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I’m quite fond of my Kindle. Sure, the design’s a little bonkers; and it’s a wee bit awkward. That aside, it is easy to read, easy to use, and mine happens to be loaded with books I want to read.
Moreover, it’s taken a great weight off my shoulders. I like to read when I’m travelling. As a result, I tend to carry lots of lots of books along for the ride. For unfathomable reasons, one book is not enough. I must have at least two or three, sometimes more. Consequently, I end up schlepping somewhere around three-point-two million pounds of books to the far corners of the world.
It’s a proven fact that books get heavier the longer they remain in your luggage. It’s something to do with gravity, airplanes, hotel food, relativity, dirty socks, quantum mechanics, and the amount of missing dark matter in the universe. Perhaps, too, the TSA is involved. I can’t quite explain it.
Nevertheless, somehow — depending on the number of books you’re carrying and the length of your trip — they get heavier. It’s one of the true mysteries of the universe, right in my briefcase.
For me, the Kindle has solved this problem. I’ve cut my beastly book burdens down to one pound. I do still, however, manage to clutter up my briefcase with lots of other stuff, but the book weight has definitely diminished. Sadly though, the addition of my Kindle contributed to what I call “the YAB epidemic” (Yet Another Brick). The Kindle added one more power brick to my ever-expanding multiplicity of power bricks; another brick for the wall. Continue reading Power Tactics
I blame Santa. It was he that started me down this road.
It was he that surprised me with a shiny new Nikon D200 a few years back. Smart, he was, as it happily mated with all my old Nikon lenses, lenses that were pretty much gathering dust in my closet. He eased me in to the dark world of digital photography. And, at first I was happy, wandering the night streets of Brussels, amazed at the versatility and just down-right fun of modern digital photography. But soon, I wanted more — more lenses, fancy carrying cases, tripods, books, and filters; batteries and bling.
The birthday fairy — an enabler working in cahoots with Santa — served only to fan my addiction. She delivered an amazing piece of glass; a Nikon 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6G VR zoom lens. Oh my. With this combo, I’m almost superfluous in the process. You want a lens, this is the one. One lens to rule them all, One lens to find them, One lens to bring them all and in the darkness bind them…
Between the camera and the glass, I need only twirl a few dials and pretend like I know the difference between aperture and exposure, mutter a few incantations about depth of field, and… voila! I have pictures, pretty pictures. I was caught, before I knew it. I’m now carting Nikky the Nikon, everywhere, buying her presents and shiny bling. And, her latest bling is a marvelous thing — automatic geo-tagging. Continue reading No matter where you go, there you are…
Connectivity is dangerous. The fricative sounds of German wafting through the open windows of today’s hotel room reminded me of that fact, reminded me of a misadventure long past, a memory from a time when connectivity took a modem and a phone line. Sometimes it took the diligent and careful application of alligator clips. Hotel phones were, and still are, nothing but trouble.
That time, in that past hotel, things went south. I had tried to look innocent. I failed. “Monsieur!” said the hotel’s night manager as he pounded loudly on my door. “Monsieur, he repeated as I opened the door, “is there is a problem with your telephone, Mein Herr?”
The switch from French to German seemed ominous. Moreover, he looked ominous. He looked like he had spent his formative years on a diet of steroids and fondue, while bench pressing Tony Soprano. “Whoops,” I thought, “this can’t be good.” Articulate and ever ready with smooth repartee, I replied with a set of universally understood monosyllables. “Uh, err, ah, umm,” I said.
Gathering my wits about me, I continued: “Uh… nope, err… Nein. Ich bin… err.” At that I had exhausted what I remembered of my high-school German. All I could think of was “Ich bin ein Berliner.” That wouldn’t work. Wrong country, wrong era; moreover (urban legends about jelly donuts aside) I am no John Kennedy. Giving up, I continued in English, once again adopting my best Midwestern silly grin, “Can I have a late check-out?” I said. Continue reading Les Liaisons Dangereuses
It’s a long, uphill slog from the BART station on Market Street to San Francisco’s Grace Cathedral at the tip-top of Nob Hill. I was winded and red-faced when I reached the top and slipped into the nave looking for a seat. The place was packed, but I managed to plop into an empty space, on the far left, two pews back from the crossing, a fantastic seat. (There are always single slots in a world that travels in couples.) This particular evening, even the transepts — the left and right arms of a cruciform cathedral — were filled to the brim. People were spilling out into the aisles, only to be swept back every few minutes by fire-marshal fearing staff.
