Tekhnologiā:

Blog linked to Facebook

I was playing around in Typepad and found a feature that links the blog to my Facebook account.  This post is to test out that functionality.  I wonder how it works.  I also wonder if it works.

Ideas to Think About: Life and Taxes

I recently heard Alex Wright speak at the Long Now Foundation via their podcast.  It made me think of a couple things.

The talk is worth listening to, as many of their seminars are.  Alex left me with a couple ideas I want to look into further.

As a child we all use to play the 20 questions game, and we are all very familiar with the first 3 questions.  Is it an Animal?  It is an Mineral?  Is it a Plant?  Then we would proceed to ask 20 questions, each time trying to further narrow down the selection until we were able to say what the person was thinking of.  This categorization if formalized is a taxonomy. 

The first idea surrounds taxonomy.  It turns out that when sociologists and anthropologists look at different societies around the world they break their world into different taxonomies.  This isn’t all that weird.  The weird part is that universally these taxonomies are only 5 or sometimes 6 levels deep.  There really is no good answer as to why this is the case. 

There are several guesses.  One has to do with the depth of families; you, your children, Your parents, and your grandparents.  If you count up the generations, you get 5.   If you add you children’s children, then get 6.  The idea then goes that this is culturally conditioned into us and the way that we see the world.  Eventually those individuals who are predisposed genetically to accept this fact become more successful in reproducing and the “idea” is carried forward via genetics and culture.

That’s an interesting idea, but also controversial even among evolutionary biologists.  I think the idea above is interesting, but it is just as scientifically mythological as other anthropological mythologies.  As a religious person I would love to have seen Adam apply the first Taxonomy. 

Next Ideas to Think About:  The House of Memories

 

Ideas of things I need to think about: Garden State

This has nothing to do with New Jersey or emo Jewish twenty somehtings trying to deal with life.  This is a blog post that I am making to capture a couple ideas I have bouncing around in my head that need further refinement:

“Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.

“Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit. You shall have them for food. And to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the heavens and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food.”

When no bush of the field was yet in the land and no small plant of the field had yet sprung up—for the Lord God had not caused it to rain on the land, and there was no man to work the ground, and a mist was going up from the land and was watering the whole face of the ground— then the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature. And the Lord God planted a garden in Eden, in the east, and there he put the man whom he had formed. And out of the ground the Lord God made to spring up every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food. The tree of life was in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.  A river flowed out of Eden to water the garden, and there it divided and became four rivers.

The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it. 

Ok, the first idea.  Adam (The Man) was put into the garden of Eden (not in Eden specifically) to work it and keep it.  What is the limit of the garden?  We notice that Eden has a limit.  There is definitely an inside and an outside.  Now looking at the garden.  We that God planted the garden in Eden, and that he placed the tree of live in the midst of the garden, as well as the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.   But we also notice that the river flowed out of Eden to water the garden.  This river divided into four rivers.  The important point I’m looking at is the idea of the garden, along with the rivers, flowing out of Eden.  Also we see the man was told to work and keep the Garden. 

Ok, So what is a garden?  It’s a collection of plants.  It’s ordered.  But as they are plants they fall under the command from God to be fruitful and multiply.  So, how far does the garden extend?  Lets say it extends 10 miles in every direction from the tree of Life.  It seems that’s a reasonable thing to say, as the tree of life was in the midst of the garden.

What happens when, after several years of working (and avoiding the serpent), the Garden grows to ten miles in each direction, is mans job done?  No, for a garden to be a garden it has to grow.  So what is the limit of the Garden?  What if there was never a fall, to what limit should the garden have been extended?  What if there was never a curse, and the garden didn’t start to die?; how far had it been extended?  How far could it have been extended; to the size of a city?  A state?  A country?  A continent? The whole world?  Could the Garden be extended to the Moon?  How about to Mars?  To the Stars?  Where do we want to put up a fence and say this is inside the garden, and that is outside?

Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb through the middle of the street of the city; also, on either side of the river, the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit each month. The leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations. No longer will there be anything accursed…

Our final look at the Garden is here.  We see a city has sprung up around the tree of life, on either side of the river, and that the fruit from the tree is bearing fruit, and that this fruit is healing and removing the curse. 

