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Tuesday, December 30, 2003
dropload
dropload
This is a simple and elegant solution to a problem I have somewhat frequently encountered. Specifically - how to send (or get) a very large file from someone without having a shared network connection. I have solved this personally by setting up one of my corporate servers with a similar (but one-directional) service and with a password protected client/partner login area.
Dropload offers a solution for larger scale and more distributed concerns.
A thought that occurs to me is that this service could be very helpful in distributing large files to a widely dispersed group - i.e. an open network working on a project for example.
It will also be handy when working not on my own servers or when working with shorter term projects/assignments - i.e. a friend asks me to review a file too large to email, this is a way for us to share that file in a quick, rapid fashion.
Very cool.
12/30/2003 07:11:00 PM
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Monday, December 29, 2003
Migration to Lotus Notes
So, this afternoon I have started to seriously migrate my personal email from Outlook to Lotus Notes (6.0).
Lots to learn and lots to do. I will also have to quickly decide if I want to try to get the upgrade to Lotus Notes 6.5 which might make a lot of sense for me to use instead (especially since I am learning it new anyway, might as well be on the most recent version).
Clearly it is a different piece of software than Outlook, in many respects a better one, but there are also negative respects as well, just stuff that I have to learn and relearn.
For example, it looks like (at least at the moment) that I cannot sort in the main view by subject. Something that I have become used to doing frequently. I think I can get the same effect in other ways, but it is a bit annoying nonetheless.
Further, there is a lot that I will have to learn in terms of the language of Lotus Notes, it treats things differently. However, at the moment at least it looks like I have managed to import my Calendar, Contacts (possibly too many times, may have to clean that up asap) and my mail (all of my messages which is quite a feat).
What seems to be missing at the moment is my tasks (todos) and my "notes" neither of which seem to have been imported successfully. I think I can export my "notes" and reimport them into Lotus Notes in a way that will achieve the effect that I need (i.e. keeping track of lots of random pieces of information). My tasks may be another matter, not sure how to do that.
The problem is that I have historically stored a lot of critical information in the tasks that were waiting to be done. So I have to find a way to deal with this in a meaningful manner soon. That said, it shouldn't be a really big deal to replicate what I need to by hand for the moment.
The other important things that I have to figure out quickly are:
1. setting up rules for all of my mail handling, may take a while.
2. setting up rules to deal with "spam" as effectively as possible
3. Setting up access for my non-primary accounts and establishing where to store that email (i.e. my "catchall" as well as non-JigZaw email accounts that I monitor)
4. Setting up alerts/notifications when new mail comes in so that I do not miss the fact that I have gotten something important.
5. Getting used to the look and feel of Lotus Notes and getting comfortable with all of the various settings/features/characteristics.
6. Archiving some of my old mail to reduce the file size of the Lotus Notes archive I have to deal with (currently pushing 1gb).
I'm sure there will be many more tasks for me to deal with, just one of many tasks I have to do...
12/29/2003 04:26:00 PM
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Thursday, December 18, 2003
Technology lets coffeehouse regulars tend to business
Mercury News | 12/16/2003 | Technology lets coffeehouse regulars tend to business
This is me.
Scary somewhat, but cool and enjoyable as well.
12/18/2003 10:48:00 AM
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Wednesday, December 17, 2003
Boxes and Arrows: The Visual Vocabulary Three Years Later: An Interview with Jesse James Garrett
Boxes and Arrows: The Visual Vocabulary Three Years Later: An Interview with Jesse James Garrett
Interesting article/interview with an Information Architect who three years ago came up with a very nice diagraming vocabulary for laying out website architectures. Something I suspect I will find useful in the future, and will certainly be sharing with some clients of mine in the very near future if they are not already aware of it.
12/17/2003 12:09:00 AM
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Tuesday, December 16, 2003
ISERP :: People
ISERP :: People
An organization that I should be aware of, looks likley to be interested in related topics.
12/16/2003 12:17:00 PM
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Frank Dobbin
Frank Dobbin
Possibly someone I should approach in the future, appears to be interested in Economic Socialogy which is pretty close I think to what i want to study.
12/16/2003 12:14:00 PM
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White, H.C.: Markets from Networks: Socioeconomic Models of Production.
White, H.C.: Markets from Networks: Socioeconomic Models of Production.
A book that I should add to my reading list, looks to be related to many thoughts I have been having about underlying Economic theory. Different in some important ways, but very related nonetheless.
12/16/2003 12:06:00 PM
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arXiv.org e-Print archive
arXiv.org e-Print archive
Different than Citeseer, but looks to be a very useful resource for me in the future, this is an automated e-print library of mostly academic publications. Going to take a while to get orientated but worth it.
12/16/2003 11:05:00 AM
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Saturday, December 13, 2003
Q: What will happen when a national political machine can fit on a laptop? A: See below (washingtonpost.com)
Q: What will happen when a national political machine can fit on a laptop? A: See below (washingtonpost.com)
This is a the second half of a really interesting article - about how the Dean campaign is also a sign of changes to both parties to come.
But what draws my attention is the line "in the next six or eight presidential elections, a third-party candidate will win the presidency"
To which all I can say is YES! And I hope I will be a part of that win (doubtfully as the candidate but who knows).
12/13/2003 05:59:00 PM
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Friday, December 12, 2003
Vaccinate Thy Neighbor
Vaccinate Thy Neighbor
Very cool applied network theory. I hope this gets picked up and spread...
12/12/2003 01:53:00 AM
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Thursday, December 11, 2003
[picoIPO] Fwd: Re: [Just Trade Discussion] RE: Chris Cook on Temporary Equity
[picoIPO] Fwd: Re: [Just Trade Discussion] RE: Chris Cook on Temporary Equity
Another thing found by deep google searching on myself... a conversation that I had a while back with Chris Cook - I really should look him up again and see how that is progressing, it was (and is) interesting stuff).
12/11/2003 08:22:00 PM
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LOCATION LOCATION LOCATION It's all about Real Estate - blog blogging for those who want to know
LOCATION LOCATION LOCATION It's all about Real Estate - blog blogging for those who want to know
When you go looking on Google you find links you didn't even know about...
12/11/2003 08:10:00 PM
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Friday, December 05, 2003
What is WSIS: World Summit on the Information Society
What is WSIS: World Summit on the Information Society
Something worth paying attention to, I haven't read over the resolutions and information in enough detail to understand fully what they are trying to accomplish (and part of me hopes the answer is "not much") but it is still something that as I look at and think about social networks and the theory of networks, this type of meeting (and the UN more generally) is certainly a group that I need to look at and see if they fit (or do not fit) into the theoretical models.
12/05/2003 11:54:00 AM
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Salon.com Arts & Entertainment | Wish upon a star
Salon.com Arts & Entertainment | Wish upon a star
Article about celebrity driven "get out the vote" campaigns. I think that these are pretty much doomed to not live up to their organizers expectations.
More critically I think that the organizers of "get out the vote" need to connect to voters and big and small issues. In general I think that the best way to "get out the vote" would be to be competitive and offer solid options in local elections as well as the general election.
If you look at the California recall election, for just one example, it actually ended up with the winner winning with more actual votes than the previous election.
I think that Democrats (and Republicans) alike are all too complecant and willing to give into gerrymandering and assumptions that they are not competitive in most districts these days. In both the primary and general elections there are far too many candidates who end up running virtually unopposed. This cannot be a healthy thing for a democracy. At the very least, an active opposition forces the incombant (or the otherwise going to be unopposed candidate) to declare themselves on issues and to listen to the voters and perhaps change positions on certain issues to address voter's concerns.
Here in Chicago we are a virtual one-party system, it is rare if ever that a Democrat faces a serious opponent in any local election, which means that many very important positions (such as local judges) go unopposed.
Most critically, it means that many voters take the very reasonable position of "what does my vote matter when I am not even making a choice?"
I have a feeling that were a third party to be created, it would have the best shot of getting some candidates elected by running almost exclusively in "safe" districts, i.e. those districts where the incumbants have generally won without opposition and likely have grown more than a bit complacent. There, serious "get out the vote" activism built on top of active online and offline work, and perhaps backed by celebrity media access and money could have a real and critical impact on the country.
For example, all it would take is a small handful of senators, or a slightly large number of representatives for a third party to have enough votes to mean that neither party held a majority, as a result that third party would have a very strong negotiating position to further their goals.
This would have to be done with compromises, but alot could be achieved and further this would be a self-reinforcing cycle. The voters in that district would see that the third party (once it achieves enough clout to be the swing votes in the house or senate) would offer a very compelling argument of influence and power.
On the minus side, the structures of the Congress have grown up around the assumption of two parties, everything from the rules of committees and the floor generally assume that independants or third party candidates if present are very minor and generally unimportant. With enough votes to deny either party a majority however, this would change. Likely it would mean that various committee appointments would be offered, as well as other compromises to accomodate the third party.
At some point in the future I hope to see such a party form. Tenatively I am calling this the "Centrist" party - i.e. not a party of one extreme or the other, but a party that is socially liberal but fiscally conservative while being comitted to globalism, free trade, and an active involvement of the US in the world (this is in contrast to the Libertarians though this party might share with them many views). I do think that this party would find a large and reasonably solid base of support throughout the country.
Republicans who are more socially liberal than their current leadership, and who are strongly in favor of small government and free trade (which the current steel tarrifs and other trade issues cast some doubt about the current leadership's positions) would be attracted to this party. In fact, even some conservative Republicans who while they might disagree with some of the social positions of the party (pro-choice for example) might find the arguement that "Government should not force a moral agenda on the people" a compelling one.
