“For the execution of the voyage to the Indies, I did not make use of intelligence, mathematics or maps.” - Christopher Columbus We cleaned out the car and found a ton of maps. There were 17: hand-me-downs sporting stains from god-knows-when.
They will all be replaced by laptop, MapPoint software and a RoyalTek USB GPS velcro’d to the dashboard. We love the USB GPS - even take it into the woods geocaching. That’s a few feet of cable to wrangle, but I can’t see getting a Bluetooth GPS which needs charging.
This is an excellent video from the CBC with Seth Roberts, creator of the Shangrila diet. Explains the fundamentals quite well via some goofy visual aids.
I like that it includes the conventional wisdom “Truly is too good to be true” angle. This is transposed with Dr. Robert’s calm confidence in results.
I’d enjoy seeing Roberts on the Colbert Report: Steven is the ultimate manifestation of America’s favorite media archetype: the loudboor.
I have no doubt that the Shangrila diet works. I’ve been doing it for a few months and have observed how taking a little olive oil decreases appetite. It’s FM - Freakin’ Magic.
But — it sounds like the worst kind of fad diet. A typical conversation–
me: So, I’ve been trying this diet.
otherperson: <brightening> Really? What is it?
me: Well, it’s called the Shangrila diet.
op: giggling Oh? how’s it work?
me: You take a tablespoon of olive oil, and don’t eat anything for an hour before and after.
op: look of distaste How’s that work?
me: Well, it reduces the body’s set point..its internal target weight. It’s because the food has no flavor.. it’s a Pavlovian thing..you remember the dogs..?
op: thoroughly confused I’ve gotta go.. freshen my drink.
Maybe I’m bad at explaining it, or should contain my enthusiasm. One thing I know for sure: don’t attempt to be helpful by bringing it up to friends/family who could… benefit from it. That’s inevitably unsubtle, and results in hurt feelings.
What’s the answer? I don’t know. There’s no no merch or consumables to push - unlike Atkins which was a billion dollar a year market. Maybe what’s needed is a new “Lose Weight Now, Ask Me How” campaign, and hand them a short HOW-TO.
I love Seth Robert’s “better mousetrap” faith that the diet is so obviously good. But, people’s opinions are strongly ifluenced by marketing and network effects. Al Roker lost weight via gastric bypass (filmed, no less): a procedure which is dangerous, invasive, and very profitable to hospitals. Shangrila is affordable, healthy and effective. Shangrila needs a street team — tools to help folks spread the word — and some celebrity endorsements.
The thinkpads have an accelerometer to protect the drive from damage if jostled. I guess this is a good thing.. in practice, it means that podcasts skip when I’m on the commuter rail from Cambridge.
The Macbooks have this feature too, and there have been some cool hacks like slapbook and macsaber. Why do the Mac kids have the cool toys?
VMWare Server goes Free - “there really is no excuse any longer for not trying out desktop virtualization or server consolidation using virtualization techniques.”
SIMILE Timeline is a DHTML-based AJAXy widget for visualizing time-based events. It is like Google Maps for time-based information.
For a couple years, I’ve been using and evangelizing telelip.com. Teleflip is a service where you could email 6175551212@teleflip.com, and an SMS would be sent for free to that number, regardless of carrier.
This is great for automated notifications (CruiseControl).
Simple idea, but a lot of fun - type a domain name into instant domain search, and it’ll show right away (using mochikit) if the domain is available. Seriously, try it.. I’ll wait…
Goes to show, it’s all about the feedback loops baby. It’s unexpectedly fun in the same as the Baby Name Voyager.
Bonus point: find a ${bodypart}sex domain that hasn’t been registered. Eyebrow sex? Geez louise people..
I’ve been playing with using a todo.txt file to manage tasks, and managing it using todo.sh - see the demo movie here. It works darn well and I may even stick with it for GTD. The screencast shows usage– to use it, you type into a command line - add: add a new task. list: list tasks
.. and so on.
To save some keystrokes (a to add a task, l instead of list), add the following synonym mapping after the line with “action=$1″:
case $action in
“a”)
action=”add”;;
“l”)
action=”list”;;
“lp”)
action=”listpri”;;
“ls”)
action=”list”;;
“r”)
action=”report”;;
“x”)
action=”del”;;
esac
wikiPad - wiki app. Now open source. I’ve been using NoteLens for off-the-cuff notetaking, a little walled garden where I don’t have to worry about file names, but I’m jonesing for markup and hyperlinks…wikipad might do the trick.
Lumpy generates UML diagrams from a running Python program - darn, missed the presentation at the Boston Python meetup.
