I do like the idea of this light emitting duvet set. One of my background (and therefore hardly started) projects has involved similar ideas - using a simulated dawn to wake you up rather than the sharp shock of an alarm clock.
I've been wondering whether it would waken you up more fully, and whether it would be a more sympathetic method of awakening?
The Light Sleeper is probably more effective than the variable-colour uplighter that I've been designing, given that it's much closer to the sleeper. I do wonder how it's powered though.
Update: Durr. I thought it seemed familiar. Looking at the exhibitions page shows that Light Sleeper was exhibited at the V&A's Brilliant exhibition that I went to back in March...
I've linked to some of Steve Pavlina's articles in the past and now I can get a regular fix of his ideas because he's started a blog (and I no longer have to check for updates as I've subscribed to his RSS feed!)
With him running his own software business, a number of his articles are focussed on software, and in particular shareware. However, the aim of his blog is to focus "purely [on] personal development." For example, for the past day or so he's been talking about how finding people who've already achieved what you want to achieve; picking their brains about how they did it, or how they think you should proceed; and modelling your behaviour on theirs can help you reach your goals.
Today's post pointed to some useful tips about common concerns when attending your first few networking events.
So, Steve Pavlina's blog - useful for everyone, not just geeks.
It seems that the rest of the year will be busy. I was going to claim it was an experiment in fitting too much into my life, but on thinking about it, I conducted such an experiment, well, about this time last year and concluded that it was a bad idea. STNC. (That's Some Things Never Change, or maybe Seasonal Thing, Normally Cyclic in this case...)
The cause of this fitting too much in is the contract work I started a fortnight ago. I hadn't been looking for any other work, but the cash reserves were starting to get a little tight and this was too good an opportunity to pass up. Not the ideal time to put work on PeerBackup on hold, as I was deep in the push towards code complete; however it should secure the company's future until mid-2005 so I feel it's a compromise worth making.
That would be fine if I had just completely mothballed PeerBackup development until the contract terminates at the end of the year, but I'm hoping to get some development done in evenings and at weekends. I'm expecting not to make any real progress on my own stuff this year, but I've set myself the goal of two days-worth of progress per week: spread over a few evenings, or the weekend, or a mixture of both.
So far I've met my expectations, and not-quite-completely failed to meet my goals. I'm attributing that partly to settling into the new job, and mainly due to the last few weekends being pre-booked for other things. As is the case for the next couple. November should give me chance to get to grips with the new schedule.
As has no doubt been apparent, my blogging is one of the casualties of my increased workload; even though it had already suffered quite a bit from my focus to getting to code complete. I'm going to look through my collection of draft postings to hopefully find some interesting links to serve up in lieu of any real content, and fend off the dreaded "empty main page."
So you'll miss out on the no doubt fabulous writing that's supposed to accompany the links but which has been floating around in my head refusing to take any useful form. You will get pointers to some stuff I've found interesting and that otherwise I'd probably never get round to posting, so on the whole, I think it's a win...
I really should try to remember to check McFilter in Internet Explorer from time to time. Then I'd have noticed that the comments box was missing chunks of text, and wouldn't have needed Karen to point it out to me.
Things weren't helped by the way my comment-spam-busting tweaks coped with someone who didn't answer the "Are you a spammer?" question. That was the first fix, so if you forget to answer (or answer wrongly) then you'll no longer get the rude "500 Internal Server Error" page.
And thanks to this CSS hack, those of you using IE6 should now be able to see the question in the first place (although hiding the window behind something else and then exposing it again would've shown that the content was there all along, hence the bug's "peekaboo" name).
-- The Museum of Modern Art: Tall Buildings -- is a superb online exhibition about modern skyscrapers. Twenty-five buildings (or proposals for buildings) from the past decade are represented, including a few of the proposals for the World Trade Centre site in New York, the London Bridge Tower, and the Swiss Re "Gherkin".
The Elephant & Castle Eco Towers is a particularly interesting project, incorporating vegetation into its sustainable construction.
(Via Downtown Liverpool)
Sean Michaels, mp3 blogger of said the gramophone fame is currently on his travels around Europe with buddy Julian.
On Saturday, they rocked up here in Cambridge and I said I'd take them out for a beer. So, from 7pm TONIGHT we'll be in the Fort St. George (on the river and Midsummer Common) for food and some beers, and I figured I'd throw the invite open to anyone else who fancies popping along.
I'll be the one looking like this only without the orange microphone or the scary backup singers. And I'll be wearing a blue t-shirt with "The North" emblazoned across the front.
There's a chance we'll be moving on later in the evening, so anyone planning to turn up after 8:30-9:00 (not that I expect anyone will turn up, late or not...) should probably give me a bell on 07710 036866 and I can confirm where we are.
