Category Archives: observations
In support of students
For me, it is very simple: restricting access to education is wrong.
Education is as much of an investment for a government as it is for the individual.
Also posted in humanity 15 Comments
Unintended consequences
Two stories.
1) A former colleague of mine did a research project for a power company on one of those machines you have in your house that goes red if you are consuming lots of electricity. One participant started boiling water on the gas hob when she was making tea because that way she could keep [...]
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 [...]
Dangers of double negatives