Democrats who are looking for an alternative to the current party's infatuation with every possible special interest group without seemingly being able to clearly state what the party is for (and who might be annoyed with the definition of the party as anti-Republican instead of actively for something) would be attracted by the social positions as well as potentially by the fiscal responsibility. The arguement that our children and their children should not be burdened with unmanageable debts and that the budget and deficits should be brought under control could sway many as well.
However, some Democrats might find the globalism aspects controversal, especially the ones that are in favor of free trade, removal of protectionism in American policy (and active negotiations and diplomacy to strive to get our partners such as the EU to do the same), an active engagement in the world (which might include the use of our military force) complicated. Certainly many unions would find these difficult points. However, the more innovative and open minded unions might also recognize that to compete in a global environment the US will best succeed by openness and engagement, as well their members will see changes as a result of global free trade, but the US has many advantages and resources and with planning and care they can ensure that their members have a significent and positive role in the future.
As well, by trading with the world and by being actively engaged, we have an opportunity to raise the quality of life around the globe. This means that working conditions, life expectancy, health, education, and opportunity will all be growing around the globe. As a world, when anyone from anywhere has an opportunity to stretch themselves we will see more and more gains as less and less of our collective intelligence, intution, and skill goes unused.
Somewhere in sub-Saharan Africa there are genuses with the ability to solve many of the major problems of the world, with access to education, health, food, shelter and other resources, as well as the political structures to be involved in the world these individuals may have a chance to impact our globe for the better.
Anyway, I'm an optimist at heart.
12/05/2003 10:15:00 AM
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Thursday, December 04, 2003
Ordering instructions for Strange Horizons year one
An Ongoing, Erratic Diary
My friend Mary Anne's journal has instructions on how to order Strange Horizons: Year One in time for Christmas. I want to order both this and her cookbook. I'd like the cookbook in time for the holidays, this book I want just to have for myself...
12/04/2003 07:30:00 PM
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Rhizome.org: Info--Fact Sheet
Rhizome.org: Info--Fact Sheet
Rhizome is an example of one of the many online communities and networks that seem to truly "get" the Internet. I am very interested in looking at this group and others in terms of how they interact and "fit" into the models of the future that are suggested by Social Network software and the more general "Theory of Networks".
In the near future I am planning on setting up a "network of networks" (name to be determined) which will serve as a "metasite" of sorts for people interested in The Theory of Networks, in Social Networks, in Social Network Software, and in other related aspects of community, activism, networking, organizational theory, software development and the like. If it goes as I hope the group and website will sponsor at least one academic oriented conference (probably held here in Chicago) and a peer reviewed publication (at least a website, potentially a print publication as well if the funding is sufficient).
The site will also serve to link to other examples and references online, so likely will link to groups such as Rhizome and others that are working and applying the theory of networks and making "real". Especially with the upcoming elections I hope to make sure that we involve people working in social and political activism (ideally in a non-partisan manner so that people from all parts of the spectrum can gather and learn what is working without "taking sides".
More on this here in the upcoming days and weeks and likely much more on a new website that will be launched in a few days.
12/04/2003 06:16:00 PM
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Drifting Through the Grid
Drifting Through the Grid
An interesting article. I am not certain that I agree with all, even most of the points of this article. But I do want to learn a great deal more about the "nettime" which seems to be something that I should both know more about and participate in myself.
Also the article cites Thomas Barnett whom I have many months back referenced in the context of an article that he wrote that was published in Esquire.
12/04/2003 05:08:00 PM
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Wednesday, December 03, 2003
BlogShares - Closed Down
BlogShares - Closed Down
I had a lot of fun with Blogshares and am very sorry to see it close, I think it had a lot of potential as a very fun and informative game. If I have time (and am quite silly) I may contact Sayed about seeing if a group of the players can take over and revive the game...
12/03/2003 08:27:00 AM
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Tuesday, December 02, 2003
Prolog manual
Looks to be pretty good if a bit old, Prolog is one of those "things I really should know" which I plan on looking at, in part to be more completley up to date on AI research as I have been doing stuff via similar but different means.
12/02/2003 08:45:00 PM
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A Response to Clay Shirky's “The Semantic Web, Syllogism, and Worldview” (Ftrain.com)
A Response to Clay Shirky's “The Semantic Web, Syllogism, and Worldview” (Ftrain.com)
Article that I need to read over and think about more deeply, it is a response to Shirky's article (which I linked to in the past) about the Semantic Web. I found this via Nova Spivak's blog.
12/02/2003 07:35:00 PM
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Thursday, November 27, 2003
unstruct.org - Unstructured Information Management
unstruct.org - Unstructured Information Management
A site I need to spend a lot of time reading and looking at, as well as potentially should contact to explore an idea I have for a new organization and conference (non-profit most likely designed to be a networking tool for people writing systems that extract data automatically and then deal with it - whether from "unstructured" data sources, the "semi-structured" sources I tend to deal with, or even from "structured" sources (emphasis on the plural as being the case with AI comes in handy). I would like to then expand to also include people do search, classification and other related topics, as well as people who are looking at the technology and applications of "network theory")
Here I mean "network" in the form of connections not just technical networks (which are one type of "network" but networks of people, cells busineses etc. There is an emerging but not fully named or understood discipline that is studying networks - in terms of organizational structure, growth patterns, and "end" states (all connected to all, independant clusters, etc.
Very cool stuff, in any case the site offers some positive viewpoint about what might be a workable means of growing my idea into something that happens and is viable.
11/27/2003 12:21:00 AM
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Tuesday, November 18, 2003
TinyWorld
TinyWorld
Pretty cool stuff, need to think about it and figure out if I can see anything to do with it, but the concept of XML described games that can be linked together somewhat "on the fly" is pretty interesting.
I wonder if it might become something really neat if combined with a M** type code base?
Anyway something to look at, at the moment I have to work on coming up with some products to get funding from a company that has offered it to a partner of mine, so that is my first priority.
11/18/2003 05:05:00 PM
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Wednesday, November 12, 2003
random thoughts and a business idea
or something because I've only been posting short stuff of late
So it has been a fairly strange past month as I have been recovering from my office move and have only just been up and running mostly fully functionally. I've been working out of my house at cafes many afternoons, not much different than working from home or from my old office, though I find myself making less phone calls. I need to get into a habit/routine where I make all my calls at one time and then work from cafes when what I need to do is write.
But enough on that for the moment.
More interestingly (I think at least) is a conflation of events that have been happening of late and some ideas which I have that I am considering looking into.
First, the idea in a short summary, more on it later I hope (if you are interested, have suggestions, paying investors etc, please contact me privately, if you don't know how, look for me at Ryze and contact me there).
"A directory of the Internet that works by AUTOMATICALLY sorting pages into collections and letting you find pages that are related/similar very rapidly and quickly. Further, it would have some elements of 'paid search' to provide a revenue model and would apply some pretty cutting edge AI techniques for the classification and search technology"
To start it off we would be using some standard crawling techniques, but would be building up our indexes in a fairly new and innovative way. Further, rather than attempt to force pages into a vast tree ala the Open Directory Project (which is nearly impossible these days) or forcing people to get very very good at searches, I hope to have an interface and an overall data structure that would work in more intuative manners.
For example, you might be able to cut and past something into a big box on my page - we would then return results that were pages that were most likely related to the content you posted. From each page you could also then find other, related pages and/or highlight specific blocks of text (or words) that you would like us to find more pages similar to.
Unlike Google we would not have a short number of words as a limit to search phrases, nor would putting in too many words result in no results (and/or being forced to play around with word tenses, pluralities etc, over time we would address this via dictionaries, thesourses and translation abilities, eventually being able to find pages in non-English languages from an entirely English search request.
Over time as well I think this would be built into either a Bookmarklet and/or toolbar type funcitonality as well as a web base page model.
It sounds pretty complicated (and it is) but I have many years of AI technology that has been sitting on my shelf that I plan on bringing to bear on this problem - specifically I will eventually be able to pretty powerfully detect page changes, differntiate between major and minor changes (i.e. changes of actual sections vs. changes of a ad or the date), and do some other rather cool stuff to the data that we collect.
I also plan on integrating our efforts with other revenue opportunies on the web - Google AdSense, Amazon.com's affliate programs, PayPal's programs and the like (perhaps Overture though I think Google might make more sense for us).
As well, I will likely offer "sponsorships" of certain things, though exactly how that will work is something I have to figure out since unlike an Open Directory type project we won't have very fixed categories, though we may have something close enough for sales purposes.
My underlying technology likely would cause some developers to have fits - I don't plan on doing this in a very traditional manner... but heck that's probably why it will work. :)
In other news, I have sparked a bit of a fit over at ChowHound with a post I made about Spoon Thai and it was followed by another discussion on the "Not about Food" Chowhound board on Secret menues. Saturday I may be joining them for a tasting of Italian Beef around town, not sure exactly what the reception will be, but personally I think the discussion while at times getting too personal has been interesting and useful and entertaining.
Last night I finally saw Memento on DVD, a movie I really should have seen when it was out in regular release. I originally read the story first published in Esquire Magazine so I had some idea what was going on, but still it was a very enjoyable puzzle film and after watching it, like any good net person, I went looking for and read some online discussions of what "really" was going on (as well as tried to get the supposed easter eggs such as showing the film in time order to work but could not).
11/12/2003 07:28:00 PM
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Monday, November 10, 2003
CodeCon 2004
CodeCon 2004
Could be interesting. I'd like to try to attend this, mostly to see who else attends, learn more about what they are developing, possibly network for future employees, and in general keep an ear very close to the ground for some of the more cutting edge (but working) applications out there.
