Wish you were beer

Some lessons

2011-08-12T10:13:00.002-04:00

I haven't posted for a while so I was feeling a little guilty and put together a bunch of random thoughts that wouldn't fit on twitter. One problem with twitter is that deep thoughts get buried under a lot of noise. This seems like a much better forum to persist and preserve them. Here goes in no particular order.

Lessons Learned

You’re body is getting progressively less useful after each decade. Plan to cram as much young stuff in as you can while you can still enjoy it and defer the other stuff till you’re old.
You need meta-time to evolve. If you can’t break away and have a bird’s eye view of what you’re doing in any facet of your life then your big deep brain will be drowned out by the noise of your small helpless brain that’s struggling to stay afloat. You need the eagle-eye, the worm-eye will make you sad and helpless.
You need to have peak experiences regularly to be productive. How can you think about going through life without the occasional spurt of adrenalized joy? Buying shoes isn’t going to help.
You spend 15 years in school learning how to avoid risk, being penalized for taking risks and marginalized for risky behavior. Nothing awesome ever materialized without risk. A life without risk is a death sentence to die of boredom.
There are no shortcuts for 99.999% of us. There’s only hard work, smart planning, focus, discipline and showing up. Yep, showing up is the hardest part.
If you don’t have a goal, a deal that you’ve made for yourself, a destination that you’ve planned then you’re just a pawn in somebody else’s plan.
Forty five to ninety million heartbeats, that’s what it takes to become a world class master at something. That’s from the 10,000 hour theory. If you spend any less time trying to master something, you’ll become awesomely mediocre.
Practice and repetition are useless without risk. If you keep doing the same thing over and over you will plateau, stagnate and then decay. If you aren’t falling, crashing, scaring the shit out of yourself then you’re rolling backwards.
Persistence is underrated. Most people never realize that persistence is the iceberg under the water that you can’t see. Success is the tiny nub sticking out on top.
There’s no such thing as luck but without training yourself to exploit opportunity, you’ll miss them as they pass.
Sadly, society doesn’t really care about your pain. Only when they feast on the failure of the fortunate, then sorrow becomes a spectator sport without any trace of empathy. See Amy, Charlie, Lindsey, et al.
We’re all spending way too much time fucking around on computers and phones and should spend a bunch more time outside making life better.

The Boulder of Life

2011-04-15T13:51:00.001-04:00

Some days you roll the boulder uphill, some you chase it down. Some days it runs you over and some you can't even find it #boulderoflife

Wikileaks and Privacy

2010-12-13T15:24:00.003-05:00

I'm a little conflicted about wikileaks. On one hand, this Assange fellow wasn't the guy who actually stole the documents, on the other his organization is the one releasing it and should be held accountable.

Why I ask myself? Isn't leaked information free to roam the interweb? Shouldn't governments be more transparent? The answer to both is yes but there are some caveats.

Caveat 1 - Privacy and Personal Security

There are a bunch of sources mentioned in the leaks or at least that can be traced back to individuals who are now at various levels of risk from embarrassment right up to execution. This doesn't pass the smell test and is just plain wrong, malicious and evil. How about if he was leaking all of our tax filings, would that be treated differently? How about when somebody starts leaking stolen facebook account chat transcripts? What's the difference?

Caveat 2 - Information Bunkers

By leaking this information, all new records will be pushed deeper into the secrecy envelope and making transparency much worse than it ever was. This is already in play. All the screaming hacktivists and journalists haven't quite got this point.

Caveat 3 - Our Security

Some people believe that everything the government does should be public all the time. If that was the case, then our country and government would be under constant economic, cultural and physical attack by those governments, corporations, individuals and organizations that don't play those rules.

It's a very sticky issue but I think that wikileaks is responsible for threatening security and privacy of individuals and countries and should pay the price. This isn't simple journalistic integrity at stake. Whatever happens next will redefine journalism and already has redefined inter and intra gov't secrecy for the worse.

Bad Religion

2010-10-17T14:22:00.001-04:00

Just saw these guys live a day ago, forgot how much I love them:

Samsung Captive w/Froyo quick review

2010-10-11T12:18:00.002-04:00

Just upgraded a couple of days ago to an unlocked ATT Captivate on the Rogers network. Had a blackberry plan and it took a call to Rogers to reset my connection before it worked (no charge). So here's the ups and downs in a quick review;

Ups
- Killer OLED display, looks better than iPhone 4 side/side to me and iPhone owner
- More screen and less bezel than a lot of other phones (4")
- GREAT browsing experience with Flash 10.1, all video sites work fine
- Great homescreens user configurable
- Sweet live backgrounds
- KILLER FEATURE -> wifi hotspot woo hoo!
- Gmail is pretty much instant
- Super light and thin next to BBold and iP4
- Pretty smooth app store
- No iTunes required
- Easily load stuff through USB or micro SD
- Skype over 3G and Wifi (in Canada woo hoo!)
- very clear phone, good reception, good speaker phone
- Swype keyboard, getting used to it

Downs
- Stock email app checks email every 5 minutes WTF??? Got to use Gmail for speed
- Need to be a techie to re-flash and screw around with settings to get 2.2
- Somehow got stuck in landscape mode after 2 days
- No LEDs to tell you missed calls, msgs or emails (WTF?? you have to unlock)
- No flash for camera
- No camera button
- No front camera for video conf (don't really care myself)
- No keyboard

All in all, I love it and couldn't go back to my blackberry until I get some email crisis that this thing gorfs on. I think that the svelte form factor and light weight will make me eventually ditch my keyboard dreams (still craving the Dell Lightning).

Recommended? Yes, in 5 months when you get 2.2 or Gingerbread off the shelf.

Leadership lessons from the Dancing Guy

2010-07-05T19:41:00.001-04:00

This is brilliant, also summarizes 'crossing the chasm'. So much to learn from this three minute video.

Stalone Says

2010-06-24T09:19:00.003-04:00

Sly Stalone wrote this for 'Rocky', pretty powerful stuff:

Rocky says -- "You ain’t gonna believe this...but you use to fit right here. (Rocky holds up his right hand) I’d hold you up and say to your mother, this kid is gonna be the best kid in the world. This kid is gonna be better than anybody I ever knew...and you grew up good and wonderful it was great just watching you everyday it was like a privilege. Then the time come for you to be your own man and take on the world and you did... But somewhere along the line you changed...you stopped being you...you let people stick a finger in your face and tell you you're no good...and when things got hard you started looking for somethin' to blame...like a big shadow. Let me tell you something you already know. The world ain't all sunshine and rainbows, it's a very mean and nasty place and I don’t care how tough you are it will beat you to your knees and keep you there permanently if you let it. You, me, nobody is gonna hit as hard as life! But it ain't about how hard you can hit, it's about how hard you can get hit and keep movin' forward, how much you can take...and keep movin' forward. That's how winning is done! Now, if you know what you're worth then go out and get what you're worth! But you gotta be willing to take the hits and not pointin' fingers sayin' you ain’t where you wanna be because of him or her or anybody! Cowards do that and that ain't you! You're better than that! ... ... I'm always gonna love you no matter what...no matter what happens...you're my son, you're my blood...you're the best thing in my life. But until you start believing in yourself, you ain't gonna have a life. ... Don't forget to visit your mother."

I wish I thought of this

2010-03-06T07:22:00.001-05:00

CONGRATS CANADA!

2010-03-01T12:19:00.002-05:00

Apple the Non-Benevolent

2010-02-28T12:30:00.002-05:00

You know what, I really love Apple for ratcheting up the standards in the IT and consumer electronics industry but I really hate their arrogance and their followers arrogance. They are not benevolent in any way and I'd go so far as to say they're outright evil;

- Destroying partners (Adobe premiere, lightroom, flash)
- Lying in adverts
- Bullying the press
- Bullying employees
- Bullying ex-employees

- Censoring app developers

- Squashing third party hardware developers

- Barb wire guarding their closed eco-system

- Taxing every possible interaction with their system

- Leaving virtually no money for resellers

- Bullying subcontractors to suicide

- Sweat shop/child labor profits

- Building crap that fails just like everybody else but covering it up

- CEO lies outright regularly ("nobody wants video" - "nobody reads anymore")

Apple = Greed/Control/Monopoly

The thing that pisses me off the most is that this navel-gazing hippy Buddhist CEO has done virtually nothing for the world outside of Apple while Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, Ted Turner and all the other 'evil capitalists' give their billions away to the poor of this world.

How cool is this band?

2010-02-26T20:30:00.000-05:00

Sick

2010-02-20T17:01:00.002-05:00

This is absurdly cool, watch this to the end;

Minding the Gap

2010-02-16T07:34:00.002-05:00

Just got back from London, swapping timezones almost effortlessly these days. I guess it helps that I usually get up at 5AM anyways so it wasn't much of a jolt.

If you're ever in London you'd be out of your mind not to check out the Tate museum. It's bigger and better than Moma or the Guggenheim and unbelievably four out of five floors are FREE!

Impossible things

2010-02-16T07:10:00.001-05:00

Impossible things really are mostly improbable things that need a little more time.

Acceleration versus Velocity

2010-02-10T17:52:00.004-05:00

Somebody asked me about this so let me follow up on my last post. In life you have to work to get good at stuff and solve problems. This work means that you have to get some inertia and do work and thus you have velocity like a car starting to head down the highway after a burst of acceleration.

Here's the thing, once you have velocity you're tempted to stay there in cruise control where you have to apply very little energy to maintain your velocity. You won't grow or get better. Eventually your car will run out of gas and/or wear out.

To get to a world class level you have to keep the inertia up, keep building momentum and acceleration. I know in some things that I do that I have peaked, I've accepted that. I can't push myself in everything but I understand the process.

