Phil Gyford's Comments

8 reasons you should give talks | Final Bullet

phil — 2012-09-21T17:56:23+00:00

On the negative side... while it's great for the speaker, for all the reasons you cite, the idea that everyone should "get up there" makes me wince slightly. If I've paid to hear people speak I want to hear people who are really, really good at what they do, or really know a lot more than most people about their subject. From an audience-member's point of view I don't want lots of people going to speak at things just because they want to. This is why I rarely speak at things - because I assume there are plenty of people who know more than me about almost everything I know something about.

One other point: "It's still true that a woman in a mixed group is often doing well if she manages to finish a sentence without people talking over her." I obviously can't speak for women, and I don't know how it compares for women vs men, but this isn't only a problem for women. It drives me nuts when people interrupt me or talk over me. Just getting a word in often requires a more agressive conversational style than I have.

But otherwise, yes, speaking is, as you say, worth doing and seems to give you more authority (and fun, and nerves) than, say, many lengthy blog posts would.

Going to dConstruct? Help test our latest feature | The Lanyrd Blog

phil — 2012-08-31T13:51:33+00:00

I realise it's a tricky balance and this is an interesting thing to try and get right. For me, as someone who usually ends up at conferences only hanging out with people I already know, I feel like I'm now going to have to look out for a person who wants to meet me (either to fulfil the obligation and say hello, or to consciously avoid them). And if I don't end up meeting them I will somehow have failed at the event. (I'm fully prepared to accept this is just me though, and I'm not trying to say this is a terrible feature!)

Going to dConstruct? Help test our latest feature | The Lanyrd Blog

phil — 2012-08-31T12:59:00+00:00

What if you're antisocial and unfriendly and don't want to meet strangers...? It feels a bit creepy and makes me very slightly dread the event because I'll be expecting x strangers to hunt me down (in a friendly way).

I Miss The Guardian Editors | fabric of things

phil — 2012-07-24T09:47:06+00:00

I enjoy the iPad edition, because I like just clicking through from one story to the next, so the section headings and lack of serendipity don't bother me too much. It's nowhere near as pleasant as a physical paper to browse, but I've no idea how any iPad app could get round that.

But, while I look through it every day, it has made me realise how little of it I'm really keen to read - there are many articles, and particularly columnists, who, when I'm looking at a section front page, don't seem worth tapping on to read. If an article can't even reach that threshold of being worth a single tap (and a tap back to return) maybe I am in fact reading the wrong paper.

Britain flooded with 'brand police' to protect sponsors - Home News - UK - The Independent

phil — 2012-07-16T15:33:00+00:00

It would be nice if the journalist (and commenters) didn't over-simplify something to make a point. The disallowed words are ludicrous, but slightly less so than everyone here thinks. From the brand guidelines:

You can't use two of the words from List A, OR one word in List A and one or more from List B.

List A: Games, Two Thousand and Twelve, 2012, Twenty-Twelve
List B: London, medals, sponsors, summer, gold, silver, bronze

Also, this is described in the guideilnes as "a helpful guide", not the law. p.9 of this PDF: http://www.london2012.com/documents/brand-guidelines/guidelines-for-business-use.pdf

Markdown Editing for Sublime Text 2: humble beginning - Brett Terpstra

phil — 2012-07-12T13:11:37+00:00

No, the settings file stays in the same place (Packages/MarkdownEditing/). But I made a copy, containing just the elements I want to override, in Packages/User/.

I initially thought the general Packages/User/Preferences.sublime-settings would override the package's settings, but it doesn't. However, Packages/User/Markdown.sublime-settings does.

Markdown Editing for Sublime Text 2: humble beginning - Brett Terpstra

phil — 2012-07-11T15:51:18+00:00

I figured it out! I copied the Markdown.sublime-settings file into Packages/User/ , removed all the settings I didn't mind staying the same, and then changed the ones (like font_size) that I wanted to tweak. That did the job. The hierarchy of SublimeText settings files is confusing me... Thanks for a nice package.