FriendFeed is like a bar, filled with people that you can interact with, but discussions generally are just 2-3 people. The conversations are short and somewhat random, showing just a sliver of who a person’s identity, if you share an interest on the subject it’s a nice way to connect. You just slide on in to the discussion, and when your ready to move on you just stand up and pass on to the next conversation. Most conversations are amiable, but that doesn’t prevent the occasional fight to flare up and turn into an all out brawl. In general it’s a fun place to just go and hangout, if you visit often enough you’ll begin to recognize the regulars.

Twitter is like walking down a street, filled with people you kind of know. You can hear the chatter from all of these people at once, some of them pitching ideas or trying to sell their wares. Occasionally, you might walk down the street with a friend or group of friends and have a discussion, though it will be drowned a bit by all the noise. The interaction and people are there, but it’s not always the best place to have a discussion, especially if you don’t want to be distracted.

Now a quick list of a few I’m not going to get to deep as this isn’t the point.

Myspace is like a back alley or a subway, sure you might get mugged, but at least there is an
artist playing his music for free, and sometimes they’re great.

Digg is like a newsstand, it carries today’s latest news not exactly the freshest source, but it’s the headline news of the day.

Google is like a massive library index helping you find what you were looking for on the internet. Wikipedia is like a library filled with information, but then again the whole internet is filled with information.

Amazon is the department store, most likely you can browse through it and find what ever you were looking for, plus you might end up picking up some random items.

Hulu and Youtube are like movie theaters, except they constantly have new film to watch.

The point is if you can figure out what kind of data you’re looking for and in the mood for, you can find it quickly. The issue is that if you are new to town, it will take a while to build up your friends in the area, and also find you’re way around, it might take a week or two. The majority of the time people don’t give websites more than an hour or two of poking around, because they don’t know what they are supposed to do.

Most services leave the use cases open to the users’ interpretation, like a playground, we can run wild and have fun with what they have provided us. The opposite is also true you don’t want to have a service where you’re telling the person exactly what to do, people want ideas and examples, they want a clear means to what they can and should do. But the number one thing we have as users is the ability to choose where we want to be at any given time and which one we prefer the most, sure I take my walk through the street every day, but I always end up where I enjoy it the most, and for me that’s at the bar. Where do you like to spend your’ time?

Image by llimllib

I became complacent with what I had and what I was achieving, I became too comfortable for my own good, and that is an issue. I read those words right after I found out about my job and you know what, it actually tells me I stayed well past the point I should have left. It’s my fault for not realizing it sooner, it would have been better for both sides, but I there is no reason for me to even attempt to change the decisions I made, it’s too late.

When you see death occur around you, it hits you that maybe you need to change, but it still doesn’t hit hard enough most of the time. This year has been rough with all the deaths I’ve had to deal with, but dealing with those didn’t effect me as much as one would think. You realize death happens, and even if you know it can happen to anyone at anytime, you think aren’t part of that group, you aren’t just anyone; stop lying to yourself, you are just another somebody, and the next wave could be the last you remember.

I walked away by mere chance, I do like to think it was partly skill that saved me, but it was a whole lot of luck. I could have easily flipped my car or continued sliding over the bank, or managed to make it to the next turn, and just the next turn, I never would have made it. I got lucky and hit the embankment, which stopped me on solid ground, and I managed to walk out with just a few scrapes. Life is filled with luck and you just have to remember you never have full control of what happens to you, sometimes it’s bad, sometimes it’s excellent, you just have to go with the flow and relax.

The number one way to escape from the pull is to just keep moving, but don’t completely resist or you’ll just exhaust yourself fighting and succumb. You have to move out of sight, change your path to the side instead of up for a little while, look for somewhere that isn’t looking to keep you there. Once you realize that there are other places you can move forward and up from, places where you’re not getting pummeled as hard. I bet you you’ll be happier, luckier, and have a better chance of surviving the outcome, you might take a few lumps along the way but that comes with the territory.

Image by bensonkua

Yes, the blog has become stagnant and has had only 2 posts in 3 months, and I understand the concerns this raises. I had a close relative die at the beginning of May and spiraled into a comfortably numb state that I didn’t feel like nor was able to come out of it for a few weeks. As I worked my way out of this depression I began interacting and having meaningful conversations over on Friendfeed and began a lot of my time there. By Mid-July, I was nearly back to normal(as close as can be expected) and had begin writing a few posts again and had planned to start posting again at the beginning of the month. Unfortunately, I lost a friend on the 26th and fell back into the depression and haven’t really felt like finishing a lot of the drafts I have sitting around.

I’ll begin posting regularly on Monday, August 17th and as of right now I’m going to be posting every Monday. Currently, I have enough to last a little over 2 months, but I will be adding more time sensitive material along the course. I also plan an update to the site, which will come with a more frequent feed of interesting stories, images, and videos separate from the main feed. For right now, I just want to let you know that I will be back posting on a regular basis, along with some irregularly scheduled content.

Today, the folks at FriendFeed unveiled a new addition to their service, file sharing. Though they say that they have only supported a few file types at this time, they don’t offer any video support and you can only share up to 3 .mp3’s within a 24 hour period. The only other current restriction appears to be that you have an undisclosed cap on how much you can share, this is also set on a revolving 24 hour period.

However, as soon as I found out I instantly though of file type obfuscation, in which you pass a file off as a different type. This allows you to share any type of media across the service, including video, and allowing you to beat the “.mp3″ quota.

In order to slip through FriendFeed’s monitoring you just have to select the file and rename  it from “FileName.xxx”,(Note: “.xxx” could be a “.mp3″, “.mp4″, “.avi”, or any other file type) to “FileName.pdf”. Upload the “.pdf” to FriendFeed, and leave a note for others to change it back into the correct file type, once they download it on their side.

Time is itself immutable, and, yet, it is the essence of all mutability

Last week, I spent time with family after the loss of my cousin. Over the week I spent time with relatives and family friends talking about memories and all the time we have sacrificed without a second thought. One of the conversations was with my aunt, about my relationship to my estranged father and how there isn’t much time left. I’m still not sure what I’m doing with my life, but this past week has been a wake up call, I need to get rid of all the hindrances in it that are wasting time.

Time is the stitching that holds billions of scattered, unconnected, snapshots together to create the ever rippling fabric of life.

The single reason for wasting time, accidents and traffic not withstanding, is our throwing mental barriers up to avoid certain situations or people. I noticed this after talking with my aunt about my dad. The only reason I’m estranged from him is because of my half-siblings, his wife, and the way she treats him. I can’t stand them so I avoid them, along with him, unfortunately, I care about him and know all to well the this recent funeral could have easily been his. I’ve seen him maybe two hours in total since New Year ‘08 and that’s not enough time to spend with someone you care about, no matter how you feel about them or the people they surround themselves with. I still haven’t figured out what I’m going to do to repair this situation, but I don’t have much time because noone expects another 5 years out of him.

“Truly successful decision making relies on a balance between deliberate and instinctive thinking.” ~ Malcolm Gladwell

I notice myself being less and less reliable on listening to my instinct and find my self deliberating on things far to much. I think we all need a good kick in the ass to get us to realize we don’t have time to waste analyzing all the data, it just takes to long. We have to learn when we come across a sunk cost and how to keep from wasting anymore time on it. I think I’m just going to stop thinking about stuff.

“Time is like money.” ~ Benjamin Franklin

This is the truth and the fact is that you can spend both rationally, or you can waste them on frivolous affairs. The best form of management with either is to think ahead and budget how you’re going to use them, but always remember to leave a little extra for fun and pleasurable things. The one major difference between the two is that you can always earn more money without spending it, but with time your always spending it and your never going to get more.

The best way to get more out of life is too enjoy the time you have.

“Our life is frittered away by detail … simplify, simplify.’ ~ Henry David Thoreau
“The value of an idea lies in the using of it.” ~ Thomas Edison
“For my part I know nothing with any certainty, but the sight of the stars makes me dream.” ~ Vincent van Gogh
“A true friend sees the good in everything, and brings out the best in the worst of things.” ~ Sasha Azevedo
“All that we are is the result of what we have thought.” ~ Buddha
“It just seems natural. You and me against the world.” ~ Chuck Palahniuk
“Any man can make mistakes, but only an idiot persists in his error.” ~ Cicero
“The tragedy of life is not that it ends so soon, but that we wait so long to begin it.” ~ W. M. Lewis
“All love that has not friendship for its base, is like a mansion built upon the sand.” ~ Ella Wheeler Wilcox
“The mind is like the stomach. It’s not how much you put into it, but how much it digests.” ~ Albert Jay Nock
“Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower.” ~ Steve Jobs
“Thought makes the whole dignity of man; therefore endeavor to think well, that is the only morality.” ~ Blaise Pascal
“I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I intended to be.” ~ Douglas Adams
“Having wonderful people in your life is the ONLY oxygen we need” ~Gary Vaynerchuk
“I know what I have given you. I do not know what you have received” ~ Antonio Porchia
“Don’t walk in front of me I may not follow. Don’t walk behind me I may not lead. Just walk beside me and be my friend.” ~ Albert Camus
“All of life is a risk; in fact we’re not going to get out alive. Casualness leads to casualties. Communication is the ability to affect other people with words.” ~ Jim Rohn
“The law of love could be best understood and learned through little children” ~ Mahatma Gandhi
“Economy is half the battle of life. It is not so hard to earn money as to spend it well.” ~ Charles H. Spurgeon
“Don’t be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment.” ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Life is partly what we make it, and partly what it is made by the friends we choose.” ~ Tennessee Williams

That was the realization I had watching Wanted, when Wesley releases the rats into the mill. He provides them with peanut butter, albeit laced with gasoline, in order to have them help in his mission. Several dozen dogs couldn’t have presented him with the return that he received for the hundreds of rats that went out to return his favor. So maybe you should follow his lead and seek the little guys that want you to help them out, not the big guys that you want help from. How do you think they got big, they helped the little guy out, and he let his friends know about it.

Look at how the successful social-networks grew. They all start with a small focused market, Myspace with Musicians, Facebook with College Students, Twitter with texting and the Early Adopter. Each of these small markets had one huge thing in common, they were set in a location where they could expand to the general population, Myspace to fans, Facebook to older Alum and the general public, Twitter to marketers and people looking for an audience. Then they expanded to the mainstream audiences through word of mouth and the necessity for people to have friends on the network to interact with.

They did 3 things and they did them well.

• They decided on a market.
• They expanded their market into a natural evolution of the original Market.
• The focused on the large groups, of small people, to help spread the message, not small groups, of big guys.

Far too many people have the wrong perspective. They seek to become a giant by standing on the shoulders of other giants, rather than building a self sufficient community that helps each other rise up to the sky. I’m going to show you a perspective variation of the King’s Chessboard, a parable in which a king offers a peasant a payment for his services, the peasant simply asks that the king give him double the amount of rice that he gave the day before, until he has covered each square on a chessboard, starting with one grain of rice. The king soon realizes that he can’t honor this payment as it’s too much for the kingdoms granary.

In my variation, I’ll have the king offering 2 different rewards to the peasant, he can receive 1 billion grains of rice each day until each square has been covered, or he can take the option from the original story of 1 grain of rice and have it doubled everyday for each square. Most people would be blinded by the large sum that they are told they will receive each day and wouldn’t quantify the fact they will actually lose a large sum by taking the larger initial choice. In fact, you will receive only ~.0000007% of the total had they chosen the doubling.

So remember, sometimes it’s better to go with the small people and to take time for the little things in life. They will pay off much more in the long term than always trying to do something that involves the major points in of focus. Take your time and if someone needs help don’t be greedy go and help them you never know the power to change your life they might have.

Why you might want to use the Seemic Desktop over other Twitter Apps

• Multiple Account Support

It’s one of the few Twitter Apps that allows you to be logged into multiple accounts at once and helps to automatically reply with the appropriate account. Has easy switching above the update field.

• Allows you to create Groups and Save Searches

It’s also one of the few apps that lets you group users, following after it’s main competitor Tweetdeck. Saved searches are a continuation from Twhirl that makes ego searching Twitter a far easier experience. These 2 items make it a huge force when you are handling multiple accounts and managing marketing efforts.

• Offers a multi-column view

Though I don’t prefer this view; many people that they are trying to draw are coming from Tweetdeck where this is what they had. The issue that this brings up is that it takes up the whole monitor, which isn’t appropriate for someone who only has access to 1 monitor, say a laptop user.

• Future Integration with many other services

This is a given, after all they have integrated multiple services into their prior client Twhirl. I’d expect to see Facebook, Friendfeed, Seesmic, and Identi.ca support on it at the least. They also have built in Ping.FM support on Twhirl and I’d expect to see that included soon as many people are requesting its addition. Loic is also speaking to Kevin Rose, Founder of Digg, and I wouldn’t be all that surprised if they worked Digg into the mix.

Even with all these major pluses to Seesmic Desktop there are also some issues that still need to be resolved with Desktop

• Wastes a Large Amount of Screen Real-Estate

As you can see from @guykawasaki’s image (above) there is a large amount of wasted space. Now as I mentioned in the multi-column view it’s no good for a single monitor set up and it’s still no good with all the wasted space in general. They have stated that they are working on a minimalist version so hopefully they will fix this issue.

• Slightly Memory Intensive

I was playing around with it and it seems a bit of a glutton with how it treats your memory. Upon opening and signing into 2 accounts I was seeing about 95MB + ~5MB for each new column. Not the prettiest use of resources but still not to bad with only a few columns.

• Currently Doesn’t Offer Customizations

The UI isn’t all that pretty and you can’t modify how the text looks at this point. So it is costing them some users with bad eyes or those who enjoy modifying their applications interfaces.

• No Distinction of Read/Unread tweets

This was the biggest one of all for me, it’s the main reason I don’t use any app besides Twhirl. I like having an easy way of telling if I have read something, because my time is important and right now they don’t offer it. This is where Tweetdeck screwed up and the main reason I couldn’t use their product.

How does it stand up to the other apps

Right now, I won’t be using it often. I’ll use it over Tweetdeck because the interface is still more pleasing, but hands down Twhirl has my heart and until they pull most of it into the service I won’t use it frequently. I give it about 3 months until it becomes my primary App, because it is amazing and it shows promise. Overall, I think Seesmic Desktop is good and will be extremely useful as people begin to amass ever larger groups of friends/followers.

P.S.- Loic, Thomas, or anyone else that works on the Seesmic Desktop. I have a suggestion to help save some screen space and to also improve the UI. You could replace the Sidebar with something similar to Opera’s Panels. This simple interface change would allow for huge space savings and an easier interface to interact with.

