Archives for December 2004

Revolution In The Valley

I had intended to read The Wisdom of Crowds, but I woke up with a severely frozen neck and upper shoulders, which was pretty bad for concentration. I cannot look up, and my left to right mobility is about 10 degrees, max. It’s hard to tell how this happened, since I have exerted approximately zero […]

Hackers & Painters

I read Paul Graham‘s book “Hackers & Painters” the other day. If you’re reading weblogs, you’re probably interested in technology, society, or both. If so, you’ll enjoy this book. Subtitled “Big Ideas from the Computer Age,” the writing is lucid and insightful, and I was filled with ideas while reading. Aaron Swartz thinks it should […]

Moveable Type 3.1.4 — How?

Would it be too much trouble for Six Apart to include a “readme” file describing how to upgrade their software? Apparently so. Here’s what I see when I download the new release: What am I supposed to do with this? Ironically, I open up the “docs” folder, and there isn’t even an “index” page? Where […]

Connectivity Restored

Friday afternoon our cable modem died. After talking with tech support, I had the choice of immediately driving into town (half-hour each way) to exchange it before the office closed (early) for the holiday, or waiting until Monday to make the swap. Friday was a busy day, and I couldn’t deal with a “drop everything” […]

Wealth Inversion

What I love about this inversion, is that it changes the notion of wealth from “what I have” to “what we all have.” And also from “what I accumulate” to “what I save.” In this whole world, there is nobody more generous than the miser — the man who could deplete the world’s resources but […]

Digital Innovation Continues Apace

Totally hot new service offering: Amabuddy. (“Don’t buy not knowing.”) You are in a bookshop or a record shop. You found something that interests you.You can’t decide whether to buy it now or later online. What you need is a price check and a quick review, perhaps some ideas of something similar that others might […]

Surviving vs. Thriving (Retail Edition)

We’re renovating a basement office for my wife’s business. The south wall has a bank of windows that measure eight feet by four feet. We need blinds, or shades, or something, to block the glare on sunny days. Cellular shades are the way to go for good-looking light-blocking and filtering. A few months ago I […]

Extreme Lifestyles (Back to the Land Edition)

Thursday at dinner a friend told me about a person he knows who was once an electrical engineer working at one of the government research labs. At some point in the 1980s, this person realized that the US government was supplying the military technology that he was developing to both sides of the Iran/Iraq war. […]