Best iPad Ad Ever?

A few months ago I bookmarked Serenity Caldwell’s iPad video and somehow never got round to posting about it here. It’s a very nice piece of work, but somehow I’m not persuaded that I need to rush out and upgrade to an iPad capable of working with an Apple Pen. In principle I understand that… Continue reading Best iPad Ad Ever?

Yikes

This can’t possibly end well. Good morning, Twitter. Please enjoy this cat fracas on the writing desk just now. pic.twitter.com/FnLg9nHBoS — John Scalzi (@scalzi) July 27, 2018

Frenemies Forever

Novelist John Lanchester ponders whether economists and humanists can ever be friends? [Hanson and Simler’s…] emphasis on signalling and unconscious motives suggests that the most important part of our actions is the motives themselves, rather than the things we achieve, such as writing symphonies, curing diseases, building cathedrals, searching into the deepest mysteries of time… Continue reading Frenemies Forever

LinkedIn: The Game

Beating LinkedIn: The Game is tricky, but not impossible. If you can believe this guy: The general goal of LinkedIn (the game) is to find and connect with as many people on LinkedIn (the website) as possible, in order to secure vaguely defined social capital and potentially further one’s career, which allows the player to… Continue reading LinkedIn: The Game

Atari 520 STM

Having just read The Jackintosh: A Real GEM – Remembering the Atari ST, I feel a massive nostalgia rush coming on: After Commodore Founder Jack Tramiel was forced out by his board, he decided, after a brief hiatus, to get revenge. Tramiel knew that a 16-bit computer was next on the horizon for Commodore, and… Continue reading Atari 520 STM

Replacing Instapaper

As time passes and EU-based users find themselves waiting in vain on word from Instapaper’s owners, our thoughts inevitably turn towards replacing Instapaper: I chose Pinboard, not because it is the most slick service – it is very minimalist – but because it works, and for everything I read, it will likely be there for… Continue reading Replacing Instapaper

The Outlook Hotel

The major fault I see when I watch The Overlook Hotel is that it spends way too much time dropping unsubtle hints that much of Jack Torrance’s post-film tenure as janitor of the Overlook involved his being under the influence of Pennywise. Way too many red balloons floating around in the background of scenes for… Continue reading The Outlook Hotel

Dancing in Movies

When I first saw a link to Dancing In Movies a week or so ago I wasn’t all that impressed: yes, someone had put a lot of effort into stringing together clips from nearly 300 films but I wasn’t getting a thrill from it. But now I’ve taken (several) further looks at it and I… Continue reading Dancing in Movies

Untitled, 1971

A Work of Art, by Janet Malcolm: For many years my late husband, Gardner Botsford, kept a small black-and-white snapshot on his desk of a man and woman wearing shorts, walking one behind the other on a tennis court. I didn’t know who the couple were but assumed they were friends from Gardner’s life before… Continue reading Untitled, 1971