Categories
Random Thoughts

XRay Vision!

The days of dull, grey concrete could be about to end. A Hungarian architect has combined the world’s most popular building material with optical fiber from Schott to create a new type of concrete that transmits light. Optics.org.

Gives a whole new meaning to “Concrete Jungle” architecture.

Categories
Random Thought

American Express Insecurity

“In theory there’s no difference between theory and practice. But in practice, there is.” – Attributed to Jan L.A. Van De Snepschent

If you have an Amex card, you may earn “Membership Rewards.” This is a marketing loyalty program where you can theoretically turn in points for theoretical goods or services.
This is all in theory, of course, because in practicing it, I have had no luck.Their web site won’t let me talk to it from work, or from home. The error message talks about being non-responsive temporarily. However, the real issue is that my password was bad. But somehow my ‘firewall’ was blocking the correct page, according to their tech support person.
His helpful advice – set my IE to “no security/accept all cookies”, delete all my current cookies, turn off my software firewall, connect my computer directly to the internet, and try again. My helpful advice to him – no, I won’t do that.

Perhaps Amex should look for a solution that doesn’t require the average user to turn off all possible security to use it. Plus if he was doing this with my dad, I’d get a call about all the sites he couldn’t auto-login to because all his cookies were gone. Brilliant. Let me try something…

Hmmm. Same PC, zone alarm on, firewall on, Firefox – it works. Hmmmm. Hmmm. Beats me. If I was still at Microsoft, I would be kicking some American Express butt right about now.

Categories
Random Thoughts

Me, Al Franken

Back in the early 80’s, Al Franken did a bit on Saturday Night Live, about the 80’s being the “Al Franken Decade.” I always liked this bit, and would imitate his manerism of saying “Me, Al Franken.” Example:

People are going to stop thinking about themselves and start thinking about me, Al Franken. That’s right. I believe we’re entering the Al Franken decade. Oh, for me, Al Franken, the eighties will be pretty much the same as the seventies. But for you, when you see a news report you’ll be thinking “I wonder what Al Franken thinks about this?” “I wonder how this inflation thing is hurting Al Franken?” And you women will be thinking “What can I wear that will please Al Franken?” or “What can I not wear?” A lot of you are probally thinking “Why Al Franken?” Well, because I thought of it, and I’m on TV.

Well, today I met Al Franken. So here’s a picture of Me, (and) Al Franken.

Me and Al Franken

Categories
Random Thoughts

The Dunbar Number as a Limit to Group Sizes

Christopher Allen looks at the Sizes of groups in a fascinating article which I’ve chopped into interesting chunks, below. Read the whole thing: The Dunbar Number as a Limit to Group Sizes

Lately I’ve been noticing the spread of a meme regarding “Dunbar’s Number” of 150 that I believe is misunderstanding of his ideas….This all leads me to hypothesize that the optimal size for active group members for creative and technical groups — as opposed to exclusively survival-oriented groups, such as villages — hovers somewhere between 25-80, but is best around 45-50. ……In my experience the smallest viable group size seems to be somewhere in the range of 5 to 9.  …In my opinion it is at 5 that the feeling of “team” really starts. At 5 to 8 people, you can have a meeting where everyone can speak out about what the entire group is doing, and everyone feels highly empowered. However, at 9 to 12 people this begins to break down — not enough “attention” is given to everyone and meetings risk becoming either too noisy, too boring, too long, or some combination thereof. [via Life With Alacrity]

Categories
Random Thought

Martha, Martha, Martha…

Like the Brady Bunch’s Jan, I wonder if there isn’t anything else important in the world to discuss.