Surprising that one of the most minimalist ways of brewing coffee is also one of the best! Note that Bentz was repsonsible for the idea of the paper filter, not necessarily the plastic cone.
(Via About.com inventors)
Best taste, and very easy to clean!
Read about it here
My favourite tip:
I popped ALL the keys off to allow the keyboard to completely dry (either draw, write down where the keys go, or take a picture so you can put ‘em all back in the right place)
There speaks the voice of experience!
In a philosophy class last night, I was reminded of why I enjoy philosophy so much. In 1963, an American philosopher called Edmund Gettier wrote a three-page paper that upset thousands of years worth of consensus on the definition of knowledge.
I was amazed at the thought of such a short piece of thought having such a big impact, but also the simplicity of the form of his ‘counter-examples’. So simple, in fact, that I can give one in this blog post!
The historic definition of knowledge had three parts. To say you have ‘knowledge’ of something, you need:
This would seem a fairly comprehensive definition of knowledge, but Gettier found a gaping hole in it. Take the following example:
You are walking through London, at two minutes to noon. You’re not wearing a watch, and so look at Big Ben to check the time. It shows the time as 11.58. So, you have justification for believing something which is also true. But is your claim to know the time watertight?
Imagine the following condition applies to the scenario:
Unknown to you (and those around you), Big Ben stopped working at 11.58pm the night before. In this case, your ‘knowledge’ about the time is mere coincidence. Does it still seem right to claim that you ‘know’ the correct time?
(This ‘counter-example’ is not one that Gettier used in his paper, but it has exactly the same form. You can probably think of other ‘counter-examples’ pretty easily)
Philosophers have responded to Gettier in a number of ways. One approach is to add an extra condition to the definition of knowledge- that the match between the way the world is and your knowledge is non-accidental. Other philosophers have argued for a narrower definition of justification, which would exclude Gettier’s counter-examples. However, there doesn’t seem to be a neat answer to Gettier’s challenge yet (see this Princeton lecture).
A sad day recently as my super-simple phone breathed its last. It was annoying to replace it, from an environmental point of view. But I did manage to find a suitably simple replacement- the Motorola F3 (review).
Designed for so-called ‘emerging’ markets, it deliberately skimps on features to save battery life and keep the cost down. The only drawback is that it’s super-simple display (think writing texts on a calculator screen) makes for a slightly maddening menu interface- this would drive many users up the wall, but I seem to be adapting OK. I think one reason for my acceptance of the rather duff interface is that the features are so few and far between, you don’t spend much time in the menus anyway…
This might sound like I’m reassuring myself that my ‘cheap as chips’ phone was actually a good buy. But I do feel that phones are particularly prone to ‘instant obsolescence’- a built-in camera goes from 1MP toy to 5MP ‘key feature’ in around 18 months. No such danger with the Motorola!
A great day’s cycling in Norfolk, tired legs amply rewarded with tea and cake…
[update] Now looking at using WordPress to bring it all together…Hopefully, I’ve now achieved two goals- the good looks of a custom-built site (johnfitzgeralddesign.com) along with an easily updatable blog.
Travelling by train from London to Vienna and back. All quite exciting, save for a few gripes: had to stomp round Gare de l’Est in search of a cash machine at 10pm last night (thought I’d get a good value exchange by waiting ’til I got to euro land…) The night train from Paris to Munich was pretty grim- no couchette on the cheap ticket! Slept in 5-minute snatches. Not feeling too shattered though.
On the train from Munich to Vienna, discover that Deustche Bahn have given me a ticket from Hanover to Brussels (odd since I go nowhere near those places!), and omitted to give me any tickets for the bit from Munich to Vienna and back. The German ticket inspector gives the closest he can come to a ‘bof!’, but the Austrian one demands that I buy a new ticket. A bit of a pickle as he can’t take cards and I’m 40 cents short- a good samaritan fellow passenger very kindly chips in. Swings and roundabouts- the ticket inspector’s zeal balanced by my fellow passenger’s kindness.
On balance, though, I’m really glad I’m traveling this way- a great chance to watch the world go by, and to get on with things- have had some very productive fettling with the HSC visual identity.
After a fair bit of mucking around with code (HTML the hard way), I’ve used RapidWeaver to get my work online. It’s certainly a quick way of getting my portfolio together! It follows from Seth Godin’s advice, that small businesses shouldn’t spend too much time tweaking their code.
[14/07/07 Update: I've now brought my blog into the new site, it's available at: www.blog.johnfitzgeralddesign.com]