Have you peaked in what you really want? Did you stop taking risks? If you've peaked then you don't want it bad enough to eat dirt, fall down and keep getting back up until you've gone from good to great, from great to unbelievable. In that case you're only going to get worse from where you are and the sad thing is that you won't even see it.

Momentum

2010-02-04T08:39:00.005-05:00

Over the years I've done a lot of thinking about both the strategic and tactical aspects of moving my life and business forward and in the process have read dozens of books and probably thousands of articles on the subject. I have a new twist on this topic based on momentum.

Here’s the deal, let’s say you’re stuck in a situation that you’re not especially thrilled with. It might be job, money, life related or whatever. Most likely the problem isn’t moving too far forward or backwards or enough that you’re not taking very much action on it or all the action that you’re taking isn’t going too far. So you end up in a place where your money is earning you .5% interest, your job is giving you a 5% bonus every year, your body is getting a little crappier and you’re moving forward reaaaaallly slowly. Maybe you aren’t moving forward at all, in fact maybe you’re moving backwards and you’re unhealthier, less employed, less compensated, worth less and less happy than last year. It happens to all of us, don’t take it personally. What I figured in these kinds of situations is that I need momentum. Momentum is different from velocity. With velocity, for example you know that you’re going to get a 3% raise every year and your investments are going to be worth 7% more on average every year. Momentum is what happens when your net disposable income is 2% more next year, 10% the year after then 40%, 100%, 300% and so on exponentially to some ceiling. Momentum in this case is the acceleration of progress or roughly your velocity squared.

How do I get there? Well I don’t know how you are going to get there but I can tell you how I’m getting there. First off if you can’t stomach constant change, risk, perseverance and hard work then go ahead and get some Doritos from your cupboard and head back to to your couch to watch Lost reruns.

There are at least three phases to getting leverage and thus momentum that work for me. Here’s what I know;

Phase I – Stuck in the Swamp

In this phase, you do things over and over the same way with the same results. You’re probably kind of disorganized or marginally organized, demoralized or lightly motivated and mostly stuck in the mud. An example would be your bills and mortgage payments. They come in at random times and you pay them at random times hopefully pretty close to the date where your paycheck or tax refund comes in. You might just be emotionally paralyzed by the accumulation of all the details that you have to deal with.

Phase II – Systems of Velocity and Acceleration

The systems part is straight forward, in this phase you figure out systems to do these things that irritated you and held you back by putting in more effort than necessary one time to figure out properly how to handle things repetitively. You figured out how to arrange your bills, taxes, irritating neighbors, bosses, investments, hobbies, passions. You’ve done it so much that it’s been burnt into your lizard brain stump, the same one that knows how to breathe without thinking. At this point the little stuff that used to be big stuff is getting fired off from what has become brain muscle memory. Bigger stuff is becoming little stuff all the time because you’re making systems and once you’ve done it once its super easy each other time. Acceleration and momentum have begun.

Phase III – Systems of Systems

This part is where it gets really interesting. So you’re firing off systems like they’re popcorn and hopefully you’re delegating the systems to other people and things are moving forward pretty fast. You’re the pioneer, you figure stuff out using perseverance, brains and balls. You systemize it once it’s figured out then replicate, train less motivated people to use your system and reap the rewards and repeat. Cool, now you can create a system for creating systems. You can find people who already built systems or hire people who do nothing but figure out systems. At this point, you’re a system factory and everything you do revolves around sustainable, repeatable systems. This applies to almost anything, diet, health, money, work, hobbies, passions etc. You’ll now understand why the most amazing successful people are SYSTEMATIC but they won’t tell you so because their system is the same one that convinced you that there's a pill to cure your fat ass. It's in their best interest for you to not understand the system. The successful people who aren’t systematic generally specialize in a specific domain where they mastered a single system and when that domain collapses so does their success (Vanilla Ice anyone?).

Phase IV, V, VI – Systems^{^ 3 +}

I couldn’t exactly tell you much about this phase but this is where VC’s, uber banks, mafias and overlay governments live. I’ll lay it out for you when I get there if they haven't killed me first.

Diggin this

2010-02-01T20:27:00.001-05:00

What deux yeux have teux deux teuxday?

2010-01-22T17:29:00.000-05:00

Awesome!! teuxdeux (toodoo) is a great to do list app that mirrors how I currently arrange to do lists in excel http://teuxdeux.com/

Why do I have the ugliest blog since 1997?

2010-01-15T17:09:00.002-05:00

Well frankly my blog is ugly and slightly absurd by design. My first blog was in 1997 on what at the time was a superbly designed site complete with all kinds of slick streaming audio/video, community features, blah blahs and all that.

Today I don't care too much about the regular web but do care about passing on some thoughts that might be of value. I'd like more to think of myself as an elder statesman of blogging, technology and startups and thus my blog is much uglier than anything I had in '97 and will probably get uglier still as I bath in the retro beauty of ugly HTML.

Heck, maybe I'll even embed some flashing java applets for shits and giggles.

Another post on the science of motivation

2010-01-13T14:48:00.000-05:00

Second post of the year

2010-01-07T19:15:00.002-05:00

Shit, last year my first post of the year was something about a bug in Microsoft Excel. Turned out to be my most linked and most popular post to this day. Still, it was a real drag to have that as my first post. This year I went and did it again, my first post was a slide deck about corporate culture. I fucked up, what can I say. Anyways, happy new year.

Oh yeah, follow me on twitter please ;).

....and read this too while you're at it.

...and watch this, it will cheer you up - I promise.

Netflix Culture

2010-01-07T19:04:00.001-05:00

Check out this SlideShare Presentation:

Culture

View more presentations from Reed Hastings.

A great repost of '50 tricks to get things done'

2009-12-23T15:11:00.003-05:00

50 Tricks to Get Things Done Faster, Better, and More Easily

By: Devendra Kumar Choudhary on Scribd.com

We all want to get stuff done, whether it’s the work we have to do so we can get on with what we want to do, or indeed, the projects we feel are our purpose in life. To that end, here’s a collection of 50 hacks, tips, tricks, and mnemonic devices I’ve collected that can help you work better.

1. Most Important Tasks (MITs): At the start of each day (or the night before) highlight the three or four most important things you have to do in the coming day. Do them first. If you get nothing else accomplished aside from your MITs, you’ve still had a pretty productive day.

2. Big Rocks: The big projects you’re working on at any given moment. Set aside time every day or week to move your big rocks forward.

3. Inbox Zero: Decide what to do with every email you get, the moment you read it. If there’s something you need to do, either do it or add it to your todo list and delete or file the email. If it’s something you need for reference, file it. Empty your email inbox every day.

4. Wake up earlier: Add a productive hour to your day by getting up an hour earlier — before everyone else starts imposing on your time.

5. One In, One Out: Avoid clutter by adopting a replacement-only standard. Every time you but something new, you throw out or donate something old. For example, you buy a new shirt, you get rid of an old one. (Variation: One in, Two Out — useful when you begin to feel overwhelmed by your possessions.)

6. Brainstorming: The act of generating dozens of ideas without editing or censoring yourself. Lots of people use mindmaps for this: stick the thing you want to think about in the middle (a problem you need to solve, a theme you want to write about, etc.) and start writing whatever you think of. Build off of each of the sub-topics, and each of their sub-topics. Don’t worry about whether the ideas are any good or not — you don’t have to follow through on them, just get them out of your head. After a while, you’ll start surprising yourself with some really creative concepts.

7. Ubiquitous Capture: Always carry something to take notes with — a pen and paper, a PDA, a stack of index cards. Capture every thought that comes into your mind, whether it’s an idea for a project you’d like to do, an appointment you need to make, something you need to pick up next time you’re at the store, whatever. Review it regularly and transfer everything to where it belongs: a todo list, a filing system, a journal, etc.

8. Get more sleep: Sleep is essential to health, learning, and awareness. Research shows the body goes through a complete sleep cycle in about 90 minutes, so napping for less than that doesn’t have the same effect that real sleep does (although it does make you feel better). Get 8 hours a night, at least. Learn to see sleep as a pleasure, not a necessary evil or a luxury.

9. 10+2*5: Work in short spurts of 10 minutes, interrupted by 2 minute breaks. Use a timer. Do this 5 times an hour to stay on target without over-taxing your physical and mental resources. Spend those 2 minutes getting a drink, going to the bathroom, or staring out a window.

10. SMART goals: A rubric for creating and pursuing your goals, helping to avoid setting goals that are simply unattainable. Stands for: Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic and Timely.

11. SUCCES: From Chip and Dan Heath’s book, Made to Stick, SUCCES is a set of characteristics that make ideas memorable (”sticky”): sticky ideas are Simple, Unexpected, Concrete, Credible, Emotional Stories.

12. Eat the Frog: Do your most unpleasant task first. Based on the saying that if the first thing you do in the morning is eat a frog, the day can only get better from then on.

13. 80/20 Rule/Pareto Principle: Generally speaking, the 80/20 Principle says that most of our results come from a small portion of our actual work, and conversely, that we spend most of our energy doing things that aren’t ultimately all that important. Figure out which part of your work has the greatest results and focus as much of your energy as you can on that part.

14. What’s the Next Action?: Don’t plan out everything you need to do to finish a project, just focus on the very next thing you need to do to move it forward. Usually doing the next, little thing will lead to another, and another, until we’re either done or we run into a block: we need more information, we need someone else to catch up, etc. Be as concrete and discrete as possible: you can’t “install cable”, all you can do is “call the cable company to request cable installation”.

15. The Secret: There is no secret.

16. Slow Down: Make time for yourself. Eat slowly. Enjoy a lazy weekend day. Take the time to do things right, and keep a balance between the rush-rush world of work and the rest of your life.