“You will never plough a field if you only turn it over in your mind.” ~ Irish Proverb

“The fundamental cause of the trouble is that in the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt.” ~ Bertrand Russell

“It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt.” ~ Mark Twain

“Laughter is the shortest distance between two people.” ~ Victor Borge

“Motivation is what gets you started. Habit is what keeps you going.” ~ Jim Ryuh

“How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.” ~ Anne Frank

“Stay far from timid, only make moves when your hearts in it, and live the phrase sky’s the limit.” ~ Biggie

“The only true gift is a portion of yourself.” ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

“In times like these, it helps to recall that there have always been times like these.” ~ Paul Harvey

“Always be a first-rate version of yourself, instead of a second-rate version of somebody else.” ~ Judy Garland

“Everyone has talent. What is rare is the courage to follow the talent into the dark place where it leads.” ~ Erica Jong

“Don’t seek to follow in the footsteps of the wise. Seek what they sought.” ~ Basho

“The final test of a leader is that he leaves behind him in other men the conviction to carry on.” ~Walter Lippmann

“Remember you are just an extra in everyone else’s play.” ~ Franklin Delano Roosevelt

“A kind heart is a fountain of gladness, making everything in its vicinity freshen into smiles.” ~ Washington Irving

“You must take action now that will move you toward your goals. Develop a sense of urgency in your life.” ~ Les Brown

“The mark of an immature man is that he wants to die nobly for a cause, while the mark of a mature man is that he wants to live humbly for one.” ~ William Stekel

“Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.” ~ Mark Twain

“Nothing that you have not given away will ever be really yours.” ~ C. S. Lewis

“The greatest good you can do for another is not just share your riches, but reveal to them their own.” ~ Benjamin Disraeli

“Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage.” ~ Lao Tzu

“Kindness is the oil that smoothen the friction of life.” ~ Anonymous

“Friendship is certainly the finest balm for the pangs of disappointed love.” ~ Jane Austen

“The greatest lesson in life is to know that even fools are right sometimes.” ~Winston Churchill

“Friendship is the only cement that will ever hold the world together.” ~ Woodrow Wilson

“Wherever there is a human being, there is an opportunity for kindness.” ~ Seneca

“From what we get, we can make a living; what we give, however, makes a life.” ~ Arthur Ashe

“You can easily judge the character of others by how they treat those who can do nothing for them or to them.” ~ Malcolm Forbes

“You can get through life with bad manners, but it’s easier with good manners.” ~ Lillian Gish

As far as the prototype, it ended up being far more complicated than I had suspected. I had originally planned on just using the SAX XML parser built into python. Unfortunately, it ended up not being a viable library now I have to build a custom parser which will take much longer than I originally planned.

As far as posts a lot of them I ended up cutting due to my own shortsightedness on using short term posts. I thought I had a lot more posts set aside but I began cutting them do to no longer being relevant to you guys. Falling back to quality over quantity I ended up killing a lot of my posts and haven’t been thinking much about topics to write about. The blog is now a place for ideas I can’t condense into a few tweets.

And as far as my stack goes I got up to 8k and then I got cocky and started playing with my emotions and not with my brain. This occurred even when I knew I had a losing hand I would shove all in. Stupidly, I did this over and over to the point that I hit 1k by the end of the month.

All of this goes back to me not being able to deal with failure. I have a tendency to either be perfect or just laze around. The only time I fail is when I don’t try which is far more often because I find a reason that it can’t be perfect and I’m not saying that everything I attempt comes out perfect, it’s not, there is always more that can be done. If it’s something that I only have a short time to do, I’ll finish it but it won’t be of the quality that I’d like.

Because of this I try to remain aloof and allow myself the time to adapt to any changes that may occur. If I need to implement something better I don’t mind stepping back and taking a little more time. I’m averse to failure and it makes me even more prone to failure. Maybe I need to just start trying more and failing only because I didn’t succeed and not because I didn’t try.

Several Questions To Pose

1. How many people are effected by what I do, positively?
2. What matters most to me, people or things?
3. Why am I doing this?
4. Is there something I could change to improve the world?

The reason for each question is to determine whether or not you are a wealth creator or a money earner. They are also good questions to ask when ever you come up with an idea that you feel like you could sell. Each of these questions are hard to answer because you have to remove your personal bias of yourself, or the answers will be wrong.

How many people are effected by what I do, positively?

How many people are you effecting positively with what you do on a daily basis, dozens, several hundred, maybe thousands? Do you even know if you have an effect on their lives? If you can’t tell whether or not your doing something that improves others lives, either through productivity or providing a service that they can’t do themselves, your probably just trying your hardest to get rich. The only problem is that you are meaningless to others, you have a discernable value and can be replaced by many other people. If you’re working to provide value, you have cast your stone into the water and the ripples of your actions will return your reward in time.

What matters most to me, people or things?

Do you pride yourself over who your friends and family or over the material objects that surround you? Would you rather work hours on end to buy things to impress others or would you rather spend your time with those people? If you want to achieve wealth you have to look inward to see what truly surrounds you. You have to be willing to make a change in someone else, no matter how poor or insignificant they may seem. If you only make decisions about others to further your own status and to make more money, your failing yourself and the world.

Why am I doing this?

What do you get out of doing what you do? Are you passionate about what you do and where does the passion come from? Is it from coming from your heart and your dreams or is it coming from the need to fill your wallet. The truth is nothings worth doing if you don’t love it, truly and honestly, yet so often you see people make stupid decisions just to get enough money for something they didn’t really need. There is no doubt in my mind that if your willing to look you can find a niche doing what you love that you can make money, as an extra positive. Normally, the two are hard to see coming together and if you can’t see it you may have to make a sacrifice in one.

Is there something I could change to improve the world?

If you had one thing that you felt you could change wouldn’t you do it? Don’t give money to charities, they aren’t actually very good at doing what they say they do most of the time. They are mainly just a tax break for the rich that allows them to say that they’ve done something good for others.* If you really want to be involved with change, get out there and do something with your person. Show up face-to-face in a soup-kitchen, read to the elderly, do anything to assist, just don’t give paper. You don’t even have to set time aside, when you see an elderly person in an airport and they need help with their bags, drop what you’re doing, it’s not as important as helping, and assist them, ask if they need it first.

* I’m not saying all charities are bad, but ,quite a few, are just tax havens for the rich and very little money is shared with the actual recipients.

Looking back can you see how action and being there for other is far more important than money. Wealth is not a tangible asset. Wealth is what you are able to create out of thin air, it doesn’t exist until someone created it. Money is a tangible asset that we use to easily share wealth with others. Money is a representation of wealth that we can trade for wealth that we want. You can work at making money all you want but if you aren’t actually creating wealth your job is useless.

As we rise back out of this turmoil that has arisen, those that focus on making money without providing wealth are going to flounder. The only way that you can survive is if you can change someones life, even if it’s only in a miniscule way. We are going to see an uprising in wealth producers and watch as the middlemen start to die off. If you don’t figure out how to provide the value that people want in return for their money, you won’t have any for yourself. For too long we were screaming, “SHOW ME THE MONEY,” now those times are over and the money is fading away.

“Strive To Create Wealth, Not Money”

That’s a motto to follow now that we have seen what happens when your chasing something that isn’t real. Wealth is real, money is not. Go out now and become a wealth creator, go out and sell your product or service that will actually change someone’s life.

“A good laugh is good for both the mental and physical digestion.” ~ Abraham Lincoln

“The simple act of paying positive attention to people has a great deal to do with productivity” ~ Tom Petters

“You have to learn the rules of the game. And then you have to play better than anyone else.” ~ Albert Einstien

“Whenever you have truth it must be given with love, or the message and the messenger will be rejected” ~ Mahatma Ghandi

“It is usually the imagination that is wounded first, rather than the heart; it being much more sensitive.” ~ Thoreau

“Being happy doesn’t mean that everything is perfect. It means that you’ve decided to look beyond the imperfections.” ~ Anonymous

“Work banishes those three great evils, boredom, vice, and poverty.” ~ Voltaire

“If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion.” ~The Dalai Lama

“In times like these, it helps to recall that there have always been times like these.” ~ Paul Harvey

“Personal participation is the universal principle of knowing.” ~ Michael Polanyi

“Remember there’s no such thing as a small act of kindness. Every act creates a ripple with no logical end.”~Scott Adams

“It’s so simple to be wise. Just think of something stupid to say and say the opposite.” ~ Sam Levenson.

“No act of kindness, however small, is ever wasted.” ~Aesop

“You cannot do a kindness too soon because you never know how soon it will be too late.” ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

“When death, the great reconciler, has come, it is never our tenderness that we repent of, but our severity.” ~ George Eliot

“It’s hard for many people to believe that there are extraordinary things inside themselves, as well as others, keep an open mind.” ~ Myself

“The good life is one inspired by love and guided by knowledge.” ~ Bertrand Russell

“The only way that we can keep advancing is by not becoming complacent with what we have achieved and strive for more.” ~ Myself

“Kindness can become its own motive. We are made kind by being kind.” ~ Eric Hoffer

“Judge a man by his questions rather than his answers.” ~ Voltaire

“Being happy doesn’t mean that everything is perfect. It means that you’ve decided to look beyond the imperfections.” ~ Unknown

“Nothing of me is original. I am the combined effort of everybody I’ve ever known.” ~ Chuck Palahniuk

“Prepare your mind to receive the best that life has to offer.” ~ Ernest Holmes

“The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources.” ~ Albert Einstein

“He who learns but does not think, is lost. He who thinks but does not learn is in great danger.” ~ Confucius

“The art of art, the glory of expression and the sunshine of the light of letters, is simplicity.” ~ Walt Whitman

“An idea that is not dangerous is unworthy of being called an idea at all.” ~ Oscar Wilde

“Never talk defeat. Use words like hope, belief, faith, victory.” ~ Norman Vincent Peale

Why go Small?

The main reason to go small is that you can stay heavily connected and have relevant data flowing constantly with out much noise in the stream. The system was originally designed for keeping track of friends so it makes sense to stay small. There are still problems with only following a few people and the main problem is based on the reciprocal friending that occurs on the service, if you are followed by someone they want you to follow them back. Having only a small group makes it hard to get a large set of advice and responses when you ask a question.

Why go Big?

The main reason to go big is to spur on the reciprocity that I mentioned above that allows you to poll your followers for answers. Also with the reciprocal reaction that gives you lots of followers it allows you to market yourself and your products to them. Another plus that comes with the mass friending is if your able to monitor and track the data that is coming through your stream you can pull out large amounts of focused data.

Now the downside of big is that you can’t build meaningful relationships easily with your friends based off of their tweets. You are opening the door to spammers by (auto-)following everyone back. It makes it harder to use apps because of to much data coming into the API for your user.

My Choice: Small

To me I’d rather have a large group of followers that I could ping off of but only be following a subset of them so that I can have a wealthy stream of information that’s relevant to me. To me I don’t want to have a lot of crap, I want to have valuable wealth inducing assets in my stream. It’s up to you whether you are marketing or there to extract information and build relationships to decide which path you want.

Note this is something that is equally applicable through the broad area of Social Media and it’s up to you. Twitter just takes this single aspect and inflames it in how their service is used making the way you use the service change based on the numbers. One site that has a similar set of changing data based on the numbers of friends & followers is Digg in that you have the ability to shout a story(currently being analysed for removal) to your friends to get dugg up.

Get a working prototype of my Main project finished.

This might not get done but I’m really hoping that I can as I spent the past month working on the algorithm and design of the system. I think I can get the base down in 2 weeks but some of the higher functioning algorithms will take a bit longer but I have to build a working test body before I get to them.

15 posts

I know I was lacking last month, in fact this is the first post in over 2 weeks. I’ll be finishing a bunch of posts I’ve been working on and should be able to hit 15 fairly easily.

Find a new car

This is new as I just totalled my car an hour ago, at the time of writing. I was planning on looking more towards the end of the month but looks like that clock was stepped up a bit.

Build up my chipstack on Full-Tilt

Lately, I’ve been playing more often I haven’t reached a point where I’m able to sacrifice money from my daily life so I just play  for fun and intellectual challenge. Right now, I’m at 3,000 and I want to reach 10,000 by the end of the month.

I’ll update you guys on how I did at the end of the month. Oh and for those of you that subscribe and visit the site I’m wondering if the new design is more pleasing to you?

So I want to offer anyone who wants it a free Twhirl skin that makes tracking replies and direct messages inline alot easier. It also introduces contrast in the FriendFeed portion of the app between others’ comments and your’s against the regular background.

Here’s the installation info you’ll need to install the skin. Download the Mint Skin
1.)  Extract the Mint.xml file.
2.) Go into your Twhirl skins folder:

• For PC it’s in Program Files Twhirl colorschemes
• For Mac its in Twhirl- (Right click) show package contents, Colorschemes

3.) Copy the file into the folder.
4.) Restart Twhirl and enable the theme.

Hope you enjoy, leave me comments or send me a reply @jimminy if you do or if there is anything you would like modified. I’m also planning on working on some more so if you would have an idea of something you would like just let me know.

Update: @kyeung808 noticed a little issue with the image I have up above and I must take note of it. The image above appears to show multiple columns but it’s actually Twitter on the left and FriendFeed on the right.

“A good laugh is good for both the mental and physical digestion.” ~ Abraham Lincoln

“The measure of success is not whether you have a tough problem to deal with, but whether it is the same problem you had last year.” ~ John Foster Dulles

“Colors fade, temples crumble, empires fall, but wise words endure.” ~ Edward Thorndike

“Everything we do seeds the future. No action is an empty one.” ~ Joan Chittister

“If you aren’t going all the way; why go at all?” ~ Joe Namath

“The object of education is to prepare the young to educate themselves throughout their lives.” ~ Robert Maynard Hutchins

“Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.” ~ George Bernard Shaw

“Your work is to discover your work, and then with all your heart to give yourself to it.” ~ Buddha

“There is nothing so confining as the prisons of our own perceptions.” ~ William Shakespeare, King Lear

“Education for creativity is nothing short of education for living.” ~ Eric Fromm

“A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable but more useful than a life spent doing nothing.” ~ George Bernard Shaw

“Once we know our weaknesses they cease to do us any harm.” ~ George C. Lichtenberg

“Everyone must take time to sit and watch the leaves turn.” ~ Elizabeth Lawrence

“Great things are not done by impulse, but by a series of small things brought together.” ~ Vincent Van Gogh

“Grant me the courage not to give up, even though I think it’s hopeless.” ~ Admiral Chester W. Nimitz

“Too much consistency is as bad for the mind as for the body.” ~ Aldous Huxley

“Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.”~ Leo Tolstoy

“Any man can make mistakes, but only an idiot persists in his error.” ~ Cicero

“If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?” ~ Albert Einstein

“Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed is more important than any one thing.” ~ Abraham Lincoln

“He who asks is a fool for five minutes, but he who does not ask remains a fool forever.” – Chinese proverb

“There is no education like adversity.” ~ Benjamin Disraeli

“You can be aggressive and self serving or you can be aware of those who need help and lend a hand.” ~ Adam Shepard

“Just because something doesn’t do what you planned it to do doesn’t mean it’s useless.” ~ Thomas Edison

“The greatest mistake you can make in life is to be continually fearing you will make one.” ~ Elbert Hubbard

“An unshared life is not living. He who shares does not lessen, but greatens, his life.” ~ Rabbi Stephen S. Wise

“Life is the first gift, love is the second, and understanding the third.” ~ Marge Piercy

“An expert is a man who has made all the mistakes which can be made in a very narrow field.” ~ Niels Bohr

“A generous and elevated mind is distinguished by nothing more certainly than an eminent degree of curiosity.” ~ Samuel Johnson

“The main fuel to speed the world’s progress is our stock of knowledge, and the brake is our lack of imagination.” ~ Julian Simon

Don’t Save Anything to Go Back

This is probably, the most noticeable in the film as this statement is only slightly paraphrased from the film. The reason not to save anything is because the risk going to prod you along, you will know in the back of your head it’s sink or swim. I don’t recommend going so far as that if you make a mistake you will fail completely, but just far enough to make it hard to accept failure.

