beatnic - just wondering

These are the text message (SMS) templates that came with my phone:

1. I am late. I will be there at
2. I’m at home. Please call
3. I’m at work. Please call
4. I’m in a meeting, call me later at
5. I will be arriving at
6. Meeting is cancelled.
7. Please call
8. See you at
9. See you in
10. Sorry, I can’t help you on this.

I’ve never used them. I’m not sure I ever will.

“Sorry, I can’t help you on this.” Seriously!

I mean they all seem to be written in some strange language from a bygone era. For starters they all have complete words and correctly used punctuation.

It got me wondering what templates you’d end up with if you went round asking people what text messages they send the most.

I’ve noticed two expressions being used more and more these days, mostly in a work context.

First, the use of the word “So” to begin an answer to a question. This seems particularly rife amongst presenters on the conference circuit.

Often it seems to be used to acknowledge a question and the questioner as if to say “Okay, I understand the question… here’s my answer…”, a way of taking the baton and gliding gracefully on. A conjunction between two people.

The other is “going forward” to describe time after a point in time. It doesn’t seem to have reached official idiom status yet, but surely it’s only a matter of time, if you’ll pardon the pun. And what on earth did people say before it came along?

Have you noticed that on the radio very few, if any, presenters and guests say “goodbye” at the end of an interview or phone call?

More often than not they say “thank you” instead.

I was just wondering if this is conscious and deliberate.

I’m on the phone to a well-known supplier of outsourced services…

“Please listen carefully to the following options…”

There are 7 options, but they don’t tell you how many there are going to be.

I’m not quite sure if what I’m calling about matches any of them.

And there’s no “For all other enquiries please hold” at the end so you’re left drifting in to the abyss with Enya playing softly at you, not quite knowing what’ll happen next.

Anyway, I digress.

What caught my attention was that the sentence offering me the option to have the conversation in Welsh was in English.

Do you have a lift at work? Does it have a male or female voice? Who decided that?

Does a lift in Belfast have a different accent to a lift in Manchester, Falmouth or Glasgow?

Should the automated announcements on trains change accent depending on which part of the country you’re in?

A search for a definition of the currently much- (some say over-) used word mashup takes you to this wikipedia disambiguation page (i.e. it has more than one meaning) which then leads to the following:

Mashup (music) redirects you to this definition:

Bastard pop is a musical genre which, in its purest form, consists of the combination (usually by digital means) of the music from one song with the a cappella from another. Typically, the music and vocals belong to completely different genres. At their best, bastard pop songs strive for musical epiphanies that add up to considerably more than the sum of their parts.

Mashup (web application hybrid) is defined as:

A mashup is a website or web application that seamlessly combines content from more than one source into an integrated experience.

Content used in mashups is typically sourced from a third party via a public interface or API. Other methods of sourcing content for mashups include Web feeds (e.g. RSS or Atom) and JavaScript includes.

The etymology of this term almost certainly derives from its similar use in pop music.

Many people are experimenting with mashups using eBay, Amazon, Google, and Yahoos APIs.

3 things that cross over between my work and my life:

• A desire to understand how things work. (What goes on under the bonnet? What do they feel like to use? What’s the story behind the design?)
• Using technology to help connect people with each other and with information
• My love of language(s)

Not to be confused with “work-life balance”.

The life of a wikipedia page on the subject of the Heavy Metal Umlaut, brilliantly captured and explained in a screencast (animation of screens with voice-over commentary).

Via: podbat
See also: wikipedia

Yes, but how did I get here?

Yesterday I went to the Design Museum in London with some friends from work to see the design of information exhibition “YOU ARE HERE” (now in its last week).

It was full of amazing examples of how we convey complex information through models, signs and symbols, including navigation devices, orreries, maps, graphs, charts and timepieces. There were some interesting comparisons between how information is conveyed in different cultures.

But I felt it missed a trick by only showing the end results.

What I’d really like to learn is…

• Who was involved (not just the accredited designer)?
• What was discarded along the way?
• What was discovered along the way?
• What do the designs that nearly made it look like?
• How was the end result decided on and who by?
• What’s the story behind the design?

In the park the other day with my son when he asked if we could walk to the swings through the forest.

So I was just wondering…

What’s the difference between a wood and a forest?

And when does a copse become a wood?

A quick straw poll amongst friends says size matters, though whether this is number of trees or area covered is less clear.

I’ve tried searching online to find an answer and so far only found this (useful) entry on Wikipedia:

A forest has a more or less closed canopy, in which the branches and foliage of trees meet or interlock. A woodland has an open canopy, which allows some sunlight to penetrate between the trees.

If anyone has any thoughts, ideas or answers it would be great to know.

Sign on train today…

Just wondering… what constitutes using a mobile phone these days?

I read the news on mine today quite happily (and quietly). If I’d read it to someone else would I have been arrested?

…context is god!

Now… which categories to put this post in?

:-)

We were talking earlier about a radio programme I wish I’d heard yesterday.

Apparently someone has been researching in to whether our association of minor keys in music with melancholy or sadness is innate or caused by conditioning. Their conclusion is that it’s something we’re born with.

I’d never stopped to think about it before, I guess I’ve always taken it for granted that it’s something intrinsic in our nature.

But it got me wondering how you go about actually proving it.

You can hardly stick someone on a desert island for their first twenty years and then suddeny expose them to a blast of Mozart’s Requiem and watch their reaction.