Steve Fischer's Random Blog

Author: fish1964

  • The Elegance of Nothing

    I always enjoy Seth Godin‘s posts, but this one especially resonated:

    And what is a brand? It’s not the logo, certainly. I have no idea what Everlane’s logo is. The brand is our shorthand for the feelings that an experience creates, the promises that a product or service brings with it.

    If Nike announced that they were opening a hotel, you’d have a pretty good guess about what it would be like. But if Hyatt announced that they were going to start making shoes, you would have NO IDEA WHATSOEVER what those shoes would be like. That’s because Nike owns a brand and Hyatt simply owns real estate.

    …

    But the brands that matter are voices that choose to matter. Voices that make assertions on behalf of their users. Who market with people, and for them, not to them or at them.

    Work that matters for people who care.

  • Tipping Simplified

    Via Daring Fireball,  GrubStreet gets it right.

    Do I have to tip?
    Yes.

    It’s so complicated.
    It’s not. When you eat and drink at a restaurant or bar or café or whatever, where servers accept tips, you will leave a tip, and that tip will be 20 percent of the total bill, including tax and whatever you’ve spent on alcohol.

    You can read the rest, but there’s no need to. I understand that some people grew up tipping 15% (I did), but in 2019 when servers might be making as little as $2.13 an hour, 20% is appropriate.

  • Nobody Lives Here

    This is an interesting map of the U.S. showing all the areas (broken down by census block) where no one lives.

    tumblr_n42t5sfiee1sisl6fo1_r1_1280

    About  47% of the country is unoccupied.

  • Some = 600 Million

    Well, in fairness 200-600 million. Not like it’s a lot or anything. Read this Facebook blog:

    As part of a routine security review in January, we found that some user passwords were being stored in a readable format within our internal data storage systems.

    Sounds kind of harmless, right?

    Or maybe not.

    The Facebook source said the investigation so far indicates between 200 million and 600 million Facebook users may have had their account passwords stored in plain text and searchable by more than 20,000 Facebook employees. The source said Facebook is still trying to determine how many passwords were exposed and for how long, but so far the inquiry has uncovered archives with plain text user passwords dating back to 2012.

    I think you should assume that your Facebook password is public knowledge at this point. And that their public statements are basically a lie.

  • The Edge

    The view from the soon to be complete observation deck on the 100th floor is somewhat frightening. Not sure how I feel about looking straight down…

    0130f3263edge-13-jpg-mobileda377dd7fimg_1714-jpg-mobile
    c6f734ff6edge-3-jpg-mobile

  • What the $%!#$@ is a Grawlix?

    h/t Kottke.org.

  • Opportunity Rover RIP

    The NASA Mars rover Opportunity was finally declared dead after an amazing 14+ year run on Mars. The NY Times has a nice interactive visual:

  • Me Cookie Monster

    Cookie Monster was my favorite Sesame Street character growing up. Cookie Monster doing a Reddit AMA made me literally laugh out loud.

    Reddit is a bit hard to embed, but some examples:

    Comment
    byu/Me_CookieMonster from discussion
    inIAmA

    Comment
    byu/Me_CookieMonster from discussion
    inIAmA

    Comment
    byu/Me_CookieMonster from discussion
    inIAmA

    And:

    Comment
    byu/Me_CookieMonster from discussion
    inIAmA

    Comment
    byu/Me_CookieMonster from discussion
    inIAmA

    And:

    Comment
    byu/Me_CookieMonster from discussion
    inIAmA

    Comment
    byu/Me_CookieMonster from discussion
    inIAmA

    Just read the whole  thing, it’s hilarious…

  • Gather Together the Full Gamut of Redundancy

    I love this article by the vice president, executive managing editor and copy chief of Random House, listing commonly used phrases with redundant words that should be removed from your writing…

    • hollow tube
      Bet you hadn’t thought of that one, had you.
    • hourly (or daily or weekly or monthly or yearly) basis
    • integrate with each other
    • interdependent upon each other
    • join together
    • kneel down
    • knots per hour 
      One knot = one nautical mile per hour.
    • last of all
    • lesbian woman
      Come on, folks. Think.

  • Made on Earth by Humans

    One year ago today. This is a nice video by SpaceX. The double landing still gives me goosebumps…