Always Look Up

In the film, Vincent stares at the rocket that is his dream multiple times as it is taking off. He was positive that he would be able to find a way to get on it no matter how impossible it seemed. Positivity will lead you towards your dreams, you just have to know where to look, up.

Share Your Success

What’s better than one person being successful and reaching there goals. It’s multiple people assisting each other in achieving their goals. The movie provides a very close relationship between multiple characters as they each find success through assisting each other. Pull someone along for the ride and let them occasionally pull you up also when you slip.

Don’t Let Others Tell You What You Can or Can’t Do

Being born in a time of genetic engineering, Vincent’s parent’s new exactly what was wrong with him from the time he was born. As the movie progresses you can clearly see that he was triumphing over these ailments that were supposed to cripple his potential. He set his own bar and didn’t let what was supposed to happened keep him from going strong. Don’t let other’s inhibit you from doing what you set out to do.

Success Isn’t In Your Genes, It’s In Your Heart

Remember that, you achieve what you want to achieve, and only what you want to achieve. Your life isn’t predetermined by what’s pumping through your veins but what’s pumping through your mind. So what is it that you want from life and who are you taking for the ride?

Do a Weekly Analysis for 1-2 Weeks

You don’t have to over thorough with you tracking, but every couple of hours write down what your doing. If you do something that could take a few hours write before you start and when you end, including the time for each. At the end of the week, compile all that information and look for stuff that appears rather excessive and see if you can cut it out; for me excessive would be anything above 6-8 hours for the week. Obviously, you can’t cut sleep, dining, or commuting out completely, but it is possible to cut back.

How to Cut Back

If say reading too much(though I don’t think that’s possible), you could cut the number of books available to you so that you read them more slowly and cherish them, or maybe it’s a social activity, you can cut your funding so that you have to stay home. Find a way to either make the time have more value, rather than desaturate it with over use, or put a flow valve on it so that you can constrict it. If it’s possible you could also just go cold turkey and cut it completely, this was my choice in canceling my subscription and removing the software from my system.

Find Something Productive to Fill the Time

This is the big one anytime you try to stop a habit, you need a distraction to prevent you from going back to your old ways.  You need something that you find interesting and will add value to your life. Here are a few, some that I plan on using

• Blogging( I know I already am, I want to do it more frequently)
• Freelancing
• Programming
• Reading
• Focused Topical Learning
• Get A Job
• Head Back to School

Douchebags

These are the guys that do pretty much anything to make your job just a bit harder. They can be overly pushy when you tell them that you’re unable to assist them. They will do anything to get what they want and don’t give a damn whether it’s possible on your end, but their persistence though annoying sticks with you. You use them to benchmark  your other customers. These guys stick out because they ruffle your feathers and they just beckon to be remembered.

Nice Guys

This group you don’t want to forget because they are the few people who can brighten your day up. They can call you up on short notice and you don’t have anything for them that’s decent but they are happy to take what you have to offer and so glad that you could get them out of there bind. I had one guy, Mr. Bruce, that wouldn’t stop smiling it was just so remarkably odd, normally I see people who are upset because they got into an accident or their flight was canceled. These are the people you want to come back again and again just so they can cheer you up.

Frequenters

These people come in maybe once every month or two and setup there reservations before they ever leave. You get to know exactly what they want when they show up. You really don’t want to forget frequenters because they are probably 20-30% of your business in my small town. You can’t offend them because they will go to your competitors and are unlikely to come back.

These are the 3 groups that I just can’t forget, I know them all by name and see someone from one of these groups atleast once per week. One thing about these groups though is that they aren’t self contained, I’ve got frequent nice guys and frequent douchebags. I’ve also managed to get a nice douchebag, I assume it’s just because I’m not used to the abrasiveness of people from NYC, they don’t come to small town West Virginia that often.  I bet if you wanted you could even make your self unforgetable by mixing them with your own style.

It’s sad to here that Steve Jobs is stepping down, but maybe whoever takes over while he’s gone will start making improvements to their fringe products like iTunes. Just the other day I was using it, as it is my default player, and I realized that Window’s Media Player had a better user interface, though slower and not as pretty. In WMP, if you want to listen to an album by itself all you have to do is double click on it’s art or right-click on it’s title and select play. iTunes doesn’t have this it takes at least 2-5 clicks and some search through different menu’s to get to play just an album, that’s quite a disrespectful use of the the user’s time.

In other news, people have started to look at the education bubble that we’ll be facing in the next few years. John Robb’s article “Industrial Education” has caused a stir, “There is reason to believe that costs of higher education (direct costs and lost income) are now nearly equal (in net present value) to the additional lifetime income derived from having a degree.” I like how he’s done this because his analysis comes toward the same view as my posts from early last year on Social Perception and Personal Economics of education where I discuss the topic, but he also comes up with some great ideas on replacing it.

That’s all I have to say this morning, I’ll be back in a few days with new posts, now that everything is back in working order.

“It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.” ~Charles Darwin

Not a quote it’s a 15 minute film called “Validation” highly reccomended for a lift.

“The most important thing in communication is to hear what isn’t being said.” ~ Peter Drucker

“A mere whisper among the winds of change, can cause the greatest of societies to crumble and others to rise from the ashes.”

“The worst sin towards our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them: that’s the essence of inhumanity.” ~ George Benard Shaw

“We have more possibilities available in each moment than we realize.” ~ Thich Nhat Hanh

“Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned.” ~ Buddha

“We must learn our limits. We are all something, but none of us are everything.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“The wise ones fashioned speech with their thought, sifting it as grain is sifted through a sieve.” ~ Buddha

“Do not believe what your teacher tells you merely out of respect for the teacher.” ~ Buddha

“Too often we enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought.” ~ John F. Kennedy

“Strange, isn’t it? Each man’s life touches so many other lives. When he isn’t around he leaves an awful hole, doesn’t he?” ~Clarence, the Angel “It’s a Wonderful Life”

“The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new lands but seeing with new eyes.” ~ Marcel Proust

“Christmas is not a time nor a season, but a state of mind. To cherish peace and goodwill… is to have the real spirit of Christmas.”

“Neither fire nor wind, birth nor death can erase our good deeds.”

“Who speaks to the instincts speaks to the deepest in mankind, and finds the readiest response.” ~ Amos Bronson Alcott

“Are you a human being having a spiritual experience, or a spiritual being having a human experience?” ~ Wayne Dyer

“In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity.” ~ A. Einstein

“If you don’t like something change it; if you can’t change it, change the way you think about it.” ~ Mary Engelbreit

“The man who views the world at 50 the same as he did at 20 has wasted 30 years of his life.” ~ Muhammad Ali

“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, therefore, is not an act, but a habit.” ~ Aristotle

“The best way you can predict your future is to create it.” ~ Stephen Covey

“Look beneath the surface; let not the several quality of a thing nor its worth escape thee.” ~ Marcus Aurelius

“Life is a succession of lessons which must be lived to be understood.” ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Discovery consists of seeing what everybody has seen and thinking what nobody has thought.” ~ Albert von Szent-Gyorgyi

“It is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation.” ~ Herman Melville

“In helping others, we shall help ourselves, for what ever good we give out completes the circle and comes back to us.” ~ Hora Edwards

“Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.” ~ T. S. Eliot

“You are today where your thoughts have brought you; you will be tomorrow where your thoughts take you.” ~ James Allen

“If you do not express your own original ideas, if you do not listen to your own being, you will have betrayed yourself.” ~ Rollo May

“The foolish man seeks happiness in the distance. The wise grows it under his feet.” ~ Unknown

It is a story that aligns very well with the depression and wartime era’s of the early 20th century. During these tough times, friends, family, and neighbors would gather what little they had and make hearty feasts to share with each other. This would provide them with more variety in the foods they were able to make and they were also connecting with each other.

Co-operation and compassion are key in tough times in keeping your communities strong.

There is no greater proof than David Armano’s assistance with his family friend, on Tuesday night. He used his personal capital on Twitter, friendfeed, and his blog to raise just under $15,000 for her in the past 24 hours. What this proves, is what we are all involved in on these social arenas is very much a community, nearly as real as that which we walk through each day. When we had raised $7,000 for Daniela, David created a video thanking everyone who contributed, with donations or spreading the word, but the thing that stuck out is he spoke of a feast with neighbors in which they would all cook everything when the power would go out and share with each other.

If one person can start an initiative to help another and raise that much in a day, what is stopping us from helping those that need it now more than ever. We have hit a period in which everyone is hurting, much like the depression and wartime eras. If we can share what we have with others to make our community better and also make connections what is the hindrance.

If we can share what we have with others to make our community better and also make connections what is the hindrance.

As technology makes more and more information available to you at an ever greater speed, your time to marvel over the latest design or innovative idea shrinks. Look at just about any area that your interested in. Now, think back to last year and what you were amazed by in that area and what your amazed by this year, last year’s seems pretty bland in comparison, right? How many times were you amazed by the changes that took place throughout the year in that area? Depending on your source for information it would probablychange once a month, once a week, once a day.

Now let’s go back and look at what would have been a marvel to people throughout the 20th century,  a lot of what I’m basing this paragraph on is the image from Visualizing Economics.   The most marvelous things at the turn of the century had very little competition, due to less information for the masses. It took cars 15 years to reach 20% usage and during the same period electricity reached only 30% of the nation. These would have been marvelous utilities to have could you afford them.

As time goes on the different media streams come along that hasten the usage and acceptance I figure a ~20% usage rate as the reduction to marvel. The radio comes along and reaches 20% in just 5 years but allows other forms of media, such as television, computers, the internet, to develop more quickly than had been possible before.  B/W and Color televisions both took ~5 years to reach the threshold, computers took about 20 years and the internet roughly 10.

If you look at how fast we find new marvels today it takes between 1-5 years for nearly anything to reach the  20% threshold. Also, with each new advance in media we find that it loses it’s marvel much quicker than before because there are many more things to marvel at, which reduces the threshold to about 10% currently. As more and more new things come around we have less and less time to spend marveling over it.

This ever increasing pace that removes our abilities to attach to something for a long period of time is going to make it harder and harder for businesses to become a Goliath. This has already started to show in weak returns for advertising and purchasing of slower media types, such as newspapers and magazines. In the very near future you will have to come out with something that will blow everyone away as quick as possible  you don’t have the time to wait and become a Microsoft or Google.

Would love to hear your opinions in the comments about what you think of this idea.

With me, I failed out of college and used an excuse all year round that could have been an influence, but I know wasn’t. The night before 3 of my final exams the first semester I suffered severe muscle spasms in my upper back and ended up in the E.R., until 2 in the morning, and also had to pack to leave school so I didn’t sleep at all. It’s all true, except I omitted the fact that I had already slipped to the bottom of my classes, or close to it. I went back for the 2nd semester but gave up on everything in the 3rd week after I realized that I wasn’t going to be able to keep my scholarships. This damn thing has been my crutch and I limped around with it just because I could; well now it’s time to change.

If you share an excuse like that with me; I want you to toss the crutch out and be honest with yourself and with others. You can be great, your just going to have to learn to walk again without having a crutch there to keep you from falling down. You can be whatever you want to, but first you must see it, then you must do it. The world is at your fingertips are you going to take it by storm this year. Here’s a quote to keep you going throughout the year.

“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, therefore, is not an act, but a habit.” ~ Aristotle

Braid (Xbox 360, PC 1stQ ‘09)

This game is probably the most innovative game in this century so far. It takes the idea of controlling time and runs with it in all directions, to solve puzzles and complete levels, turning this platform game into one of the best games of the year.  If you haven’t played it pick it up on Xbox Live Arcade now or if you don’t have a 360 you can wait for the PC version to come in the 1st quarter of 2009.

Audiosurf (PC-only)

This is probably my favorite time waster of 2008 and the foreseeable future. The game takes your non-DRM audio tracks into race tracks, based on various elements of the audio file, and crosses it with a puzzle game. You end up having something that resembles what you would get if you crossed Guitar Hero and F-Zero. Since it is using your audio to create the game you can keep adding more and more levels as you add more and more audio to your hard drive. Pick it up from Steam for $9.99 right now.

Mirrors Edge (Xbox 360 ,PS3, PC 1stQ’09)

This isn’t a truly large innovation but this game has laid a whole new path for future games that harness first-person perspectives. It was seemingly so real that it had people vomiting from the virtual induction of themselves into the game by seeing the arms, torso, and legs of Faith. I have a feeling we’ll be seeing more games that use this induction to make their games more realistic.

Left 4 Dead (Xbox 360, PC)

This game is just another FPS until you get into it and have hundreds of enemies rush you out of nowhere. The AI Director has it’s issues but it provides this game with some suppensful moments that make every play-through completely different. It analyzes whether your doing well or barely hanging on and adapts how many and when it’s going to flood you with enemies.

Those where the most innovative games that I have seen and played in 2008, all are recommended purchases. I’ve also already spotted one that is going to be an innovative game when it comes out in 2009 or 2010. The game is called LOVE and is a MMO that is procedural rendered and completely editable by the players.

If you think I missed a game let me know and I’ll look into it or tell you why it didn’t get on the list.

Remember no man is a failure who has friends.” ~ It’s A Wonderful Life

Merry Christmas

Your child does not seem to have a learning impediment, but he does not seem to want to speak. The schoolmaster pressures you to start considering “other options,” namely therapy. You argue with her to no avail (she is supposed to be the “expert”). Then, suddenly, the child starts composing elaborate sentences, perhaps a  bit too elaborate for his age group. I will repeat that linear progression, a Platonic idea, is not the norm.”

Now, the reason I mention this is that I know for a fact that this exact example is very true. I went through it when I was in  2nd grade, of the K-12 system, at age 7. I didn’t know how to tie my shoes, dress myself, but the big one where school comes in was my reading comprehension and verbal language.  However, by my 3rd grade year, age 8, I could tie my shoes and dress myself, but also my reading comprehension had jumped to that of an average 10th graders, verbal language was also on par with older students. Over time, they have both lost that advantage.

Education will never be a linear system, yet, that’s how our systems treats it. Our system focuses on the ones with the most promise to fill the position, the rest are left alone or sent to remediation to see if they can recover, most can’t. I was the exception to this case and even now I’m behind in my composition and verbal usage, I’m sure it shows.

I would be pleased to hear any stories that you may have to share on the subject.

How often can you manage to meet nice people and forge a relationship with them in so short a time? It’s rarely happened to me that it has occurred in the same way as it did in that situation. Normally, if I attempt to help people they get offended or are just genuinely unappreciative of the effort that I put into their happiness and satisfaction. No matter what their response I’m going to feel good for assisting.

