A Two-Pound UNIX Workstation On the Cheap
" Sometimes it's important to do something just to see if you can; indeed, the search for that lone datum is all that separates it from the completely meaningless gesture.[ via dangerousmeta ]
It is because of my quest for dubious knowledge that I come to you today from a keyboard so tiny that I could probably type faster on it with chopsticks than with my fingers. But hey, it works."
cam writes a list of things he learned in 2001 which contains a really simple lesson:
"No matter how good your idea may sound, chances are someone else has already thought of it. Accept this as a kind of self-compliment."for whatever reason, i had this lesson burned-in at birth and it always amazes me how many people will assume that a perfectly good idea is a bad idea if someone else has thought of it. strange really - the world is a big place and it's just a conceit to believe that your idea is a new idea. a conceit which is much less difficult to propagate now that google is around.
this lesson is really a rule, with a corollary relevant to programmers:
"It’s been said by other people, but it’s worth repeating: the best programmers these days know how to use the Web to solve problems.
I’m not talking about just knowing how to find things on MSDN online or Apple’s developer site . As often as not, the problem I need to solve hasn’t been addressed there—but somebody, somewhere has run across the same thing and found a solution."
on
npr's
all things considered
i heard a story about
to-do lists
that mentioned a long-standing personal to-do that apparently is pretty common - start and actually finish ten books which i've purchased but haven't read.
first up is
Seek : Reports from the Edges of America & Beyond.
alan reiter engages in a little out-of-the-box thinking for wireless data and brings up the hot topic integrating cellular with 802.11 . as he points out boingo got some cash from sprintpcs , voicestream is itching to purchase mobilestar and now ntt communications is rolling out its own network of hotspots:
"NTT Communications plans to launch in April 2002 an Internet access service in Tokyo based on a network of wireless LAN hotspots in restaurants, hotels and other facilities."
"The move is further evidence of a growing interest by carriers and other big service providers to use 802.11-based wireless LAN technology to create wireless connections to their network services. It is possible that such wireless LAN access points would become the next generation of 'pay phones' for wireless data users."
if you loved loved thinking in java and are into python then you might be happy to know that bruce in working on thinking in python.
o.k. maybe just one more look back - fray: a year in stories :
"In the next few pages you'll read 12 stories from 12 authors about 2001. I asked them each to tell a story from a month that somehow represented the year for them. Their stories fall all over the spectrum from hope to despair. From home and away, they redefined normal, changed priorities, made choices, and found resolve.[ via cam ]
These stories paint a complicated, truthful, intimate portrait of 2001. And, of course, you're invited to add your story to the mix, too."
i was going to write an eloquent, witty and moving essay about the past and upcoming year, but after some thought i decided instead to get a headstart on one of my resolutions for next year by spending some time with my wife and dogs with a bottle of wine and a few movies.
<raises glass>here's to keeping the simple things simple. have a happy and safe new year's eve and a wonderful new year.</raises glass>
wow. Life begins at 100 Mbps! is an amazing bit of analysis which demonstrates that the former cto of british telecom is a smarty. if you'd like an inside peak into how the broadband situation got to such a sorry state then read the whole thing. twice. it also points towards a vision of a future that should sound familiar:
"So how are we going to advance? I think we have been here before. Back in the 1940s USA TV companies couldn't find an economic means of providing signals to outlying communities. So people clubbed together to build towers and antenna systems, and wired their houses to realize Community Antenna TV. This was so successful that the expanded systems became the Cable systems of today.[ via interesting people ]
In a similar manner, youngsters now frustrated by the lack of bandwidth are linking homes with CAT5 LAN wiring strewn across gardens. Schools are buying 802.11 wireless-LAN cards to create their own networks at a much lower cost than building wiring schemes. There is a message here for the network companies, and a huge opportunity. If they don't provide the bandwidth demanded by rapidly advancing terminal technologies, people will just set to and provide their own. Hotels, schools, coffee shops and places of work are starting to look like the phone boxes of the 21st Century. People are gathering there to satisfy their craving for wide-bandwidth, which isn't a 56Kbit/s or 2Mbit/s dribble, but orders of magnitude more."
i'm not sure exactly what it means, but it sounds like as good a resolution as any. maybe it'd be easier than quitting all those other bad habits that i've accumulated over the years.
while a few of of the photos are taken by people who went to the steven spielberg school of emotional manipulation, many of the shots from msnbc year in pictures are extraordinary.
just in time for summer - look snazzy and support the site at the same time by buying some snowdeal schwag!
“The stranger has been a fundamental touchstone of cultures at least since Abraham and Sarah invited weary road travelers into their tent only to find out that they were angels in disguise. The Odyssey, too, is a meditation on strangers and hospitality: Odysseus experiences different ways of being a stranger on his way home while the suitors abuse every rule of hospitality in his own house. It's easy to see why strangers are so important: a culture's attitude towards them expresses its understanding of its position in the world of social groups. In our culture, we're suspicious of strangers. They're a threat. They lurk in shadows. On the Web, however, strangers are the source of everything worthwhile. Strangers and their utterances are the stuff of the Web.”
the hyperlinked metaphysics of the web
ev / cam / rc3 / dave / dangerousmeta / boing boing / keeptrying / textism / anil / sylloge / caterina / haughey / genehack / megnut / kottke / kalsey / splorp / john robb / paracelsus / nick denton / eatonweb / /usr/bin/girl / commonme / torrez / overstated / C:\PIRILLO.EXE / gulker / mcgee / delacour / webcrumbs / dane carlson / soapbox / vielmetti /
doc / satn / joho / egr / rushkoff / scoble / kevin werbach / amy wohl / tim o'reilly / dan bricklin /
langreiter / glish / morelikethis / hack the planet / raelity bytes / aaronland / burningbird / decafbad / tesugen / netcrucible / skippingdotnet / aaron swartz / flangy / salad with steve / w3future / jy / a frog in the valley / kumo / diveintomark / voidstar / too much news / dan sheridan / lawrence's notebook / joel / scott andrew / brent ashley / eric freeman / dithered / youngpup / loudthinking / jon udell / ringnalda /
shifted librarian / libtech / handheldlib / jessamyn / researchbuzz /
802.11b / sifry / reiter / mostly harmless / dailywireless / 802.11 planet /
qmacro / stpeter / dizzyd / durand /
blogzilla / mike's blog / mpt / hyatt / asa / blake ross / chris nelson /
simon fell / sam ruby /
webvoice / saltire / websense / bblog / poelog / bizquick /
forwarding address:osx /
bekkers / burkhardt / pope / hugh /
zeldman / rosenfeld / peterme / xblog / soapbox / design weenie / antenna / blackbeltjones / cognitive architects / arts and farces / noisebetweenstations / eleganthack / brad lauster / brushstroke / webword / signals vs. noise / uxblog / iaslash / nooface / lucdesk /
dan gillmor / glennf / onlinejournalism / deborah branscum / jd lasica / paul andrews / ken layne / talking points /
metafilter / metatalk / alterslash / spinsanity / adequacy / plastic /
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