17. Time Boxing: Assign a set amount of time per day to work on a task or project. Focus entirely on that one thing during that time. Don’t worry about finishing it, just worry about giving that amount of undivided attention to the project. (Variation: fixed goals. For example, you don’t get up until you’ve written 1,000 words, or processed 10 orders, or whatever.)

18. Batch Process: Do all your similar tasks together. For example, don’t deal with emails sporadically throughout the day; instead, set aside an hour to go through your email inbox and respond to emails. Do the same with voice mail, phone calls, responding to letters, filing, and so on — any routine, repetitive tasks.

19. Covey Quadrants: A system for assigning priorities. Two axes, one for importance, the other for urgency, intersect. Tasks are assigned to one of the four quadrants: not important, not urgent; not important, urgent; important, not urgent; and important and urgent. Purge the tasks that are neither important nor urgent, defer the unimportant but urgent ones, try to avoid letting the important ones become urgent, and as much as possible work on the tasks in the important but not urgent quadrant.

20. Handle Everything Once: Don’t set things aside hoping you’ll have time to deal with them later. Ask yourself “What do I need to do with this” every time you pick up something from your email list, and either do it, schedule it for later, defer it to someone else, or file it.

21. Don’t Break the Chain: Use a calendar to track your daily goals. Every day you do something, like working out or writing 1,000 words, make a big red “X”. Every day the chain will grow longer. Don’t break the chain! That is, don’t let any non-X days interrupt your chain of successful days.

22. Review: Schedule a time with yourself every week to look over what you’ve done that week and what you want to do the next week. Ask yourself if there are any new projects you should be starting, and if what you’re working on is moving you closer to your goals for your life.

23. Roles: Everyone fills several different roles in their life. For instance, I’m a teacher, a student, a writer, a step-father, a partner, a brother, a son, an uncle, an anthropologist, and so on. Understanding your different roles and learning to keep them distinct when necessary can help you keep some sense of balance between them. Make goals around the various roles you fill, and make sure that your goals fit with your goals in other roles.

24. Flow: The flow state happens when you’re so absorbed in whatever you’re doing that you have no awareness of the passing of time and the work just happens automatically. It’s hard to trigger consciously, but you can create the conditions for it by allowing yourself a block of uninterrupted time, minimizing distractions, and calming yourself.

25. Do It Now: Fight procrastination by adopting “do it now!” as your mantra. Limit yourself to 60 seconds when making a decision, decide what you’re going to do with every input in your life as soon as you encounter it, learn to make bold decisions even when you’re not really sure. Keep moving forward.

26. Time Log: Lawyers have to track everything they do in the day and how long they do it so they can bill their clients and remain accountable. You need to be accountable to yourself, so keep track of how much time you really spend on the things that are important to you by tracking your time.

27. Structured Procrastination: A strategy of recognizing and using one’s procrastinating tendencies to get stuff done. Items at the top of top of the list are avoided by doing seemingly less difficult and less important tasks further down the list — making the procrastinator highly productive. The trick is to make sure the items at the top are apparently urgent — with pressing deadlines and apparently large consequences. But, of course, they aren’t really all that urgent. Structured procrastination requires a masterful skill at self-deception, which fortunately bigtime procrastinators excel at.

28. Personal Mission Statement: Write a personal mission statement, and use it as a guide to set goals. Ask if each goal or activity moves you closer to achieving your mission. If it doesn’t, eliminate it. Periodically review and revise your mission statement.

29. Backwards Planning: A planning strategy that works from the goal back to your next action. Start with the end goal in mind. What do you have to have in place to accomplish it? OK, now what do you have to have in place to accomplish what you have to have in place to accomplish your end goal? And what do you have to have in place to accomplish that? And so on, back to something you already have in place and/or can put in place immediately. That’s your next action.

30. Tune Out: Create a personal privacy zone by wearing headphones. People are much more hesitant to interrupt someone wearing headphones. Note: actually listening to music through your headphones is optional — nobody knows but you.

31. Write It Down: Don’t rely on your memory as your system. Write down the things you need to do, your schedule, anything you might need to refer to, and every passing thought so you can relax, knowing you won’t forget. Use your brain for thinking, use paper or your computer for keeping track of stuff.

32. Gap Time: The little blocks of time we have during the day while waiting for the bus, standing in line, waiting for a meeting to start, etc. Have a list of small, 5-minute tasks that you can do in these moments, or carry something to read or work on to make the most of these spare minutes.

33. Monotasking: We like to think of ourselves as great multitaskers, but we aren’t. What we do when we multitask is devote tiny slices of time to several tasks in rapid succession. Since it takes more than a few minutes (research suggests as long as 20) to really get into a task, we end up working worse and more slowly than if we devoted longer blocks of time to each task, worked until it was done, and moved on to the next one.

34. Habits: Habits are as much about the way we see and respond to the world as about the actions we routinely take. Examine your own habits and ask what they say about your relation to the world — and what would have to change to create a worldview in which your goals were attainable.

35. Triggers: Place meaningful reminders around you to help you remember, as well as to help create better habits. For example, put the books you need to take back to the library in front of the door, so you can’t leave the house without seeing them and remembering they need to go back.

36. Unclutter: Clutter is anything that’s out of place and in the way. IT’s not necessarily neatness — someone can have a rigorously neat workspace and not be able to get anything done. It’s being able to access what you need, when you need it, without breaking the flow of your work to find it. Figure out what is “clutter” in your working and living spaces, and fix that.

37. Visualize: Imagine yourself having accomplished your goals. What is your life like? Are you who you want to be? If not, rethink your goals. If so, then visualize yourself taking the steps you need to take to get there. You’ve got yourself a plan; write it down and do it.

38. Tickler File: A set of 43 folders, labeled 1 - 31 and January - December, used to remind us of tasks we need to do on a specific day. For instance, if you have a trip on March 23rd, you’d put your itinerary, tickets, and other material in the “March” folder. At the start of each month, you move the previous month’s folder to the back. On March 1st, you’d transfer your travel information into the “23″ folder. Each day, you move the previous day’s folder to the back. On the 23rd, the “23″ folder will be at the front, and everything you need that day will be there for you.

39. ToDon’t List: A list of things not to do — useful for keeping track of habits that lead you to be unproductive, like playing online flash games.

40. Templates: Create templates for repetitive tasks, like letters, customer reply emails, blog posts, etc.

41. Checklists: When planning any big task, make a checklist so you don’t forget the steps while in the busy middle part of doing it. Keep your checklists so you can use them next time you have to do the same task.

42. No: Learning to say “no” — to new commitments, to interruptions, to anything — is one of the most valuable skills you can develop to keep you focused on your own commitments and give you time to work on them.

43. Unschedule: Schedule all your fun activities and personal life stuff (the stuff you want to do) first. Fill in whatever time’s left over with uninterrupted blocks of work. Write those into your schedule after you’ve completed them. Reward yourself after every block of quality, focused work.

44. Purge: Regularly go through your existing commitments and get rid of anything that is either not helping you advance your own goals or is a regular “sink” of time or energy.

45. One Bucket: Minimize the places you collect new inputs in your life, your “buckets”. Ideally have one “bucket” where everything goes. Lots of people experience an incredible sense of relief when everything they need to think about is collected in one place in front of them, no matter how big the pile.

46. 50-30-20: Spend 50% of your working day on tasks that advance your long-term, life goals, spend 30% on tasks that advance your middle-term (2-years or so) goals, and the remaining 20% on things that affect only the next 90 days or so.

47. Timer: Tell yourself you will work on a project or task, and only that project or task, for a set amount of time. Set a timer (use a kitchen timer, or use a countdown timer on your computer), and plug away at your work. When the timer goes off, you’re done — move on to the next project or task.

48. Do Your Worst: Give yourself permission to suck. Relieve the pressure of needing to achieve perfection in every task on the first run. Promise yourself you’ll go back and fix any problems later, but for now, just run wild.

49. Make an Appointment with Yourself: Schedule time every week or so just for you. Consider the state of your life: what’s working? What isn’t working? what mistakes are you making? what could you change? Give yourself a chance to get to know you.

50. [This space left intentionally blank]: This is a big list, sure, but it’s not an exhaustive one. The last space is left for you to fill in. What works for you? Let us know in the comments — or write your own list and link back to us!

‐ ‐

From: Devendra Kumar Choudhary on Scribd.com

A Great Read

2009-12-15T10:38:00.000-05:00

Seth Godin has a new free ebook. I'm not finished reading it but it's well worth the read.

Get it here

Google Chrome Extensions: Blog This! (by Google)

2009-12-14T17:37:00.000-05:00

Google Chrome Extensions: Blog This! (by Google)

I've been using Chrome for a while and this is a great extension. Maybe it'll get me to spend more time on blogger and less on twitter.

T21 still brilliant after 2 decades

2009-11-15T15:48:00.000-05:00

What PC users can do that Mac users can't

2009-11-11T13:35:00.003-05:00

Read this, it's hilarious

Thanks to PGuy for this one, for the record I use both but am not fruity enough to be seen in public with a Mac. iShit in it's own fisher price kind of way is for ladies, kids and kitten lovers and I'm really happy that Google isn't afraid to say so.

If this was white it'd be a mac.

Going mobile - wishlist for a mobile device from a mobile dude

2009-11-11T13:23:00.003-05:00

I've been on the road pretty much non stop for a couple of months now and have had a pretty great time with my tiny Sony Vaio, Blackberry Bold and Zune HD. It got me thinking though, what would be my ideal travel device.

Here it is in case you're an Android product manager or the hardware guy at Nokia;

- I need a phone with a great rendering processor and runs something like RDP to connect to my computer in the office or in the cloud (ie. Gotomypc on my phone)

- Love the Motorola Droid but it needs to be about half as thin and OLED (2012?).

