Circadian Shift

Dirtyradio has been "unavailable" for over a week now, which I find somewhat perturbing. In the meantime, I've been catching up with my retro tunage listening, courtesy of WOXY Vintage.

Also in a retro mode, I found (via New Wave Outpost) this treasure trove of 80s MP3s -- some guy digitised a ton of his 12" vinyl, encoding it all at a high bitrate (192 kbps or better). There's plenty of cheese, but also some terrific nuggets in there. Download away.

For other listening enjoyment, there are now several CBC Radio Podcasts for you to choose from. The science show Quirks & Quarks has been offering podcasts for a while, but now you can also get a weekly super-condensed version of the Saturday afternoon pop-culture juggernaut Definitely Not the Opera, plus a weekly selection from the show Ideas (one of those shows that I keep meaning to listen to more often).

D'oh! I completely missed my Blogiversary last week.

It was four years and fours day ago that I began this blog over on Blogspot.

• Inaugural Post
• A post from the day of my first Blogiversay but not one that actually observes the event in any way
• 2nd Blogiversary Post
• 3rd Blogiversary Post

So where am I going with this thing? Some thoughts:

• Continue with more-or-less the same content/format -- chiefly consisting of links to various things that I find interesting, posts about music and occasionally other stuff
• Continue with the weekly moodboards, mostly as a personal exercise for myself, but I will try to throw in at least some value-added content (e.g. music links) in those posts for the rest of you so that it's not a complete navel-gazing thing
• Update the templates and design of this blog -- I've had the same look for the last three years and it's time for a change

I've also really gotta work on resuscitating my other work-related blog, Clicks & Notes, (it's been nearly a year since I last posted there) and update/expand the content on jenvetterli.com as a whole.

Wow, there's a lot to do. Anyway, I will once again thank those of you who are constant visitors for your continued interest and support. It's nice to know that at least a few people find my ramblings here somewhat enjoyable.

Been neglecting the blog lately...

Here's a song that many of the music-bloggers have linked to already. I've heard it on dirtyradio once or twice, and I like it too:

• Ellen Allien & Apparat - "Do Not Break" (mp3, 7.19 MB) (courtesy of Orchestra of Bubbles)

It's a fun bit of electro, with a beat that dares you to defy the title.

Meanwhile, Freak Girl's Pew links to this quick list of Six Tips for Happiness.

And, just because, here is a drawing of a cute small rodent holding a giant cherry:

Time. Time. Time.

Every once in a while, the sickness kicks in a little more severely than usual.

"In 1985, physician Larry Dossey, in his book Space, Time & Medicine, coined the term "time sickness" to describe the illnesses that nag us because we believe we're in the race of our lives against a ticking clock."
(from the article "Slow down your life", by Martha Coventry)

Seems like there a multitude of things that one can, might, should, must devote one's attention and energy to. Sometimes the choices are easy. Get up. Go to work. Meet a deadline. Sometimes the choices are not so easy, or are all too easy to avoid. Read a book. Clean the apartment. Phone a friend. Go back to bed.

And then the day passes, and you wonder where all the time has gone.

But it's not just time-sickness on an acute scale -- measured in hours, days, and weeks -- but on a chronic one. Months, years -- even a decade -- of choices now bears scrutiny and lament. Mistakes are becoming harder to recover from, because, well, time is running out.

What to do? What to do...

"Where I am, I don't know, I'll never know, in the silence you don't know, you must go on, I can't go on, I'll go on."
Samuel Beckett, The Unnamable (1959)

P.S. It's now been one year since I put my first weekly mood board online. You can view all the boards as a slideshow and see how time has passed.

It's been one of those weeks that has afforded me plenty of opportunity to practice patience, compassion, and restraint.

And how.

I caught the Bodyworlds2 show (Wikipedia entry) tonight, its final night at the Ontario Science Centre. I hauled myself out early yesterday morning (!), hoping to get in before it got too crowded, but it was still too late. The only available ticket slots were for 3.30am last night/this morning, and 7.30pm today.

So, I enjoyed it (flashbacks to 3rd year anatomy class at UofT and all). The exhibit has not been without controversy, whatwith all the posing and manipulations of the corpses, but in a way I think it shows that developer Gunther von Hagens and his team have a deep understanding and appreciation of how the body works in order to portray it so wonderfully and imaginatively. I did find it bothersome that one of the signs referred its accompanying exhibit as a "plastinate" -- no, it's a person, and should be recognized and respected accordingly.

During the inevitable gift shop stop at the end of the exhibit, I did briefly ponder picking up one of the souvenir exhibition catalogues, but then remembered that I have a perfectly good set of anatomy textbooks kicking around somewhere that I haven't read in a gazillion years anyway.

