Its common, I think, use “the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog” to show common glyphs when selecting the right font for your project.

Today I learned that “sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow” is a much more fun one.

Also I learnded that that a Pangram is a sentence that uses all letters of an alphabet at least once.

Link: Pangram - Wikipedia - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pangram

These look good to me. I use Sonos today for music playback with Spotify and these look well suited to for the bedroom because:

1. there are no voice assistants built in. There is no privacy on voice assistant.
2. I expect an Ikea price to be reasonable (current Sonos pricing is excessive)
3. They look nice enough.
4. Can use my own smart light bulb

Sonos has collaborated with IKEA on SYMFONISK, a range of speakers designed to democratise the home sound system. Combining our expertise in sound and technology with IKEA’s knowledge of home furnishing, SYMFONISK seamlessly fits into the home to enhance everyday life and integrates with the Sonos system.

SYMFONISK: Stereo Furniture by Sonos and IKEA | Sonos : https://www.sonos.com/en-gb/symfonisk-by-sonos-and-ikea

I’ve been observing my cat for life lessons.

• Sleep More.
• Sleep wherever you are
• Rubbing seductively against people's legs when I’m hungry will get me dinner
• You can make people guilty by sitting on their lap and staring at them
• When you walk away make sure that never, ever, ever look back. You own it, it will there when you need it.
• Keep yourself clean
• Be Chill. Things happen but you can keep your cool by staring casually at them
• Never eat from plate that you are served on.
• Keep moving
• Don’t just sit in the same place all the time. Move around to look busy
• Look the other way when confronted with a bad situation. Feign ignorance, deflect attention.

I love fonts so this tickled my whimsical font nerve.

Pop Culture Typography - YouTube

Change happens slower than I might think. Even at 50% of new sales in a year, this means that probably just 30% of cards will be electric by the time I am retired in 20 years.

Sadness.

Electric vehicles take majority share of new car sales

We estimate that EVs will account for 54% of new car sales by 2040, not 35% as previously forecast.

Electric Vehicle Outlook 2017 | Bloomberg New Energy Finance | Bloomberg Finance LP : https://about.bnef.com/electric-vehicle-outlook/?src=social

This article on The Guardian is like science fiction:

Sperm counts among men have more than halved in the last 40 years, research suggests, although the drivers behind the decline remain unclear.

The latest findings reveal that between 1973 and 2011, the concentration of sperm in the ejaculate of men in western countries has fallen by an average of 1.4% a year, leading to an overall drop of just over 52%

One other thing:

“If you are a guy with a low sperm count and you try for a baby when you are 21, you are probably not going to notice you’ve got a problem,” Pacey said. “But if you are trying with your partner when she is 35 then that’s when the heartache comes, because by then you have got low sperm count, you’ve got an older partner and you haven’t got a lot of time to try and fix it medically.”

Men should be considering that their body clock is ticking too ?

Sperm counts among western men have halved in last 40 years – study | Life and style | The Guardian : https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2017/jul/25/sperm-counts-among-western-men-have-halved-in-last-40-years-study

At time of writing I can averagely expect to live for 10306 more days.

This website: Life Expectancy Tables - Actuarial Life Tables | Life Expectancy Calculator

As a 50 year old male, I need to plan to live to 79.

Sobering.

As a 40 year old, plan to live to 77.8. I’m guessing the difference is that you’ve survived this far so your life expectancy improves marginally as you get older. Aka, you don’t always reach 50 and those that do are survivors ?

I received this innocous looking “infographic spam” email (I get a LOT of these, we never publish them).

It demonstrates why I use plain text when sending email to prevent spam, malware etc.

I was going to send a polite reply when I noticed this text in the response. I see this because I always respond in plain text email (to the annoyance of many people)

When I look at the source code, I can’t make much sense of whats actually happening here. I think I’m looking at a vulnerability in some mail clients (Outlook?) that would spawn a click fraud to something related to asbestos.

I often like to listen to Chillstep, (a cross between Chillout and Dubstep) when working and Youtube a is great source for it. Here is a selection of what I have been listening to recently.

“Look to the Rose that blows about us—“Lo, Laughing,” she says, “into the World I blow: At once the silken Tassel of my Purse Tear, and its Treasure on the Garden throw.”

Excerpt From: Omar Khayyám. “The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam.”

A reminder to spend your money on beautiful things. More simply, take time to enjoy life.

Source: Doctor Who notice on The London Underground - Imgur

You can never really be lonely anymore.

The Internet is always here to criticise you.

I enjoyed this picture of a happy elephant in a waterfall and blowing water out his trunk.

