In my recent experiments, I have focused on developing my skills at user interface design. In particular I have been focusing on the rules and patterns which create more effective usability in the interfaces. I came across this video with some amazing ideas. Have a look at the video and see how it may inspire you.
A bit of sadness today for a tragedy that occurred in one of our happiest places. The term “Redneck Riviera” is usually used to describe any body of water whereby normal folks go to swim, drink and engage in general enjoyment using their boats. Our Riviera is located on the St Johns River between Lake Jesup and Lake Harney in Geneva, Fl. and we enjoy boating there as often as possible.
Yesterday, a mother of 3 died while tubing and I must say this is a very sad event. We could say that we have seen this coming. This part of the river which was once desolate and remote, is now usually filled with boats and people. The river here is not very wide or deep and is not the place where one should should be engaging in water sports which involve speed and a long rope. There is simply not enough room in the river for tubing, and the other boats go way too fast.
See the story here if you are interested in reading more about this event.
I am using a new Firefox add on to handle the creation and submission of my blog articles. This tool integrates with Firefox and allows you to add images, text, links and video to your blog entry and then handles the submission of the blog to your site.
After a 3 year hiatus from driving(work from home gig), I have started driving a fairly long distance to work and back again. Now that I am driving again I have been amazed how at how completely dangerous and comical the mindset of people is/are/can be when they are driving to work.
Due to high gas prices, people are more conscious than ever about gas mileage. Given that I drive a rather large truck (which I need to pull boats, trailers and motorcycles), I am keenly aware of my gas mileage. The combination of the price of gas, coupled with my long driving distance, have caused my gas bill to be one of my highest single monthly expenses.
In an effort to see if there is some small things I can do to help this matter (mainly saving money), I have tried a very simple method called hypermiling. Simply put, the term hypermiling is used to denote the various methods of efficiency used to get the most mileage out of our cars and our gas. Hypermiling has proven that with just a few simple steps, gas consumption can be reduced by as much as 30% or more. The simple steps are the following:
In my effort to save some money I have given this method a try and I have found some surprising results. In merely slowing down by 5 miles per hour, getting in the right lane and switching from Metallica to Bob Marley, I have found that I have been able to change my average mileage per gallon from 16 MPG to 23 MPG.
I am calling it “Marley Miling”
After several months of testing, I am very surprised how much money this savings has really added up to. Without any attempts at conservation I found that it costs me about 100$ to fill up my truck and I use 1.5 of tanks of gas per week. This total comes to 600$ per month for my gasoline expenses. The 30% I save by “Marley-Miling” now adds up to a whopping 180$ in savings per month. This is simply amazing.
Beyond the money, I have found that there are additional effects of “Marley-Miling” that are almost as equally profound.
1. I am more at ease in the car, at work and at home when I removed the constant aggravation of trying to get just that tiny bit ahead in may car to and from work.
2. The savings in Gas was an equal or greater reduction on the pollutions and greenhouse gasses I am now NOT emitting.
3. My 30% reduction in gas usage means 30% less demand on an inefficient and dangerous source of energy.
4. The roads are 30% safer.
5. I have a renewed vigor for my music collection and listen to 30% more music.
So try this simple technique and I know you too will see some amazing benefits. I think that we will all be better for it.
In my recent travels I visited a village who makes Whogamawhickies in order to survive. To this village, Whogamawhickies represent the mainstay of everyday life and the production of these little creations supports many lives, families and families of families.
As of late there is some discord within the village. This discord has created an atmosphere whereby everything the village is and has ever done is being questioned. The reasons everything is being questioned is not due to a failing in the current processes nor the the actual Whogamawhickies themselves, but rather the blind following and the ranting of the Cult of Google.
The Cult of the Google are a legion of followers who base their entire platform on the wisdom of others. The Cult of the Google makes anyone feel like they are a marvel of ability and choice simply by viewing its text. The Cult of the Google empowers those to feel that they have attained instant experience and awareness. In the Cult of the Google, the view is that there is no longer a need to have actual experience in making Whogamawhickies.
According to he Cult, the new way of making Whogamawhickies should be produced as stated in the Cult of the Google using the methods described in the Tele Funken U 47. The telefunken U 47 is an academic only approach using the Cult of the Google as its basis.
So into this village came a personality, Zang who through the Cult of the Google has garnered a legion of followers. The teachings and preachings of Zang , garnered by exhaustive use of the Cult of the Google, started in a complete re-write of the Whogamawhickie process.