I also wound up seeing Michelangelo Antonioni's 1975 film The Passenger (IMDb info), starring Jack Nicholson, yesteday. The premise is certainly enticing enough -- escape your life by exchanging your identity with someone else's. I thought it was OK. The narrative is vague and highly symbolic, which -- if you like that sort of thing -- makes this film worthwhile. But it's not really a thriller. (PopMatters review here. Metacritic roundup here.)

Other than that, it's more of the same. Got an achy-head-and-scratchy-throat thing going on, that I'm hoping will not tip over into a full-blown cold. We'll see...

I like big scary German words that manage to encapsulate concepts that require several words in English to explain...

From the Ryan Bigge review of Leah McLaren's novel The Continuity Girl:

"Even the German word SaumassigeSchreibmaschiene, which roughly translates into 'putrid garbage typewriter prose,' fails to convey the stench of this slush pile."

I'm going to have a heck of a time remembering how to spell that...

(Link to the Bigge review via Paved.)

The word "setup" is not a verb, it is a noun.

The correct phrase, if you want to indicate an action, is "set up". That is the verb "set", plus the adverb "up". Two words, goddamit. Two.

Set up.

Set up.

Set
.
.
.
up.

Thank you for your attention to this matter.

Addendum, 18 January 2006: The same goes for "check-in" -- grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.

Long time readers of this blog will recall its companion website, Circadian Shift: The Outpost, where I used to regularly post retro MP3s and some other stuff.

Then, back in July of last year, the free hosting service that the site is on decided to clamp down on the file types that it hosted, so that you could no longer upload MP3s or other multimedia filetypes, and also set bandwidth restrictions on how much could be downloaded from the site per day and per month.

At the time, any existing multimedia files were left alone, but a few weeks back the provider made good on their promise to lock down on the unauthorized file types, so that if you've clicked recently on one of the few remaining MP3 links to the site, you'd have seen a screen that looks like this. As mentioned before, I have the option to upgrade my account to one of the company's paid hosting packages to lift the restrictions, but I'm not going to bother.

I've left the site up for now, having cleaned out some dead links and changed a few widgets. At some point, I'll probably incorporate the remaining content into a page on this site, and then just kill it. And I still have to go back through the archives here and take out the remaining MP3 links, and also update the sidebar.

UrbanDharma has a Buddhist calendar for 2006 available for free download as a PDF.

The calendar features serene black-and-white nature photography and quotes from the teachings of the Venerable Ajahn Chah.

Thanks to "N" for bringing this Globe and Mail article to my attention:

For one in seven, the sandman's a stranger

For one in seven Canadians, the sandman's nightly visits are few and far between, according to a new Statistics Canada study.

According to the report, released Wednesday, about 3.3 million Canadians aged 15 (should be "aged 15 and older" -- jv) have trouble falling or staying asleep, suggesting that they suffer from insomnia.

"Life stress" was discovered to be a common factor in insomnia (duh), but -- interestingly -- "work stress" was not. Other factors include performing shift work, chronic pain conditions (such as arthritis), and obesity. Age was also a factor, with insomnia being more prevalent in older groups.

Here is an article from StatsCan about the study, as well as the 18-page report (PDF, 210 kb).

In response to my previous post, which contained a link to this overview of social bookmarking services, Maria asked:

So I don't understand that "social bookmarks" thing. I've tried to, but I guess I'm a bit daft. Could you explain it to me?

Wherein I will respond by posting this definition of "social bookmarking" from Wikipedia (more on the Wikipedia page itself):

Social bookmarking is an activity performed over a computer network that allows users to save and categorize (see folksonomy) a personal collection of bookmarks and share them with others. Users may also take bookmarks saved by others and add them to their own collection, as well as to subscribe to the lists of others—a personal knowledge management tool.

Which hopefully answers your question, Maria. However, I feel obligated to supplement that that with a mini link-vomit, which may possibly be of interest to someone:

• Social Bookmarking Tools (I): A General Review -- from D-Lib Magazine, published in April 2005
• Social Bookmarking Tools (II): A Case Study - Connotea -- also from D-Lib; Connotea is a bookmarking service geared toward the academic community
• Organizing links from references -- from easternblot, Eva's science blog; Eva talks about using CiteULike (another bookmarking service for academics) as well as del.icio.us
• Social Bookmarking Tool Comparison -- has some additional definitions and linkage concerning related technologies
• Social Bookmarking Resources -- a list of links from H20 Playlist, which in itself appears to be a social bookmarking service for people at Harvard Law School
• Social Bookmarking -- brief article which likens the social bookmarking phenomenon to what happens in file-sharing networks like Kazaa

Info-junkie that I am, I rather like the social-bookmarking thing as a quick-and-dirty way to capture interesting things that I find online. My "Drive-by Linking" category here on this blog draws in the links that I post to my del.icio.us account. I actually use Spurl as my front-end to capture the links, which get cross-posted to del.icio.us (there were reasons why I started doing that which no longer apply, but I still do it the same way just because).