If I'm really up to it I might even try to present at it myself.
11/10/2003 08:22:00 PM
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Friday, November 07, 2003
Shirky: The Semantic Web, Syllogism, and Worldview
Shirky: The Semantic Web, Syllogism, and Worldview
Clay's article makes a point that I made almost exactly a year ago, that there is a fundemental philosophical problem with the Semantic Web itself. That is that context and difference is an inherent part of the world but is ignored in the Semantic Web.
I am not sure why Anil Dash when linking to this article thought that Clay was "wrong" - I fundementally think Clay is RIGHT.
11/07/2003 06:27:00 PM
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Monday, November 03, 2003
opensourceCMS
opensourceCMS
Looks to be really useful site that I need to spend some time looking over - since my company does almost all of our development on PHP, these may be some systems and tools we need to be using.
11/03/2003 07:03:00 PM
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Saturday, November 01, 2003
Lotus Notes and Outlook issues
Hi all,
A technical question and request (and an offer in return).
I am in the midst of moving to a new laptop and am exploring
alternatives to Outlook as I would like to avoid the cost of buying MS
Office (if I can). My laptop came with Lotus SmartSuite (which seems
more than sufficiently compatible for all of my needs for
presentations, writing, and spreadsheets) and a license of Lotus Notes.
However, I have been unable to figure out how to import my 1+ gigs of
mail, calendaring and other data from Outlook into Lotus Notes, and how
to configure Lotus Notes to work in an Internet email only manner (i.e.
no Domino server).
Is there anyone on the list that knows enough about Lotus Notes,
especially in a client only mode, to help me with this?
And/or can anyone suggest an alternative to MS Outlook?
I have extremely serious mail requirements, so something like Outlook
Express is not an option. My needs are for an integrated mail, calendar
and address book capable of handling about 1 gig of past emails
(imported from a .PST file), 1500+ contacts, 3+ years of active
calendar events. It has to have very powerful rules for mail reading to
allow for automated filtering/filing (importing MS Outlooks rules would
be nice but not mandatory).
Further, I have to be able to easily and quickly access all of the mail
- mail split into many "archives" and/or search results that don't show
everything are non-starters. (I recently evaluated Bloomba a new mail
software package, which is nice, but has a 2500 message limit in any
given view - that can easily be less than a month's email for me, so
that limitation is quite severe for me).
If there is some way I can help you out in return, please ask.
thanks!
Shannon
11/01/2003 05:13:00 PM
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Tuesday, October 28, 2003
Linux Is the Enterprise Operating System
Linux Is the Enterprise Operating System
Good news. Basically Linux is no longer just for "true believers" but for the real business. Which is good and in fact great news.
10/28/2003 07:23:00 PM
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Monday, October 27, 2003
"Stories for Men" by John Kessel
"Stories for Men" by John Kessel
Or if you want to print out the story, here is a better link. FictionWise is nice if you want to read the story on your laptop, but if you prefer to print out a copy to read on paper (and not drain your battery or strain your eyes) the versions available are not printable.
But this link from Asimov's is.
10/27/2003 05:04:00 PM
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Fictionwise eBooks: Stories For Men [MultiFormat] by John Kessel
Fictionwise eBooks: Stories For Men [MultiFormat] by John Kessel
Looks like the Tiptree winning story by John Kessel is available for free from FictionWise. I am getting it at the moment and plan on reading it, been on my short list of stuff I wanted to read ever since WisCon.
10/27/2003 03:59:00 PM
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Friday, October 24, 2003
New system
or what's a little new technology amongst friends...
So, having heard yesterday that my new laptop was being held at customs, having been built in China, I didn't expect to get it until next week if I was lucky.
However, this morning when I went downstairs to pick up my mail, there was a nice little note from the package room for my building that I had a package, and sure enough, it was my new laptop.
I have been setting it up all afternoon, not difficult at all and very cool in many ways. Very light, long battery life, large screen.
The only problems, which are minor at the moment - are I need to get a copy of my invoice (which I thought would be with the shipped product but was not), I think they shipped the wrong battery type, and I may have been charged more than I should have been. (but not by all that much). The good news is that they have a price protection, but the bad news is that they appear to have changed the model from when I ordered it to now - and now it is configured with the smaller battery. So, they have my call logged and will call me back, probably on Monday.
But other than that, it appears to be a great system. Best case, I manage to talk them into giving me a 9 volt battery, and let me keep the 6 volt (I had planned in any case on eventually buying a new battery)
Or alternatively, they may give me the same discounts on the new price, which would mean a refund of essentially the cost of the bigger battery. We'll see on Monday.
And I have to decide fairly soon whether to buy MS Office, or make due with the copy of Lotus SmartSuite that will be coming my way soon (included with the laptop).
But the big news is I now have a new laptop, with WIFI, and can start being productive outside of my house!
10/24/2003 05:47:00 PM
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Tuesday, October 14, 2003
Did I get a deal?
stay tuned, will know in a few weeks
So, since moving my office and starting to work virtually I have been shopping for a new laptop, one that will be lightweight, have a long battery life, ideally run Windows XP (possibly in as Virtual PC), and eventually likely will be running a UNIX OS to serve as a portable server.
In the course of this I have been looking at more configurations of laptops than is really reasonable, more brands, more options, more different approaches which I could take.
This afternoon I found a solution, then may have found an even better (actually possibly found two even better solutions).
The first solution that I found early this afternoon was a student at the University of Chicago who is selling a slightly (less than one year) used Sony ultraportable. It is not flawless, and would require some changes to make it work well for me (additional battery as it turns out - not cheap, and an OS upgrade which is a bit cheaper), but it would be a possible solution and would be less than $1000 which gives me some room for the rest of the items that I would need.
As I was learning just how much I would have to do to make that system work for me, I found a few options for refurbished or other special situation Mac Powerbooks. There the best I found from a dealership based on the East Coast is a system that was configured as a special system being offered at a discount of about $600 from the price of the system normally. It would have 1GB of memory, a very fast processor, a large hard disk, a writeable DVD drive (something I really don't need) and in short would be a pretty potent and powerful system, but it is also even with the discount $2200 and to that figure I would have to add the cost of a MS Office suite + Virtual PC (and likely other additional software). So the price break not withstanding it would be a fairly expensive solution for me to consider, but it is tempting and on the more reasonable side the same store had other less costly options to consider and I have also found some used 12" powerbooks here in Chicago (the system in question was a 15" one).
But then, on a whim, I started looking at another alternative site for refurbished Apple laptops. As it turned out while it had a decent deal on a refurbished 17" powerbook (nice but likley too heavy for me irregardless of how "cool" it is) on the whim I looked at what options the store had in PC laptops.
It had a Sony TR2A for pre-order, and so I did.
And there in is the possible deal, earlier today I described it to someone I love as "playing the high tech lottery a bit". For $15 (with shipping) I may, emphasis on the may, have just bought myself a $2200+ geeks wet dream.
The TR2A is a 3.1 pound (with CDRW/DVD drive and battery) laptop capable of an estimated 7 hrs (tested at over 5hrs at least in a previous less powerful incarnation). It has a 40GB hard drive, 512MB of memory, built in wifi and even a builtin camera. In short it is a very small, very long running, and very cool laptop. Not the largest or the most powerful by any means ("only" a 1 Gig processer) but potent none-the-less. And if I do get it for $15 an absolute screaming bargain.
I do have the reciept from the online store confirming my order and the price, as well as their own email marketing (their "tell a friend") advertising the price. A few hours after I ordered it they had corrected the listing, but as of yet I have not recieved any email from them other than the order confirmation.
The system does not get released until later this month (Oct 22nd I think) so I have a while to wait to see if I am going to get it for the unbelievable bargain. If I do, I will be buying a number of additional products - an extra battery, an upgrade to XP professional, MS Office 2003 (which will have just come out by then) and probably an extended warrentee from Sony.
But I am not going to count on it, though I suspect rather strongly that I have a case should they try to get out of delivering the goods, they sent me a confirmation email and rather clearly agreed to their price, so hopefully it will come down to them and Am Ex in the worst case.
On other news my books from Amazon arrived to today. Two that are for business and two for pleasure, adding to others I picked up already this month I have a net influx of books of over 7 and a net outflux (i.e. books I finished reading) of 1, at this rate I will have hundreds of unread books surrounding me on all sides in just a few months. So I have resolved to set aside some serious amounts of time in my schedule to start making a dent in the deep piles of books.
Next weekend, however, will not be such a time for the most part, it looks like I will have another (like this past weekend) weekend which I spend very happily with Julia. It is strange, on one level we did not do much at all this weekend, but on another that was the entire point of it, not doing much but not doing it together. A very cool and enjoyable feeling indeed.
At the moment I am listening to my birthday present from my sister a CD by the Flaming Lips, catching on some emails (a small email I sent off to a mailing list asking people's opinions on laptops has turned into a partial Mac vs. PC debate), and contemplating pulling an all nighter to get cought up on a lot of life's chores. Specifically I have books I want to read, a pile of laundry that needs to be done, and a house that still needs much cleaning - and the early morning hours such as now are a good time for all of the above. There are rarely many other people using the laundry room so I can take a lot of machines and use the one side loading double machine which I need to run two seperate loads of comforters through. And in between loads I can continue on my ongoing task of unboxing and cleaning up my house putting it back into some semblance of order. Especially now that the garbage strike here in Chicago has been resolved I should start throwing out a lot of random stuff (empty boxes for one starting point).
More like I think I will get a bit of reading in for a few hours the go to bed, laundry still waiting for me but much else accomplished.