- Stick a projector on it with quadruple the resolution that projects onto any white surface so I don't need a monitor

- Get all hotels, airports, planes, cars to have bluetooth keyboards and displays or display surfaces that let me use my phone like a laptop without lugging the keyboard and monitor

- Gimme my 7.2Mbps mobile network already

- Gimme skype native on my phone (prolly already on the droid)

- Make it so that you can control the media player without taking it out of your pocket or taking your gloves off.

Thats it, thanks!

Listen to the wolf

2009-10-27T18:51:00.001-04:00

Waitn what? I can order a mac from my zune hd?

2009-10-09T17:11:00.000-04:00

Sent from my BlackBerry device on the Rogers Wireless Network

A bevy of gadgets!

2009-09-30T17:51:00.000-04:00

Sent from my BlackBerry device on the Rogers Wireless Network

Saw this one coming

2009-09-19T09:42:00.002-04:00

I've been predicting a Google/Apple/anti-trust showdown for years now. Actually I don't feel especially smart about it because it seems obvious. Here it comes.

Spinnerette

2009-09-17T21:26:00.002-04:00

Brody is back with Spinnerette, shades of Siouxie. Especially digging Brody's Joy Division T;

I agree with Jimmy

2009-09-16T10:24:00.003-04:00

To quote Jimmy Carter on CNN, Jimmy says;

"I think an overwhelming portion of the intensely demonstrated animosity toward President Barack Obama is based on the fact that he is a black man, that he's African-American," Carter told NBC News. "I live in the South, and I've seen the South come a long way, and I've seen the rest of the country that shares the South's attitude toward minority groups at that time, particularly African-Americans."
"That racism inclination still exists, and I think it's bubbled up to the surface because of belief among many white people -- not just in the South but around the country -- that African-Americans are not qualified to lead this great country. It's an abominable circumstance, and it grieves me and concerns me very deeply," Carter said.

Without coming across as a left leaning socialist, I totally agree with Jimmy maybe for he first time in my life. Seems like there's an undercurrent of racism that can't be legitimately expressed outright so it's been re-channeled into this gun toting lunacy.

For the record, I'm a right leaning fiscally conservative type minus the guns and bibles so the thing that really freaks me out is that these wingnuts didn't get their panties in a bunch when George Bush gave the banks 700B and ran up monster deficits for the past 8 years like a drunken schoolgirl with her first credit card.

I guess the difference is that GWB spent most of the money on rich people and wars.

These teabaggers are nuts

2009-09-13T11:46:00.004-04:00

What the fuck is wrong with these crazy Americans? It's really hard to believe that these people are real. How did such a loony group get taken seriously? Being a Canadian it's really hard to understand how the US mainstream media takes this group seriously and it's equally shocking to see how indifferent most middle of the road Americans are to these teabag quacks. You've got people protesting with AK47s, claiming their president is a socialist Nazi who's going to set up death camps to round up old people and finance abortions by seizing rich rural peoples assets. What the fuck???? They're serious too and even worse they really believe that pres Obama is going to put an end to freedom as they know it.

Last gasps of summer

2009-09-06T18:42:00.000-04:00

Sent from my BlackBerry device on the Rogers Wireless Network

Again??

2009-09-06T01:02:00.000-04:00

Sent from my BlackBerry device on the Rogers Wireless Network

Motorhead!

2009-09-03T22:14:00.000-04:00

Sent from my BlackBerry device on the Rogers Wireless Network

Rev horton heat

2009-09-03T20:54:00.000-04:00

Sent from my BlackBerry device on the Rogers Wireless Network

Nashville pussy

2009-09-03T20:08:00.001-04:00

Sent from my BlackBerry device on the Rogers Wireless Network

Motorhead!!!

2009-09-03T18:33:00.000-04:00

Sent from my BlackBerry device on the Rogers Wireless Network

Wise words

2009-08-27T21:12:00.000-04:00

Sent from my BlackBerry device on the Rogers Wireless Network

Sold! No more dirt bike for me until I have more time.

2009-08-22T11:47:00.000-04:00

Sent from my BlackBerry device on the Rogers Wireless Network

Amazing dog

2009-08-18T10:35:00.001-04:00

The Cove

2009-08-06T15:13:00.001-04:00

Enola Gay

2009-08-06T11:04:00.002-04:00

In 1945 on this day, a B29 bomber named Enola Gay dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima and the world hasn't been the same since and probably never will be.

IMG00261-20090801-1257.jpg

2009-08-01T12:57:00.000-04:00

Sent from my BlackBerry device on the Rogers Wireless Network

Post /750 Brody Dahl is the hottest rock chick ever

2009-07-24T13:29:00.003-04:00

Digging this these days

2009-07-21T17:16:00.002-04:00

I really like Ellen Allien, skip this if you don't like minimal techno.

If this doesn't cheer you up, you should shoot yourself now

2009-07-20T09:42:00.001-04:00

Scary vegetarian bbq

2009-07-18T18:43:00.000-04:00

Sent from my BlackBerry device on the Rogers Wireless Network

Fermented dairy drink wtf??

2009-07-18T15:53:00.000-04:00

Sent from my BlackBerry device on the Rogers Wireless Network

BBQ Wtf

2009-07-17T23:03:00.000-04:00

Sent from my BlackBerry device on the Rogers Wireless Network

This is heartbreaking

2009-07-15T09:57:00.004-04:00

I eat meat and wear leather and don't really have a problem fishing or raising and killing livestock as long as its done in a humane way. I have many friends who are hunters and I consider them environmentalists - sometimes fanatically so. I realize that animals in the wild aren't especially kind to each other and have seen some pretty gory animal on animal brutality first hand. I am pretty much the last person to promote vegetarian diets or anti-fur/vegan lifestyles but I have to say that the industrial and institutional levels of brutality that are routine in the delivery of consumer staples and products makes me fucking sick. I'll still wear leather and eat meat but this (below) is something we shouldn't cover up or pretend doesn't exist when we buy our fur lined parkas;

http://www.earthlings.com/

Burning Spear

2009-07-13T17:58:00.002-04:00

Sent from my BlackBerry device on the Rogers Wireless Network

A more competent monopoly

2009-07-13T13:11:00.002-04:00

I think that the best news that Microsoft has heard in the past decade is that Google is pursuing office productivity apps and operating systems. At the same time, Googs are getting kneecapped by privacy concerns at every turn and starting to raise the ire of the anti-trust thugs - takes the spotlight off MS. This is great because it forces MS to start actually putting out wicked products instead of the third rate crap it had been until 2008. What wicked prods you ask? Well, XBox 360, Natal, Bing image & video search, Sharepoint (no shit), Server 2008 (same core as W7), Silverlight & IIS smooth streaming are awesome products and getting better. I wish they'd fix some old crap though like IE, Outlook and some of the enterprise tools.

Disclaimer: MS makes me money, Google, Apple and Oracle do not, can not and will not ever make me a living.

What they're not telling you

2009-07-09T08:38:00.003-04:00

Google announced an operating system yesterday. No big deal because even the fantastic Chrome browser has a tiny tiny market share that nobody cares about. What Google, Microsoft, Apple and Oracle aren't telling you is that they are all developing systems where your computer and storage will be virtualized and all you need is a dumb-ish front end. Mark my words, MS will probably be the first to have something significant to market where most of your apps run on a VM in the cloud. You'll probably be able to use your Windows machine from a Mac through something like Silverlight or RDP. Pay as you go for your apps and storage, coming soon...

Maslow and the peak experience

2009-07-08T13:22:00.003-04:00

A long time ago, like around 1990 - I read an essay in a book of cyberpunk short stories called Semiotext(e) SF from the subversive publisher of the same name. It stuck with me this whole time and really shaped the way I view things. I lost the book many moves ago and it's out of print so it wasn't easy to find but I recently re-ordered on Amazon from a used book vendor.

The subject matter is peak experiences which in my mind are essential for balanced living and something I've written about a few times. Here's the story OCR'ed for your benefit in all it's original splendor - enjoy!

Colin Wilson, a literatus or homme des lettres who has accomplished great things in nearly every print genre from philosophy to encyclopedias, has exercised tremendous influence on anti-authoritarian circles, thanks to his work in libratory psychology. But he is also idolized in SF circles for his Lovecraftian pastiches. Legend has it that Wilson once criticized HPL's atrocious style and was challenged by August Derleth to do better. SPACE VAMPIRES and LIFE FORCE were the result, by far the most orignial contributions to the Mythos since the master's death. HPL's genius owed much to sexual repression. Wilson's inspira- tion was to uncover the sexually "buried"in pulp and horror and free it from its bonds, transforming its energy from neurosis to self-realization. He has recently published a major SF far-future trilogy, SPIDER WORLD, with a similar philo- sophical agenda.

Bob Banner, who edits CRITIQUE: A JOURNAL OF METAPHYSICS AND CON‑SPIRACY (the best periodical on conspiracy theory), asked Colin Wilson for a brief resume of his central philosophical idea. We found the result valuable enough to warrant its inclusion as one of our three non-fiction pieces. Some doubt has recently been cast on Sheldrake's interpretation of the "100th monkey" material—but this doubt cannot rule out the possibility of some other "vitalist" development in biology with the same implications. Morphogenetic field research looks particularly promising in this respect. Aside from this one point, we find Wilson's essay a powerful manifesto of self-evident importance.

Maslow, Sheldrake, and the Peak Experience

By Colin Wilson

The other day in our local pub, a stranger asked me how many books I had written. When I said 55, he looked startled, and asked me whether there was any constant theme that ran through them. Lying awake in the middle of the night, I decided to treat this as a challenge, and try to summarize the basic theme of all my work. The result—which follows—comes as close to it as I can manage in a couple of thousand words.