I guess the value that I get is a good feeling and occasionally some single-serving friends, even if you didn’t meet them on a plane it’s a great term.

So have your ever assisted somebody and formed a relationship or just felt good about what you had done for them? Leave me some comments on what you think the value of providing assistance would be to both parties. Hope you enjoyed the post.

“A true gentleman is calm and at ease; the Small man is fretful and ill at ease.” ~ Confucius, The Analects Book VII, Verse 36

“What a man thinks of himself, that it is which determines, or rather indicates, his fate.” ~ Henry David Thoreau

“What we do for ourselves dies with us. What we do for others and the world remains and is immortal.” ~ Albert Pine

“One’s gratitude is a far greater judge of character than one’s attitude.”

“We confide in our strength, without boasting of it; we respect that of others, without fearing it.” ~ Thomas Jefferson

“With fame I become more and more stupid, which of course is a very common phenomenon.” ~ Albert Einstein

“Measure not the work until the day’s out and the labor done.” ~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning

“Think to yourself that every day is your last; the hour to which you do not look forward will come as a welcome surprise.” ~ Horace

“You see things; and you say, ‘Why?’ But I dream things that never were; and I say, “Why not?” ~ George Bernard Shaw

“Don’t go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first.” ~ Mark Twain

“We all die. The goal isn’t to live forever. The goal is to create something that will.” ~ Chuck Palahniuk

“There is no formula for success, except perhaps an unconditional acceptance of life and what it brings.” ~ Arthur Rubinstein

“In order to learn the important lessons in life, one must, each day, surmount a fear.” ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

“The world doesn’t revolve around me (or you), but by people caring for others.” ~ A Life Defined By Death

“Although the world is full of suffering, it is full also of the overcoming of it.” ~ Hellen Keller

“Familiarity with danger makes a brave man braver, but less daring.” ~ Herman Melville

“In giving, a man receives more than he gives; and the more is in proportion to the worth of the thing given.” ~ George Macdonald

“A purpose of human life, no matter who is controlling it, is to love whoever is around to be loved.” ~ Kurt Vonnegut

“If we could first know where we are, and whither we are tending, we could then better judge what to do, and how to do it.” ~ Abraham Lincoln

“Nature is full of genius, full of the divinity; so that not a snowflake escapes its fashioning hand.” ~ Henry David Thoreau

“Today is not the time to be thankful for what we have accomplished and have individually, but what we can accomplish and share together.”

“Appreciation is a wonderful thing: It makes what is excellent in others belong to us as well.” ~ Voltaire

“Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.” ~ Leo Tolstoy

“We haven’t got the power to destroy the planet or to save it. But we might have the power to save ourselves.” ~ Ian Malcolm

“Be not afraid of greatness: some men are born great, some achieve greatness and some have greatness thrust upon them.” ~ Shakespeare

“Little things you take for granted may be something huge and astounding to someone who doesn’t experience them every day.”

“Out of clutter, find simplicity. From discord, find harmony. In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity.” ~ Albert Einstein

“Wheresoever you go, go with all your heart.” ~ Confucius

“Apologize when you screw up and focus on other people, not on yourself.” ~ Randy Pausch

“The only thing that will redeem mankind is cooperation.” ~ Bertrand Russell

“Our wise acts accompany us through life to please us and help us. Just as surely our unwise acts follow us to plaque and torment us.” ~ George Clason

“We were making the future,” he said, “and hardly any of us troubled to think what future we were making. And here it is!” ~ H.G. Wells

Blogs -

Get Rich Slowly – This is the best blog on personal finance that I have found. J.D. goes over so many different topics and various projects  that this is one of the biggest repositories for personal finance tips, tricks, and information.

Wise Bread – This blog is written by multiple people so there isn’t the same connection as with J.D. The topics can range widely from the writer’s experience and the quality is sometimes lacking. Good information it’s Lifehacker for finance.

Books -

The Richest Man in Babylon – This book is astoundingly in how simple it is too understand and it’s approach of using a story to achieve an osmotic effect with it’s information and your mind. It teaches multiple lessons in how to handle your finances while also having an underpinning in humility. A great read and also a classic from the 1920’s

Rich Dad, Poor Dad – This isn’t necessarily dedicated towards personal finance so much as street wise thinking on finance. This book isn’t to be taken literally but it does off plenty of good advice for business, and investing outside of the stock market. It makes it on the list because of these facts.

Hackers and Painters – I recommend this book not in it’s entirety, but for one essay that is contained within. You can read this essay entitled “How to Make Wealth” at Paul Graham’s website. A much different approach than what we have been ingrained with.

Tools -

Mint - My personal web tool to help chart my monetary flow. I find it fitting for my lifestyle in that it is simple, it easily connects, and implements multiple security measures. Pluses, SMS, nice tagging feature, allows you to break down bills into their subsequent parts, and handles almost any form of monetary trade, from checking, credit cards, and savings to stocks and loans.

Wesabe – This in the personal finance blogging arena comes out on top. It has community support, allows your to set goals, and update manually to keep it balanced. * I had issues with it miscalculating my credit card and telling me I had $245 on the black rather than $70 in the red so it was screwing the debit/credit balance of by $300 .

Geezeo – Another community connected online management tool. This comes out on top in the user happiness it seems. As far as I can tell, it lets you do what the other two do but it seems to be a more complete package haven’t actually used this but I may look into it.

Spreadsheets – Nothing like handling all the pertinent details yourself. Though this isn’t as easy as the others and will take some time out of your day I would at least recommend knowing how to do this either by hand or using software such as Excel, Quicken, Google Spreadsheets, etc.

1. Easy to Find: Sharing an unanimous identity across the spectrum means that people only need to know that one aspect to find you on their favorite service. This makes it easier for you to not ostracize your followers by not being where they feel comfortable.

2. Reputation Proceeds You: If someone knows you from another service it will make it easier for you to gain following as you enter a new service. You also will have a beacon set up for when followers from another service come looking for you.

3. Protection From Miscreants: This is probably one of the big ones in this day and age. If someone shares the name with you and they do something that could only be viewed in a negative light; they are going to hurt your brand.

4. Multiple Connection Points: You can connect with people on multiple fronts in a multitude of ways. This provides heightened connectivity with those around you. Allows you to create deeper relationships that connecting on only one front.

1. Bankroll Management:This is definitely one of the largest keys to the game of poker, making sure you can still be in the game when your opportunity arises. The concept is that your allowing yourself to achieve the maximum value at the lowest risk possible. If your good at managing your stack you can take a small stack and still come out on top, do the same with your skills, talents, and money and you will can build a great life. This is the foundation that you build off of.
2. Aggressively Take Chances: The more you risk in the early stages the easier it will be to recoup losses or exploit your massive advantage in mid- and late-game. This becomes especially true if you are good at managing your bankroll.
3. Know When to Back Down: The corollary to number 2, being aggressive can put your in a winning position in most situations, but if you get cocky you might end up losing everything. You may scare away the source of your income. It’s up to you to toss a few hands, either due to the fact that your hand sucks or just to provide an incorrect position to your competition.
4. Opportunities are not Rare: Yes, this may not be 100 percent true in life; it is in poker though.  Every hand your dealt is an opportunity to advance, in life you have probably on average one opportunity every day. The problem is that most people don’t have the skills to see opportunities in their peripheral, only the obvious ones that stand out right in front of them.
5. Luck is a Factor: Every person is dealt a different starting hand, sometimes you will be beat before you ever see your hand. The only thing that you can do is try to take advantage of what you’ve been giving.

As I walk through this frigid world, I have nothing to distract me from what is inside. I open myself up to everything that enters my mind. I am only on this journey for the pleasure that may wait on the other end. As I reach the bottom of the mountain, the lights begin to grow dim from the world above. I have a strong sense of fear growing over me as I don’t know what awaits around the next turn, could be nothing, could be pain. I hear a river rippling off in the distance and walk towards it, because I know it will be my guide through the night. My only friend, the only sound in the dark, it leads me along yet never fails me. This shall go on for multiple hours, tonight.

After about two hours, my mind begins to wander, “What have I done?”, “Why are you doing this?”, “What do you seek that is this important?” My answer to the first is a triviality, because there is no turning back from here, not now. I can only assume that I have to do this for my fear or for the fact of my own humanity. ” What do you seek that is this important,” how do you answer, so many possible things. This is when I come to realize I have lost myself in society. We have no knowledge of what it is to be free from everything, no one to bother you, nothing to distract you, just the open mind that you find filling your body with brash feelings.

The mind shall fill you full of hope, even when there is none. The mind shall fill you full of the memories of love, even if they be only memories. The mind shall fill you with dreams and delusions, even if they can never come true. Some dreams can come true; all they require is a steady will and a challenge for it. Your will can get you over the obstacles in life if you allow it to.

This is the challenge that I face, and is one I cannot do without in my life; the challenge of understanding me and what I want from life. I realized then that all I ever wanted was to take care of everyone that I care for. I cannot do this in my current state so I will have to apply everything to make this work. I have to force my way through life, ambition will get me there but only if I am wise enough to know how to control it.

During break, I took the time to understand why I’m not doing well in school. Since school began, I’ve found that I have no standard for self-motivation. This lacking sector therefore has caused quite a bit of strife in my life. So I went in search of a solution for my problem.

Quite frankly, the problem I found is I lack any reason to give a fuck about anything related to myself if another is not getting anything from it. Now I’m not saying I’m a selfless person, because that’s not true, I achieve my highest potential when acting in a selfless regard by which I normally benefit from the action itself. I find that I’m am merely a mediocre being with the potentiality to achieve above most peoples standards if I choose to. This brings forth my dilemma, I don’t give a fuck about achieving anything if I don’t feel it helps someone other than me.

It’s been this way for years I was merely mediocre in high school only achieving about a 3.0 on average. However, when it came to achieving for the chance to please another I was capable to achieve almost a 4.0, if only to prove myself to another I expressed my potential. I have adopted this methodology once again in an attempt to try and achieve more than merely mediocre. The problem in doing this is that I now have no one in which I would wish to prove myself to, no reason to achieve above mediocrity for.

I have turned to an unlikely source for motivation my ex. The reason I have chosen her is because she is the only thing that I ever wished to achieve anything for. The problem is I understand that I have about a 0% chance of ever re-achieving anything with her. I fail to want to prove to her knowing this. However, with nowhere else to turn I shall turn to the one source of past inspiration for the future inspiration of my
life fleeing from mediocrity.

The realization that everything that I seek means nothing to me in any sense. I am not worried about money, except to live from, I seek no indulgences outside my personal vices which I have begun to abstain from. I feel that everything shall fall together as it may and I really have no reason to try and influence the cosmos’ actions to affect myself. I seek no reason for life, life is what it is there shall be no reason in seeking the unseekable, I shall just live it.

The realization that one shall not try to change another’ view of life unless it would be beneficial to the other party to see life as something else. The influence one has on others should provide a more meaningful presence or essence to that persons life.

The realization that I have no reason to worry about anything no reason to wonder what could happen, just wait to see what will. I mean if you were to worry yourself with the wonder you will have wasted the time you could have been experiencing what happened or enjoying something else while waiting.

“Memories are nothing, Memories are everything, Memories are what was and will be.”

I’ll begin with who I used to be. I was a geeky kid who had a hard time socially, who was slowly devoured by his pain. His pain led him into a world that was self-centered and effortlessly anti-social. He desperately wanted to be like the other kids, but feared giving a bit of himself away and of rejection. So for years he stayed in his head and remained seperated from the people in the physical world that surrounded him.

This all changed with an inspirational story about someone close to me. It was the telling of my cousin’s life, he died at the age of five, yet he held the wisdom and heart of a man. He was born with a disorder that caused deformation of the majority of his organs, extreme pressure on his brain, and an enlarged tongue. Even facing such hardships, he was always filled with hope, happiness and courage. When people told him he couldn’t do something, either because they felt he wasn’t capable or just worried about his safety; he would prove them wrong by atleast attempting to accomplish that which they said he could not. The boy understood more about life than most people ever do.

Knowing that someone this young and in his state had the courage and hope to take what people told him and go in the face of it, changed my life for the better. I found that trying to open up to others was better than not trying at all, that the world doesn’t revolve around me (or you), but by people caring for others. I realized I was a nobody that was currently headed to nowhere and I needed to change. i found the person I am seeking to be today, the person I wish I would have known so long ago. I found the person who is helpful to those who seek it and even those who do not. I found a person who no longer fears his emotions and rejection, but lives with what he gets. A person who knows he finds happiness by helping others. A person who lets others get know him and who he is as that person. A person who will try his best to get were he plans to be and plans to be trying his best once he gets there. Thus,  my life as it is now can be defined by my cousin’s death, an event I will never forget.

Physical Filing Objectives that I’ll be working on is finding a way to organize my books and films so that I don’t have to dig through piles to find what I’m looking for; right now, I count 15 stacks of books scattered around my room. I’ll be going through and organizing all my bank and credit statements, balancing everything out of course.

Virtual Filing Objectives that I’ll be working on are setting up a better system for RSS feeds, right now I’m satisfied with the system but, with 3+ hours a day it’s just too much. I’ll be redoing my bookmarking so I can find web pages that I use on a more consistent basis and links from others saved for reading. I’ll be redoing the majority of my computers filing system as it has files scattered in random folders.

With the blog I’m working on a redesign that fits who I am and provides a cleaner interface than the one that your reading this on, even I find it hard to read on. I’m also debating on adding more content that fits the innovation theme. Originally I had planned on this being a more technology focused blog with a few political and philosophically innovative ideas; if you look back that’s not how it turned out.

So for the next few weeks I’ll be doing some introspection, try and clear my mind, and get set to roll out some better content in ‘09. This is mainly for my benefit but hopefully it results in some positive effects for you also. I think I may continue this process every year if it turns out something that is effective. This idea of redeveloping your internal and external systems is something that everyone should try to force change on themselves.

“Nature never appeals to intelligence until habit and instinct are useless. There is no intelligence. Where there is no change and no need of change.” ~ H.G. Wells

“The beginning is the most important part of the work.” ~ Plato Do what you want but, don’t let fear stop you from starting now.

“All things are possible until they are proved impossible — and even the impossible may only be so, as of now.” ~ Pearl S. Buck

“Whenever you feel like criticizing anyone just remember that all the people in the world haven’t had the advantages you’ve had.” ~ Gatsby

“There never was a moment, and never will be, when we are powerless to alter our destiny.” ~ Steven Pressfield

“If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.” ~ Henry David Thoreau

“Don’t give up when you still have something left to give, Nothing is really over . . . till the moment you stop trying.” ~ Anonymous

“You can get everything in life you want if you will just help enough other people get what they want.” ~Zig Ziglar

“Have compassion for all beings, rich and poor alike; each has their suffering. Some suffer too much, others too little.” ~ Buddha

“Never be afraid to try something new. Remember, amateurs built the ark; professionals built the Titanic.” ~Anonymous

Its hard for many people to believe that there are extraordinary things inside themselves as well as others I hope you can keep an open mind

“An efficient and valuable man does what he can, whether the community pay him for it or not.” ~ Henry David Thoreau

“Every organization must be prepared to abandon everything it does to survive in the future.” ~ Peter Drucker

“Trust men and they will be true to you; treat them greatly, and they will show themselves great.” ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

“When you reach the top, keep climbing.” Enjoy the day. Keep reaching for the elusive fruit of success even after you grasp it in hand.

