Josh (the blog)

I’ve delivered simple, clear and easy-to-use services for 20 years, for startups, scaleups and government. I write about the nerdy bits here.


@joahua

On a fact-free piece on a complaint about fact-checking

Whilst speaking of journalists who don’t bother to check their facts, the SMH’s Razor blog seems to be a tad keen on drawing a distinction between “bloggers” and “real” journalists. You’d think they’d be careful to not alienate their audience (presumably mostly geeks) in this way, but apparently not: the Big Media agenda seems to have come through rather clearly, as fact-checking standards for SMH weblogs are (one would hope — but possibly not) rather less strict than their ‘real’ journalism.

Robert Scoble’s cell phone number has been in the side column of his blog for ages. This wouldn’t be such a big deal if your blog post — I daren’t call it an ‘article’ or anything else that comes closer to ‘journalism’, lest they take offense — wasn’t speaking on the subject of lack-of-fact checking. Caught out by irony, it seems.

Dust glow

A photo of dust on the floor

Das Keyboard

A photo of Das Keyboard

This looks really cool, and logically [the absence of letter markings] makes more sense than perhaps it first seems. Enforced dependence upon memory will remove the need for any consultation with the markings on the keyboard in a fairly short period of time. The creator likened it to the absence of key labellings on a piano, which is… only semi-valid, I guess, as there are only 7 keys on a piano that repeat according to a visible pattern, whilst there are 104 keys on any standard keyboard. Having said that, I completely buy the thinking behind the weighted keys argument, that’s great stuff.

It’s also USB, so anyone wanting to use one with an Apple Mac mini is in luck. But then, it’s black. Not to be racist or anything, but black just doesn’t go with shiny white Apple gear.

Soooo… $US79.95 plus an airfare (they don’t ship to Australia, so I’ll have to ship to them!)… hmm. Tempting, but strangely not, at the same time.

Sports carnivals and ridiculous clothes

A photo of two slightly over-dressed individuals sporting house colours.

Photos of the moon

I took these photos over the last night or two with my digital camera. The reason the moon is this large/detailed is (mostly) that I’ve cropped the images to this size, and was using maximum optical zoom on the camera itself when I took the photos (which is why the third is so blurry, I guess!)

The third image, as well as the last two, were shot through a filter (not a later digital filter, but optical) — I’m not entirely sure why the colours are so different, truth be told!

The second and third photos are just overexposed — the only difference is that I held my hand adequately steady for the second, whilst in the third it slipped a bit. I’m noticing a resemblance to the Lucidien brand in how that photo came out, but their logo is produced with Photoshop effects, not taken from a photo. But hey, a cool look nonetheless!

A blue moon
An overexposed moon
An overexposed moon, blurry, blue filter
The moon, clear, can make out craters
The moon, grainy, fairly clear