All in all, a very good weekend (since Monday was a holiday, even though I did work much of the day, I am counting this morning as the beginning of the week).
10/14/2003 01:29:00 AM
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Monday, October 13, 2003
Sixth Level of Hell
Not that this is much of a surprise to those who know me... but amusing none the less.
The Dante's Inferno Test has banished you to the Sixth Level of Hell - The City of Dis!
Here is how you matched up against all the levels:
Take the Dante Inferno Hell Test
10/13/2003 10:50:00 AM
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Tuesday, October 07, 2003
The Singing Detective
or why I really love pulp noir surrealism, but know I'm probably a minority
Tonight I saw the screening of "The Singing Detective" at the Chicago International Film Festival. The screening was sold out, but Julia and I went hoping to get tickets and lucked out by finding someone with an extra pair (thanks to the help of the staff of the film festival who kindly pointed the man out at the front of the line who had the extra pair). Tickets in hand, we proceeded to wait an hour in line for the film. Did I mention that both Robert Downey Jr. (the star of the film) and Keith Gordon the director were on hand and that before tonights screening was an interview by Richard Roeper with Robert Downey Jr., and a presentation of an award from the Film Festival to him?
I personally cannot recommend this film highly enough - I loved it.
But, I should make it clear, it is a Pulp Noir, Surrealist, Musical, Tragedy - so may not be the cup of tea for many people. Reading some reviews after seeing the film I see that critics are divided, some hating the film, many loving it, few (at least whom I have read as of yet) recognizing the Surrealist elements to the film.
Personally I thought it was pretty obvious, there were entire scenes that appeared almost lifted from "Waiting for Godot" (En Attendant pour Godot). Of course, I am a huge fan of that play and have read it in both French and English many times (one of the few, "Le Petite Prince" and Rinoceros being the others). For me, what is appealing about the film is the very interesting, visually compelling, and intellectually interesting ways in which it plays with perspective, point of view, actors, the screen, and movies and writing - all while rapped around some of my favorite framing devices, the pulp noir detective story.
The visuals are quite amazing in my opinion, sometimes graphic but also full of reoccuring importance and echoes from scene to scene. If I have any complaint about the film it is that at times it was a tad too transparent, not living up to one of the great lines of the film "I want to write stories full of clues instead of stories full of solutions" (I'm probably paraphrasing but you get the picture, the quote is in the context of writing).
While clearly Robert Downey Jr.'s performance will be the one that most people will rightfully comment on (it is quite amazing as most of his tend to be) I think that Mel Gibson's performance is perhaps the biggest surprise for me - unlike most of the films I have seen with him in them here he plays a role into which he has both immersed himself and disguised his famous features. I truly enjoyed his performance (and unlike one critic who thought it was hard to shake the fact that it was "Mel Gibson in a bald cap", I thought he lost himself in the role very well indeed.
This is a long film that is well worth seeking out, one I am very happy to have seen!
10/07/2003 01:20:00 AM
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Wednesday, October 01, 2003
Unboxing
or what you find when you start opening things
So far, a pair of slippers I had completely forgotten I owned, and mounds of trash the day that the Teamsters go on strike and cease garbage collection service for my building. What fun! :)
But seriously I have finished the move from hell, during which time I literally got called by an elevator repairman who had trapped himself in the elevator I needed working to complete my move! And during which time over 5 different repairpeople from that same elevator company, over the course of many days would visit the building trying mostly in vain to fix the elevator from hell.
I now have a living room full of boxes which I have begun to go through, slowly but I am making decent progress in figuring out what needs to go where and in identifying large sections of stuff which I no longer need, when this is all completed, hopefully by the end of this weekend, I will have my home in the best shape that it will ever have been in! So that is one very positive effect of all of this effort.
Tomorrow I will be mostly dealing with getting my webserver back from the dead, somehow the move crashed my system very hard, so we will have to spend a lot of time trying to figure out what went wrong and fix it, I'm most seriously worried that it may have been a hacker attack of some form, which would really and truely suck.
In any case, for today I am going to nap a bit, then get back to the task on hand of going through boxes and closets and piles until I have made room for all of the new items from my office which I now have to keep here at home (and/or have found and identified items which I can either sell, donate or throw completely away. Lots of work but very satisifying as well.
10/01/2003 05:49:00 PM
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Friday, September 26, 2003
Telegraph | News | Doctor Who ready to come out of the Tardis for Saturday TV series
Telegraph | News | Doctor Who ready to come out of the Tardis for Saturday TV series
Yeah.
YEAH!!!!
I am and have been for multiple decades, a HUGE Dr. Who fan, far more so than any other Science fiction television show (even recent shows such as Babylon 5 which I got into in reruns, my interest pales in comparison to my Dr. Who interest.
So this looks like some of the best news I have heard in a very, very long time. I can see Dr. Who as a very successful, modernized television show, for one, the format and structure lends itself to a nearly infinite variety of stories, an entire universe (and time) to play in, and a very deeply developed universe to build on.
The more recent novels, which I have not been keeping up with as much as I would like, hint at some directions for the series to go in, more complex companions who can more than hold their own, complicated plots and ongoing story arcs.
And in any case, it is a series that I will be following closely and one that I hope to enjoy when it is broadcast, and who knows, perhaps try seeing if I'm up to the task of writing for it? (I can dream can't I?)
9/26/2003 05:42:00 PM
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Moving
or why I don't get jokes at the moment
I am moving my office and scattering things to the five winds.
Later today, and some tomorrow, my files, computers, and "stuff" will be moved to my house to set up a home office for me there (and test out my new DSL service which should be on but which I have not yet even tried).
My development team will be moving to an office in the south loop, as will a lot of our furniture which will be stored in a warehouse there (if you are reading this and knoiw anyone in Chicago who would like to buy some really great furniture for a office have them contact me ASAP). We are also moving our development servers, production web server and the developers computers and stuff into that office.
Our business files and items are going to yet another location.
And on top of that all we have sold a lot of our excess furniture to another company which is also moving this weekend.
And already our copier was picked up by one moving company (that same other firm took over our copier payments) and just before that our phone system which we sold them was taken apart and disassembled to be put back together at their new offices (and in the process crashing our office server which is one more thing for me to deal with next week).
Later this weekend and next week various other smaller items of furniture will be picked up by the buyers and/or owners of the respective pieces.
So, the net of all this is that I am crazed at the moment and hard to reach but will get back to everyone as soon as the dust settles, my computer(s) are back up and running, my webserver is serving, and the dust has settled.
Until then, please no jokes as I don't get them at the moment...
9/26/2003 03:33:00 PM
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Friday, September 19, 2003
Probabilities in the Game of Monopoly®
Probabilities in the Game of Monopoly®
some people have too much time.
Very cool use of computer simulation and programming to answer a question we have all had at some time - where to put that next hotel....
9/19/2003 05:11:00 PM
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Thursday, September 18, 2003
Catching up
with life, the universise, and everything and everyone
Okay. I know it has been over a week since I posted, possibly the longest stretch I have gone without at least a small post since I started this Blog. But I have been busy if not productively then at least mentally recharging, regrouping, and thinking. So, in short order a few sets of announcements, updates, and other items.
As a few of you know this past weekend I was in CA for my grandmother's 80th birthday. A long weekend of family events and catching up, lots of fun but also fairly draining between the long travel times, the time shifts, the stress imposed by the events, and the stress I imposed on myself because I was out in CA instead of back in Chicago working.
Thursday I flew to LA and visited my Aunt. She had long promised to take me shopping as she thought I needed an update in the wardrobe department. We didn't have much time because she had many different tasks and errands to run, between getting ready for the weekend and the sale of a house she had had on the market since April (which closed the next day). So we went to one store where we managed to find me two pairs of jeans that fit and two really great shirts (still haven't gotten the jeans which were being tailored to correct the length of the legs and mailed back to my home). The shirts are really great, one short sleeve and one very cool red shirt. All-in-all a very successful couple of hours shopping.
We then delivered a plant as a present to her realtor and I shopped at the local Vons to get ingrediants for our dinner which I was cooking as small way of thanking her for her hospitatlity and the clothes. I made us a salmon salad nicoise with fresh salmon which I broiled with fresh baby dill and a sauce of olive oil, herbs, lemon, and honey. The salad was organic mixed greens, hard boiled eggs, cherry tomatoes, and baby red potatoes. I also prepared a rice wine vineager cucumber, jicama, and vidalia onion salad (with a few hot peppers washed and crushed to add flavor). All in all a very tasty meal which also impressed my aunt and my cousin with my cooking skills.
Friday, Saturday, and Sunday were taken up with a wide range of family events - dinner Friday in Santa Barbara at a great restaurant, Saturday daytime spent visiting and exploring the markets, Saturday evening 70 of my grandmother's closest friends and us attended a charity event at an estate in Monticito (which was both a lot of fun and quite amazing), and then brunch Sunday morning. I ended up helping the caterer for the brunch, I made the fruit salad (chopped fruits for 50 people) and helped prep the smoked salmon plate, the caterer said she wished I lived in Santa Barbara. In any case it was a lot of fun. I then started on what felt like a 12 hour journey home (down the hill to wait for a bus, 2 hour bus ride to LAX, check in, 2 hour wait at the gate, flight home, only to learn that the CTA had stopped running trains early on Sunday evenings so after a few miles of walking still had to take a taxi to arrive home just after midnight.
In all it was a fun weekend, but it was also stressful.
This week I have been catching up and starting the process of preparing my office to be moved.
