Author: William Gallagher

Weekend read: hiding through razzle dazzle

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You are reading the only sentence I may ever write about cars. That was it. Right there. You’re welcome to re-read it, but you’ve already got everything out of it about cars that I have ever or will know. It is for want of trying. But still, this fascinated me: new cars are being tested out in public and they are painted in the most astonishing crazy ways – in order to hide them:

It seems that the adoption of “dazzle” to hide car designs coincided with the explosion of consumer cameras, and more so with the ubiquity of smartphones. GM told me that the practice began in the late 1980s, but didn’t really explode until the 1990s. “In recent years with the rise of smartphones and mobile internet devices, the vehicle camouflaging technique has really escalated to a technique used for the entire lineup,” the company’s reps added.

So, how does it work? Dazzle camouflage sounds oxymoronic: Why would you cover something you want to disguise with vivid, contrast-heavy patterns? It’s actually one of the primary concepts of camo, found both in nature and manmade systems. Think of a white tiger with black stripes. Those stripes run perpendicular to the line of the lion’s limbs, and in this way, they break up the continuous form of the animal itself. Along the same lines, Army camouflage is designed to break up the lines of soldiers’ arms and legs.

How Automakers Use a WWI-Era Camo Technique to Disguise Prototype Cars – Kelsey Campbell-Dollaghan, Gizmodo (17 October 2014)

It’s a fascinating article that takes in the history of ships where camouflage was a bit more life-and-death than a car marker’s bottom line. Read the full piece.

Factoid: we’re allowed to make up words

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We’re writers. We can do this. There’s precedence. You already know that Shakespeare, when stuck for the right phrase, would sooner make it up than consult a thesaurus, but he wasn’t alone. And sometimes writers create words that then run away from them, that escape their writer and come to mean something else:

On occasion, a writer will coin a fine neologism that spreads quickly but then changes meaning. “Factoid” was a term created by Norman Mailer in 1973 for a piece of information that becomes accepted as a fact even though it’s not actually true, or an invented fact believed to be true because it appears in print. Mailer wrote in Marilyn, “Factoids…that is, facts which have no existence before appearing in a magazine or newspaper, creations which are not so much lies as a product to manipulate emotion in the Silent Majority.” Of late, factoid has come to mean a small or trivial fact that makes it a contronym (also called a Janus word) in that it means both one thing and its opposite, such as “cleve” (to cling or to split), “sanction” (to permit or to punish) or “citation” (commendation or a summons to appear in court). So factoid has become a victim of novelist C.S. Lewis’s term “verbicide,” the willful distortion or deprecation of a word’s original meaning.

The Origins of Writerly Words – Paul Dickson, Time (30 April 2014)

Read the full Time magazine piece.

Eat that

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Okay, so, there is no question but that the best food in the world is dark chocolate and that the best drink in the world is builders’-strength Yorkshire Tea. Easy. Some poor eejits don’t realise this, though, and have gone off on some damn fool idealistic crusade to find out what foods make you sleep well and which ones keep you up.

Tossing and turning. Long, sleepless nights. They’re draining, frustrating, and, well, exhausting—physically and mentally. And they’re usually unnecessary, experts say, but can be counteracted by minor dietary tweaks. Indeed, what you put in your mouth can directly affect how many ZZZs come out. “The majority of people with day-to-day insomnia could be sleeping like puppies if they made just a few changes,” says Jacob Teitelbaum, medical director of the Fibromyalgia and Fatigue Centers, which are located nationwide, and author of From Fatigued to Fantastic. “And if you know how to eat right? You’re going to be way ahead of the game.”

From cherries to almonds, consider these soothing, snooze-inducing foods:

Bananas. Make them a daily staple. They’re packed with potassium and magnesium, nutrients that double as natural muscle relaxants. Plus, they contain the sleep-inducing amino acid tryptophan, which ultimately turns into serotonin and melatonin in the brain. Serotonin is a neurotransmitter that promotes relaxation; melatonin is a chemical that promotes sleepiness. It takes about an hour for tryptophan to reach the brain, so plan your snack accordingly.

[See: Top-Rated Diets Overall]

Sleep-Promoting (and Sleep-Stealing) Foods – Angela Haupt, US News (19 July 2012)

Bananas are just the first of the good ones and there some bad boys in there too. Read the full piece.

Handiest. Thing. Ever. Make and take phone calls on your Mac

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If you’re the kind of person who leaves your iPhone in a pocket or purse placed inconveniently across the room, you’ll appreciate the ability to answer an incoming call with your Mac. You can also initiate calls from your Mac—to the other person, the call will look like it’s coming from your iPhone, but you’ll be chattering away with your Mac’s built-in microphone and speakers. For this to work you have to configure both your Mac and iPhone.