“Don’t worry about what anybody else is going to do. The best way to predict the future is to invent it.” ~ Alan Kay

“May I never be complete. May I never be content. May I never be perfect.” ~ Fight Club

“Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.”~ Confucius Everyone, let’s rise from this stumble.

“The truth is incontrovertible, malice may attack it, ignorance may deride it, but in the end; there it is.” ~Winston Churchill

“Trust men and they will be true to you; treat them greatly, and they will show themselves great.” ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

If a butterfly can change the weather on the other side of the world with a beat of it’s wings; why can’t you change your neighborhood

Our nature is to surround ourselves with those that bare semblance with us and, through them we can see our imperfections.

“Don’t handicap your children by making their lives easy.” ~ Robert Heinlein

“Extreme hopes are born from extreme misery.” ~ Bertrand Russell

“It’s only after you’ve lost everything that your free to do anything.” ~ Tyler Durden

At the center of your being you have the answer; you know who you are and you know what you want.” ~ Lao Tzu

“The fear of death is nothing compared to the fear of having not lived authentically or fully.” – Frances Moore Lappe

“The young do not know enough to be prudent, and therefore they attempt the impossible and achieve it, generation after generation.” ~ Pearl S. Buck

“When the Power of Love Overcomes the Love of Power the World Will Know Peace.” ~ Jimi Hendrix

A mans wealth comes not from what he carries in his wallet, but what he carries in his heart. Have a great day everyone!

“I find hope in the darkest of days, and focus in the brightest. I do not judge the universe.” ~ Dalai Lama

The world is still colorful, even though the news may be gray. Hope, everyone enjoys their day.

If you like these and would would like to get them every day add me on Twitter: @jimminy.

Innovation (n.) That which is newly introduced; a change or, the act of innovating.

Innovating (v.) Beginning or introducing(something new); being creative.

In the conversation they discuss Innovation as being natural and being hard work. I find that it’s a natural change of thinking in order to adapt to the constraints that your facing. It is just as natural as evolution is, in fact it is real-time evolution of the mind. Anytime you grasp a new idea, your mind has innovated how you think, even if the idea came from someone else.

Innovation can’t be constrained by hard work, however, if that was the case evolution wouldn’t be possible. Look at the world, it has fauna and flora in locations where they can take the most advantage of their environs. Innovation is natural to the the universe, mathematics and sciences have reproduced constraints for this.

Imagine that you really want to get to the top of mountain with a semi-low grade, simple right, you just walk up. Now imagine that the mountain is a mesa, you can’t find a point were you could just walk up, you have to climb. That’s innovation, it’s a change from what you are used to doing with a mountain, because of the constraint of steep cliffs.

Now, many people think of innovation as changing something that is complex to make it simple. This is easily one of the most paradoxical constraints; as the solution becomes more simple, the problem gets more complex. The constraints in this case are constrained by their variability which makes it even more complicated to see the natural solution. This is why many people today see innovation as hard work, their dealing with problems that are increasingly complex.

Innovation is naturally simple and complex.

Last week, The Next Web published an article entitled The Era of Entrepreneur!, in which they discuss 5 defining elements of an entrepreneur. These 5 elements don’t just apply to an entrepreneur but, anyone wishing to change something. The discussion won’t help too much if you’re not interested in business so, I provided the list below.

1. Be Independent
2. Think Different
3. Be Prepared
4. Be Patient
5. Ignore Everyone

Over at theBridgeMaker, they have written 7 Must -Have Personal Growth Strategies. This article has a more focused thought into Thinking Different and Being Independent in order to grow as a person.

The NYT has an article on Pursuing Big Ideas that has 10 items that will help anyone seeking to get the creative juices flowing. These different approaches will provide you with plenty of ways to think differently or “not think at all “.

Spiritual Blog provides 2 articles, the first is 10 Paths to Individualism. The article analyzes 10 Socratic quotations into finding ones Individuality.  The second is a set of 10 Insightful quotes from Plato, no analysis.

That is all of the inspiration and now I’d like to take a moment to point out another element of economic stupidity, in the secondary-education’s foundation. The NYT has posted a story that states the Downturn is driving tuition UP. The fact that multiple stories have been written on the subject of tight lenders even to students means that the majority of this money will be coming from the government. I’ve already done several articles, College is Taxing Our System and Education pt 2. on the shear absurdity that is government subsidization in this sector

Barack Obama

Over the last year, we have seen such a division between the parties. We have faced the trials of separation on many levels, belief, color, sex, and age. This was a plague that swept our land and it was going to be hard to repair.

Tuesday Night, November 4 2008

We had two men stand up and destroy these divisions with their speeches, McCain, with his Concession Speech, and Barack Obama, with his Acceptance Speech. It does not matter any longer who you wanted to win, because with these speeches they have UNITED us as the American people. We are now 50 states standing under Barack Obama, as the 44th President of the United States, as one UNITED country.

Barack Obama’s  Acceptance Speech

Acceptance Speech Part 1, Part 2

McCain’s Concession Speech

Concession Speech

One phrase is ringing with a deafing roar in my head, right now.

“I am proud to be an American!”

As I was editing this I came across from52to48withlove, an Idea from Ze Frank.

How often do you take note of the world around you and its details of what it has offered the world? I come from Lewisburg, a small town of less than 8000 people, in West Virginia, that has been the center of so much I was shaken by the fact. Mind you I’ve lived here nearly 20 years and knew most of these things but, never really gave a damn. Then everything just starts to fall in and you realize that it isn’t as small as you once thought.

It’s amazing how people can change a town’s history. This kind of kicked off last week when I heard someone at work mention Seth McClung, the Brewers relief-pitcher. Today, Patch Adams, the one the movie was based on, came through our airport on his way to his property a few miles down the road. There was also Bimbo Coles, retired basketball player for several NBA teams and on the 1988 Olympic team. Mason Patrick, a major general, highest rank military officials had received during his time period(1918-1927) received his brigadier general and major general status within a one month period.

The town and surrounding area also have quite the history. The area was a very intensely disputed area during the Civil War with a cavern that was used as a salt-peter mine and multiple battle grounds within the area. Just on the edge of the town is a cemetery with unmarked Confederate soldiers. We have the one of the only continuously used Carnegie Halls in the world and it is also booked with world renowned acts though at a less frequent pace than the one located in New York, for obvious reasons. The Greenbrier Resort, the famous government bunker and the host of the first Ryder Cup, lies just a few miles away.

Almost all the people who have lived here all their life know about these things, though some are hidden just off the beaten path, even for regulars. Those that have moved here probably know of the big ones like Carnegie Hall and the Greenbrier. Look around your town, city, or even neighborhood, you never know what you might find out about your community and it’s history.

Honestly, this post wasn’t about what we have it’s about not caring enough to realize what you have. The little things in life are what truly matter, even if you don’t notice them. Little things may be something huge and astounding to someone who doesn’t experience them every day.

1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2. A robot must obey orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3.A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

Three Laws of Honorable Humanity.

1.An honorable human may not injure another, or through inaction, allow another human being to come to harm.
2.An honorable human should assist others when they ask for help, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3.An honorable human must protect his own existence and desires as long as they do not conflict with the First or Second Laws.

I also realize that you cannot be overly stringent on these laws but, these are merely the basis for an honorable life. That is why I changed must in the second law to should as we may have constraints that a robot would not, mainly our personal life(ie. families, need for sleep, inability to assist do to physical or mental issues, etc.). This list is also incomplete and can be amended with the same extensions as  the original list, however the Fourth and Fifth Laws are relatively irrelevant to a human.

Asimov’s Zeroth Law, supersedes the first three laws and states,

A robot may not harm humanity or, by inaction, allow humanity to come to harm.

The Honorable Human’s Zeroth law is by the same changes as the others.

An honorable human may not harm humanity or by inaction, allow humanity to come to harm.

I’d love to hear your feedback on the conversion of Asimov’s Laws and if you believe this to be a good platform to base honor upon. Obviously, a human’s decisions are his own and not that of a near-perfect logic system.

A man’s wealth comes not from what he carries in his wallet but, what he carries in his heart.

So we’ve all dealt with and continue to deal with the volatile markets of this past week and likely to come back next week though more subdued. Most of us are still probably a bit worried about what’s going to happen in the coming months. I don’t think we should focus on that it’s just not good for general mental health, though we should all be knowledgeable about what is going on around us. I feel like providing some positive inspiration and news for such a down time.

How to Overcome the Fear of Failure – Success Soul This isn’t just about personal failure though it focuses on solidifying oneself. This is something for everyone, we all have our personal pillars that we rely on so that we can keep standing even when we are weak. If our pillars are weak they won’t be able to support us when we fall so we all need to fight the fear and buckle down for the coming months.

What Does it Mean to Be Rich? – Get Rich Slowly A good analysis of what rich is and what it may be. He describes a really interesting situation that he went through recently that makes you think. Even if you feel poor, infact, you may be richer in comparison to the majority of the world?

The Best $20 You’ll Ever Spend – Get Rich Slowly This post is directed more towards people who want to build their knowledge through networking. This is great for people seeking to become independent of the workforce, start a business, or just become a better leader. This is honestly the simplest way’s to enrich you mind of working strategies and new ideas, it’s also inexpensive.

Is All This Paranoia About a Startup Depression Justified? – The Next Web This is an honest explanation of the positive aspects of the collapsing Web 2.0 arena. If your interested in where the boom tech sectors(e.g. Web 2.0, Clean Tech, etc.) are likely to go, this is a great example of what is going to happen during the coming months.

Lastly the story of a sheriff in Cook County, Ohio that is standing up against banks to help people stay in their homes. He’s refusing to do instant foreclosures and giving the families 120 days of leniency.

It is not what you know but, who you know that will get your through life.

Several, example businesses both for good and bad.

Google – This is one of the most famous examples of a trust based company. It has had a notoriously low marketing budget, with no real world advertising. They have built their business through users trust in the search results and spread into other trust-worthy services.

Digg – This company took off because of fans of Kevin Rose trusted in the service he was providing. It was his own ability to build trust in the tech community to provide the user base for his service.

eBay – This is a recent failure, it built itself up into a trustworthy business after years of being around. Recently, it has lost people due to it’s inability to adapt to the I want it now mentality, as an auction site.

Any Social Network – These sites just don’t work without other users, so you have to either market it heavily or hope that the early adopters love it enough to spread it around.

Familiarity is another key to gaining trust that allows your to become connected. Familiarity provides an easy way to provide a setting that people will be able to easily connect with. You can provide them with tools they already know how to use or, be focused in the same areas as they are, allowing them easy entry into the subject.

These are the way to spread an idea, product, or service. You provide them what they want or something they don’t know they need. Let your early adopters spread the idea to their friends, this is the reason what you do needs to be remarkable and memorable. Don’t knock off developed products you will not steal it’s users by doing that and it will hurt you in the long run, because there will be no trust in your abilities.

So let’s first determine what both are. A question is something that results in an answer, a search for knowledge. An answer is a fact or result of the question. These two ideas are simply that but together they result in knowledge and perceived knowledge that’s incorrect?

What is the result of question? You might be saying, “That’s pretty easy, it’s an answer numb nuts.” I would agree with you. How do we come to the answer of a question and you would ask, “What kind of question?” Does the context of the question matter, not really if I gave it to you, you would most likely be able do give me an answer. How do we come up with an answer? We use what we have observed and memorized as a way to determine answers. We take all the information we have come into contact with and used it to determine the best answer to use.

Now, what if I gave you an answer with out any context you would probably be confused, eventually you would come up with a question. Would your question be right in respect to what I wanted, probably not. You’d probably question your question itself, probing for why it was wrong. Say I gave you the number 42, what’s the question to 42? There’s an infinite number of questions in which you could come up with the number 42 as an answer, your’s most likely would be wrong. Now, you question your question once again becoming more frustrated you continually question the question that came before.

Since, the way we generally think we will always ask the question before we get the answer. The answer therefore should always lie in the future in regards to the question. So when we get an answer without context we can only derive the question from our past experiences. We seek the question that would lead to such a solution, one that we use our prior observations to find. When we find that our question is wrong; we continue our way into the past to determine the question that created the new question, and so on and so forth. We seek so hard, yet every new question is ultimately wrong because it could not have been the only possible question that derives the one we seek to the answer.

Yet, this is how we choose to narrate the past. We start from the answer and continually question it and what created that answer. Eventually, we have decided upon a path that is ultimately wrong and is only a single set of questions that lead to such and answer, out of an infinitesimal amount of questionable sets.

Oh, the question to the number 42 is, “What is the answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything?”

Oddly, this post should have already been on here unfortunately somehow it didnt’ make it into the database when I transfered my blog. I hope this gives everyone something to think upon. The question for 42 comes from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, for anyone who is confused.

The Quantum-Library is the layer that co-exists as a member of both the Library and the Anti-Library. It is something you may have read, but when read again with a different perspective it exists in another form. These type’s of books are the ultimate for a bibliophile. It is the layer described above and contains the texts that you re-read.

My List

Think on These Things ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti A very interesting book that delves into multiple philisophical and spiritual topics. It is an insight into different aspects of one’s life that one should think about as one progresses through them. It is the most perfect example of a “quantum text” I have found, thus far.

Moby Dick ~ Herman Melville I can’t come up with anything better than the way Glenn described it another great example:

“You should read Moby Dick when you are 20, 40, and 60 because you take a different perspective of all three major characters from the story because of your own position in life.”

The Richest Man in Babylon ~ George S. Clason This is a book that is filled with multiple parables that not only deal with money but also humility. It is a remarkable reminder on how to live one’s richest life, emotionally, physically, and spiritually. I think this should be a mandatory read, it is filled with so much wisdom that still rings true after three quarters of a century.

The Last Lecture ~ Randy Pausch This book is about Randy Pausch and his attempt to leave a legacy for his children. If you ask me, he did a pretty damn good job describing aspects that we should all try and attain. Humility. Respect. Earnestness. Passion. Understanding. Lightheartedness.

The 48 Laws of Power ~ Robert Greene This is something I will be reading the rest of my life, though not in it’s entirety, once is enough for that. This book is filled with so much knowledge it took me 2 months to finish, I just couldn’t sustain reading it constantly day in and day out. This is one of the single greatest texts to learn the basic underlying of social-engineering.

The Silmarillion ~ J.R.R. Tolkien The Bible of Middle Earth, is the text that describes the origins of the world, evil, and the division between men, elves, and dwarfs that occur in the first and second age of the world. Anyone who has read the Lord of The Rings would be doing themselves a great service in reading this text. I find this much more enthralling than the Trilogy.