I've also tried out Furl, which I never really got into (there has also been a Furl backlash), and occasionally use Simpy and Jots.

The thing with bookmarking with bookmarking a ton of links for later, however, is finding the time to go back and revisit them. But that is the subject of another post...

Sunday may be summarized thusly:

Ow.

I even missed brunch (sorry, N).

Mr. Marc Weissblott provides this most erudite re-cap of my evening:

Circadian Shift blogger Jen expressed her enthusiasm for the concept with a bottle of Glenfiddich single malt scotch whisky, left undrunk for eight years. Based on her sequence of entries, Jen spent the night contemplating the contents of her dusty bar cart, lost control of her noun usage and faculties for writing code, then was drained all motivation before midnight.

Well, good, I'm glad to see that me making a jackass of myself didn't go completely unnoticed.

I obviously failed to anticipate how much effect drinking a Glenfiddich of unknown potency and in unknown quantity (out of an oversized coffee mug -- not the full mug, but filled partially, then refilled partially) would have.

So, I can now safely cross NaDruWriNi off my list of "Stupid Things to Do That May Seem Like Good Ideas at the Time".

Of some of the other NaDruWriNi participants:

• Stennie: "I told you it was going to happen. I fell asleep... I think my first experience at NaDruWriNi is a failure. I think I need to participate in a team next year, or not at all."
• BrockLi went dumpster-diving
• Miss Hannah: "Listen to me.....DRINK WATER. Between every drink! For serious! You'll thank me!!" (Damn, wish I read that sooner.)
• Ed posts a re-cap of his recent dating history and ponders a crack in the ceiling
• girl in black: "yeah, this was a fucking mistake. you live, you learn."

(Additional fun-filled linkage available via Technorati and del.icio.us)

Sorry. I'm done. Am going to bed now.

Signing off from NaDruWriNi 2005. G'night.

The problem with taking inventory or one's liquor cabinet is that now said bottles are now scattered all over one's desk and one's bed's, which means that going to lie down now is most inconvenient.

There's a fine line between having one's ethanol consumption function as a way to unblock the ol' synapses, thereby allowing one to write whatever one damn well pleases, and having said consumption drain one of all ambtion to write altogether.

My friends, I am teetering on that line right now.

Even almost started putting together a post on fave brunching places in Toronto (since am meeting "N" for brunch tomorrow morning, thereby must be coherent and presentable enough to drag myself to said brunch), but now don't feel like it.

BTW, must compliment Ms. Ice Queen on her verbose stream of consciousness NaDruWriNi post.

BTW, writing HTML in addition to your own own stream-of-consciousness ethanol-fueled ramblings is hard. Remember, kids: don't drink and code.

Y'know, have noticed that, in responding to comments from other NaDruWriNi 2005 participants, I seem to have dropped usage of nouns.

V. Bridget Jones of me.

Y'know, as long as I'm sitting here participating in some lame-ass blogging meme that everyone seems to like in theory, but doesn't seem to actually follow through on, now is just as good a time as any to share to following bitchy mean-spirited links that seem to bring out the worst in people (just like BWI):

• GoFugYourself -- dissing the bad fashion choices of the rich and famous since, uh, a few months ago
• Threadbared -- sewing patterns (or at least their covers) are funny; really
• AwfulPlasticSurgery -- when the quest for beauty takes a detour into hell

Admit it -- they're funny. You know they're funny.

Awright, where the hell is everyone?

While the blogosphere seems to not lack for people who have expressed interest in NaDruWriNi 2005, clicking around thus far, I'm not seeing too much evidence of people actually proceeding with it.

And what about the crowd here in T-dot? Ice Queen? Eva? Maria? You mean I'm doing this all by myself???

Perhaps it is still early yet. Am very disappointed.

(Bloggers who do appear to be playing along include Stennieville, BrockLi, and SciFi Ranter Girl.)

As mentioned in the previous post, I have several unopened bottles of liquor that have been sitting around for a number of years, including a bottle of Glenfiddich that I bought when I turned 30.

Well, this past September, I celebrated birthday number 38, which means that the poor Glenfiddich has been sitting there for eight years. Which just seems very, very wrong.

I am now actually drinking the stuff (so if I turn up dead tomorrow, you all will know why), which leads to the question: How does it taste?

Maybe I'm just out of practice with my scotch drinking, but it damn near took my head off at the first sip. It stills seems very strong now, but it otherwise apparently potable.

Will continue web-surfing and drinking, wherein NaDruWriNi 2005 will continue. Stay tuned.

There was a time and a place in my life when I actually prided myself on having a well-stocked liquor cabinet. There always seemed to be friends dropping by, and I had a nice big place to myself (was residing in a condo owned by my parents), so it seemed like a cool thing to do.