About twenty-five years ago, I received a letter from an American professor of psychology called Abraham Maslow. What he had to say struck me as breathtakingly original. Maslow said that, as a psychologist, he had got tired of studying sick people, because they never talked about anything but their sickness. It struck him that nobody had ever bothered to study healthy people. So he asked around among his friends: "Who is the healthiest person you know?" And he then got all the healthy people together and asked them questions. He immediately discovered something that no one else had ever found out: that all extremely healthy people have, with a fair degree of frequency, what Maslow called "peak experiences," experiences of bubbling, overwhelming happiness.

A typical one was as follows. A young mother was watching her husband and children eating breakfast. Suddenly, a beam of sunlight came in through the window. She thought: "My God, aren't I lucky?", and went into the peak experience.

When Maslow talked about peak experiences to his students, he made another important discovery. They began recalling peak experiences which they'd had in the past, which they'd now half-forgotten. He realized that this is the problem: that we all have peak experiences, but we take them for granted and quickly forget them. But as soon as his students began recalling their peak experiences, and talking about them to one another, they all began having more peak experiences. Talking and thinking about them somehow put them in the right frame of mind for further peak experiences.

All this excited me tremendously. For obviously if science could discover how to induce peak experiences, most of our worst social problems would vanish. Even then, in the early 1960s, it was obvious that most of our problems are due to boredom and frustration, and that alcoholism, drug abuse, football hooliganism, vandalism and sex crime are really a muddled search for the peak experience. If we could learn the secret of the peak experience, we would be well on our way towards H. G. Wells's "modern Utopia."

But when I put this question to Maslow, his answer disappointed me. He said he didn't think it was possible to have peak experiences "at will." They came when they wanted to, and there was nothing much we could do about it. Yet it seemed to me that this comment ran counter to his basic optimism. And I settled down to try and answer the question of how to induce peak experiences.

The first clue was that Maslow's students had started having more peak experiences as soon as they began thinking and talking about them. The reason is obvious. Thinking and talking about happiness puts you into an optimistic frame of mind. You get the feeling that man was intended to be happy. The philosopher Epictetus made the interesting observation: "Man is not worried by real problems so much as by his imagined anxieties about real problems." That is to say, we tend to get stuck in a thoroughly negative frame of mind. That is why healthy people have more peak experiences; they don't waste so much time worrying about things that will never happen.

In the past twenty-five years, I have learned a great deal about the various tricks for inducing the peak experience, and have proved to my own satisfaction that Maslow was mistaken. (Un‑ fortunately, he died before I had time to tell him so.) There are a great many simple mental techniques for inducing the peak experience, and the basic method is always the same: to deliberately generate "inner tension," followed immediately by relaxation. Graham Greene discovered the basic method when, as a teenager, he played Russian roulette with his brother's revolver. When the hammer clicked on an empty chamber, he experienced an overwhelming sense of delight. This method is obviously not to be recommended, but anyone who thinks about it carefully will see that it contains all the important clues.

A couple of weeks ago, I spent four days in Amsterdam, trying to teach a roomful of "mature students" how to induce peak experiences. The experiment was successful beyond my expectations. During the final session, two students became convinced that they could see a golden light, while another said she had apparently floated clear off the floor.

But does all this bring us any nearer to "a modern Utopia?" Five years ago, I would have said no. But in the meantime, there has been a new and fascinating development. This is largely due to the work of one single man, the biologist Rupert Sheldrake. It was She!drake who, in a book called A New Science of Life, came up with a theory of evolution that outraged most of his older colleagues. According to modern biology, evolution occurs through changes in the genes. According to Sheldrake, there is a simpler and much quicker method, which he calls "morphic resonance." The simplest way of explaining this is to cite the famous story about the monkeys on the island of Koshima, off the coast of Japan. Scientists fed the monkeys unwashed sweet potatoes, and one exceptionally bright female named Imo discovered that if she washed her potatoes in the sea, they were not only less gritty, but tasted better. Soon all the monkeys on Koshima had learned the trick. But so had other monkeys on the mainland—monkeys who had had no kind of contact with those on Koshima.

Was it some form of telepathy? Apparently not, for it not only works for animals, but for crystals. Some substances are extremely difficult to crystallize in the laboratory. But as soon as one laboratory has succeeded in doing it, the substance begins to crystallize much easier all over the world. At first it was thought that visiting scientists had carried tiny fragments of the new crystals on their clothes or beards. But this possibility was finally eliminated. Apparently the crystals were somehow "learning" from one another... Sheldrake set out to prove his theory with a number of experiments. One of these involved sending out thousands of those trick "pictures" in which a face is concealed in a mass of lines. He reasoned that once a certain number of people had learned to "see" the face, increasing numbers of people would be able to see it immediately. And that is precisely what happened.

If Sheldrake is right—and the biologists are fighting him tooth and nail every inch of the way—the consequences would obviously be momentous. To begin with, we would have to recognize that our writers and artists are largely to blame for the chaotic state of society. The chief qualification for a Nobel Prize is apparently to believe that life is futile and meaningless, and to say this in books and plays that end in the defeat of the hero. We stuff this poisonous rubbish down the throats of our children at school and university, and apparently believe that we are equipping them to face life. If there is anything to the theory of morphic resonance, then this is the equivalent of pouring plague germs into a city's water supply.

On the other hand, if a fairly large group of human beings could learn to have peak experiences at will—or simply learn to put themselves into the state of mind in which peak experiences are likely—then, according to Sheldrake, it should continue to spread naturally to increasing numbers of people. And perhaps a century hence—perhaps far less— everybody would be born with the ability to induce peak experiences. And the face of our civilization would be totally changed.

This made my day

2009-06-30T08:36:00.000-04:00

Started off in a bad mood until I saw this;

Wow, I made it five years

2009-06-29T18:47:00.005-04:00

Fuck, I didn't even notice that I've been posting here for five years. That's a really long time, never figured that I'd last that long.

Here's what my first post looked like ;

(so much for relevance and depth huh?)

Friday, June 04, 2004

Hello

Am I only coming through in waves?

Facebook S/N ratio

2009-06-29T18:12:00.002-04:00

Seems like a lot of blogs have gone really quiet while activity has moved to twitter and facebook. I've actually now decided to go in the exact opposite direction. The reason for this is twofold.

First off;

I dislike FB because it pushes other people's updates to me without having subscribed explicitly. This was fine for a few months but rapidly became a mundane pattern of vanity updates and game invitations. FB also only lets you view updates from people who you know who are your friend which limits the availability of relevant information/updates to those in your network. That in itself turns out to be a torrent of utter crap with the odd shard of anything useful floating by. FB for me is now a useful spam free social email replacement tool if you only use the messaging and block noisy friends.

Second;

I dislike Twitter because for the most part there isn't very much thought put into tweets as they are more or less designed to be sent by phone. Twitter streams are interesting but not captivating (speaking for myself of course).

Finally;

I got off of blogging because I found that too many blogs were ~~fucking crap~~ego masturbating vanity monuments to the church of how cool am I. I was and still am afraid that this one is the same although a while ago I stopped posting about what I was doing and more what I was thinking. Now I have returned and will try to make my posts more relevant and hope to emit more revelations with some depth and links to stuff that I find particularly cool.

Speaking of cool, I love these two new-ish tracks;

Growth

2009-06-29T11:22:00.002-04:00

Seeing that it's been a long time since I posted anything meaningful, I thought I'd start again. Don't get me wrong, lots of people are pretty happy with the Excel post from January but it wasn't very deep. Depth is something severely lacking from Facebook and to some degree Twitter so I find myself back here at blogspot re-pondering my social interaction with the intertubes.

So here goes... I think that I posted this already but it's worth reposting. Here's Bruce Mau's manifesto;

An Incomplete Manifesto for Growth

1. Allow events to change you. You have to be willing to grow. Growth is different from something that happens to you. You produce it. You live it. The prerequisites for growth: the openness to experience events and the willingness to be changed by them.

2. Forget about good. Good is a known quantity. Good is what we all agree on. Growth is not necessarily good. Growth is an exploration of unlit recesses that may or may not yield to our research. As long as you stick to good you’ll never have real growth.

3. Process is more important than outcome. When the outcome drives the process we will only ever go to where we’ve already been. If process drives outcome we may not know where we’re going, but we will know we want to be there.

4. Love your experiments (as you would an ugly child). Joy is the engine of growth. Exploit the liberty in casting your work as beautiful experiments, iterations, attempts, trials, and errors. Take the long view and allow yourself the fun of failure every day.

5. Go deep. The deeper you go the more likely you will discover something of value.

6. Capture accidents. The wrong answer is the right answer in search of a different question. Collect wrong answers as part of the process. Ask different questions.

7. Study. A studio is a place of study. Use the necessity of production as an excuse to study. Everyone will benefit.

8. Drift. Allow yourself to wander aimlessly. Explore adjacencies. Lack judgment. Postpone criticism.

9. Begin anywhere. John Cage tells us that not knowing where to begin is a common form of paralysis. His advice: begin anywhere.

10. Everyone is a leader. Growth happens. Whenever it does, allow it to emerge. Learn to follow when it makes sense. Let anyone lead.

11. Harvest ideas. Edit applications. Ideas need a dynamic, fluid, generous environment to sustain life. Applications, on the other hand, benefit from critical rigor. Produce a high ratio of ideas to applications.

12. Keep moving. The market and its operations have a tendency to reinforce success. Resist it. Allow failure and migration to be part of your practice.

13. Slow down. Desynchronize from standard time frames and surprising opportunities may present themselves.

14. Don’t be cool. Cool is conservative fear dressed in black. Free yourself from limits of this sort.

15. Ask stupid questions. Growth is fueled by desire and innocence. Assess the answer, not the question. Imagine learning throughout your life at the rate of an infant.