So, the effects of the fall and it’s curse are only temporary.  But my question still stands?  What is the limit of the Garden?  How far will it extend?  Just to the edge of the city which has grown up around the banks?  How about to the edge of the state?  Will it be only to those of a given country, or just to those individuals of a given race?  Will you be the one who plants the first tree on the moon?  Are the stars really that far away when you have forever?  Perhaps they are in need of a couple gardeners.

Newswire: Mystery Illness Strikes After Meteorite Hits Peruvian Village

I saw this over at digg, and thought I’d post it as it does contain on semi-serious ideas.

Villagers in southern Peru were struck by a mysterious illness after a meteorite made a fiery crash to Earth in their area, regional authorities said Monday.

Around midday Saturday, villagers were startled by an explosion and a fireball that many were convinced was an airplane crashing near their remote village, located in the high Andes department of Puno in the Desaguadero region, near the border with Bolivia.

Residents complained of headaches and vomiting brought on by a "strange odor," local health department official Jorge Lopez told Peruvian radio RPP.

Seven policemen who went to check on the reports also became ill and had to be given oxygen before being hospitalized, Lopez said.

Rescue teams and experts were dispatched to the scene, where the meteorite left a 100-foot-wide (30-meter-wide) and 20-foot-deep (six-meter-deep) crater, said local official Marco Limache.

"Boiling water started coming out of the crater and particles of rock and cinders were found nearby. Residents are very concerned," he said.

So, now for all the fun ways we can take this story.

The first one is for all you Hal Lindsey fans out there.

Then the seven angels who had the seven trumpets prepared to sound them. The first angel sounded his trumpet, and there came hail and fire mixed with blood, and it was hurled down upon the earth. A third of the earth was burned up, a third of the trees were burned up, and all the green grass was burned up. The second angel sounded his trumpet, and something like a huge mountain, all ablaze, was thrown into the sea. A third of the sea turned into blood, a third of the living creatures in the sea died, and a third of the ships were destroyed. The third angel sounded his trumpet, and a great star, blazing like a torch, fell from the sky on a third of the rivers and on the springs of water— the name of the star is Wormwood. A third of the waters turned bitter, and many people died from the waters that had become bitter. – Revelation 8:6–10

The second direction you can take with this is for all you science fiction fans out there.  Go pick up your copy of Andromeda Strain and start reading.  While you are out getting your copy, pick up a couple cans of Sterno. 

I guess another direction you can head with this is for all you science based horror fans out there is to pick up your copy of World War Z and the Zombie Survival Guide.  While the beginning of each of these stories do not exactly start with the approach of a meteorite, many Zombie movies and books do indeed start with this theme.

If you wanted to take this into the Occult based Horror you can always rely on H.P. Lovecraft to provide you with a good story.  Check out his Colour out of Space.   

I think I should talk about comic books and how Meteorites falling from the sky bring about the changes from the ordinary into the super natural.  But I am not really a comic book “expert.”  I’ll leave that job to others.

 

Sucks to be me... From Blackberry to iPhone to Blackberry Again

Well I broke my iPhone. I dropped it at lunch today and the glass shattered.

I went off to the Apple Store last night to get it replaced.  Turns out that due to the fact that the screen is shattered and nothing else is wrong I will have to pay $250 to get it fixed.  If I had damaged the phone more I wouldn’t have to pay as it would be covered. 

Personally I think I should have kept the phone at the point they told me the damage was only cosmetic and then used the touch screen and cut my finger up and then asked them if they thought the damage was only cosmetic.  Also, what seems interesting to me is that each Apple Store seems to have a different policy on this broken screen issue.  I have gone online and seen that other Apple Stores have acted differently regarding this screen issue.

I think Apple is really missing the boat on this one.  Some teenage girl was in the store before me with two broken iPods.  These iPods were banged up, and on one the screen was not working.  They were each registered to different people.  Their tech guy took a look at them spent about 10 minutes on each trying to resurrect each before handing her new refurbished ones and sent her on her way.  I couldn’t get this kind of service on my iPhone. 