After the end of this month JigZaw will be moving from our current offices to a number of new ones. I will be working from home in a home office and probably will make use of Regus for someone to answer my phones, recieve my mail and provide me a downtown office to work out of and/or meet with people (they have a plan that for <$300/mth you get all the virtual office services plus 50 hours of office usage/month - probably just about perfect for me).
My developer will be moving from our current offices to a shared office/tech incubator which is just blocks from his house. We may also be hosting some of our servers in that facility and may store our excess furniture there as well - the details of that are being worked out. My mom who has been helping us with out bills will be taking one of our computers, our payables files, and our shreddrer and storing that at her home.
Our copier and some of our excess furniture is being sold to one of our neighbors.
But, I still have to find all of our other excess office equipment and arrange for it to be sold (hopefully), probably sometime next week. I then also have to pack up what I need for my own home, pack up what is going to the other places, and start to resolve the numerous big and little issues that remain to be done before we move.
These include:
1. Set up DSL at my home office (started already)
2. Set up phone service for my home office - not yet started, probably going with Vonage.
3. Select a laptop and purchase it for myself (both because I need a Windows 2000 or XP pro system and I will now need a portable system with good WIFI to work more effectively). I'm leaning towards a Sony Vaio, but am considering both an Apple system or another PC maker's system) - it needs to be very lightweight, have great battery life, and solid service. The Sony Seems almost ideal but appears to have poorer WIFI.
4. Sign deal for office space for my developer.
5. Sign deal for Regus office space (or other option for our mail and main line phone)
6. Find a mover - coordinate with where we are moving items, this could be as soon as next Tuesday! (yuck but also a bit of a relief to get it over with sooner vs. later)
7. Sell/transfer obligations for my current Xerox, some misc. furniture, and my PRI phone line - lots of paperwork and annoyances.
8. Write a survey to use to drive sales of my consulting service (leading into sales of my software), write, test, distrubute - lots of work likely.
9. Start updating my advisors and business partners of how to reach me during the move and after.
10. Clean my house both because my girlfriend is returning to Chicago from her business trip tomorrow and because soon I will be working out of the house.
11. Do laundry and drop off dry cleaning (see #10)
12. Start cleaning and packing my office - look for stuff I need to read/reply to /deal with quickly vs. stuff I need at my new home office vs. stuff I need to throw out (and/or scan in my business cards etc). Also means I have to sort my computer equipment, computers, "schwag" from conferences, articles etc. i.e. Lots of filing and sorting for me.
I'm sure there are many more big and small tasks ahead of me, but you get the picture.
9/18/2003 06:06:00 PM
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Wednesday, September 10, 2003
openhousenewyork - what
openhousenewyork - what
Oct 11th and 12th sounds like a really good weekend to be in NYC, I may try to fly out there, see my sister and view the sites.
9/10/2003 11:56:00 AM
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Tuesday, September 09, 2003
Augustine's Blog
Augustine's Blog
This is my friend Natalie d'Arbeloff's blog for her cartoon alter ego. Pretty cool stuff which I need to read through someday soon...
9/09/2003 11:02:00 PM
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Thursday, September 04, 2003
Recall
Recall
too cool to even begin to describe adequately - go, check it out, relive the web.
9/04/2003 04:57:00 PM
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humancompetitive
humancompetitive
Very cool stuff indeed. I need to read most about the underlying algorithms where genetic programming was used to generate "human competitive" results, but this is pretty neat stuff. A lot of my own thinking about AI tends towards self-modifying programs (in essense, more in a bit), though I do have some questions about "genetic" programing - primarily how you create a "fitness test" and allow for variablity.
(think about it in terms of how do you tell whether or not the software that is being generated is "good" or "bad" - and allow for variability in the techniques and algorithms used, but in some effective manner. It is not exactly a simple issue)
Most of my AI work involves writing applications that are data driven in an almost literal way - that is, they may literally rewrite their own code (in a limited fashion) based on what they are working with - this can be somewhat confusing stuff but it also allows for highly generalizable solutions with little that is hardcoded about them. It is not a huge stretch for me to then consider where there is some way (or ways) in which I could introduce variablity into the code/test process and morph into writing "genetic algorithms" for much of the work I do (mostly text pattern recognition and data extraction/mapping)
9/04/2003 10:36:00 AM
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Thursday, August 28, 2003
Yahoo! News - Urban Sprawl Makes Americans Fat, Study Finds
Yahoo! News - Urban Sprawl Makes Americans Fat, Study Finds
Yet another reason why I love living in the city and being able to walk from (and to) work each day. I'm currently looking at different options for office space for my company as our current lease is coming up for renewal, whether I can walk home from the new space (if we move) is a very big and serious factor for me.
Sure price, appearance, etc are also factors, but all other things being equal, I would much prefer an office that I can walk to and from than one that requires me to drive (or take a taxi) to get there if I need to. Sure, most of Chicago could also be gotten to by public transit, but many places would require multiple transfers, something I try to avoid whenever possible.
8/28/2003 04:46:00 PM
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Wednesday, August 27, 2003
Chowhound's Toronto Message Board: Indonesian? Other great places?
Chowhound's Toronto Message Board: Indonesian? Other great places?
My question to Chowhound's Toronto board...
8/27/2003 12:38:00 PM
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Optimize Supplier Relationships with Contract Management
Optimize Supplier Relationships with Contract Management
And an earlier article from Aberdeen which also supports what my company does - very good stuff.
8/27/2003 11:16:00 AM
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Four Keys to Effective Supplier Contract Management
Four Keys to Effective Supplier Contract Management
Supports what my company sells - Decisa: Contract Compliance software.
8/27/2003 11:11:00 AM
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O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference -- February 9-12, 2004
O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference -- February 9-12, 2004
Sounds both like a conference I would like to attend (and would really enjoy) and one that many of my friends really should attend and present at. I will be sharing this call for submissions with a number of the groups I am active within, who knows, perhaps I can attend and present something myself.
8/27/2003 10:42:00 AM
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Tuesday, August 26, 2003
Renaissance Weekend
Renaissance Weekend
I was invited to attend this, am seriously considering going for Thanksgiving weekend - need to find the invite letter and confirm some details of the invitation, also need to decide whether I want to go this Thanksgiving.
8/26/2003 02:20:00 PM
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Calvin and Hobbes - 11 year old strip on Journals
Welcome to uComics Web Site featuring Calvin and Hobbes -- The Best Comic Site In The Universe!
Very appropriate for online blogs...
8/26/2003 01:03:00 PM
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ISSN for Weblogs (Joe Clark: fawny.org)
ISSN for Weblogs (Joe Clark: fawny.org)
Very interesting idea, not sure if I will apply for one or not. I may want to wait until I have the time (and funds) to move from blogspot to something more permanent, as well as the time to reorganize and update my base site a bit.
But still, a very cool and interesting idea - ISSN numbers for weblogs.
8/26/2003 12:51:00 PM
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Salon.com Technology | Truncat
Salon.com Technology | Truncat
A new short story by Cory Doctorow, one of my favorite current authors. Reading this will be my small gift to myself later today, probably sometime this evening as a reward for a successful day - or at least that is my plan. I highly recommend after you read this story, that you look for his other short stories at Salon.com, as well as anything else by him you can find.
8/26/2003 11:44:00 AM
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Friday, August 22, 2003
Edge 124 - Blackout and The moral sense test
Edge 124
Two really interesting articles on one page. I probably need to read "Edge" more often, looks to be very much stuff that I like by authors I admire.
The Blackout conversation starts off with a piece by the author of Linked: The New Science of Networks which is a book I greatly enjoyed and highly recommend.
As I read over his article I was struck by the following thought, he mentioned "electricity cannot be stored" as one of the reasons why the current power grid is so interconnected, with the risks so dramitically illustrated earlier this month. My thought and question is, "is this still the case? Or, with fuel cells and/or other technologies might electricity be stored?"
Probably there is no way of storing electricity without some loss other than perhaps superconducting coils (where the electricity can go around and around in circles without loss), but are there means of harnessing energy currently as electricity and converting it to stored energy of another form? One that could ideally be quickly and easily converted back to electricity when there was demand?
It would seem to me that there must be, but perhaps it is a question of scale - i.e. it would take a lot of very large "rechargable batteries" to store the output of a small power plant, let alone a large one.
Anyway, something for me to noodle on, may show up in a future novel if I think of something really cool.
8/22/2003 12:10:00 PM
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Tuesday, August 19, 2003
Travel, worldcons, and oddities
So, this morning my girlfriend (yes, read that right) emailed me that there are some really amazing rates to Toronto ($120/person $140/person taxes included (base rate was $99) for a round trip on AA), would I like to go with her over Labor Day weekend?
When we finally connected (my cell phone wasn't working for time) we weren't able to get the best dates to travel (Saturday morning, back on Labor Day) but were able to get pretty good - Saturday afternoon, back early morning Tuesday.
So, we decided to go.
I then went online and looked at hotels, lots of options but all around a few hundred for the three nights, and many that were inexpensive were somewhat questionable. So, I checked what I could get for airline miles on American. Turns out I could get a 4 star hotel for the three nights we needed and would only have to pay a $25 late booking fee.
Pretty good so far, so I did it.
Then, I decided to check out TorCon's website and see where it was and how far away it was from our hotel etc. Turns out I managed to book two rooms in the party hotel for TorCon. This does mean I want to make sure we're not on the first or second floors...
