Tuesday, August 28, 2007

Look, I Have a Theme Song!

I have a theme song, and it even has a video!!


The Future Soon, song by Jonathan Coulton, with the video by Mike Spiff Booth. If you think this is as awesome as I do, drop a little in their tip jar.

Here's another from these two; I think I have worked in this office, but not currently of course.

Code Monkey

P.S. I'm not really sorry if these songs get stuck in your head.

Monday, August 27, 2007

What Should IT Provide?

For corporate users of collaborative tools, what should IT provide?

For ease-of-use, many corporate users are going to external services, looking for applications to manage wikis, photos, blog posts, and more. These external services usually have excellent support and reliability, and various kinds of training and help are available.

But if IT could provide these same services, but designed for corporate use, here are some of the things the IT services could provide (in no particular order):
  • LDAP authentication

  • ensure appropriate licensing

  • maintain back-ups, and the ability to provide restores

  • secure or public rss-feeds

  • appropriate server infrastructure

  • centralized profile management (what group someone is in, projects they are on)

  • security


  • more to come, I'm sure

    What I'm Playing Now...


    I thought if I'm going to post on Video Games at all, I should at least say what games I'm playing! I pretty much play one game at a time, per console, so here's what I'm playing for each, in order of more to less play time:

    Nintendo DS Lite:
    Puzzle Quest
    Thanks, ChrisM, just as addicting as you said!

    Nintendo Wii:
    the Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess
    Finally finished this, just wondering about replay value. I do wish it didn't have to say how many hours it took me...

    Mac:
    MondoSolitaire widget
    For those times when you are just waiting at your desk.

    and, I just found this
    iPhone:
    Bejewelled
    This may get more playing time than the others (unless it drains my battery too quickly). I do need my cell phone, after all.

    (mobile on hold)

    until I figure out how to post to my blog from my new iPhone. Maybe it's fast enough to just do it via the web browser?

    Sorry for the Delay


    Sorry for the delay in posting, I was busy playing with my new... wait for it... you can guess... yup, my new iPhone!!! Wow, is it awesome! Even better than I thought!

    Here are To Do lists I'm looking at, but I haven't found the perfect one yet:
    TaDa List
    Listingly
    ToodleDo

    I'm also looking for a replacement for Documents to Go, but I'm thinking web-based would be better:
    Zoho
    Google Docs & Spreadsheets, but no Safari support?
    Note that I rarely use Microsoft formats, prefer OO, so the built-in reader in the iPhone doesn't always help me.

    Suggestions?

    EDIT: 8/28

    Tuesday, August 21, 2007

    Virtual Sun Worlds

    Sun has a virtual world I'd like to try for work meetings and such. It looks a lot like Second Life, but I heard the sound quality is very good. But don't a lot of these folks look like they're wearing Star Trek uniforms?

    Thursday, August 16, 2007

    Pictures from Our Flyball Tournament

    We just held our 5th annual Bay Racers flyball tournament. We had a new photographer this year, he had never done flyball before. But check out his pictures!

    Monday, August 13, 2007

    Kami is a Grand Champion!


    Kami earned her Flyball Grand Champion (FGDCh-30) title at the Bay Racers tournament in Hayward on Saturday!

    Good job for my old girl!

    Thursday, August 9, 2007

    Visualization

    Just some notes on visualization:

    Edward Tufte's books (and poster) are pretty great, and beautiful:
    The Visual Display of Quantitative Information
    Envisioning Information
    Visual Explanations: Images and Quantities, Evidence and Narrative
    Beautiful Evidence

    PowerPoint Does Rocket Science--and Better Techniques for Technical Reports
    why PowerPoint should not do Rocket Science

    Here's the Napoleon's March poster.

    and finally, this may be useful:
    A Periodic Table of Visualization Methods

    Interactivity Scale

    (more interactive)
    A
    F2F (1:1)
    F2F Meeting
    B
    Video IM
    Second Life/ Virtual Reality
    C
    Telephone (1:1)
    Conference Call
    D
    IM
    Discussion Forum
    E
    Email
    Comment Wall
    F
    Blog
    (least interactive)

    EDIT: The letters (A-F) are just for grouping labels.

    Wednesday, August 8, 2007

    Mass Collaboration

    open open open

    (makes me think of that old Mervyn's commercial)

    So if you blab everything you're working on, all the time, and some others chime in, eventually your project morphs into something even bigger, maybe better. You certainly get ideas and perspectives you wouldn't have thought of yourself.

    I'm going to try to put out more of my stuff, even before I've really thought it through, in the interests of open open open.

    Tuesday, August 7, 2007

    Facebook is my Cubicle

    I was trying to figure out what the point of Facebook is, at least in a work context. Then I realized it's like my cubicle! When I used to have an assigned office at work, I had all kinds of things visible for any visitor to see:
    * papers, etc., that I'm working on
    * books I'm reading or refer to
    * calendar with pictures and notes
    * magazines showing my interests
    * pictures of my SO, my dogs, Bay to Breakers, etc.
    * current fun mousepad
    * collection of floaty pens
    * random small toys to play with if you were waiting for me to get off of the phone

    You (the visitor) could also leave me a note, and see if I'm around and maybe what I was currently doing.

    Isn't my Facebook page like that?

    Monday, August 6, 2007

    Here's another Facebook "incident:"
    There's one vote that Rudy Giuliani definitely can't count on in his 2008 presidential bid: his own daughter's. According to the 17-year-old Caroline Giuliani's Facebook profile, she's supporting Barack Obama.
    Slate, 8/6/2007

    Thursday, August 2, 2007

    Soon, the future I've been waiting for!

    Flying Cars!
    Jet Packs!

    We need more robots!

    Buster's Famous! (again)



    Buster is featured in this month's Bay Woof newspaper. I think you can probably pick these up at most Bay Area pet stores. His article is under Bay Area Canine Champions!