Saturday, October 02, 2021
If your bra elastic is too tight, stretch it over the back of a chair
Thursday, September 30, 2021
Books read in September 2021
Saturday, September 18, 2021
My voting by mail experience
Thursday, September 16, 2021
Things They Should Invent: "Browsing-Friendly" sign for small businesses
Tuesday, September 07, 2021
The mysterious missing verses of The Tottenham Toad
The Tottenham Toad came trotting down the roadWith his feet all swimming in the seaPretty little squirrel with your tail in curlThey’ve all got a wife but me.
Here's the weird part: the internet says that this is the whole song, but I clearly remember it has having three verses! I distinctly remember other lines from the song, and there is no record of them on the internet.
I remember the following lines:
Sunday, September 05, 2021
Could an eBay-style bidding system help painlessly cool the real estate market?
Tuesday, August 31, 2021
Books read in August 2021
New:
1. Dico des mots qui n'existent pas et qu'on utilise quand même by Olivier Talon and Gilles Vervisch
Reread:
1. Born in Death
Tuesday, August 17, 2021
Things They Should Invent: people who left this job went on to work at...
I recently had a new idea, inspired by an Ask A Manager column and my own job-hunting experience:
New rule: if you reject someone because you think they're going to leave for a better job, you have to tell them where to find this better job.
— "Impudent Strumpet!" (@ImpStrump) August 4, 2021
Today, my shower gave me an improvement on this idea: a "people who left this job went to work at..." website, or perhaps a LinkedIn functionality.
Scraping LinkedIn data (and other data if other useful sources are available), track which employers people went to after leaving a previous job, and look for patterns.
For example, if many people left Acme Inc. to work for Roarke Industries, and a comparable number left Roarke Industries to work for Acme Inc., that tells one story. If many people left Acme Inc. to work for Roarke Industries but there was no pattern of traffic in the other direction, that tells another story.
People can use this information to find better jobs and find employers who are likely to hire them based on their previous experience. Conversely, they might also be able to use it to plan their career path - for example, if Roarke Industries requires 5 years of experience and a lot of people go from university to Acme Inc. to Roarke Industries, then Acme Inc. might be the place to get the experience you need to be hired by Roarke Industries.
Tuesday, August 03, 2021
Things They Should Invent: cupboard to dishwasher to resident to dishes algorithm
The cupboard where I keep my cups is precariously full.
And I often run out of cups (or appropriate cups, e.g. I have wineglasses but don't have any coffee mugs) before my dishwasher is full.
I didn't have this problem in my old apartment!
I feel like someone could make an algorithm to fix this.
You enter your cubic centimetres of dishwasher rack space and cupboard shelf space, the number of people in your household, and perhaps the rate at which you use dishes in a given day (e.g. 2 mugs, 1 wine glass, 1 water glass) and it calculates the optimal number of each item for you to own. Perhaps it could even tell you how to arrange your dishes in the cupboard.
Maybe it could also do the opposite when you're buying a dishwasher: you tell it what you own and the rate at which you use it, and it finds the optimal dishwasher to fit your lifestyle.
Saturday, July 31, 2021
Books read in July 2021
My second COVID vaccine experience
Friday, July 16, 2021
Things They Should Invent: concordance tool with a Boolean NOT function
Wednesday, June 30, 2021
Tuesday, June 29, 2021
Magic Words: "or . . . ?"
Thursday, June 24, 2021
Health and labour: a mini-braindump
Sunday, June 06, 2021
Magic Words: "human being"
Friday, June 04, 2021
Food storage containers with clip lids are extremely difficult to open and close
Latest pandemic malfunction: the container I use to store my cooked pasta broke!
When shopping online for an appropriate-sized replacement, the option I found was a "Clip It" container - a glass container with a plastic lid that has clips along the side, as shown in the image.
Clip It food storage containers |
It takes a lot of force to push the clips down in a way that will allow them to clip over the lip of the glass containers, and therefore to seal the lid. If I handle it like a normal container with a normal amount of force and strength, I can get a maximum of one (1) clip to clip. If I use my body weight and gravity, I can get a maximum of two (2) clips to clip. I have never, not once, been able to get all four to clip.
I know I'm not especially strong, but it really shouldn't be at all difficult to operate a food storage container!
If you are considering buying this style of food storage container, I strongly recommend trying it out before you buy it - or, at least, keeping it in returnable condition until you're certain you can make it work - so you don't end up paying for a container that's difficult to operate. (I made the mistake of removing the labels, throwing out the receipt, running it through the dishwasher, and filling it with food before I discovered that the lid was difficult to close, because, like, it never occurred to me that a food container could be difficult to operate!)
And if, like me, you are stuck with this style of container, I found it's less difficult to put the lid on if I do so on a table rather than on the counter. The table is lower than the counter, so I can press downwards and use my body weight, which gives me enough leverage to get two of the clips to clip and therefore for the lid to be reasonably closed.
However, it shouldn't be this hard! I shouldn't need leverage and body weight and strategy to operate a food container. And, for that reason, I strongly recommend avoiding them.