I’ll tell you now, I was mighty glad to see cushions on the pews. My ecumenical sorties into various churches and cathedrals don’t include memories of cushions. I admit it, when I walked up the aisle, I briefly succumbed to a moment of irrational fear; a fear of ass-numbing angst combined with childhood memories of church-induced narcolepsy. More so, I’m usually not one for choral groups, nor cathedrals for that matter – unless, of course, they have flying buttresses (the cathedrals, not the choral groups.)
I am quite fond of flying buttresses. I think I just like saying the words “flying buttress” — it has such a nice ring to it. Unfortunately, they’re not something that comes up often in casual conversation. It’s a shame. Someday, I’ll get to work it into a conversation. “Nice flying buttress you’ve got there,” I’ll say. “I dig the arches, man.” Continue reading The Harmonic Resonance of Grace
The failure statistic is often cited, usually with a moan and a wail. It goes like this: 30, 40, or 50 percent of all IT projects go bad. The rest — the ones that actually succeed — well, they go “slightly bad too.” At least some of them do. In the end, nobody’s happy. Jobs are lost, heads roll, teeth gnash. The statistics are real enough, by the way, although they are often cited incorrectly. I fault leadership and the incessant mixing up of means and ends.
Here are the facts. The original source of those numbers is a 1994 report by the Standish Group called the CHAOS REPORT. The report said this about IT projects (and I’m paraphrasing not plagiarizing):
- 31% of [IT] projects are cancelled before completion,
- 88% are over deadline or over budget or both,
- The costs of such overruns are usually (at least) double original estimates
If you think those numbers are sort of long in the tooth, how about these from 2004.
- 18 percent of all IT project out and out fail,
- 53 percent are “challenged” (in other words went awry in some way),
- Only 29 percent actually “succeed.”
These were updated in 2004. Unfortunately, the damn researchers rearranged the categories, so it’s actually impossible to compare the numbers. Continue reading A Means to an End
Naming an epoch using the superlative prefix of “post” — as in post-industrial, or post-modern, or the particularly unsatisfying post-millennial — is the one true indicator that we haven’t a clue. When I hear it, I tend to silently grumble the opening lines from A Tale of Two Cities:
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to heaven, we were all going direct the other way. — In short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.
Wisely or foolishly, I think of this particular moment as a “time in between” – we’re no longer where we were and not yet where we’re going — both an age of foolishness and an age of wisdom.
It’s a time of great shifts; the rules of the great game are changing and the players are all different. Hell, I’m not even sure it’s the same game. The world may be “flat,” as Tom Friedman says, but it’s also very very bumpy.
Ok, “ho-hum,” you say. It’s no news to you that the forces of globalization, instantaneous and ubiquitous communications, and unparalleled technological innovation are tearing markets apart, changing global dynamics, and redefining almost every aspect of our lives — but, what may be news is that we “ain’t seen nothing yet.” There’s a revolution brewing in this epoch of incredulity. Continue reading The Epoch of Incredulity
I think I was eight when I read my first “real” book — of course, that’s not counting comics, Willy Waddle, or books designed to be chewed. The book was Arthur Ransome’s Swallows and Amazons, a proper book; a marvelous story for a boy who spent his days poking at squiggly-wiggly things in the tide pools of Cadboro Bay. I’m sure I still have it somewhere.
I love books — the look and feel, even the smell. They’re almost perfect: relatively portable, random-access, and — treated properly — they’ll last a hell of a long time. If you get tired of them, you can give them away, sell them on eBay, take them to a used-book store, or burn them for kindling, al la Fahrenheit 451… They look grand on bookshelves. They’re almost perfect. The do have a few draw backs:
- Books (and paper) are heavy — especially those damn 4-inch thick computer books.