In fact, when I first moved out of the condo into my first apartment in The Annex (spacious two-bedroom digs that I shared with a friend from school), I bought two microwave carts from IKEA: once of which was actually used to hold a microwave, while the other became a dedicated bar cart.

Now I am esconced, and have been for some time, here in The Hovel. The "bar cart" is still here, but hasn't been opened since (I think) Bill Clinton was still in the White House -- until tonight:

Here's what I found in the liquor cabinet:

• Unopened bottles:
  • Glenfiddich single malt scotch whisky (750 mL) -- I remember when I bought this; it was shortly after I turned 30; the bottle came with a 'bonus' Glenfiddich bar towel, which has long since disappeared
  • Absolut vodka (375 mL) -- the blue lettering on the label seems a bit faded, but otherwise things look perfectly intact
  • Cuervo Expecial tequila (375 mL) -- I think this was a 30th birthday present from my coworkers, most of whom did not witness the time a couple years previously that I got very very damaged on tequila during a Friday night bar outing with other coworkers from the same company, otherwise they would probably have picked something else (I hope)
  • Kahlua "Licor de Cafe" (200 mL) -- unknown vintage
• Open bottles, partially consumed:
  • Bacardi amber rum (750 mL) -- level only about an inch down from the top; if I had to take a guess, I probably bought this around Xmas to mix with eggnog
  • Martini extra dry vermouth (500 mL) -- level two inches down from the top; I used to sometimes bring my own cocktail shaker with me to social gatherings and mix martinis for everyone there
• Bottles with a few dregs in them (one inch or less left in the bottle):
  • Campari (750 mL) -- probably a late-90s nostalgic throwback to my late-80s/early-90s evil Yuppie wannabe phase, when I drank a lot of the stuff
  • Cinzano vermouth (1 L) -- no doubt a leftover from the aforementioned martini-girl phase
  • Ricardo coconut rum (750 mL) -- was probably making pina coladas
  • O'Darby Irish Cream (375 mL) -- for hot chocolate or coffee
• Unopened wine bottles:
  • Codorniu Classico Brut sparkling white wine (750 mL) -- this possibly could have been a pre-New Year's Eve purchase, but I can't for the life of me think when
  • Inniskillin Chardonnay (1993) (750 mL) -- a gift maybe?
  • Valpollicella -- the lack of other information on the label would lead me to believe that this was made by a friend

And you may ask yourself, "How did I get here?"

NaDruWriNi (National Drunken Writing Night) is the perfect event for those of us who lack the ambition to participate in NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month). As I am home alone this evening, I figured I might as well go for it.

The evening's choice of intoxicant will be Glenfiddich

Stay tuned.

The thanks (or blame) for this event crossing my radar may be ascribed to Eva.

In absence of any other inspiration, here are some funny lists from McSweeney's that I like:

• Thirteen Leading Synonyms for "Deliverables" in 2005
• Action Verbs to Use Sparingly on Resumes
• Words and Phrases I Use at Work, But Seldom Use at Home
• Frequently Asked Questions at the Office

As BoingBoing reports:

Jargon: Treeware -- a dead-tree book
On the message-board from John Scalzi's wonderful post on ebook piracy, a stupendous new coinage from ebook circles: treeware. That is, a book that is physically printed on dead trees, rather than being digitally represented as phosphors on a screen.

Humph. I was using that term three years ago.

Even though I'm not part of the 9-5 world right now, I still manage to be greatly entertained by others writing about the craziness one encounters in the name of employment. Here are three blogs about working life that I particularly enjoy.

• BigPictureSmallOffice.com -- tales that just about any office worker can relate to, with a wonderfully evocative cast of characters, such as The Man from Glad (CEO), Black Widow (HR), Rigor Mortis (Legal), and Whiney Baby (Communications); however, the author is no ordinary cube slave -- he's a Senior VP
  • sample post: this description of the company's Customer Care Center sent chills of recognition down my spine
• Waiter Rant -- working in an upscale New York bistro means that you meet all kinds of people from all walks of life; The Waiter's vignettes offer terrific insights into the frailties and foibles of humanity
  • sample post: this entry on gringo shit is a typical slice of life
• Clublife -- Rob the Bouncer is a sober-headed guy with a day job who also works nights keeping intoxicated miscreants in line, and manages to do so with grace and aplomb
  • sample post: it doesn't matter what field you're in -- I think we've all worked with people like Bobby O

BTW, in light of what's been in the news over the last week, figured I might as well jot this down...

Should circumstances arise wherein I'm rendered into some kind of giant meat popsicle, with most of my brain tissue gone and doing nothing but lie in bed for a decade, by all means pull the goddam plug.

When you do, please take any bits and pieces of me that still work, and do something useful with them.

BTW, are y'all remembering that there's Drive-By Linking on the homepage, after the regular blog posts? You can scroll down, or click the handy jump link located just below the blog title bar.

(Really gotta put them somewhere more visible...)

