Archive for the ‘Books’ Category

Random Internet Wanderings

Saturday, August 29th, 2009
Kite surfers catch the last of the daylight at the end of another beautiful day in the Netherlands.

Kite surfers catch the last of the daylight at the end of another beautiful day in the Netherlands.

I was out strolling through the Internet today and came across a number of sites that I thought were great, but I just didn’t have time to spend more than a few seconds at each stop.  So, I thought I’d add these links and maybe you could enjoy them even more than I did.
  • First stop, Animal House Quotes at imb.  Not for the easily offended.  But a classic nontheless.
  • Then I opened up KCCN FM 100 for good tunes for my web stroll.
  • Next up, a quck review of indifference curves via a Google Search…I drilled down into a few sites, but Wikipedia was the one I relied on for comprehensive information…
  • And from there, I linked to LaTeX (pronunced Lay-Teck) to see how they represent math equations….surprisingly, the Wikipedia description was far more informative than the official web site
  • Somehow–I can’t recall how–I ended up at a WordPress themed blog tracking down some informaton on LaTeX.  The blog had some interesting information, but more importantly, it had a great design.  So I had to track down the design called Notepad Chaos created by Evan Eckard for Smashing Magazine
  • The comments in that article mentioned how Notepad Chaos looked a lot like Web Design Wall.  So I stopped over there to compare….Once at WDW, I found myself wandering down lots of Internet Rabbit Holes (IRbHs) from the links in various posts and articles. 
  • The first tunnel was over to  Ma.tt where I learned how the WordPress creator spends his day.  I would love to leave my office empty for 6 days a week… 
  • From one of those articles, I learned about Gravatars, images that you can use all over the Internet without having to upload new images to each and every blog, website, forum, etc, that you might visit.
  • Of course, I had to visit the parent site for WordPress, Gravatar and others….and that is Automattic. Great stuff.
  • And I’ll bet you didn’t know that some people intentionally remap their keyboard and type in other than QWERTY keyboards.  There is DVORAK and AZERTY…who knew?!  I had no idea. Not sure if I can switch but I’m intrigued.
  • A link in one of the articles took me over to The Power of Less.  Something I could clearly spend some time reviewing!  Focus is good. I’ve already modified my computer usage to shut down Outlook when I’m trying to focus on other things.  I am going through withdrawal, but a little concentration will get me past this.  I no longer visit my Facebook page either…Less is more. More time for me.
  • And while enjoying the great web designs I found, I decided to go looking for more WordPress Themes and ended up at WordPress Theme Park.  Nice.  I’m thinking of using some of these graphic ideas in a logo I’m designing.
  • And without dragging you through the mud, I’ll just say that I hit about a dozen other sites related to logo design, internet design, and graphic design in general.     
  • Finally, I’ll close this list with the last link I visited before heading outside to enjoy the evening by jogging through Den Haag for a couple of hours– Tim Ferris’ blog–where he talks about his 4-hour week.
  • The timing of visiting that final webpage seemed appropriate as I later stood on the beach in Scheveningen, NL .  There were crowds and crowds of surfers, windsurfers, and kite surfers who had been in the water for most of the day.  Here in the NL, most businesses seem to close promptly at 5 or 6 pm and only stay open late one night a week.  Which got me to rethink the idea of working hard and working late to get more done…all I have to do now is take up kite surfing….

And with that in mind….why am I still sitting here writing this blog?  Time to go work on another project.  Signing off for now.  Peace to you and may you enjoy life.

:>D
ylan

Popularity: 23%

Blink…

Monday, July 20th, 2009
Blink, by Malcolm Gladwell

Blink, by Malcolm Gladwell

A great book by Malcolm Gladwell. This book takes you beyond the power of intuition and shows you how we make decisions unconsciously using a wealth of information that is always present in our world.

Intuition is real, even though we often discount it. Malcolm makes a study out of this phenomenom and shows how our brains process a staggering amount of information and then presents us with its solution…the result is what we often refer to as intuition.

Fascinating book. Read more to learn about how we think even when we are not conscious of our efforts.

Popularity: 7%

Project Gutenberg and Google Books

Tuesday, September 23rd, 2008

Michael Hart founded the Gutenberg Project; the first and largest single collection of free electronic books, or eBooks.  Michael Hart began this project in 1971 when he typed in the Declaration of Independence and stated the most valuable aspect of computing would be for storage and retrieval. 

Google agrees and has embarked on a scale that far surpases what Gutenberg began.  Google has scanned and continues to scan all of the books in 20 world class libraries.  This brings the knowledge of the world to the screens of anyone with Internet access.  Visit http://books.google.com/books to give it a try or click on http://books.google.com/googlebooks/library.html to learn more about the project in general.

Enjoy your reading! Share this with your friends.  Learn and never stop learning.

Popularity: 1%

Intelligence

Thursday, July 31st, 2008

“It is a law of nature we overlook, that intellectual versatility is the compensation for change, danger, and trouble. An animal perfectly in harmony with its environment is  perfect mechanism. nature never appeas to intelligence until habit and instinct are useless. There is no intelligence where there is no change and no need of change. Only those animals partake of intelligence that have to meet a huge variety of needs and dangers.”

-The Time Traveller in H.G. Wells The Time Machine.

Popularity: 1%

The Divergence of Mankind

Wednesday, July 30th, 2008

I watched the 2007 I am Legend movie on Netflix and glimpsed the May 2008 released alternate ending online.  I followed that up with Mattheson’s original 1954 I am Legend book (which is well summarized on Wikipedia).  That drove me to read H.G. Wells 1895 Time Machine (summarized on Wikedpedia) (and also found in the Complete Science Fiction Treasury of H.G. Wells).

All three have the same basic concept…that man has diverged into two separate and opposing species. 

  • In Time Machine, there are the Eloi who live in the light of day, are docile as lambs, weak as sheep, small of stature, quite pretty and fun loving.  They fail to render assitance to any of their kind and have no fear of anything other than the night. They peform no labor and eat only the fruits that are readily available and appear t be planted just for the purpose of fattening them up.  They are paired against the Morlocks who have retreated below the surface, cannot stand light, and feast on the meat of the fair Eloi. The Morlocks only come out at night to snatch the Eloi for their meals.
  • In Mattheson’s 1954 “I am Legend”, a bacteria has brought vampires back to the planet.  In this case, there are three kinds of beings: Neville, the sole remaining survivor of the plague who is immune to the conversion, those who live, but are vampires, and the un-dead…vampires who have returned from the dead, but have no faculties of thought.   In this version, Neville kills the sleeping vampires by day, unaware that there are both un-dead and living among them. The living vampires seek him out as a danger to their new society and eventually exterminate him.
  • In the 2007 movie version, a “cure” for cancer turns out to convert the host into a vampire-like being that is rabid, does not converse, and has no remorse for others.  The disease sweeps through the planet and leaves only one remaining survivor.  It sleeps by day, and hunts by night. In this version Hollywood version however, a cure is found and so are the other survivors.  
  • In the 2008 Alternate ending, the zombies are capable of jealousy, rage, and other complex emotions, and thus are not just blood-thirsty zombies as they are made out to be in the Hollywood version.

All of these left me wondering about the state of mankind.   They point to extremes in nature: the hunter and the hunted…and the reversal of fortunes through unplanned or unforseen changes in the environment or rather, unrecognized changes. 

Perhaps the message is not to lash out when we don’t understand.  Our first instinct is to treat the unknown as insignificant, without feelings, and with disdain…perhaps we should try to step in someone else’s shoes before we dismiss them so quickly…

Popularity: 2%