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My ratings (R) are from 1 to 9. My Dates are also permalinks. Click on the column headers to sort Jots. Feel free to use the address bar like a command line interface by setting the optional query string parameters: Dtm1 (10, 20, 30, YYYYMMDDhhmmss), Dtm2 (YYYYMMDDhhmmss), IsJot (Jot or Not), Tag (zero+ times), NotTag (zero+ times), OrderBy (PostForDate, PostTitle, PostLink, PostText, PostSource, PostRating, PostSize) & Desc(Desc), and Limit(integer).

1. What do you think makes a woman want to have an abortion? TAGS: Images. Politics. Sad. TV.
2. Went to get my oil changed and found this... TAGS: Art. Beauty. Comics. Images. Inspiring.
3. What is the purpose of the Universe? Here is one possible answer. TAGS: Biology. Chemistry. Evolution. Physics. Science. Space.
4. Pressure sensitive Wacom stylus for Lenovo ThinkPad X230t in Windows 8 TAGS: Design. Gadget. Hardware. My Stuff. Software. TECH.
5. Flaco before and after shots TAGS: Beauty. Cool. Images. Inspiring. My Stuff. Ramblings. Sad.
6. When to take out the trash TAGS: Home. My Stuff. Ramblings. Self Improvement.
7. Ancient Egyptian D20 the oldest in the world? TAGS: Anthropology. Chill. Cool. Games. History. Images.
8. Worm Sandwich TAGS: Biology. Fauna. My Stuff. Ramblings. Writing.
9. CrossFit WOD 2012-04-15 TAGS: CrossFit. Gear. Health.
10. Workout buy-ins TAGS: Boxing. Conditioning. CrossFit. Family. Health. Kids. Knives. MARTIAL. Mind. Play. Psychology. Self Improvement.
11. Watch the wind TAGS: Beauty. Chill. Cool. Life. My Stuff. Play. Poetry. Ramblings.
12. A really brutal admissions year TAGS: Chicago. Education. Family.
13. I disappeared TAGS: Books. Conditioning. Go. Literature. Music. My Stuff. Politics. Ramblings. Reading. Videos.
14. Review of my software usage TAGS: Amazon. Apple. Cyber Life. Google. Hardware. Microsoft. My Stuff. Software. TECH.
15. Methane discovery stokes new global warming fears Shock as retreat of Arctic releases greenhouse gas TAGS: Geology. History. News. Science. Sustainability. TECH. World.
16. Fish uses fins to walk and bound TAGS: Biology. Evolution. Faith. Fauna. Images. Live Action. Nature. TECH. Videos.
17. Life Log SS TAGS: Comics. Death. Life. My Stuff. Ramblings.
18. CF WOD 2011-11-29 TAGS: Conditioning. CrossFit. Training.
19. 7 and 13 TAGS: Faith. Literature. Mind. My Stuff. Quotations. Quote. Ramblings. Text.
20. Thanksgiving 2011 TAGS: Family. Home. Mind. My Stuff.
21. MLG Pro Circuit 2011 Providence SC2 TAGS: Live Action. Sports. Star Craft. Video Games.
22. Thank you Judy B. TAGS: Inspiring. My Stuff. Ramblings. Sad.
23. A laser to give the universe a hernia? TAGS: Cool. Physics. Quirky. Space. TECH.
24. Mr. Rogers Just Kidding TAGS: Culture. Images. Journalism. Live Action. News. Outrageous. Politics. TV. Videos.
25. Each generation TAGS: Family. Inspiring. Kids. Literature. Mind. My Stuff. Ramblings. Science. Writing.
26. Steve Jobs (1955-02-24/2011-10-05) TAGS: Apple. Beauty. Computers. Culture. Death. Inspiring. Obituaries. Sad. TECH.
27. Interest and Commitment TAGS: Mind. My Stuff. Ramblings. Thoughts.
28. Google to End Health Records Service After It Fails to Attract Users TAGS: Cyber Life. Cyber Tech. Family. Health. TECH.
29. Why Sex With Creatures from the Future Is a Bad Idea TAGS: Biology. Cool. Evolution. Funny. Movies. Science Fiction.
30. First 'living' laser made from kidney cell TAGS: Biology. Biotechnology. Nanotechnology. Science. TECH.
31. Illinois House OKs Chicago Gambling TAGS: Chicago. Economy. News. Politics.
32. Is Process Killing the Software Industry? TAGS: Mind. Programming. TECH.
33. About Music Beta by Google TAGS: Amazon. Apple. Cyber Life. Google. Microsoft. Music. TECH.
34. Multitasking the Android Way TAGS: Cyber Life. Gadget. Google. Operating System. TECH.
35. Intelligence break led to bin Laden's hide-out TAGS: Military. News. Security. USA. Violence. War. World.
36. Dreams and Controversy TAGS: Cyber Life. Faith. MARTIAL. Philosophy. Politics. Psychology. Ramblings. Relations. Self Improvement. Sex. TECH. Thoughts. Violence.
37. CADE (Part 2): The Good Slaughter: A Proud Meat Cutter Shares His Processing Floor TAGS: Death. Documentary. Food. Interviews. Live Action. MARTIAL. Mind. Training. Videos. Violence.
38. What kind of workout do you do when you have stitches on your hand? TAGS: Conditioning. Health. My Stuff.
39. Eight Ways to Un-Fuck Your CrossFit Gym TAGS: Conditioning. CrossFit.
40. I love my new Alienware M15X laptop TAGS: Computers. Cyber Life. Cyber Tech. Hardware. My Stuff. Software. TECH.
41. NASA Finds New Life TAGS: Biology. Chemistry. Cool. Evolution. Science. Space. TECH.
42. Multi-touch and Mobility TAGS: Cyber Life. Cyber Tech. My Stuff. TECH.
43. Digg V4: The Broken Covenant (aka Selling Out to "The Man") TAGS: Cyber Life. TECH.
44. Hit by a freaking taxi TAGS: My Stuff.
45. How to Enable Vertical Tabs in Google Chrome TAGS: Browser. Cyber Life. Cyber Tech. Firefox. Google. TECH.
46. U.S. Navy Successfully Uses Laser to Shoot Down Drones TAGS: Gear. Lasers. Military. News. TECH. Videos.
47. Time's running out! TAGS: My Stuff. Ramblings. Text. Writing.
48. Army Drops Bayonets in Training Revamp TAGS: Fighting. Gear. Knives. MARTIAL. Military. Pole Arms.
49. The real reason why Steve Jobs hates Flash TAGS: Apple. Audio. Cyber Life. Cyber Tech. Gadget. Hardware. Images. Operating System. Software. TECH. Videos.
50. The secrets of intelligence lie within a single cell TAGS: Artificial Intelligence. Biology. Mind. Science. TECH.

