comes in regular Business, eBusiness, and WiReD flavours; the roll-your-own generator seems to be out of commission
  • The Word Spy's entry on 'buzzword bingo' -- in general, The Word Spy is a handy resource for sniffing out new jargon
  • a Wiki entry on the origins and variations of 'buzzword bingo'; also check out the related Wiki entries about 'alarm bell phrases' and 'killer phrases'
• Rhymer.net's page of business jargon and buzzwords
• an entire site dedicated to Corporate Babble
• and, lastly, this very neat looking site that I've never seen before called The Corporate Asylum

For those of you presently reading this while at your office, now would be a good time to get back to work.

CSS Mini Tabs (via Zeldman).

Awoke at a semi-decent hour this morning, but have been somewhat lacking in momentum, thereby frittering away the opportunity to have a really productive day. Need to work on that.

Meanwhile, the BBC provides some answers:

Why some of us are early risers

Researchers at the University of Surrey say they have found a link between people's preference for mornings or evenings and a gene called Period 3.

This gene is one of those involved in regulating the body's internal clock. It comes in two forms - a shorter and longer one.

Researchers have found that people with an extreme preference for early mornings are more likely to have a long version of Period 3.

In contrast, those with an extreme preference for evenings are more likely to have the shorter version.

However, lest I get too complacent:

Dr Archer said despite the findings, other genes and other factors also played an important role in determining who among us are larks and who are owls.

"Your day or night preference is obviously a complex behavioural trait. It is not solely down to one single gene.

"It is a combination of genes that interact together to form your body clock," he said

"But, of course, there is an influence from your lifestyle. It is not all to do with your genetics. You can chose to follow a particular life pattern. You can override your genes."

Well, it was worth a shot.

Should you have nothing better to do, you may also wish to check out my latest post to The Big List, on the list as reigning genre in American magazines.

(Linkage via Technorati.)

• Top 10 business applications for Short Message Service (via the biztechnewsportalthing)
• Three Steps to Blogging for Business (also via the biztechportalthing)
• Be interesting or be quiet (via blogdex)
• The Computer Job Economy (also via blogdex)
• Free online typing test (blogdex again)
• and, lastly, a whole mess of linkage on information foraging (via Infodesign)

So, for one reason or another, you find yourself out of a job. What to do with those 320-odd business cards you've got left over? Why not try making business card cubes?

Or, try rounding up all the leftover cards from your other jobless friends and take a stab at this depth 3 approximation to Menger's Sponge.

If you've only got a few cards to play with, you can just stick with nice little origami animals, like this puppy, this bunny (which hops!), or this frog (which also hops).

If you managed to grab a few reams of printer/photocopy paper on your way out of the office, why don't you give these geometric and puzzle paper models a go? Or some other origami shapes?

Or, you can try crafting yourself a handpainted origami business card holder in anticipation of your next gig.

(Thanks to The G Spot for the link to the business card cubes.)

• Microsoft to kill popular Linux antivirus product

  Users and resellers of RAV AntiVirus, popular especially on Linux platforms, are in limbo after Microsoft Corp. announced plans to buy the RAV technology from Romania's GeCAD Software Srl.
  The RAV product line will be discontinued after Microsoft completes the acquisition of the technology, Microsoft said....
  The acquisition has observers questioning Microsoft's ultimate intentions and wondering what the Redmond, Washington, software maker wants with technology that powers leading virus scanning tools for e-mail servers on Linux platforms, rivals to Microsoft's Windows and Exchange products.

• Holy Change Agent! Consultants Edit Out Jargon

  Deloitte Consulting, an arm of the accounting firm Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu, has developed a free software program, Bullfighter, that identifies jargon in documents. The goal is to make it easier for investors to decipher what companies are trying to say....
  The software, which works like a spelling checker program to spot questionable words and phrases in Microsoft Word and PowerPoint documents, is available on the Deloitte Consulting Web site at www.dc.com/bullfighter....
  "Some of the most hated (words) were 'leverage,' 'bandwidth,' 'touch base,' 'incentivize,' 'inoculate,' 'bleeding edge,' 'robust,' 'synergize' and 'envisioneer.' "

  (New York Times article; free registration required.)

