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October 31, 2007
Strange Visitors
I've been working 16+ hour days for the last few days. Apologies for the poor postings. But today I'm taking a few hours and trying to relax. And, mystery of mysteries, I saw the strangest thing this evening! Check it...
October 30, 2007
Remembering Molecules?
Most all the stuff you learn in school is false. If that sounds like an extreme generalization -- it is. And it's exactly why what you learn is false: it's incomplete, it's generalized, it's dumbed-down for the masses. It's easy...
October 29, 2007
A Good Cause
You guys know me -- I'm not the type to be raising money for the cause-of-the-week. But for the first time in two years, I want to use the blog to request money for a good cause. What's the...
October 27, 2007
Is F-Sharp Enough?
Ready for prime time? I've gotten the functional programming bug lately. Most of my career after I learned my third language or so, I could care less what the language is -- just let's solve it already, ok? But lately...
Best Office View in the World
Bet it's hard to get take-out, though...
October 26, 2007
Sharing the Point about MOSS
For the past few days I've been putting together a presentation about Microsoft's new portal product, Microsoft Office Sharepoint Server 2007, or MOSS. There's a local Sharepoint User's Group starting up, and I got selected to make the first...
October 24, 2007
ICANN Addresses the Domain Snatchers
Just like I pointed out over a year ago, somebody is trolling for domain names. Today there is a PDF out from the Security and Stability Advisory Committee (SSAC) that it that ICANN is looking into people sniffing domain search...
Interview Checklist
I had an interesting discussion with a potential cofounder last night. We had met online, and were kind of feeling each other out for whether or not a partnership would be a good match. Today I have an interview with...
October 23, 2007
Where's the Line?
Got Kratom? If you do, does that make you bad? Got into an interesting discussion over on news.yc this morning regarding the question: "Just what is okay to sell on a website?" A user named "rms" has a site called...
October 22, 2007
It's an O/S, it's a Browser
Cool! Silverlight will run on linux! So I'm thinking about my next project, a small app to write over the next few months while I'm filling the piggy bank back up and working on finding cofounders, and it occurs to...
October 21, 2007
Rare Pics
During WW1 colour photography was in it's infancy, pioneered by photographer Jean-Baptiste Tournassoud using Autochrome plates invented by the Lumiere brothers. These photos are either digitally remastered or works by Tournassoud Due to the age of these pictures, it's hard...
October 20, 2007
Talking Head Roundup
I have a secret vice. It's watching political talk-shows. As a right-leaning libertarian, somehow I started watching these shows back in the days of Bush I and Clinton even though I "didn't have a dog in the fight", as Clinton...
October 18, 2007
Who owns my Friendships?
Back in the day, when dinosaurs ruled the earth, we had a Dayrunner. The Dayrunner had an address book, and all was good. If you met somebody you wanted to track, you simply put them in the address book. Nowadays...
October 17, 2007
Who me? Worry?
Coming soon is the big day where Y-Combinator chooses its Winter teams. Over on the news.yc board, there's a lot of angst and tension.I applied too (for the first time), but I have absolutely no worries at all about...
Sapir-Whorf and Hackers
Not this guy Philosophers have a lot to say about how to write good programs. It might not seem that way, but they do. Take the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, which basically says that the shape and structure of a language molds...
October 16, 2007
Waiting...
The big guy upstairs has decided for me to cool my heels this week, it seems. I've got a lot of stuff happening, but none of it is happening right this minute. I have a large client in the Midwest...
Anti-Google: the Future of Social Networking
What media do you want to consume today? It seems like a strange question -- obviously you're already consuming stuff so you must know -- but yet are you really consuming the stuff you'd like to? Whatever time you spend...
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October 15, 2007
Lookin' for Love in all the Wrong Places
It may be love, but you won't believehow many batteries this guy takes "My forecast is that around 2050, the state of Massachusetts will be the first jurisdiction to legalize marriages with robots," artificial intelligence researcher David Levy at the...
Recommendation-Consumption Impedance Mismatch
There's been a terrific discussion around social sites both here and other other parts of the blogosphere. It seems to me that content selection systems swing out of whack after achieving a certain level of growth, as I pointed out...
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October 14, 2007
Voting up or down is dead
Look. I know the arguments. Let's say you're creating a social web site, that is, a place where people can do stuff and other people can recognize them for what they are doing (even if it is just scratching their...
Pluto Clears Up
Pluto, with a smaller dot representing its largest moon, Charon. The two specks in the upper right are Nix and Hydra, Pluto's recently discovered mini-moons. The white streaks are background star tracks. University of Hawaii astronomer Dr. David Tholen has...
October 12, 2007
Hiking with the Little People
The Mountain Awaits...
October 10, 2007
Oddly Io
See something odd here? New Horizons, the space probe that is headed to the planet that used to be Pluto (those astronomer bstrds!) passed Jupiter back in February. As part of that pass, the probe returned all sorts of information...
Social Networks and ADD
There have been three memes lately in the world of startups that I think are connected: Social Networks degrade over time - or as put by CmdrTaco from Slashdot: Look at Reddit. It started small with smart people. As it's...
October 9, 2007
Iapetus Rocks
Iapetus, home of the Stargate in the Arthur C. Clarke 2001 books, finally got it's close-up The Cassini orbiter took a good close look at Iapetus on September 10th, and the moon continues to be one of my favorites. What's...
October 8, 2007
Imaginary Worlds Mean Real Money
While you read this, over 30 million people all over the world are thinking or working in an imaginary world. Another 100,000 are busy at work building the worlds and collecting the rent. They're not neurotics and psychiatrists, they're workers...
October 7, 2007
Breaking the Rules
I've been following little Irish company Steorn for some time now. They're kind of hard to miss, as they claim to be developing a machine that produces more energy than it consumes. This has been a pipe dream for decades,...
October 6, 2007
Mountain Assault 5: Infiltrate Military Installation
It's not military base anymore, but the FAA maintains a radar dome at the top of Apple Orchard Mountain in Virginia I have a lot of ideas for blog entries, but I've spent my blogging time lately figuring out this...
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