I usually avoid political posts, but this has too much WTF to resist.

"What do you think makes a woman want to have an abortion?"

"... I don't know, I have never -- it's a question I have never thought about."

WTF

It's not just awesome styrofoam art, but that people can do awesome stuff and I wonder if we'll ever know who did it.
It makes sense to me that things (genes, memes, chemical reactions, universes) which can more successfully reproduce would be more prolific and persistent (or exist at all). Successful reproduction is dependent on several factors like 1. The ability to reproduce at all. 2. Reproduction with diversity (sexaul > asexual reproduction). 3. Favoring lower energy states (going downhill) even if you have to go uphill first. (Posting this becuase this info has a limited shelf life): If you have the Lenovo ThinkPad X230t and upgrade it Windows 8, then your stylus will not be pressure sensitive. However if you go to http://www.wacom.com/en/support/drivers and download the Tablet PC - Enhanced Graphics Driver 7.1.0-8 zip, it has the 7.1.0-9 driver zipped within the first zip, which will make the stylus pressure senstive again! Now I'm ready to rock and roll with MyPaint, GIMP, and Inkscape! This story is how I felt this morning. I see so many different people when I commute, some obviously beautiful, others less so. But I knew that for everyone there was something remarkably beautiful, something very ugly, and something mundane. Life is too short to not see the beauty.

When is the best time to take out the trash? Some say immmediately, but that interferes with your flow. Some say whenever the trash can is full --We sort of do that at our house but then we just put the trash bag at the back porch where they pile up. I used to take the trash out just before my morning workout, but with my injured knee the trash has been piling up.

This morning I've decided to make it a habit (a resolution?) that I will take the trash out just before I go out! I'm usually dressed and ready to go out well before the wife and kids are so it won't interfere with my flow. At my house there is a flow issue in that we exit through the front, but the large trash bins are at the rear. However, that's a small problem, and I will give myself a pat on the back anyway.

