Pyjamanating

Art and science combined in Gormley’s 2000 sculpture called Quantum Field in London

Announcing the new Theatre Breaks Magazine for news and reviews, West End Guide, Hotel Deals and Theatre Breaks in London

I’ve been using a program to make sure I take regular eye breaks and longer breaks as well. It’s called Time Out (Free Download) and only works on the Apple Mac computers.

It is very easy to fall into bad habits when using a computer for hours on end. You care about what you are doing, so can sometimes push yourself too far, or over-strain yourself. The human body isn’t built to sit in one position for endless hours, gripping a mouse or typing on the keyboard. Dejal Time Out is here to help. It will gently remind you to take a break on a regular basis.

Time Out has two kinds of breaks: a “Normal” break, typically for 10 minutes after 50 minutes of work, so you can move about and relax, plus a “Micro” break: a very brief pause of typically 10 seconds every 10 minutes, so you can remember not to tense up too much for long periods. You can disable either kind of break if desired, and the breaks are automatically paused when you go away from your computer, and can be reset when you come back.

You can configure how long each kind of break lasts, and how long between breaks. Each Time Out is announced via the screen slowly dimming, with related graphics materializing, and when the break is complete, it fades out again. You can change the time these transitions take… and you can even change the color and the level of transparency during the break. So if you like, you can make it mostly transparent so you can continue reading while on your break… though it’s better for you if you give your eyes a rest during the Time Out.

While in a break, a progress bar shows how long till it is over, and buttons are available to postpone or skip the break if you can’t be interrupted right then. Starting with version 1.5, you can change the number of minutes for the postpone buttons, or even hide them and/or the skip button, if you want to encourage yourself to take the breaks.

I’m still not sure whether I’ll keep this going long term, but for the moment it’s definitely doing me some good.

Blue

BLUE by Andy Roberts

This version of Blue is a photomontage set to an original sound recording of a song by Andy Roberts.

Pictures by andyrob

Blue - Andy Roberts on PhotoPeach

Clever idea and practice from Earthworm:

Cereal Box Mailers

Bubble wrap envelopes are not recyclable plus they are manufactured and you have to buy them, so I have created a template with which to make mailers from cereal boxes. I have tested it by sending a book to myself and then to others who reported back. The secret is in the way I do the corners. Corners are very vulnerable with books. This way the corner of the mailer takes the brunt of it.

Do you prefer working at home to in the office?

I do , but feel free to add your own opinion.

Screentoaster is an online screencasting facility for multiple platforms. I had difficulty getting it to run from Camino but got it working in Flock eventually. This is the first test, embedded here after having been recorded directly to my andy roberts screentoaster account.

No video exists on my computer as far as I can make out, but there is an option to export an avi version for download, which I could then upload to youTube if I wanted to. So how does this compare with Snapz Pro X which I’ve already used and paid for?

In Australia, the government want to introduce compulsory internet censorship.

Of course we already have this in the UK since 2004

Winter Eurostar Deals from St Pancras to Paris or Brussels

It’s worth checking out Eurostar Deals in the winter for last minute Paris Breaks or shopping trips.

• Choose Paris, Lille Europe or Brussels
• Be flexible with dates and times
• Consider an upgrade to Eurostar Leisure direct

Or it’s always possible to take a few days in Amsterdam by combining Eurostar deals with a further train and hotel package.

Linda asks Am I a crofter now, after coming across the term to depict the new style of worker, aiming for self sufficiency working from home on the internet.

Am I a crofter now? Are you? at Acting to Improve
I agree we need to find a better term for this mixed way of working but for me crofting isn’t it

As you can see, Linda rejects the term crofter because of the special meaning which the word has in Scottish heritage and I agree. Taking a word which means one thing and then using it for something a bit similar but really quite different is a bad thing to do with language.