When they asked me if I wanted to have them ship the phone in right now, or wait and I could call Apple care, I told them I wanted them to ship the phone now and give me a loaner and ship the repaired phone to my home, they told me they couldn’t give me a loaner as they didn’t have any.  They also told me that they couldn’t ship the iPhone to my home.  The other guy a the ‘genesis bar corrected him and told me they could ship to my home. I then asked if they could swap it out with a refurbished model, and they said no.  To be honest, I’ve been treated better by Cingular reps on this one. 

Well, now I’m back on my Blackberry (which is charging slowly) and the repaired iPhone will be shipped back to me in 2 to 3 business days.

So here are the lessons learned

• There is something about cell phones that cause companies to start to suck
  • Apple’s iPhone is the bastard child of Apple Support
  • Apple needs to carry more loaner Phones
  • Different Policies with different stores
  • ‘Policies’ changing from day to day
• Going from iPhone to Blackberry is not fun
• iPhones dropped from waist height on a tile floor will cause the screen to break

Christmas in August....

It’s August already and it seems that yesterday was January.  Most of my plans for this year have been dashed to pieces to lay neglected on the side of the speeding highway that this last year has turned into. 

Over the last couple of weeks I have taken time to slow down and simplify my life.  I have thrown out 6 trash bags of stuff many of which was one of a kind Lord of the Rings crap I had collected over the years when I ran The One Ring.  In this process of letting go I have come across things that I needed to pick up and keep a hold of.  This story is one of the things I found laying at the side of the road neglected.  It was a story that needs to be told.

I’m not very big on gifts, getting or receiving; when I do get a gift it’s a big deal.  This last year I exchanged gifts with a couple of friends.  One gift that stood out was a book from my friend Nikki.

Nikki got me a book for Christmas, a non fiction book; a book I had seen several times in the book store, but it seemed to only be mildly interesting too me. Well seeing the book, I thanked her for it and threw it into my car with every intention of adding it to the stack of books I am reading.  Time passed and the book stayed in the car.  I would come across it in manic bouts of car cleaning.  The book soon rotated to the trunk.

One day around May, I found myself in my car, waiting on one of my other friends to show up for something.  I fired up my iPod looking to listen to another pod cast.  Curses!  I had listened to all my podcasts.  I saw my bible and thought about doing my homework for my bible study.  No, I could put that off.  Then the thought occurred to me.  I could go to the trunk of the car and get Nikki’s present out of the trunk.  I got the book and read the cover “Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything”. It asked a couple questions.

• What do sumo wrestlers and teacher have in common.
• What does the KKK and real estate agents have in common?
• Why do crack cocaine dealers live with their parents?
• What effect does legalized abortion have on the crime rate.

Well, that sure seems interesting.  I cracked the book, and I couldn’t put it down.  About 30 minutes later my friend showed up and I had to put it down.  Over the next week I would race home from work and devour the book.  It was the best non fiction book I have read in a long time. 

Then it hit me.  I had totally overlooked this gift.  These hours of pleasure and enjoyment had been given to me by Nikki and I had not trusted her to know me enough to get me a good book.  I had not thanked her for it.  I had made a mess of one of the best gifts I had been given in a long time.

Over the next couple of days I finished the book.  The next time I met with Nikki I thanked her for the book and told her how bad I felt about not reading it sooner.   I also told her I would post a review of the book to my web site. 

Time has passed and it is no longer late spring, it’s now late summer and I have yet to post the review.  Let the above be my Mea maxima culpa as well as my review and recommendation for the book. 

August is a strange and unfitting time for Christmas, as it is a strange and unfitting time to thank someone for one of the top 10 gifts I have ever received from my friends and family.  But like Christmas, thanks and apologies for mistakes are never too late, they are like Christmas in August.

Fairy Tales for Scientists

I am among those who think that science has great beauty. A scientist in his laboratory is not only a technician: he is also a child placed before natural phenomena which impress him like a fairy tale. — Marie Curie

"The Help..."

I have a friend of mine who at one point started to call everyone who was in a service oriented job “The Help.”  If you were a waiter, you were called “The Help.”  If you were a gardener, “The Help.”  If someone was in any of these types of positions then they were all labeled, “The Help.”  There were many reasons for this, several of which were likely not all that honorable.  But this weekend I kept coming back to this idea of “The Help.”

