The One Laptop Per Child Program

I just think that the One Laptop Per Child program is amazing. Brilliant technology, great scheme. I think that I might contribute to this, as a solution to my donation dilemma.

NY Times technology reporter David Pogue gives this nice intro to the OLPC:




Kevin Rudd eat your heart out!

What is disappointing, however, is that the OLPC has made some of the big technology players jealous. Microsoft and others are scared that they're losing potential customers in the developing world, and so they are developing ultra cheap laptops of their own running cheap cutdown versions of XP for these regions. Terrible. It's bad enough that the first world is flooded with crappy virus infested Windows boxes. Why inflict that on kiddies in developing countries?

Happy Arbitary Calendar Reset Day

I'm a real scrooge when it comes to New Years. I find it completely underwhelming.

Just to annoy everyone, I make a point of going to bed extra early on NYE to make sure that I'm definitely asleep at midnight. That'll show em!

And no, I don't do new years resolutions either. If something is important enough to be made into a resolution, then its important enough to start doing the moment you think of it. Why wait for new years?

Interestingly, the Cancer Council here in Australia has recently come out and said that New Years is one of the worst dates to choose to try to quit smoking. With all the parties and drinking and stress of this time of year, the temptation to smoke is likely to be at its greatest.

Ok, that's enough from me for this year... I'll get back to wetting these here blankets (grumble grumble). See you in '08.

Mac Software recommendation: OmniFocus, the ultimate to-do list

We nerds love systems -- systems of all kinds, protocols of all sorts. We're always on the lookout for ways of living more like robots. And so for nerds, clever little systems designed to help you get organised are always a really appealing way to overcome the clutter and chaos of life. This is even more true when the system can involve some kind of gadget or software. Nerds, you may have noticed, love gadgets and software.

But sometimes we nerds forget that, ultimately, we aren't robots. And so we get too ambitious and try to implement systems that are too nerdy. I've fallen into this trap many a time. A couple of years ago I built my self a Super Duper Intelligent Techno ToDo List using FileMaker. At its core was a super intelligent algorythm that would prioritise all my to-dos based on the importance of the project they were a part of, the domain that they contributed to (e.g., career, social life, health, etc.) and how soon they were due. The hope was that it would run my life for me, showing me the most important things to do at any given time. The system took me ages to set it up, and it was all very clever (if I do say so myself), but I only ended up using it for a couple of weeks because, ultimately, it just wasn't human friendly.

And then i discovered Getting Things Done (GTD). GTD is a little nerd cult based on a book by David Allen called, funnily enough, Getting Things Done. It is a set of 'action management' principals that are complement the human mind, not replace it. The basis of the system, as I understand it, stems from the notion that we typically have ideas about things that need to be done at times when we have no way of doing them, and that trying to remember to do these things is both inefficient and stressful. So GTD encourages us to abolish the practice of taking 'mental notes' in favour of either a paper and/or digital system. And under GTD such a system should include a few core features:

a) ubiquitous capture - one must be able to capture todo items quickly and easily, at any time (the moment they come to mind) and keep them safe.

b) context based lists - todo items must be grouped together on the basis of the context that they can be done in, or the resources they require, NOT, as we instinctively tend to do, on the basis of what project they are a part of.

c) trust - you need to be able to give yourself the iron clad garuntee that once a todo is in the system, it will DEFINETLY be seen when it needs to be seen, and so, one has to develop the discipline of regularly processing one's inbox and context lists.

Those, in my opinion, are the core essentials. You can learn more via the wikipedia article. It's nothing revolutionary. In fact, David Allen describes GTD as "just advanced common sense".

A GTD system can take many forms. For example, you could implement it using index cards, a notebook, or text files. But if you are a Mac user, I would recommend this new piece of software from OmniGroup: OmniFocus.

A free beta version of OmniFocus has just be released, although i've been an alpha tester since early this year. I think that it is the most elegant GTD software available. It's become an indispensable part of my life now; I couldn't live without it.

Best features (IMHO):


The quick entry window.When working in any other application a single (assignable) keystroke brings up a 'quick entry' window. You bang out a quick note, hit enter, and voila, it's in your digital inbox.

