Letters Remain

  • American Food Consumption Since 1970

    Lately the New York Times has excelled in creating compelling graphic charts. This one, which numerous blogs posted last week, shows how American food consumption has changed since the 1970s.

    There’s an overall increase of 1.8lbs of food a week: 0.5lbs of which is fat. Dairy is the only food category to see a decline, even with a 0.3lb increase in cheese consumption.

    After looking at this, is it any surprised that since 1980 America has seen a doubling of obesity in adults aged 20-74?

    via Kottke

    Lloyd Morgan

  • Finding Underrated Geniuses

    Finding it difficult to discover good/great people? Ben Casnocha (author of My Start-Up Life) suggests relaxing your usual filters (Ivy League education, big breasts, etc.) and instead suggests seeking out the underrated geniuses who aren’t amazing at what you typically seek.

    People who earn the label “hidden gems” are hidden because they lie unturned after a popular, blunt filter is applied to a population. To find good, underrated people, de-emphasize popular filters.

    If you want to find a smart person who has time to be your friend, try to find a bad self-promoter. The popular filter, at least in business, is in favor of charismatic personalities and clever marketers. Find the brilliant mind who’s a so-so marketer and revel in her availability.

    Lloyd Morgan

  • Independent Film Channel

    Always on the lookout for enjoyable and thought-provoking films (i.e. not the typical mainstream drivel that makes it to your big-name cinema), I think the Independent Film Channel’s website may provide a plethora of (independent) candidates.

    Since the Cardiff Film Festival now ceases to exist, the Chapter Arts Center is Cardiff’s answer to New York’s IFC Center. Woe is me.

    Lloyd Morgan

  • More Top Productivity and Personal Development Blogs

    Primarily an advert for a new “community search tool” (the author’s custom Google search), this blog post turns into an impressive list of the top productivity and personal development blogs in the following categories:

    Previously: Top 50 Productivity Blogs

    Lloyd Morgan

  • Imagining the Tenth Dimension

    Another one from the year-old+ StumbleUpon archives: a video to help in imagining the tenth dimension.

    Apparently the book isn’t scientifically up-to-par and wouldn’t survive the remotest hint of peer review, but the video is interesting nonetheless.

    Lloyd Morgan

  • The Shutdown of MathWorld and the Fall of Publishing

    MathWorld—a division of Wolfram Research, the creators of Mathematica—was temporarily shutdown in late 2000 due to a copyright dispute over a book based on the website.

    Eric Weisstein’s commentary on the shutdown reveals a lot not just about being on the receiving side of an unfounded lawsuit, but also about publishing and its apparent change from a book-lovers’ business, to one run by people “unashamed to treat information as a commodity”.

    It is no secret that one consequence of the explosion in the popularity of the internet and related electronic technologies is that many battles will be fought over how information is created, stored, and accessed. It is equally clear that we all have a stake in how these battles are decided.

    Lloyd Morgan

  • Facebook + Google = FriendRank

    News of Google’s newest advertising venture:

    In its just-published patent application for Network Node Ad Targeting, Google hatches plans for identifying the most influential of a circle of friends and providing this ‘influencer’ with ‘financial incentives from advertisers in exchange for permission to display advertisements on the member’s [social network] profile’. Doing so will ‘provide advertisers with the option of targeting either all members in the community or advertising only on the profile of the influencer, thereby targeting the entire community,’ explains Google.

    As some Slashdotters have commented; if your best friend goes for this, maybe it’s time to re-evaluate that relationship: friendship isn’t supposed to be a commercial transaction. As for the targeted ‘influencer’: it’s a perfect example of one of Malcolm Gladwell’s so-called Mavens; the influential early adopters.

    via Mind Hacks

    Lloyd Morgan

  • Usability Tips for Your Website/Blog

    Tom of I’d Rather Be Writing—the ‘technical communication’ blog—has just written-up twenty usability tips for your blog.

