Snap Judgement: Windows 8 Thingy

I’ve only had a few minutes to mess around with the Windows 8 Consumer Preview, so I don’t know exactly where I come down on it. Like a lot of people, I was determined to reserve judgement on the Metro interface until I actually got to see it in action. Now I have. I have two things to say about it.

1. After all this time, it’s nice to see a new PC user interface approach, of any kind–but I don’t know if it’s because we desperately needed a change to the way we’ve normally been doing things, or if it’s because I’m board to death of seeing the same interface elements everywhere all the damn time.

2. Windows 8 is not a PC operating system, but rather a multi-platform operating system that will have a version available for the diminishing PC market. That said, as someone who uses a computer almost every waking hour of every day, I want the PC pointing device (e.g. mice, trackpads and balls) destroyed. If Metro lacks a robust keyboard shortcut system, it will be a massive step backward, in my eyes. Yes, you can choose not to use Metro, but then you’re back to the boring–see previous note.

R.I.P. Davy Jones

R.I.P. Davy Jones of the Monkees | The A.V. Club. This is sad. I got into the Monkees back when Nickelodeon was running their show nearly round-the-clock. I was a fan. Still am.

Where Were You In… Uh, ’64?

“The 1964 NYC World’s Fair is legendary — birthplace of animatronics and Belgian waffles, the zenith of exuberant goofy corporate futurism and the beloved coming-of-age for millions who entered a modern world filled with promise. Documentarians are raising funds to produce ‘After the Fair,’ a doc featuring any amount of droolworthy archival footage of the great fair.” {From 1964 World’s Fair documentary raising funds on Kickstarter – Boing Boing.}

At last, we may finally learn who was at the DuPont Pavilion.

Use Your Delusion: Stress Makes You An Optimist

“A new article published in Current Directions in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, reviews how, under stress, people pay more attention to the upside of a possible outcome.” {From: Science Daily | Via: Lifehacker}

Don’t we all know people like this? They leap without looking, and they refuse to plan for contingencies, because it’s going to be okay. Apparently, under stress, we all become those people. Or, in my case we become paralyzed by anxiety and dwell heavily on hypothetical negative outcomes, but then I don’t have to do anything, so I guess that’s my “win” scenario?

Help The Awesome

Okay, so I’ve been seeing links to this piece by Jesse Thorn, where he provides a ton of advice on how to achieve your goals. If you’ve managed to avoid reading it up to now, I’m going to spoil it for you. Here’s part of the ending: “If you’re talentless or lazy, none of this will work. If you’re talentless and lazy, you’re particularly out of luck.” Followed by some riffing about how, deep down, you’re probably not lazy, so it’s okay.

Info-Holes

This is a great illustration of the perils of divided attention. If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it maybe six other times now: Multitasking is a bullshit, made-up notion, created by people who don’t know how to prioritize things.

That’s why if you want to be really good at something, just do that one thing. Like that monk who just sat under a waterfall for twenty years or whatever–I bet he was really good at that by the time he was finished.

Morality Doesn’t Pay!

Does Science Teach Us to Eat the Rich? Well, no, as it turns out–but read the link anyway, it’s all pretty interesting. (I think so, anyway. This is the second time I’ve linked to a post that references the same study.)

Next question: What the heck is Motörhead’s “Eat The Rich” all about? Oh wait, it’s about Lemmy telling somebody to put their mouth on his schvantz. Some mysteries are not as tough to decode as others.

Random Fun

So, this morning I was messing around with DuckDuckGo (a relatively newish search engine), and stumbled into their “Goodies” section, where they mention that you can use the site to generate random numbers by entering the phrase “throw dice.” You could even enter “throw 2 dice.” I thought that was pretty cool.

What’s even more cool is that it understands standard dice notation. That is, instead of typing “throw dice,” which will get you a random number between one and six, you can type “throw 1d4,” which will get you a result equivalent to rolling a single 4-sided die. Entering a request for multiple dice (i.e. “throw 2d4″) shows you the result of each individual die and the total.

Even better? There’s really not supposed to be an 11-sided die (I know, I know, someone’s going to email me an link to one right after I post this), but if you put in 1d11, it works just fine. Google doesn’t even do this shit!

I don’t think a search engine will ever replace my trusty old Chessex translucent green set (which is only fairly old, seeing as how I bought them in 1990 or thereabouts), but I think it’s quite cool that the DDG people built it in to their search engine. Things do not have to be useful to be worth doing.

Happy Birthday, Dr. Fever

I just found out that yesterday was Howard Hessman‘s birthday.

Rules Are For The Little People

“New research suggests that the upper classes are more likely to behave dishonorably than those lower on the economic spectrum. The rich are more likely to cheat, steal, and even disobey traffic laws than those with less money and power….” {From: Are Rich People Less Moral? – Slashdot}

Well of course, dear. How do you suppose they got and/or stay rich?