imagiBlog

Interesting Buddycloud status messages:

• Now with 33% more Lookup.
• Coming soon to a place near you.
• Your address book just got social.
• Addressbook 2.0
• warning: contains 98% awesome
• malcolm t thunderpants
• the living address book
• Ross Savage: Serves Beacon Stew

Found on my desktop:

• Life is a series of conversations.  You are not living it unless you are having those conversations.  Step up and talk.

Steve Jobs: Your last day of life:

• Live every day as the last:Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart. - Jobs.

And from Tom Perkins:

• Think for yourself.
• Always go back to basics

In 1984, Bob Scheifler and Jim Gettys set out the early principles of X:

• Do not add new functionality unless an implementor cannot complete a real application without it.
• It is as important to decide what a system is not as to decide what it is. Do not serve all the world’s needs; rather, make the system extensible so that additional needs can be met in an upwardly compatible fashion.
• The only thing worse than generalizing from one example is generalizing from no examples at all.
• If a problem is not completely understood, it is probably best to provide no solution at all.
• If you can get 90 percent of the desired effect for 10 percent of the work, use the simpler solution. (See also Worse is better.
• Isolate complexity as much as possible.
• Provide mechanism rather than policy. In particular, place user interface policy in the clients’ hands.

The first principle was modified during the design of X11 to: “Do not add new functionality unless you know of some real application that will require it.”

X has largely kept to these principles since. The reference implementation is developed with a view to extension and improvement of the implementation, whilst remaining almost entirely compatible with the original 1987 protocol.

I create lots of stickies on my Mac (desktop post it notes).  I’m trying to clean them off.  One of them is a list of music to listen to.  Should anyone care:

During the day

• Duke ellington newport 1956
• Beverly kennedy
• Ann Hampton Callaway
• Mastercuts Bar Social
• Finlandia symphony
• Thievery Corporation The Cosmic Game  (2005)
• Ladytron Witching hour
• Winter chill - hed kandi
• The Mills Brothers
• Louis Prima
• Capitol Collectors Series

In the evening:

• Cal Tjader
• Stadtism

On a Sunday morning:

• Nightmares on wax  - Mind elevation

Sunday afternoon:

• umanji - the witch

This is just fascinating.

“Of the estimated 2000-3000 computer users in the Bay Area”

I think it will snow.

Yesterday was a little odd.  I ran into two fellow Durban natives.  The first was perhaps the most surprising.  I was on a business call with someone who’s name I recognised.  But not sure if it was the same person that used to hang out in the school computer room hacking on his Amiga 500.  Then I noticed the South African accent and the date of graduation.  Indeed it was the right person.  Odd how after a good fifteen years, one still bumps into the same people. Hello Simon Davis.

Second Durban meetup was when I had drinks with Tyler and his girlfriend Lisa.  They run the Pukka German podcast.  Pukka German is a way to learn German with a twist.  It’s more about day to day idioms and phrases that are actually used.  Think “I am sick” verses “to feel rough as; to
feel hit by a ten tonne truck; to feel worse for
wear; to be under the weather”.

Saw this rather amusing anecdote on the BBC website about the bank bailout announced today.  I’m not sure where I stand on the issue but can appreciate this:

Dear RBS, LTSB and HBOS,

It appears that your accounts with us
are in arrears, and you are now overdrawn by £37bn. Please be advised
that we will be charging you interest of £200m per day.

You will also be charged £50m for this letter, this covers any admin, and falls under the ’serves you right’ legislation.

Failure
to repay will give us no option but to remove all fat cats from your
company, and we will also reclaim any houses & cars from them.

Yours Sincerely,

The British Public

I made music.  Just a little intro.  Reason and Logic Pro rock!  You won’t like my music but if you insist you could download test.mp3.

data destruction time, originally uploaded by SimonTennant.

I found four 200GB disks left over from my last raid array. I am happy to report that they have been destroyed before being put in the rubbish bin. Chances of someone reconstructing all 4 disks into a working array were slim. With some hammer action, the chances are slimmer. “When you have a hammer in the hand everything seems like a nail”.