Letters Remain

Author: Lloyd Morgan

  • I, Toaster and The Economies of Production

    Doing away with the division of labour and most other economies of production, Thomas Thwaites’ Toaster Project is an experiment to “build a toaster, from scratch—beginning by mining the raw materials and ending with a product that Argos sells for only £3.99”. Many have mentioned this already (Jason Kottke, Tyler Cowen on Margin Revolution, Radley…

  • Exporting Poor Work Environments

    After a long time of successfully managing to avoid the blog, I eventually clicked this past week when I was sent Fake Steve Jobs’ reaction to the news that an employee of Foxconn, one of Apple’s Chinese ‘manufacturing partners’, committed suicide shortly after reporting a missing iPhone v4 prototype. We can’t make these products in…

  • The Ideal Creative Workspace

    Jonah Lehrer suggests that the ideal creative workplace is “a room with blue walls that feels very far away and is filled with references to foreign countries”. Why would these three conditions be conducive to creativity? Colours can influence how we think (in one experiment, red backgrounds were found to make participants more accurate, while…

  • The 12 Core Human Skills

    Elaborating on a concept from one of my favourite posts written by Dilbert creator Scott Adams (career advice: either “become the best at one specific thing” or “become very good (top 25%) at two or more things”), Josh Kaufman of Personal MBA suggests the 12 core human skills that we should strive to become very good…

  • The Principles of Edward Tufte

    The problem: “presenting large amounts of information in a way that is compact, accurate, adequate for the purpose, and easy to understand”. The solution: Edward Tufte (actually, the solution is “to develop a consistent approach to the display of graphics which enhances its dissemination, accuracy, and ease of comprehension”… but that’s not as catchy). Yes,…

  • Making Graphs That Work

    Seth Godin offers some advice on creating quality, legible, graphs.  Short and sweet. Don’t let popular spreadsheets be in charge of the way you look. Tell a story. The only 4 stories permissible: Things are going great, look! Things are a disaster, help! Nothing much is happening. We need to work together to figure out…

  • The Negative Effect of Positive Thinking

    An entire industry has been created and thrives based solely on the theories of positive psychology: self affirmations help to motivate, we are told, and they may even help those with low self-esteem build their confidence. Now research is starting to show the opposite: that self affirmations (or ‘positive self-statements’) have a negative effect on…

  • Developing a Web App on a Shoestring Budget

    As the title suggests—and the tips prove—this brief guide to getting a web app up-and-running on a small budget requires, well, a budget (as opposed to no budget and doing it all yourself). The steps: Create a clear wireframe model Outsource the development Use an open source content management system Start a design contest Leverage…

  • Books to Ignore

    Like timesink productivity websites, books written purely to instruct us what books to read are inherently counterproductive.  The Second Pass does the opposite, producing a list of ten ‘classic’ books not to read. White Noise by Don DeLillo Absalom, Absalom by William Faulkner One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez The Road by…

  • Alcohol in Moderation: Not So Good, Maybe

    Moderate alcohol intake has long been lauded as an ingredient of the healthy lifestyle; being good for your heart and your longevity. According to a growing number of vocal psychologists, however, studies showing health benefits from moderate alcohol consumption are purely correlatory and any advice coming from them should be taken with caution. From an…