- Does computer-related activity really cause carpal tunnel syndrome?
- “Most likely the disorder is due to a congenital predisposition – the carpal tunnel is simply smaller in some people than in others…There is little clinical data to prove whether repetitive and forceful movements of the hand and wrist during work or leisure activities can cause carpal tunnel syndrome.”
- Marc Hedlund on baking cookies and caring about details
- “But what I really do is pay a lot of attention to all the little parts of making cookies. How melty is the butter when I add it? Did the eggs get beaten to that particular fluffiness? When I put the cookies in, did the oven just stop heating to temperature, or did it just turn on again? How does the kitchen smell when the cookies are ready? That’s all there is to it. I like cookies enough that I give all of my attention to making them come out right. I pay attention to every step and how it affects the results.”
- Beating the market by buying art
- “In 1997, the Christie’s sale of 20th century art works from the estate of Victor and Sally Ganz netted more than $207 million, a record sum for a single-owner sale of art at auction…Over the period 1948 to 1997 the Ganzes earned real rates of return ranging from 12 to over 21 percent for works sold at the three auctions. Overall, the Ganzes beat – often by a wide margin — the returns from diversified portfolios of common stocks…Their financial success did not result from a few lucky purchases. They earned consistently high returns, regularly beating the stock market on works by different artists acquired at different time periods.”
- NY Times implements subtle layout difference to indicate whether a story is news or opinion
- “The Times has instituted a sweeping but subtle redesign, to emphasize the difference between objective and subjective journalism. Straight news will remain, well, straight: laid out in justified columns, with even margins on the left and right. Stories that have been colored by analysis, commentary or authorial whimsy will all receive the layout previously reserved for columns: a straight left margin and a ragged right one.” [via Newsdesigner]
- Stellarium Astronomy Software
- “Stellarium is a free open source planetarium for your computer. It shows a realistic sky in 3D, just like what you see with the naked eye, binoculars or a telescope.”
- A giant FAQ database about Google by Googlers
- “Google encourages all its employees to send things they learnt or want to share with coworkers as a snippet of five lines – no less, no more. The employees have to be very precise and focused. It can be anything from executing a simple task or if they figured out a better way of doing something that is part of their daily work. Or just an aha moment. All they have to do is email it in. Google then indexes all these emails and makes them searchable.”
- Prodigies and the hard work of being a genius
- “But most importantly, the young Mozart’s prowess can be chalked up to practice, practice, practice. Compelled to practice three hours a day from age three on, by age six the young Wolfgang had logged an astonishing 3,500 hours — “three times more than anybody else in his peer group. No wonder they thought he was a genius.” So Mozart’s famous precociousness as a musician was not innate musical ability but rather his ability to work hard, and circumstances (i.e., his father) that pushed him to do so.” [via JK]
- Building Ruby, Rails, LightTPD, and MySQL on Tiger
- “Compiling and installing these tools this way is well worth the effort, as the end result delivers an easy-to-upgrade, system-independent, stand-alone development platform that is impervious to potential problems that can be caused by system updates, operating system upgrades, etc.”
- The entire text of The Cluetrain Manifesto
- The whole book is now available online.
- Popgloss shopping photo blog for women
- A twist on accidental shopping: “It has a similar feel to Cribcandy, lots of pictures few words, updated dozens of times a day and with the ability to save pictures and links to anything you like with one click.”
- Photos of the neighborhood surrounding 37signals HQ
- “Here are a couple of shots of the areas surrounding 37signals HQ. You get a real feeling of the neighborhood, it is very ‘paper street’ from fight club.” Less stalking, please.
- Lego ice cube tray
- “Serve the coolest drinks around with ice that looks like Lego bricks.”
- Mac laptop zoom trick
- Hold down the Control key as you drag two fingers on the trackpad. Voila, you’ve got zoom power.
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18 comments so far
Steven Romej 19 Oct 06
The stalking photos were pretty cool. The two photos from DHH ’s gallery were never enough
Sam 19 Oct 06
Amen on the hivelogic article!
nerkles 19 Oct 06
Carpal tunnel is actually quite rare. People often have surgery for it but they really have something else, so then “it” comes back and they get hopeless. Not to dismiss real CTS … I’m just saying get 2 or 3 second opinions before you go under the knife for it.