The Analects of Confucius ~ Lun Yu(Confucius) This filled with a lifetime of wisdom that will require a lifetime of thought and introspection. If you can bust one of these kernels apart so that you can understand it, you can come to some amazing ideas of life. I try to read and understand one a day, though i haven’t purchased the book, yet.

The Art of War ~ Sun Tsu Another I don’t actually own this one either and, merely read the kernels of strategic influence online.  Since, I haven’t finished I’m not going to post a review of it. If some else would like to feel free in the comments. I just find the tactics and strategy of what I’ve read extremely deep.

Tribes ~ Seth Godin (I can’t discuss this one, yet. Pre-order the book it’s well worth it.) Brief idea of it’s text: It’s about leading a community on any level of a network.

Fight Club ~ Chuck Palahniuk This story has so many levels it I’ve read it a dozen times and interpreted differently every time. You have the chaos aspect, non-conformity, anti-consumerism, and the list goes on and on. This one of the few books that remind me of a movie as I read it, with symbolism that entrenches the mind.

Another person who has already made a list is ubiwar. Hope you enjoyed reading about my quantum library and feel free to share your own, I’d love to find some more books to add to my library.

“The only thing we have to fear is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance. ” ~ Franklin D. Roosevelt

Franklin D. Roosevelt’s First Inaugural Address is still one of the most inspirational speeches to have been given by a president. I beg you to listen to his words or read them as they bear wisdom that may help us turn this situation around. Just look at that jewel above and how the media channels are spouting fear to the masses.

A Responsible bank CEO speaks out about the bailout, the CEO of BB&T discusses 14 points that don’t make sense about the bailout. This may be tinged with a bit of fear but, atleast there are some banks that didn’t deal in the illogical financing, that got us into this mess. We need to find more banks with this kind of respectable handling of their customers’ money.

Today, the seeds of the next big thing are being planted, this is provision for inspiration. It is providing the knowledge of what has happened in the recent recessions and their outcomes. We all have the ability to build the next big thing, don’t quite your day job but, most definitely don’t stop trying to redefine the world of tomorrow.

Tyler Durden’s 8 Rules of Innovation, will help you if you decide that you want to redefine the future. “Your life is ending one minute at a time,” so you better go do what you want before your time runs out. This interpretation of  some of most notable quotes from the book and movie are remarkable.

I hope that they people have read this find this at least a small distraction from the turmoil around us. We need to have solidarity in our lives not instability. Surround yourself with people who can speak honestly about the current environment but still provide us with the strong front that we need.

Social Security is the funds that are taken automatically from workers pay for retirement funding, unemployment,  disability, spousal and children, and widow benefits. All of these, except for the retirement, unemployment, and widow benefits, were not part of the original bill and the widow benefits have changed from lump-sum to the continued monthly payments of the deceased spouse. The original bill proposal was highly controversial in and was opposed because it would result in the loss of jobs. However, some said that this was an advantage as it encouraged the elderly to retire, opening positions for the youth.

The problem is that now the elderly are working longer and are less encouraged to leave, resulting in harder positioning for the younger generations. The fact that this pay comes from the workers who should be the younger generation means that this is impacting their future coverage. The average age of workers is also beginning to go up and at ~15% per worker and at a 5.8:1 worker/retired we are slowly sliding into a Social Security deficit; projections show that the ratio will drop to 3.1:1 meaning that we won’t even be providing half the coverage that’s promised.

While researching this, I discovered that the Social Security spending for the ‘07 Fiscal Year was $580 billion, this is annualized process that increases every year. Honestly, we’re worried about the government spending $900 billion just once, sure it was on bad loans, but it’s actually going to help stabilize the country while we prepare for the long run. Social Security is ripping off the future generations to pay for it’s promises.

I propose that we introduce a retro-active grandfather clause that will reduce the rates of which people are accustomed will be receiving.  You reduce funding to anyone who was born since January 1, 1963(45 years old as of 1/1/09) to 70% of what they where promised once they reach 67, regressing the rate by 5% for every subsequent year until age 35. Anyone between the ages of 35 and 30 shall receive 25% and anyone below 30 will recieve nothing.  We have this bill continue until the year 2100 and direct excess funding towards the federal deficit. I would not have a problem having the tax remain in my wages so long as it is going to help sustain the state of the country in the future. This isn’t even as drastic as what we need but, it is an initial idea to help us get it started.

This is just my two cents on my subject, and in fact this would actually be excluding myself(19 years old). Though it wouldn’t matter there is nothing left for my generation or future generations, either way. Please leave some comments on what you think of this subject.

Bryant said he expects that the troubles on Wall Street will likely influence some students to switch majors in the coming months from business to other fields, including computer science. He also urges caution to those students.

These students are obviously in it for the green, they followed it to business and now that it collapsed they’re following it to the next big thing. What we need are people passionate about what they do, not people that are only passionate about money, key examples abound in the Financial Sector right now. I think we should find people who actually want to do these jobs, and not just for the money.

With the economy as weak as it is, if your a small company it’s going to be even more important for you to find passionate people, just read Jason Calacanis’ latest post (recommend signing up to his mailing list), excerpt below.

3. Firing the average people: Again, it’s totally politically
incorrect, but I highly recommend firing anyone who is good or
average. Startups are an Olympic sport and every slot on your team is
critical. You wouldn’t put a “good” swimmer in a relay, would you?
Don’t have one in your startup. Fire the good and replace them with
the great. ~ Jason Calacanis

You know who are probably not going to be average, the people who are passionate about what they are doing. The passionate employee may spend more of their personal time on learning more about they’re area, and be willing to take a pay cut to keep they’re position.

So we need to find a way to deter people from following the money, in the next few years we will see a large rise in un-passionate employees in the Tech Industry. This will hurt companies that invest in people that only got into the area for the cash. What happens when the cashflow slows, or another bubble happens, and how can we stop them now?

Yesterday, was the day that she finally shared some information about this site it will be called Dashbuzz. However, she currently doesn’t have a prototype to present to venture firms, so she is seeking to raise twenty-five thousand in grassroots funding through a program she’s calling Start Me Up. I decided to interview her to see if I could get more details that what she had given on her post. She gladly provided answers and I would like to see this service get funded as it looks like an amazing marketing tool.
I have provided the interview below.

I understand that your site is still in pre-alpha stages correct?

Yes, Dashbuzz is currently in very early stages(pre-alpha), but we are moving along quickly and hope to come out with a beta in early 2009.

Is Dashbuzz a marketing tool, and who do you plan on the service targeting, professional marketers or the general public?

The roots of the idea lies in marketing, but not traditional marketing. My marketing experience is in social media marketing and using grassroot techniques. Rather than coming out with a tool that is solely for marketing companies and professional marketers, I’ve decided to provide the general public with the tools that they need for marketing, in hopes that it opens the social media marketing industry to everyone.

It will be a freemium service so there will be different levels; they will range from average social media usage(1-5 services) to extreme social media usage(5+ services). I feel like the site everyone has the right to understand how to get their content out there, whether it be a blog, art, music, films, or their business. We will eventually offer and enterprise size application that will take advantage of the usage statistics from the other users.

What value do you see this service providing to this group?

It will offer a new way to look at how we use social media. Currently, we are using all these services, but we don’t know what kind of activity sparks what kind of traffic and sales. Maybe when you post at 3 o’clock in the afternoon on Facebook, you get more page views than you do at 10:30 o’clock in the morning. Have you ever had a spike and didn’t know where it came from? These are all things that we are attempting to figure out, and I think the knowledge of such events will offer great value to our users.

What other ventures have you been involved with and how successful were they?

This is my first company that offers a real product. I had a social media marketing company for several years, but that was a service, so it wasn’t scalable at all. I made good money for awhile, but couldn’t build it up too much. I decided I wanted to start building things, instead of building things up for other people. So, I started my blog SiliconCalley to learn more about startups. After a brief stint writing for TechCrunch, I started an LA based tech news blog called TechNews.LA. It hasn’t been around that long, but it’s doing very well.

What will the people investing in your service this early be receiving for their assistance?

They will be enrolled on the beta tester list to be the first people to use the service. They will also receive discounts on the site when we open up the premium memberships. Bloggers who invest will then be the first people to write about the service. Service providers and advertisers( and potential partners) who invest will also be considered first when the time comes the top 100 investors will receive free lifetime memberships.

If anyone is interested in providing funding to help start this company please visit her site here, where you can read what she’s written about this, donate to the cause, or contact her for further information.

1. When your in the direst of need for there services an error occurs in which everything must be restarted.
2. They are bloated trying to provide everything to everyone.
3. They have services you didn’t know about consuming precious resources.
4. They come with programs that are never used.
5. The user interface can be horrible, it always looks great but doesn’t always respond.
6. If you’ve got the money you can get a better experience.
7. Pretty much everyone knows about these issues but the majority don’t mind and continue to use it.

Come on people share any that you can come up with.

The work you do should rub off on you in positive ways that add to your value as a person, provides a skill or increases your abilities. In the formal education system we choose our education to help us get work when we’re done. Many  people don’t choose a job for what value it will add to their skills but for what it will add to their wallet. This principle is best suited for the younger job seekers, late teens-early 30’s. The older age groups may gain something from it but with far less potential for reinvesting those skills.

A great example is myself and how this principle has improved me. I’ve been socially inept all my life, except for close friends I didn’t enjoy dealing with people. Even in college I only interacted with the people I had to and friends from high school. However, just over a month ago, I got a job as a rental agent and have become a much more social person. I have to interact with people every day, settling complaints, providing them directions, and helping them find assistance if I can provide it. I have seen this skill improve as I’m more comfortable sharing with people than ever before. I went from a secluded introvert to a secluded extrovert(geographically secluded, for now).

I’m also working on several web projects. These projects have provided me a way to learn more languages and study them deeper, than I would if I was just doing it for fun, though it is. I have increased my knowledge in this area though it’s still inefficient and everything is in the red. Several hundred dollars versus several thousand for school though put’s it in perspective 40-60 hrs/week vs. 80-100 hrs/week. It seems like a fair trade; though, it punishes me if I want to go search for a job at a top Tech Company.

This is example of how successful it can be, I learned how to socialize and that wouldn’t have been taught to me in any school. If you wanted to learn skills through interaction; try and find a position, or create one, where you are forced to learn the valuable lessons, relating to that skill. Think about it your getting paid to increase your personal assets that you can take elsewhere, if you hate the job pick a new skill.

from Gary Vaynerchuk when he spoke about the crowd that tries to flip their businesses without monetizing during your way to the top, “Make some cash along the way.”

If you want to get anywhere in this new social society, where transparency is so necessary, you are going to have to back your shit up. If you say something you better make sure you have the details right or your going to have your ass handed to you. You have to be able to provide your crowd of followers what they want and if you say your going to do something, you better <omitted> do it. I am going to keep doing this for myself but, I will continue to post it for my crowd.

DWYSYWD, saw those letters on a license plate in North Carolina, several years ago. I thought about what those letters meant for probably half an hour and finally came up with something that fit, ” Do what you said you would do.” Doing what you said you would do is the key to backing your shit up and, it will simplify your life. When you follow through and stop lying you remove the need to continue lying and you become transparent and open to these people. This is key to building your brand.

“Stop dicking around and back your shit up. Do what you said you would do.”

Seeping Through is going to be slower than the other two ways to get through the path, but it will be more reserved and rational. This is a reasonable choice if you fear an abrupt change that would destroy the majority of progress that you made. You can still manage to get past the  wall, though you may be surpassed by others in the Overflow or Breakthrough categories.

Overflowing the Boundaries will be the most level of these ideas as it has an adequate pace and will fill the other side of the dam quite rapidly. This is for those who don’t mind risking a bit of their assets if something were to happen. You can outpace those that are just trying to Seep Through to gain ground and, also have a more consistent pace than that of someone who is trying to Breakthrough. This is the way to go if you want to be able to more reliably adapt and still move quickly.

Breakthrough is going to be the quickest once it happens, but the pace will be hard to maintain, without prior planning. You can destroy the barrier and quickly decimate your competition in the short-term, however, if you didn’t plan properly a change can ruin you just as quickly. If you pass the first dam and hit another down the line, you may not have enough pressure to cause it to buckle. Breaking through will not be for everyone, except for a few people who have it together, most people should try to just Overflow the boundaries or slowly Seep through.

If you were a stone you will sit at the bottom for ever and never find a path through to the otherside of  the dam. You may never know what lie on the other side and be just as happy and complacent for ever, slowly being wittled down by those that flowed past you. You do not want to be a stone do you? Most of all, be yourself and find a way to adapt to the change, pass  through the barriers and achieve your goals.

I make a decision early on that is an over-extension of what I’m capable of doing at this time. However, I allow myself time to achieve this over-extended goal with any problems that may arise(not so good for large short-term goals).

“Once I made a decision, I never thought about it again”~Harry Truman

I follow Truman’s outlook very pragmatically. I make the decision, but I allow my self to make shorter term goals as I advance toward the larger goal. This provides a less stressful approach to completing a task that doesn’t have a rigidly defined deadline.

One large thing that this could help with would be a Bucket List. Your not going to go running out and have all of these things planned to happen; you just want them to happen and along the way you find ways to make them happen. It is perfect example of pragmatic decision making is that you can still change the order of the smaller goals to slowly overcome the larger goal of things to do before you die, or some age limit.

This is something that keeps the sports interesting, their always pushing the limits and perfecting what their doing, something I see media failing at. Media is something that stagnates and rarely see something that pushes the boundaries of what is possible. Newspapers haven’t changed in close to a century, movies and television haven’t progressed much either, just the technology that is used and the money spent on it, video games haven’t seen anything revolutionary in the last few years besides increase in graphics, the internet is still promising but has also began to stagnate.

Looking at the internet we’ve seen it grow from closed network to open network, basic text-on-screen to simple coloring and fonts, simplistic layouts of pages to divisible sections on a single page, and now we are seeing social media and web 2.0 for the past 5 years and it’s stagnating and spreading because it’s the new web fashion, and no one is stepping up to change this model. The way I see it is we need some form of progression, right now everyone is focusing on perfecting the web 2.0 model and no one is trying to make a step that shatters that boundary. Right now, the biggest step recently has been streaming live video and HD content. Everybody else is trying to perfect what they’ve already done by copying what their competitors are doing.

Nikola Tesla was decades ahead of his times with his innovative ideas that could have revolutionized the world in the early decades of the last century. We’ve seen a lot of what he had designed come to fruition but he doesn’t receive the credit, radar, radio, AC current, wireless transmissions of images, voices, and electricity, plus countless others. He was the Da Vinci of the late 19th and 20th centuries. What we need is a Tesla to come along for the Internet Age to renovate it’s stagnant models and provide the ground for future technological advances in the future. His progressions are finally being perfected for general use in our daily lives.

As you look around everyone is striving for perfection because they think that if something is perfect people will use it over their competitors. The problem is that you can’t steal people away with your perfect implementation because people will leave for something that has ‘progressed to a new standard’. You can try and provide the perfect solution but being perfect is absolutely unnecessary; try to be close to perfect by way ahead of the pack in what your doing.

