Sk-etchbook

This popped up at the top of a search listings the other day.

http://www.google.com/explanation.html

This got me thinking. In a society of free speech and via a medium which is difficult, nigh impossible to moderate what kind of filtering is actually going on in search results? I image specific words are filtered out for the purpose of safe searches but filtering of obnoxious and offensive opinions can not be simple.

Furthermore should it be done? In a developed society surely all are entitled to their opinions. It would be the responsibility of the offender to justify his stance point yet to refrain from persisting to the point of forcing their unwelcome views on others. The offended then should equally respect the offenders view and not take offence. Rather it is the offendeds responsibility to offer their contrasting opinions and justify them. Disagreement is likely but should be respected.

Total comprehension and through understanding of any situation or element requires complete information. Positive, negative, objective and subjective.

There is a limit of course when these views are acted upon where it does become immoral, turns to bullying and can degrade the quality lives however this is not the topic here.

To me, offensive opinions are not offensive. They are mealy the results of the individuals life experiences and the influence of their exterior. A mind ravaged with hate and anger is the worse prison of all. There are no bars, no doors and no windows. You remain trapped for as long as they exist.

Would it not then be the right thing to help these people escape their prisons. Censorship and condemnation has no positive returns.

The manifestation of conciousness at a sentient level is a truly miraculous thing. We all possess the ability to manage, construct and reconstruct our own realities, our personalities and perceptions can be moulded. The only way to overcome the negative aspects of our own psyches to to question our beliefs. Questions which sometimes need to be offered others.

Negative, spiteful opinions towards generalised groups or stereotypes, even ones based on our own experiences or "what we have been told" are nothing more than childhood monsters.

What may initially appear to be a hideous, evil and scary monster lurking in the darkened corner of your room turns out to be nothing more than teddy bear once viewed in the light.

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Freaky little article here on Wired. Looks like in the future technology really will be getting under your skin.

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This is an extract sent out by leading recruitment acency Reed:

A recent study suggests that over 50% of employers think the jobs market is overrun by jobseekers with academic qualifications and 68% think not enough candidates have practical skills and vocational qualifications.

This research is supported by recruitment specialists who attended a recent debate on the state of the graduate market. One of the main outcomes was that may graduates lack soft skills and doing a year of traveling might be a better option then continuing in education and doing a masters degree.

There is an emphasis on both schools and employers to provide better training on soft skills like team working, leadership and social skills.

If you are looking to improve on your soft/practical skills then voluntary work is a great way to do so. Why not browse through reed.co.uk's 'benefits of volunteering' or start searching for voluntary jobs now on reed.co.uk.

Internships also provide a great opportunity to upgrade your skills and it has been recently announced that a host of Premier League clubs, including Chelsea, Everton and Sunderland, are on the look out for new interns.

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I just stumbled across this list here. Some lovely names, makes me think mine's a bit dull. Think I'll go down the Deed Pol office to get mine changed. It's only a £10 apparently.

Barb Dwyer
Pearl Button
Hazel Nutt
Ray Gunn
Helen Back
Stan Still
Jo King
Lee King
Terry Bull
Mary Christmas
Max Power
Paige Turner
Sonny Day
Tim Burr
Teresa Green
Will Power
Anna Sasin
Chris Cross
Doug Hole
Justin Case
Barry Cade

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I've just been writing a bio and this entertained me so I thought I would share.

What kind of world were you born into. What events, music, trends or fashions have played a part in shaping the person you are?

I was born in 1982, I've just been having a look at what was in the charts that year and they were some reet choons indeed! Funny thing is most of them are still reasonably well known and the majority of the number 1's spent 3-7 weeks at the top. I seriously doubt as much of the chart music out at the moment will be remembered twenty seven years down the road.

www.number-ones.co.uk

www.chartmagic.co.uk

According to these web sites my unholy arrival was accompanied by a bit of reggae from Musical Youth with their 'Pass the Dutchie' number closely followed by Culture Club's 'Do You Really Want to Hurt Me'.

Check out these videos...

