This past week has been a very Jewish one for me, in so many senses. In Jewish tradition, there is no such thing as joy without the element of sorrow, nor sorrow without the element of joy. The most famous example of this is the breaking of a glass during a wedding, to remind us of the breaking of the temple – as well as to signify that this newly created house is another stone of the rebuilding.
Leave a CommentThoughts on many things Posts
Since I published my two-part review of SmartHalo 2 back in the beginning of October, there has been a bit of a development – and not in a positive way. The SmartHalo team has made a long post over on Kickstarter, announcing that whoever hasn’t gotten their device won’t get it, and that they are shutting down their servers. In their own words:
Leave a CommentI’ve written previously about my use of my Apple Watch to track fitness. This summer, I bought the Polar H10 chest strap wanting to add another, and more accurate, metric to the metrics already being recorded by my Apple Watch. The hope was that I could leave my phone at home altogether, and simply take my Apple Watch for a ride or run, preferably recording with Strava.
Leave a CommentMy experience with recruiters has become somewhat of a recurring theme here on the blog, and for good reason. For some reason, my LinkedIn profile attracts a relatively regular stream of them. Here is one example that I would like to draw your attention to – identites hidden to protect the inept:
Leave a CommentWhile analysing an Excel sheet the other day, I needed to combine two columns so that I could get names in the format firstname lastname (the list had been provided as lastname,firstname). As it happens, doing so is relatively easy. You do it on a cell by cell basis, by using basic excel commands.
When getting caught with their hands in the cookie jar, public officials tend to offer their good intentions as a defense. I don’t understand why we keep accepting such defenses. Who cares that your intention was to ensure proper tax planning? You still lied about whether or not you were domiciled somewhere else. I don’t see a valid argument that your so-called “good intentions” – an appeal to the ethics of your intentions, rather than the ethics of your actions – is relevant at all. It is certainly not a mitigating circumstance.
Leave a CommentThis week’s post follows on to last week’s to talk a little about the digital divide. It is adapted from a paper I wrote back in 2017 as part of my Bachelor’s degree with the Open University.
Leave a CommentAs I’m sure you noticed, Facebook suffered massive downtime to several services last week, including Messenger, Instagram and so on. Such events often serve to highlight what services we have rely on. While I’ve been (at least attempting to) phase out Facebook for some time, there are still some things that I actually need it for.
Leave a CommentThis is part two of a two-part series on my experiences with the SmartHalo 2 bike computer. Last week I talked about my general views of the device, and this week I’ll discuss both the displays and the touch interface.
Leave a CommentThis is part one of a two-part series on my experiences with the SmartHalo 2 bike computer. It’s no secret that I’ve backed a few Kickstarter projects over the years. Some have entirely failed to deliver, some have delivered products so atrocious that it doesn’t bear thinking about, and some have delivered a product that delivers (and sometimes well and truly overdelivers) on the pitch.
Leave a CommentI recently learned of a nifty little trick for users of Google’s Workspace services (i,e. Docs, Sheets, Slides, Forms etc.): You can start a new document, spreadsheet, slide deck and so on from the address bar of your web browser. Simply enter the appropriate command (below) into the address bar, hit return, and watch as it unfolds:
Leave a Comment