16. Collaborate. The space between people working together is filled with conflict, friction, strife, exhilaration, delight, and vast creative potential.

17. ——————————. Intentionally left blank. Allow space for the ideas you haven’t had yet, and for the ideas of others.

18. Stay up late. Strange things happen when you’ve gone too far, been up too long, worked too hard, and you’re separated from the rest of the world.

19. Work the metaphor. Every object has the capacity to stand for something other than what is apparent. Work on what it stands for.

20. Be careful to take risks. Time is genetic. Today is the child of yesterday and the parent of tomorrow. The work you produce today will create your future.

21. Repeat yourself. If you like it, do it again. If you don’t like it, do it again.

22. Make your own tools. Hybridize your tools in order to build unique things. Even simple tools that are your own can yield entirely new avenues of exploration. Remember, tools amplify our capacities, so even a small tool can make a big difference.

23. Stand on someone’s shoulders. You can travel farther carried on the accomplishments of those who came before you. And the view is so much better.

24. Avoid software. The problem with software is that everyone has it.

25. Don’t clean your desk. You might find something in the morning that you can’t see tonight.

26. Don’t enter awards competitions. Just don’t. It’s not good for you.

27. Read only left-hand pages. Marshall McLuhan did this. By decreasing the amount of information, we leave room for what he called our “noodle.”

28. Make new words. Expand the lexicon. The new conditions demand a new way of thinking. The thinking demands new forms of expression. The expression generates new conditions.

29. Think with your mind. Forget technology. Creativity is not device-dependent.

30. Organization = Liberty. Real innovation in design, or any other field, happens in context. That context is usually some form of cooperatively managed enterprise. Frank Gehry, for instance, is only able to realize Bilbao because his studio can deliver it on budget. The myth of a split between “creatives” and “suits” is what Leonard Cohen calls a 'charming artifact of the past.'

31. Don’t borrow money. Once again, Frank Gehry’s advice. By maintaining financial control, we maintain creative control. It’s not exactly rocket science, but it’s surprising how hard it is to maintain this discipline, and how many have failed.

32. Listen carefully. Every collaborator who enters our orbit brings with him or her a world more strange and complex than any we could ever hope to imagine. By listening to the details and the subtlety of their needs, desires, or ambitions, we fold their world onto our own. Neither party will ever be the same.

33. Take field trips. The bandwidth of the world is greater than that of your TV set, or the Internet, or even a totally immersive, interactive, dynamically rendered, object-oriented, real-time, computer graphic–simulated environment.

34. Make mistakes faster. This isn’t my idea — I borrowed it. I think it belongs to Andy Grove.

35. Imitate. Don’t be shy about it. Try to get as close as you can. You’ll never get all the way, and the separation might be truly remarkable. We have only to look to Richard Hamilton and his version of Marcel Duchamp’s large glass to see how rich, discredited, and underused imitation is as a technique.

36. Scat. When you forget the words, do what Ella did: make up something else … but not words.

37. Break it, stretch it, bend it, crush it, crack it, fold it.

38. Explore the other edge. Great liberty exists when we avoid trying to run with the technological pack. We can’t find the leading edge because it’s trampled underfoot. Try using old-tech equipment made obsolete by an economic cycle but still rich with potential.

39. Coffee breaks, cab rides, green rooms. Real growth often happens outside of where we intend it to, in the interstitial spaces — what Dr. Seuss calls “the waiting place.” Hans Ulrich Obrist once organized a science and art conference with all of the infrastructure of a conference — the parties, chats, lunches, airport arrivals — but with no actual conference. Apparently it was hugely successful and spawned many ongoing collaborations.

40. Avoid fields. Jump fences. Disciplinary boundaries and regulatory regimes are attempts to control the wilding of creative life. They are often understandable efforts to order what are manifold, complex, evolutionary processes. Our job is to jump the fences and cross the fields.

41. Laugh. People visiting the studio often comment on how much we laugh. Since I’ve become aware of this, I use it as a barometer of how comfortably we are expressing ourselves.

42. Remember. Growth is only possible as a product of history. Without memory, innovation is merely novelty. History gives growth a direction. But a memory is never perfect. Every memory is a degraded or composite image of a previous moment or event. That’s what makes us aware of its quality as a past and not a present. It means that every memory is new, a partial construct different from its source, and, as such, a potential for growth itself.

43. Power to the people. Play can only happen when people feel they have control over their lives. We can’t be free agents if we’re not free.

Love this

2009-06-10T20:24:00.001-04:00

check it out

A triple violation of the Canadian Charter of Rights in Keswick Ontario

2009-04-30T15:04:00.006-04:00

Somewhere in the backwoods town of Keswick Ontario, a police department and school are making a mockery of our charter of rights. It seems an Asian youth was being bullied by a 'white' youth. The 'white' kid threw a punch and the Asian kid being a black belt, quickly gave his foe a broken nose.

Both were suspended even though one was clearly defending himself. Here's where it gets sick, the Asian kid is being charged with assault by the police and will be expelled from the school. The other kid gets off scott free even though he's the bully and started the fight.

Our Charter of Rights grants us security, freedom from punishment and freedom from discrimination based on race.

I paraphrase our Charter word for word here;

Legal Rights

LIFE, LIBERTY AND SECURITY OF PERSON.

7. Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of the person and the right not to be deprived thereof except in accordance with the principles of fundamental justice

TREATMENT OR PUNISHMENT.

12. Everyone has the right not to be subjected to any cruel and unusual treatment or punishment.

Equality Rights

EQUALITY BEFORE AND UNDER LAW AND EQUAL PROTECTION AND BENEFIT OF LAW / Affirmative action programs.
15. (1) Every individual is equal before and under the law and has the right to the equal protection and equal benefit of the law without discrimination and, in particular, without discrimination based on race, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, sex, age or mental or physical disability.

I'm pissed off, really really pissed. I urge you to write a polite email to these authorities who clearly don't get it and don't understand our Constitution and Charter of Rights.

CATHERINE McGINLEY
Principal
Keswick high school
keswick.hs@yrdsb.edu.on.ca

York Regional Police Department
Armand P. La Barge
Chief of Police
info@yrp.ca

Here's the Globe and Mail story

Follow up;

Hate crimes investigation

The kids uprising also made Keith Olbermans #1 best person in the world last night.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

This is cool

2009-04-20T11:19:00.002-04:00

Now if they could just combine this with the Tegra platform. Hmmm.....

I can't tell you how much I want one of these

2009-04-20T10:46:00.001-04:00

Just fucking sick!

Here come the Tegras

2009-04-16T15:05:00.002-04:00

I've been anxiously waiting for Tegra based mobile devices for a while. I'm pretty sure that Microsoft will be the first out of the gate with the new Zune and Winmo 7. Although Apple has a pretty good relationship with nVidia, I think it's unlikely that they can revamp their whole core platform just to support this core.

It's about time we see some cool shit like this;

Muppet gore

2009-04-05T11:01:00.000-04:00

The smartest thing

2009-02-17T13:32:00.002-05:00

This is clearly the smartest thing I've seen this year. It's 18 minutes long so if you have ADD or couldn't give a crap about macroeconomics and evolution then don't bother.

Here's a couple of videos I like

2009-01-07T12:23:00.003-05:00

Trentemøller: Moan

Trentemøller: Miss You

royksopp: what else is there

crystal castles: crimewave

I want one...

2009-01-07T12:19:00.001-05:00

Something better

2009-01-05T16:02:00.004-05:00

I feel guilty for posting such a boring post on Excel, here's the Crystal Castles from Toronto to cheer you up. Alice Glass has some wicked eyes. (edit: Video moved to post above)

Excel 2007 'Cannot empty the Clipboard'

2009-01-05T15:56:00.003-05:00

This might save somebody some time and headaches if google picks it up. I was getting a 'Cannot empty the Clipboard' error every time I moved cells around in Excel - eventually I mucked around with the settings and made it go away. Here's how; In the excel main menu (glass globe w/logo), click Excel options, then Advanced, then turn off 'Show paste options buttons'

How exciting was this as my first post of the year?

Update: I still haven't found a permanent solution but I found another thing that seems to help. In Excel 2007, from the "home" tab, the first thing on the left is the clipboard tool panel. Expand the panel to view the clipboard and in the clipboard you might find "cannot empty clipboard" as an entry. Empty the clipboard, keep the panel open for a second or two while you do a few cut and pastes/drags etc. and then the bogey seems to go away.

I call this the cable dance because back in the day I had a printer that only worked if you unplugged the cable, shook it out and plugged it back in.

Great track by Common

2008-11-19T13:17:00.000-05:00

check this out.

Something cool on Surface

2008-11-17T10:08:00.004-05:00

Microsoft seems to have a lot of inertia with Surface apps and I think that we've seen a lot of great things out of their newer user interfaces. They ~~kidnapped~~ ~~abducted~~ recruited some great people from Adobe, Apple and Frogdesign and it's really starting to show. The new Zune software is brilliant and so is the Virtual Earth interface.

What they need is some equal talent on the hardware side. To date most Wintel laptops, media players and mobile devices have form factors that basicly suck ass. HTC seems to be changing that on the mobile side but there aren't too many more companies pushing those boundaries. PC hardware is mostly the equivalent of GM cars from the 90's - fugly, cheap and flakey. Luckily there seems to be a wave of much cooler stuff coming out. Here's my wish list;

- PCs that look like they were made by Bang and Olufson
- Media players that look like they were made by Prada
- Laptops that look like they were made by BMW

Having said that, the questions that those suppliers would ask is would I be willing to to pay a premium for that? I'd say yes, by probably about 10% and not 35% like Apple demands.

Cool

2008-11-14T22:14:00.001-05:00

Check this out.

