notes.husk.org. scribblings by Paul Mison.

flibbertigibbet

dailymeh:

flibbertigibbet

Here’s an f-word for you, as far as I can tell not noted here or here (does that mean everyone knows it already?).

flibbertigibbet • noun • a silly, flighty, or scatterbrained person, especially a pert young woman with such qualities.

I knew that word, but I always used it in an equal-opportunities manner (often aimed at myself) rather than at “pert young women”.

Here’s another f-word I’m fond of:

flounce • noun [intrans] • move with exaggerated motions : she flounced around, playing the tart and flirting.

Attaining Hampstead

While researching the proper way SCREEN$ load on a Spectrum, I was distracted by somehow running across an old adventure game.

Hampstead was by Melbourne House, who put out a fair few classic text adventures in the 1980s. As the instructions put it:

Hampstead is a quest, but not for gold. The aim of it is to reach the
pinnacle of social status, and acquiring wealth is only one part of
the problem. If you wish to go up in the world you also have to gain
the admiration and respect of your fellow men, and there's more to
that than a fat bank balance.

There’s been a flickr of rediscovery in the past: Aleks Krotoski wrote about it in the Guardian Gamesblog in 2007, as did Anna Black earlier this year. Personally, I find it interesting for a few reasons. For one thing, it’s one of those games during the flowering of 8-bit home computers that tried to reflect everyday life, and perhaps even comment on them (as did Manic Miner and Skooldaze/Back to Skool). For another, there’s this comment in the Crash preview of the game:

It is different to most adventures, in that its purpose is to amuse people rather than provide a hard adventure. Indeed, the adventure is extremely simple, which the authors say is so that anyone can complete it, and so reap more enjoyment from it.

That’s a sentiment that’s getting traction again these days, at least amongst certain people I know. Perhaps I’ll even download the game and give it a go. After all, who doesn’t want a bit of Hampstead once in a while?

Future-O-Matic Theory Maker

With apologies to Russell:

… on second thoughts, maybe it works better on a whiteboard. Ah well.

Licence Fees Across Europe

After reading one too many commentary pieces on the fall-out of the BBC’s Digital Strategy Review, and hearing the odd friend suggest that the British didn’t know how good they had it, I decided to complile a Google spreadsheet of TV licence fees across Europe.

Once I had a first version out, Chris suggested that I should add a column stating whether there was an ad-free state broadcaster, and that’s there now; there’s also a heatmap visualisation.

Unfortunately, the GBP Equivalent column seems a bit fragile- Google Finance hiccups every now and again and it doesn’t work. Publishing also seems not to allow nice formatting (‘£145.20’ not ‘145.2’), so I’m linking directly to the editing page. Still, hopefully there’s stuff of interest for people there.

The British Junk Food Report

rentzsch wrote an interesting post on some of the junk food he tried while in the UK for NSConference:

The absolute most-important thing for a U.S.-based traveler to the U.K. is knowing what junk food you should load up on while there. Here’s our report:

• Kit Kat Chunky: DON’T BUY. There are far better things to spend 260 (!) calories on.

Really? I love Kit Kat Chunky, although I have a particularly soft spot for the allegedly limited edition Caramel variant. Maybe I’m just dull, or perhaps the mix of biscuit and chocolate is just more my sort of thing.

Wispa: BUY. This was the least-interesting bar to me, but came up the biggest winner.

Its very concept didn’t appeal to me: an “aerated” chocolate bar. More than anything, it seemed like a hack to give you less chocolate for the same price.

If you try only one chocolate bar while in the UK, I recommend Wispa.

Wispa has a competitor, Aero, which is more air, less chocolate. It also comes in a mint version. Personally I find them a bit too light, but occasionally they’re right.

• Wheatabix: BUY. Apparently these are State-side, but I never noticed or tried them until I arrived in London. They’re like a fine-grained Shredded Wheat that dissolves much more rapidly in milk. Yummy, if you’re the kind who likes soggy shredded wheat (I do).

