clock … watching time, the only true currency

After updating my iPhone to the 2.2 firmware, I couldn’t delete emails from Mail.app anymore. I am not the only one, and there is a solution which worked for my IMAP account. Go to: Settings > Mail, Contacts, Calendars > [account name] > Advanced > Deleted Mailbox Then, set “On My iPhone” Trash for a [...]

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I’ve used a webcam since 2003, and I was excited about it then for family communication. Today’s New York Times article “Grandma’s on the Computer Screen” talks about the growing trend among extended families to use webcams to stay in touch, especially for grandparents and their grandchildren. Video calling, long anticipated by science fiction, is [...]

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Another Dick Francis book, Field of Thirteen groups thirteen short stories from many sources, ranging from Sports Illustrated to The Times to Cheshire Life to Woman’s Own, with a few tales newly published in this volume. These stories illuminate people’s foibles and strengths in typically direct Francis language. Most of the time, justice plays out, [...]

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Joseph Conrad is more famous for other writings, but I pulled ‘Twixt Land and Sea off the shelves several years ago because his seafaring stories are most interesting to me. I read the tales a few weeks ago. This collection of three stories set in the South Pacific share a location and a melancholy tone. [...]

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I succumbed to the re-re-read for 10 Lb. Penalty, by Dick Francis. Now I’m going to put this very tasty book in the bag to leave the house and give it a new home. Never a problem to return to old favorites, especially for such bon-bons, but I won’t need a fourth reading.

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An Arsonist’s Guide to Writers’ Home in New England by Brock Clarke amused me with witty, wonderful language. But the story’s absurdity left me disconnected and uncaring about the outcome. I still laughed (to myself) at different scenes and phrasings, but the book never rose above the humor. It’s high-end literary humor, to be sure [...]

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Luke Wroblewski wrote Web Form Design: Filling in the Blanks, published by Rosenfeld Media. Looking now, I realize I’ve read all the publisher’s books so far…both of them. A straightforward, well-argued, well-illustrated reference book, Web Form Design tackles the obvious subject in all its details. I’ve been involved with more web forms in the past [...]

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I saw the movie only two years ago. As a book, Deliverance grabs you with language that ebbs and flows in tension like the river at the heart of the story. You can read the summary here. I’ll simply add: great book, and the renowned movie followed a great story quite faithfully. The first edition [...]

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After this summer’s revelation, I picked up another Alan Furst novel, Kingdom of Shadows. The story almost matches the cover for noir. Paris again serves as the hub, but most of the action takes place in Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and Germany. Nice page-turner in dangerous pre-World War II Europe, where the inevitability of war made fatalism [...]

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Indi Young’s Mental Models: Aligning Design Strategy With Human Behavior dives into an approach to building products to solve the right problems. In Young’s words: Mental models are simply affinity diagrams of behaviors made from ethnographic data gathered from audience representatives. [page 2] I’m more familiar with personas. Young positions personas as an output of [...]

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