This weekend, my sister and I took my parents on the Museum of Neon Art’s tour of Los Angeles.  The tour was amazing, and the tour guide was the very definition of the word Help.  He pointed out many of the very interesting buildings and their history as well as the status of many of the neon signs we passed.  While his rhetoric was repetitive at several times, it was something I was not quite looking forward to that turned out to be a great time. 

Before the trip we had the pleasure of eating at Traxx.  This wonderful restaurant is located at Union Station, in Los Angeles.  The food was wonderful, and the atmosphere was classic.  The train station is described as the Last of the Great Railway Stations built in the United States.  We also had a great time at the restaurant and the waiter and staff were the very definition of “Help.”

My first choice for the evenings meal was Cicada.  My sister and I looked online for a place in downtown and this restaurant was recommended by several sites.  I tried to make reservations online, and when I went to Opentable.com, I was told that there were no seats available on Saturday.  Well, I have been confounded by Opentable.com in the past when I tried to get reservations at Grace several months ago.  I was able to quickly circumvent this problem by calling Grace directly and getting a table.  (At this point I’m going to insert a parenthetical shout out to Chris Cognac for introducing me to the place before their Chef won Iron Chef America.)

So I called Cicada, and spoke with the person who answered the phone.  The conversation went something like this.

“Hello.”
“Hello, what are your hours on Saturday?”
“I’m sorry we are closed on Saturday for a special event.”
“Oh,… ”
“As a matter of fact we are closed every Saturday for special events.  You will have to dine with us some other evening if you wish to experience our cuisine.”
“…Ok, thank you very much.”
Click

It now seems that I will never go to Cicada, as they seem to have the most arrogant staff I can possibly think of.  All I wanted was to make a reservation, which I couldn’t, and that’s ok.  The problem was the condescending attitude.  I understand some people want their “Help” to mistreat them.  Think of all the stereotypical European butlers you have seen in movies or read about in books; I get the attraction.  But I am not some stuffy rich guy; I’m a born and bred Southern Californian who has a pretty laid back attitude.  I want my “Help” to at least be helpful, and if you are not going to be helpful, be at least gracious.  Above all, don’t be a jerk.

While I am sure that Cicada, can survive without my recommendation and business, I wanted to pass the following lesson on.  Many times throughout the day, I find myself in the role of “The Help.”  My boss looks to me to help him program computers.  My co-workers look to me as a thought leader on web related issues.  Each of us looks to the people around us to “Help” them through the day.  When this happens, we need to remember that we need to be helpful when possible, and to quickly and graciously say “I don’t know, I can’t help you, let me find someone who can” when we can’t.  Don’t have a bad attitude, and don’t be rude.  Don’t be a dumb black and red Cicada. 

Safari on Windows: Apple's Smart Client Play

I have spent the last week now looking at everyone’s ideas on why Apple released Safari on Windows.  I think some people have come up with some rather good ideas.  Others have come up with some rather strange ideas.   But I still don’t think that all the real reasons have come out.  Lets look at several key important factors that we know about apple and their direction. 

1. It’s about software.  Steve Jobs stated this several times at the D Conference.  His point is important.  It’s about hardware, with good software.  This has always been the case with Apple. 
2. It’s about the cloud.  Steve also said that his paradigm for software included the cloud of web services. 
3. It’s about the SDK for the iPhone.  Many people have pointed out that by having a version of Safari on the Windows, it allows those individuals to develop applications for the iPhone on the Windows. 

Software
Software is important.  Having your software running on a given piece of hardware is important.  By itself there is value in having your software run on Windows.   The more software that Apple releases on a given platform the less unique that platform becomes.  The software is the user experience and the brand.  All the software that Apple releases for the Windows platform breaks the branding of Windows.  What would happen if Apple continued to release different pieces of functionality from their iLife applications for Windows.  Would people use them.  Yes.  Would people recommend them.  Yes.  Would they be more usable than the built in Windows software.  Probably.  This hurts the Windows brand. 

This also plays right into a weakness that few have exploited up until this point.  Microsoft has to allow for 3^rd party applications to replace built in Windows functionality.  As soon as this becomes hard for Apple to do, all someone needs to do is complain about Microsoft lock in.  Google is doing this right now.  I’m surprised more companies are not doing this.  Adobe should start to build Bridge into the basic operating system search, replacing the way Windows handles graphic searches.  Also, I’m not surprised that Microsoft hasn’t played this card against other platforms they are trying to gain traction on.

