Blog

Following the true half-geek tradition pursued at chiperoni.ch, I’ve upgraded to the latest version of WordPress. So far everything looks like it’s working fine. Please leave a comment if you stumble across an error.
I guess, I’m curious to see how Akismet will help to curb spam.

Thanks wp for fixing so many bugs.

As a long-time WP user, I’m really happy that WordPress has gathered such a large community. It’s not always the case that the better (and faster) software wins…

useful:
Illustrator Tutorials

via del.icio.us

I’d like to point you to this posting, which sums up a lot of things i’m discovering about blogging:
Why You Should Blog

Even though many of my long postings* never reach publish status, writing is a great way to reflect on stuff. And I love saying, “I’m blogging this”…

*The short postings do get published 😉

for future reference:
Anatomy of an Icon

Source: Swissmiss

I couldn’t think of the German word. Instead I used this word to describe what I was trying to say:

ADJECTIVE: Tastelessly showy: brummagem, chintzy, flashy, gaudy, glaring, loud, meretricious, tawdry, tinsel. Informal : tacky
Source: garish. Roget’s II: The New Thesaurus, Third Edition. 1995.

and surprised myself what vocab is hidden in the back of my head.

yet another tagging tool:
Shadows

Here’s a link that has been lingering in draft status for the last couple of months:

How to learn from your mistakes

I’ve been meaning to write up some of my own thoughts on this topic. But so far I haven’t got round to it yet… So here’s the link instead.

How do you learn from your mistakes?

stumbled across this Newsweek article at Kottke.org:

At Google, we think business guru Peter Drucker well understood how to manage the new breed of “knowledge workers.” After all, Drucker invented the term in 1959. He says knowledge workers believe they are paid to be effective, not to work 9 to 5, and that smart businesses will “strip away everything that gets in their knowledge workers’ way.” Those that succeed will attract the best performers, securing “the single biggest factor for competitive advantage in the next 25 years.”

I’m asking myself: is the “knowledge worker” really the biggest factor?

Just got back from an excellent gospel concert held by the Basileia church choir in the Theodorkirche.

A great way to start the Christmas season on an icy cold and grey November day.

[Note to my readers: This restless nomad is developing traditions. See last year’s entry]

found this excellent posting on the African brain drain dilemma:

I am weary of the brain drain argument. It belongs to donor and NGO conferences, not to the real lives of those who must live by their wits and effort as opposed to a cheque from Western taxpayers. Those who bandy the argument are relentlessly statist and even now have their eye on remittances that they believe can be directed better by government and development organisations than by the people who earn them. It is an argument beloved by middle class paternalists in hock to donor money and who believe that without those who have left, everything at home will fall apart – it is nonsense of the worst kind.

The article describes how a nurse was able to improve her living conditions for herself and her family by working and studying in the UK for a couple of years.

Think again before trying to introduce regulations to restrict qualified workers from working in Europe. Better: fight corruption, introduce a fair and just legal system, promote the free economy, and reduce the bureaucratic red tape required to start a business.

[…] average cubicle dwellers work at one thing for just 11 minutes at a stretch and this is divided into three-minute chunks. Once they are interrupted from the task in hand it takes them 25 minutes to get back to it.

source: print version of yesterday’s FTD

and here’s the original article, which was published in the NYT:
Meet the Life Hackers

Stumbled across this:
dodgeball.com :: mobile social software

Sounds like fun. And more stress.

Don’t know about you, but I’m getting kind of tired of all the different networking platforms like Open BC and Linked In.

Creating Passionate Users: How to spend your marketing and ad budget