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I been getting invitations from Google to attend webinars for a while now. Previously I've not really paid much attention to these, however while thinking about marketing I thought I'd look iinto the format and content. There's some great material in some of the ones freely available online. Here's a list of just a few, check them out.

Adsense

Adwords

Web Design & Marketing Strategy

Web Design & Marketing

Wordpress

Trends

SEO

PHP

And 100's of other things

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Today's problem is how to write an effective Bio? How do you condense a lifetime of experience and achievements into a few sentences. Whats more how do you write something which captivates the reader, summerises your (professional) persona and gets the message (that you are fantastic and they need you) across. Whats more how personal can you make it, surely the style and tone should also reflect your personality but as it is written for a purpose these aspects should not overshadow the desired outcome.

Hmmmm... Here's some reading (of varying usefulness, but a start).

How to Write a Bio

Brand-yourself.com

About.com

Ehow

Sitepoint

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I've been doing some logo design training for the past week or so...

Now I can admittadly be a bit of a space cadet at times, living in my own little magic garden shed on top of an imaginary hill made of porridge oats.

But..

One of the logos referred to a few times is FedEx (quite a famous and well know logo). I'm currently on a chapter about the use of negative space and FedEx is again been used as and example.

I'm ashamed to say I'd never even noticed the uniquely inventive aspect of this logo before. And I've even worked in companies using FedEx, handling their branded document envelopes weekly even daily.

Now have I just been really dim here or has anyone else missed it too?

Ready?

OK, who can see the arrow? Or more importantly did you know it was there before it was pointed out?

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A couple of useful links for aspiring students:

http://www.inspiringinterns.com

http://www.gurucareers.com/

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Triboluminescence is a funny phenomenom. Things glowing. I saved these links a while ago so now I can't really remember why I thought it was intersting. But interesting al the same.



www.nature.com - Sticky tape X-rays

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This is Ida.
Read more about her...

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http://www.d-9.com/

This is an excellent movie. A highly recommended must see and a compleatly original take on the alien invasion genre.

I think what makes this film soo good is the fact that it is multifacited and speaks on many levels. You have a good (although there are a few minor holes in the consitency and reasoning) storyline, excellent special effects, good actors and believable characters which you can feel rapport with. However the film addresses very aptly and with varying degress of subtlety some of the darkest social issues and predudices of our time.

Anyway there's plenty of reviews out there which cover everything so I'm not gonna waste too much of my time.

10 stars, get ur asses on them seats if your still to see this film.

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I've had this video flagged to watch for a while but every time I tried to watch it I got that bored I fell off my chair. Today I managed and after the first 5 minuted it is actually interesting. I had a rough idea of how a recession functions as part of the economic cycle but had never really investigated the difference between a recession and the credit crunch as they are two totally separate things.

A recession is usually defined as a general slowdown in economic activity over a sustained period of time, this is normally measured by a decrease in the GDP over two consecutive quarters.

More...

The credit crunch on the other hand has been caused by short-sightedness, bad management and greed. Banks and financial institutions put profits before risk and now it has come back to bite them on the ass. This means that any reserves that should be in place to brave the recession do not exist. Personally I think all the banks that needed bail outs should be seized by the government and owned by the state. Banks are bastards anyway I've spent 9 months out of the past 2 years having to sort out mistakes and issues with mine. They are very greedy and unethical especially since the reclaiming business began. Banks should not be ran as businesses as people are now totally dependent on them. They should be institutionalised and then when we come out of the recession the profits put towards repaying the government debt.

The government debt is also a big issue. Admittedly it is making matters better at present in terms of job losses, closures and preventing the market stagnating but at what cost? Massive tax rises for a long time coming. You would think trying to correct a debt problem by getting into more debt is a bit of a gamble especially when attempting to maintain what could be a false economy anyway. The housing market is another area where human needs have been over-capitalized on. The basic wage in the UK is (age 22) £5.73 so that's about £12,000 a year. This is the end of the housing market which needs stimulating, house prices just got too high for young people, first time buyers and low earners to buy. Banks then started lending larger mortgages as they could make money on them, fueling the market on via sales raising prices further. Eventually this had to collapse, there is a limit to how much people can and will pay for anything. The problem then is asset prices decrease, loans are no longer covered and securities are worthless the entire market is based upon money which doesn't really exist.