Classes on Thursday evenings mean that I haven't been home to watch NBC's Brit-com ripoff The Office (is it even airing on a Canadian station?), but as this roundup of reviews would suggest, it's not as gawd-awful as everyone expected it to be. The folks at FC Now also weigh in with their own discussion.

A little while back, I procured (courtesy of a Chapters Indigo gift card that I got for Christmas) the complete box set of the original BBC version and have worked my way through Seasons 1 and 2 (but not the Special).

I like it (I think), but it hasn't induced any laugh-out-loud moments like other similarly-themed movies such as Office Space, or even the Beavis and Butthead compilation "Work Sucks" (which I have on VHS). In fact, some of it is downright painful.

So why do I watch it? My partner-in-crime "N" has this explanation:

"The situations are all truthful and realistic, yet, as a spectator, you can not be 'hurt' by all those situations, you are safe as an observer."

Makes sense, I guess. Your mileage may vary.

(I've tried to add to/elaborate on the above "paragraph" about a dozen times and still can't do it. Evidently something in my brain does not want to go there.)

I know it runs counter to whole principle of the Hipster PDA, but people can't help but want to accessorize the things. Me included.

Here's a case I've found that's particularly suited to the Hipster Mini:

It's made by Capsul, a company based in Quebec. It's a very sleek little design, and the minute I spotted them in The Outer Layer (located in the Annex here in Toronto), I just had to get one. Way cool.

(If you want a Capsul case of your own, you can find a list of retailers here.)

Here's another very nice case, as spotted by Jesse James Garrett:

Also very elegant, and you've got to like that little pen that comes with it. It apparently is available through dynagifts.com.

Now that the other blog is up and running, I should eventually get my shit together and do some maintenance work around here, namely:

• clean up my links page and update my very sadly neglected blogroll
• set up something to splice my del.icio.us links into my regular blog

Meanwhile, to see the del.icio.us links (a.k.a. the "Drive-By Linking"), you'll still have to either scroll down the page to see them after the "regular" blog posts, or use the Click here to jump to "Drive-By Linking" link that appears above the regular blog posts (i.e. just after the blog title and tagline). Yep, that one, right there.

So much web surfing. So little time. sigh

Addendum: Just realized that the main page sidebar now needs updating as well. Sheesh.

• Eva has gone and launched her own second blog
• Bob has a spiffy new domain name pointing to his blog
• Jerry comes up with some real and fake job tips
• tbit blogs a music meme and makes Graig play along; (I'll admit that my mind was a great big blank when I read some some the questions -- fortunately no one has passed me the baton)
• Brett's dad posts a pic of young Brett feeding a baby kangaroo -- awwwwww
• lastly, Pete links to this list of things heard while performing colonoscopies

People who've been reading this blog for the last year or so will have observed that I don't post nearly as much (if anything) about business and technology as I used to.

There've been a couple reasons for that, some of which I'd rather not go into. But one of the things that I'd hinted at, way back on the eve of my Second Blogiversary, was that I'd made a decision on which direction Circadian Shift was going to take in terms of its subject matter.

So, finally (having taken decidedly more than "a few weeks to implement"), I've got me a brand new blog...

Clicks & Notes is my new "work" blog, where I plan to keep track of all those job-related things (IA, web design, project management, etc.) that I used to post about in those great big mind-boggling lists back in late 2003 to early 2004. Just nice, uncontroversial* business and technology linkage, and me on my best behaviour with no swearing, whining, or silliness.

Everything else stays here.

Obviously, it remains to be seen how well I'll be able to maintain two blogs. It's highly unlikely that Clicks & Notes will be the same biztech linkage firehose that happened 'round here about a year ago. I'll just have to start slow and see what happens.

Anyway, feel free to check out Clicks & Notes (there's not too much there as of right now, but that'll change in a day or two). There is, of course, an RSS feed that you can subscribe to also.

-----

* "Uncontroversial" means that any linkage relating to the more, uh, difficult interpersonal aspects of working life will also stay here.

As noted on boing boing, Merlin Man of 43 Folders has expanded on his concept of the Hipster PDA with this article on how to organize it. There are some good tips there that I'll have to try out.

I've been using mine since the fall, and I like it. I also came up with a wee modification of my own...

The Hipster Mini works just like the regular Hipster PDA, but instead of using index cards, it uses blank business cards:

I like both sizes; the Mini version is good for when you want to travel super-light, or record very small thoughts :)

And here are some some shots I took of my regular Hipster PDA and Hipster Mini, side-by-side (shot with the keychain-cam, so they're a bit off-centre and blurry):

Also, I'm using a 3/4" fold-back clip for the regular Hipster, while the Mini sports a 9/16" clip. I find it makes for a very cute little card stack.

boingboing points to this newly launched blog:

Circadiana: "This blog will be dedicated to tracking and commeting on the advances in the study of biological time, mainly circadian rhythms, but also other aspects of temporal biology, e.g., developmental timing."