Come on 20!
Worm sandwich. I'm writing this note while eating a sandwich. I had to go out in the drizzling rain to get the sandwich. I was looking down to avoid the puddles and I noticed the various worms on the sidewalk. There was one that was heading towards a water filled line in the sidewalk and I paused on my journey to witness his. I thought that he was going to cross the "valley" of water and I wanted to see that, but instead he went into it, submerged for his full length. I supposed that it was safer in the crack then out of it, given the foot traffic, but wouldn't he drown? Perhaps he was coming up for air now and then? I stuck around for a few moments, but he just squirmed around in the bit of dirt there. I continued on my own journey to get a sandwich and on my way back I checked on the worm and he was still submerged. There were other worms on the sidewalk. One was just a foot away who was also submerged but dead; Other worms were squirming or dying or dead. I don't know what drives a worm's existence. What sort of biofeedback or biochemistry motivates a worm. Do annelids strand themselves when it rains because of air, sex, acidity, or what? Why do they dig? There must be something in their biology that says dig or die. I think they feel pain or at least squirm more vigorously if partially squished. So many questions. Human brains are more complex but we're all basically worms with limited thoughts and choices and actions. In any case, I've finished my sandwich and it's time to post. Fave recent workout that I did: http://www.crossfit.com/mt-archive2/008300.html. Chest-to-bar pullups, 30" box jumps, and GHD situps. Loved the box jumps! I don't have a GHD station, but this set up works: bench, power cage bar set at proper height, and a barbell pad (usually used for back squats).

I do buy-ins with other areas of my life, but the buy-in technique is clearly demonstrated with workouts. I was doing The Open portion of the 2012 CrossFit Games (http://games.crossfit.com/workouts/the-open) the other day, when it hit me that the 5th week of it will roughly coincide with the release of the "Hunger Games" movie! I then sold myself on the idea of doing my workouts as if I were preparing to be a participant/tribute in the Hunger Games. I was also inspired by the competitors in the 55+ category!

Here's another recent examples of the buy-in technique: I was warming up the other day and noticed that I was already mentally and physically tired. I then thought that when I'm fatigued is a good time for someone to attack me. I instantly got a "fuck you" attitude and decided that my workout would be 3 rounds of heavy bag work, where each round was 3 minutes. I was energized and vigorous and proud for overcoming the fatigue. I do a similar technique when I take a hot shower: If I notice that have any hesitation about suddenly switching to a cold shower, then I've sold myself on the idea that I must then suddenly switch to a cold shower.

One more buy-in: I sometimes have a hard time getting the kids to do martial techniques with me. But just yesterday I was fooling around with a jump rope and iron whip techniques and the kids were laughing it up. I switched to doing a knife fight with the jump rope handles as the knives. The rope forced some measure, and the handles were so un-knife like that it seemed less violent. Basically it was different enough that the kids bought into it and wanted to try it out!

A buy-in gives any project drive and gets results!

Watch the wind
    uproot and uplift
        the discarded debris
    of paper and plastic
into fanciful flights
    overhead, on high,
        soaring out of sight.

Makes me appreciative that my daughter Connie got accepted by the selective-enrollment high school of her choice as well as the International Baccalaureate high school of her choice. Connie worked really hard and is very talented, but I'm sure that many who didn't get in are the same. However the line has to be drawn somewhere and I'm sure the other kids will do great elsewhere. Instead of checking Facebook, G+, reddit, etc, I've been selfish! I've been reading books (Douglass, Dickens, Emerson), playing (Go, piano), watching Netflix, avoiding election news, dining out, working out, doing lots of work work, slumming with family, and ... ah rats! We all that stuff whether we surf or not, but I admit that I like to disappear now and then. And yes, I was also to lazy to send Christmas cards again!

I periodically do a review of my software usage -- especially if I've gotten a new computer! However this year I'll emphasize software on my phone and tablet.

Hardware and Operating System:

• Phone: HTC Thunderbolt with Android 2.3.4. It's good. I love the integration of contacts between Google Contacts, Facebook, and the phone itself. The short battery life is my chief complaint: Why must I recharge mid-day? I dropped the phone and cracked the screen but it has been fully functional. The crack is annoying though so I have an excuse to get a new phone and Android 4 too.
• Tablet: Amazon Kindle Fire with its forked version of Android. I'm fine with the price, size, and speed. All the Amazon stuff (books, music, videos, docs) work great. What I dislike is that some apps are in the Google store but not the Amazon store and vice versa. I imagine that a non-Amazon Android tablets can do all the Amazon stuff fine through apps or the browser. I may make the Fire for the family library, and get a regular Android 4+ tablet for myself later.