- Books are not very portable — small quantities are fine, but if you try to take ten or so on vacation with you, it’s a literal drag. Despite their catchy name, Few “Pocket Books” will actually fit in a pocket — or if they do, you look kind of stupid.
- Paper takes up a lot of space — especially those damn user guides, administrator guides, and installation manuals I print and bind in 3-ring notebooks.
- Printed materials tend to “expire” — Today’s newspaper is worth about a dollar, yesterday’s is suitable for wrapping fish. (Of course, tomorrow’s newspaper, if you had it today, would be worth a fortune.)
- Repurposing is difficult — Transmutation costs are outrageous, either lead to gold, or paper to digital. Screw OCR, it’s not good enough, ever.
- Paper is expensive — There a “tree-cost” and an environmental cost. The manufacture and bleaching of paper is horrendous. Stand downwind of a pulp mill and breath deep. You’ll know what I mean.
- The print publishing process is arcane — the economies discourage risk and tend to favor existing authors and large publishers, to the determent of the small publisher or aspiring writers.
In late 2007, Jeff Bezos introduced the Kindle. I’m not sure he’ll be remembered in the same breath as Herr Hoffmann Johannes Gensfleisch zur Laden zum Gutenberg (whew). At least his name is shorter. The Kindle is, nevertheless, revolutionary. Continue reading Digital Pulp Fiction
A few days ago, a reader of this humble blog asked if I knew a way to embed “Skype Presence” in a SharePoint Web Part.
I didn’t. But, I was intrigued. (That’s a bad sign… as it usually means I’m going to stay up until the wee hours.)
It turns out to be pretty easy-breezy, with a few caveats. I’ll explain those below. It’s easy because lots of stuff today is “widgetized.” A few minutes on the Skype site turned up some Skype web-widgets—– basically HTML code one can embed on a blog or web page — that gave me what I needed: HTML that would display Skype “presence” by Skype name (what I call a SkypeID).
Realize, I’m no code slinger, but it looked to me that one could simply modify the HTML, adding in different Skype names, and then stack it up in a CEWP. So that’s what I did. Continue reading Skype Me, Dr. Memory!
I woke up when I heard the snap, crackle, pop. A tree had fallen in the woods and I had heard it. Whatever the philosophical implications, the actual effect was that my power went out.
“Damn,” I muttered, shaking off a sense of déjà vu. It was early morning, Sunday, December 23. The winds were howling — gusts to 90 mph, or so the weather channel had predicted the evening before. Trees were snapping and cracking like Rice Krispies. “Damn,” I muttered, shaking off a sense of déjà vu. The earlier the hour, the more limited my vocabulary. “Damn,” I muttered.
I glanced at the clock. Now on battery — having achieved true cosmic Zen harmony with its VCR brethren — it was happily flashing 12:00, 12:00, 12:00. “Damn,” I muttered, switching my gaze to my backup alarm clock. It read 7:30 am.
It’s was a Sunday, the day before Christmas Eve, and I was without electricity. I thought to myself: “now, you couldn’t pick a better day to challenge the fading infrastructure of a once-great industrial state.” I then told myself to shut-up and stop being so pedantic — fading infrastructure, indeed. “Damn.” Continue reading Blogging by Candlelight
 I learned of the game the hard way. Sometimes it’s called “Follow the Lady” — you probably know it as “Three-card Monte.” It depends on the art of misdirection, distraction and illusion, and just a little sleight of hand. And now it seems, it’s played every night on the evening news. Even “The Daily Show” (or for now “A Daily Show”) seems to have been taken in by the artful dealer; fooled by the throw of the cards; fooled into casting the contests one by one, and ignoring the real story.
“What,” You say, “you don’t know the game?” Well, it’s easy… easy to play, easy to win. Step in a little closer…, trust me… Step right up, everyone’s a winner!
I learned the game when I worked a carnival one summer. Nope, I wasn’t “a carnie.” I was just a “greenie,” cheap summer labor. Being a carnie, well, that’s something you’re born too.
I was an innocent — called “a new” — maybe a half-step above the mooks and marks that meandered on the midway. Even now, I can sometimes catch a scent of that past, when the wind blows right. It’s scent that casts me back to those long days and thick summer nights, Kansas in late August. Continue reading Follow the Lady
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