Student: I do not like who I have become.
Master: You are as you have always been.
Of Grasshoppers
Student: If but e’vr so briefly, I experienced normalcy.
Master: What’s that?
Living the Middle Ground
Somewhere between the things we want to do, and the things we need to do, are the things we can do.
Blowning the Brain Cloud Away
Eons ago I discovered nootropics and delved into the costly world of daily vitamins and cognitive enhancers. Age takes its toll on the body but stress takes its toll plus interest, penalties and fees. Some days I struggle with tip o’ the tongue syndrome where the word or thought is almost there but just does not want to coalesce or my head may feel fuzzy. The solution is to deal with the source of the stress. Therein lay a catch-22. So once again, I look toward nootropics to give me edge I seek. I’m starting with Ginko.
The Power of Computing
Computing tied to a single computer or location is undeniably an artifact of the past. The Cloud with its risks and uncertainty is where data should live as the risks far outweight the risk of maintaining that data on a single, fixed location piece of hardware. For a family that keeps all its digital records (photos, documents, etc) only on the home computer, a housefire or even something as mundane as a failed harddrive can wipeout a lifetime of family history.
The Cloud gives us data accessibilty and security with machine independence but from time to time we do require a specific machine which may not be at our current location. The ever presence of connectivity through devices such as the iPhone, Droid, and iPad eliminates the distance between where we stand and the physical computer. For example, I just used Team Viewer from my iPhone to log into and control my home workstation for downloading "Native Flutes for Relaxation" from Amazon while they were offering it for free. That’s coo! Oh, then I made this post from my iPhone. Mobile computing is now! Tomorrow computing and access will be so ubiquitous and transparent that most people won’t even recognize their activities as "computing" or "Internet" as we do today, similarly to how people breathe without thinking about oxygen.
From the mouths of babes
Mom: "What are those bumps on your face?"
Evan, almost 5: "Chicken pox."
Me: "What are chicken pox?"
Evan: "That’s when you bump into something and get bumps all over you."
Me: "How did you learn about chicken pox?"
Evan: "I went to another world."
Exhausted
The level of exhaustion I’m experiencing right now is bizarre, inexplicable and almost beyond description. I don’t believe I’ve done anything to deserve to feel this tired. I’d like to rent a secluded cabin and just sleep for two days.
I cut down a tree
Switching Spam Filters
I have been a huge Spam Karma fan for years but the open source community does not seem to be taking the ball and running with it.
As of January 1st, 2009, I am no longer developing, maintaining or supporting Spam Karma. If you want to contribute to its code or download the latest GPL release, you can check out the code repository, over at Google Code. [Source, unknowngenius.com]
So I’m switching to Akismet. The last time I tried Akismet, I had many false positives. That is, it reported real comments as spam. With Spam Karma, I had almost zero false positives for all the years I used it. If you try to leave a comment and it fails or doesn’t show up, just contact me.
The tree has fallen, the tree has fallen!
From the mouths of babes
Evan, almost 5: "MMMmmm. Dad what’s this?"
Dad: "Old coffee grounds for the compost pile."
Evan: "I like old. Wait. No, I don’t like old because old people don’t let me do whatever I want."
Quote of the Day
Behind every successful man is a surprised woman.
On Time Management/Organizational Tools
I’m a huge fan of Jott. I don’t know how Siri (recently acquired by Apple) slipped through my radar. I now have Siri and am very excited. SpringPad and I have this oddly tenuous relationship which I’ll explain in another post. I think SpringPad has incredible potential and should be appreciated by fans of Evernote.
Like Stephen R Covey’s First Things First and David Allen’s Getting Things Done, none of these tools do any good if you don’t use them. And by use them, I mean fully. For instance, in Gmail I frequently flag emails to review later but then I may not review them. The same thing can happen with any of the tools above. I fill Jott with voice notes and text memos daily. Like sharpening the saw, a review is critical. One of my mantras is "15 minutes a day for proficiency." It comes from preparing for juggling shows. If I wait until the day before a performance and try to cram several hours of practice in, I don’t perform well. If I spent 15 minutes a day for those same number of hours, I perform very well! That 15 minute mantra applies to all things in life be it learning a skill like guitar, a language like Spanish, losing that extra weight, reading a book, writing a business plan, or just keeping your life in check.
Trying to get organized while living our crazy lives often feels a bit like trying to balance your checkbook while going down a water slide. You can’t do it and your checkbook gets really soggy. Feels like a catch-22; too busy to organize, must organize to not be so busy. That’s were 15 minutes a day comes in. We can spend 15 minutes just staring into space. Even exhausted, we can muster 15 minutes. And now, I will spend 15 minutes reviewing my notes in Jott.
From the mouths of babes
Me: "This machine measures my blood pressure. See that blue line in my arm. That’s the blood in my arm."
Evan, nearly 5 years old: "Blood? Blood is bad for you! Blood will make you die. I’ve seen it on Noah’s game."
Of Grasshoppers
Student: I never wanted to be the enemy.
Master: You can still be friendly.