But, in a sign of just how cool my girlfriend is, she's not unhappy that we're going to be staying there, though I want to spend most of my vacation with her relaxing and exploring Toronto, I might try to get to some of the convention. One friend has mentioned that he might have to memberships, if he can't find a buyer for them, perhaps I'll buy them from him (or if my karma's really good he won't charge me much...). In any case, if you are reading this, planning on being in Toronto for TorCon, and might want to meet up for Lunch or Dinner Sat, Sun, or Monday (dinner only Sat) I'll be around.
In any case, even if I don't make it to the convention itself, which I suspect I might not, I will be there, in a different city for a real vacation - something I haven't had for quite a while, Wiscon over Memorial Day only somewhat counting as a vacation - though it was and is a great time.
8/19/2003 01:39:00 PM
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Monday, August 18, 2003
MathWorld News: There Are No Magic Knight's Tours on the Chessboard
MathWorld News: There Are No Magic Knight's Tours on the Chessboard
More interesting perhaps than just the math article here cited, it the site it is on - one which I suspect could occupy me for a very long time...
8/18/2003 04:03:00 PM
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Friday, August 15, 2003
The Blackout
The Blackout
Pretty cool - I figured something like this had to be out there, thanks to Doc Searls here is the link. A collection of phonecam photos (mostly) of the blackout.
A few things, more in a later longer post most likely. I think how the US has dealt with this current blackout is pretty amazing and reflects my personal overall general feeling about people and society - that is, if you expect people to behave themselves and help each other they generally will (i.e. people are generally good as opposed to generally bad).
It is quite notable, I think, that while Detroit and NYC were peaceful, with people safely sleeping on the streets and/or out and about with an almost party atmosphere (according to one report I heard this morning on the radio describing Chelsea in Manhattan), there was "serious looting" in Ottowa and a state of national emergency was declared there. Not, perhaps, what most people would expect given the general perception of Americans vs. Canadians.
Just last night I attended a monthly political Science Fiction discussion group, our book for this month was Octavia Butler's "Parable of the Sower" which depicts a post-apocolyptic vision of California in the 2020's.
Looking at what just happened, I am struck by how far the country has come in just the decade since she wrote that book. She wrote it in the wake of the LA riots, when a vision of escalating lawlessness and chaos did not seem so far fetched. But think about things now, it certainly appears that everyday ordinary Americans as well as our government officials can conduct themselves extremely well in crisises and that lawlessness and violence is not the result.
For me, it is the small little things that I particularly note, the fact that tolls on bridges out of New York were lifted - not the reaction of stupid beaucrats but rather the reaction of sensible people. The stories of individual small acts of kindness are also impressive, as are the relatively small numbers of people hurt or even needing rescue from elevators (800 calls in NYC seems amazingly, almost unbelievably low).
In short, I am quite proud today to be an American and I am very pleased with how we have conducted ourselves in the face of seeming disaster and crisis.
8/15/2003 11:52:00 AM
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Thursday, August 14, 2003
The myth of discoverability - UIWEB.COM
The myth of discoverability - UIWEB.COM
Interesting discussion about user design - mostly stuff that we already do at JigZaw but useful to read a well written discussion of it. I will be sharing this with my development team.
8/14/2003 12:15:00 PM
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Wednesday, August 13, 2003
Ming the Mechanic: Net Work
Ming the Mechanic: Net Work
Flemming Funch posted an interesting thought exercise, I posted a response - this is so I don't lose the thread.
8/13/2003 06:22:00 PM
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Salon.com Books | Two isn't company
Salon.com Books | Two isn't company
Interesting review of a new book - by a Marxist academic, but according the review "laugh out loud funny" (in a good way).
It strikes me that in a book about relationships and marriage, that ignoring, the admittedly small, polyamory movement is somewhat surprising, but not unexpected.
Myself, I'm pretty in tune with the cultural norm of a single monagamous relationship, but given how many of my friends are both very intelligent and also in complex polyamorous relationships, I do think it is a subject worth some attention in a book about love and marriage... since adultery is somewhat different in a polyamorous relationship (though, I think if I understand things correctly not impossible - it would be a relationship that is kept from the other person or persons in the relationship).
In any case it sounds like a book worth a look, though with the dual caveats of being written by a Marxist and seemingly ignoring the option of polygamy (i.e. a relationship with multiple consenting parties, often long term).
[note - I edited this a day after posting to correct a mispelling of polyamory/polyamorous - which is the term I meant though not what I typed]
8/13/2003 02:06:00 PM
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Tuesday, August 12, 2003
Degrees of Separation Are Likely More Than 6, Especially in E-Mail Age
Degrees of Separation Are Likely More Than 6, Especially in E-Mail Age(note registration required)
Interesting article on updated study of the "Six Degrees" phenomenon.
Speaking personally, I am very convinced that I am connected to anyone else in the world by a very small chain. In part, however, this is because I am already directly connected to thousands of people, truly more like tens of thousands. And through them, I know that just "one degree" away from me are a great deal of people and at two degrees I can reach a very large portion of the world.
This is because in many ways I am a bit of a nexus, my interests, social circles and other networks cross many non-overlapping groups. Furthermore, I have been online a very very long time, and thus know a lot of people who have also been online for quite a while. In addition, my network (just talking about people who I know and are likely to remember me) is very diverse - in terms of ages, geographies, races, educational levels and many other factors. While large portions of it do skew towards the technology sector, I also know many artists, writers, financial people, business people, lawyers, doctors, CTA workers, machinists, horse carriage drivers and many other people.
Have I kept in contact with everyone I "know" - not at all, but I do have quite an active and vibrant network, one which is is growing every day.
To take a few quick examples:
- one of the professors cited in the article wrote a book that very close family friend was a reader of (and fellow professor at Notre Dame)
- Multiple people I know very well are only one degree of connection away from members of Bush's cabinet or staff (one friend of mine was a classmate of John Ashcroft for example)
- A family member has been to a new year's eve party with Madonna (at Madonna's house, also been out for sushi with her while she was filming "A league of one's own")
i.e. just off the top of my head I have a short connection to some of the more difficult to reach people in the world. (I have communicated personally with senior people at Microsoft, another member of a group I am active in used to report to Bill Gates directly - so again a few degree connection to a fairly hard to reach person).
My point is that while I know my own network is unusual, I don't think that I am radically atypical, though I know I have a larger network than most. If you consider the number of people that an average person knows (or is known by) - counting from elementary school, junior high, high school, family, college, and the typical 3 to 5 different jobs, as well as religious groups, summer camps, neighbors, and others, it is not hard to see that most people if really pressed have a network of weak links that is in the thousands of individuals.
From that, consider how many of those are circular networks - i.e. networks that are just a tight bunch of connections with few "outsiders" (consider a commune as an extreme example - the groups of families living there would all be tightly connected, with possibly few if any other currently active connections - however each family member (other than children perhaps) would still have a large network of family and friends from pre-commune days...)
This points to a factor that I am not sure any of the studies have considered tracking - a timeline of connection.
i.e. there is a difference between those members of my network with whom I have communicated in the past week from those in the past month, the past year, and those I have not spoken to in over 2 years (or in extreme cases a decade or more). While all may be part of my network, I would have a harder time communicating with and just locating those with whom I hae ceased being in highly active communication - in many cases I would have to ask for help from either third party resources (the phone book) or from other more active members of my network who may have been in contact with them more recently.
(to illustrate this point, say I wanted to reach Bill and Hillary Clinton. I know that my old next door neighbor is a fellow Rhodes Scholar and at one point in time dated Hillary (before she met Bill), and that he has and is still very active in Democratic politics. However, I also know that they recently moved. So to contact them I would either have to look up their contact info in a phonebook or I might ask my parents who are closer to them for their current contact information.)
8/12/2003 05:49:00 PM
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US Government Graphics - collection of links
US Government graphics link page
A large collection of links to pages of US Government agencies collections of images and graphics, most are in the public domain (though some may be bound by other licenses so as the site says, read each page's disclaimers carefully).
May be a useful resource when I am working on websites and applications for myself and for others.
8/12/2003 02:01:00 PM
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Friday, August 08, 2003
Salon.com Technology | IBM countersues in Linux battle
Salon.com Technology | IBM countersues in Linux battle
Round Two (or three if you add Red Hat's countersuit as well) will be interesting and important to watch this unfold.
8/08/2003 11:56:00 AM
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Thursday, August 07, 2003
Shirky: A Group Is Its Own Worst Enemy
Shirky: A Group Is Its Own Worst Enemy
Looks really interesting - when (and if) my printer is back working, hopefully tomorrow I plan on printing this out and read it in greater detail.
8/07/2003 05:35:00 PM
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jish.nu/about/booklist
jish.nu/about/booklist
I need to sit down and do this type of list...
though mine would be about 7x as large.
At the moment I have about 10 books which are duplicates in search of a new home. About 100 books waiting to be read. And about 700+ books at home, with another 100 or so at my office, and another 400 or so still on shelves or boxes at my parent's home.
Okay so perhaps about 10x his list.
I must say, however, his list is a very good one, a lot on there I have read or want to.
8/07/2003 03:09:00 PM
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Wednesday, August 06, 2003
Google Search: Shannon
Google Search: Shannon
Over the past year I have moved from being somewhere buried in the deep masses of Google, to being the 40th search result in Google for "Shannon" - which I think is pretty cool.
8/06/2003 01:50:00 PM
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Monday, August 04, 2003
The Great Chicago Fire and the Web of Memory: Welcome
The Great Chicago Fire and the Web of Memory: Welcome
My novel has a section set during the Great Fire in Chicago, so when I have time I really need to read over this website and draw from it what I can.
