Year: 2005

How To Deal With Change

Post ImageSpeaking of change, Keith over at the wonderful To-Done! blog had this to say today:

Even small changes, like a rip-roarin’ summer, can throw us out of balance. Sometimes it’s as simple as a routine, or good habit, being broken. If enough time has passed and enough disruption has occurred, it can be hard to get back on track. Part of a maintaining a good work/life balance is taking a break now and again. The problem lies in that sometimes, a break is such a disruption you can lose momentum in various aspects of your life.

In my experience the best way to get back to normal (or what feels like normal) is to take a holistic approach as opposed on taking on one aspect of your life at a time.

He then outlines the holistic approach to handling change. Of the nine points Keith outlines, I’m currently doing three and occasionally four (clean and order your living and work areas is starting to be regular, but not yet). Looks like I have a little work to do!

Read: To-Done!

Changes at Light Speed

Post ImageLife is funny sometimes. One day, you’re just working away and things are pretty much status quo. The next day, you’re registered for school and your brother arrives in Edmonton! At least, that’s what happened to me in the last two days.

It wasn’t too long ago that I was still unsure of whether or not I was going back to school this semester. I feel like a break, like I don’t want to be in school. I gave it quite a bit of thought, and had some good reasons for just working for the semester, but then I started talking with an advisor and reality hit me like a brick. Our post secondary school system, which we pay like $500 per course for, isn’t really setup to allow taking a break right in the middle. The University seems to want you coming back, spending the money – imagine that!

I flirted with the idea of graduating with a general science degree and just a minor in Computing Sciences as I only needed one more course to do that, but I decided against it. I am going to try and finish what I started, the Specialization in Computing Sciences with a Minor in Business. So I’m now registered in three classes, meaning I’m once again a full time student.

At the same time, I found out that my brother was coming to Edmonton to attend Centre High this year. Apparently the high school in Inuvik was deemed unsafe, as the majority of the building’s pilings are rotting. So in what was probably the fastest turnaround time ever, the decision was made for Tom to come down and live with my grandparents, just as Kim did last year. Kim and I picked him up from the airport tonight, and tomorrow he registers for classes (a little late, just like me). I’ve created a photoset for Tom’s arrival in Edmonton, so you can see the initial three pictures here.

I’ve got to get Tom blogging now! Kim has started once again – she posted today.

Upgrade to Web 2.5

Post ImageI really like the idea of “the Web as a platform”, an idea that has been termed “Web 2.0” and has become pretty widespread. While definitions vary, I rather like this one (from Richard MacManus and Joshua Porter’s “Web 2.0 for Designers“):

This may sound like we’re in the Matrix, but in the words of Amazon.com CEO Jeff Bezos, “Web 2.0… is about making the Internet useful for computers.”

I think in the longrun that by making the Internet useful for computers, we can make it even more useful for humans. At least that should be the goal. Richard MacManus has an excellent collection of descriptions if you want more detail.

There are a ton of so-called “Web 2.0 companies” getting lots of love from the geeks in the crowd for being forward thinking and embracing this new idea of how to create web applications. Not sure which companies I’m talking about? Think Flickr, del.icio.us, 43Things, Google Maps, and A9 just to name a few. All of them offer an API, and so they make themselves a platform. These platforms have spawned some pretty cool services, like HousingMaps, Mappr, Colr Pickr, Cheap Gas, and many others. Very cool stuff.

Web 2.5

The problem with most of the Web 2.0 stuff floating around right now is that it relies on the browser. If Web 2.0 is about relinquishing control, why are all the current examples and mashups trapped inside the web browser? Seems pretty backward for such a forward thinking idea to me. And yes there’s the argument that creating a web page makes the application independent of the platform – it’s not tied to Windows or Mac or Linux. Yet with all this Web 2.0 goodness, I can’t help but wonder where the rich clients are? (There are lots of reasons to want a rich client, which I have written about in the past.) Do we have to settle for a thin client just to take advantage of this new “web as a platform” methodology? If that’s the case, it’s not as great as I thought!

If Web 2.0 is about creating a platform, then Web 2.5 is about creating a platform that can extend beyond the browser. Flickr’s API includes support for SOAP and XML-RPC, so there’s no reason that it couldn’t be used by rich client applications on Windows (for example) without having to use the browser. And what about those services that only offer a REST api or otherwise make it difficult to use outside the browser? Well then they aren’t Web 2.5 ready, are they? 🙂

Web 2.0 has the potential to take the Internet to the next level, and it many ways it already has. And while it’s still very early in the grand scheme of things, I can’t help but wonder if we’re going to get trapped by the thin client. So please, platform developers and mashup makers, upgrade to Web 2.5!

Kazaa is Dead

Post ImageActually, Kazaa has been dead for a very long time in my eyes, but now it’s official:

An Australian court ruled on Monday that the popular file-sharing network Kazaa violated Australian music copyrights and ordered the company to modify its software to help prevent it.

Sharman issued a statement after the ruling saying: “In the judgment handed down today, both parties have had a win, although neither side has had a complete victory. Sharman Networks is obviously disappointed that we have not been completely successful. But we will appeal those parts of the decision where we were not successful and are confident of a win on appeal.”

Yeah, I don’t think so. Look what happened to Napster after it was ordered to modify it’s software to prevent illegal sharing of copyrighted materials – dead quick. There’s no way Kazaa will recover from this.