Smart start- and due-date parsing.As well as entering dates via a mini calendar window, OmniFocus will also recognise dates written in almost any format (e.g., 01/01/08, January 1, Jan 1, tomorrow, tom, 3 days, 3d, next week, January, 2 months, March 2008, etc.)

SmartMatch. You can assign tasks to a context or project list by typing its full title, or, simply by typing any aspect of it; OmniFocus will match it to the most similar context. For example, typing "wo" might match to the context "Work", or typing "market" might match to "Supermarket".

Sorting, Filtering, and Grouping. You can sort, filter, and group tasks by all kinds of different task characteristics, and easily change between these views.

What OmniFocus doesn't do, however, is run your life for you. And for this reason, Omni Focus can be dangerous in the wrong hands. So it's best suited for people who are familiar with GTD. It's also probably best suited to people who spend most of their time around their Mac.

If you're interested in OmniFocus, check out the 15min intro video (available here), and download the beta.

Also note that there is a 50% discount available if you pre-order before Jan 8. You can get a futher discount on top of that if you own a copy of OmniOutliner Pro (another Omni product).

Nicafaith CQ

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, made some comments recently about which elements of the Christmas story are important to believe in and which one's aren't. (I heard about this via Lee's post over on the 'Thinking Outside The Cage' blog.)

The Archbishop says he doesn't believe that a star literally guided three wise men to Bethlehem. This, apparently, is not an essential miracle to believe in. Furthermore, according to The Age, Dr Williams said that "while he believed in it himself, new Christians need not leap over the "hurdle" of belief in the virgin birth before they could join the church".

Interesting.

In marketing his very relaxed and moderate brand of religion, Dr Williams might hope that religion might capture a greater market share. It's a 'lite' version of faith, now 99% miracle free; a Diet Faith for those people who would like to take up religion but have previously found some elements hard to swallow.

I wonder, though, if moderate, diluted religion ends up playing quiet a different role? I wonder if it might serve as the religious equivalent of a nicotine patch; an intermediate step, not into religion (as Williams might hope), but out of it. Are Williams, and other moderates, creating a form of belief for those who are finding religiosity less and less compatible with the rest of their lives, but can't (for one reason or another) bare to go 'cold turkey'? And might this ultimately lose them more of the flock?

How much, I wonder, do either side of the believe divide know about how religious ideas play out in the minds of people in the long-term, and which are ultimately the best at capturing hearts and minds?

The things you find when doing literature searches: study on the correlation between shoe size and penis length

I was simply poking around the internet for articles relevant to my PhD, and just a few wrong clicks landed me in the British Journal of Urology.

Those urologists sure do seem to have a lot of fun. If ever there was a scientific journal that could replace the in flight magazine on aeroplanes, the BJU would be it.

One article that caught my eye was titled "Can shoe size predict penile length?". I just had to find out the answer, because, let's face it, we've all wondered.

The abstract sums it up:

Objective

To establish if the ‘myth’ about whether the size of a man’s penis can be estimated from his shoe size has any basis, infact.

Subjects and methods

Two urologists measured the stretched penile length of 104 men in a prospective study and related this to their shoe size.

Results

The median stretched penile length for the sampled population was 13cm and the median UK shoe size was 9 (European 43). There was no statistically significant correlation between shoe size and stretched penile length.

Conclusion

The supposed association of penile length and shoe size has no scientific basis.

Myth busted!

(this blog post is so going to attract the wrong kind of google ads)

References

Shae, J. & Christopher, N., (2002). Can shoe size predict penile length? British Journal of Urology International, 90, 586-587

A tribute to the Pale Blue Dot

Kid Nation

I find this new TV show, Kid Nation, absolutely riveting!

It's not hard to imagine the TV executives pitching this one:

"OK Johnny, I got somethin you're gonna love, the next big the thing! It's dynamite I tells ya!...think Survivor meets ....Lord of the Flies!

Ya like?! No Johnny, it's got nothin to do with the Hobbits...Lord of the Flies! It's with kids! Kids, see!...no, no, no, not elves! it's with kids!"