One Girl Revolution

Or: Why it is getting harder for me to use public transport and stay sane.

Ah, Northern Snail. Your trains are slow, noisy and usually filthy. This morning, I was jammed into one of your three-carriage rush-hour trains, in a corner of the doorway (no seats to be had), making Uncomfortable Proximity Friends with the Yeti Beard Guy (ever seen that Friends episode? Yeah, he was like that).

I happened to be reading your brand new magazine, Northern. It makes your company look glossy and friendly, when in fact all I have experienced is grumpy staff, dirty trains and grumpy customers (due to the previous two).

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Technorati Tags: buses, public-transport, student-life, trains

At the start of this week, I came down with a terminal case of forgetfulness. The worst casualty: my cellphone, which I left plugged into the wall in the dining room.

The word ‘nomophobia‘ was coined back in 2008 to describe the feeling of panic that comes from being without your phone. I now understand that feeling.

All those 12 year olds out there who haven’t got phones while all their friends have? I now have such sympathy for them. Never before have I been struck by such an urge to text somebody. I worried that the two or three important phone calls I was waiting for would happen while I was out. I even lost the ability to tell the time – I am one of those people who checks the time on their phone and doesn’t wear a watch.

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Technorati Tags: cellphones, mobile-phone, nomophobia

Don’t You Lecture Me!
The word “lecture” isn’t something generally associated with good vibes. If you’re lecturing someone, you’re boring them to sleep while ranting on and on.

Classes started this week at Armpit City University, and it didn’t take me long to realise that university is not set up for commuters. These kids carry practically nothing with them! How on earth do they manage? Oh, right, they’ve all got iPhones to check their email and can drop in to the dorms to pick up and unload stuff. I’ve got to carry everything with me. Learning to downsize my bag is one of the biggest lessons I’ve had to learn this week. No, Aeryn, you really don’t need to bring your netbook every day. You’ve got public access computers all over the place. Suck it up and use them, preferably without doing an Adrian Monk and wiping down the mouse.

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You may know Induction Week by its more colloquial name: “Fresher’s Week”, but everyone who’s ever survived this particular university tradition knows it is really Form-Filling Week. Yes, folks, the students are back. The streets are paved with vomit. And I have to work with these people?! Oh, yes. I am a Mature Student now.

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Technorati Tags: college, student-life, university

While I love Evernote, its lack of sub-notebooks was the bane of my existence until recently, when I decided to get smart about my tagging system.

My Notebooks

Awwww!

I have four notebooks: Personal, Work, Study and one called Snippets, which is where I store random web clips such as cute bunny pictures.

(Sadly, I have no credit information for this pic, but I want to know!)

My first step was to look at my existing tags and figure out which sub-notebooks I would have used for each main notebook.

A lot of scribbling later, and I had a rough draft.

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According to this BBC video – NY cafes crack down on free wi-fi*, independent coffee shops in New York are struggling to cope with the number of laptop users practically moving in and using their free wi-fi. Unfortunately, the video leaves a lot to be desired in the way of actual questioning of the subjects, so I’m going to fill in some gaps in the questions I would have liked to see answered.

Is the problem really table-hogging, or something else?
The video seems to be saying that it is customers staying a long time (and using the internet) that is causing independent coffee shops to lose money. How about the cost of bandwidth and electricity? Is that a factor? And if not…

What about people who are reading books, writing novels without a laptop or talking endlessly to their friends?
Table-hogging causes lost business. I know this from experience working in a coffee shop – people see the place is full, turn around and leave. They want a sit-down more than they want your particular style of coffee. But…

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Technorati Tags: bbc, culture, nyc, starbucks, usa, wi-fi

A lot of people have been saying it since that bluebird of twitterness started whistling his happy little tune: Twitter is pointless. And now, there is a study to prove it.

Over at Pear Analytics, they’ve been analysing Twitter traffic to categorise exactly what it is people are tweeting about.

