Jason McIntosh: February 2008 Archives

Two delightful, apropos-of-nothing but related events:

First, a new season of WNYC's Radiolab launched the other day. This is my favorite of the podcasts that I discovered last year. It's a science show not quite like any other, keenly intelligent and inquisitive with a fun and conversational attitude. It features two good-humored hosts and a wide range of interesting guests. What really sets it apart, though, is its surprisingly high audio production values. They make the experience of listening to an episode full of delightful surprises, continually mixing in subtle and original sound effects, and making sparing but creative use of actors' voices for occasional dramatizations.

The audio is so good, actually, that I wouldn't let myself listen to my freshly downloaded copy for several days because the left speaker on my earphones blew out, meaning that what I have come to think of as my semiannual headphone subscription needed a renewal. (And why is it always the left one? Eh.) One ear was good enough for most of my other mostly-talking podcast subscriptions, but not this one. I finally got to hear it today, when I swung by CVS for a new pair.

And this leads me to the other small delight today, the Philips earbuds I selected. First of all, at six dollars, the price is right; if they can hold out for six months I'll be happy with them. More than that, though, was the packaging. Like most small electronics nowadays, its blister-pack was constructed of apparently bulletproof packaging. Even though I wanted to go get cuppa coffee first, I was resigned to needing to schlep back home and further dull my kitchen scissors in order to pry the thing open.

Just to make sure, though, I examined the package as I started to walk home, and imagine my delight at discovering that its cardboard backing was perforated, with a friendly little "press here to open" tab, like a box of detergent. So I did, and within a minute I was listening to Radiolab in both ears and had deposited the remains of my purchase (as well as my old headphones) neatly into a sidewalk trash bin. And from there, I went to go get coffee and a cupcake. I tell you, I could not be happier.

I used the word "disinterested" in a blog comment last night, and despite its tiny probable readership I find myself worried that people who do read it will read it incorrectly, that I meant it to mean "uninterested" instead of "taking a neutral stance". I bet dollars to donuts that most users of the English language think it has only the former definition, when they encounter it.

Certain people like to get angry that other people are stupid and English is doomed when they encounter evidence of readers taking the wrong meaning from words like this. And they remind me of nothing so much as hardcore Unix geeks belittling everyday computer users for getting something wrong in a command-line invocation and erasing half their hard disk.

That's right: I'm saying that that "disinterested" is an example of a word with a terrible UI.

I just pulled up the snopes.com article about Barack Obama to quote at my mom over the phone, after she said said that she was worried "not so much about the black as the fact that he went to school at one of those, er, uh, what-you-calls." Sheesh. (She was thinking of "madrassa".)

Announcing The Gameshelf Blog, a new community of intelligent-if-eclectic game news and discussion. I hope that it will fill out the long and dreary spaces between new Gameshelf episodes with interesting game-related tidbits that share the show's spirit.

I've invited everyone whose name has appeared in an episode's credit roll to join the site as a contributor. I went by memory so it's entirely possible I overlooked you (or your mail client ate the invitation as spam); if that's the case, and you want to help, please contact me!

Yes, it's the same URL that the show has held for years. I quietly replaced the static site with blog software a few months ago, and more recently redesigned it so that a link to the most recent episode will always appear at the top. The blog and the episode videos have separate RSS feeds, too. (Rather, one's a subset of the other.)

I was surprised at the amount of response I got on another blog when I asked if anyone I knew was a fan or foe of Getting Things Done. There was much love for it, while the the most negative comments was "meh, it's not for me". So it definitely seems worth looking at.

Have bought Allen's book, and waded around in 43folders.com for a while, so I have a pretty good idea now how the system works now. Yes, the core idea is quite attractive. (Get everything-and-I-mean-everything out of your head, and into a trusted external system.)

I have downloaded OmniFocus, a just-released Mac application specifically designed around GTD, with a lot of input from the 43folders people. I have been a big fan of the Omni Group's stuff since I started with Mac OS X, and look forward to sinking into this.