8/04/2003 01:17:00 PM
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Silicon Valley - Dan Gillmor's eJournal - Why I Buy Internet Phone Calling
Silicon Valley - Dan Gillmor's eJournal - Why I Buy Internet Phone Calling
A friend of mine is working on a similar business so I should look over these comments when I have time.
8/04/2003 12:55:00 PM
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Wednesday, July 30, 2003
Bloki weblog for mindecos
Bloki weblog for mindecos
I've been a participant for a while now in MindEcos, here is the newest site related to MindEcos, this looks to become the primary home for MindEcos for the near term at least.
7/30/2003 10:44:00 AM
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Monday, July 28, 2003
Traders and plans
or changes but not bad
(a quick note to myself - Bob Hope died yesterday. I was and am a huge "classic radio" fan, I grew up without a television and unlike my contempories grew up listening to performances on the radio (or tapes of radio shows) so Bob Hope's passing is for me a passing of an era, there are not many stars of classic radio left. And yes, I know that most of the rest of the world remembers Bob Hope for movies, USO shows, and TV shows but for me he and George Burns and other stars of that era are remembered for their radio roles. I only heard a small sampling of their shows, and only at odd hours on the radio growing up, not like people who grew up back in the 20's, 30's, and 40's (and even a bit of the 50's) when radio stations published schedules, and people arranged their day by the radio shows. Now it may almost be impossible to find a radio station schedule, let alone one that lists all of the radio stations in a given area and the "shows" that they broadcast, in many ways Radio is a dying medium)
This weekend I discovered the joys of Trader Joes.
And, to make it even better, Sunday night I was able to share that joy with the woman I care about. She unexpectedly was able to join me for dinner, so we tried a wine and a pasta sauce from Trader Joes. The verdict so far, very good!
7/28/2003 06:25:00 PM
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Caring about Thinking
Caring about Thinking
Andrius' current blog - when I have time I need to catch up on his blog and also add it directly to my links here.
7/28/2003 11:50:00 AM
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Friday, July 25, 2003
anil dash - July 25, 2003 : Many Years of Sucking
anil dash - July 25th, 2003: Many Years of Sucking
Have I mentioned before that I like Anil Dash's style?
Very amusing, and all too true.
7/25/2003 08:05:00 PM
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My weekend plans
or how much has changed just this month
So, as I sit here late on a Friday afternoon, I am looking around my desk at the office and starting to think about what my plans are for this upcoming weekend. I am going to try to get into the office at somepoint this weekend and clean, the piles of "stuff" near and around my desk are getting too big, and there are books which are here at the office which I would prefer to be at home (my signed copy of American Gods for example), too there are books at home which I would prefer to have easily available here at the office (tech reference works, some business books etc).
Thinking about my home, I think that this weekend my goal will be to attack the chaos which is my bedroom. It is not really that bad, though my wire hangers have some rabbit genes (they keep multiplying). My first goal will be to clear the surfaces of my two desks (one too many probably) and recycle some of the items which are no longer functional (my broken monitor specifically). I will then finish putting the desks together so that they are more functional, and shift all of my office supplies to one of the desks.
The other "desk" I think I will convert at least partially into clothing storage, I think it will let me organize my clothes more effectively, and help me clean up my bedroom closet. I'll then look at moving more of my clothes out of my hall closet and into my bedroom.
This may take a while, but the end result will also show me just how much clothing I have that I no longer could imagine wearing (more than I like probably) - I'll donate a large amount of that to a charity and will free up space for other purposes. (thinking ahead to the future, I now may have a very important purpose - having some room for someone else's clothes, at least a change of them... that's such a cool thought to have).
If I get really ambitious, I'll also attack my other closets this weekend. The linen closet in my bathroom would not be a huge project, mostly a lot of folding and trying to figure out something to use to solve the small items getting buried by the big ones problems (i.e. how do I store sheets with pillowcases, or towels with hand towels without losing something, and still also store my extra comforters etc?)
The other major project in front of me is my living room, but that probably requires a second person to help move some of the pieces, so that probably will wait until next weekend when I could have help with the furniture moving... (and other things).
All in all much of my weekend plan is to keep myself busy, to get more of my home in order, to catch up on my reading (more new books keep coming in than I have been finishing books) and to probably try to get some writing done as well, though most likely non-fiction stuff for JigZaw not fiction.
I'm alone this weekend, a wedding out of state is the cause, but it feels different, now instead of it being my normal state, it is no longer my default. Now, I can see that future weekends I will have someone to spend time with (and future weeks as well) - though how much and doing what will vary it is clear that my past months (or even years) of eating most meals alone, of not doing much because it mostly was better with someone else are no longer my normal state.
We're still working out the language, it is all something pretty new for both of us, for now and into the future, we're just going with it, enjoying each moment we have together.
Unlike all of my past, however, this feels amazingly comfortable. I call her, she calls me, we both are clearly interested in spending time with each other. In the past I've never been sure entirely of that. In the past I've often felt that I had to do the asking, the planning, but also that one mistake on my part could ruin everything. With this, it feels much more comfortable, for one, we are both adults and that certainly helps, but more it feels very mutual, we both want to be with the other.
It is really wonderful. It is also, slightly scary but in an entirely good way.
7/25/2003 06:56:00 PM
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Economist.com | Illinois's Senate seat
Economist.com | Illinois's Senate seat
I met Mr. Kathuria last night, and other than being a Republican he seems a viable candidate. I'm hoping to meet with him in the upcoming months and learn more about him, both his business and political interests. If he is truly a fiscal conservative, but not also a social conservative, he would be a marked improvement to our current senator, Peter Fitzgerald. And a Republican, I must unfortantly say, likely has a better chance of being elected than a Democrat in a state wide election here in Illinois.
That said, I would also like to see someone such as Mr. Kathuria elected, especially from someplace like Illinois which may be viewed as "traditional" - it would be a striking statement. Mt. Kathuria's international business interests and high tech focus certainly bias me in his favor, I'll see if I can agree with the rest of his political positions.
7/25/2003 03:15:00 PM
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I, Cringely | The Pulpit - Snapster suggestion
I, Cringely | The Pulpit
Interesting idea from Robert Cringely about a possible legal version of Napster with a potentially viable business model.
I think there are some serious flaws to his model, and some potential legal challenges (for example, it is not clear to me that "backup" copies can legally be distributed around to a high degree, nor that charging for them is completely legal - but the business model makes some intuitive sense.
Further, there are some other serious issues.
1. Why "must" the model be publically traded? Intuitively I would think that a co-op model, which also has shares might work as well (though potentially less profitibaly)
2. How do you determine that someone is a shareholder? (and how do you maintain them as that - if the shares are publically held they can easily sell them, however if the shares are not publically held and the only buyer of the shares it the company itself (the coop model) then this problem goes away.
7/25/2003 12:03:00 PM
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Thursday, July 24, 2003
Salon.com Sex | Craving an oasis
Salon.com Sex | Craving an oasis
A bit wordy (okay, very wordy) but also an important illustration of a point I have tried many times to make to people.
(especially in technical discussions where people insist that they can define all the ways to view and manage data - read this and think about the infinite ways you can interact with the world to see why I disagree with the view of trying to predict all future interactions)
7/24/2003 11:45:00 AM
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Tuesday, July 22, 2003
Bridges and steelworkers
or small sights in the big city
Today has been an odd day. The weather is a bit chilly and the air feels heavy with impending rain, though so far at least, the rain has not arrived.
On my morning bus ride into the Loop for a business meeting, the bus I was on was rerouted, the street ahead of us was closed to traffic. As we approached, I saw why, the bridge, one of the many drawbridges ringing Chicago's Loop was up.
The bus rerouted to a nearby street and crossed on an adjacent bridge, we then turned and returned to the regular route. As we turned, I saw a very unusual sight, the underside of one half of the bridge.
For, you see, just the one half was up in the air, the other half was still lowered across the river. So, unlike a normal bridge opening, when one half blocks your view of the other, this morning I got to see the underbelly of the bridge. A very interesting sight indeed to start the day.
Then, as I entered the offices where my business meeting was, I saw another very unusual and cool sight. Across the street was a high rise building in the midst of being built. This morning, perched on huge steel girders, at nearly the height of the offices I was enterering, were steelworkers rather casually smoking and sitting on the girders taking a short break from their day's labors.
It was nearly exactly like a photo from the early part of the last century, two steelworkers straddling mighty girders perched high above the street. It looked much like a very famous photo I have seen of the building of the Empire State building.
All in all a rather interesting start to the day, and a strong arguement to myself that very soon I need to get a digital camera which I can carry with me at all times to capture such moments.
7/22/2003 01:45:00 PM
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Monday, July 21, 2003
Cookies, Curry, Markets
oh my
So, this weekend was all about the food. I read a fair bit, had a nice visit with my family on Sunday and spent Sunday afternoon on a sales call. But mostly, this weekend was all about the food.
Friday, I made a salad and ate it with with a chicken and apple sausage and some leftover applesauce. Very tasty. Then, instead of going out by myself on a Friday night, I decided to bake, don't ask me why, but I did.
So, I took some dried pears and dried apricots which I had laying around and rehydrated them in some water over low heat on my stove. While they were rehydrating, I made some dough, modifying a recipe for chocolate chip cookies. I took a couple of cups of flour, some brown sugar, 2 eggs, about a half-cup of sugar, cinnimon, and a half-stick of butter (the recipe called for a full stick, but that seemed excessive. I melted the butter and the brown sugar in a saucepan and then poured it into the already mixxed ingrediants. I then mixxed the dough until it "felt right" (hard to explain). I heated the oven to 375 degrees, greased a cookie pan with butter and shaped cookies. On top of each cookie I put a dried pear and at least one dried apricot (on a few cookies just apricots as I ran out of pears). I sprinkled some confectionary sugar on top to form a sugar glaze.
