Month: October 2007

  • Smarter project management

    [Evidence based scheduling](http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2007/10/26.html). Some good ideas for project management here. Somewhat harder to apply in a world where a significant part of your task is working out what to do, though.

  • Crowdsourcing weather

    [Coming soon: weather prediction on the Wikipedia/Digg model](http://www.marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2007/10/the-weather-wis.html). It’s going to be very, very interesting to see if this works or not. My guess is ‘no’ – expertise reigns in these fields.

  • Fixing fiscal policy

    [A nice column from Nicholas Gruen on fiscal policy](http://clubtroppo.com.au/2007/10/27/the-loneliness-of-the-long-distance-policy-innovator/). I’ve always been intrigued by the idea of an independent fiscal policy authority, but (outside of the obvious political concerns) I’ve never been able to find a way to have tax rate adjustments that are both frequent enough *and* obvious enough to consumers without massive administrative…

  • What’s up Doc?

    [How to draw Bugs Bunny](http://www.boingboing.net/2007/10/23/john-k-shows-you-how.html). John K is completely mad, but very enjoyably opinionated. His blog is worth a read.

  • A better calculator

    [A calculator with PC style keyboard](http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/calculate-this/takumi-calculator-features-computer-style-keypad-and-usb-connectivity-315314.php). Also works as a USB keyboard, which makes it a very, very tempting purchase…

  • Election07: Nickel plated edition

    *Announcements*: ALP: [Measures to encourage landlords to install energy efficiency improvements in the properties they rent out ($150m)](http://alp.org.au/media/1007/msloo270.php). 28 days to go.

  • Not such a happy kingdom

    [Things not to do at Disneyland](http://kenlevine.blogspot.com/2007/10/things-not-to-do-at-disneyland.html). (Slightly NSFW picture at that link). Jon Saffran did it best, of course.

  • A quick project for Halloween

    [How to make a floating head hologram](http://www.instructables.com/id/Make-a-cool-hologram-illusion!/). Clever trick.

  • A better way to manage storage

    [Plug and play for bare hard drives](http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/hard-drive/hdd-dock-plugs-bare-sata-drives-like-nes-cartridges-312747.php). It’s always been a great annoyance that bare (i.e., designed for installing inside your computer) hard drives are so cheap, but buying an enclosure and swapping them around is tedious, and external drives are much more expensive. This looks like a good middle ground.

  • Back in the long-long-ago

    [A history of the C64](http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/1991/a_history_of_gaming_platforms_the_.php). No gaming platform holds a dearer place in my heart. It wasn’t so much the platform, but what the programmers did with it, of course.