If you enjoy or have enjoyed either Sam and Fuzzy comics, or the Magic: the Gathering card game, you might get a kick out of the Sam and Fuzzy: the Convention cards.
Monthly Archive for August, 2005
For awhile now, I’ve kept hearing about David Allen’s Getting Things Done. It seems to be taken as a given that this ought to be required reading for, well… getting things done™. Yesterday, I decided to pick up a copy.
I’ve only read the first two chapters, but I have to admit: I’m hooked. Like you, I have a lot to do, sometimes more than I think I can actually accomplish in the time allotted. Allen’s ideas make a lot of sense, and I’m all in favor of anything that makes it easier to… uh, get things done™.
One of Allen’s points in the very first chapter is what connected; I won’t look up the actual quote, but essentially he said that we don’t actually manage time, projects, or priorities; we can only mangage actions. That is, I can’t manage five minutes, and wind up with six minutes; and so on. But I can manage my actions; the idea, then, is to transform your projects and priorities from vague “to do” blobs, to specific, doable actions.
Makes a lot of sense to me. I’m going to go get something done, now.
Remember always hearing that people only use 10% of their brains? I was reminded of this when I was looking over the table of contents of the O’Reilly Mind Hacks book.
Just in case you haven’t realized it, this is a myth, and is a bunch of nonsense. You use your whole brain, and there isn’t 90% of it shuttered it away with latent psychic powers or something hiding in it. For some more information, there’s a short article here, or a longer one here.
Some time ago, I posted about this wiki (which has a lot more information, now) — nonadmin.editme.com. The idea is to run Windows normally using a non-admin account. There are some very nice security benefits to this; in fact, this is one of the best security features of most Linux-based operating systems (except the dreaded Linspire). The problem is, that Windows was seemingly designed with the idea that the primary user would be the administrator, and would be logged in as such all the time. In other words, even if you want to improve your security by running as a normal user, Windows is designed in such a way as to make a lot of things extremely difficult if you do this.
I decided to look around on this topic again, and found Aaron Margosis’ WebLog — the Non-Admin blog!
There look to be some pretty handy tips on here. The major challenge, unfortunately, is third party programs which, for some insidious reason, will only work properly when the user is an administrator. Palm software seems to be an offender on this count. Recently I installed an Outlook extension (PlanPlus) by Franklin Covey… several days of errors later, we concluded that this, also, needed to be run as admin. I’m still looking for a solution to this one, as I’d prefer to find a way to make it work without the user being in the administrators group. Hopefully Vista, if it does anything right, will get this right.
Find out How To Be Organized. (Part 2 is here).
I’ve had a leaning toward modding my X-Box for awhile now, and have just never arrived at the state which we call “getting around to it.” The chief drawback to doing an X-Box mod is that you won’t be able to use X-Box live, which so far I’ve never used anyways, and I’m not sure that I will. The advantages include being able to put a larger hard drive in it, and being able to use it as a PVR or an inexpensive computer. You can still play all your XBox games on it, of course.
A big hurdle for modding the X-Box used to be finding and obtaining a modchip, and then opening your X-Box up to successfully perform the mod. If this thought has stopped you before, check out Modding the XBox in 10 minutes.
You know you secretly suspected it all along. This article in a UK paper called The Independent, (as well as many other news sources) highlights some recent studies which show that coffee may be among the highest contributors of anti-oxidants to the body.
A brief search led me also to Coffee Science, which has Yet More collections of the various Good Things that science has to say about coffee.
The Blog Herald has a post on the decline of geek blogging. Discussion ensued at Slashdot.
I suppose this is a Geek blog. Is geek blogging in decline? I don’t know; it’s an interesting article nonetheless, and a nice reminder that if you are writing in a blog, you have in mind that someone will read it, and it makes sense to attempt to write things that people might actually want to read.
By contrast Slashdot itself, possibly the geekiest geek-blog of them all, shows no sign of decline. Then again, Slashdot, kuro5hin, and similar sites, have become something of an institution.
I don’t think geek blogging per se will ever disappear; the interweb is inherently geeky. No matter how mainstream the web becomes, it’s architects and enthusiasts are, and will remain, geeks.
5/22/05, according to my event logs, was the last time I logged into Windows here at home.
I’m not proud. (Or tired.)
It was a bit alarming, though, when I realized that I might not remember my password. Even more so when I realized I wasn’t sure what the administrator password was, either.
Always remember the administrator/root password.
Fortunately, my first guess turned out to be correct.
I need to use mess about with Macromedia Flash stuff today, ergo I am using Windows. Attention, Macromedia/Adobe: if you make a version of Flash MX 2004 (or the next version, I’m not picky) for Linux, I will buy it the same day that you release it. Just give me some notice so I can save my pennies. Thank-you.
Ever seen the CBS TV show Numb3rs? I saw the first two episodes awhile back, and just watched the last half of another in reruns. It’s a pretty good cop/crime show, made a little more unique than most by the addition of having a mathematical prodigy as one of the main characters.
I’m too lazy to link all the various sites you could find about the show, so if you’re interested you can just go here.
The math in the show is based on the real deal; there are a number of mathematicians who act as consultants for the show. Now, having to construct crimes which lend themselves to the application of some mathematical pattern-finding to solve them might prove a difficult twist to maintain; hopefully the show won’t collapse under the weight of its own cleverness. For example, tonights episode was about a supposed serial sniper, which turned out to actually be a series of copycat snipers; explained as an example of viral spread of a sniping meme. One character even made a reference to Malcolm Gladwell, and “The Tipping Point.” Hm. Neat, but that’s stretching things a little far for me.
Regardless of all that, the show has strong writing for a prime time TV series, and I’d say it’s definitely better than the various CSI crap-fests^H^H^H^H series ruling the ratings right now.