One final point. Isn’t Safari used to render out all those widgets in OS X?  Will this mean that those guy will now run on Windows and on the iPhone?  If the answer is yes to this question, then we now have a common development environment for these widgets.  This is an end run around Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo all at once.  This also leads to my next point.  This also provides a common platform for Cloud based Applications

The Cloud
What applications use the cloud these days.  There are all sorts of tools which use web services.  But in the end, there are only several standards that are available in this space.  The battle is still being fought.

Microsoft has been doing a lot of heavy lifting in this area with their .Net framework and the implementation of WS-* to provide inter-platform operability. All this stuff is great for fat clients and .NET  based smart clients.  But this leaves Apple and Adobe to build in support for the WS-* standards into their smart client applications. 

Oh wait, Apple has no Smart Client platform.  Or do they?  Perhaps Safari is their Smart Client Platform play.  Adobe has AIR, and Microsoft has Silverlight.  We notice with both of these platforms each company is extending their strength (Flash and .NET) into an area that is a weakness.  So what do you do if you are Apple.  You need to extend things you control, things like Safari and Quicktime.  I wouldn’t be all that surprised that if in the next 12 months you see WS-* get extended down into both of these applications.  In the mean time we have things like JSON and AJAX.  While you can’t get all the functionality out of these services as you can out of a WS-* framework.  You do get enough to handle the day to day workings of a consumer device.

I predict that Safari + Quicktime will be the Smart Client platform that Apple will move towards in the next year to create their cloud development platform.  This will be done to extend the widgets platform that currently exists today.

SDKs
I think this is going to be the true SDK for the iPhone.  If you merge Quicktime into the Canvas tag, then you truly have something.  If I had an iPhone right now, I would love to play around with some of the Apple specific tags supported by Safari.  What happens when I throw widget code at it’s JavaScript interpreter.  What happens on Windows if I do this?  I would also love to point it to a .MOV file online that has some interactive content in it.  Extend and expand this, and you have a nice save environment to build applications that won’t take down the network they are running on.

Summary
I feel that the decision to make Safari as the SDK for the iPhone is a good idea if they take some of the steps laid out above.  This is an opportunity for Apple to take control of the platform that will be used to develop “cloud” based applications.  They will leverage their iTunes / Quicktime platform on Windows and combine it with their iPod platform into a cell phone form factor, bypassing the coming standards war which will feature Google, Microsoft, Adobe, and Yahoo fighting it out to control the Smart Client Platform.

Tags: Apple, iPhone

Leadership

I just read an interesting article on leadership, that I thought verbalized some very basic ideas I have on the subject.  The article is written from the point of view of Annapolis.  Perhaps I liked it so much due to the many years I served as a Senior Patrol Leader in Boy Scouts.  I want to come back to this list later, so I’m going to summarize it here for me to come back to later. 

1. To lead, you must first learn to follow.  –  This is an interesting idea in churchs you hear about servant leadership, but this article uses a term called Followership.  I feel that this is a great term that more people should use before they even get a chance to talk about leadership.
2. “I’ll find out, sir!”  – This response is given instead of “I don’t know”.  I think this is an even better idea than a previous idea I had which was that only wise people say “I don’t know.”  Perhaps the smart person says I don’t know, but the truly wise says “I’ll find out.”
3. Dishonesty is not to be tolerated.  – This reminds me of Luther’s definantion of the 8^th commandment.  “We should fear and love God that we may not deceitfully belie, betray, slander, or defame our neighbor, but defend him, think and speak well of him, and put the best construction on everything.”
4. Think first, then stop and think again, then speak honestly without assigning blame.  – I learned this when writing reports in Scouts.  Always use the third person.  State the facts.  Allow someone else to assign guilt or innocence, importance or unimportance.  You are just providing information. “Just the facts, ma’am.”
5. Do it for the team. – Don’t let the other guys down.  You are needed, and while you might think you are replaceable, at this moment, right now, here in this place, you are not replaceable.  Also, the inverse is also true.  You need your team mates.  They are not replaceable. 

Anyway, I would highly recommend going over and reading the article.