My earlier blog query was prompted by a mail from our marketing department wanting to know if we knew of any ‘opinion forming blog sites’, to which my response was ‘I know exactly what their opinion would be, so I’m not going to enter this discussion’….which was seen as somewhat negative by our CEO. So what would your favorite blog say about Mobizines? Have I really gone too cynical? Or is realistic a better word for it?
Neil Hopcroft
A digital misfit
opinion formers
Name some blogs you trust to give you good opinions about tech, gadget and phone products and software.
Book review: E=mc^2 by David Bodanis
This book follows the story of the life of the famous equation, describing a little about its ancestors (each of e, =, m, c and squared), how Einstein put them all together, and the life the result took on after he had.
It describes a lot about the research done during wartime, explaining how the bombs work and some of the people who were working on it. I was a little disappointed by the lack of discussion of either power generation or particle accelerators, both of which seem, to me, at least somewhat relevant. And he managed to avoid much in the way of talking about either Dr Strangelove or his inspiration John Von Neumann (who only appears briefly).
The writing is easy going, not too technical, its about the life of the participants not the physics itself, but its nice to have a context for some of it.
Who should read this book: non-physicists who are interested in how discoveries travel through the scientific community, anyone who would like more context for how the atom bomb came to be developed.
Linkblast
The people of Tokyo should construct a giant building shaped like Godzilla
Just what the voices in your head always wanted
Now you can play Dilbert for pleasure as well as work.
A quick note of congratulations to my car for passing its MOT today with only advisories on the brakes, which I got fixed even though they weren’t failures – it seemed like the kind of thing that was worth fixing especially if the MOT itself wasn’t going to be expensive. So no emergency new car for Neil, not yet anyways.
I’m amused by the idea that Winterkalte ‘Maximum credible accident’ leaking from my headphones at the office sounded like birds chirping….its very good coding music but it doesn’t sound much like birds from inside the ‘phones.
Happy sound, reprise
I think I’ve finally figured out what the happy sound was…its Skype on the mac telling me someone has come online, which all makes sense.
There are some things I should tell you about before they get lost in the mists of time. I took a day off to head up to the Manuskript gig in Cambridge a couple of weeks back. This is why I go to gigs, sometimes everything just clicks, everything is right and the people are great, the show is great, theres a buzz in the air. It doesn’t happen very often but when it does its wonderful. I can’t really describe it but you know it when it happens.
And then, last friday, the management of the Water Rats get a *BIG THUMBS DOWN* for trying to run another event the same night as BMovie. I somewhat object to venues thinking they can run two events in a night anyway, it feels like profiteering, at least its not as bad as the Underworld where they kick you out for 10 so the club can start. However the waily indie kids weren’t really my cup of tea and, given I had to go catch my train early anyway, I decided to cut my loses and make a break for it – if I stayed I would have gotten just two or three songs before it was time to leave anyway. All in all quite a shame, if thats going to be a common feature of BMovie nights I’m going to have to stop going, it turns into too much waiting and not enough music to be viable for me.
Meanwhile I seem to be burning bridges faster than I’m building them – I wish I had the energy to drive some things more forcefully.
Book review: NLP The new technology of achievement by Steve Andreas and Charles Faulkner
I chose this book after someones response to my gentle mocking of someone reading ‘NLP for dummies’ on the train – its not a subject I knew much about. Well, I thought I didn’t know much about it. Reading this book though is like reading a collection of many other management and personal development books, there isn’t much in the way of new material here (for me at least, perhaps if you’ve not read so many of those books it might be fresher).
The book is structured around a series of thought exercises to take you through the process of accentuating positive aspects of your life and distancing yourself from the negative. The gist of it is to connect yourself (in your memories and imagination) with good things about your life, and reduce the importance of the bad things.
While I think NLP is a nice structure for learning to be positive about yourself this book concentrates too much on getting accolades from people it has helped and not enough on useful information about how to make it work.
Who should read this book? Anyone who feels like they are stuck in a rut and hasn’t already read a lot of management books.
I’ve just scared myself by noticing that I’ve now had this journal for 10% of my life, thats just over 3 years 7 months, sometimes I hate having a brain that thinks about things like that. So anyway heres a review of my year:
“Well thats one mystery solved. I woke with a shock last night, so much so that I jumped out of bed.”
“Four jobs I’ve had: postman, clockmaker, industrial spy, arms exporter”
“We arrived at the base around lunchtime, I’m not sure its the first time I’ve ever been on a military base, but certainly I’ve not been required to sign in to a museum for a very long time.”
“Following my interview last week I’ve accepted a verbal offer for a job based near Fulham Broadway, in London.”
“The slouch started with an abortive run to a pub near the station – so we ended up milling around at the station, allegedly the site of the biscuit incident, for a while, awaiting the arrival of anyone unfortunate enough to have been trying to use the trains from Stanstead or beyond…they’d been replaced with buses.”
“This morning I was trying to catch the tube to Earls Court – I was waiting on the blue line platform, they were having signalling problems so things were running a bit slowly and there were a lot of people about.”
“Back online again now. And I’ve eaten too much cheese over the last few days.”
“I board the district line at Fulham Broadway for my journey home.”
“Kiva takes Prosper to another level. I like both of these sites – they both provide an interesting view on people helping other people out.”
“As is typical technology mocks in suspicious ways, playing me the mad capsule markets just as the heavens opened upon my arrival in worthing.”
“What a beautiful spring morning? A touch of frost in the air, enough to wake you up but not enough to make you cold.”
“I’ve just bought a book containing a section on “poking: effectiveness and danger of reprisal”, complete with a graph and everything.”