How to make and receive iPhone calls with your Mac – Christopher Breen, Macworld (17 October 2014)

This is the thing I think I am most looking forward to using now that I’ve moved from the OS X Yosemite beta to the final release. In theory it worked before but I had problems and put them down to the beta nature of it all. Plus I just put it down, decided to do it again some day.

That day is now. Or it would be if I were back at my office. I’m away with my iPad and I have already used that to make and receive calls. The audio quality is subtly different but receiving calls sounds great and making calls sounds fine. I love how it just happened, too. I’d left my iPhone in my office and was reading something on my iPad somewhere else in the house when the phone rang – and then so did my iPad. One tap and I was taking that call. Gorgeous.

So I know I’ll use that again and I know that I’ll use it when my Mac is doing it too. Maybe even more so: I do a lot of phone interviews so I’m assuming I will be able to use Audio Hijack Pro to record these. This could even transform my biggest problem of prevaricating before phoning people. When they are one tap away, I’m going to tap.

If you’re using iOS 8 on an iPhone and an iPad, those two already work together, you’re set. If you want to do it with your Mac too, you need to do a couple of things. Read this full piece on Macworld for exactly how to do it.

Søren Kierkegaard nails it about internet trolls – in the 19th Century

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There is nothing really new. And nothing old that doesn’t apply today, at least unless it involves floppy discs. The invariably interesting and absorbing writer Maria Popova’s latest entries in her Brain Pickings site includes a piece about trolling and bullying – in the 19th Century, not the 21st. The crux of her article is this quote from philosopher Søren Kierkegaard:

There is a form of envy of which I frequently have seen examples, in which an individual tries to obtain something by bullying. If, for instance, I enter a place where many are gathered, it often happens that one or another right away takes up arms against me by beginning to laugh; presumably he feels that he is being a tool of public opinion. But lo and behold, if I then make a casual remark to him, that same person becomes infinitely pliable and obliging. Essentially it shows that he regards me as something great, maybe even greater than I am: but if he can’t be admitted as a participant in my greatness, at least he will laugh at me. But as soon as he becomes a participant, as it were, he brags about my greatness.

That is what comes of living in a petty community.

Why Haters Hate: Kierkegaard Explains the Psychology of Bullying and Online Trolling in 1847 – Maria Popova, Brain Pickings – (13 October 2014)

Just as I did, just as I’m sure you did, Popova sees the Ben Franklin effect in that passage. I have Benfranklined people now I know of it, I can think of people I need to Kierkegaard too.

But just as I urge you to read this one piece on Brain Pickings I’ve already read it so I’m off to continue my regular poking around the whole Brain Pickings site. Join me when you’re done.

OneHourADay app briefly free

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What could you achieve in just one hour a day?

Parkinson’s Law: Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion – So what happens you set just one hour a day for to achieve your goals?

By breaking down a goal into smaller hourly tasks, it will not only make it easier but also more effective in achieving your goals.

Try this simple app, that helps you get down your desired goals and also a detailed description then start the timer when you are ready to dedicate one hour of your day to achieve your goals. The timer will stop at one completed hour until the next day. It will also keep a running total of all the hours you have achieved towards your goal.

You can set a daily reminder and add additional goals.

Example Goals:
Revising for exams
Playing the Piano
Write a book

Give it a go and see what you could achieve in just one hour a day!

Parents, stop laughing. For everybody else, maybe yes, maybe you can get an hour spare to work on your goals. Even if it’s not necessarily 60 minutes in a row.

I’m not sure of the value of this app. I already work in hours, it just seems to suit me to do one hour on this then one hour on that. But I do it most of the time by asking Siri on my iPhone to set a timer for an hour. (Sometimes Siri tells me “Remember: a watched iPhone never boils.”) So if you have an iPhone that can run OneHourADay, you don’t actually need OneHourADay.

But it looks good, it’s a positive reminder of what you want to do and there is something satisfying about seeing it on your screen. Plus, it was £1.49 (or $1.99) and it’s now briefly free, so do take a look. Watch that it’s still free when you check out that link, though: I’m expecting the free offer to expire soon.

Tidy up before you clean up

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Before beginning her career as a successful author and speaker, Patsy Clairmont did something unexpected. She washed the dishes.

She wanted to take her message to the world, but as she was readying herself, she felt nudged to start in an unusual way. She got out of bed and cleaned her house.

