Simon Hammond Blog

Reading this article is not a waste of time.

Paul argues that maybe procrastination is not always a bad thing, particularly if in ‘procrastinating’ you are actually doing something worthwhile. This sounds like a conflict between what you ought to be doing and what you’d rather be doing. Clearly, you sometimes have to do things you’d rather not but maybe not as often as you might expect. The habit of disposing of chores with a twist of the imagination and a creative kick, once nurtured, means you can spend time wrangling with more interesting subjects.

Having said that, I get a lot of eureka moments whilst doing the washing up and there is nothing like a boring seminar to provoke the mind into tugging at the bars, trying to escape.

Tags: PhD, rant, unfiled by si
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Yes, it’s true. Yahoo has acquired del.icio.us. It now has another desirable property (after flickr recently) on the Web2.0 Monopoly board.

I’m anxiously waiting to see how Yahoo will handle this early xmas present to itself. A flickr/del.icio.us mash-up is an obvious and trivial move. The main thing will be moving tagged, online, bookmark sharing into the mainstream I presume. Maybe they’ll finally provide private links.

Yahoo clearly doesn’t mind buying services that trump its own:
Y! Photos and flickr
MyWeb2.0 and del.icio.us

I just went away to check out what Yahoo had in the way of streaming radio. It’s called LAUNCHcast and it likes to pop up with:

Error

Sorry, we do not support Netscape on the Windows platform.

Error Code: 25 - 0

I predict a very merry xmas or Q1 for the boys at last.fm, in line with my previous mumblings.

Tags: web by si
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I missed this post on the essential IlliGAL blog recently.

It concludes with a kicker:

Thus, as competent GAs and their derivatives take hold, I predict that there will be a decrease in the numbers of bad GA/EC papers advocating weird combinations of operators and weird techniques on strange grounds and an increase in landscape learning and adaptation. I certainly hope so.

Me too. Looking at indices for some conference proceedings makes me want to mischievously use them as the basis of a random title generator. Have I blogged my alchemy-theology scale rant model yet?

Tags: PhD, rant by si
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The hugely underrated last.fm (formerly audioscrobbler) continues to extend its recommendations engine (or ‘giant computer brain’).

If you haven’t tried out this service, or you only tried audioscrobbler’s early shaky incarnation, then you really need to give it a spin. Be warned: you may not be able to go back to traditional radio with a fixed playlist, inane DJs and no skip feature.

Last.fm is clearly eligible for assimilation by Google, Yahoo, et al but I really hope they hold out. Despite the windfall I’m not convinced being bought up helps a small company unless it is financially threatened. Flickr handed out freebies and upped its limits after it was bought by Yahoo but still goes offline for the occasional ‘massage’ (suspicious and possibly smutty?).

It makes sense that being small and unshielded keeps a company keen and innovative. It also encourages them to develop their own character.

Tags: web by si
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