Solve wasted heat and office greenery in one

From How to Geek:

I can’t exactly recall when the idea came to me, but at some point I started wanting to use the heat from a computer as a way to warm the soil and help with germination/growth.  I became hooked on the idea of using computer heat as a way to control the soil temperature of some sort of living plant life.

The result is a rather clever design that uses acrylic cylinders filled with soil to draw heat up to to the planter in the top of the case. Hit up the link below for a very detailed run down of the project including results from various temperature tests.

Most office workers have desktop PCs churning away all day every day (well, throughout the working week, anyway) which brings office temperatures to the high seventies by mid-afternoon.

Equally, most office workers (particularly solicitors it seems) like to be surrounded by greenery, plants and other nick-nacks better suited to a greenhouse. Personally, I’ve never seen the attraction with indoor plants; I couldn’t even get jazzed by growing cacti.

So, what could be better than a computer-mounted mini garden which uses heat generated from the PC to enhance growth?  Better than a Tupperware box full of seeds left to germinate on the office window sill, right?

And please: no comments on health and safety. If water leaks through causing the circuit to short and the thing goes up in flames, so be it. It’s a good metaphor for what’s happening to the planet if nothing else.

Hitting back at the text-walkers

From the Metro 15/05/12:

People texting while walking in Fort Lee, New Jersey, could be slapped with an $85 (£53) fine after police decided to clamp down on the activity.

It’s better than me slapping them I suppose.

The Fort Lee Police Department has issued 117 tickets for reckless walking in the past month, with offenders being forced to pay the penalty.

Officers pointed out at least 20 pedestrians who had been hit by cars while texting and walking to justify the fine.

Police chief Thomas Ripoli said: 'Pedestrians aren't watching where they're walking, they're not aware.'

However, people have only been fined if they are ignoring traffic signs or jaywalking because they are too busy looking at their phones, with walking along the sidewalk apparently still above the law.

Remember this? Sometimes falling into an open sewer just isn’t deterrent enough.

I’m still astounded at the number of people I’ve personally witnessed walk head-on into obstacles, crash into other people, trip up flights of steps and generally go sprawling all because they’re too engrossed in whatever’s on their frickin’ phone.

What’s wrong with pulling off to the side (“when it’s safe to do so” – ahem) and sending that damn text?

Most pedestrians are always far too quick to think that a) the Highway Code doesn’t apply to them and, b) other road users are the ones who should take responsibility and save them the trouble. As my old driving instructor used to say, “it takes two to have an accident”. I’m not sure that’s universally true, but I take the point.

I just wish your average text walker did, too.

Maybe criminalising text walking is the way to go over here, too?

Best exam advice ever

Judging from the stats on my blog at the moment, there are a lot of students (and not just law students) who are desperate (I mean really desperate!!) to find some kind of magic answer to:

• how to revise super-effectively and craft great answers in exams;
• knowing what’s going to come up in their exams;
• fluking their exams with or without any revisions if all else fails; and
• ending the months (years?) of studying torment because, you know, it’s all got a bit too much.

Hmm - must be that time of year or something!

This year, there's been a big focus on question spotting for some reason.

Trying to question spot and limiting your preparation is always a dangerous practice. I didn’t do it for any of my LLB, LLM or LPC exams and I’m still thankful I had the sense not to try.  I remember my biology teacher at A level bizarrely boasting that “we’re in the business of question spotting” (I think he fancied himself as a bit of an expert at it).

Sadly he proved to be wildly myopic (and I think was looking the wrong way down his binoculars).  When the class’ results came out it wasn’t pretty. 

Weren’t A levels just the worst?!?

So, really, don’t shoot yourself in the foot by trying to question spot. It’s just not worth the risk.

Still, if you’re a poor desperate student cramming for all you’re worth and fancy giving it a whirl, don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Stock photos – the generic face of today’s law firm

 

I’m no branding expert, but I know when something’s wrong. And I see a lot of things wrong with the websites of law firms out there.

When you want to stand out, it’s counterintuitive to plaster your website and promotional materials with the same default stock image of a lawyer or other professional in a fricking dark suit.

            

But it happens ALL … THE … TIME.

There’s nothing quite like a sea of generic looking websites all selling legal services that look so similar you can’t tell them apart. Firms (or their web designers) seem to have a love of insipid, lifeless and inaccessibly corporate stock photos (usually one of the brunettes above) plastered across their sites as though it’s a badge of honour.

I saw an ad in the Metro the other day (yes, the Metro!!) for a firm whose strapline was, “no ordinary law firm”. Naturally it featured a generic stock photo of (you guessed) that same brunette in a dark suit. Ordinary?  Ordinary? Well, maybe their legal services aren’t, but their ads certainly are.

Where’s the personality gone? Lawyers might not be the most photogenic bunch, but surely the staff of a firm can’t be so un-photogenic that they simply cannot be shown to prospective clients under any circumstances.

Yep, I realise people move on and firms don’t want to be put to the hassle and expense of updating their images whenever a key member of staff leaves, but they can still be used for the background, ‘atmospheric’ shots (you know, of the team hard at work trying to win their client’s medical negligence case like it’s the only file they’ve got open).

I just give up.

Coffee trips, slips and spillages

^{There’s nothing worse than a soggy bourbon!}

(Most) lawyers love coffee. In fact, I have heard it said there is a direct correlation between the greatness of a lawyer and the blend of coffee he or she drinks. I’m not so sure about that, but anecdotally at least, I think it’s a fair statement that the majority of lawyers love their coffee.