Laughed.

There is a Greek poem that tells the story of the Fox and the Hedgehog 1 that is

"the fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing"

The principle of the poem is to highlight two world views. You can live your life with one big idea that defines everything you do or you can have the view the world is full of ideas and options.

.

The one big idea is something obvious like a religion, an employer or specific interest that is their passion and comes to define everything about them. For other people, it about finding new ideas and considering each one. Maybe it about travelling for new experiences and see new things, new places and new people.

For myself, I believe I tend to the “many ideas” view. I work on many different technologies (although I once specialised). I embrace the uncertainty of travel. I like reading off topic content in design and finance. Sometimes it’s confusing to myself when I “change ideas”.

But then, nothing stays the same. Living my life with just one “big idea” through obeisance to some gods or a single lifelong hobby or having the same job year after year just doesn’t make sense to me. Mind you, it would make for a much simpler life that could equally be enjoyed.

I like that idea. One big idea or many idea. You can have both.

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p>You can live your life with one big idea that defines everything you do or you can have the view the world is full of ideas and options.

I often listen to Yuuoz when working.  I want to introduce his music to you.

The misc is perfect backdrop to concentrating in the office. Sort of a chill, slow beat, chant-like ambient feel that helps me pass the hours filled with ITIL-compliant drudgery and beat the PRINCE2 blues.

I hope you enjoy it too.

Warm And Bright Spirit 012 by Yuuoz

One of the funniest reviews on Amazon I’ve ever send.

BUT (or should I say BUTT), not long after eating about 20 of these all hell broke loose. I had a gastrointestinal experience like nothing I've ever imagined. Cramps, sweating, bloating beyond my worst nightmare. I've had food poisoning from some bad shellfish and that was almost like a skip in the park compared to what was going on inside me.

Then came the, uh, flatulence. Heavens to Murgatroyd, the sounds, like trumpets calling the demons back to Hell…the stench, like 1,000 rotten corpses vomited. I couldn’t stand to stay in one room for fear of succumbing to my own odors.

But wait; there’s more. What came out of me felt like someone tried to funnel Niagara Falls through a coffee straw. I swear my sphincters were screaming. It felt like my delicate starfish was a gaping maw projectile vomiting a torrential flood of toxic waste. 100% liquid. Flammable liquid. NAPALM. It was actually a bit humorous (for a nanosecond)as it was just beyond anything I could imagine possible.

AND IT WENT ON FOR HOURS.

I felt violated when it was over, which I think might have been sometime in the early morning of the next day. There was stuff coming out of me that I ate at my wedding in 2005.

I had FIVE POUNDS of these innocent-looking delicious-tasting HELLBEARS so I told a friend about what happened to me, thinking it HAD to be some type of sensitivity I had to the sugar substitute, and in spite of my warnings and graphic descriptions, she decided to take her chances and take them off my hands.

Silly woman. All of the same for her, and a phone call from her while on the toilet (because you kinda end up living in the bathroom for a spell) telling me she really wished she would have listened. I think she was crying.

via Amazon.com: Haribo Gummy Candy, Sugarless Gummy Bears, 5-Pound Bag: Grocery & Gourmet Food.

Star Drunk is the sequel to the viral short film ‘Cleverbot: Do You Love Me.’ Star Drunk is an experiment in writing a short film while drunk; several writers from Portland got together one night to write the script. We promised each other that whatever we wrote that night, we’d produce as a short film. We ended up creating a Star Trek-Star Wars-Battlestar Galactica’esque parody with laser gun fights and space battles.Taking the concept a step further (and stranger), we asked our cast to be drunk on the night of filming.

I have a new favourite YouTube channel

This is a perfect description of my chair at home (which is next to to my home lab of VMware vCloud servers).

Source: Lolnein

I think this product review might fit into the category of over sharing / too  much information.

But it would seem to be a great result for their marriage. No ?

Source: Amazon

source: reddit

Prancercise. 5 minute demonstration. Don’t laugh, don’t be a hater.

“We are really going to cut the noose and let it loose with the Prancercise Gallop”

This could be the exercise program for Network Engineers everywhere - Unicorn Prancing!

Original - Prancercise: A Fitness Workout - YouTube.

Update - Unicorn Prancercising

Check out this songbook from IBM in 1937 that reads like a communist manifesto for the workers to celebrate their collective efforts to:

“Our Leaders we revere”

“For the EVER ONWARD I.B.M.”

Oh my. That’s some weird arse crud right there.

Source: Retronaut 1937 : The IBM Songbook