Stuff I Found

Thursday, February 21, 2008

More On Bad Education

I would have made this video a bit differently (there's a bit too much questioning about historic figures vs. pop culture figures), but I very much agree with the point they're making and I'm glad I'm seeing more support for it from people somewhat closer to my age.

Wednesday, February 20, 2008

Roller Coaster Crash

Fortunately there were no deaths... everyone just stood up and was fine.

Saturday, February 16, 2008

Continuous Partial Attention

From a link on Scoble's blog...

I don't really have the appropriate attention to read this article, but it looks interesting!

In a 24/7, always-on world, continuous partial attention used as our dominant attention mode contributes to a feeling of overwhelm, over-stimulation and to a sense of being unfulfilled.


BREATHE. Notice what happens to your breath as you pull down and check your email or vmail. Most of us hold our breath. Some of us tighten our upper body. If we're aware of what we're doing and we are able to manage our breath -- that is, keep breathing -- the stress response is minimized.


I hope breathing will really minimize my stress, but I won't hold my breath...

Leave kids alone!

According to this article:

the idle parent is a responsible parent because at the heart of idle parenting is a respect for the child, a trust in another human being. It is the irresponsible parent who hands the child over to various authorities for its education and care, whether that is childminders, schools, CBeebies or the virtual world of Habbo Hotel. Or it is the parent who tries to impose his own vision on the children and does not simply let them be.


Anybody else for "idle professoring"?

We don't care about status and career advancement and how we are perceived by others. We are free of all of that rubbish. We simply want to enjoy our lives and to give our children a happy childhood. What greater gift could there be from a parent?


Hmmm... that sounds just about as self-righteous as parents who have the opposite position.

Instead of talking to friends and neighbours, anxious people seek advice in books, websites and internet forums.


So why are you writing an article about this on the Internet?!

Be weak! Give up! You can't do everything. Lower your standards. Get friends to help you.


I don't want friends to help me lower my standards! How dare you!

On the other side, somewhere in the distance, the children play. I don't bother them and they don't bother me.


Maybe there's something wrong with you if your kids don't want to play with you...

I am a disaster-prone, chaotic layabout and so should warn you not to listen to my advice. Certainly my friends say the idea of me advising other parents on childcare is absurd.


Geez, you go from self-righteous to self-wrongous quite quickly.

Sorry, that was a dumb article after all... but fun to read!

As for the issue at hand, surely there's a balance between leaving kids alone and not... don't leave them alone too much, but don't bother them too much. A true happy childhood is as elusive as a true happy adulthood. We will just have to wait for the happy-drug with no bad side effects to come along, and then everything will be fine...

Thursday, February 14, 2008

Will Wright on Spore

Will Wright talks about the best computer game of all time in this article.

Good news for anybody who can't wait to create creatures:

Maxis expects that the creature creator will be many players' entrance into the world of Spore. They're even going so far as to distribute this creator for free a few months before the game hits retail shelves.


Hopefully once Spore comes out there will also be a way to exchange creatures and perhaps other in-game content, eh? Oh wait, the article answers my own suggestion:

Maxis has come up with a fully featured method of sharing all of this content, called Sporepedia. Users will be able to search through everything every other Spore user has created. They can build a buddy list and search just their friends' stuff. Or they can search by tags, as if they were pulling up YouTube videos.

In fact, users can even create videos of their characters and post them automatically onto YouTube directly from the Sporepedia interface.


Wow!! Awesome!

For music lovers, or composers, this must excite you:

Dropping into one of his cities, Wright pointed out that Spore even procedurally generates its musical tracks. "For any city, for any colony I make, a theme will be generated for it," he said.

Wright collaborated with musician Brian Eno to create the music generator, which also allows users to jump in and create their own themes by clicking and dragging musical notes. "I could put in the Star Wars theme if I wanted to," Wright said.

Tuesday, February 12, 2008

Spongebob in Old Movies



What more can one say?