During this process, any of the Stalwarts, those who originally created the Whogamawhickie process, were viewed as being old and unable to change. Zang became leader of the Whogamawhickie process and instantly began to abandon the long trusted and carefully crafted processes and methods used to create the Whogamawhickie. Zang began promoting and rewarding only those who also supported the belief in the Telefunken U 47 and the Cult of the Google. This group of people became known as the Zangifites.
In the times that followed, everything about the trusted processes were abandoned and changed in an attempt to blindly implement anything and everything that was stated in the Tele Funken U 47.
In the wake of these changes it was determined that the Whogamawhickies would now be created using only the teachings of the Cult of the Google. In the times that followed, Zang and the Zangifites led the followers on a long and endless trek into the desert. The long and endless trek into the desert would be used as a proof of concept to prove that the only chance of staying alive in the new world was to abandon the old ways and to use only the academic ways of the Cult of the Google.
Along the trek into the desert, the followers, as a proof of concept, spent all of their time pondering how they would stay alive during their trek. The pondering however did not address nor include the reasons they were trekking into the desert, how they would stay alive, nor includes any notions about about the actual Whogamawhickie process.
In the early days of the trek, they continually poured out their water and burned other necessary items because those items did not conform to the teachings of the Cult of the Google. Once all the water had been poured out they would then continually refine how the process of how a Jug of water “should” be created according to the Telefinken u 47. In the days, weeks and years that followed, all of the time and effort was spent arguing and refining the next generation Jug of Water and who would be in charge of its various parts. In this manner the 1 original water jug was broken and recreated 15 times using 15 of the latest techniques pondered in the Cult of the Google.
Pretty soon, during testing of the jug, it became apparent that in order to keep a jug holding water, 150 people, 10 to a jug, were required to hold their fingers over the many holes in each jug that would continually loose water. That is once they actually found and put more water into those jugs.
In testing it was revealed that each of the 15 groups of “hole pluggers” would have no clue how to plug up the holes in each others jugs because each jug was crafted using a completely different method. Each jug was built using a different method, held water differently and were dependent on the same 10 people dedicated to that jug in particular.
After some time, the reality of how far off course the trek had become was apparent to everyone. The Zangifites had begun to realize that the new fangled Chinese finger torture, empty jugs of water, nor the thirsty desert trek had anything to do with the Whogamawhickie process, which by now had nearly been forgotten.
Discord and discontent quickly started to settle in as the group found itself standing in the middle of the desert, thirsty and tired of plugging holes. The truth was that the jugs did not even hold water. In the realization that followed, the thirsty group watched as the Zangifites rode off on camels to find another desert trek, hoping that a different trek, into a different desert, would prove that the Cult of the Google was indeed far superior to the school of experience.
This is not the end of the story nor is it a sad or pointless tale. After the camels faded into the distance, the group began to realize that the Whogamawhickies still thrived and awaited their return. A comforting realization began to emerge unto the group.
The realization was that they did not need to shuffle in small pointless steps, huddled in groups of 10, with all of their fingers plugging holes in the new fangled jugs that currently did not even hold water on a pointless journey into the desert.
The group slowly began to remove their fingers from holes in the empty jugs. With their fingers removed from the empty jugs, they found that they could again walk with a speed that would allow them to at least get out of the desert.
Now, walking smoothly again, the group quickly arrived back at home. The remains of the group realized that the Whogamawhickies and the trusted processes, built from experience, awaited them just as they had left it before their pointless excursion into the desert.
The story of their trek would serve as a reminder that they survived by building Whogamawhickies, not by trying to recreate a Jug of Water.
In our society I think we have a way of trying to complicate ideas for only for complications sake. “look how smart I am”! Email is one of those things where we have complicated matters for absolutely no reason. Why email when you could talk?
I am here to tell you that Email sucks. I am also here to tell you that talk is back! While email is a cool and novel idea when you don’t have time to write a letter, stuff it in an envelope and snail mail it off to your pending Russian mail order bride, it is in fact a terrible communication mechanism.
My problem is that people are using Email in the wrong ways. Email is a bad communication mechanism. Well actually email is not the problem, but rather it is people’s use of the medium that is the issue.
Many times I am seeing people trying to communicate and coordinate through the use of email even though their recipients are within a stones throw away. Many times email allows people to say things they would not otherwise say in person. People are also not quite the writers they could or should be and as such the communication is never quite clear.