Check out It’s Not Carpal Tunnel Syndrome. That book totally saved my ass. And by ass, I mean wrists. I’d probably be unable to type today if I hadn’t found that book and this keyboard a few years ago.
Scott 19 Oct 06
Compiling all that stuff from scratch really makes you appreciate how slow your G4 mini is.
brad 19 Oct 06
It’s true that carpal tunnel is one of the less common forms of RSI ; people often refer to any RSI as “carpal tunnel” so that adds to the confusion. I have thoracic outlet syndrome which is more common, especially among people who use the mouse a lot. Another good (though a bit dated) book on the subject is Repetitive Strain Injury: A Computer User’s Guide, by Emil Pascarelli and D. Quilter.
Mac laptop zoom trick 19 Oct 06
For those of you without a powerbook/macbook/ibook nearby, this trick works on any desktop mac with a scrollwheel mouse. Just hold down control, and scrool. Pretty cool, but for me, pretty useless.
Tara Hunt 19 Oct 06
Not to be contradictory or anything, but The Cluetrain Manifesto has been available in its entirety online (for free) since 2000, I believe. In fact, it was available in its unedited, pre-book version before it was even printed…which actually lead to its printing. There was such a buzz created fr this series of wonderful essays online, that publishers decided to take a risk and publish it. The authors insisted, though, that the free online version would stay and it never hurt sales (still became a best seller).
Nice story, eh?
Derek 19 Oct 06
No wonder you guys rarely work from your office ;)
Gio 19 Oct 06
the article about art as an investment vehicle is interesting but misleading in a couple ways.
first, it takes one isolated case and compares it to the broad historical market averages. it would be interesting to see what returns are for art collectors on a broad scale as compared to stocks. if you want to compare one to one cases, then look at warren buffett, who has compiled an annualized return of something like 23-25%.
second, it only compares dollar amounts and misses important distinctions between “investing” in art and investing in stocks. I think most, if not all, true art collectors would say that they collect art for the love of art first, and as an investment second. art is speculative, not based on anything measurable. stocks are true investments (though some may carry more or less speculative risk). you’re buying a share of a real business, hopefully one that generates profit, and therefore your shares entitle you to a piece of those profits.
Richard 19 Oct 06
my kids love to make cookies. (read on)
we started a cookie journal where we capture the date, occasion, guests in our house, who helped, what we did different, along with ratings of the dough at each stage and the cookie along with what was best about the whole experience.
journaling cookies has taught me several things, including: 1. We don’t spend true quality time with kids as often as we think we do. (judge by the dates in the journal) 2. Kids find what is meaningful in the mix/preparation/experience far better than adults 3. Kids don’t care if they offend you
spend quality focused effort finding what is meaningful all the while not caring who you offend in the process. This will always find you closer to pure genius.
Phil 19 Oct 06
Those pictures don’t really tell me any more then viewing from Google Earth and going through your trash hasn’t shown me already.
Rex Hammock 20 Oct 06
Re: What Tara Hunt said. I also thought Cluetrain had been online since if was first published, so I emailed Doc Searls (one of the authors) and asked. He wrote me back: Heh. It’s been up for years. :-) So “now” is right, technically.
John 20 Oct 06
Jeez, what a depressing looking office!
Paul 20 Oct 06
As I ride the Metra that passes 400 N. May every day, I salute you. Well, in my heart, anyway.
Nice video on Apple’s site too, guys!
Jimmy 20 Oct 06
Apple released a 37signals video?
http://www.apple.com/education/whymac/compsci/video.html
Don Schenck 20 Oct 06
Because when you’re doing savory cooking, you use a recipe.
But when baking, it’s a “formula”.
So the attention to detail is, actually, how baking SHOULD be done.
Having said that, I’m heading home for a Single Malt and a good cigar!
Chrisooya 23 Oct 06
Mac laptop zooming uses the command key, not the control key.
Mark 24 Oct 06
Anyone want to comment on why Google didn’t simply go the wiki route, and instead used an email-based system?
Comments are closed