Holy mixed messages, Batman!

Caught while walking the dogs a couple of weeks ago.

Getting fit while buying candy-grams. The mind boggles. The possibilities are finite.

And one small additional point: If it was absolutely necessary to encourage kids to be fit and buy candy on the same sign, wouldn't it have been worthwhile for TPTB to try to spell out "BEFORE" in place of "B-4"?

I may be showing my age, but I think schools should at least make a show of resisting the abandonment of literate usage, not embrace it.

Cheers...

An ugly solution that I've come to like...

I first attempted a "standing work desk" in Colorado, implemented by simply hoisting the desk I had been using onto a set of concrete blocks and 6-inch lengths of 4 x 4. It worked well for a while, until I brought down a bar stool from the upstairs—"to lean on" was my official excuse—after which it was a matter of only a short time before I was simply perched on top of the stool all the time.

Shortly after moving to Texas, I read somewhere about how one could use LACK side tables from IKEA to create a platform on top of an ordinary desk that was suitable for monitors, and after attaching a single drawer (for the keyboard) to the front of the getup, the result is a standing setup for very little money. Even better, there were a couple of LACK tables already available (they had been in Natalie's storage units), so putting the idea into practice was a no-brainer.

I have been pretty good about maintaining the "standup" work lifestyle, if for no other reason than there are no "high" chairs in the house. That and the close quarters of of my office, which would make the use of any chair problematic. I can say with confidence that I haven't thought about sitting down to work for a while. (That does not mean I never sit down... what's happened is probably a reversal of percentages: I stand now for about the amount of time I used to sit previously, and I sit for most of the time I used to spend standing.)

What has bugged me, both in my old office and new, was lighting.

In both rooms, the lights—which are part of the fan unit in the middle of the room—pretty much sit right over my work station. Incandescent lights create a light "hot spot" well inside the top of my peripheral vision. LED bulbs that aren't as bright don't provide enough task lighting. And while a standalone light might have been a solution, there really wasn't any good place I could put the thing.

So during one of our visits to one of the mega-hardware/home improvement stores a few days ago, I was struck by an idea. Does there exist, I asked one of the floor staff, a gadget that flexibly "extends" a lamp socket? It turns out there is, and it's called an EasySpot. Here's what it looks like in action:


The bulb at the end is a 38° floodlight-style LED unit sold by UtilitTech Pro. It provides 750 lumens of light (about 60-70 watts) while consuming 15 watts of electricity. The rated lifetime is 30,000 hours, and the light generated is "warm" (about 3000K).

Despite the rather strange appearance, the setup puts light where I need it (on the work surface in front of the monitors). I've also adjusted the extender so that the lamp is as high as possible without creating a distracting hot spot in front of me.

Here's hoping that the rated lifetime is no joke, because quite a lot of "new technology" bulbs we've bought in recent years last nowhere near the advertised lifetime, and this LED bulb was not cheap!

Cheers...

Mnemonic epiphany...

From time to time, I've toyed with the idea of introducing a little "background music" to various mnemonic images that I may come up with, as a way of upping the "information density" of such associations. I even came up with a preliminary list of very short excepts from various pieces of music (e.g., da-da-da-DUMMM, from Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, to represent the number 5). However, this led to a curious epiphany today.

Specifically, I realized that I have not normally been involving my sense of hearing in such images (and perhaps "construct" would be a better word here than "image," as what I am describing the whole of what is supposed to be used as a mnemonic device). The more I got to thinking, the more I realized that I've been depending almost exclusively on the visual aspect over the years—creating wild and zany images, but with few, if any sounds, and definitely no smells or other sensations.

I can't really pinpoint when this "change of approach" happened to me, but it did, probably soon after I moved away from Buffalo and the Forks Hotel (where I used to include some memory effects along with my close-up work).

That said, I should probably focus on developing more "multi-dimensional" mnemonics the old fashioned way before adding a separate sound track.

Cheers...