Who Moved My Brain?

Merlin Mann, of 43 Folders, has posted an inspirational presentation on managing your own time. Brilliant. See http://www.43folders.com/2008/08/14/who-moved-my-brain.

Holiday Book Report

We just returned from a short week's family holiday to La Gomera, an island near Tenerife in the Canary Islands. It was a terrific holiday very far from the normal "chaos" of the Canary Islands. Other than looking at the geology (lots of volcanoes!), we did nothing other than lounge by the poolside, tennis, eating terrific meals, and reading. I was able to read seven books over the week.

Charlie Wilson's War, by George Crile. As stated by the Economist on the cover of the paperback, "gripping". It provided me a completely different perspective on events in the US and Afghanistan during the occupation by the USSR in the 1980's.

The New Cold War, by Edward Lucas. This is an account of Russia's drive to autocracy over the last ten years since the fall of the USSR.

How Doctors Think, by Jerome Groopman, M.D. I bought this book by "accident" on Amazon, thinking that I was ordering another book. Despite that, this is a terrific read which gave me terrific insght about how medicine really works.

The Man Who Ran the Moon, by Piers Bizony. I grew up with the beginning of the US space programe (I wish I still had all the NASA brochures that I sent away for). This book tells the story of making NASA from the perspective of James Webb, the first administrator. The book is a pure political history of the creation of NASA and the space programme.

The Atomic Bazaar, by William Langewiesche. I had read some of this book already in articles written by Mr. Langewiesche and published in The Atlantic Magazine. However, in book form the whole topic of the drift of nuclear weapons through the world is a gripping and unending story. I read this book after reading "Charlie Wilson's War". The pair of books describe essentially the same thread, with little overlap, relations between the USA and Pakistan with many learnings which help me in a tiny way understand more about today's world and where we are heading.

The Hot Topic, by Gabrielle Walker an Sir David King. I had the opportunity to meet Sir David at a dinner of The Scottish Oil Club in 1994. Following his retirement from being the Chief Scientist for HM Government (UK), he's written a terrific book to set out the problems and propose solutions for climate change.

Why Things Break, by Mark E. Eberhart. Dr. Eberhart is a professor of chemistry and geochemistry at the Colorado School of Mines. This book is a biographical journey of his own discoveries during his childhood, formal education, and professional life learning how "things break". I was particularly struck by his discovery that in today's litigious world, people "expect" things to not break—ever.

With Speed and Violence, by Fred Pearce. Mr. Pearce is another author that I had the opportunity to meet a few years ago. He writes regularly for New Scientist magazine on climate change and the environment. This is a very engaging book which presents what we know, and don't know, about climate change and the potential for "tipping points" to bring on abrupt climate change.

 

Pakistani Gun Market

YouTube, and video sites like it, continue to impress me as the alternative to traditional television broadcasting. I grew up in the 50's and 60's in USA when television was created. I'm now witnessing the birth of its successor.

This video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nGlHgeqWLFc) is a fascinating tour of a gun market in Western Pakistan on the historic Khyber Pass.

Desktop Searching Tool

Wow. I justified to myself to get myself a new laptop. The family had a need for another in the family—to support my wife in her college career. I had my eye on the Sony TZ series. While absurdly expensive it is just what I want (small, light, long battery life, full-featured).

As part of the journey to that machine setup and running (it takes weeks to get a new laptop setup!), hesitated installed Google Desktop Search. And I never liked Microsoft's search tool either, even on Vista. I subscribe to James Fallows's blog (a writer best known for his work for The Atlantic), and he mentioned his supreme satistfaction with X1. See http://jamesfallows.theatlantic.com/archives/2007/12/more_yuletide_cheer_software_d.php.

I trust Mr. Fallows. I've been reading his work for years. He's on my list of people I'd love to have dinner with some day. So I downloaded the trial version of X1. It's terrific. They will get my $50 license fee.

Google's Gmail Spam Filter is Suddenly Too Aggressive

 
 

I forward incoming mail to my home/business account to Google's Gmail so that I can easily access copies of my mail while travelling. This avoids me having to set up remote access to the mail server inside the firewall.

 

Worked well until this week when most of the forwarded mail received by Google is identified as "spam" and moved into their spam folder. I don't have a clue about what changed. I get "tons" of spam mail direct into the Google account simply because it exists. But I don't understand why all of the sudden there are so many false positives. And I don't understand why I don't seem to have any settings to change to help fix it.

 

I guess I will stop using this approach.,

Out of Control Pig Disease in China

Today's Washington post covers the story of a devastating disease of pigs in China. "

"The Chinese government has admitted that the swine deaths amount to an epidemic but contends that the situation is under control."

Given their skills managing SARS and choosing to paint toys with lead paint, this is not good for the world.

We need To Think About Value-Add When We Create Jobs

The Scotsman reports today that 40 jobs will be lost due to ending of tolls on the Forth Road Bridge (http://news.scotsman.com/edinburgh.cfm?id=1352572007). I do hope all these people will shortly find more rewarding employment elsewhere. I also applaud removing these tolls as I can't begin to think of any good reason why it makes economic sense to continue to incur the toll-collection costs considering the marginal value-add of the tolls themselves.

