- Conversation my arse - "Andrex has become a great case study in modern marketing, because it represents the logical outcome of two dominant trends: the mission escalation trend and the conversation trend. Both are waves of brand thinking that have swept all before them in recent years, and it’s not exactly Andrex’s fault that they have been caught up in it. It’s just that the nature of their business means stretching both trends to breaking point." Scathing observations on currently fashionable approaches to marketing.
- Albertus and The Prisoner - A look at the font that helped to define the character of the cult 1960 TV series: ”We’ve not been able to find any direct statements from the McGoohan or any of the other creators of the show about why Albertus was chosen. It has a strong flavour to it, which will have helped to define the Village as somewhere out of the ordinary, and perhaps its duality fits well with the feeling of the setting as somewhere both old and new.”
- Sodium's explosive secrets revealed - "The spectacular reaction of alkali metals with water was poorly understood — despite being a staple of chemistry classes." New research suggests that the explosive reaction is about more than just hydrogen released from water molecules.
- Notes on watching "Aliens" for the first time again, with a bunch of kids - Matt Zoller Seitz revisits the classic sci-fi film in the company of children: ”I suggested "Aliens," thinking, "Well, it's exciting, and even if they haven't see the first one, the movie tells the story well enough that you won't be confused about who Ripley is and what's at stake for her.”… as we watched, I realized again that while unfortunately you can't see a great movie again for the first time, the next-best thing is to show it to people who've never seen it.”
- A Spreadsheet Way of Knowledge - Steven Levy: ”I learned, belatedly, that last October 17 was Spreadsheet Day, marking the 35th anniversary of VisiCalc, the Apple II program that started it all. This moved me to republish a long piece I wrote 30 years ago about the significance, as well as the dangers, of this advance. (This was so long ago that I had to define what a cursor was!) The piece first appeared in Harper’s, November 1984."
- Dark Energy Camera Takes Accidental Gigantic, Magnificent Picture of Comet Lovejoy - "Oops! In a happy accident, Comet Lovejoy just happened to be in the field of view of the 570-megapixel Dark Energy Camera, the world’s most powerful digital camera." Seek, and ye shall find
- Life with Bob Dylan, 1989-2006 - "Uncut talks to the musicians, producers and crew who have worked with Dylan from 1989 to 2006, and catches an unprecedented glimpse of the real Bob…"
- How I Requested My Photographs From The Department of Homeland Security - Runa A. Sandvik finds out what Big Brother knows about her: ”I have my photograph taken and my fingerprints scanned every time I enter the United States. So do all other foreign nationals… In response to a Freedom of Information Act request I filed in November 2014, the Department of Homeland Security released a document containing information collected about me under this program over the last four years."
- LibreOffice Project's Check - "We invite you to read a new article about how we analyzed another well-known open-source project. This time it is the LibreOffice office suite that I have examined. The project is developed by more than 480 programmers. We have found that it is pretty high-quality and that it is regularly checked by the Coverity static analyzer. But, like in any other large project, we still managed to find previously undetected bugs and defects and in this article we are going to discuss them. Just for a change, this time we will be accompanied by cows instead of unicorns."
- Nineteenth-Century Nuts: The Anatomy of a Victorian Lad’s Mag - Salacious Victoriana examined by Dr Bob Nicholson, the Digital Victorianist: ”I’ve recently become obsessed with the Illustrated Police News. First published in 1864, this low-brow Victorian newspaper made its name by offering sensational, illustrated accounts of the week’s biggest crime stories… However, in the mid 1890s the paper came under new ownership and began to morph into something rather different. Crime stories continued to appear, but were increasingly displaced by sports coverage and sex. Boxing news, racy music hall songs, scandalous divorces, adverts for pornography, and sketches of half-naked female celebrities soon became the staple features of the paper. In other words, it started to look a lot like a typical issue of Nuts!"
Happy invoicing!
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