Tethering a Blackberry Bold with Rogers

2008-11-07T12:23:00.003-05:00

So I have this 6GB package with Rogers that I barely use but is still less expensive than the 500Mb package for reasons only known to Steve Jobs and the marketing fools @ Rogers.

I always thought that there was an extra charge for using the wireless data package with my laptop but as it turns out there isn't. So.... I gave it a try and it works well. 350Kbps up and down and essentially free because it's paid for. One more thing, I upgraded my firmware to .168 and it's rock solid and the battery life is great - highly recommended. Now it never crashes and works flawlessly.

Here's how to tether taken from Howard Forums;

Task 0: Connect your BB to your laptop using a USB cable or bluetooth* (* haven't tried yet)

Task 1: Install Blackberry desktop software on your computer.

Task 2:

Set up Internet APN.
1. Go to Start>Settings>Control Panel.
2. Double-click Phone and Modem Options.
3. In the Phone and Modem Options window, click the Modems tab.
4. Select Standard Modem and click Properties.
5. In the Standard Modem Properties window, click the Advanced tab.
6. In the Extra initialization commands field, type the following:
+cgdcont=1,"IP","Internet.com"

1. Click OK.
2. In the Phone and Modem Options window, click OK.

Task 3:

1. Go to Start>Settings>Network Connections.
2. Double-click New Connection Wizard. The New Connection Wizard opens.
3. Click Next.
4. Select the Connect to the Internet option. Click Next.
5. Select Setup my connection manually. Click Next.
6. Select Connect using a dial-up modem. Click Next.
7. If the Select a Device screen appears, select the Modem - Standard Modem check box. Click Next.
8. In the ISP Name field, type a name for your connection. Click Next.
9. In the Phone number field, type*99#. Click Next.
10. Indicate which users will have access to the connection. Click Next.
11. Enter the user name and password provided by your service provider. Click Next.
12. Click Finish.
13. In the Connect window, click Properties.
14. In the Properties window, verify that Modem - Standard Modem appears beneath the Connect using heading, and then click Configure.
15. In the Modem Configuration window, clear the Enable hardware flow control check box and make sure none of the other check boxes are selected. Click OK. In the Properties window, click OK.

Task 4:
Connect the BlackBerry device to the computer and verify that BlackBerry Desktop Manager displays Connected. The BlackBerry device must be identified by BlackBerry Desktop Manager in order for the modem to establish a connection

Task 5:
Connect to the Internet using dial-up networking.
Note: During this procedure, do not operate the BlackBerry Browser or any third-party applications on the BlackBerry device. An active data session may interfere with the modem connection. Also, make sure an ethernet connection is not active at the same time.

1. Connect the BlackBerry device to the computer.
2. Open BlackBerry Desktop Manager.
3. Click Start>Settings>Network Connections>.
4. Enter the user name and password provided by your service provider. (BLANK for Rogers)
5. Click Dial.

Congratulations to the USA

2008-11-05T05:57:00.002-05:00

Congratulations for doing something incredibly brave. For the first time in decades I admire the USA.

More Thoughts on Obama

2008-11-04T18:57:00.004-05:00

Southern Fried Liberals

I was in the Bahamas last week and there was a bunch of fat pink mustached southern sounding Americans swilling beer around the pool. Looked like a bunch of rednecks to me and I didn't think much of it until I saw that two of them had Obama t-shirts on. I must say that I was a bit shocked.

On the Web

Since I got back, I've been reading the news websites and reader comments go on about how great Obama is, either that or a bunch of obscure foil hat inuendos like how he's not an American, french kisses Castro and square dances with terrorists. There aren't many people praising John M, just shooting down Obama and about the same number calling Palin a dumbass whacko.

Running the Stand

Both candidates would make reasonable leaders but I'm terrified of Sarah Palin and for that reason above all others I think that McCain lacks judgement and isn't fit to run a hot dog stand. From a Canadian perspective, it's probably better that McCain wins but I can't think of a single Canadian that I know that isn't hoping for an Obama landslide.

Good luck my American friends and please don't fuck it up again.

My Prediction

2008-11-04T16:53:00.003-05:00

Given the huge voting lines and massive early vote turnout I'm venturing to say that Obama will win by a big margin. People don't go to that much trouble unless they're really passionate and I think people are really passionate about change this time around. The lineups from what I can see seem to be civil and actually pleasant so I'm guessing they aren't filled with people scared to let a black man win.

Lets revisit this tomorrow, my gut feeling is that people are very anxious and excited about a new beginning.

How Prolific Was 2Pac?

2008-11-02T19:43:00.002-05:00

When he said way back in 1995:

"I see no changes all I see is racist faces

misplaced hate makes disgrace to races
We under I wonder what it takes to make this
one better place, let's erase the wasted
Take the evil out the people they'll be acting right
'cause both black and white is smokin' crack tonight
and only time we chill is when we kill each other
it takes skill to be real, time to heal each other
And although it seems heaven sent
We ain't ready, to see a black President, uhh"

We're on the eve of change, are we really ready?

Dear Steve

2008-10-14T17:47:00.004-04:00

Dear Steve, You don't look so hot, we're worried about you. What gives?
Your Amigo, Sanj

P.S. I think I'm finally going to buy one of your laptops

How sad would it be to lose a great innovator like SJ. As much as I can't stand Apple's smug marketing and arrogant posturing, the products are pretty ground breaking and the world will be a much worse place without Steve's hand. Anyways all that to say that Steve isn't looking so hot these days and today he looked like a corpse.

Tilt shift

2008-10-09T11:27:00.004-04:00

How cool is this tilt shift lens effect?

Shrink this train from Stefan Gilgen on Vimeo.

Beached from Keith Loutit on Vimeo.

Bathtub III from Keith Loutit on Vimeo.

Using Spore to Guide the Economy

2008-10-09T10:24:00.005-04:00

Many people know about the Sims game and recently Spore where you build a world and it evolves based on how you tweak the 'DNA' and genetic pool of your simulation. Why can't you apply methodology the same to economic simulations? Here's my idea, the government and private sector combined should set up a massive simulation of people, economies and stimulus programs that run in much faster than real time and allow the general public to try out simulations of different economic programs. Google/Microsoft/Oracle/Amazon/Apple/IBM/OSF should chip in resources to build/connect to this cloud simulation and it should be open to supercomputers as well to plug in simulation results. Additionally, people can volunteer their free CPU cycles to try random parameters like the folding protein and SETI screensavers do.

It should be run like a contest and every couple of weeks, the top 1% of simulation results should be analyzed by a pool of really smart people. As the economy is a moving target, this should be an ongoing effort with base assumptions adjusted based on the changing reality.

There's almost no chance that this can be done in time to change what's going on now but there's no reason why a few spreadsheets can't be thrown out there with tweakable parameters to let pundits work on. I am pretty convinced that the crowd can figure out economic algorithms to ease or solve many of the economic pressures at hand.

Just a thought, much better than handing out free money and buying deadbeat mortgages with my tax dollars IMHO.

I figured it out

2008-10-07T09:37:00.002-04:00

I finally figured out who Sarah Palin`s debate coach was.

Must have taken years to learn how to use so many words without saying anything. Obviously Palin`s got this act wired but she could use some medication for all that eye twitching.

McCain/Palin are kidding right?

2008-10-06T17:40:00.002-04:00

First off let me tell you that as much as I dislike GWB, it's not because he's a republican -it's because he's an idiot. Second, I don't think that Obama has much of a platform other than not being GWB. Having said that, McPalin scares the shit out of me.

McPalin reminds me of those wind up chattering teeth that just keep knocking out robotic nonsense like a drunken Monty Python skit. I can't understand how this guy who's voted vastly in favor of GWB policies can consider himself the voice of change. How the fuck is this old fossil a maverick? Why doesn't he call himself a speed skater or a bowler because that's just about as relevant and maybe a little less humorous. He's kidding right? And meanwhile Rome is burning and Sarah is busy giving shout outs to third graders and throwing aw-shucks winks like she's selling corn and kisses at a state fair hot dog stand. WHAT THE FUCK, DO THEY REALLY THINK AMERICANS ARE THAT STUPID??? On second thought that's a good question, after all they did vote GWB in twice right? You guys are gonna vote in an executive to fix your global problems right? Did that somebody on the world stage just recently get their first passport? Didn't you learn the first time what happens when you put provincial imbeciles in charge of global affairs?

I'm afraid that Obama can't handle the crisis either but I'm infinitely more petrified of having a weaker/older GWB-esque relic in charge with a backwoods soccer mom running wing. In either case, we're fucked for a while and Chindia have a great chance to trample all over us with middle eastern sovereign funds bankrolling them.

Mark to Market, the big shaft

2008-10-03T13:59:00.005-04:00

Lets say you had a bar of gold that's worth a thousand dollars today but all of a sudden nobody was trading gold for a few months. Is your gold worth zero? Not really, it's worth something close to a thousand dollars when people are buying again.

Here's the rub with banks and mortgage companies. Nobody these days wants to buy any mortgage, good or bad so they are forced to value the whole lot of them at zero even if only a few percentage are defaulting. The problem is that by valuing the mortgages that they are already holding at zero even though they will mostly be paid, the banks have 10 times less money to loan because of the way they're structured with leverage.

So 500 billion dollars of mostly good mortgages are marked down to zero even though most of them are worth most of their full value and thus 5 trillion dollars of bank liquidity is gone instantly. Thus explains why overnight so many banks collapsed.

How stupid is it that such a simple rule fucked up the entire dynamics of the economy and how stupid of the people who could do something about it a year ago didn't start until this week.

It's called Mark to Market regulations and you'll be hearing about it for a long time.

