Texting and walking - don't do it

The BMJ have completed a study I have been looking forward to for along time. "Impact of social and technological distraction on pedestrian crossing behaviour: an observational study." And the results were just what I wanted them to be. From the abstract:

Results Observers recorded crossing behaviours for 1102 pedestrians. Nearly one-third (29.8%) of all pedestrians performed a distracting activity while crossing. Distractions included listening to music (11.2%), text messaging (7.3%) and using a handheld phone (6.2%). Text messaging, mobile phone use and talking with a companion increased crossing time. Texting pedestrians took 1.87 additional seconds (18.0%) to cross the average intersection (3.4 lanes), compared to undistracted pedestrians. Texting pedestrians were 3.9 times more likely than undistracted pedestrians to display at least 1 unsafe crossing behaviour (disobeying the lights, crossing mid-intersection, or failing to look both ways). Pedestrians listening to music walked more than half a second (0.54) faster across the average intersection than undistracted pedestrians.

So yeah, if you're going to be walking around with your phone out at least don't look at it while you cross the street! "Walk with purpose" is one of my favorite sayings.

Source, Via

It has been a great year

Santa has been found

Turns out he's a UPS man

Seriously though, with the number of sales Amazon is doing shipping companies must be loving the holiday season.

"For Profit"

With everyone talking about how much Amazon is loosing with its "Super Saver" shipping and "Prime" shipping it's important to remember that they're still making money.

Yes, you can get a 1,672 pound safe shipped to you at no cost. Heck, you can even get a 3,955 pound belt sander shipped for free. But guess what? Amazon will still make money off you. If not on that item then somewhere else.

Despite what some have said from time to time, Amazon is a for-profit business. So, we looked at some numbers, and we believed that this would be a good program for customers and for Amazon. -- Jeff Bezos, Amazon founder and CEO source

How does one explain color to a bind person?

Apparently one cannot.

Finally

Someone in the car industry got smart

The Chevy Spark:

Besides having a more responsive touchscreen and easier-to-use controls than the Volt, the Spark has another advantage: It lets you use a GPS app from a smartphone on its 7-inch screen. (Via)

You can use an in-car screen as an extension for your phone's GPS! So you have an always up to date map. How has it taken this long?

Technology in global improvement

Why does every global improvement project involve new technology?

There's nothing wrong with technology, don't get me wrong. There are many great projects that take some new technology and implement it in some third-world country to make it a better place. That is wonderful.

I just hope people don't get caught up in thinking that every sustainable improvement project must use cutting edge tech.

Arch Linux

Linux is complicated

That is simply a fact. And yet, that may be what makes it so appealing. But once you find something it does so much better and faster than Mac or Windows it's totally worth all the headache and frustration.

Arch

Seems even more complicated than things like Ubuntu, Red Hat or Fedora. But if I one day have enough know-how to use it, I'll be happy.

Lifehacker has a great guide for getting started with Arch.

Geniuses

How are some people just geniuses?

Others aren't.

This guy created some of the most iconic iOS interface designs that even Apple adopted them. Example: the pull to refresh feature that everything uses. Then he got bored and created his own iOS interface framework, because, you know, that's what geniuses do.

He's 25

Earth is Amazing

Sometimes I forget how awesome this planet is

That's why I love things like Planet Earth and compilations like this:


(As a bonus an M83 song starts at 3:40)

Legos - 2.17 Miles High

I still maintain that Legos are some of the best toys ever built.

It came to light today that if there was some way to stack 2x2 bricks on top of each other the tower could extend 2.17 miles high. I say if it were possible because you'd have wind blowing it over after a few feet, and if there were any slight flaw in even one brick it could bring it down early.

The 2.17 mile limitation: the bottom brick would collapse under the weight of the 375,000 bricks above it.

Source

Ads

I'm probably going to put some ads on here. Mostly just to see how that all works.

I did put my own text sign up for dropbox ad on the right. I'll keep that one where it is. I'm a big Dropbox fan.

It can simply do everything! You can get tons of free space if you put a little time into it. I save all my documents there so they're all backed up to the cloud. And it's a good backup too - it saves versions. Plus all the files I work on from different machines (Windows, Mac, Ubuntu) are always in sync and available everywhere.

Funny Videos

I think I'll share funny videos here. There are so dang many good ones, but I'm really not a big user of Facebook.

Don't let technology rule your life

Use it to aid your life.

Source

daringfireball.net

I've tried it before - didn't like it. But now I do.

This is my first blog

I'm not too sure where I'll go with this. I don't plan on posting lots of personal stuff on here. This is as personal as I'll get:

• My typing skills need some refreshing. It's been too long since my middle school typing class.
• They say it's good for creativity to write at least a few words down per day. I'd like to be more creative.
• I'm having a blast learning to write in Markdown.
• I'll talk a little about technology news stuff.

Did you know they had 8 inch hard drives??

---

To get markdown into something blogger likes I convert it to html, and blogger likes that.

---