Cartoons and Comic Books
May 02, 2008
The curiosity of my coworkers at ThoughtWorks often leads to a number of healthy and interesting debates, which often occur in the pub, on internal mailing lists, and anywhere in-between. One such discussion, of the mailing list variety, revolved around the topic Chinese economics and politics. Inevitably, the recent Angry Red Dragon issue of The Economist was mentioned in passing as participants shuffled over the topic of general Western opinions on China.
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We Need More -onomy
May 01, 2008
The other day I was listening to assorted tracks in my reading room while enjoying a glass of scotch and puttering away in the codebase of my current project. I was feeling chipper, the sun was shining. On Saturdays I’m willing to play the music loud enough to feel engrossed and I was looking for a bit of a beat in most of what I was listening to.
I own an iPod Video, and if we discount the fact that Winamp seems to be the only reliable way of getting data on and off the device, it does a satisfactory job of playing music.
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Dupies (Dollar-Rupees)
Jan 02, 2008
The Theory Moving to a new country often involves adjusting to a new currency. As much as my mind can’t intuitively wrap itself around miles, I have a hard time with the feeling of Rupees here in India. Thankfully, the current economic situation provides us with some easy answers.
The present economy helpfully provides us North Americans with a nearly-round conversion rate:
$1 CAD / USD : Rs. 39.1 We can exploit this fact by rounding up to Rs.
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Not Getting Things Done
Jan 01, 2008
Some lessons I learned before reading this article Rohan showed me today (ironically filed under GTD):
Get rid of your car. Own less. And less. And less. If you have to own something, own something good. Don’t watch TV. Ever. Do things you love with other people. Do things you hate with other people. The article, unfortunately, suggests moderation. If you, like me, are incapable of moderation, you almost certainly consume food, alcohol, sleep, and friendship with reckless abandon.
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The Gap
Sep 02, 2007
One of the roadblocks to the Tightpinkproduct is The Gap. My friend installs Ubuntu and complains about the difficulty of installing Flash or forcing WMV files to play inside of Firefox. He shouldn’t have any reason to complain. All these things work. More often than not, they will work with packages living inside repositories. I, too, would complain but I’ve become too used to the routine of installing such packages on top of a default Linux installation (much in the same way I’ve become accustomed to fixing a default Windows installation or patching up OS X).
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Fidget Weights
Sep 01, 2007
I saw Thoughtless Acts a while back and it immediately reminded me of an idea Drew and I came up with years ago. It came to the attention of people who frequented my basement office that if one became engaged in conversation, he or she would inevitably stand on top of some octagonal free weights I had lying around:
Perching oneself on these long enough would lead to fidgeting. The participant would roll them over and gradually get more aggressive by lifting and rotating the weights in various directions.
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Google is My New Microsoft
Aug 02, 2007
Mike (seen here fondling beef) had a blog post about accidentally formatting the wrong partition and losing all his data. Then he went crazy and formatted his entire blog on purpose. What a guy.
In response to his non-existent post, I will engage in a tirade describing where computing has taken me.
First, there was my PC. My first real computer of my very own. At the time I was a poor teenager in secondary school and my options were limited.
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A Walk
Aug 01, 2007
I went for a long walk in the rain. Gosh was it muddy.
I saw a little girl whipping herself and begging for change. A sick, touristy part of me wanted to take a picture of her. An even sicker part of me wanted to borrow the whip to see if the sound it produced was representative of the pain it inflicted. She tugged at my arm as I walked by; I shrugged her off as politely as I could and continued.
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Making It Look Easy
Apr 01, 2007
Do you remember the last time you were in the physical presence of an expert? Do you remember how it felt to watch her perform her art? Perhaps hands dancing through the strings of a guitar or over a keyboard. Perhaps instinctual movements producing new material at needlepoint or temporal painting through dance. Perhaps the gentle swing of a chain-saw sliding through the groves of an unfinished ice sculpture. Perhaps it was nothing more than a delicate, natural conversation with your mentor over coffee.
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