Viddler.com – Life After Death by PowerPoint 09 – Uploaded by donmcmillan

I’m working on powerpoint  and I thought it worth reminding everyone what not to do in powerpoint.  I find this one of the most entertaining powerpoints I’ve seen!

Life After Death by PowerPoint 09 – Uploaded by donmcmillan.

The bigger the bonus the worse the result

It’s often considered common and obvious knowledge that if you want someone to do a better job of their work, a good way to encourage them is to give them a nice monetary reward.  However, unless it’s a truely meanial task with no cognative load this can have the exact opposite effect.  What really motivates us is finding a purpose and mastery in a job.  So maybe see how you can be more purposeful, or if there is a task in your current role that you can truely demonstrate mastery in, as it should make you feel much more motivated.

 

Even if you’ve listened to Dan Pink before, I recommend this illustrated version of his talk, as it adds a very entertaining dimension.

The surprising truth about what motivates us: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XAPnuFjJc

twice the language half the page

I’m always impressed by the bi-lingual.  Whilst I have dabbled in various other languages, I have not yet reached fluency in a second language.  I have noticed that many of my colleagues are, and so if you too are bilingual, I hope you find the following useful.

There is a new interface which allows you to search google in 2 languages at the same time, potentially doubling your results for a given search topic.

To try it out, hop over to http://www.2lingual.com/

Happy searching!

2lingual Search.

SKYNET Doomsday clock ticks forward.

I often find myself boggling at the advances we make in AI and warfare.  This news article calls for international legistation regarding unmanned fighting vehicles.  Quite a scray quote is:

Noel Sharkey, a professor of robotics and artificial intelligence at Sheffield University, said: ”Our biggest concern … is autonomous systems that [select] targets themselves.”

And I think that’s a valid concern!

Curbs on war robots urged.

This  comes after the announcement of the EATR robot last year, designed to refuel by consuming things it finds.  The most worrying thing was it was initially described as “mostly vegetarian“.  That statement was corrected to ‘strictly vegetarian’ but at that point I was somehow less comforted.  (hey, I work in IT, I’ve seen many systems not do what they are ‘supposed to’).

And actually the title of this article is somewhat misleading, as SKYNET is already here! SKYNET is the name of a satellite system in the UK which provides secure telecommunications to British armed forces.  The military don’t actually own these satellites by the way, they mearly rent them from a company called Paradigm Secure Communications.

Hmmm.. paradigm.. why that sounds a little like CYBERDYNE….

I for one welcome our new robot overlords.  Please don’t refuel with me!

How the internet makes us stupid

My iPhone turned into an expensive paperweight yesterday, and so today I have been going about my life without this ubiquitous device.

There have been numerous times where I’ve thought to do something and realised I couldn’t: A photo I wanted to take, a quick check of my calendar, looking something up on the internet, a birthday wish to a friend and so on.

This has demonstrated how often I get distracted, and the amount it disturbs my train of thought.  It’s highlighted to me how my thinking itself has changed, eternally craving quick fact gratification, and cutting my attention into easy to manage bite size chunks.

Without my ‘little internet’ in my pocket, I spent my lunch break today pootling about, and found a surprising number of times, after the urge to distract myself had passed, that I’d notice something about the world around me, and take delight in it.

As I sat eating my lunch a crowd of pigeons gathered around me, and I noticed that 2 of them seemed to have feathered gaitors/spats whereas the rest had bare familiar pigeon legs.  I immediately thought of looking it up on my little internet, but without the ability I spent time just watching the interaction and appreciating the moment rather than losing myself in pointless fact gathering.

Even in the course of writing this post, I’ve searched for various things, checked my email, read a bit of an ebook and generally hopped around all over the shop.  I certainly don’t have the attention span I used to have, and it looks like other people are noticing the same thing.  Nicholas Carr has just written a book on it, and I’d recommend a look at the following article, and see if you too have the urge to unplug….

How the internet makes us stupid.

Maximising windows when they don’t wanna

I’ve had a problem a few times in windows (usually word or outlook)  where a window ‘maximises’ but leaves a gap at the top of the screen.  This has happened a few times to me.  In one company where I had no admin ability on my computer they did a complete re-install of the program!

There is a simpler solution.  In fact there may be a few, and if I find more I’ll add them to this post.

Looking around the web many people seem to suggest just scaling the ‘restore down’ version so it covers the full screen, but I don’t want a work around, I want maximise to go to the full screen and restore down to be a window.

The following worked for me:

Maximise the window (yes, even though there is space at the top), and then hit shift as you use the ‘X’ to close the program.  On restart it should be filling the screen.

I think there is another solution (which was a keyboard shortcut) but I can’t find the answer again after many google searches (hence making my own post).

How to keep someone with you forever

An interesting article on ‘sick systems’ and how they work to keep people trapped in them.

Sometimes this happens accidentally, and hopefully you’ll not find yourself in this situation, but I have the feeling that it will be all too familiar to some.

Issendai’s Superhero Training Journal – How to keep someone with you forever.

Evolving memory in digital life.

There is a small digital life simulation which allows people to experiment with evolution, and replay and examine the routes taken to gain the improvements.  In the following article they talk about how basic digital organisms have developed memory.  It’s a teeny step, but definitely a step towards Skynet. Eep!

In all seriousness though, it’s an interesting approach to AI, allowing it to grow by itself.

via New Scientist

Transcribing documents and improving security

I’m a big fan of reuse and making things more efficient.  I was very impressed then to read about this nifty modification of the CAPTCHA system (where web pages make you type in words to prove you are not a spambot) which also improves the transcription of documents.

Rather than those few keystrokes being wasted, people are now helping to preserve human knowledge and make it more accessible to the world, a result I’m pretty pleased with!

Using our powers for good – how web security software can help to transcribe old books | Not Exactly Rocket Science | Discover Magazine.

When ideas have sex

Following on from the previous mention I made to the idea of language being a scaffold that allows higher function, I found this talk really fascinating.

Matt Ridley talks about how sharing ideas and group effort have allowed our civilisation to reach heights that would be unobtainable to an individual.  That the modularisation of human endeavour is the key to our massive advances, and that no single human knows how to make a computer mouse.

I also think it’s interesting that the social conventions of western society focus more and more on the individual, and yet we are more reliant on our fellow humans than we ever have been before.

The only downside of this talk is that it makes it very obvious just how stuck we’d be after an apocalypse (zombie/biochemical/environmental/etc)

via When ideas have sex: Matt Ridley on TED.com.