I think the concept of Talk is being lost. Walk down and chat with me! Walk down and let us coordinate and walk through a problem together. Email seems only a way to say “Hey I did my part , you’re it!” It is becoming a way to have time and productivity vanish before your eyes.
I work in an office where everyone is within a nearly instant walking distance. Even in this proximity I see far too many emails being used when s simple TALK would result in far more meaninful communication and miles more productivity.
The next time you are about to hit the send button please ask yourself if you could just as easily have a TALK with the person. I think you will find that it is much more effective and gratifying at the same time.
PS. Do not get me started with the “REPLY ALL” button. There are very few times when this button should ever be used.
I have many ideas, issues, thoughts and feelings running through my head. At this particular juncture I do not know exactly where I need, want or have to start in order to explain this to you. I think in this situation we cant go wrong by resorting to the mis-mash random bullet point approach.
So how is it that I could even possibly bring this all together for you in a way that precludes you from thinking that I am a rambling wacko who drank far too many whiskeys in an over hyped, overstretched Cadillac Escalade Limousine last night.
How does one even begin to tell you about my dinner with the Pope last night followed by my inability (or actually unwillingness due to fear) to go up and do a Live Karaoke version of Big and Rich’s “Save a horse, Ride a Cowboy”? I think I could have killed it but why did I not force myself to do it?
BTW.. Watch the Video at this juncture and realize that this is how I want to live.
PS. If my “Save a horse, Ride a cowboy” dreams do not materialize then this is my backup plan… Click this now and let us dream together
Anyway….This morning it was far too painful to lay there in bed with a swollen head, so I decided that a quick dip in the pool followed by some coffee, eggs and grits would help me feel better. As I choked down some grit-covered eggs I read a few articles from the dailymashup.
Energy fears looming, new survivalists prepare
The best way to find meaning at work? Don’t look for it
Some days you can almost judge how accurate (or not) your view of the world is based upon how serendipitous all of the articles you read support your internal view of the world.
If you have read some of my previous blogs you would probably see that I have a dichotomizing approach to my writing where by I am positive and uplifting about some things and others I often appear to be like the 3 witches who told Caesar to beware of the Ides of March.
I am frankly, very concerned about the state of the world and I have been for some time. My visions for being like Big and Rich are not materializing.
The first sign is that vacations are starting to suck. When I was a kid, Disney appeared to me to be a magical fun place I wanted to go and hang out. Now I view it as I do most vacation destinations. Places that are designed to separate you from your money in more ways than can even be counted. From parking to drinking and eating, everything about vacations is an non-fun expensive hassle filled with rude, self-absorbed strangers that would rather run over you with their strollers than to be even a bit courteous.
I am also concerned about the crash course the American economy has been in. I think I recognized this earlier than most as I could see the writing on the walls of my Mcmansion. Many people thought I was crazy in my views that the value of everything would drop by 50%. Now that I am driving again after nearly 3 years of hiatus, the reality of our demise is even more clear to me.
Instead of strollers killing me at Disney, I now face the constant threat of being killed on the highway by mindless nobodies who would risk life and limb at 80 MPH to simply get in front of me at all cost. As a side note, it is funny that these people are those who would never do something like that in a grocery store line and in person. Why are they 10 feet tall and bulletproof in their Toyota motor cars? Are they drinking Early Times?
These people seem to be on their way to work where all the bad karmas of the current world have left them with no meaning and little ability to derive pleasure or value in anything that they are doing there.
Is it because the world is ending in 2012? Is it because telling fat jokes and throwing cookies off of my shoe into my mouth is no longer enough to excite and motivate people?
The people I am seeing are not deriving enough value in their jobs, in their moods and in their lives for the right reasons. Is getting more pay and better titles without putting in that extra effort really a means to an end for the betterment of their happiness?
So is it crazy that I am cultivating a garden, raising chickens and stockpiling canned Salmon (with way too much Mercury) and now gasoline? Am I crazy for fearing the world may be going to hell in a hand basket?
I had dinner with the Pope last night…..
So in the middle of my dinner last night I thought I could look to the Pope for some divine inspiration. See the Pope (or at least a life size bust of the Pope), sat in the middle of a large table in a round room in the “Bucca De Peppa” restaurant. I spun the large “lazy susan” so that he was looking directly at me and I asked him what “he” thought were the answers were to my bullet points of life. Needless to say, he did not know about that, but in the Spirit of Catholicism and all the wacky things it stands for, he somehow knew that it was about suffering.
