Hack day
So, now the open hack day is not only coming to London, it is also happening right next door, at Alexandra Palace. It’s obvious, then, that something will have to happen to make me unable to attend it. And there we go, I’m moving out of the country just two weeks before.
Of course, I didn’t really participate that much on the hack days while I was still working at Yahoo!, and I probably wouldn’t come up with any ideas for stuff to build this time either, but I still find it amazing that they can time it so well.
Child well-being and carrier bags
In an effort to reduce the amount of carrier bags we use, we have bought a nice looking, stronger and bigger bag that we try to remember bringing with us when we go shopping. As I went yesterday, I obviously forgot the bag at home once more and started thinking about British attitudes towards their carrier bags. I noticed that the father and son in front of me took five carrier bags for things that I would have packed in two. A week ago, when cleaning out a cupboard at home, I discovered exactly how many carrier bags we had stuffed in there to be used as bin bags some time in the future. If half a cupboard stuffed with bags is what we have collected over the last year, I can only wonder how many bags the father and son collect if they’re using 2-3 times more bags than we do.
At this point, I had the table listing child well-being per country in my mind. I had noted that Sweden and Denmark were in the top three and the UK and USA are at the bottom of the list. Then it struck me. In the US and the UK, carrier bags are given away for free. In fact, you might say “The UK is addicted to carrier bags. In 2005, 17 billion carrier bags were given away for free in the UK. In contrast, in both Denmark and Sweden you have to pay your carrier bags. But what about the Netherlands, at the top of the list? Well, I haven’t been to the Netherlands for years and I really can’t remember, but a quick search shows that you do in fact have to pay for your bags there.
So, there is clearly a correlation between free carrier bags and a low child well-being. Something to think about next time you go shopping.
Coming late to the party
After reading that last.fm is going to get a whole lot more music in their library I decided to give last.fm another try. I don’t know what happened to make me avoid it until now, but both my standard login and my backup one are registered but not used. It’s clear that I’ve wanted to try this out before. It’s also clear that the whole usewhateveraddressyouwant@dlade.net situation is a bit dangerous, since I can’t figure out what email works with their password recovery system.
So I’ve created yet another account and tried it out once more. What really surprised me about last.fm is that it has actually heard of the artists that I like to listen to, and has already within the first hour of using it managed to suggest other artists that I hadn’t heard of but whose music I actually liked. At the risk of sounding Californian, that is just awesome. Other services of the same kind usually have no idea what I’m talking about when I mention Hedningarna or Amadou & Mariam, and when I finally find an artist they have heard of (such as Nitin Sawhney) they pick up on a part of the music that I don’t particularly like and then quickly steer off towards mainstream music.
I’ve needed to find some new music for a while now (read: years.) This could be a good start.