A page of Arts & Entertainment News.

Also quite minimal, but what the hell.

• a tutorial on colour theory (via Insomnygen)
• thoughts on doing a time shift, plus a proposal for a 28 hour day
• a free online dictionary of unusual and weird words
• a library of free Classical MP3s, although not with the most friendly interface

Kinda minimal, but I've settled on a portal page for General News.

OK, I might add some links in the left column, but not much else.

I did eventually get to the Metro Zoo (the original trip was cancelled because of my cold). "N" was nice enough the lend me a digital camera, so I have actual photographic evidence of the trip. So, behold the first Circadian Shift photo gallery:

Metro Zoo Trip

You'll have to excuse the less-than-exquisite quality of the pics -- it was my first outing with a digicam.

• Free eLiterature -- another source of free e-books in MS Reader and Mobipocket formats (via Pocket PC eBooks Watch)
• Warning: Your Job May Be Hazardous to Your Health -- a Business 2.0 article, with some handy illustrations (via BostonWorks: The Job Blog)
• buncha linkage to new articles about weblogging, courtesy of plasticbag

A List of Lists

(Much more amusing is this list from Jayme.)

Reason #243.

(Via Pete Bevin.)

Cribbed from my Business and Technology News page:

• Enough Already: Curbing Info Glut
• The "Missing" Pocket PC apps: Access & PowerPoint
• Typing may not irritate the wrist: study

Yet another reason why I should have a llama:

Guard Llamas Keep Sheep Safe From Coyotes

(Thank you, MemeMachineGo!.)

Before I forget, here's a good article:

Web User Interface Developer - an overview
The purpose of this article is to.... give people - like project managers, sales, customers and other developers - an insight into what a web user interface developer does and doesn't, shoulds and shouldn'ts...

And there's the obligatory diagram, showing how WUID's relate to Information Architects, System Architects, other developers, and Project Managers.

Of course, real life is often very different from this idealized scheme (one is rather left with the impression that the sun shines out of your typical WUID's backside). Definitions blur. I rather think that the task of defining the metadata falls into the IA's purview (library science, anyone?), but maybe that's just me.

(Link to article via thought?horizon.)

Still somewhat brain-damaged. Sorry.

Plenty of other places to visit listed on the sidebar.

Hopefully, tomorrow will be better.

*_*

Really gotta wake up.

A combination of website building and frantic excavation work (thank you, Rubbermaid 'Rough Totes') kept me up around the clock and into the morning. Then the electricians showed up to install the range hood.

All of which put me back on a "9 to 5" schedule.

Oops.

Information architecture guru Lou Rosenfeld recently found himself wondering how people learn about new or unfamiliar music. If you've been wondering that yourself, go check out the resulting comment thread for several good leads.

Also check out two recent additions to my 'Music Links' blogroll: DJ Martian's Page and NewFrontEars for plenty more kickass leads on new tunage.

Returned to The Hovel from a visit chez Parental Units' abode to find this note under my door:

The electricians will be on (sic) Mon. or Tues. June 9 or 10 to install a range hood over your stove... Please make certain that your stove is cleared off and that the first shelf of the cupboard above the stove is clear... Please also ensure that the way is clear from your front door to the stove.

Oh, god.

Time to get out the bulldozer and the forklift.

I've also been living dangerously and answering the phone without checking call display first. So far, I've been lucky.

I know I'm posting this in the noonday glare, but wanted to mention it before I forget:

Still With Me by the Balanescu Quartet (MP3, 7.44 MB)

Courtesy of fellow Sauna inhabitant Graig.

Unfortunately not the original by Vince Guaraldi, but a cover by George Winston (better known for the New Age piano tinklings he released on the Wyndham Hill label in the 80s):

Cast Your Fate to the Wind (MP3, 6000 KB)

Six-and-a-half minutes of quiet wistfulness.

