Monday Links from the Bank Holiday B&Q vol. CXXXIX

[BrilloPad]

"success is a catalyst for failure"

Sounds like the slogan for IBs.

[Gonzo]

Did I ever tell you about the time... - "Did you meet a pop star once? Is it a dull story? Stand up straight and tell the rest of the class." Excellent collection of stories about people having uninteresting encounters with pop stars, such as this classic tale by Simon Fox: "I met Dave Hill from Slade in Tandys and gave him advice on running a power extension up to his loft." I've submitted my story from 2005 of the Sugababes blocking my way to the coffee machine at ClientCo but moving when asked, but it hasn't been posted yet. Maybe it isn't dull enough.

Shane Embury

I can confirm that he was in the audience at the 1990 Reading Festival. I remember seeing him but did not have the courage to actually talk to him.

I was once on a flight from London City Airport to Copenhagen with all the members and entourage of New Young Pony Club once. They all agreed that it was a good flight. I could tell that they were musicians but I didn't know who they were so had to consult the schedule of the Roskilde festival that was on at the time to work it out. I nearly did ask them but decided not to because that would probably be humiliating for all of us.

[EternalOptimist]

blinking after decapitation ?


weird.

good finds though NF

[NickFitz]

The handle for the hot tap in the kitchen has broken, so for the first time ever I'm going to a DIY store on a Bank Holiday While I'm doing that, you can be reading this lot:

• Losing One’s Head: A Frustrating Search for the ‘Truth’ about Decapitation - "I have often heard a story retold about a man who attended the execution of his friend during the French Revolution. Seconds after the guillotine fell, the man retrieved the severed head and asked it a series of questions in order to determine whether or not it was possible to retain consciousness after decapitation. Through a system of blinking, the victim allegedly communicated his message back to his friend." Medical historian Lindsey Fitzharris, who blogs as The Chirurgeon's Apprentice, hunts down the truth behind this well-known tale.
  
  
• The Disciplined Pursuit of Less - "Why don't successful people and organizations automatically become very successful? ...Curiously, and overstating the point in order to make it, success is a catalyst for failure." Greg McKeown on the importance of rejecting opportunities.
  
  
• The innovations of Internet Explorer - Nicholas C. Zakas reminds us just how much the modern web owes to Microsoft's much-maligned browser: "Long before Internet Explorer became the browser everyone loves to hate, it was the driving force of innovation on the Internet... It may be hard to believe that Internet Explorer is actually to thank for a lot of the features that we take for granted today, but a quick walk through history shows that it’s true."
  
  
• Authors Behaving Badly: How I Pissed Off Legions of Emily Giffin Fans - When Corey Ann Doyle posted a less-than-enthusiastic book review, she sparked a flamewar by the author's husband and assistant that soon spread from Amazon to Facebook and Twitter, and ultimately to threatening voicemails: "Around 11:00PM I received 3 different calls, all blocked, with one leaving a “delete your review!” voicemail and the second stating that I should just kill myself for being such a miserable person for attacking poor Emily. REALLY? And yes, I’m talking with the cops about this already."
  
  
• Sylvia Plath’s Drawings - "London’s Mayor Gallery recently exhibited 44 of Sylvia Plath’s pen and ink sketches that capture her “deepest source of inspiration”: art. The astonishingly adroit drawings reveal not only the literary icon’s exceptional attention to detail, but also a kind of diverse yet introspective curiosity about the world, from nature to architecture, from intimacy to public life."
  
  
• Stanford biologist and computer scientist discover the "anternet" - "A collaboration between a Stanford ant biologist and a computer scientist has revealed that the behavior of harvester ants as they forage for food mirrors the protocols that control traffic on the Internet." The full paper is also available online: PLoS Computational Biology: The Regulation of Ant Colony Foraging Activity without Spatial Information
  
  
• Python Books - Not Monty, but a good collection of free resources concerning the programming language and associated frameworks.
  
  
• Turn of the Century - "Today, according to the National Institute of Standards and Technology, there are close to 800,000 global standards. But go back a century and a half and you find an American economy in which there were literally none. On April 21, 1864, a man named William Sellers began to change that. Sellers initiated the first successful standardization fight in history, over the humble screw. That struggle was not just about a particular standard. It was about the importance of standardization itself." Excellent article by James Surowiecki on how the establishment of standards enabled the era of mass production. (As this is from Wired ten years ago, we must be a long way past that 800,000 by now.)
  
  
• London Artisan Integers; distribution, Hotel Infinity, punk, an excuse & explanation of sorts. - "I’m very proud to launch London Integers, the UK’s finest hand-crafted artisanal integers emporium. You can go and get your own London artisan integer right now by going here: http://www.londonintegers.com/create" Dan Catt provides integers, mainly so we don't have to rely on the USA to provide them.
  
  
• Did I ever tell you about the time... - "Did you meet a pop star once? Is it a dull story? Stand up straight and tell the rest of the class." Excellent collection of stories about people having uninteresting encounters with pop stars, such as this classic tale by Simon Fox: "I met Dave Hill from Slade in Tandys and gave him advice on running a power extension up to his loft." I've submitted my story from 2005 of the Sugababes blocking my way to the coffee machine at ClientCo but moving when asked, but it hasn't been posted yet. Maybe it isn't dull enough.

Happy invoicing!