I agreed, or at least, I did then because it took 30 minutes to deliver each of my drinks which, as the night progressed, got progressively clearer? So in those whiskey doldrums I had a chance or 13 to ponder his suggestions. Once I had a chance to think about it I began to realize that he may have had a point. In our safe little American bubble, we have not had to suffer in the amounts and proportions than should probably should be required by a human in order to intrinsically understand the ways of the world.
I think I started to understand the Toyota guy in his hurried rant, endangering his fellow travelers to save a precious few seconds in the drive to his meaningless job. It was a meaningless and unproductive job created by his own inability (or unwillingness) to suffer and to get himself ahead or to at least provide some sort of self-created meaning and enjoyment from his own efforts.
If he perhaps suffered for the betterment of himself, might it not make his own existence better for us all? While he works hard to save a few precious seconds on the freeway, could he not take that much effort to further his own learning, patience or common courtesy in everything he does? Could he perhaps take it upon himself to do more, work harder, read more, rub more, slow down and just maybe suffer a bit in order to make his own situation better? Maybe then his job would suck less and at the same time possibly create an environment of positivity and productivity for himself and everyone around him.
So after I pondered all of my bullet points I started to think that the Pope may have had a point at dinner last night. He may be on to something… Might we need to strive and suffer only for the betterment of ourselves? A new friend of mine mentioned a motto of his last night.
Dream, Suffer, Win…..
I think he may have been speaking to the Pope too.
I often read the blogs from an excellent site called “Read Write Web”. The posts are always well written, researched and chock full of a technical goodies appealing to newbies as well as technical Neanderthals like myself.
The article “Why Gen Y Is Going to Change the Web” is no different. As I read the article however, I suddenly realized that I was “old”. Please don’t get me wrong by being offended by the term “old” as some sort of slander against age.
When I speak of being “old” I am speaking of the condition of where most of the people you work with, around and yes even FOR, are not of your generation. As I read this article I realized that I have officially crossed the divide where my generation (GEN X) has moved into the “waning” stage of our careers where we are now the “oldsters” in our respective environments.
As oldsters we begin to see a whole lot of things happen.
1) We begins to make comments about music, songs and tv which most people have no idea what we are talking about.
like hey, do you remember “Hong Kong Phooey“? As a side note to the “newsters” (Gen Y). I would like to to say that you will never be so inventive to come up with a Crime Fighting Dog, with the voice of a delta blues black man, who works as a Janitor and changes into a Martial Arts Superhero and who drives in a Jalopy while doing it!
2) At the beach, you begin to feel like “Chester the Molester” for looking at the modern women so you have switched to looking only at the “Cougars“.
3) Yes, we are balding. Most of the hair is not falling out but it is however being relocated to other places like our eyebrows.
4) We aint as good as we one was but we are as good once as we ever was. And for your listening pleasure, Toby Keith can say it better than I…
PS…Yes we can do it more than once, it takes some concentration, some effort and an hour in between… There is also the law of diminishing returns….
5) What was I talking about? Oh hell with it…
It has been some time since I wrote this. I knew it was coming. Lets take a look back.
It was July of 2006.
I was living in the big house that Hurricane Charlie almost leveled. In that short span of 30-40 minutes I lost 47 trees. By the graces of god, none of those trees hit the house. This event set my wife and I off on a mission to make that house a mini-mansion. A McMansion if you will. We were estate creating.
Like a dumb ass, young buck with no sense at all, I refinanced my first and second mortgage into a new first, rolling in some debt, some cars, many “Froggers” trips and some of the past monetary sins that we are all guilty of.
It was then that the county, seeing this, felt the need and opportunity to raise my Taxes from $3,600 to $7,200. After looking at my finances and my earning power, it was then I realized that “This cannot continue”. I felt that the bubble that was our economy, our real estate market, was going to burst. I told my wife: Look around and everything you see WILL be devalued by 30%. I started telling everyone this. I think people thought I was wacko.
I walked out to the road in front of my Mcmansion and this is what I saw.
I said, this house will never be worth more than it is now. GET OUT NOW.
Well, looking back I see I was wrong. The Real Estate market would not fall 30%, it would fall 50%.
Now that you have reached this point, this is where you can begin to read the following article by Eric Janszen. Read this entire article and take a few steps back. I have long written about how I am fortunate to have seen and been a part of many waves or bubbles. This is yet another one I am and will be a part of.
“The Next Bubble — Priming the markets for the next big crash”
To the relatively few that read my “Shtuff”. I am sorry for being away. I have been rebuilding the Spawn project from the ground up. It almost killed me. Lost some support, some life and possibly some friends. This is not to be taken lightly but I managed to stick to my principles, my goals and my vision. I am glad to say that I have surfaced on the other side.
