QR Codes: Uses and Misuses

QR codes to me are roughly equal parts admirable and irritating. An example of a QR code

Admirable, because they are an elegant way to encode a lot of information in a small visual space. Irritating, because they are showing up all over the place, not always for a good reason.

I don’t hate QR codes. (A lot of people hate them. I can’t work up the energy for that.) Sometimes I even think they are cute (like this Heifer International example). I just wish they would settle down into a sensible standard that people know how to apply. Right now they’re being thrown around all haphazardly, and it makes me crabby.

Here’s my breakdown. There are a lot of other people who have made similar lists, like Terence Eden’s (his is more technical); I’m not claiming to have some kind of last-word genius revelation here. Continue reading QR Codes: Uses and Misuses

Is good the enemy of the good?

11NTC was all a-buzz about NPower‘s Community Corps. As far as I can tell, Community Corps and Civic Actions‘ Geek for Good (which I caught some buzz about last year) are directly competing for the same eyes. They are both online services matching geeks (who have skills and time) with nonprofits (who have tech needs). Is Community Corps’s clarion call the death knell of Geek for Good? I didn’t hear any talk about the overlap, and Geek for Good’s site doesn’t have easy contact info. I just posted a contact form to Civic Actions, so stay tuned. (I guess. Not that any of you are tuned.)

One day this might be a real site.

Well, this is embarrassing.

I set this site up (actually, Jeanne Kramer-Smyth set it up for me) as a place to muse about my professional interests (mostly; see “About”).

Sadly, as you find it now (it’s September…), it’s mostly a demonstration of my lack of follow-through on things that aren’t my highest priorities. We set this site up in March. (Hence the putative “published” date of this post. At that point, this page was the standard “Hello World” WordPress example.) I moved house in May. I began pursuing a new job in June. I started that new job in August. So this lovely little site has not received a great deal of my time and attention. It eventually showed up in my Google results anyway, so I figured I should actually put content here that didn’t make me ashamed of myself.

Queen of the Universe, 10 & 11

10. Do you own or rent a property which has sidewalks that other people might have to walk or push a stroller or use a wheelchair on, ever? Has there been wintry precipitation recently? It’s your responsibility to make your walk safe. No snow. No ice. Wide enough for wheels. If you can’t do it yourself, my benign government will have a postal-code/neighborhood-searchable “Get shoveling help” app, so you can find paid or free assistance. If someone slips and falls on your property because you just didn’t bother, there will be severe consequences. (For example, making you Snow Remover For Life. for your whole block.)

11. Highway sign change: Any sign that now says “Do not pass” or “No passing zone” will become “None shall pass!!”

Queen of the Universe, continued

7. Biting insects and blood-borne pathogens, begone! But with some kind of “don’t screw up the entire food web/population balance” rider.

8. There’s got to be some kind of population reduction. I know this is going to be why the peasants rise up and burn me in my palatial roundhouse, but I think there are too many people. Finding new ways to grow more food seems like a losing proposition, eventually, what with our planet being finite and all. Best suggestion so far: Everyone is reversibly sterilized at birth, no exceptions. Then, after you turn 21, if you want kids, you apply for a breeding license. At first I don’t think there will even be any more hoops than that. You apply for one, you get one. Like a fishing license.

When I’m Queen of the Universe

I was gonna write these up in a Facebook note but then I got all paranoid about ownership and copyright issues. Weird.

Anyway: My Queen of the Universe Platform / List of Proclamations

1. Proselytization is punishable by death. Zero tolerance. You want to set up a storefront or a website or a mail-order business telling people about your god(s), have at it. But you start knocking on people’s doors or invading their countries and telling them they have the wrong gods, and you will vanish without a trace. [Clarification: I don’t mean my personal guard will come and kidnap you. I mean you’ll just spontaneously vaporize. Poof.]
2. All public trash cans that look like barrels with two legs and round heads shall be painted to look like R2D2.
3. Some kind of kilt subsidy. I used to think I would proclaim Tuesdays as Utilikilt Day, but I don’t want to make it too structured. I just want more men to wear kilts, more of the time.
4. Ban advertising. (In part just to see what happens if people only buy things they actually need, or that they happen across and find delightful. Also because I think advertising is a corrosive force, spiritually and psychologically speaking.)
5. No patents for life forms. I feel like genetically modified organisms are a giant Promethean Frankenstein nightmare waiting to happen, but I also think that viral genetic medicine is interesting and potentially beneficial, and I love the Golden Rice concept, so I don’t really know how far to take this one.
6. No Christmas music before Thanksgiving. And no “holiday medleys” of any kind. The severest penalties will be reserved for medleys of holiday music composed after 1900, played on “classical” instruments like violins and cellos and piano, and then broadcast by stations that should be playing actual classical music.

Sightseeing

Lunch walk today was Mission: Ducklings.
Lafayette Park: Cordoned off due to a demonstration/protest of some kind. Couldn’t get close enough to see what the issue was. No ducks at all.
Constitution Gardens: Many, many ducks and ducklings (including very sweet little peeping noises from the underbrush), and two herons, possibly great blues (which eat ducklings), and several geese but no goslings.
19th & Penn: Hillary Clinton crossing the street. (No ducklings in her modest entourage.)
I Street between 19th & 18th: The Giant Inflatable Rat. (No ducklings there, either.)