Whoohoo! And the first post, "Everything You Always Wanted To Know About Sleep (But Were Too Afraid To Ask)" is an informative (and lengthy) read.

Have gotten a few hits coming in using the search term "tsunami". Sorry, I don't have what you're looking for.

Boing Boing has been serving as the nexus for blogosphere coverage for what's been going on in Southeast Asia. Try this post as a starting point -- much clicking to be done from there.

MetaFilter also has a few posts of interest, here, here, and here.

Take care, everyone.

Props to The Nub for providing this link to an article on self-defence in the home. The article has pointers on making use of common household items to battle home intruders:

And it's good to know that my TV remote control is still useful for something, given that I haven't watched TV at home for several months now...

The fun continues over on Blamblog, where Admiral Blamb and his intrepid crew continue to do battle with a giant trans-dimensional Kenny Rogers.

Here's a quick recap of the story up to this morning, while the latest episode demonstrates the fearsome power of Bernard Sumner lyrics.

(I started putting this post together sometime back in August, but never got around to finishing or posting it)

Links about verbal combat and sleight-of-hand:

• Conversational Terrorism
• Thirty-eight dishonest tricks which are commonly used in argument, with the methods of overcoming them
• Tricks and Fallacies
• Fallacies, tricks and errors
• The Power of Words: Advertising Tricks of the Trade -- Part One and Part Two
• A Fish Story--Or Not? -- "Behaviorists tell us that lying is innate to the human species and comes about for two genetically programmed reasons: to receive rewards and/or to avoid punishment."

About critical thinking:

• The Critical Thinking Process -- notes from the ever-thoughtful Dave Pollard
• Critical Thinking on the Web -- mondo resource site

There there's:

• 14 Workplace Personalities and How to Handle Them

Lastly, if all else fails:

(Belated thanks to my brother for sending along the link to that pic.)

I've been liking my little Hipster PDA that I put decided to try out a couple weeks back.

I find the 3x5 index cards work for me better than the little 3x5 notebook that I'd had stashed in my "purse" before -- they provide a stiffer writing surface, and the blank space (I bought unlined index cards) allows me to switch between "portrait" and "landscape" orientation, to draw diagrams, and basically to scribble any way that I damn well please.

The cards has been a good dumping ground for little things and ideas that float around in my brain and tend to come to the fore when I'm sitting on the subway, or eating lunch, or whatever.

43 Folders, from whence the Hipster PDA concept came, offers many more tips on productivity and the like. Definitely worth a look.

(pic is from stock.xchng)

Sure, they're annoying. However, a fire drill is the perfect excuse for getting out of even-more-annoying meetings. Whoohoo!

Some related linkage which may possibly be of use:

• an info sheet from the Pasadena Fire Department
• a Fire Drill and Evacuation Planning FAQ
• How to Plan a High Rise Fire Drill
• Tips on Conducting an Emergency Evacuation Drill -- Tip #2, "Vary the hazards encountered in your fire drills", provides much room for creativity ;)
• Fire Kills -- a site devoted to fire safety
• then there's The Fire Safety Institute
• should none of those appeal, there's always Elmo's Fire Safety Game (Flash, needs sound)

Digging through some old files that had been burned to CD, way back when, yielded this artifact:

Above image converted from this PDF (11 kb), which had been generated from this Microsoft Word file (21 kb).

I have no idea what I was working on, back on October 12, 2001, but obviously I felt the need to blow off some steam in the manner portrayed above.

(It is, of course, based on the well-known screed "Adminspotting", which in turn was derived from those immortal words out of Irvine Welsh's Trainspotting.)

It must truly be a sign of geekdom when one's lunch-hour "feeling cranky" micro-shopping trip results in the purchase of office supplies as an emotional salve.

Bought:

• 1 package of 100 3"x5" index cards (white, unlined)
• 4 Staedtler 'triplus ball' pens (2 red, 2 blue; going for half price at the local Grand & Toy)

Am thinking of putting together my own Hipster PDA.

Meanwhile, gapingvoid offered this wee scribble a few days back:

Exactly.

Brilliant -- utterly freaking brilliant:

"If you all don’t lower your voices and cease calling me Satan, I will have to sing show tunes."

Via lactose incompetent.

Meanwhile, stereogum posts photos from Britney Spears' wedding, featuring the bride and groom in matching white baggy tracksuits. Mock all you want to, but I'll admit that -- more than once -- it's occured to me that an all-sweatpants wedding would not (necessarily) be a bad thing.

As Davezilla would say: "Klassy with a capital K."

Given the state of The Hovel, one might think that I've been getting my decorating tips from toothpastefordinner:

Some good tunage, like these moody mixes, helps to ease the pain. Grab 'em fast before they're gone.