In this time I actually forgot how to log into this blog.
In any manner, we have a lot of catching up to do. When I logged into the blog this morning, I saw some of the posts I had laying in the hopper. This one was written almost 6 months ago now but I never published this.
It has only been recently that someone has coined the term “Enterprise 2.0″which is what really reminded me that I should be sticking to my guns. I realized that I am not as Whacky and as far out as I believed I was getting. After putting my blog and my research into the next wave of technology on the back burner while rebuilding Spawn, some of these items have come to light and have begun to be discussed by the general population.
When reading “this here blog” again after some months, I musts say that I feel a wave of gratification and contentment come over me. So in this light I have pressed the “publish” button on a few of the items in the “chute”. Here is one of those whereby I also have a butload of code and ideas that are also sitting around in the “you are a whacky asswipe” category that should likely have been published and explored further…… So without further adieu…..
In a recent post “This Software Cures Cancer”, I wrote about the doubt in my head about pouring myself into a software avenue or creation when it seemed as it was only a fruitless effort due to the many other guys that were out there surfing that wave already. See, it takes a lot of effort to paddle out there and catching a bad ride means a lot of energy wasted. So you want to make sure the wave you commit to is worth the paddle.In my searches for the next wave I have been following the rise of the Social Web, the Semantic Web, the Programmeable Web and Web 6.0.1 + tax.
I have also written about “The Alternative Minimum You” whereby I am raising the concerns about so much networked information about me flying around in this Social web.
Now, I want you to go back an look at these items closely so that we can all pay attention to the next wave coming.
It not a secret that the Social World of the Web is upon us and we are even to the point whereby we have “The Facebook National Presidential Debate”. This is no genius moment. It has reached general adoption. Information that is private and secure, whatever it may be, is information that is not making money.
Anything from a blog about “I’m Shy but I have a Big Deck”, to a blog on whether “Can Mullets Save the World?” or even one video of a girl in her underwear can spawn an entire sub-industry of money making and advertising ventures. The value of Joe Shmoe’s personal pictures, tastes, browsing history, friends has grown to be valuable commodity. The Subliminal Billboard of Life has arrived.
Due to these concerns about privacy and considering the recent MySpace issues with taunting and the misleading of online identities for bad intent we are seeing a backlash. This backlash is spawning a new awareness of the dangers of some much information proliferation.
There is a series of announcements and developments underlying this world however that is being undertaken that will vastly level the playing field in the areas of software development and opportunity.
Data Portablity .org
Open Social
These efforts will very much affect all of the players in the Social Web Industry because it is defining standards that will almost “commoditize” the concept of a “Social Site”. These concepts will develop standards on taking this information from site to site and will develop an Interaction Framework and set of Service Standards that will allow one to interact with these sites from anywhere or any device. The Social elements and interaction/awareness will be built into almost every product and service. All of these social elements will be built right into WordPress and anyone can run their own Social Network.
As I am writing this article a piece of ajax could be running in the background reading each word that I type and can easily search Flicker for pictures, Google for articles and Delicious or Digg for links and clouds related to my words. This type of functionality will be built into a lot of products due to these standards.
Everyone in the Social world seems to be focused on the Social Sites and using them as ways to provide a Home Page type of “Chat room on Steroids”. As I look back to that article “This Software Cures Cancer”, I realize that in a way I am exactly right. There are too many people surfing that part of the beach. That space is too crowded.
There are not many people however who are seeing that these concepts as having more far reaching value and opportunity in the Enterprise space.
Enterprise minded developers like myself have long sought after the elusive “Enterprise Service Bus”. To those ends we have poured ourselves into Frameworks, XML, Standards, Service Oriented Architecture, Best Practices and all things that make software more interchangeable, reusable and configurable. There have many attempts, but no one in the Enterprise ever reached the killer Enterprise Service Bus.
In all those years of trying we had a lot f issues to overcome because the standards, frameworks and open source offering were not in place as that are today. The browser was not there for us as it is today. In the 90’s the Enterprise folks ended up coming to the Web via Porn. The Porn people had to overcome many obstacles selling Porn
Few people are seeing that the social element, combined with portability and a service framework has fare more value, opportunity and profit in the enterprise space
So there is gold in them hills if you are someone who is paying attention to the wave that will be DataPortability and Google Social, Project Weave and others.