Minor correction: the product is called Weetabix. I don’t eat breakfast cereals, though, so I have no other comment.

(Tumblr is stripping the style attributes from the span tags. Sigh.)

Birtspeak 2.0

nevali:

The BBC should also make a step-change towards simplicity in its operations and structure, dismantling the remaining elements of its traditional hierarchy and replacing them with a flatter, more dynamic and flexible structure that reflects the nature of the BBC’s new challenges: wholly focused on serving the public with fewer management layers; better team-working and pan-BBC collaboration; and stronger performance management.

— BBC Strategy Review, March 2010

Sigh.

Names

Writing about the Toshiba TG01 reminded me of this post by mrgan:

Product names currently topping Engadget’s feed: (these are all real and not particularly cherry-picked)

• Kula TV PMP
• Optio I-10
• Gateway EC14D
• Alienware M11x
• Projectiondesign Remote Light Source
• DMC-ZS7 (Or is it 7SZ? Or SZ7? Or Z7S?)
• MvixUSA Ultio Pro
• Moto CLIQ
• OLPC XO
• Mustek MER-6T

I like “iPad”.

Foundem vs Google

Foundem, “the world’s most advanced vertical search engine” (as they sell themselves), is one third of an antitrust complaint against Google. They’ve previously complained about being dropped from Google search results, although that’s apparently been resolved since.

In the business news segment on Today, the section that caught my ear was a company representative complaining about Google’s inclusion of video and shopping results (aka “universal search”), specifically mentioning a search for the Toshiba TG01, and the fact that the videos were hosted on YouTube:

(I’ve highlighted the parts of the page that Foundem seem to be arguing against, but removed the Google header.)

Now, I can’t help but agree that, for this sort of search, Google looks cluttered, and you can’t argue that the video isn’t on a Google service. However, while  one of the four “shopping results” links goes to Google’s product search, the other three link directly out to retailers.

So, how does Foundem do?

At least with Google’s results I have a good idea of what the product actually is (a mobile phone); Foundem’s results don’t even list the right category. From Google’s page, I can see reviews and the manufacturer’s site; from Foundem, nothing, until I drill down again. Remember, this is a search that was suggested by the company themselves.

Perhaps instead of complaints to the EU, Foundem would be more successful if they fixed their search engine to, you know, actually work?

A Manifesto.

unlinkyourfeeds:

You need to stop automatically dumping your feeds from one account into another.

Look, I know it’s tempting. New service, not sure how you’ll keep up with the ever demanding maw and there’s the “import your content” button, right there in the sign-up process. A quick trip through a login screen or an OAuth link and there you are: All your stuff automatically aggregated into a new one-stop-shop of the genius things that pop out of your head

Look, just go and read the original, ok? Ta.

A short list of Chrome issues (beta 2)

An update on the issues listed in December:

• You can’t invert open behind - on Safari command shift click opens in a new window behind the current one with command click opening in a new window in front/focus, whereas Chrome is hard-wired to do the opposite (and with tabs to boot)
• Tab moves between all link and form elements, not just form elements (Gmail does this on Safari now too. Boo!)
• There are no command key shortcuts to open bookmarks in the toolbar
• The combined text/title/URL completion in the “Omnibox” means you have to go too far into a URL to easily work around the lack of command key shortcuts
• You can’t set a default font size, so sites that honour relative fonts (like delicious, and (in places) Twitter) now have Huge Idiot Typefaces
  • fixed, in Preferences > Under the Hood
• While Chrome sensibly uses the keychain (so, like Camino, it can share usernames and passwords set up in Safari) it doesn’t offer to complete the username part, meaning more typing
  • this seems to be fixed too
• Crashes on pasting a rich text post from Tumblr back into Tumblr
• Crashes on importing my (admittedly huge) Safari history

On the other hand, I am pleased to see that a request for the zoom button to instead maximise has been rejected as “Invalid”.