Uploaded this month's addition to Circadian Shift: The Outpost:

This Beat Goes On / Switchin' to Glide by The Kings (6,656 KB)

Yet another nugget of Canadian goodness from 1980. The Kings produced this one smash hit single, a few others, and pretty much faded out of the spotlight after that.

The second part of the track, ie. "Switchin' to Glide" appears on Just Can't Get Enough: New Wave Hits of the '80s, Vol. 4, which I own, but this full epic version with both parts is an MP3 that I got from a former co-worker of mine.

Also of interest to 80s freaks in the viewing audience:

• The 80's Tarot -- Spotted this on blogdex yesterday, but didn't bother to look until I saw it linked in MemeMachineGo!'s sidebar; it is frickin' brilliant and a must visit for fans of 80s music.
• There's also this short film called 80s Ending, which bills itself as "a wonderful parody on the ending of every 1980's movie you've ever seen!" (thank you, Jeremy)

Awright.

Who the hell ran this Google search? Have you ever seen that here? No. And you won't.

Yeah, whatever. Back to your regularly scheduled blog.

Since I've been trying out a few toys lately, thought I'd let you know how things were going.

I'm liking Bloki, the half-wiki half-blog thing that lets you and others post web content through your browser. (My own Bloki site is here. Have been very slowly, but steadily adding links to various resources.) A couple things, though:

• For creating and editing pages, Bloki says it supports "Mozilla 1.3 or later" and "Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0 or later". I tried using Firebird 0.6 (which is based on Mozilla 1.4), but no dice. I found that MS-IE 5.5 works just fine. As for Opera, forget it.
  (Note: If all you want to do is look at pages, "any browser that supports HTML 4.01" is A-OK. )
• WRT support for other browsers, I understand their stand, ie:

  We'd love to support other browsers, but they don't include the in-browser editing technologies the WYSIWYG editor is built on.

  Just a suggestion: I can live without full WYSIWYG page authoring capability (am perfectly happy doing my authoring in raw HTML), but it would be nice if maybe the functionality to open, edit pages with raw code, and save them was supported in other browsers. Again, just a suggestion.
• I added a Site Meter to each of my Bloki pages, but every time I open up a page to modify it, the meter code gets munged, so I have to paste a clean copy of it back in again.

Those glitches aside, I still think Bloki is a good thing. And it's a hell of a lot easier than setting up a wiki myself.

Meanwhile, I've stopped using AmphetaDesk, because every time I opened it up, my baby Adele would become twitchy and sluggish. Goddam Windows ME.

... so I'm just going to throw a bunch of links at you that I cribbed from my Business and Technology News page ('cuz it's not like many of you are going there yourselves):

• Applying for a Job II: Resumes -- nothing groundbreaking here, but may be of interest to techies; see also Part I
• XML Power Job Hunting -- using an XML DTD and associated bits to slice and dice your CV
• Canada Fills U.S. Prescriptions Under the Counter -- gee, the concern seems to be not so much with any potential threat to public health as it is with not enough money flowing back to drug manufacturers (New York Times article, free registration required)
• Vancouver will keep downtown bars open till 4 a.m. -- "world class city" Toronto (god, I hate that expression) has no plans to follow suit
• Ban inexperienced drivers from using cellphones: US officials -- hell, they should ban all drivers from using cellphones

So, we are back. Wee bit of hardware trouble on the weekend. Thanks to the Sauna crew for getting everything up and running again.

In the meantime, I've put together yet another page of business and technology newsfeeds. I think I'm going to stick with this one. [Addendum: Made a few cosmetic changes, but the content is the same.] Still want to put together similar pages of general interest news, and arts/entertainment news. Plus a links page. Will get to it eventually.

(If anyone spots anything screwy with the page, please let me know. Gracias.)

I also put up a few things on my Bloki site. It, too, is a work in progress.