This is a pumped-up infographic from a book on infographics.
Hawks v. Doves
It’s funny reading this, it has the sense of being true, yet you know it must be untrue at the same time. Hello, cognitive dissonance.
Even the graphic’s author (though not designer) sounds torn:
“Of course, the political spectrum is not quite so polarised. Actually, it’s more of a diamond shape, apparently. But this is how it’s mostly presented via the media – left wing vs. right wing, liberal vs. conservative, Labour vs Tory. And perhaps in our minds too…
“Well, certainly in my mind. Researching this showed me that, despite my inevitable journalistic lean to the ‘left’, I am actually a bit more ‘right’ than I suspected.
“This kind of visual approach to mapping concepts really excites me. I like the way it coaxes me to entertain two apparently contradictory value systems at the same time. Or, in other words, I like the way it f**ks with my head.”
So, well, it may or may not be a good cheat sheet for the two dominant American political ideologies, but it sure is neat.
I originally discovered the Pocketmod service some time ago on Lifehacker.com. It’s an interesting little online utility that creates disposable pocket organizers that you print out on plain paper, scribble on, and throw away after about a week or so.
This is my current PocketMod setup. (I dream of a day without CamelCaps.)
The joy and guilt of PocketMod is in this disposability: it’s incredibly basic and shouldn’t last for more than a week (unless you laminate it for some reason), then, you toss it. There’s a certain elation in keeping a full-featured organizer that doesn’t need batteries, is free, and fits in a wallet. I wouldn’t try synching it with Outlook, though.
To use PocketMod, you design it yourself from a drag-n-drop Flash app, print it out, cut a slit in it, fold it, write on it, refer to it occasionally, then toss it when you’re done. It’s beautiful in its customizability, cheapness, and disposability.
It’s also ugly in its disposability and bowing to our evil capitalistic and productivity-monitoring overlords. Fine, whatever.
Me, I use one about a week every six months or so, then go back to being an organizational wreck. Better than buying a $20 planner every year that ends up with 312 blank pages.
Permit me a melancholy moment. And let’s not look down our noses at power chords.
If they could just fire Garrison Keillor (out of a cannon into the sun) from his weekend-swallowing series on NPR and play this song for a few minutes, we could give the elderly their weekly shot of nostalgia inside a few minutes. And then get back to the business of Worthy Information Dispersal instead of waiting two hours for Keillor’s terrible show to finish.
Listen up, nuggets. Some good… well, some very nice men risked their lives just this last night for your freedom. You’re sittin’ there, eating your corn chips, drinking your sody pop, when it was that thin blue line on the Pacific holdin’ back the four winds of Evil. Just remember, if it weren’t for these guys, you’d be eating sushi and watching generic anime on TV. *shudder*
This is an update to my earlier post, in which I smugly and fecklessly skewer Apple’s visual redesign of their cross-platform music store/music management mega-app, iTunes.
Here’s the update: It’s still ugly, still visually inconsistent with both Microsoft and Apple operating systems, and the ‘fade to pale’ action when the app is not in focus is still terrible.
Fortunately, there are at least a dozen apps out there that allow you to control iTunes without ever having to look at it. Here, I’m quickly covering three programs with three different approaches:
ExTray – has hotkeys and album art, but is somewhat clumsy.
hktunes – has basic hotkeys, is super small and focused, but limited.
bbBroamTunes plugin for Blackbox (my personal choice) – offers more flexibility over the other two and is bug-free. But, it’s not as easy to configure, and only works in Blackbox. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by doctorfrog 
Posted by doctorfrog 
Posted by doctorfrog 