Addendum 16 August 2004: Indeed, the mixes have now dropped off, and there are new ones up in their place. Will have to check those out later today.

...otherwise I wouldn't know how to do important things, like how to pack a fresh brain for shipment to the New York Brain Bank. And most of the packing items can be readily found at your local supermarket and/or hardware store.

The NYBB has been thoughtful enough to include a downloadable PDF version (275 kb) for printing and offline perusal.

(Thanks to Kingblind for the link.)

Endgadget reports:

The Japanese Tomy Sleep Watch Doll has six sensors, can say 1,200 sentences and after learning its owners sleeping habits, irritates the crap out you when you change your sleeping times.

That is so, so, wrong.

September is nearly here, which means that a lot of university students are making the move back into dorms, apartments, and big old houses everywhere. (And in Toronto, many U of T students live in my 'hood, The Annex).

Just remember, kids:

You're welcome.

(photo is courtesy of Bore Me, where there are many more silly things to distract you)

How about 27 phrases you wish you could say at work? My favourite:

"6. Ahhh, I see the fuck-up fairy has visited us again."

That damn fairy seems to like hanging out around here...

• it doesn't count if it's food left over from a meeting
• it doesn't count if it's something you bought out of the vending machine using only nickels and dimes
• it doesn't count if it's someone's birthday cake
• it doesn't count if it's something that someone else went downstairs to buy and brought back to you at your desk while you've been working
• it doesn't count if you're drowsy and trying to concentrate

Clicking through some of the links in my blogroll (which is screamingly out of date, and I keep meaning to clean it up and put in some new links and...):

• Mookie provides a bunch of linkage to freeware for Windows PCs
• Graig is featuring a bunch of cover tunes in his MP3 sideblog
• blamb lists 101 things about himself (which reminds me that my list could use an update)
• tbit is catblogging
• so is Eva

• Brain anti-anxiety switch found -- "Scientists have found a switch in the brain that appears to control anxiety and wakefulness." (via del.icio.us)
• Rejection massively reduces IQ -- "Rejection can dramatically reduce a person's IQ and their ability to reason analytically, while increasing their aggression, according to new research." (thanks, bob)

Ugh. I am coming down with a cold, hence the condition of wakefulness at this obscenely early hour.

BostonWorks: The Job Blog points to a couple goodies for fans of the movie Office Space:

• recent interviews with members of the cast
• the Office Space soundboard, featuring Bill Lumbergh

• idiolect (who posts lots of nifty stuff about the brain) writes that many sea-sleeping mammals only sleep with one side of their brains at a time
• Study Explains Spatial Orientation Differences Between Sexes; Inner Ear Size May Be Determinant -- "although women are more likely than males to misjudge what is horizontal when performing tasks in sensory-deprived or biased environments, they may have an advantage over men while performing tasks under other sensory conditions, such as driving a car or piloting a plane"
• Scientists prove time flies when you're busy
• Hearing more complex than thought -- "the human brain can detect differences in the arrival time of a sound at the two ears of about 10 millionths of a second"
• Forbes magazine has a list of brain exercises you can do to keep the ol' mental faculties sharp
• Tony Blog points to Wikipedia's list of cognitive biases, which are distortions in the way we perceive reality

Addendum: Spotted on del.icio.us, Psychology Today outlines their brain power diet.

Was cleaning out some comment spam in the archives, and came across this old post:

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.

New word:

craptacular: adj. denoting that something is not merely crappy, but spectacularly crappy; n. craptacularessence

New term for the lexicon:

shoveltalker: n. One who lives by the maxim "If you can't dazzle them with brilliance, try baffling them with bullshit."; v. shoveltalk, shoveltalking

Bunch of links on memory, courtesy of del.icio.us user Acid Zebra:

• Buffering and Human Memory
• Short-term Memory
• Super Memory: Forget About Forgetting -- a site about "improving memory, self-growth, creativity, (and) time-management" from the makers of SuperMemo software (Wikipedia also has an entry about SuperMemo)
• Mnemonic Techniques and Specific Memory Tricks to improve memory, memorization
• Memory Links -- a list of recommended sites from Red Deer College; the aforementioned Super Memory site also has a list of links

On creativity:

• Gaping Void has more musings about your private Mount Everest
• Detailed Instructions for Running a Brainstorm Session
• The Snowflake Process for Writing a Novel (via del.icio.us)
• Researcher links storytelling, math ability -- "Math and storytelling may seem like very different abilities, but a new study suggests that preschool children's early storytelling abilities are predictive of their mathematical ability two years later"
• Daydream your way to your dream job -- "With visualization techniques, you can learn to use your imagination in a purposeful way to get you where you want to go"

Addendum: Two more creativity links:

• The TRIZ Journal -- "'TIPS' is the acronym for 'Theory of Inventive Problem Solving,' and 'TRIZ' is the acronym for the same phrase in Russian."
• fans of Brian Eno's Oblique Strategies can get a daily hit via an RSS feed

Over at Gaping Void, Hugh has started a list of thoughts about how to be creative. My favourite ones:

2. Creativity is a process, not a fixed state.

You never really reach your goals. By the time you get near to fulfilling them your criteria has already changed. Results-driven definitions of success are counter-productive to being creative, to finding new markets or possibilities.

