One of the things I've learned fairly early on in the journey that is parenting is that kids tend to want something more if it's not available to them. With my sons, this becomes particularly apparent when one is playing with a particular toy: that toy seems to often become the most desirable object in … Continue reading The power of scarcity
Today marks the the centenary of my grandfather Bertie's birthday (that's him on the left above, along with my dad, Gran and uncle pictured in around 1948). Grandad was a physicist. After completing his education at Queen's University in Belfast, he headed over to the mainland to work for GEC. This was in an era … Continue reading Centenary
This morning, amongst the baby news, is coverage of David Cameron's latest big scheme - to make UK ISPs implement mandatory opt-out pornography filters on their services. Another great example of politicians not understanding the fallibility of technology. My mobile provider, Orange, currently provides such a service. It's one I've disabled, not because I'm a … Continue reading The Scunthorpe issue
The 156th weeknote. Which means 3 years' worth, if my maths still works. Actually, it's a bit more than three years ago that I wrote the first one of these, as I have taken time off and not written them when on holiday and the like since this in May 2010. Back then, I had … Continue reading Weeknote 156: three years
In the first week of September, I'm going to be speaking at the wonderful Silicon Beach conference in (hopefully still) sunny Bournemouth. The following article isn't my talk, but sets up what I will be talking about - the importance of empathy in design (and ways to achieve it). If you are interested in coming … Continue reading Silicon Beach 2013 – The World Isn’t Flat
I fundamentally don't trust Ian Duncan Smith. I do trust, however, that he holds deep beliefs that social security benefits dissuade people from working. For me, I agree, but only in the same way that I believe a lack of oxygen dissuades people from breathing. I don't think he's right about causality, and he and … Continue reading Balance of evidence-based policy
Next week: back to normal (whatever that is).
Continuing the theme whilst I'm off on holiday... Now this one is all Apple's fault. In the old days there were files and directories on MS-DOS and the same in Unix. Then Apple got all fancy pants with MacOS and started talking about Documents and Folders (which to be fair to them, is slightly more … Continue reading Crap Tech Industry Metaphors: 3. Files and Folders
Next week: more of the same...
Numbers are an incredibly inhuman abstract construct. It's no coincidence that for some primitive tribespeople numbering systems progressed no further than "1, 2, many". Whilst pootling through the lanes of west Pembrokeshire this afternoon I heard the broadcaster Paddy O'Connell give a good demonstration of our appalling ability to handle things numeric. Standing in for … Continue reading Number blind
