Author: Paul Mc Namara
A Rainy Night in Helsinki – 19 February 2019
2010s, Finland, Helsinki, Photography, Travel
Nice to see rain for the first time in 2019.
Bordeaux rainy place – 14 August 2011
2010s, Bordeaux, France, Photography, Travel
Bordeaux France on a Sunday afternoon
https://www.redbubble.com/people/paulmcnam/works/36824100-a-rainy-place-in-bordeaux-france-on-sunday-afternoon?asc=t&p=art-print
Olympiasee, Am Olympiapark, 80809 München, Germany – 13 October 2007
2000s, Germany, Munich, Photography, Travel
I love this photo of Munich in October. I found it while going through some old pictures. From what I remember, there was a football tournament in Olympia park that day.
Learning Music Theory from YouTube
2010s, MusicI am loving this YouTube video about learning music theory. I got a midi keyboard for my 2019 challenge and have realised that there is a lot to learn to get to the point of making something good.
52 interesting facts from 2018
Thought ProvokingFascinating list of 52 facts from 2018 by Tom Whitwell. I have listed a few I found interesting but go and read the full list.
Are you thinking what I am thinking. How hard is it to grow Vanilla Pods?
https://medium.com/fluxx-studio-notes/52-things-i-learned-in-2018-b07fc110d8e1
- A Chinese podcast called “How to Make Your Voice More Attractive” has 218,000 paying subscribers. Overall, the market in Chinese self-help subscription podcasts was worth $7.3 billion in 2017, compared with just $314 million for all advertising-funded podcasts in the US. [Jennifer Pak]
- When he took over the bookshop chain Waterstones, James Daunt gave individual store managers control over which books to stock and how to display them. Over seven years, returns dropped from 20–25% to just 4%. [Robbie Millen / Benedict Evans]
- Vanilla pods now cost $500/kg, roughly the same as silver. Madagascan farmers have briefly become vanillionaires, causing chaos in areas where the nearest bank might be a day’s walk away. [Annah Zhu]
- A Spanish bakery will install a ‘thermal breadbox’ on the side of your house (for free!) and deliver warm bread every day [Pablo Alarcon]
Autumn Path – Helsinki, Finland
2010s, Finland, Helsinki, Photography, Travel
I love the wonderful colours in Autumn, especially when the sun is shining and the sky is blue. Going for walks in this season are refreshing even when Winter is coming.
Geography Now – Finland
Finland, Helsinki, Thought Provoking, TravelSuch an entertaining and informative video about Finland. One correction however, the best ice-cream is Salmiakki and Lemon. Or sitruuna-lakritsi-jäätelöä. Mmmmm.
Autumn on Esplanadi – Helsinki, Finland – 28 September 2018
2010s, Finland, Helsinki, Photography, Travel
Camera Memory Card Failure Lessons
Photography, Tech, Thought ProvokingThis was interesting to read about losing a week’s worth of photos from a memory card failure. I have had my own woes with memory cards and USB drives failing without backups being done. The costs are quite prohibitive for restoring hardware failures as indicated in the piece. The main lessons are getting many cards (reading negative reviews to judge failure rate), backup often and use a camera with dual card slots.
Some negative customer reviews are frivolous because they are rooted in user error, or because they concern themselves with delivery rather than the product’s quality or performance. However, negative reviews are generally more significant than positive reviews.
If you think that one shouldn’t focus on the negative while the vast majority of reviews are positive, consider that on Amazon, the average rating for a product is 4.4 (out of 5) as found here by analyzing 7 million reviews. Even a product with an average 4.0 rating (4-star) is below average. The large majority of products are rated above 4.0, so the difference between a great product and a subpar product is less than 1 (star) on average. On the other hand, we’ve just seen that the number of 1-star reviews for different cards varies by a factor of four.
Read the whole article.