Self Distraction
This is one of those gags that is so simple it is astonishing nobody thought of it before. If you haven’t already seen these, there is a series of videos that feature young children being shown old technology like radios and Walkmans. Invariably, they are aghast at the size of these things and you feel ancient.
Until Clickhole gets revenge for us. The video isn’t embeddable but do it, click this link and Watch How These Kids React To A Boombox Playing A Recording Of Their Parents Fighting
After six hours of looking at study material (and three cups of coffee and five chocolate bars) it’s easy to think we have it committed to memory. Every page, every important fact, evokes a comforting feeling of familiarity. The cramming has left a lingering glow of activity in our sensory and memory systems, a glow that allows our brain to swiftly tag our study notes as “something that I’ve seen before”. But being able to recognise something isn’t the same as being able to recall it.
Different parts of the brain support different kinds of memory. Recognition is strongly affected by the ease with which information passes through the sensory areas of our brain, such as the visual cortex if you are looking at notes. Recall is supported by a network of different areas of the brain, including the frontal cortex and the temporal lobe, which coordinate to recreate a memory from the clues you give it. Just because your visual cortex is fluently processing your notes after five consecutive hours of you looking at them, doesn’t mean the rest of your brain is going to be able to reconstruct the memory of them when you really need it to.
Memory: Why cramming for tests often fails – Tom Stafford, BBC News Online (18 September 2014)
I don’t know, I’d need to be more organised in order to have the time to space out when I revised or crammed. But read the full feature for more, if you’re not currently cramming.
Give this man some credit and some applause: we’ve all seen the new iOS 8 keyboard’s way of suggesting the next word you might want but he’s only gone and used it to create a song.
Mind you, who owns the song? This guy, Jonathan Mann, or his lyricist, Siri?
Looking for a simple “delete” option in your account settings for that messaging app, or that online shopping service? Good luck. Clicked on the “cancel account” link and saw an option to cancel a subscription cycle, but not to delete an account? Yep. Don’t quite know what the difference is between “deactivate” and “delete”? I’m with you.
To Delete, or Not to Delete? If Only We Could – Lauren Goode, Re/code (13 October 2014)
Goode was taking the route we probably should all consider: getting more done by getting rid of distractions. But as she tries to actually delete her online accounts, things got stubborn.
Read the full feature for more, including what’s advice she can give you for trying to do this yourself.
There’s an interview doing the rounds that apparently features John Sculley talking about Steve Jobs and Apple. (Previously on Sculley… Jobs hires him, they’re best pals, then they’re not, Sculley fires Jobs. Now read on.)
I say the interview apparently says this because, on the one hand, I haven’t watched it yet – I thought we could do that together – and on the other because every bleedin’ interview with that man is about exactly that same topic.
What I’m interested in more, from our productivity point of view, is how Sculley attempted to shape his story when he was still in the thick of it. He wrote a book called Odyssey: From Pepsi to Apple which at the time I really enjoyed. Later I said that to someone and they looked at me exactly the way I would now. Because of them, I got the book back off my shelf, opened it up, shut it again.
It’s not a very good book.
But here’s a guy attempting to put his career and its single most notable moment into a shape, a narrative that ultimately showed him in the best light. I don’t care whether he succeeded or whether it was even possible, I do care that we could try the same thing.
Why not? You are CEO of your work, I am of mine, let’s write our autobiographies in such a way that we make sense and most importantly that our successes get better coverage than our failures.
I’m not sure I’m really advocating that we write 100,000-word books about us, I have limits to my ego – says the man with two blogs, a speaking tour and previously a podcast – but that bit with the successes and failures could be big.
I forget things I do that are good. If I pull something off then no matter how hard it was for me, it’s done now so I know it’s easy for everybody else and I undervalue my own effort. But I just went a bit bombastic for a second, wrote about my towering glory and that time only last night when I successfully roasted a chicken at 1am, I could feel good about myself.
Possibly also silly, but.
Here’s that Sculley interview if you’re sitting comfortably.
Specifically, a feature on Time and Motion. Since this is the BBC, it naturally includes pop music. Time and motion study? “Every Breath You Take”.
Okay.
But it’s an interesting little package:
I’m just saying.
A comedy club in Barcelona is experimenting with charging users per laugh, using facial-recognition technology to track how much they enjoyed the show.
The software is installed on tablets attached to the back of each seat at the Teatreneu club.
Each laugh is charged at 0.30 euros (23p) with a cap of 24 euros (£18). Takings are up so far.
Speechless.
Part of me hopes that it’s astrologer Susan Miller. If she actually believes the utter garbage of astrology, there is a word for her and it’s “Goodbye”. If she doesn’t and this is preying on the gullible, there might be other words.
Though either way, someone who claims to be able to foretell the future really shouldn’t have a website that looks like it was designed in the 1980s.
But then, no, hang on, websites are technology and Miller says that this is a bad time to spend any cash on technology. Specifically now, as in some period of weeks around here: I refuse to indulge the nonsense by stating the dates she gives. There’s not a whole lot of point, really: it’s all bollocks and at the end of the period astrologers will says “see? told you” and everybody sensible will have forgotten this crap existed. The only ones left paying attention will be the aforementioned gullible and, you know, there’s just so much you can do to help people.
Such as quoting astrologers and laughing. Miller has been talking to Time magazine, which I usually rather enjoy, saying that we shouldn’t buy iPhones right now because Mercury is in retrograde. Uh-huh. I’m guessing that means we’re at the spot in Mercury’s orbit where because we’re also moving in an orbit we appear to overtake it so Mercury’ seems to fall back or something. Mercury’s fine. Orbiting away. It’s all in how you look at it, where you stand and how stupid you are.
But I can’t accuse someone of having no scientific basis without asking if they have evidence and there is some. There’s proof:
Miller says that her daughter — “an Aries, they never trust what you say and have to do their own little empirical research” — once bought a laptop during Mercury retrograde and had to sell it on eBay after realizing she hadn’t bought enough hard drive space.
Those Aries rascals. No possible chance that they cocked up and regretted saving some cash by buying a low-spec computer, no. It has to be that the stars and planets of the entire universe aligned across the infinite cosmos to tell her she shouldn’t have gone to Currys.
Talk about not taking responsibility.
If you want to read more then off you pop, the link is under the quote, I don’t want to go there with you. And the full article includes a link to that Website That Time Forgot too.