🖋️ LongForm
Want to reduce the noice and just focus on things with a little more meat - the this category is for you. Like so much on this site we have a ‘WIP’ as i take some out - and put some in - but safe for at least starting in 2026.
My First Seven Jobs
#FirstSevenJobs ... it's a meme and made me think about mine ...
- Baby Sitter
- Newspaper Delivery
- Building Site Laborer
- Bin Man - or 'Garbage collector' as we know them in the US.
- House Cleaner (not what you think - this was working for an English Council - spending days in a single flat attempting to get it to a level that your usual house cleaner would even consider. You just do not want to know what we had to deal with.
- Chocolate Factory - Packing the candies and cleaning the machines .... by hand !
- Meat Factory Labour - including making Black Pudding - again - using my own hands.
Observations
My early jobs were
- very manual in nature
- involved minimal customer interaction (no waiting on tables, serving in stores etc)
Would You Pay For News
Well ... would you?
The click through is an interesting article from Fred Wilson who did a 'deep survey' with his own kids. It's a good read.
Me - I think pure news is never again going to be paid for. Think about it - it is a commodity.
BUT ... in RED NEON CAPS - 72 PT - BUT .... the analysis, opinion and insights around it - definitely. And that is why esteemed organs like the FT, Guardian, NYT, Post et al - will survive in some form - provided they work out their new business models. (Let's face it - the old ones aren't working).
UPDATE:
This is a really good read from Josh Guttman who writes that 'we all pay for news in one way or the other' (true) and then goes onto highlight some companies that are starting to help us - the reader - to get out news - without being saddled with the costly trackers that advertisers fell they need to embed in their posts. ...
What's new-er is a general distaste for any form of advertising on the page, as evidenced by the rise in usage of ad blockers. In the US, 15-20% of users block ads and in EU, it's approaching 50%. A new category of companies have appeared to tackle this issue from either the publisher or reader perspectives.
August 17, 2016 at 10:41:09 AM PDT by jgphilpin
Power For The Few ....
"Power for the few will be assumed through the inaction of the many. "
Apparently these regulations are too onerous for the multi-billion corporation that we know as Uber to operate in London.
Uber is challenging four of the new rules;
- requiring written English tests for drivers,
- having to locate its customer service call centre in London,
- requiring insurance that covers drivers when they are not working
- having to alert TfL of changes to its business model or app.
I do hope @SadiqKhan is listening .... part of his electoral platform was to push back on the company. Until someone does - they will continue to ride rough-shod over everybody and everything in its wake - and then someday in the future we will look back and ask - how did that happen?
Let me tell you the answer now : By Not Paying Attention!
Kite Flying Can Be Harmful To Your Health
Have you ever read the book 'The Kite Runner' ? If not you should.
If so, you can imagine why that particular wonderful piece of literature popped into my head on reading this news ...
2 Children, 1 Man Die After Kite String Slits Their Throats in India
... in case anyone ever thought that Kite Flying was a sedentary sport!
A Little History Of My Maui Music
I was in Maui on the Southside nearly ten years ago watching a subset of the Molinas family entertaining the 'grocks'. Out of the blue this young kid emerged and delivered a Ukulele solo like I had never heard.
I didn't know they were the Molinas family at the time, and so had no idea who Andrew was. BUT.
But, I wanted to find out. For some reason I didn't enquire on the day who these guys were, so it was later when I started to just ask around.
I described him to people and the general consensus was 'oh - you must have seen Vince Esquire'.
Which is how I got into Vince Esquire and his band, and also how I came to meet Shawn Michael - now back in LA - but definitely the best bass guitarist that you have never heard of.
Anyway, you can read all about Andrew and his family the other side of this link. and so glad to see another great Maui musician emerging.
Why Apple Sits Apart
Engineers left in a vacuum might say "well, that's maybe not so important; we can get a better signal by doing it the other way so let's do it that way." So, left to their own devices, that would be the way the product would end up. So you have to have a really strong voice supporting the user. I think the idea of focusing on that is uniquely Apple. In an optimistic sense you have to say that still exists at Apple. It does.
- Attention to detail.
- Customer first.
- Because 'it's harder' isn't an excuse.
Great Read :
What I Learned Working With Jony Ive's Team On The Apple Watch
It's All About The Headline ....
Opening copy reads :
One of Apple's largest component suppliers, Samsung Electronics ...