    I’ve been doing research on what distinguishes good blogs from poor ones, especially by reading “lessons learned” posts by bloggers. I’ve come up with 20 principles I think are worthwhile.

    • Encourage comments
    • Include an About page
    • Keep posts short and to the point
    • Link abundantly
    • Include a list of related posts beneath each post

    The Resources section towards the end of the post links to a wealth of further information. Reading this, I was put in mind of Seth Godin’s recent call for web podiatrists.

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    Lloyd Morgan

  • Whip Your MP3 Library into Shape

    10 years ago I made the decision to shy away from using ID3 tags with my MP3s; at the time they were new, cumbersome, and not really that useful if you already implemented good file-naming conventions. Then my library grew.

    A year ago I realised that my archaic way of thinking was getting in the way of simply enjoying my now fast expanding MP3 collection (on a purely indulgent level, and in a perfectionist ‘everything has to be correct’ level). It was then that I made another decision: to correct my error, no matter how long it took. Everything had to be perfect.

    Here are the tools I used (and some tutorials below that):

    • Windows
      • Media Monkey – Batch converts to MP3, Ogg, FLAC, etc.; normalizes volume levels; finds and embeds album art (and singles’ art), automatic ID3 tagging; automatic file structuring.
        Media Monkey is just a great, all-round music organiser and player. It’ll even synch with your iPod.
      • MP3Gain – For all its advantages, Media Monkey is quite a ‘heavy’ application. To normalize your volume faster, use the light-weight (and open-source) MP3Gain.
      • MusicBrainz’s Picard – Everything ID3. Artist, album, artwork, etc. I haven’t used it personally, but have heard good things. However I do wonder how it will deal with my singles collection: Wikipedia states, “[Picard focuses] on album oriented tagging as opposed to track based tagging”.
      • Mp3Tag – Another good all-round tagging utility. Light-weight too. Before I moved to Media Monkey (so I had less applications), this was my tool of choice.
    • Linux/Unix
      • AmaroK – The best all-round music application for your free OS. It does everything you need, and more besides. All crammed into a small, fast, light-weight application. Artwork support has been a bit iffy, but maybe the EmbedCover plug-in script will fix that? Don’t forget to enable SQL! (Oh, and it automatically connects to your Last.fm account; sweet!)
      • EasyTAG – I haven’t used it yet, but have a feeling it’s going to be my new best friend. AmaroK will always be my music player of choice, though!
    • Mac
      • Don’t kid yourself, you wouldn’t move away from iTunes even if I paid you. Or if I had your mother at knife-point.
    • Lifehacker’s Alpha Geek: Whip Your MP3 Library into Shape
    • Help
      • My current music library is 100% MP3. I’m trying to fully embrace the open-source culture, so some suggestions on whether or not to convert to Ogg or FLAC is most welcome… as are tutorials and any useful applications.

    Lloyd Morgan

  • The Millionaire and the Squatter

    Originally an idea for “professional philanthropic development”, Michael—a multi-millionaire who’s giving away $78m over a 10 year period—lived with a homeless Chicago man for one weekend. Freakonomics covers the story in Michael, Meet Curtis: Philanthropy Gets Personal.

    Curtis cooked another plate of chicken and beans. He was about to eat it, but once again he offered it to Michael. This time Michael accepted. Michael looked overwhelmed; his face was perspiring. Curtis refilled his coffee and gave Michael one of his cigarettes to calm him down.

    “Not everyone lives like this,” I said. “And don’t feel bad for Curtis.”

    “No!” Curtis exclaimed. “Don’t pity me,” he said, pouring some whiskey in Michael’s coffee. “This will help you sleep tonight…” Curtis lit a cigarette and leaned back on his busted plastic chair. “Just understand that you got to be creative. Even if you got a home, you still got to pay rent — so you take in somebody now and then. Maybe you let your friend stay in the house and they watch your kid, or clean up, or pay you…” Curtis kept on talking. Michael kept on eating.

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    Lloyd Morgan