In other words, Patsy got rid of the mess. And it put her in a position to start living more creatively. We must do the same.

Bringing your message to the world does not begin on the main stage. It starts at home. In the kitchen. At your desk. On your cluttered computer. You need to clear your life of distractions, not perfectly, but enough so that there’s room for you to create.

Clutter is Killing Your Creativity (And What to Do About It) – Jeff Goins, Goins, Writer (undated, probably 14 October 2014

Read the full piece.

Weekend read: The Adultery Arms Race

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I’m not judging. And I think this goes beyond questions of fidelity, I think it goes in to issues of our individuality. As tools let us always know where our partners and friends are, there is a convenience similar to the way that you have forgotten what it was like arranging a place to meet and having to stick to it. We all send a text now saying we’re a bit late or can we try that Sushi place next door?

There is also an easing, a relief, a reassurance. If my wife is away driving a long route, I do worry about her so in theory being able to see that she’s got there would be good. I can do this, we can do this, but I won’t. If she takes a left turn and wanders off down a scenic route, isn’t that her business? If the scenic route is a euphemism then my heart rate just went up but still, fundamentally, I don’t own her. I need to keep her by making her want to be, not because I’ve got GotchaApp 2.1.

The Atlantic website is less concerned than I am about individuality, it’s initially more concerned with the betrayed spouse. But in a piece that is at first 1984-like worrying, it goes through both the technical and some of the emotional issues – plus for all the tools to help someone catch their partner, it turns out there are tools helping the partner evade detection. Hence The Atlantic’s title of The Adultery Arms Race.

Here’s a taste from the start:

In an earlier era, a suspicious husband like Jay might have rifled through Ann’s pockets or hired a private investigator. But having stumbled upon Find My iPhone’s utility as a surveillance tool, Jay wondered what other apps might help him keep tabs on his wife. He didn’t have to look far. Spouses now have easy access to an array of sophisticated spy software that would give Edward Snowden night sweats: programs that record every keystroke; that compile detailed logs of our calls, texts, and video chats; that track a phone’s location in real time; that recover deleted messages from all manner of devices (without having to touch said devices); that turn phones into wiretapping equipment; and on and on.

Jay spent a few days researching surveillance tools before buying a program called Dr. Fone, which enabled him to remotely recover text messages from Ann’s phone. Late one night, he downloaded her texts onto his work laptop. He spent the next day reading through them at the office. Turns out, his wife had become involved with a co-worker. There were thousands of text messages between them, many X‑rated—an excruciatingly detailed record of Ann’s betrayal laid out on Jay’s computer screen. “I could literally watch her affair progress,” Jay told me, “and that in itself was painful.”

The Adultery Arms Race – Michelle Cottle, The Atlantic (14 October 2014)

Read the full piece.

Keep 1Password 4 around after you upgrade

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I’m waiting to hear back from the makers Agilebits and will update this as I can. But my copy of 1Password 5 is lacking five passwords – that I know of. It happens that I created five this week as part of a particular job so I both know they were in 1Password 4 and I needed them today for that work.

Not a sign of them in 1Password 5 or, where I first went for them, the mini 1Password in my Mac’s menu bar.

But they are all still there in 1Password 4.

Now, Agilebits doesn’t recommend you having two versions of 1Password and if they tell me that’s my problem, I’ll believe them. Except, I’d dragged 1Password 4 to the wastebasket.

It is fluke that I hadn’t emptied it. And if I had, I’d have lost those passwords.

With the previous Dropbox bug that Agilebits had eventually copped to, that makes nine passwords I’ve lost – that I’ve found out about.

More when Agilebits responds.

All writing reveals us, even our CVs

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From the school where funny and true are uncomfortably rubbing up against one another, this is just the smallest extract from The World’s First and Only Completely Honest Résumé of a Graphic Designer. I chose this extract not because it is the best but because it’s a segment that works by itself – just you go read the whole thing to see how excellent the entire article is:

Lucid Concepts (2004-2007)

I loved everything about this company, and regret I worked only three short years there. It was run on chaos in the morning, fear in the afternoon, and Ritalin at night, all qualities for producing great design. Lucid is where I produced my most misunderstood piece, the one-hundred-and-twenty-two page deck explaining why Citadel Airlines should change their logo’s main colorway from one shade of red to another.

McSweeney’s Internet Tendency: The World’s First and Only Completely Honest Résumé of a Graphic Designer. – Marco Kaye, McSweeney’s (4 June 2012)

Read the full piece.