Not that it matters! Thanks to BitTorrent, Kazaa has been waiting for that final nail in the coffin for quite some time. Goodbye Kazaa, I won’t miss you. In fact, I’d be super happy if users couldn’t download the crappy, adware-laden software any more, as it would save me the trouble of having to remove it when I do a consulting job.

Read: New York Times

Podcasting: The Next Big Thing

Post ImageI have been reading John C. Dvorak for a long time, and while I don’t always agree, I do today. Here’s what John had to say in his latest opinion piece:

There is no doubt in my mind that podcasting is not only here to stay but will also shortly threaten established media broadcast systems. It’s not so much that they will all be destroyed by homebrew networks, but podcasts will be taking away just enough listeners to be a major concern.

There’s something particularly interesting about the piece. John wasn’t always banging the podcasting drum, as he points out:

Before I go on I should mention that initially I was skeptical about podcasting because it’s in an arena filled with flotsam. It’s not like TV, with 500 stations and nothing on; it’s like radio, with 50,000 stations and nothing on. Or at least nothing you can find.

Once he became involved with podcasting himself via TWIT, once he tried it out, he came around. That’s pretty representative of podcasting in my mind. Sometimes hard to explain, but once you try it, you just get it.

Read: PC Magazine

Google Wallet?

Post ImageThis is another one of those rumors that just will not die. I wonder if it’s going to turn out to be true, just like Google Talk was. Here’s the latest evidence to suggest that Google might be entering the online payment business:

Gary spotted a job opening (and here) for a “Fraud Operations Director, Merchant Payment Solutions” position at Google. Google already has people that look into click fraud issues with ads, so this seems like something different. We know that Google’s working on some type of payment system that’s apparently been dubbed Google Wallet. Perhaps this job is related to that? And is the system a rival to PayPal? No, said Google earlier this year.

Unlike Google Talk, I am eagerly awaiting Google’s payment system (if it really does exist). PayPal is far and away the best service available, and is incredibly entrenched, so I’d be interested to see what Google can bring to the table. And no, I don’t think anyone who currently supports PayPal would jump ship to Google Wallet – more likely, they’d support both.

Read: John Battelle

Locking gas caps!

Post ImageHow can you tell that gas prices are far too high? Well, you might spit coffee all over the dash when you drive up to the pump and see the price, or you might be checking prices on one of those converters that makes your car burn restaurant grease as fuel. Or, you might even be ordering a locking gas cap:

The word from Pittsburgh is that auto parts suppliers are rapidly selling out of locking gas caps, which were originally invented in the 30s because of gas thefts during the Great Depression. Buyers are reporting their gas tanks have been siphoned, or that they want to head off potential siphoning due to ever-rising gas prices. Some stores are having difficulty getting more units in stock from manufacturers.

There was a similar little article in today’s Dose too. Are people really siphoning gas, or is this a little bit of Pimp My Ride? I mean gas prices are so high, what’s another few dollars on a locking gas cap right?

Read: Engadget

Predicting Katrina

Post ImageNow that the blame game is well underway in the United States and especially in New Orleans, it’s interesting to see who predicted Katrina and who did not. Surely someone must have known it was coming right? In fact, lots of people did, including Brendan Loy:

One of the earliest and perhaps clearest alarms about Hurricane Katrina’s potential threat to New Orleans was sounded not by the Weather Channel or a government agency but by a self-described weather nerd sitting on a couch in Indiana with a laptop computer and a remote control.

“At the risk of being alarmist, we could be 3-4 days away from an unprecedented cataclysm that could kill as many as 100,000 people in New Orleans,” Brendan Loy, who is 23 and has no formal meteorological training, wrote on Aug. 26 in his blog, irishtrojan.com. “If I were in New Orleans, I would seriously consider getting the hell out of Dodge right now, just in case.”

I think it’s pretty interesting that in 2005, someone can make a prediction like that and post it to the Internet for all to see. Unfortunately, this also highlights a current shortcoming of the blogosphere – finding interesting and meaningful posts as soon as they are created is still difficult at best.

Read: New York Times

You know you're a student when…

I just got back from setting up my sister’s computer in her new place. And she cooked supper too, thanks Kim! We had chicken and Lipton Sidekicks, which of course require that you add water, two cups to be exact. We realized that Kim doesn’t have any measuring cups, so at first we didn’t know what to do! Do we just guess? Fill it up til it looks good?

After a few minutes, we found the solution. A student may or may not have measuring cups in his or her place, but almost all students have shot glasses! Sure enough, Kim had a couple two ounce shot glasses (eight fluid ounces in a cup). Problem solved 🙂

Notes for 9/4/2005

Little late on this one, but better late than never right?

  • I rediscovered tonight how much I like Caesars. So yummy!
  • Kim has returned to Edmonton and moved into residence at MacEwan.
  • From “The Art of Demotivation”: You can do anything you set your mind to when you have vision, determination, and an endless supply of expendable labor.
  • I’ve still got to get my Dad’s new blog skin up and running, though I have successfully upgraded everything to Community Server (though the old site is still live).
  • I’m becoming a total wiki-convert. I really am quite taken with Instiki.
  • The last week has been unique in that I don’t think I looked at Google News very much, maybe once or twice. Instead, I read mostly blogs and I don’t feel out of the loop.
  • I ran into a friend from junior high on Whyte Ave on Friday night, who I hadn’t seen since I last lived in Inuvik in grade 9. I very much doubt she’s reading this, but you never know, so hello Jill!
  • Happy Birthday Alberta!