EDS recently started a blog called “EDS’ Next Big Thing Blog.” The first post – Mania and the Next Big Thing – sets the tone for the blog. Written by EDS Fellows, the blog is “dedicated to the exploration of these and other questions as we pursue the identification, investigation, analysis and understanding of the “things” that will manifest themselves as the next big thing in information technology.” It’s a real blog – comments are open – and some of them are pretty interesting and relevant to the articles. So far they are writing about three posts a week – most of them in essay format – on a variety of corporate IT thoughts and issues.
Dave Winer connected the dots yesterday that Philip Greenspun was up in Homer, AK (as am I). I didn’t know Philip, but took a quick look at his site, vaguely remembered ArsDigita, made the MIT connection, and dropped him an email.
In perusing Philip’s blog, I noticed that he had flown up here in his Cirrus SR20. My close friend Paul Berberian flew up here last summer (pretty Alaska pictures here) in his Cirrus SR22 and I dropped Paul an email about Phil. He responded immediately that he was a silent Philip Greenspun blog lurker / fan – I connected Philip and Paul – I imagine they’ll have some bizarre email exchange about airplanes.
I surfed around a little more and noticed that Philip had written a book called Software Engineering for Internet Applications with Eve Andersson and Andrew Grumet. I spent a few hours with Andrew a several months ago at MIT talking about MIT Sloan’s implementation of .LRN using OpenACS (ah – there’s the linkage to ArsDigita). I dropped Andrew an email and he quickly responded and pointed me to this cool song from Ellis Paul about Homer and Alice’s Champagne Palace (which I’d heard before – I think Kevin Menzie had sent it to me – but smiled when I listened to it again.)
Philip responded a few hours later by email and Amy and I took him out to dinner at The Homestead (and no – it’s not in the middle of Beluga Lake even though Google Maps thinks it is). We had a great time – who needs social networking when you have blogs and email.
Dave – thanks for writing a sentence about us yesterday – look at all the good karmic energy that was unleashed on the world!
I knew it would happen – it was just a matter of time. Amy’s blog finally ate her brain. It’s 4:30pm and she’s in her bathrobe continuing to work on her blog. Amy’s a writer and it’s fun to watch her get completely absorbed by something.
In particular, I love it when she jumps up and down and rants at stuff. She usually does this in close proximity to something she’s reading, especially the NY Times. Today she wrote about a quote from Evelyn Husband and an editorial from Salman Rushdie. And yes – she was jumping up and down and screaming rude things when she told me about it – she moderated herself for her blog.
In addition to being willing to talk about politics and current events (something I rarely express an opinion on other than to hand out copied of Atlas Shrugged to people), she’s a much better photographer than me. If you want to get a feel for our place in Homer, check out her Alaska 2005 pictures. Moose or gulls anyone?
P.S. If you are too lazy to read Atlas Shrugged, try the Atlas Shrugged (Cliffs Notes). Yo – Amy! – time to go for a run on the Homer Spit.
One of the treasures of Homer is our local movie theater. It’s located on the corner of Pioneer and Main (how fitting) and is an old single seating theater. We get two movies a week with three showings a day (3, 6, and 8:30). The movies change every Friday so there’s a moment of excitement late Thursday night or early Friday when we drive (or run, or walk) by the marquis after the movie change. The popcorn is fresh and parmesan cheese is 25 cents extra.
Last week’s movies were Star Wars III and The Longest Yard. I punted Star Wars III since I’d already seen it in Boulder (and once was enough for this one – how disappointing) so Don and I went to The Longest Yard last night (gotta get it done by Thursday or you’re hosed). The girls (Amy and Christine) had no interest so they stayed home and played with dolls or something.
Adam Sandler’s remake of the 1974 Burt Reynolds original version was great. It got predictably lousy reviews, but that’s just because the reviewers don’t appreciate the artistry of a repressed Jewish comedian in jail pretending that he is an ex-NFL superstar who got busted for shaving points, turned into a loser, and got tossed in jail for drunk driving. Sore stomach’s from 25 belly laughs and a pair of big smiles greeted Amy and Christine at Cafe Cups for dinner after the movie.
Tonight’s movie: Mr. & Mrs. Smith which we’ve already seen, but tonight is a 6pm movie night, so we’ll get to enjoy my namesake demonstrating some studly behavior while fantasizing about his girlfriend / movie-wife.
Live8 is just awesome. I’ve been tethered to my computer for a while watching it live on AOL.
Pink Floyd is on stage right now in London (the first time since 1981 as a full band, including Roger Waters.) I love Pink Floyd. I once listened to Dark Side of the Moon for an entire semester during college (I had an early CD player – I started it at the beginning of the semester, pressed the repeat button, and pressed stop at the end of the semester. Yes – I occasionally turned the volume down to sleep at night.) I have fond memories of my mom yelling “turn down that shit” when I was home from college visiting for the summer blasting The Wall.
