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Category Archives: observations
Design by enthusiasm
As many of you are most probably aware I work for Canonical and some of my blog posts from here are syndicated to design.canonical.com. I was asked a rather interesting question on that blog and partly due to the impatience of the asker decided to respond by way of a post. My other motivation for [...]
Guadec Day 2: In pursuit of critical mass
Today I was reminded of this quote by Jane Goodall:
If everyone could think a little bit about small choices they make every day: What do you eat, does it result in animal cruelty? What do you wear, how was it made, does it damage the environment? When people start thinking like that they do change. [...]
Could you lend me some withdrawal please?
I find it enormously irritating when cash machines offer me a ‘withdrawal’.
When I walk up to the cash point I am thinking about getting some cash. Some money. Moolah. Readies. Wonga. I have never uttered the line “I am just going to the cash machine to get a withdrawal” and I doubt that I ever [...]
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Blogging
At some point or another those who blog and those who read blogs end up having some sort of dialogue (internal or external) about blogging.
The Voice’s workplace has recently launched a blog. (Though, as it allows no comment, I would argue that it is more of an archive of articles.) And, as a clever sort [...]
Paranoid population
Has anyone heard those new ads on the radio? “How can you tell the difference between someone just hanging about and a terrorist casing a place?” (Ok, so I am paraphrasing a little here but that is the gist of it!)
I don’t like it. Is creating a paranoid population really the best use of taxpayers [...]
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Is internet access a utility?
I have been staying with The Voice for the last few weeks. His broadband connection hasn’t been working for the last 2 weeks. The inadequacies of Tiscali and Sky Broadband notwithstanding – between them they seem to think that a 4 week interruption to service is acceptable – is it only me who sees internet [...]
Posted in observations 3 Comments
I’m feeling lucky
I spend a lot of my time watching people. Mostly I do this as part of some user research piece or the other but often it is because I am just nosy and like to see how people go about doing things. I also eavesdrop. Apologies to all but in my defence, I do pick [...]


Unintended consequences