Month: April 2005

How the web works

Or “The advantage of tabbed browsing”.

Before I start this is NOT a pro-Firefox post but I will be mentioning it as it’s my browser of choice. There are other browser that offer tabbed browsing.

Anyway, I was just randomly surfing when a post on Caterina’s site caught my eye. It’s about the book “Getting Things Done” which I’ve seen mentioned at 43 Folders and have on my Amazon wishlist, she links to a particular post on the 43 Folders website that itself contains several related links: a summary of the GTD methodology, a PDF of an annotated workflow of the method, another site with a more Windows based slant on some of the productivity solutions and the website for the man who wrote the book and started the cult of GTD (to uses Caterina’s phrase).

Caterina also mentions her new love for a certain brand of notebook, and offers a link to another blog post about them from where I find a link to a reseller of Caterina’s notebooks of choice and to the oft mentioned moleskin notepads.

Phew.

So why is this particular to tabbed browsing? Because I no longer need to move back and forward (or between open windows) to see the links between these sites as I used to do when attempting something like this using a single browser window (and you techies can keep your semantic definitions of windows to yourself, thank you very much). Maybe a quick screenshot will be better than my attempts to describe this.

Tabs opened in Firefox

It may LOOK confusing but you can follow my surfing thread from left to right, from Caterina through 43 Folders, GTD specific sites, on through David Allen’s site and to the moleskin notebooks.

And THAT, ladies and gentlepeeps (and everyone else inbetween) is why tabbed browsing is a good thing.

Now I just need to find a Firefox extension that will let me produce a list of all open tabs, and their URLs, and I’m a happy, although still knackered, bunny.

(And yes I’m aware of Session Saver but it doesn’t let you generate a list of the tabs stored)

This is all very much an excellent example of how a technology has been mapped to the way people work. Information design, if you will.

April 22, 2005

Meme: Fahrenheit 451

You’re stuck inside Fahrenheit 451, which book do you want to be?
Not any of the ones that are incinerated. Simple really.

OHH not LITERALLY, but literaturally? (ohhh I just invented a word, ohh, no I didn’t). Anyway, I’d choose to be Mowgli in the Jungle Book. Why? Because of the songs of course (whaddya mean there are no songs in the book!!)

Have you ever had a crush on a fictional character?
Possibly Smilla from Miss Smilla’s Sense of Snow, or Gill Templeton from the Rebus novels, but nothing significant as yet.

The last book you bought is?
The Electric Michelangelo by Sarah Hall. Not read it, and only bought it as I’ve been thinking about getting another tattoo at some point. Never heard of it before either so very much an impulse buy. I have to admit that I do occasionally buy books “by the cover” and I’ve yet to be disappointed.

What are you currently reading?
Disgrace by J.M. Coetzee. I normally have two or three books going at at time, but as I’m trying to actually FINISH some of the books I start I thought I’d stick with the tried and tested, one at a time method. It’s working so far.
I’m enjoying this book more than I thought I would if I’m honest, which is good because it was recommended by… er… dammit… memory like a … thingy… you know… fins… water…

Five books you would take to a deserted island
1. HitchHiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (a Trilogy in Four Five parts) – funny, makes you think, and would allow me to drift off into imaginary worlds.
2. How to get off a desert island.

Who are you going to pass this stick to (3 persons) and why?
No-one as a meme is a self-propagating unit of cultural evolution (and I’m lazy).

April 22, 2005

Matchstick Men

Awful nights slee… well I fall short of calling it sleep as it was more a night spent tossing and turning, checking the clock. Isn’t it amazing how much vitriol and hatred we can heap on such a simple device, after all it’s not the CLOCK’S fault I was up most of the night yet it was the focus of my hatred, desperation and more as it tracked my insomnaic process through the wee small hours.

So to work then, with a roll and sausage (lorne that is) and three cups of coffee to the good already. Cakes later will provide a sugar rush but I fear for the afternoon, poised as it is after lunch and knowing already of it’s fate. Stupor and quite possibly snoring.

Water now, by the glassful and Basement Jaxx blaring to “Plug it in, plug it in baby” but where? What source can I tap into to stem sleep, to fight off the dazing demons of daydream. I fear I will wander this day, lucid but stupefied, removed by a blur.

Fuck me, I’m knackered.

April 22, 2005

Backwards

Question (seeing as you all liked the last one so much): if you had two blog posts, side by side, in which order would you expect to read them? Left to right (newest on left, older on right) or right to left (newest on right, older on left)?

My thinking is that we read (in Western society) from left to right, so having the newest post on the left makes sense. However to go “back” to an older post by moving to the right feels wrong. Surely to go “back” you move to the left (like you would to go back a page in a book).

I’m confused and contradicted all at the same time. If any of the above makes sense I’d appreciate your thoughts on the matter?

April 21, 2005

Vice Versa

“There is a light that never goes out” Morrissey sings into my head. I work on, aware that the tune was familiar, from somewhere else? (I don’t listen to The Smiths that often, did they do cover versions??). I paused to listen to the lyrics. VERY familiar. Where had I heard it before?

Somewhere. Faster maybe? Something with more of a beat to it? But surely The Smiths wouldn’t have borrow the lyrics from another song, no no, it can’t be that.

Then it came to me. Erlend Øye used the lyrics on “There Silikon Soul remix” on the DJ Kicks album bearing his name. A split second later I realised that, of course, it was he who had used the lyrics from The Smiths song, not vice versa.

A most odd feeling that, when a newer track takes on higher precedence, in my own personal song rating system, than the original. Doesn’t happen often. In fact I don’t think it’s ever happened to me before. I knew, and liked, the Smiths song long before I’d even heard OF Erlend Øye let alone heard anything he’d done. Yet somehow, his use of the lyrics has completely obliterated any recollection of the original track. Until now.

It’s not like having just heard the original version of a song you only knew as a cover version (even though you didn’t realise it WAS a cover version until you heard the original) nor is it the same as hearing an existing song reworked into something completely new as, in that case, you still have the existing song in your head.

No, for some reason my brain had switched the association of the lyrics “Take me out tonight, cos I want to see people who are young and alive, driving in your car, please don’t drive me home, because it’s not my home, it’s their home…” to the new Erlend Øye track and it was a bit of a jolt to hear the original Smiths version. Most odd indeed.

Having re-read that, I’m not sure it even makes any sense but then, when have I ever bothered about that?

My point is this; sometimes, despite the fact you know the original version of something, it doesn’t mean that it can’t change and replace itself in your affections. In other words, things change, sometimes for the better, and whilst you never really forget the original you do put it to the back of your mind whilst embracing the new.

I’m sure there is a deeper meaning in there somewhere.

April 21, 2005

(In)dependent

I was 20 when I left my parents home. We’d just gotten engaged when Louise’s flatmate had to move out. Or her flatmate moved out so we had to get engaged? I forget… I just do what I’m told.

How old were you when you fled the coop?

April 20, 2005