Games: Lots available for phone, tablet, comp, console, physical, etc. These are more for my kids.

• Angry Birds. $0. Fair. Phone: Pre-installed. Tablet: Available but I don't need it.
• Let's Golf 2. $0. Meh. Phone: Pre-installed.
• Math Workout. $0. Good. Phone: Pre-installed.
• MathDoku. $0. Roughly kenken; Good. Phone.
• Enjoy Sudoku. $3. I could have put up with ads on the free version. Good. Phone.
• Speed Anatomy. $0. Fair. Tablet.

Comics: Just read in print or online with a big screen!

• Comics. $0. By comiXology; Reads require download and often a fee; Fair. Phone: Needs a big screen. Tablet.
• Mango. $0. Manga; Fair. Phone: Needs a big screen.

Reading: Going with e-books if available. Hesitating on digital NGM because we love the print.

• Kindle. $0. Good. Phone. Tablet.
• Google Books. $0. Good. Phone.
• Dictionary.com. $0. Good. Phone. Tablet.
• Audible. $0. Amazon audio books. Tablet.

News: Perhaps we all check the news too often!

• Chicago Tribune. $0. News; Good for local. Phone.
• CNN. $0. Good. Phone.
• Pulse. $0. Good; A variety of top sources. Tablet.
• USA Today. $0. Good. Tablet.
• News. $0. Reads Google Reader but no other features?; Ill named; Meh. Phone: Pre-installed.
• Google Reader. $0. Fair. Phone.

Audio: I don't do lots of music, but so far I like Amazon's handling of music better than Google and Apple. Yay radio!

• FM Radio. $0. An actual local radio; Need headphones for antenna; Good. Phone: Pre-installed.
• TuneIn Radio. $0. Internet radio with local options; Good. Phone. Tablet.
• Pandora. $0. Internet radio; Love it. Phone? Tablet.
• Slacker. $0. Internet radio. Haven't used. Phone: Pre-installed.
• TuneWiki. $0. Haven't used. Pre-installed on Phone.
• Music. $0. Music player by Verizon with find on YouTube feature. Phone: Pre-installed.
• Music. $0. By Google Music Beta; Player but no other features? Phone.
• Amazon MP3 Store. $0. Songs usually $0.69; Player and shop at Amazon; Unlimited storage if purchased through them; Good. Phone. Tablet.
• Little Piano. $0. A little musical keyboard. Tablet.
• Voice Recorder. $0. Take and share audio. Phone: Pre-installed.

Media: I watch YouTube and Netflix, but I don't do much TV, otherwise cable and Hulu might be interesting.

• YouTube. $0. Phone: Pre-installed. Tablet: N/A; Just use web.
• Netflix. $0. Good. Phone. Tablet.
• Connected Media. $0. For sending/sharing music, photos, or videos. Phone: Pre-installed.
• Gallery. $0. View and share photos and videos. Phone: Pre-installed.
• Gallery. $0. View and share photos and videos. Tablet: Pre-installed.
• Videos. $0. View and share videos. Phone: Pre-installed.
• Camcorder. $0. Take videos; Can switch to camera. Phone: Pre-installed.
• Camera. $0. Take photos; Can switch to camcorder. Phone: Pre-installed.
• PicsIn. $0. Doodle. Phone.
• Magic Doodle. $0. Doodle. Tablet.

Phone: I use the fewest phone minutes in my family. Waiting for phone wallets to mature.

• People. $0 Rolodex; Links people across: phone, Gmail, Facebook, Twitter, Skype, etc.; Call history. Phone: Pre-installed.
• Contacts. $0. Not integrated with my other stuff, so why would I use this? Tablet: Pre-installed.
• Voice Mail. $0. Alas, I have to use this now and then. Hide, since this is just the 3rd page on the Messages app. Phone: Pre-installed.
• Voice. $0. Google Voice; Don't use on phone much but I do Google calls on a full computer often. Phone.

SMS/IM: Yes, my family texts/chats often!

• Messages. $0. SMS; Can also check voice mail; Use often. Phone: Pre-installed.
• Mobile IM. $0. For Windows Live, Yahoo!, and AIM. Haven't used. Phone: Pre-installed.
• Talk. $0. For Google Talk/Chat; Use regularly. Phone: Pre-installed.
• Skype. $0. IM and Skype phone; OK. Phone: Pre-installed.
• KakaoTalk. $0. Don't use much. Phone: Pre-installed.

