Gordon Meyer

Newspaper in the throes of change

Andrew Alexander, soon to be former Ombudsman of the mighty Washington Post, writes frankly about the challenges the paper is facing in the current climate of economic and socio-technological change.

Create a customized news broadcast for your home

The UK website Automated Home writes about News Anchor, which automatically creates a video podcast, in the style of an evening news broadcast, consisting of the latest news from your favorite RSS feeds. It's a neat idea and the demo video is well worth a peek.

I don't have News Anchor, so I haven't tried this, but it occurs to me that because RSS feeds are easy to create (I'm partial to Feeder), you could create a custom feed that makes up a newscast for your family and children to remind them of upcoming household events. The result will be a format a lot more compelling than whatever you're using now.

A door-mounted counter for tracking, um, things

A home-built In/Out Counter provides a way to track consumption, as described on the Jaagpag E Arredores blog. In the end, it didn't prove practical, but that shouldn't stop you from visiting the site; there are plenty of other interesting projects to peruse.

Is that a pen in your pocket?

I'm a firm believer in the write it down strategy, so for the past ten years or so I've been carrying a Fisher Bullet Space Pen in my left front pants pocket. They're great pens and I recommend them highly. As you might guess, over the years I've lost a few, and at $20 or $30 each, that's always a bummer.

I have a couple of alternative pens that I sometimes carry if I think I might be engaging in activities where I could lose the Space Pen. Activities such as flying, shopping for clothes, or bar crawling. My alternatives are an inexpensive pocket pen I found at a Japanese stationery store, and the Cross Ion pen. The Ion really isn't much less expensive, and I dislike its gel ink, so I can't say that I recommend it. It's just that I've never managed to lose it, so I'll keep using it until I do. (Yes, I recognize the irony in the situation where I've never lost the pens that I bought for the purpose of misplacing them.)

I recently discovered a new alternative. It's the Fisher Stowaway Space Pen. It uses the same NASA-inspired, fantastic ink cartridges, but costs less than half as much as the more stylish Bullet model. It's a lot thinner than the Bullet, and about 1/4 inch longer, so it's still quite pocketable. It appears, however, that you can't replace the ink cartridge. I'll know for sure when the time comes to do so and I attack it with a pair of pliers.

At only $10, I no longer have to concern myself with my pen slipping out of my pocket. But no, you still can't borrow it.