3. Put the hours in.

Doing anything worthwhile takes forever. 90% of what seperates successful people and failed people is time and stamina.

12. Everybody has their own private Mount Everest they were put on this earth to climb.

You may never reach the summit; for that you will be forgiven. But if you don't make at least one seriously honest effort to get above the snow-line, years later you will find yourself lying on your deathbed, and all you will feel is emptiness.

Meanwhile...

Contentious writes about How Arranging Ideas Spawns New Ideas.

And Good Morning Thinkers passes along a list of Idea Facilitation Tips. (This will to come in handy on Thursday, when I'm locked in a brainstorming meeting chez office.)

Jerry at Red Wheelbarrow (who, I note, has me listed in his blogroll under "People, Politics, Madness" -- not sure I want to know which one I am) has come up with a few snappy retorts for annoying pretentious anti-pop-culture wannabes.

And he's come up with a "Guilty Pleasure Meme", wherein you bold the items in a list of cultural detritus of which you covertly partake, and then add one more of your own. What the heck -- I'm game:

1. Melrose Place
2. Who Wants to Marry my Dad?
3. The O.C.
4. Backstreet Boys
5. John Tesh
6. Joe Millionaire
7. Friends (only the first five seasons)

and, my adddition
8. Teletubbies

Yeeeeaah, that's right -- I used to watch the Teletubbies. 'Twas during a period of eight months after I quit my first corporate gig to go back to school. All my classes were evening classes, so I used to stay up all night and then sleep until 3 or so in the afternoon. Then I'd enjoy the brain-damaged hijinks of Tinky-Winky, Dipsy, LaLa, and Po over my "morning" cup of java.

(Ah, those were good times...)

So, anyone else want to take a crack at it? I dare ya!

Brain Tags pointed me to DiceLaRed, a Spanish site that monitors several other sites and blogs and outputs these visual "barometers" on what's being discussed:

For those whose Spanish may be a tad rusty -- no worries. Most of the sites being monitored are in English. And, as I discovered, they even have the good taste to include little ol' me:

• Pete has put together a Canadian spelling quiz. Since we Canucks use British spellings for some words and American spellings for others, it does get a wee bit confusing sometimes.
• Shaolin science examines the principles of physics which underlie those amazing feats performed by Shaolin monks (via MemeMachineGo!)
• Handedness develops in the womb -- "In one study, nine out of 10 fetuses at 15 weeks' gestation preferred to suck their right thumbs. Hepper's team followed 75 of those fetuses after birth, and found that at 10 to 12 years old all 60 of the right thumb-suckers were right-handed, while 10 of the 15 left thumb-suckers were left-handed and the rest right-handed." (via Anthropology in the News)
• Yawning is catching in chimps -- "Chimpanzees yawn in response to seeing other chimps yawn, reveals a new study." (ibid.)
• Human smarts based on volume, location of gray matter (ibid.) (see also commentary from FuturePundit)
• Research shows brain's role in stuttering -- "New research from Purdue University shows that even when people who stutter are not speaking, their brains process language differently."

(Apologies for the bad pun -- these things happen when you're wracking your brains for a blog-post title.)

Whiskey River provides this charming little blurb:

Rene Descartes walks into a bar and has a drink
The bartender asks him, "Would you like another?"
Descartes pauses and says, "I think not," and promptly disappears.
The bartender is enlightened.

I decided to copy blackbeltjones's idea and take my del.icio.us tags and magnify them according to how many posts had those tags:

So, I've taken the first step towards updating Circadian Shift: The Outpost -- I've reinstated the two-column layout, because the three-column one looked like crap in several browsers. Also, links to the Gaping Void Galleries are gone, as Hugh no longer emails cartoons out to people for syndication.

Next step would be to update the list of music links and put some new MP3s up...

I think. Sorry about yesterday's outage. While I did briefly entertain thoughts of putting in some work on my other websites during that time, I wound up just surfing the net instead.

Meanwhile, Modulator provides a handy list of acronyms seen on an ER dry-erase board. I think "AMS" deserves a place in my lexicon.

Do you remember that Bugs Bunny cartoon where Bugs disguises himself as an orchestra conductor and makes life hell for some overblown opera singer? Ever wonder why everyone kept calling Bugs "Leopold"? This is why.

(via Reflections in d minor)

I don't remember how I stumbled across it, but only last week I came across A Mixed Blog, which is a project of The Multiracial Activist.

They've provided a