Status-Q

Economically, there are two kinds of people/households in this world:

• Those who pay more taxes than they consume.
• Those who consume more taxes than they pay.

It's a fairly arbitrary line to draw, and I wouldn't want to make any value judgments based on it. It's tempting to call them 'wealth-generators' and 'wealth-consumers', for example, but that's too simple. Most teachers fall into the second group, but without them, we'd have fewer people able to be in the first group.

Those in the first group are typically creating value by selling products or services that people want directly. Many of those in the second are doing the same thing, but we buy their products and services via a distributor known as 'government'. That, to a large extent, is what taxes are.

But I just thought it was an interesting thought experiment, if nothing more. What's your family budget deficit? How much are you dependent on government subsidy?

And if you don't like the answer, comfort yourself with the thought that, thankfully, not everything revolves around taxation! How does your balance sheet look in other areas?

• Those who generate more happiness than they consume.
• Those who consume more happiness than they generate.

That's much more important.

Well, that's fine, because I haven't got one of those...

For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.

– Richard Feynman

I don't normally think of myself as a terribly geeky geek, but the postman just called, and we now own the first series of Star Trek.

Actually, the first three series.

On Blu-Ray.

So I guess geekiness must come in bursts...

Here's a quick plug: my next door neighbour, Edel, creates beautiful handmade books. They range from tiny ones you can carry anywhere, to medium-sized notebooks which will make your friends' Moleskines look very dull, to A4 leather-bound guest books which would be a great wedding present.

As you can imagine, they're not cheap, but they're beautiful, they can be personalised in various ways, and you know you'll be giving a unique gift made with great care by someone who loves her craft. Worth checking out.

I'm just testing Poster, an iOS app for posting to Wordpress blogs. I've used Blogsy for some time, which is capable, but not beautiful, and at times decidedly quirky.

Poster is elegant, has Markdown support, and a URL scheme which means you can send posts to it from apps such as Drafts.

In most places in iOS where you can edit text, you can tap with two fingers to select a whole line. This works, for example, in text editors like Notesy, Drafts and Byword, and can be quite a time saver. In fact, it selects the line up to the next line break; if you're typing code, that's probably one line, but if you're writing prose, it'll select the current paragraph. Very handy if you want to move paragraphs around using cut and paste.

Another place you can use it is in the URL field of a browser, where it will select the entire URL with fewer clicks than the usual tap-tap-select-all.

I use this, for example, if I'm looking at a page in Safari and want to open it in 1Password. As you probably know, apps can register particular URL schemes for their own use, and 1Password's browser will recognise ophttp and ophttps, so you can just go to the beginning of the URL in Safari, insert an 'op', and you'll be taken to the same page in 1Password (or 'g' for GoodReader, etc.)

The problem is that just 'going to the beginning and inserting something' can be a pain if the URL is long. You probably have to scroll slowly left, tap the correct insertion point, and so forth. Much easier is a two-finger tap, select 'Cut', type 'op' and then tap 'Paste'.

If you're doing this kind of thing regularly, you may want to set up a bookmarklet to make it even easier, but the two-finger tap is a handy thing to know in general.

I've been experimenting with low camera angles - something that hasn't been so easy with my Canon 6D, since it doesn't have an articulated viewfinder, so to get shots like these you normally have to lie on the ground if you want to see what you're taking. But the built-in wifi means that you can, instead, put the camera down low and use your phone as a viewfinder, which is what I did today.

The shallow depth of field was deliberate - I quite like the effect.

iTerm 2 is a terminal program for the Mac with lots of great features beyond the standard OS X Terminal. Alfred is an excellent app launcher, which in its newly-released second version is taking the Mac world by storm.

If you don't use either of these, I strongly recommend them.

If, on the other hand, you already use both of them, you might like my (very basic) plugin that lets you list your iTerm profiles using an Alfred keyword and fire up a new iTerm window using the selected one.

Looking at the collection of gadgets on my bedside table makes me wonder whether I'm dull and unimaginative, or stylishly coordinated...

(For the curious, the three similar-looking devices on the right are my Kindle, iPad, and iPad mini. I don't normally need them all in the same place at once! The thing on the left is my GPS logger and the watch is, of course, a pebble.)