I’ll list throw out a few names here: The Offspring, Pennywise, Weezer, Incubus, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Green Day, and Chris Cornell(Soundgarden and Audioslave). All of these bands originated in the period between 84-93, to very niche groups at that time. They also didn’t see huge growth in their fans like bands do now a day, but also grew slowly enough to handle the pressure, preventing premature collapse. They also forged new paths in the music industry. These are bands that are good to invest in but are hard to find.

Build your brand like you are a punk band. Don’t go big to begin with unless you know your going to be able to sustain the pressure. You want to start off with your niche and then expand slowly through trust and ability. This will give you time to develop a strong following that will stick with you through a flop to see a future success. You just need to keep cranking your stuff out and they will come.

Browser

The #1 productivity tool I have is Firefox. It trumps the rest of the browsers in usability, speed, and security. I have issues with the other three, IE is slow and not quite secure, Safari is pretty much Firefox without any real way to improve it’s productivity, and Flock seemed way to cluttered for regular use. I use a clean filing system on my bookmark toolbar to make it easier to get the sites I want when I want them.Then I also use several add-ons that also reduce the time I spend completing tasks. The 3 that I use most often are:

Feed Sidebar, provides your feeds anytime you want without having to visit another site. I find it better than Google Reader as it provides same pre-content viewing when you click the link and opens it when you double-click. It has a multitude of options that allow you to set how often it updates, how long the list remains, and how you want to have the pages opened. The only thing is that your feeds don’t exist in the cloud.

CoolPreviews, formerly CoolIris Previews, an add-on that displays a little mouse-over button that provides a preview of the page on the other side of a link. Think Snapshots without the automation and annoyance of interruption.

Firebug, this one’s going to help web developers and designers out a bit. It provides debugging for your web pages, quick viewing of how a technique someone has on their page that you would like, and also provides some nifty tricks for scraping media.

One more thing to add, not an add-on per say, but Ubiquity is a nifty tool so far. We’ll see if it gets better.

Microblogging and IM.

I use Twhirl for staying up on Twitter and if I need to I can cross post something to Pownce. Very productive tool as I can catch up on close to 200 peoples tweets for a period of 4 hours in a matter of 10-15 minutes.

For my IM client I use Trillian, it allows me to incorporate all my accounts into a single interface and provides me with alerts when I receive an Email so I can respond relatively quick. The cloud variant of this is Meebo but doesn’t provide the email updates, but still a nice piece of browser based software.

Notes, Writing, and Schedule

Notes depending on what the content is. If the note’s just something simple and I’m at my desk I’ll just scribble it down on an index card very simple and old school. If it’s something a bit bigger like a chunk of info off the web I just quick copy it to MS OneNote and clean it up later. I occasionally use Evernote but, it hasn’t become a necessity as I usually am on my own computer.

Writing, I use Onenote because If I need to post something to the web i can just drag it out of the window and drop it. Makes the copy and paste an inefficient process.

For a schedule, I use an old school calendar and just write my info in real quick.

Desktop

I use Vista, honestly not that bad but, I have 1 icon on my desktop, Recycle Bin all the programs and folders I use are stored in the quicklaunch. Quicklaunch means I don’t have to leave my browser window to open up Photoshop, Trillian, ITunes, Secondary Browsers, or my editors.

P.S. This is just what I do to stay productive I don’t know how much or even if any of this advice would help you.

Robert Scoble on passionate user adoption and Ubiquity. This is just something that I enjoyed reading especially after using Ubiquity for several hours yesterday. If you want to use it I recommend reading the tutorial and watching the video.

An article, from Business Pundit, on the enlightenment complex that we see stateside also developing in the Chinese culture. A bit of an insight into why my generation, for the most part, feels so damn entitled. Also, suggest why depression is on such a climb.

This is one of several articles that prompted my last post. It is promoting some smart financial advice on steering clear of private lenders. However, it all so shows weak decision making on behalf of the government, in allowing people weakened by the subprime mess increased loans.

A really thorough and thought provoking conversation with Nassim Nicholas Taleb, author of ‘The Black Swan‘ and ‘Fooled by Randomness‘, provided by Portfolio.com. It looks into his life and how he removes the noise of now.

As somewhat of a bibliophile this last one is just an amazing list of 50 Essential Novels, provided by Leo Babauta at Zen Habits. It is such a substantial list of both classic literature and current hits that are certain to last for a long while. I recommend checking this list out if you enjoy reading.

I mentioned this in an old post that was originally written in the middle of March, though it focused on only the government subsidization. The issue is not that government shouldn’t assist, but they are hurting themselves and the economy by not regulating school rates. Over a 30 year period they have wasted approximately $2.4 Trillion( with a T) on education. Meanwhile, college rates are rising doubly as fast that of interest rates.

The people who were taking out loans are hurting but if they claim bankruptcy that is only making it worse for everyone else. The students with 30 or 40 thousand dollars in loans are going to find it hard to pay back because of the weak job market, and the parents who took out mortgages are are probably hurting tremendously. Yet, today the NYT’s posted an article on how the lenders should be taking the brunt of this blow. By allowing the students to claim bankruptcy on these funds.

This article is fucking ridiculous( pardon my language) , this will allow for billions of dollars to be wiped from the slate. This leaves the lenders with no capital to provide for the future borrowers and no profit for their services. What needs to happen is a reformation of the collegiate system.

The problems of our current economic tumults are founded upon these 2 systems the collegiate and the lenders. They are the major issues that caused the collapse in the housing market collapse, outside of the pricing bubble. Colleges have been and will be taxing the lending system both private and federal, making it harder to produce revenues to reach the equilibrium needed. College is generally going to cost you more with less job security and lower standards of pay. Lenders are feeding on this fact for interest and fees.

So the point I’m trying to say, is that even if we find a way out of the housing bubble, we still have a huge problem. If we don’t do something to reform college funding we will see this strain the system to a point of another economic collapse. I can see this occuring anywhere from less than 5 years to 10-20 years from now, it will happen if we don’t do anything.

Last weekend, I purchased several domain names for a project I’m working on and decided to also get theinnovationist.com, this where my issues began. I redirected my blog there and then Sunday I noticed that my archives where down. I left a message for customer service at the site and then went about to fix the issue myself. I ended up working Sunday night and most of Monday on this issue, instead of writing.

Monday afternoon I get a call from GoDaddy thanking me for my purchase and ask me if I have any issues. This is great customer service, they preempt any issues that I may have and offer me advice. I thank them back for this as I was shocked at this level of gratitude coming from such a large company.

I also go to see if I have recieved a reply from the customer service of my blogging site, no reply. It takes until late Tuesday night before I get a reply and they also tell me that my comments aren’t working, hooray. So it took them two days to tell it’s even worse than what I had suggested, I reply back asking if they could explain the issue in further detail and had to wait until earlier today to get any confirmation on the issue. Of course, I had already discovered the issue late Wednesday night and everything was working again before they contacted me. So, I’m a bit miffed at the service provided.

This just shows that how you treat your customers is extremely important. Your customers are your lively hood, if you don’t treat them with respect how can you expect repeat business. GoDaddy came to me, someone who isn’t pulling in anything by measure to their revenue. The other place left me to deal with my issues, sure they assisted but the service was so damn slow. This is how to build and destroy your brand, GoDaddy left me with a great feeling and the other company left me to stranded and pissed.

So here’s me trying to be preemptive, you guy’s are my customer. I want to know who I’m talking to, who I’m providing information, and I want to know what you guy’s are looking for from me. You can give me suggestions on stuff to talk about, I’ll do it, I don’t mind doing the research. I write for myself, but I’m here for you, I could just as easily keep all this stuffed in a book on my desk or scattered around in pages.

“Tell me what you want out of me and I’ll step up and try and provide it.”

P.S. If you would like some really good advice on building your brand and dealing with your customers, I recommend GaryVaynerchuk.com.

Edit: Sept 22, 2008 No longer using the same blogging service (uber.com).

How many times a week does this happen to everyone? You make a choice for a perfectly logical reason, but the outcome isn’t what you had expected and you’re disappointed. Barry Schwartz uses the example of jeans and dressings in this TED video, but it’s anything that offers you a choice with to many alternatives. You psychological punish yourself afterward because your afraid you made the wrong choice.

The same issue occurs in a democracy, we provide to many options with to few choices of representation. It is the flaw in democracy those who vote decide who represents their group, but the people who don’t vote are free from having to decide on inadequate representation. They should also be able to own up to their choice of inadequate representation rather than attack the person that was chosen for them by the masses who did vote. If the person is a horrible representation, “Hey, you had nothing to do with it so you shouldn’t care. You didn’t care enough to vote on time, so don’t cast your ballot after the fact.”

Like they say in court, ” If you can’t afford a representative, one shall be provided to you by the state.”

I-Power is an interesting idea from Kevin Rose. Basically, the idea is to add background software to the Iphone and hardware in your home that acts as switches. The Iphone sends out a gps signal that registers on the hardware when you leave the range it shuts everything off and when you enter it comes back on.

Content and Community video from Gary Vaynerchuk, an amazing guy, is something I enjoy because he cuts out the BS. He gives it to you straight, it’s not about you it’s about the customer. This applies to life not just a vlog.

20 Strategies to Defeat the Urge to Do a Useless Task over at Zen Habits something that really strikes a chord with me. Recently, I was asked how I manage so many social media sites, approximately a dozen. I replied with, “I guess I’ve just become atuned to doing it.” This lists the processes that I use and some I don’t, it lets you have some flexibitility.

Innovation Step By Step Instructions from Musing on Marketing provides a pretty simple guide to innovation. It’s something that anyone looking to innovate a market should read. I plan on looking at it when I need to clear my mind and drop back to the basics.

Forrest Gump: How to Build Your Self-Confidence over at Success Soul is about being creative, confident, and how to lead. It shows the values that truely matter, not the knowledge that we are forced to believe matters. It is there to prove that you can do what you want and the wisdom all came from Forrest’s lips.

Well, that’s what I have for you tonight, be back with new stuff on Friday.

The Personal Library
The Quantum-Library
The Anti-Library

The Personal Library is a the basic layer containing all of your possessed books and other literary works. It possesses those that you have read, re-read, and have yet to read. For the separation of the layers this is the only layer that contains books that you have read only once.

The Anti-Library is something that has become a bit of a buzz word after being mentioned in Nassim Taleb’s, The Black Swan. He quote’s Umberto Eco on his view of a library(quote provided below). It is the layer that holds text that you have yet to read.

‘”Read books are far less valuable than unread ones. The library should contain as much of what you do not know as your financial means, mortgage rates, and the currently tight read-estate market allows you to put there. You will accumulate more knowledge and more books as you grow older, and the growing number of unread books on the shelves will look at you menacingly. Indeed, the more you know, the larger the rows of unread books. Let us call this collection of unread books an anti-library.”‘

However, there is another layer that is not discussed as of yet. It contains the texts that you have read, but ultimate meaning still eludes it’s readers. A book that shifts meaning depending on the perspective used to percieve it’s words. A layer that contains the ultimate in re-readability. This layer is like a movie, you watch it once and you enjoy it, you watch it several more times and you notice several subtle nuances, and the longer you re-watch the more you notice. These are the text’s that he is wanting to pack.

The Quantum-Library is the layer that co-exists as a member of both the Library and the Anti-Library. It is something you may have read, but when read again with a different perspective it exists in another form. These type’s of books are the ultimate for a bibliophile. It is the layer described above and contains the texts that you re-read.

So if you know of any texts that exist in the Quantum layer leave a comment here or over at Glenn’s blog he’d really appreciate it.

Addendum:

Seeing people come in from Zenpundit, Jay@Soob, OZ Deichman, and Ace Hanna, I have added my own list with reasons for their selection.

The logic of asking if the glass is half-full/half-empty is normally used to determine if a person is optimistic or pessimistic. Generally, pessimism is frowned upon when you are asked this question, however it may be flawed. The flaw in the question, is that I don’t think you gain more from being an optimist. Let me explain this more thoroughly.

If your ever out at a restaurant, the waiter normally asks you if you would like to have your glass refilled. This is were the question frays, if you see it as half-full your more likely to say no thanks, however, if it’s half-empty you’ll want it refilled. If you replace the liquid with ambition, would you not want to have more? Yet, many would say no, because they don’t need anymore; they are content with what we have. I say look at it half-empty and ask for more.

Ambition is something that you can never have enough of. So, I want you to go out; and every time you see your glass as half-full, know you need to see it as half-empty. Go after your dreams; be optimistic because your a pessimist with as much ambition as you can handle. You can accomplish your dreams just don’t be so pessimistic as to dismiss them.

The story that really brought this idea to fruition in me is that I saw an interview with two 14 year-old girls on television. These girls were kicked off of a bus in Portland last year for kissing by the bus driver who called them ’sickos’. He didn’t bother to wait to get to the next bus stop. This was someone who was forcing his opinion against homosexuality because he saw it as a truth, in doing so he impeded the girls’ rights.

The election has been wrought with constant bipolar truths that are no doubt going to stay in the mainstream media until at least November. Most of them originating in the Democratic Primaries just to market to the masses on one side of the truth. You have “Hillary is a woman, a woman can’t run the country”, “Barrack is Muslim(not true), he’s going to sell this country out to the terrorists”, “McCain is too old to be president, he’ll die in office”, “Barrack is like Rev. Wright”, and “A black man isn’t capable of running this country, he’ll turn it into a ghetto”, all of these have been either explicitly or implicitly distributed by the media. Is this the representation of the beliefs of everyone in the country? No, they are marketing to their audiences, the only problem is that diffusion has occurred in media and it spreads, having it reach the people that share the other side of the truth.

If your trying to sell something as truth, you have to realize that what your truth is opinion only. As you age, however, your opinion shall become more refined; it needs a proper base to do so. So try to reflect on your views and the flip-side of them. You may be the intolerant bastard who you despise.

I plan on keeping the schedule of 2 posts per week, Monday and Friday, however occasionally it will be a link dump or something else. I plan on writing about an innovative or inspirational person once a month and also about items that I found innovative. So I’ll get along to the link dump.

The 7 Secrets to Warren Buffet’s Happy and Simple Life over at Success Soul looks into the 7 rules that Warren Buffet lives by. Most of this are about living a simple life and not becoming jaded by fame or fortune. Pretty interesting post about the richest man in the world.

11 Ways to Build an Extraordinary Life over at Steve-Olson looks at 11 things that your going to want out of life and he sums them up perfectly. This is how I live and it’s kind of cool to see this in text. It kind of tells me that I’m pointed in the right direction, but I can still advance further.

25 Visionaries Who Created Empires from Virtually Nothing at Business Pundit looks at some of the biggest names in the world of early industrial business to computers to entertainment. This is missing several people that I find inspirational, however, they didn’t create empires. Several of the people on this list are actual on my list of innovative and inspirational people.

A post at the NY Times on Web Literacy vs Conventional Literacy. This is pretty interesting as several of my friends and I, all in our late-teens to early-twenties work both sides of the line; we read books regularly and we stay up-to-date with blogs and other web sources. I actually would rather read a book than multiple pages of an e-book or large source of data.