Email: I prefer to do email at a full computer. Urgent communications should be done by phone or text.

• Mail. $0. Can connect to Gmail, Exchange, POP3/IMAP, Verizon.Net, Hotmail, Yahoo; I use for Hotmail and Yahoo. Few features. Phone: Pre-installed.
• Email. $0. Can connect to various email providers; Don't use much. Tablet: Pre-installed.
• Gmail. $0. I love Gmail. Phone: Pre-installed; minimal feature set. Tablet: N/A; Just use web.

Social: I prefer to do social sites on a full computer. I do Facebook, but barely do Twitter and the rest.

• Facebook. $0. Most Facebook-specific features. Phone: Pre-installed. Tablet: N/A; Just use the web.
• Friend Stream. $0. View Facebook, Flickr, and Twitter; View by status, photos/vids, links, lists (?), and notifications; Post to Facebook, Twitter. Phone: Pre-installed.
• Peep. $0. View Twitter; View by all tweets, mentions, direct messages, starred; Post too. Phone: Pre-installed.
• Seesmic. $0. View Facebook, Twitter, Google Buzz; View Twitter by: timeline, replies, direct messages, profile (my tweets, fave tweets, retweets, following, followers), lists, trending; View Facebook by: news feed, friends, pages, wall; View Buzz by: Following feed, nearby, profile; Post to same. Phone: Pre-installed.
• TweetDeck. $0. Owned by Twitter; View Twitter, Facebook, MySpace (PC), LinkedIn (PC), Foursquare, Google Buzz; Post to same. Phone: Pre-installed.
• Google Buzz. $0. Post to. Phone.
• Foursquare. $0. Most Foursquare-specific features; OK if you like that sort of thing. Phone.

Office and Files: I prefer to do office stuff on a full computer but I love having centralized simple text files that my wife and I can both access. I'd really like to log my workouts in my Google Docs spreadsheets but the interface is a clunky.

• Dropbox. $0. Web hosting and sharing; I have no need to pay for Evernote or box.net; Great! Phone. Tablet: Not part of the official Amazon store but the "hack" is simple: http://forums.dropbox.com/topic.php?id=47218.
• Calendar. $0. View and post to Google Calendar; Mobile calendar access is key sometimes. Phone: Pre-installed; Limited. Tablet: N/A; Just use web.
• Docs. $0. View, edit, and post to Google Docs. Phone: Minimal features. Tablet: N/A; Just use web.
• Quickoffice. $0. View basic documents; Don't use much. Phone: Pre-installed. Tablet: Pre-installed.
• ES File Explorer. $0. I tried Astro, but I like ES better. Phone.

Maps: Mobile maps is important when you're travelling.

• Navigation. $0. Great back up for GPS. Phone: Pre-installed.
• Maps. $0. Google Maps. Can be useful. Phone: Pre-installed.
• Google Sky. $0. Nice, I've used it several times. Phone: Pre-installed.
• Google Earth. $0. Good, but I haven't used it much. Phone: Pre-installed.
• Places. $0. Rate Places app by Android?; Meh. Phone: Pre-installed.
• Footprints. $0. Don't use much. Phone: Pre-installed.
• Latitude. $0. Don't use much, but I might when the wife gets a smartphone. Phone: Pre-installed.

Utilities: A calculator with basic science functions should be built-in!

• Weather. $0. Great!; I check often. Phone: Pre-installed.
• The Weather Channel. $0. Good. Tablet.
• Calculator. $0. I use this often. Phone: Pre-installed.
• Office Calculator Free. $0. Tablet: No built in calculator?
• RealCalc Scientific Calculator. $0. OK.
• Flashlight. $0. Cool idea but the regular mobile light is OK. Phone.
• Candle Free. $0. Fun little thing. Tablet.
• Goggles. $0. Google Goggles; Nice idea but I haven't used it much. Phone.
• Translate. $0. Google Translate; Good. Phone.
• Barcode Scan. $0. Good. Phone
• A HIIT Timer. $0. Good. Phone.

Special Apps:

• Amazon.com. $0. Love it! Phone. Tablet: Pre-installed.
• Mint.com. $0. Good. Phone. Tablet.
• PNC Mobile. $0. My bank; Fair. Phone. Tablet: N/A?
• ING DIRECT. $0. My bank; Fair. Phone. Tablet: N/A?
• Pingdom. $0. Meh. Phone.