I’m sure we’ve all had a mug miscalculation at work which results in stained trousers and a damp crouch for the rest of the afternoon. Ahem. Well, I know I have. 

Walking back to your desk with hot mug of something can be hazardous too (and not just for the office carpet).  Thankfully, a new scientific study may help to reduce the risks (I’m glad the UK taxpayer hasn’t forked out for this wondrous insight, though).

From msnbc.com 09/05/12:

Ever wondered why it's so hard to walk with a cup of coffee without spilling? It just so happens that the human stride has almost exactly the right frequency to drive the natural oscillations of coffee, when the fluid is in a typically sized coffee mug.

New research shows that the properties of mugs, legs and liquid conspire to cause spills, most often at some point between your seventh and tenth step.

So says a pair of fluid physicists at the University of California at Santa Barbara.

Coffee drinkers often attempt to walk quickly with their cups, as if they might manage to reach their destination before their sloshing java waves reach a critical height. This method is scientifically flawed. It turns out that the faster you walk, the closer your gait comes to the natural sloshing frequency of coffee. To avoid driving the oscillations that lead to a spillage, walk slowly.

Forget science and fluid dynamics; just let common sense prevail. Sprinting back to your desk with a cup of hot liquid isn’t smart in any circumstances.   I don’t know that we needed Professor Nescafe to tell us that!

Secondly, watch your cup, not your feet.

The researchers found that when study participants focused on their cups, the average number of steps they took before spilling coffee increased greatly. Krechetnikov and his graduate student Hans Mayer, the primary author of the study, suggested two explanations for this result: First, focusing on one's cup tends to engender slower walking; second, it dampens the noise, or chaotic sloshing, in the cup.

Yes, focussing on your cup is a kind of ‘flying on instruments’ approach.

Third, accelerate gradually. If you take off suddenly, a huge coffee wave will build up almost instantly, and it will crash over the rim after just a few steps.

OH NO – D I S A S T E R

Well, thanks for the tips. 

Now claim conscious lawyers can walk about their offices carrying cups of hot coffee safe in the knowledge they’re less likely to go A over T scalding a colleague in the process and, much more importantly, denying themselves their caffeine fixes.

I can sleep soundly tonight!

It’s getting kind of quiet around here…

I’ve just been clearing out / sorting some more of my Google Reader subscriptions.  What the hell has happened to the ‘blawgosphere’? 

The legal bloggers who I always regarded as ‘old timers’ are looking a bit thin on the ground suddenly, and those who are still about, haven’t updated in a while.

I’m scared to speak too loudly in case it echoes! 

You’ll be telling me there’s tumbleweed rolling down the road next…

Ah – crap!

Clinton Cards - Another one bites the dust

From the Telegraph 09/05/12:

In 2009 it made a pre-tax profit of £24.1m on sales of £345m, an operating profit margin of 7pc. Last year it made a loss of £10.6m on sales of £364m. The change in its fortunes has been swift.

But it has been building up for a while. The company for too long was dismissive of the threat from email and e-cards, claiming most people enjoy sending and receiving real cards through the post. That may have been true a few years ago, but with high quality smart phones and slick competition from upstart rivals like Moon Pig, Clintons was in trouble. Who really wants to take a trip to an out of town retail park to buy a birthday card?

Actually, on sales of £364m, an awful lot of people, apparently.

The company reacted by launching its own e-card business. Maureen Hinton at Verdict, a retail analyst, said it was too little, too late.

Clintons has also found its business model – plastering the high street with its shops and buying up its rival Birthdays – to be catastrophically out of date. Its rental bill, at the last count, was £80m a year.

Ouch!! You’ve got to sell a lot of ‘Get Well Soon’ cards to offset that.

But that’s only part of the story, of course. Clinton’s problems are as chronic as they are endemic: the rising cost of post, the gradual decline of sending greetings cards generally, unwisely moving to the lower-end of the market in terms of quality of products, overwhelming competition from other stores (particularly supermarkets) and a staggering lack of investment in IT, their delivery infrastructure and in improving the appearance of many of their stores.

The shopping experience has been lousy for a while (as confirmed by Mary Portas did a rip-snortas). Several of the branches I’ve visited obstinately boasted a decor from the early 1970s as though it was something to be proud of. Given the events of the last 48 hours, it looks like their business model dates from the same period as well.

The shelves seem to be increasingly chocked with Taiwanese tat and there are so many promotional stands you can’t walk around with a tube of roll-wrap held widthways without colliding with something.

My last visit also had a sting in the tail at the till. What shopper wants to be guilt-tripped into buying a breast cancer pen as an add-on when you’ve just nipped in for a birthday card? (Anybody else had that recently?!) What I really want to know is what happened to the Wacky Weasels that used to be writhing about the floor like angry vipers waiting to strike unsuspecting shoppers on the ankle?

Current CEO (of Starbucks fame) Darcy Bussel (ahem) Willson-Rymer has had a bit of a thankless task on his hands and, in retrospect, it proved to be the proverbial exercise in rearranging deck chairs on a sinking ship. Not only was he unable to find a buyer for the ailing sister chain, Birthdays, but Clintons has gone to the wall during his tenure as well. Everything else he has or hasn’t done at the helm there seems a bit academic now. I bet he’s wishing he’d stuck to coffee.

But hey-ho. If American Greetings buy them out, trim the fat and implement some of the IT and infrastructure changes that are decades overdue, maybe Clintons has a fighting chance of surviving for the long term. I hope so; I really want them to make it. The high street can’t take much more pummelling.

It’s grim out there, folks.