And finally just a really interesting idea, TechCrunch brought up an interesting project for people. They asked for A Dead Simple Web Tablet after hearing about a rumor about Apple working on one for sometime this Fall. So they posed the question to the people if they could design a thin tablet that runs linux and uses Firefox as it’s main use.

Wednesday, June 23, the Housing Bill was passed through Congress and the House. I’ve reviewed what little information their giving the public and it’s only going to affect a small majority of homeowners, approximately 400,000. The main benefactors to this bill, however, are Frannie, Freddie and other lenders. The fact still stands that overtime the average American is going to be taxed for the problems of others

The bill will offer bailouts on houses up to $550,000 which in most cases would be relatively higher than median pricing in any area, exceptions for a few areas (i.e. California). This is just ridiculous; if you’re going to offer this to former defaulters you’re a fucking retard, or a member of Congress. This is a horrible incentive to be offering, it’s just going to show them that they weren’t responsible for their problems, each party will point the finger at the other.

I think someone should have thought this thing through at 600 pages you would think that it might be worth something, yet nothing except tying the government to corporations. I think if anything we need to bolster economic centers of growth but we can’t be bailing people out for every problem, yeah I’m calling you out Dems, and we need to develop a plan that can actually help rather than just boost morale for a few months. We also need to show that we don’t support weak economic decisions by people, how about starting to teach basic personal finance and economics in our Middle and High Schools.

Our lending market filled itself with greed and ditched common sense; they offered poorly qualified people opportunities that they could never afford. These people only thought about margins and not about the chance that everyone else would be going after the same niche in the market, subprime borrowers. Now we, the American public, get our asses taxed off until we default or our jobs get taxed to the brink and they collapse leaving us jobless and then we default. This isn’t going to help it’s just there to ease the trip down.

So it looks like I’m going to have fun as a responsible spender over the next several decades. Hooray for the assholes back in the 90’s and early-oughts, for flipping me and my generation over and fucking us in the ass. It really fucking stings to know that simplicity and release from branding, no matter how non-conformist, doesn’t help you separate far enough to escape bailing out the people bound to consumption. It’s time to stop praying for the money to come in, and learn responsibility for your actions.

Atheists get a bad rap because of the radical few, who vocally protest meaningless shit. If you look at the Newdow v Congress was it necessary to protest against the words “one nation under God”, yes it may have been his constitutional right; however is there any true harm to be brought forth from these words. His claim actually brings forth a stigma against atheists because he became vocal it added fuel to the fire of Christian aggression. The same amendment contains freedom of speech or the freedom to remain silent. I am just calling for a rescission of aggression in the atheists motion for the truth. Let the Christian’s aggression lead to there own gaffes.

This same principle can be applied to politics in broad or even warfare. You need to stay defensive and alert of your enemies tactics and where their coming from next. If your right-wing read The New Yorker and the Huffington Post; if your left-wing watch FOX, stay attuned to where their coming from be objective about it. This gives you the ability to strike them where their weak, or deflect their blows back.

“So just shut the fuck up and listen.”

This guy has been doing that for several weeks and it’s amazing what he overhears and quotes. He also is probably more knowledgeable about the strategic and religious flaws in this post.

P.S. I’m a right-wing Athiest.

1. Sir Ken Robinson: Do schools kill creativity?

A speech on how capability should no longer be based on educational standard and how creativity is a new way to develop one’s capability. Imagination is a the ultimate gift to a child.He takes an astounding non-conformist view and presents it excellently.

2. Malcolm Gladwell: What we can learn from spaghetti sauce

Gladwell speaks about how people base their judgements. He delves into human variability in choice.A very interesting insight in how to develop a product that will be diversly accepted, increasing it’s aspects to fit or providing more with different aspects.

3. Barry Schwartz: The paradox of choice

Schwartz looks at the inverse of Gladwell’s talk and how over variation in choice can cause more harm than good. Showing that our world is becoming so simplified for groups that the world is being diluted in complexity.

4. Larry Lessig: How creativity is being strangled by the law

Larry is showing how people are being restricted further and further from modifying the IP of another and creating something new. This talk is quite motivating in the way that you think about recreating it has been around for century’s and now people are labeling it piracy. To go along with this I recommend reading The Pirate’s Dilemma.

5. Hans Rosling: Debunking third-world myths with the best stats you’ve ever seen

Hans Rosling delivers a speech that talks about the inefficiency in the development of current thought, from pre-conceived notions. He displays the data in a fascinating way that enthralls you as you watch it move through time.

When one escapes what he knows, he finds knowledge; first he must be wise enough to realize he has to escape. Once he has done this, he shall spread his knowledge to others and shall his knowledge prosper. As he prospers in this new environment he shall see his knowledgeable gains wane. This occurs as he again becomes a copy of those around him, the internal narcissism of man. He shall always become a copy of those he surrounds himself with and he shall create copies of himself within his view of them.

We are naturally herded, by society, by our ideals, and by our own discretion. We are the sheep of this world; we shall follow as we are taught, as our fore-fathers were taught. Yet, did not the fore-fathers of this land remove this teaching from their minds and choose to rebel to gain free reign for themselves and their neighbors. They chose to be the shepherds of this land and its people, they no longer wanted to follow a lord that denied them the same rights as the men that lived among his lands close. This is becoming that land of lords and of sheep, so timid they may be. The time must come that shepherds, hidden among sheep, will rise and reshape our knowledge, teaching us ways anew.

We the narcissistic sheep of this land shall soon relegate our minds to the brink of non-acceptance, out of fear for change, to any shepherd that may arise to bring forth the new rebellion. The rebellion for change must come before we all become diluted into the same mental body. As we become more the same, the chance for change becomes ever more burdensome upon those who will rise. Our best source of knowledge into change comes from enemies, those who we resolved are flawed in there knowledge, they too feel this way of us. What if we sought to understand their knowledge, we shall unburden them of their preaching and hate and allow ourselves to grow substantially.

“We must seek wisdom from the ancients, for age doth leave wisdom in place of youth and as tides change, so do the ages pass.”

“The soul attracts that which it secretly harbors, that which it loves, and also that which it fears. It reaches the height of its cherished aspirations. It falls to the level of its unchastened desires — and circumstances are the means by which the soul receives its own.”~James Allen, As a Man Thinketh

“Every body perseveres in its state of being at rest or of moving uniformly straight forward, except insofar as it is compelled to change its state by force impressed.”~ Sir Isaac Newton, Principia Mathematica

I’m going to break the Allen’s down into more general terms in order to derive connection and a better understanding of it. So the first can be perceived as,

“One’s subconscious attracts its ambitions and that which it dreams, that which it refuses to lose, and that which it avoids living with. It shall bring a person to his meaning in life. It then finds its purpose un-rebuked and as such it shall become conscious through its surrounding events.”

Now in relation to the second it develops an overlying idea that there is a force in act. The subconscious is pulling ideals & non-ideals together into the conscious life. The force of the ideals as they are achieved, this is under our mental control, is pushing us forward in a positive direction that leads to more forward advances, the counter is also true.  The uncontrollable, however cannot be predicted by our conscious or subconscious states and is the randomness that can turn a wealthy, businessman, with a family; into a hollow, emotionless, bastard, who cheats upon his wife and children.

What is this force that acts so negatively upon the forward advances that we make? It’s effectively the friction of life, based around the idea of diminishing gains, it shall pull us back as we begin to reach our goals and complete more and more of what we dreamt of, we slow. The only way that we can keep advancing is by not becoming complacent with what we have achieved and strive for more. Also we cannot overburden ourselves with that that we take distaste in, it shall only lead to an harbored contempt for what we’re achieving.

I was watching Seth Godin on TED and, he was talking about how to market to the world by not focusing on the masses, but risking your gains on the people who actually give a damn about what you are selling.  “The riskiest thing you can do now is being safe.” You are going to have to take your risks to stand out among the ever growing crowd. Develop your product and sell it not to a crowd but to the few who care about your work. Let the few spread your product, all you have to do is find them and give them what they want.

Man is capable of perceiving risk and finding ways to manage it, however, the simplest way that man knows is to remove it all together. This is quite risky in itself as with higher risk comes higher failure rates but, also, larger success. We should not see these failures as losses but as knowledgeable gains for our future successes. When you truly develop an understanding of the risk you are taking it is no longer a gamble; you have developed a strategy to turn most fortunes, good or bad, into positive successes.

“The time you have is short, better to fail today and have tomorrow left to succeed; you will never know if your failure now will lead to a future success.”

First unto the personal economics, I’m going to defer this to another persons observations. Now of course this is merely a perception on how well you can do with a High School Diploma(HSD) compared to a B.S. The HSD will have roughly a 8 year head start over the BS; as such the BS would have to be putting roughly 2 to 3 times that of the HSD for roughly 1.5 to 2 times longer, just to be roughly even.

Now on to the topic of Subsidized Education. This is the act of the government providing grant money to help students attend college. The government in the past few years has spent around $200 billion annually towards higher education; this can be tracked back for nearly a half century $7 billion in 1965 to $170 billion in 1995 so on average we’re spending $100 billion annually for the last 30 years and with a 60% failure rate. We have wasted $2.4 trillion dollars on education, roughly one-fifth of our national debt. This has caused an effect that has allowed the colleges and universities to raise the price of admission drastically, hurting the middle-class.

Morally, I feel that we should remove subsidies in the education industry. In removing the subsidies and regulating the amount that a school could charge we could gradually reach an equilibrium and prevent the facilities from relentlessly raising tuition rates. In doing this, we would help the economy by stabilizing wages and allowing our country to slowly shift more towards productivity.

Now how do we become more productive. We gradually have more citizens filling the roles of the illegal immigrant laborers, the current state of our nation is that we are a nation of hedonistic intellectuals when our society needs physical labor, not mental. If you were a true intellectual you would develop your skills and let yourself be discovered by others. If you aren’t willing to express your intellectual capacity your have yet to realize any dream requires will and determination.

This is the nation of freedom and dreams that our forefathers fought for, our rights and dreams, with their blood, sweat, and tears. Yet, we have become a nation of daydreamers who don’t have a clue about what true labor is. Working men founded one of the strongest nations and we, their heirs to this land, have become the hedonistic clan to lead the United States down the path of Greeks and the Romans. The greatest empires fall when they believe they are greater than all others, another shall rise with a dream and and prove them wrong.

So do you have the will and determination to follow through with your dreams?

The first thing they must do is be willing to give up their time to learn. If they are unwilling they will push knowledgeable gains to the back burner and achieve very little. If however, they decide to devote in part or whole this time to self-education and they shall have the ability to gain knowledge at a semi-constant steady pace. This pace is still mediocre in the majority of cases, because they can still remove themselves from their studies fairly easily.

The second thing that can help with this is their personal determination to learn from these studies. The undetermined will lack the consistency to achieve much in a timely fashion, not necessarily but most likely. If they decide to be both determined and willing to garner thorough knowledge from their studies they shall have a rather constant pace that is faster than just being willing to learn. If you aren’t too willing but extremely determined you shall only exhaust yourself with utter boredom in search of the knowledge. With out both in unison you will not be at the best position for learning.

These two things are rather influential in any aspect of life. This reminds me of Ryan’s The Business of Running about pacing one’s self to achieve what they set out to achieve without over exerting yourself. Therefore my metaphor on this subject in accordance to the prior info is the following:

” One’s willingness is the pace at which one shall go forth with their problems and tasks in life and determination shall be the speed at which they are able to maintain at this pace. “

If they do not follow both they shall struggle at a speed to high or pace themselves to inconsistently and they will achieve little.

A formal education is possessing the knowledge through coursework and the conversion of knowledge from one body to another, both mechanics and linguistics of the course are passed along. It is often referred to as a formal learning environment where one is to pick up skills in a particular field along with knowledge from a more vast pool of knowledge of general education. Generally, this area is merely obtained to comply with “The Plan” to obtain a higher salary or general monetary gain.

Learning, however, does not come just from such a formal environment we just use the formal environment to leverage one’s future wealth. Learning is habitual to many a human spirit and we are constantly learning if we seek knowledge and understanding. Learning can be more influential and more focused outside of a formal education or vice versa. However, we all shall make the choice between a formal education or a non formal education whether focused or not.

Social Perception and Ideology guide us through the realms of our life and to us choosing to follow “The Plan” to lead the dreams of our families, our friends, and the general public. We choose to do this because it is pushed upon us from when we are young, “The only way you’ll be anybody is if you go to college.” However, I have come to the realization that if we seek knowledge it shall not be hidden, it shall not be shrouded from our heart, however society will hide the wealth and acceptance from us because we did not follow the societal plan. Society shall turn us away without proof of our knowledge even if we possess more knowledge and skill, because we don’t have a piece of paper saying we possess that knowledge and skill.

1. Is this material worth my time to use? If it’s not, why would you feel that it was worth someone else’ time to read it, view it, or listening to it? If the material is just a piece of shit that you think will get overlooked; why would you introduce it to the public?

2. Will this benefit anyone? If it doesn’t, what relevance does it have being open to the public? Can this ever help someone; if not why waste your time with it?

3. Can it be better with just a little bit more effort? If it doesn’t take much more to make it an even more remarkable piece; why would you not do that to make your material better?

Pose these questions to yourself every time you go to create something. If you follow these three simple questions you will have something that you are confident in, is something that others will enjoy or think about, and you will know that you didn’t waste your time working on. Also, sleep on ideas and material; if you review your own material at a later point you will be more objective in your own bias.

The birds are oblivious to what happens around them, much as we are. I watched one lonely bird sit among the power line and he appeared to be doing exactly as I, relaxing in the break of morn. He sat there standing his ground among the line as bigger birds swept the air above him, almost in an aggressive fashion. Then a beautifully vibrant cardinal sat a few feet away from him, still he remained oblivious. Then a bird of his kind came and sat just inches away, beak to beak, just the two of them for about 5 minutes and then they both flew away.

These birds represented life and a love, he refused to give up his spot for those most definitely more powerful, remained at peace not succumbing to beauty alone for it had no meaning for him, and finally he found that which fit him that which he was familiar. It was a sight of freedom, not one of the birds could change what he was searching for, what he wanted. Here I am sitting just thinking, ” I wish I could just be free, not the bird locked in society’s cage. I just want to be able to enjoy it all and not have to worry about the rules. I found what I want in life, I want to be able to watch the sun rise, cigar in one hand and a cup of coffee in the other, every morning.”

We must look at the cost of freedom though, all the dangers that it presents. Free birds have many more risks than do the one’s sheltered and locked away. They face predators that could kill them, their young, or ruin their nests. The face random events of strong winds and bad weather that could kill their young. They have no control, they are subject to unknown change constantly. Society’s birds never have these concerns, they are protected by the wire that strangles the heart of freedom.

We can all become free birds but, first we must change our ways. We must change how we attain our food, how we protect ourselves, and how we view our surround before we can ever slip through that little door. We will probably be better off remaining in the cage but, there’s always the fact that outside we can learn more, do more, and see more at risk of our lively hood. It’s up to us to change and only us whether we risk it all for freedom.

“A man of knowledge and a bird adrift may both do what they choose, see what they wish, and go where their heart takes them.”