Tom Blogs

XKCD reaches 1,000

Tom — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 14:54:41 +0000

Today the cartoon blog XKCD posted it’s 1000 cartoon.

Here’s six favourites of the previous 999:

Christmas wishes for around the home

Tom — Thu, 22 Dec 2011 14:38:59 +0000

Things I would have liked to have put on my Christmas list:

Vintage Camera Pillows
Found on www.swiss-miss.com/2011/12/vintage-camera-pillows.html and originally from www.etsy.com/listing/83835293/vintage-amica-eyelux-camera-canvas?ref=fp_treasury_12

PicNYC Table
Found on www.likecool.com/picNYC_TABLE–Furniture–Home.html and originally from www.haikocornelissen.com/work/picnyc-table/

Table and chairs cabinet
Found on www.likecool.com/Transformer_chest_has_two_chairs_and_a_table–Furniture–Home.html and originally fromclaudiosibille.com/ludovico.php

6 Music Shout Out

Tom — Sun, 18 Dec 2011 13:08:59 +0000

Here is a clip from Friday 16 December’s 6 Music breakfast show where Shaun Keavney reads out some middle aged shout outs. This one is for my brother who became a dad the day before:

/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/Middle-age-shout-out-steeltwins.mp3

Download clip

Inventive spam

Tom — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 10:52:08 +0000

Here’s a some recent spam comments which have caught my eye:

In response to A cold winter evening at Brisbane Road:

Hey There Blog,
Maybe a little off topic, however, its not even the middle of winter and its already getting
to 5°C…
Kindest Regards

In response to How tech giants deal with dissent:

lovely bunny and we hope you all have a wonderful holiday.

I couldn’t agree more.

Opening titles – making the effort.

Tom — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 10:36:45 +0000

Good to see some real thought and imagination put into the opening titles on Game of Thrones:

Click here to view the embedded video.

As opposed to another recent TV favourite of mine, Fringe, is pretty dull:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Cold winter evening at Brisbane Road

Tom — Sat, 10 Dec 2011 23:28:09 +0000

tomsteel posted a photo:

Playing about with flavours.me

Tom — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 17:44:03 +0000

Today I resurrected an account with flavours.me after a launch of Version 2 last week.

As a social portfolio it does very well. The only obvious account mising for me was de.licio.us but apart from that all the usual suspects were there along with the ability to add your own RSS feeds.

You get a selection of designs and layout options, colour scheme options, fonts and personal backgrounds.

If you pay £12.50 a year through paypal (or not considering recent events) you can use your own URL and other design features.

I am set up at iam.tomsteel.co.uk, try your own at flavours.me

Croydon Timelapse on Vimeo

Tom — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 13:20:02 +0000

Simple timelapse of cloudy skies over Croydon taken with an iPhone4 using the TimeLapse app. The bright light in the centre is a reflection of the camera’s flash which came on.

And yes, the window is that dirty!

Croydon Timelapse on Vimeo

How tech giants deal with dissent.

Tom — Thu, 17 Nov 2011 14:03:37 +0000

A few weeks ago I saw this peice on The Register about an Apple employee who was fired as a result of privately making derogatory comments about Apple’s brand and products on his Facebook wall. His undoing was that not all his “friends” were friends, and one printed off the comments and showed them to his boss.

Story from The Register: Apple was OK to fire man for private Facebook comments

Then today I came across a very similar story but with quite a different ending. A Google engineer posted a rant about all the problems he saw with Google plus but instead of posting it privately he accidentally made it public. He wasn’t fired, he even says Google said it was his decision to delete it or not (he did, and posted this response, which some could question if it was written for him).

Story from Forbes: Whoops. Google Engineer Accidentally Makes His ‘Plus Sucks’ Rant Public.

Either way, I know which company I’d prefer to work for.

Positive and negative Google Plus hyperboyle, it’s all the same.

Tom — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 15:50:28 +0000

These opinion pieces are everywhere.

Why Google+ Pages Isn’t Good for Business
4 Reasons Google+ Brand Pages Will Be Better Than Facebook’s
Google Plus Finds Sweet Spot Between Facebook & Twitter
Google Engineer Calls Google Plus a ‘Complete Failure’; 5 Reasons We Agree
Why It is Wrong to Call Google Plus a Failure

Google Plus may be “not ready” for business, but it isn’t “not good for business”. It’s a beta product, the future is far from clear.

It would be foolish to right off the provider of the biggest search engine, video sharing and blogging platform. But equally daft to claim you must join in now or you’ll miss out.

Articles which launch with attention grabbing headlines like “Why Google+ Pages Isn’t Good for Business” are just as bad as the confusing rhetoric they criticise other of.

All any of these pieces needs to say is “Google Plus is interesting, but it’s not there yet, watch this space”

The last two articles linked to at the top of this peice are from the same website, so at least there’s some other balance out there.