Greed and the American Public

2008-10-03T08:26:00.005-04:00

I've seen a lot of comments from viewers on CNBC, CNN & FOX about how they reject the notion of a wholesale bank bailout. When you look at the reasoning behind why the bailout was defeated on Monday, it seems to stem from the perception that it's simply bailing out the greed and excess on Wall street. What most people seem to forget is that consumers share a great deal of the blame as well and they (we) should recognize that. What do I mean by that? Well, how many people in North America bought huge houses when interest rates were microscopic? How many people took 3 vacations a year on their credit cards? How many people leased multiple massive cars because they seemed so cheap? How many people ran up their credit cards? It goes on, the government lowered interest rates and both political parties encouraged people to buy houses with nothing down. Deregulation allowed banks to offer interest only 40 year mortgages to people who could barely afford it even in good times. The greedy system provided greedy people with unlimited nearly free toys and when the party ended the greedy people blamed the greedy system for victimizing them.

We're all going to eat shit for a while because credit has dried up even for responsible people and companies and without credit the whole economy goes into slow motion and sometimes seizes. I've heard many people talk about the 'old fashion' way of doing business without credit. That's a load of shit because without responsible credit this society wouldn't exist and without irresponsible credit, it wouldn't have grown as fast as it did. If your supplier doesn't give you 30 days credit and you don't give your clients 30 day credit, your business is going to suffer. If the concept of car lease/purchase financing is gone, we're all driving 8 year old rust buckets and a few million people will be out of work and UPS ceases to exist. Oh yeah, without credit your municipality can never fix anything major that breaks until you all go drop off a bags of cash at city hall.

I'm all for responsible credit and tighter regulations and I think that Warren Buffet and Mark Cuban are both right in their thinking that if you let investors buy in alongside the government into the credit pool that's currently seized up, almost everybody will come out better for it.

Until it un-seizes, we're all in big shit. Conserve your cash because you'll need it to survive or you'll find some great buying opportunities soon if things go well.

We are in deep shit

2008-09-29T16:05:00.003-04:00

Deep deep shit my friends.

A really smart guy

2008-09-24T08:33:00.002-04:00

This guy Vinod Khosla is one smart fella, read what he has to say about renewable energy. This dude is the type of guy that should be advising the governments on sustainable energy policies. Did I mention that he was the co-founder of Sun Microsystems and general partner at Kliener Perkins?

AOL Revisited

2008-09-22T17:37:00.002-04:00

Once upon a time AOL had this huge following of non-technical people who used their cartoony software to send messages to each other and read the news. It was a walled garden for old people and kids who didn't understand the Internet. It was really cute, had pretty colors and nice icons and animations. Eventually AOL let their users onto a little bit of the Internet with some weird ass browser that didn't work with any site other than AOL. Eventually people got wise and realized that they really didn't want to pay triple what other people were paying for a playschool version of the Internet and AOL took a hit and had to dismantle their walled garden and let people free using Netscape and Internet Explorer. Today AOL is some third rate destination site and nobody really cares about them.

Apple is the new AOL, they give you pretty colors and shield you from the machine but at the same time don't let you do too much because they're afraid that you'll hurt yourself. They won't let developers write killer apps, they don't have the most killer hardware and they actually don't even have the most usable software.

RIM, Google and HTC show a glimmer of hope on how that can one day change. RIM's got a killer with the Bold with more to come around the corner, the HTC Touch HD is sick and finally tomorrow Google's launching the HTC with Android.

Oh yeah, did I mention that PCs/Laptops are becoming rapidly irrelevant? And Microsoft, well they're still around there in the background providing infrastructure and platforms but they are to some degree just enablers of the stuff to come while HTC/Google are the real drivers.

Hey Americans!

2008-09-21T09:54:00.003-04:00

Your government just gave away $170 billion of your money to 'stimulate the economy', bought $200 billion in crappy mortgage companies, bought bad debts of $85 billion from a near dead bank and now is going to buy another $700 billion of bad debts from the banks.

That's after arguably spending a few hundred billion on a random war in the wrong place.

Your debt will be 11.3 trillion dollars after all is said and done.

My favorite video

2008-09-19T12:51:00.007-04:00

Anybody that knows me knows that The Knife are one of my favorite acts, so it's no surprise that this Royksopp track with Karin from The Knife on vocals is my fave vid. I usually don't like Royksopp because they're too wimpy but this is pretty cool. BTW: Karin is the one eating the apple and not the one floating.

Royksopp - What Else Is There?

Biofuel is mostly dumb

2008-09-19T12:51:00.003-04:00

In the long run, biofuel is really a pretty dumb idea. We already have a massive problem with fertilizer runoff, drinking water and deforestation so it just seems really stupid to trade air pollution for water/ground pollution. Brazil seems to have a good handle on sugar beets but they started in the 70s. Today we know a lot more about what happens when you trade forests for fields and it's clear that that's no good. The same goes for bio-plastics, we trade one kind of pollution for another and because it has some kind of first level benefit, most people ignore the net benefit/loss.

It's just plain dumb and that's what happens when you treat this kind of stuff emotionally and not pragmatically. We need to look at all of these things like an accountant would with objective eye towards cost/benefit. Push down pollution on one side and where does it pop out on the other?

There are a lot of dollars going into much better solutions but they just aren't as glamorous. My prediction is that capitalism will work it's magic and smart solutions will come but in the meantime some idiots will keep pushing stupid ideas to stupid people with emotional judgments. Think hard about this stuff next time somebody feeds you some more enviro-bullshit and embrace the stuff that really makes sense. Personally, I trust the capitalists to have a far more tangible impact than the rabid environmentalists;

http://www.dawn.com/2002/01/25/int18.htm
http://walmartstores.com/Sustainability/
http://www.pickensplan.com/index.php

On bolds and zunes

2008-09-17T09:28:00.004-04:00

I've had my blackberry bold for a month now and I have to say that I'm loving it for the most part. The email + web is great, videos are decent and the screen & keyboard are awesome. The only thing about it that sucks is how much the thing crashes. Sometimes its a couple of times a day and sometimes it's every few days. Clearly this thing isn't quite perfect. On top of that, I'll have to be really careful with this one because my old phones took tons of abuse and lasted me years, the bold looks kind of fragile and reboots when it takes a big bump. I dread the day when I drop it on concrete.

Regarding the Zune, I have to say that the Zune Software V3 blows iTunes right out of the water and the Zune itself is still my preference over the iPods. I really don't like the touch and before you get your panties in a bunch, I do actually have one and use them both side by side. I don't use an iPhone but I get the general idea and understand why some people like them. I also noticed that the new iPod touch finally has a physical volume button but I still wouldn't get one if I had a choice. I am however using my 1st gen touch to play spore when I'm bored. Which brings me to another gripe - I bought spore on the iTunes store for 6 bucks and only after I downloaded it did I realize that it didn't work on my touch - fucking store and itunes didn't even warn me. I didn't read the fine print. I had to then buy the 10 buck touch version with no chance of a refund for my mistake.

At the end of the day, I still think that iFans are a closed minded group that don't really realize to what degree they've been been short-changed and won't figure it out until Apple becomes un-trendy. After all, Apple aren't really the underdog anymore and it's hard to be an individualist when everybody in your subway car has the exact same gear as you right? Are you really a counter culture individualist who uses the same gadgets as George Bush? Does listening to JJohnson & Feist somehow make up for it?

Apple used to run an advert about 1984 and big brother, these days I think that they're the second biggest brother on the planet with the first being Google.

Gina

2008-09-12T17:35:00.000-04:00

How cool is this?

2008-09-12T17:18:00.001-04:00

Two weeks with a blackberry bold

2008-09-04T18:12:00.002-04:00

Week 1 went great, roaming around the east coast of Canada. No problems whatsoever switching between 3G/Edge/GSM. However when I got into NY state last friday, it started crashing regularly. Spent 4 days in NY/NJ upstate, midstate and bottom including coastal NJ and it crashed every 6 hrs. Zipped over to Boston for the past couple of days and now its rock solid. Seems like there are still some roaming issues with ATT USA and that's probably what's causing the launch delay.

My advice to RIM is to hold on until its rock solid because clearly it's going to be a disaster if released in the US in this state. In Canada however, rock solid and a joy to use. I get lots of Americans down here eyeing my device and asking me about it so clearly it's lustworth.

Oddly enough, at a software conference it seems like most of the programmer types use iPhones and the founder/owner types use crackberries.

It's been a while

2008-09-04T08:36:00.003-04:00

I'm sitting here at the Seaport in Boston for the Business of Software conference and I have come to realize how great it is to get so much insight from people who have been through a lot more than I have. I've met loads of people who came from all over the world and spent some fairly significant money to be here. Since Boston isn't too far from me it wasn't such a big commitment but after being here this year I think I'll follow this conference wherever it goes next year even if that means going to the UK or wherever it is next.

I also realized that I have a lot of knowledge to share with others as I have been through 3 bootstrap companies, 2 IPOs, 2 mergers and 3 fiascos. That's a lot of startups! A fellow with a show on the BBC will be interviewing me about my experiences with VCs, that should be interesting.

So all that to say that I'll be contributing to this blog regularly again soon but probably more with a slant of what I've learnt over the years and what's driving me.

Adios from Boston!

Smug bastards

2008-08-07T11:37:00.005-04:00

Every time I see a smug Apple advert it makes me want to puke. How about this, recently the biggest and most dangerous hacking hole since 1997 had been discovered, patched and closed by all of the major vendors together in a cooperative effort with no BS. This includes Microsoft, Cisco, CERT and all of the Linux/GPL community.

Everybody pitched in, coordinated and fixed their systems but the smuggest bastard of the lot (Apple) were not only late with a patch, failed to tell their customers about it but they also fucked up their patch and now Macs and OSX servers everywhere are vulnerable. Notice how the press hasn't jumped on their heads like they would for any other company? Good thing there's so few of them out there that nobody really gives a shit.

Test your connection here.