I then baked them for about 20 minutes, cleaning up the kitchen while they baked.
My verdict. Well they are tasty, possibly a bit too thick (may roll them thinner next time) and some baking soda probably would have been a good addition. I'll probably try this again, possibly next weekend.
Saturday, I shopped at the farmer's market, and then returned home and made myself breakfast, fried eggs, some sausage, and half an English muffin toasted on the same pan as the eggs were fried. Very tasty.
Then Saturday evening, I made Chicken Curry. Not my best curry ever but pretty tasty - about a pound of chicken (legs and thighs with bones and skin), a can of potatoes, tomato paste, coconut milk, and lots of spices. First I started with onions and some hot peppers and a bit of oil, cooked until translusent. Then I added some garlic, and the chiicken. Onto the chicken I added powdered ginger, cinnimon, and curry powder. After the chicken had cooked a bit on all sides and was nicely coated with spices. I added the tomato paste, a few tablespoons of canned Thai Red Curry paste, the coconut milk and the potatos. I then turned down the heat to medium and let the whole mixture simmer (covered) while I boiled water to make my starch for the meal, Chinese egg noodles.
The result was very tasty, though a bit milder then some previous versions I have made and the potatos were only so-so - would have been better to use the potatos from the farmer's market but I didn't feel up to the prep work to do that.
I ate the curry with a little bit of hot mango chutney or a bit of Thai chili sauce - both tasted great with it.
Sunday, I had a barbeque with my parents for lunch, we had great hamburgers and corn on the grill, freshly purchased by me at the Farmer's Market on Saturday - very good. Sunday night I had more of the Chicken curry with a small portion of Chinese egg noodles and one leftover ear of corn.
All-in-all a good weekend from a food standpoint, and a lot of fun to be able to cook and enjoy my kitchen again. Though I missed having someone to share my cooking with.
Tonight I'll probably have a small salad with some greens and veggies from the farmer's market, and finish off the chicken curry and the egg noodles. Since there is not a whole lot of the chicken curry left, I may also have one remaining Chicken and Apple sausage - should be a very tasty meal, which I will eat while doing a number of loads of laundry (I live such an exciting life...)
Tomorrow night I'll be meeting friends (well at least one very particular friend....) for a movie in Grant Park. Other than my remaining cookies, I'm not sure what else will be my contribution to the potluck dinner we'll probably be having.
It feels good to be enjoying cooking at home, and to have somoene to cook with and for. I still have more to finish in terms of cleaning and organizing my home, but I am making a lot of progress. This weekend I managed to sort some of my books into a bit more semblance of order - which feels good, though there is much more work to be done.
7/21/2003 01:19:00 PM
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Wednesday, July 16, 2003
Yahoo! News - Sao Tome Government Overthrown While President Away
Yahoo! News - Sao Tome Government Overthrown While President Away
Small news item, but potentially very important. San Tome is one of the few major, mostly untapped oil rich countries in the world. Potentially there is enough wealth in the oil around San Tome to cattapult the few citizens from their current dire poverty (<$250/year average earnings) into some of the richest people in the world. Billions of barrels of oil, about 150,000 citizens - do the math.
It is also a country which has been discussed as possible location for a US military base, it is off the coast of Africa, near to but not a part of Nigeria, and would be a possible logical base of operations for the US, as well as fairly important area likely to face increasing pressure from nearby countries (especially Nigeria).
7/16/2003 05:21:00 PM
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anil dash - "upon the demoise of Netscape"
anil dash - archives
Anil Dash wrote earlier today proposing that Google fund Mozilla. I think this is quite possibly a great idea.
7/16/2003 12:58:00 PM
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Flowers on the table
or what you can do in one very busy evening
My kitchen is clean.
Okay, that's actually a bit of an understatement, not only is my kitchen clean, it is possibly in the best state it has ever been in the entire time I have lived in my condo.
Last night I accomplished the following:
- Did all my dishes and put them away
- Scrubbed floor and all counter surfaces, and santitized them
- Transformed bookcase from being a hazard in my bedroom into shelving in my kitchen
- Removed all misc. bags, boxes etc and cleaned my kitchen table
- Cleaned all surfaces, including the top of my refrigerator, doors, walls etc.
- Took frequently used food and cooking items out of random places and onto shelves on bookcase!
In short, I have nearly the kitchen that I want, now I have just smaller little tasks to do to make it perfect.
- Replace some burnt out lightbulbs above sink
- Add papertowel holder, probably mounted someplace near sink
- Sort through all current kitchen items, throw out or donate unneeded items
- Replenish long term supplies, especially spices
- Get appliances repaired (leak in dishwasher, small annoyances with stove, possible cooling problem with fridge)
- Remove or coverup really ugly wall paper
- Replace cabinet fixings (hinges and handles) with more modern look
I'm sure as the summer continues I'll think of other items which I need, but I now have a great starting point.
Last night I also cleaned my dining room table, removed the leaf from the table to bring it back to a more useable scale for my living room, set up my chess table in a place where it may actually get used, dusted my living room, put up shelves on another bookcase to store the books previously in my bedroom, cleaned in my bedroom as a result of moving the books, and found some items buried away in my closet. I also bought some wine for tonight's dinner.
Tonight I'll have a guest over for dinner, this morning I bought flowers at the farmer's market, they are now on the dining room table. I also bought a loaf of bread fresh from the oven, and some ingrediants for our salad. On my way home this evening I'll pick up some candles and probably pick up a meat dish (though I may wait until she joins me and together we'll buy something from the grocery store across the street).
It feelds amazing to have my home in shape to have a guest over for dinner, I suspect I'll being doing this more and more often.
My next project is my living room, I have finished for the most part with my dining area, though there are some small further things that I want to do. Next I will be moving one of my big bookcases across the room, building (or buying) a tv/stereo stand, dealing with the still too large pile of unsorted boxes of papers and other items, putting together the chair currently in pieces, and dealing with my current futon (I've seen identical ones available now for about $100 - might be the way to go until I can get the couch I really want...)
With the living room finished, I'll turn to three other major projects. My bedroom and the at least one too many desks which I have in there at the moment (can I transform one of them into clothing storage? This thought just occured to me, possibly one of them with the right boxes/shelf storage devices might work for storing much of my clothes!). My closets, both getting rid of the hangers which keep multipliying, getting rid of clothes which no longer fix and I no longer wear (or would want to wear), and organizing the storage spaces in them. This includes my linen closet in the bathroom, my two clothing closets in the hall and in my bedroom, and the "misc" closet in my front hall - the later being the biggest project of them all. The third project is related to the second, it is going through the contents of my front hall closet, paring them down where possible, and making them useful - i.e. getting my golf items available, my photographic items available, my bike repaired and stored effectively, the many unneeded boxes, broken items etc thrown away (or donated) and shelves installed and put together.
Then when the dust literally settles, I'll take out of storage my art items and display them!
It is looking very possible by the end of the summer.
(I have to thank Bravo for the show which I watched much of last night, "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy" - lots of fun and somehow inspiring as I cleaned. It features five gay men transforming one straight man - improving his grooming, his fashion, his cooking, and his living area - with rather phenomenal transformations all done in a single day! Lots of fun, great banter, and good inspiration as I was cleaning and transforming my home.)
7/16/2003 12:36:00 PM
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Tuesday, July 15, 2003
BlogCoop continued
To continue and elaborate a bit from my previous post.
I have had a chance to exchange some emails with Mark Covey about BlogCoop and he has answered a few of my questions/concerns. First, his idea is to vary the compensation from the ownership stake - i.e. while all owners will be "equal", compensation will not be (or at least need not be).
I think this is more workable, but raises a number of interesting questions and concerns, it is also not in some ways all that radical of a new thing. Further, it is different than current day Co-ops. In the Co-ops of which I am a member, all members are equal in some regards - i.e. getting the same benefits of ownership such as discounts, access to services etc. BUT each member is a shareholder, there is a minimum investment required to join, but then voting and some financial benefits (dividends) are paid out in proportion to the number of shares which you own - i.e. some owners have more votes and get bigger dividends.
The two co-ops which I am a member of are a grocery coop and a bookstore coop here in Chicago. I have not been an active member of either for the past few years as I no longer live really near either store, but I am still a member. In each case there is a financial benefit tied to one's usage of the stores - i.e. a discount returned at the end of the year based on that year's purchases. There is also a dividend paid to all shareholders when there is a profit (frequently paid in stock if you like).
A key difference between a share based co-op and a more typical corporation is that generally a co-op is not publically traded, and the shares are not easily trandferable, that said, the co-op itself is obligated to buy back your shares (generally after some initial limit, usually after holding them for at least one year).
The Blogcoop model suggests that all "owners" will be equal - i.e. will have the same vote (or votes depending on the system used) and will get the same benefits of membership/ownership except crucially for compensation.
In contrast, "compensation" for the two co-ops I am a member of is handled like any other business, the employees are paid a salary which comes out of the earnings of the business. The members share in the profits and recieve discounts or other benefits from membership (bulk purchasing, special orders, monthly sales etc.). Crucially you do not have to be a member of either business to do business with the business - i.e. the members get profits on the sales of goods (and sometimes services) to non-members, as well as the "profit" on sales to members. This is a crucial element in growing a long term successful business, having a source of outside of the group resources.
In any case an interesting idea which I have shared with a number of the groups I am actively involved in. I look forward to their reactions and to seeing how the idea grows.
7/15/2003 01:41:00 PM
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