So finally is it better to keep throwing money at the problem or are we better off letting the market crash? Sure companies would fail, jobs would be lost and the better off would be grumbling about the value of their shares or interest on their savings but the new market would boom. People would have less but things would cost less, there would be increased equality and access to goods. Increased tourism, less outsourcing abroad and new companies will always start if the demand exists.

Think I've rambled on enough for now. Here is a comment about the effect the media has had on the situation - Don't even start me on that subject!
The Media Effect

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I just had a play with the new Wolfram Alpha search engine. I can definitely see how it could be a very useful tool. It's in it's early stages so it doesn't give you much data but potentially it could be incredibly time-saving for professionals, researchers and students predominantly. I don't really get why people always have to hype things as the new or the replacement of? TV didn't replace radio and the intent didn't replace TV. You would think people would have learnt by now things can coexist. Wolfram Alpha meets a completely separate need from Google it provides data, statistics and facts opposed to Google's provision of relevance. Google is very bad at this, I've tried searching for charts and stats before and got a load of rubbish. As it stands it's not good enough to succeed, the data feeds are too limited yet the idea is solid and if the effort is put into the project it could quite easily become a common business tool.

"British search engine 'could rival Google'"

The next Google

Oh and check out Google's next big thing. Pretty impressive as a bystander, very impressive as a tech geek.

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Painting the Mind

I watched this program called Painting the Mind the other day. Here is the description:

"When builder Tommy McHugh and chiropractor Jon Sarkin suffered massive brain traumas, they suddenly revealed a previously hidden talent: to create art that amazed critics and collectors."

I found it fascinating as I have studied quite a bit of philosophy, psychology and a little neurology over the past year relating to mind, brains and consciousness. Now I am wholeheartedly an idealist specifically a panpsychist. Einstien with his funky E = mc2 equation (energy equals mass multiplied by the speed of light squared) showed mass is just a highly condensed form energy. Now our current understanding of the manifestations of energy is limited, my comprehension is that consciousness and matter are made of the same stuff. Now although this fundamental essence, personified through time into a soul or an afterlife does live on, in a way which is a hundred times more complicated and a thousand times more simple than we have made it to be, you as an individual do not.

This program is an incredible insight into the functioning of the brain and the fragility of higher consciousness. The questions raised are thought provoking, I can't even imagine just going for a number two, popping a vein and then being a different person.

It also covers some of the left/right issues which are prominent discussions relating to creativity and what separates some of the geniuses of the past apart from everyone else.

How to become a Savant

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The European Future Technologies Conference and Exhibition is a new European forum dedicated to frontier research in future and emerging information technologies. More than 700 scientists, policy-makers, industry representatives and science journalists convened over 3 days to discuss today's frontier science, tomorrow's technologies and the impact of both on tomorrow's society.

Science Beyond Fiction

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Is it?

http://create2009.europa.eu/

Who makes up all these random new "years of", "blah blah week" and "hoo ha days"?

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These are amazing. The power of magnetism!

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I just came across this quote on Banksy's site. I liked it so thought I would share.

When I was a kid I used to pray every night for a new bicycle.
Then I realised God doesn’t work that way, so I stole
one and prayed for forgiveness.

- Emo Philips

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http://www.webresourcesdepot.com

Bundles of different freebies including open source shopping carts, flash site converter, cheat sheets and loads more goodies.


http://getontracks.org/

Tracks is a web-based application to help you implement David Allen’s Getting Things Done™ methodology. It was built using Ruby on Rails, and comes with a built-in webserver (WEBrick), so that you can run it on your own computer if you like. It can be run on any platform on which Ruby can be installed, including Mac OS X, Windows XP and Linux. Tracks is Open Source, free and licensed under the GNU GPL.

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