Opposable Thumbs

Riding bike or bus is no longer alternative transportation. According to the scribes at Portland Transport: Active transportation is the new alternative.

This is just a collection of random thoughts that were floating through my head last night before I fell asleep. And, yes, I do think about these sorts of things often. That's why I'm a geek... It seems to me that searching for information on the web really makes more sense when done in context. That is, Google and the like are great for finding certain kinds of information when you're interests are very general, but they can often be a real pain when searching for something very specific. That is, unless you know some relevant details about the item you're searching for. But that's not often the way it works when you're trying to track down a long lost resource. For instance, you might remember that you saw this web page you're looking for sometime last month. But Google doesn't know anything about that. Now, bookmarks and browser history provide this kind of information. That is, they can provide it. But there's currently no way to bridge this gap. Not to mention that services like del.icio.us and Furl add another layer on there. Besides that fact that they store the information about your bookmarks remotely (making things in theory much easier to interface with a service like a search engine), they also add on features like tagging. Which, obviously can be exploited.

I'm trying out a new Wordpress template for the blog. I'm using the Obsidian 2.0 template, but I hope to find some time to customize it heavily. That or I'll dump it entirely and try something else. Just got bored with that Kubrick template that came with Workpress. Update: Well, this news is already a week or two old, but I gave up on that template and am back to the default (and way overused) Kubrick template. A few too many attempts to edit the other template and failure to make a backup are the reason why.

My Unitarian Jihad Name is: Brother Machine Gun of Sweet Reason.

Get yours.

Though I've never really been interested in the whole MBA thing, Josh Kaufman posts his "Personal MBA" Program based on a thread started over on Seth Godin's blog. As a wanna-be entrepreneur, this looks like some very interesting reading.

So, those of you who know me (and who reads this site who doesn't anyway?), probably have heard me go on about starting my own company. I keep saying that I'm going to do it one day, but so far that day has yet to come. And, honestly, I think it's still a ways off. But that doesn't stop me from planning and thinking about it. Today was one of those days where I found myself thinking about it even more than usual. Coincidentally, it was also a day where I found two really great essays/posts on the subject. First up is Paul Graham's How to Start a Startup. Graham describes the insights he distilled from his years building Viaweb (which was eventually acquired by Yahoo). There's a lot of really great suggestions in this piece, but what struck me most was the idea of doing it all for as little money as possible. I know this sounds like common sense to most, but having seen how a handful of business operate (I can't claim to understand any more than those for which I have been employed -- and even those only slightly), it doesn't appear to be the general approach. There's always the push to hire more people or start some new marketing campaign. Anyway, good stuff... Then, I see that Kottke is talking about the businesses that influence his perspective. He sites a number of role models that I already have, but adds a few that I think are worth checking out: Craig Newmark, founder of Craig's List; Coudal Partners, a design firm in Chicago; and David Bull, a fabulous artist who creates woodblock prints and sells them online. Good reading and good material for thought.

Via Feld Thoughts comes a link to what looks to be an intriguing selection of interesting readings.

Just testing something out... please ignore me.

• Nu Cardboard: Fun with JMS
  Posted: 2004-08-26T16:16:43Z (categories: java jms )
• Linguistics prof. George Lakoff dissects the \
  Posted: 2004-08-26T20:25:34Z (categories: politics )
• GBorg -- The Development website
  Posted: 2004-08-26T20:35:45Z (categories: db java postgresql )
• Eclipse IDE
  Posted: 2004-08-26T03:02:24Z (categories: eclipse plugins )
• ONLamp.com: The Top Ten Subversion Tips for CVS Users
  Posted: 2004-08-26T21:26:23Z (categories: subversion )
• launch4j - windows native executable java application wrapper
  Posted: 2004-08-26T20:15:42Z (categories: java launcher win32 )
• home [interface ecology lab]
  Posted: 2004-08-26T22:13:15Z (categories: infoecology media ontology )
• Pragmatic Automation
  Posted: 2004-08-26T20:47:10Z (categories: configmgmt lavalamps )
• You Are Number 6: James Drools
  Posted: 2004-08-26T20:33:51Z (categories: Drools java )
• An Introduction to RDF and the Jena RDF API
  Posted: 2004-08-26T21:52:59Z (categories: java jena RDF )

• Commons Launcher - Overview
  Posted: 2004-08-25T01:34:40Z (categories: java )
• Red Robin - Jython
  Posted: 2004-08-25T12:57:57Z (categories: eclipse java jython python )

• Raible Designs ~ My Tiles to SiteMesh Migration
  Posted: 2004-08-24T15:02:29Z (categories: java sitemesh tiles webapp )
• kObjects.org: kXML 2
  Posted: 2004-08-24T22:11:45Z (categories: xml )
• winlaf: Home
  Posted: 2004-08-24T22:27:20Z (categories: java laf winlaf )
• alex wright
  Posted: 2004-08-24T15:23:53Z (categories: classification socialsoftware taaxonomy )
• Cross Platform Java Installer - install4j
  Posted: 2004-08-24T22:07:01Z (categories: installers java )
• Aaron Johnson: Extracting Text From MS Word
  Posted: 2004-08-24T15:05:06Z (categories: java msword search )
• .c( whytheluckystiff )o. -- No More And Not
  Posted: 2004-08-24T01:44:46Z (categories: ruby )
• JNIWrapper: bridge for calling native code from Java without JNI
  Posted: 2004-08-24T22:37:53Z (categories: java jni )
• Urchin RSS Aggregator
  Posted: 2004-08-24T21:13:27Z (categories: rss syndication )
• Java 2 Runtime Environment Notes
  Posted: 2004-08-24T22:08:19Z (categories: java jre )
• d2r: atomflow
  Posted: 2004-08-24T21:12:28Z (categories: atom syndication )
• A Personal Information and Knowledge Infrastructure Integrator: Edmonds et al.: JoDI
  Posted: 2004-08-24T15:24:58Z (categories: km weblog )

• mezzoblue css Zen Garden Resource Guide
  Posted: 2004-08-23T06:05:00Z (categories: css webdesign )
• O'Reilly Network: The worst way to start a resume
  Posted: 2004-08-23T00:40:15Z (categories: jobhunting resume )
• Get the New SaverBeans Screensaver Pack
  Posted: 2004-08-23T13:49:47Z (categories: java screensaver )
• Bloug Entry (Aug 17, 2004)
  Posted: 2004-08-23T02:51:30Z (categories: IA )

Page 5, The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci

And this is the proper order; since if you wished to show the usefulness of any plan you would be obliged again to devise new machines to prove its utility and thus would confuse the order of the forty Books and also the order of the diagrams; that is to say you would have to mix up practice with theory, which would produce a confused and incoherent work.

Just found this tasty looking recipe for spring rolls. Fits nicely with my new diet (more about that later).