Category Archives: Geek Stuff

Geek Stuff, General

Where will you go today

I just heard about ‘Shopping Walls‘. Basically, if you see something you want to buy, you take a smartphone picture of the code box next to a picture of item and you will be automatically routed to a web site where you can quickly seal the deal and get the item mailed to your home.

Now if I was of a nefarious bent of mind I would cover the little code box with a code box of my own and direct this person, who is about to  disseminate credit card/account information and who expects to provide this information, to a dummy website of my own design that will collect the sensitive information. I might even relay the information through to the store so that the buyer does not notice that anything untoward may have happened.

(I don’t have a smart phone so I have no idea what they are doing.)

 

Phone Number
Geek Stuff, General

Graham Hill: Less stuff, more happiness

Graham Hill: Less stuff, more happiness | Video on TED.com.

An intriguing talk. If I lived in a dense urban area I might consider the editing he talks about. My main problem is that I don’t want to put my books into digital format.The second problem is that you can’t fit two people into his space. That will need some extreme editing.

I wonder how he gets that coffee table to seat 10 for dining? I think I found the link. Its not a coffee table.

Geek Stuff, General, Politics

Rights vs Responsibilities

In my previous Post I remarked that I didn’t consider FDR’s Second Bill of Rights to be rights. Rather, I consider them to be responsibilities a society owes its members.

Just to clarify the matter, I believe Rights are what individuals holds within themselves. To say someone has a right to health care immediately implies that the health care giver is obligated and does not have the right to refuse. This violates the rights of the health care giver.The same may be said for housing, employment, education, etc.

But a Society does have the Responsibility to provide to its members health care access (even basic health care), basic housing, basic education, competitive opportunities in business,  equal employment opportunities, and a social assurance to the elderly, disabled, unemployed and young. I think FDR’s Bill of Rights baselines a good deal of society’s responsibilities to its members.

Geek Stuff, General

Followup on l(a

I did find a copy of l(a in my copy of The Norton Introduction to Literature – Poetry – edited by J.Paul Hunter. My edition goes back to 1973. And the layout in this edition is different from the on-line layouts. The ‘ll’ line has a space between the line above and the line below.

Geek Stuff, General

Two spaces after a period: Why you should never, ever do it.

Two spaces after a period: Why you should never, ever do it. – Slate Magazine.

The author makes a very good point that two spaces after a period is unnecessary in a proportional font world. Very useful in a in a mono-spaced world. I also thought the author spent too much time disparaging the double spacers of the world (probably needed to fill in all the space he had left).

One point for continuing the double space method is to make it easier to parse e-text by computer. Although with computing getting much more capable of figuring out what people intend, this may be a moot point.

And, of course, this does not apply to writers that are using the spaces on a page to complete their work.

I was trying to find a link, using E E Cummings as an example. I found l(a as a candidate and then went on to find at least three different versions on the web, laid out differently and spelled differently. And I don’t have a printed copy in hand to determine which version is closest to the author’s vision. But if you go to Collected Poems 1922-1938  you will see that a number of his poems depend on the actual layout of the letters and the empty spaces,  as well as the content of the words.