Bias of the BBC

As a resident of the UK and a BBC license-fee payer, I have the privilege of enjoying the full resources of the BBC on television, radio, and increasingly on the Internet and my iPod. It is a tremendous resource and I do not wish it to disappear anytime soon, despite the not-insignificant annual cost for the license. At the same time, over the years I have grown more irritated when I notice obvious biasness in the BBC news reports. Sometimes they just don't know what they are talking about—or maybe it's me? I can't have missed that much in my life to believe those assertions by the BBC report which clashes so much with my understanding of the world. It therefore is somewhat reassuring when I read how the BBC itself is aware of that bias (to what extent is still a mystery) and that it's written about. See "Confessions of a BBC Liberal" in today's Sunday Times, authored by the person who wrote "Yes, Minister".

Mobile Phones Causing Bees to Disappear?

The Independent, bastion of outstanding and unbiased British reporting, reports in today's paper the assertion that mobile phones might be the root cause of the disappearing bees. See http://news.independent.co.uk/environment/wildlife/article2449968.ece.

"The theory is that radiation from mobile phones interferes with bees' navigation systems, preventing the famously homeloving species from finding their way back to their hives. Improbable as it may seem, there is now evidence to back this up."

There is a serious issue with bees disappearing. We must have bees to survive as a species.

Of course mobile phones wiping out bees will be a world-changing discovery if this is to be proven. At the same time, what is so special about mobile phone radiation? We have had radio transmissions originating from our planet for over a hundred years, and bees have survived over that period. We have been bombarded by radiation originating from space since day one of the universe. Bees have survived that.

What is different about mobile phones to be worthy of this accusation?

Samba Domain Control in Fedora Core 6

I found I needed to upgrade the server from Red Hat 7 (or 8) to run a more contemporary version of Linux. Main reason is that the machine running Red Hat simply refused to restart after replacing the LAN card. I simply wanted to upgrade from 10 mbs to 100 mbs. That led down a long and tortuous path to build a new server, based on Fedora Core 6.

Everything seemed to get installed and started just fine: Sendmail, Apache, Samba file shares, etc. However, getting Samba to act as a domain login controller just would not work. I'm convinced there is a bug. I guess I will try to collect the information in the logs and send it off to the Samba developers.

SSL Email in Python?

I've figured out how to send email via a Python script using the email module. But I find how to setup an SSL connection which is required to use the Gmail SMTP server. Anybody know?

Proprietary is Not Necessarily Secret!

The term "proprietary" should mean "something that is owned by someone". Even people who create software (or hardware) that then license under what they consider "open" and therefore non-proprietary licenses are kidding themselves. They own it. They created it. They chose to license it. Even after licensing it, they *probably* still own it (unless they gave up ownership in the license).

Proprietary does not mean secret, non-open, or anything like that ... despite that, I agree that's how the word seems to be now used. I guess it's ok that words evolve, but the definition of the word "proprietary" has evolved faster than it should given that this evolution has confused the topic of software licensing.

CERIAS Weblogs � Vulnerability disclosure grace period needs to be short, too short for patches

CERIAS Weblogs � Vulnerability disclosure grace period needs to be short, too short for patches

This is a terrific article which presents numerical analysis in the assessment of risk. So rare these days.

Google Reader

First I was reading the web. Then blogs arrived. Then I found it useful to read blogs via Newsgator inside of Microsoft Project. Now, I've discovered Google Reader, to read blogs. Terrific.

Quiet PC

I got tired of the hurricane noise in my den. I ordered a new "quiet" computer case from Quiet PC (Antec P150). Terrific case. Terrific company to specialise in such environmentally friendly products!

Fantastic Book on Microsoft Project

There are a number of books out there on Microsoft Project. I've run across one (and how I found this I can't remember) which is the book for project managers who use Microsoft Project to read.

"Dynamic Scheduling with Microsoft Office project 2003", by Eric Uyttewaal, ISBN 1-932159-45-2.

As Harold Kerzner says in the Foreward, "this book will convince you that project management can be done more efficiently and effectively using scheduling software". This book tells you how to do it with Microsoft Project.

Steve Yegge on how Google Works

Steve writes a very long piece on how he sees Google running, as an insider. He works there as a developer. The piece is not really about Agile Development, despite the title.

His world in Google is so different from others, that we can't help but be challenged to think differently about our own world and how to take some ideas from Google's world.

Adobe Acrobat 8 has built-in Web Conferencing

Now this is interesting.  See http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobatpro/ where "Enable users of Adobe Reader® software (version 7.0 or 8) to participate in shared reviews.Use the Start Meeting button to collaborate in real-time with the new Adobe Acrobat Connect line of products." 

It is likely that users of Adobe have not yet experienced web conferencing, and using this "safe" option could be their introduction.

I'm not sure that all products need to have built-in web conferencing, but it's clear that only a very small minority of the world has yet to experience it.

Skidmore Owings and Merrill

While at university studying civil engineering in the 70's, I had visions of someday working at SOM (Skidmore Owings and Merrill).  I didn't want to be an architect and preferred the engineering and business side of big building projects; but the thought of being involved with the creation of such lovely things was a goal. 

I ended up finding that I didn't really "get" structural engineering as much as I "got" fluid mechanics, so my career took a turn towards other directions.

I still wish thought, that when I grow up I can work for or with SOM.

Business Week reminded me of SOM.

Microsoft Live Writer

Microsoft's new tool, Microsoft Life Writer, has received a lot of attention.  All reports are very positive with little to no negatives.  I tried it a few days after release, but for whatever reason it would not connect to my blog on Blogger.  This is another try a few weeks later and it works. I guess there were initial teething problems.

Interestingly, it has one feature I really like: spell checking.  And it has "automatic correction" on spelling, which doesn't seem to workk.