“How to Rebuild Your Attention Span and Focus”

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This is generally an excellent article, but I have to take exception with one of its assertions:

I’ve been using a second monitor for nearly ten years, thinking that vast amounts of space were key to productivity. The second monitor myth has been around for quite some time. Yet the only actual scientific study I could find linking multiple monitors to productivity was done in 2003 by a monitor manufacturer, a video card manufacturer, and the University of Utah. It’s actually kind of a marketing document, not a study. I’ve opted for one, large monitor. Two monitors just allows me to put distractions on one monitor, and actual work on another.

An interesting fact about the origin of the concept, but that’s beside the point: multiple monitors are indispensable for keeping an eye on one thing while actively working on something else.

I’m using three monitors at present, each one generally dedicated to a different virtual machine (Win7, Linux, and the underlying OS X machine). While I’m coding on the Win7 system, I keep a browser open (to documentation or other useful programming info) on the Linux machine, and my notes and to-do list (and possibly a second browser or an IM conversation with the lead developer at BigCo) open on the third. I could do all that with only one big monitor, and I have before, but it wouldn’t be as efficient… I’d be switching between programs repeatedly, often just to see what’s on their screens. As it is, my notes or documentation are always visible, which is very useful.

So I have to disagree with the phrase “second monitor myth.” In my case, at least, it’s not distractions I’m putting on the extra monitor(s), it’s useful information.

“The Kobold Wizard’s Dildo of Enlightenment +2”

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This book sounds hilarious. I’ve always been a sucker for fiction mixing the physical world with a fantasy world. Things like Joel Rosenberg’s Guardians of the Flame series, in which a group of D&D players are transported to what they thought was their fantasy world by their professor-slash-Dungeon-Master, who turns out to be a wizard from that world. Or Rick Cook’s hilarious programmer-oriented Wizardry books, where a programmer from Silicon Valley is kidnapped into a world of magic, and figures out how to put together spells like a computer program. Or Alan Dean Foster’s Spellsinger books, or Jack L. Chalker’s Dancing Gods series, or likely many others that I’ve forgotten. It would quickly pall as a steady diet, but as an occasional treat, it’s delightful.

I find the premise of this one slightly baffling though. In the many years I played, my D&D games never involved characters having sex with anything, including each other. That may have been influenced by the fact that I started playing when I was eight, but that can’t be the complete explanation because I kept playing for at least two decades after that (and likely would still be, if I knew a good group of players here too). The games I played in included both all-guys and co-ed, both in player and character, and players who were introduced to it well after puberty as well as before and during. But I suppose I can see how the game could degenerate into that sort of thing.

“Human hive-mind game whups computer boffinry ass”

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My high-school best friend and I both ended up in Virginia in the very early nineties, a few years after we graduated, he in the Air Force and I going to tech school. We decided to make a trip back to Connecticut to meet up with the old gang.

Among the people we met were our former girlfriends, the sisters M and C (we’d all parted on friendly terms and were eager to see one another again). And we met M’s new boyfriend, a fellow maybe ten years older than us. Among his several less-than-flattering character traits was an intense dislike of video games and anyone who played them, though I didn’t know it at the time. When he flatly stated that “nobody wins with video games,” I pointed out a few of the benefits that were known even then, such as improved hand-eye coordination, thinking to start a conversation on the topic. He looked me right in the eye and repeated “nobody wins with video games.” Needless to say, we didn’t stay very long after that… the difference between ignorance and stupidity is that ignorance can be cured, and he had no interest in a cure.

That memory always comes to mind when I read something like this, which just proves once again that video games are not only entertaining, but can also be damned useful to the entire human race.

“Ultraviolet Movie Locker Aims to Solve the Movie Industry’s Digital Mess”

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Sorry, but I just don’t trust the movie industry to do something like this. It sounds good, and it would be welcome, but think about it… the movie industry made a killing on the VHS-to-DVD format change, just as the music industry did on the cassette-to-CD change, and the 8-track-and-LP-to-cassette change before it.

Maybe the movie people have realized that the DVD-to-Blu-Ray change isn’t going to be nearly as lucrative (because there’s no real benefit to convince the consumer to re-buy everything in the new format), but I doubt they’ll give up all that potential revenue without a much larger fight. They’ll find some way to cripple this before long, maybe before it even launches. And you can bet that you’ll pay more for the privilege of having it, too.

“UK ICT classes killing kids’ interest in tech”

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Here’s the first paragraph:

The Royal Society is to investigate why British schools are failing to interest children in information technology – and why numbers taking classes are falling so fast.

Well, duh!

There are two main reasons for this. The second one is that the dot-com era turned into a dot-bomb — you can no longer make a six-figure salary as a programmer even if you can’t write a simple for-loop, the way you could then with minimal luck. Most people find computer programming ridiculously boring, the only reason they’d do it is for a huge salary. Those are all but impossible to find these days, and require much-greater-than-average programming skill (and the ability to prove it by your reputation) to land.

But the primary reason is, it’s a school subject. That in itself says it’s going to be terminally tedious and boring, regardless of how interesting the subject matter itself may be. I’m one of the most computer-interested people I know, and have been since I was twelve — but thanks to a particularly authoritarian teacher named Mr. Boss (no kidding), the computer course at my school is one of the only two classes that I ever failed. (Oddly enough, the other was also taught by Mr. Boss. Imagine that.)

So, Royal Society, I suggest you start by investigating those reasons. I doubt you’ll need to look any further.