….We took 2,000 tweets from the public timeline (in English and in the US) over a 2-week period from 11:00a to 5:00p (CST) and captured tweets in half-hour increments. Then we categorized them into 6 buckets:

News, Spam, Self-Promotion, Pointless Babble, Conversational and Pass-Along Value.

Pointless Babble won with a 40% share. “Pointless babble”; i.e. something that wasn’t talking to anyone specific, wasn’t a retweet, didn’t contain a news item and wasn’t spam. Things like “I’m chilling out, watching TV”, for example.

Which makes me wonder. These tweets are about our basic, everyday lives, and those lives are being branded pointless. Lately it seems like unless you are a cog in the machine 24/7, you are… well… pointless. Twitter about your job (as long as it is positive and vaguely schmoozy), network with potential clients or talk about lofty current events, you lazy schlub!

Those tweets tend to be the funny ones. And they seem to be the only things tweeted by celebs… or is it self-promotion for them? The boundaries are a little blurrier than that, I think.

And what about those tweets that cross the categorisation boundaries? Amanda Bonnen made a “Pointless Babble” tweet that later became News. There’s probably a lot more of that on the horizon (so beware if you have a complaint about something!).

I must admit, I was rather surprised – and pleased – at the lack of spam reported by the study! Guess they’ve not had to deal with those darn pr0n ’stars’.

[via Mashable and various other internet sources.]
[image credit - A Little Bird Told Me by mattknow via HongKiat.com]

Technorati Tags: statistics, study, twitter

I went to see Adam last night. In case you aren’t aware of this movie (and it isn’t surprising, considering the limited release), it is about a man with Asperger Syndrome who falls in love with a neuro-typical (referred to as NTs).

Being somewhat on the spectrum myself – it is hard for an adult to get a diagnosis, especially an adult female – I thought I should go and check it out. I found the only local cinema showing it, and joined the enormous Orange Wednesdays queue. Despite queuing round the side of the building, there were maybe 10 other people in the room.

Many critics have condemned the film as dull, one or two (who shall remain credit-less) comparing it unfavourably to Rainman due to the protagonist’s lack of savant powers (see Autistic Impressions here for more on the savant focus in movies and its influence). Or they set the film up as: “Look at how weird these people are. Look at how abnormal they are – they must suffer sooooo much! Isn’t it no surprise they can’t have proper relationships?”

Adam is ultimately a film about love and humanity, and while Adam shows a great knowledge in the area of space and engineering, he is clearly not a savant. Just a regular Aspie. To me, that’s what makes the film so charming, even if the script feels as disconnected as its main character.

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Technorati Tags: adam, aspergers, autism, film, movie

I can’t be the only person on the interwebs who can’t see the point behind The Uniform Project. It’s raising money for charity, which is always a good thing, but the premise just seems a bit… off.

This site fell into my browser window while I was looking for one-bag travel tips – I wanted to see how to get the most wear out of as few items as possible.

“OK,” I thought. “There’s an idea here. But…”

She’s pledged to wear one dress for a year for sustainability reasons. Except she’s not wearing one dress. She’s wearing seven copies of the same dress. Why not just buy seven different dresses at the same price point?

The proper way to do it would have been to buy just one of the dress. Let us know how it holds up to all that washing. What to wear on laundry day?

Have I missed the point?

Technorati Tags: sustainability

Money, not love, is what makes the world go round, for the most part. Before money was invented, I could probably have offered a bunch of old clothes in exchange for a new pair of jeans, or turned over my old computer equipment and got myself an iPod Touch.

How can someone figure out which money-making path is right for them? There are a number of tracks available, and from where I’m sitting, it looks like most people believe it’s a trade-off between earning lots of money and not having to answer when Work shows up on your Caller ID at all hours of the day and night. I refuse to believe this, with all the young-person stubbornness I can muster.

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Technorati Tags: Books, career, review