They started with “Breathe In The Air”, then “Money“, then “Wish You Were Here”, and finished with “Comfortably Numb.” Man, these dudes look old (except for David Gillmour), but boy can they sing and play their instruments.
Seeing a teenager in the crowd wearing a Dark Side of the Moon prism t-shirt made me smile. I wonder if he can sing the following lyrics backwards like I can.
How I wish, how I wish you were here.
We’re just two lost souls swimming in a fish bowl, year after year,
running over the same old ground. What have we found?
The same old fears, wish you were here.
or maybe
When I was a child I caught a fleeting glimpse,
Out of the corner of my eye.
I turned to look but it was gone.
I cannot put my finger on it now.
The child is grown, the dream is gone.
I have become comfortably numb.
Go sign the Live8 online message to the leaders at the upcoming G-8 Summit.
To: The 8 most powerful leaders in the world
50,000 people are dying, needlessly, every day of extreme poverty.
At this year’s G8 summit meeting, it is within your power to put an end to this tragedy. It is an extraordinary opportunity which it would be shameful to ignore. We urge you to take these 3 steps to make extreme poverty history…
Technorati has a bunch of Live8 tag action going on so I figured I’d add to the mix. live8; live8 pink floyd
Star Wars 3 was technically beautiful, but thematically disappointing to me. However, Seth emailed me a link to Store Wars (via his dad Randy). You’ll have to decide whether or not you are on the dark side of the farm. Worth a five minute break from your day. Hang in there until the end – yogurt is delightful.
Today is one of my favorite days of the year. I like almost every day, but today is special. Happy Anniversary Amy. Happy Birthday Drew. Happy sunshine everyone else.
Over the weekend, I wrote about the top 10 bathrooms in the world according to Wallpaper* magazine. A similarly obsessed reader pointed me to Urinal.net’s list of the top 100 urinals in the world. Both of the lists left off my personal favorite, which until this point has remained incognito. Pictures follow:
In addition, the toilet paper has the following Non-Disclosure Agreement printed on it (which is – like many non-disclosure agreements – worth the paper it’s printed on.)
Bathroom Services and Non-Disclosure and Non-Disparagement Agreement
By tearing this piece of paper, you have acknowledged performing a Certain Rectal Activity Properly (a “Crap”) or a Perfunctory Insignificant Standing Stream (a “Piss”). In consideration of your Crap and / or your Piss, as applicable, and in consideration of the usage of this bathroom (the “Politically Incorrect Loo”), you hereby agree to the following:
Violation of any of the above shall be subject to the applicable laws of this jurisdiction, or the unilateral discretion of the hosts’ gun collection.
– Juan B. Rawkstar, Esq.
Who said blogs weren’t fun? I’m always a little uncomfortable in this bathroom since guns make me more nervous than horses do, but I’ve gotten used to it.
On my run this morning I was grooving to the Positively 10th Street podcast from the Wilson family. Josh and Emily were psyched it was summer, Josh was farting, and Fred and Emily started riffing on “School’s Out for the Summer.”
School’s actually on for me in the summer. Amy and I are about to head up to Alaska where I dramatically change my rhythm for a couple of months. I’m still working full time – probably more effective then usual – since I eliminate face to face meetings (especially the random ones), eliminate travel, and compress stuff down to things that matter. But – the pace changes.
As part of the change, I choose a few things to go “intellectually deep on.” I figure I get three hours a day back from all the friction of the normal work stuff (travel, random useless meetings, waiting for people, sitting through stupid things that you can’t easily get up and walk away from, lunch meetings just because someone forgot to say no – you get the picture.) So – I’m taking three “self-directed” classes this summer.
Class 1: Programming. I’m a pretty good programmer, but I haven’t done anything seriously in a long time (I like to say that I’m one of the world’s best BASIC programmers, but that would have been before Visual Basic. Wanna know about early versions of the Microsoft BASIC compiler and Btrieve (before Novell bought it) – email me.) So I’m going to start with Brian Harvey’s “Computer Science Logo Style 2/e, Vol. 1: Symbolic Computing” and then retake MIT’s 6.001 using MIT’s OpenCourseWare and the online version of Abelson and Sussman’s Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs.
Class 2: Drawing. My mother is a fantastic artist and Amy and I have a large modern art collection. I can barely read my handwriting, let alone draw anything. I’m going to start with Betty Edward’s highly acclaimed The New Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain and see where it takes me.
Class 3: A New Kind of Science. I bought Stephen Wolfram’s book A New Kind of Science when it first came out and it sat on a table and stared intimidatingly at me all last summer. Every now and then I’d pick it up and read through a few of the end notes and look at the pictures. This summer, I’m going to tackle it in a systematic way, with plenty of help from the website and the NKS Explorer software.
So – in addition to everything else, school’s on this summer.