... not could have (should have ?)
One of Apple's largest competitors, Samsung Electronics
... because the article is ALL about safety in Samsung's semi con factories and clearly reads ...
That year, and every year since, tech media outlets have regularly suggested that there was no real difference between Apple's iPhone and the manufacturing of much lower margin Android products, which cut corners and take expedient shortcuts to deliver cheap products.
🔗 Read All About It At Apple Insider - who should not be using such stupid click bait headlines and opening copy in their articles.
#ShameOnThem
Jobs Coming BACK To The USA
Heh - GREAT News - Adidas is bringing jobs back to America. See - it can be done.
'Caveat Emptor' ... 160 jobs actually - and unclear what those jobs will be - because the manufacturing is being done by robots.
I keep telling you .... those jobs are not coming back.
It's All About .... Timing
It’s that time of year I guess. Another birthday. The Newton launched 23 years ago - two years after the World Wide Web.
One an unprecedented success that nobody saw coming ... the other demonstrating exactly the same thing - but with lousy timing.
Saying It Like It Is
“Really,” Steve said, and waited.
“ ‘Does she want a job at Apple?’ ” I said, quoting his e-mail.
“A joke,” Steve said.
“I know.”
“Like this meeting,” he said.
.. it’s a great read. And that last line in the quote above - like a rapier!
Spot On
#VRM #PeoplePower
Maybe the best thing to do is to start unilaterally giving the users more power over their own online presence. Stop trying to own everything. Because there's no way to win that game. Even if you win you lose.
Another Reason Why We Are All Doomed
How safe do YOU feel flying in these planes, given that they can barely keep the electric on?
More Corporate Skulduggery - AT and T This Time
Doesn’t a $7.75 Million fine seem like a drop in the bucket? I bet it is less than the money they made.
particularly since ….
Last year, Sprint and Verizon paid out a combined $158 million to settle similar billing practices.
Talking of Birthdays ...
and now Netscape … went public 21 years ago today.
I wonder what those tech brains are up to these days?
Thieving Cable Companies Still Not Locked Up
The news today is just formal confirmation that the TV guys really don’t want to give away their best stuff for free.
Or, more precisely, they’d prefer that you pay twice when you watch their stuff: Once with your credit card, via some kind of pay TV subscription, and again with your attention, when you watch the ads they sell.
“And last week’s news that Time Warner was buying a chunk of Hulu was another indicator that Hulu’s old model was toast, since Time Warner hated Hulu’s old model. So today’s news is just formal confirmation that the TV guys really don’t want to give away their best stuff for free. Or, more precisely, they’d prefer that you pay twice when you watch their stuff: Once with your credit card, via some kind of pay TV subscription, and again with your attention, when you watch the ads they sell.”
Privacy - The Killer App
Privacy by design: Only Apple could make 'differential privacy' sound cool.
TechCrunch Talks … and
what Apple recognizes more broadly is that consumer trust (fueled by privacy) is the killer app.
#VRM
The Only Good Use For a Keurig Machine
Hadn’t realized that there was such visceral dislike of Keurig - but there you go - the power of the Internet!
It Isn't Just You - We Are Getting More Stupid
Dumbing down. You read about it a lot. Just the other day, someone told me that a recruiter had mentioned to them that they should 'dumb down' their resume.
"You use words that are too long and nobody understands what you are talking about."
How sad - particularly since it seems that there might be a reason.
Of course, if language, vocabulary and and use thereof was one measure of how dumb you might be take note that Wikipedia reports that ....
It has been estimated that the vocabulary of English includes roughly 1 million words (although most linguists would take that estimate with a chunk of salt, and some have said they wouldn't be surprised if it is off the mark by a quarter-million); that tally includes the myriad names of chemicals and other scientific entities. Many of these are so peripheral to common English use that they do not or are not likely to appear even in an unabridged dictionary.
Webster's Third New International Dictionary, Unabridged, together with its 1993 Addenda Section, includes some 470,000 entries. The Oxford English Dictionary, Second Edition, reports that it includes a similar number.
Imagine the problem that we have when
A Native-level fluency of a language is estimated to be between 20,000–40,000 words, with basic conversational fluency possibly requiring as little as 3,000 words.
i.e. if you use somewhere in the order of 5 to 10% of a language to communicate your written ideas - you are considered fluent.