Other:

• Internet. $0. Android browser; Good. Phone.
• Web. $0. Amazon Silk browser; Good when it works: Sometimes the Amazon Stuff works online fine while regular web pages don't. Tablet.
• Voice Search. $0. Voice search and commands for phone, web, text, sms, music, navigate, email. Voice commands have been clumsy. Phone: Pre-installed.

Non-mobile computer software brief version:

• Windows 7 operating system
• AVG anti-virus
• Chrome browser
• Dropbox file hosting and sharing
• IrfanView media viewer
• GIMP raster image editor
• Inkscape vector image editor
• Sketchup 3D modeling
• Notepad++ text editor
• Mercurial revisions control software
• PostgreSQL versus MySQL database
• StarCraft II real-time strategy game

History repeats itself?

History: 55.8 million year ago an extreme climate change occurred called the Paleocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM). The PETM is so clearly visible in the geologic evidence that it defines the border between two epochs. One of the main theories about PETM is that global warming melted the polar ice and exposed methane. Methane is 20x more potent as a greenhouse gas than CO₂, so the global warming was exacerbated, the oceans acidified, and mass extinction occurred.

News: The Siberian Arctic Shelf and permafrost has been melting. Now hundreds of methane fountains are turning up. My guess is that once it gets this far, there's no reversing it. We've already been causing extinctions, but there are going to be a lot more. Runaway global warming here we come.

I suppose someone can make a variant of the evolve fish bumper sticker using the African lungfish.

I've kept a "Life Log" for years. It's a short document (only a few pages long) with a chronological listing of important events, places, people, things, jobs and salaries, medical incidents, births, deaths, etc. in my life.

The format of my Life Log is simple. For each year I have a short line with the year, my age on my birthday of that year, my "grade" if I was in school that year, and similar info for my wife and kids. EG: 2011. 43. JH XX. CH 13/8. YH 10/5. AH 7/1. Then for each year I have bullets for the important things, nested by date and time if possible.

Recently I rediscovered the comic "936 Little Blobs" [http://abstrusegoose.com/51] where the each of the blobs corresponds to one month in a typical lifespan of 78 years. I like it because it gives you a one page view.

However the blobs don't provide much metadata so I decided to transform it into a Life Log spreadsheet [https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Anl6QqLgOdR9dFNZTDBERGluYWhiUzFYNG1LQmdlWXc] where each cell represents a month. You can enter as much or as little info in each cell. When you're done entering info, just turn off word wrap and the cells shrink, thus allowing you to see your life on one page. As a spreadsheet, it also does things like calculate your age on your birthday for each year.

A Life Log has a lot of practical uses: Medical history, resume building for job hunting, credit reports, legal issues, etc. However its most important function is to give me perspective on where I've been, where I'm going, what's important, and that time is passing.

Fave recent workout that I did: 5 rounds of: 5 Hanging Ring Extensions, 5 Forward Rolls, 5 Backward Rolls, and 10 Sots Presses 45#. Several reasons: 1. As part of my warm up I do 3 minutes of jump rope where I alternate between single-unders and double-unders, and I broke 90 double-unders so 100 is within sight! 2. Rolling without a mat is gnarly! 3. I knew the Sots Press would work weird muscles in the upper body but I was surprised at what it did for my knee. As part of my cool down I do a 12 minute round of stretches that includes sitting on my knees (seiza). That's the best my right knee has ever felt during seiza in a long while. I think it was the static active knees during the Sots Press! I'll make the Sots Press a regular thing.

My numbers for today are 7 and 13.

7 is for We are Seven by William Wordsworth. The death of a loved one temporarily weakens us, but to honor them we must ensure that their lives strengthen us and lives through us.

13 is for transformation, rebirth, rebellion. 13 exceeds the numerology of 12. A death must occur in order to have a resurrection. The extraordinary requires the surpassing the status quo.

We are seven! We will transform!

[FYI: Here is a copy of "We are Seven" by William Wordsworth. I prefer the original intro by Coledridge.]

A little child, dear brother Jem,
That lightly draws its breath,
And feels its life in every limb,
What should it know of death?

I met a little cottage Girl:
She was eight years old, she said;
Her hair was thick with many a curl
That clustered round her head.

She had a rustic, woodland air,
And she was wildly clad:
Her eyes were fair, and very fair;
--Her beauty made me glad.

"Sisters and brothers, little Maid,
How many may you be?"
"How many? Seven in all," she said
And wondering looked at me.

"And where are they? I pray you tell."
She answered, "Seven are we;
And two of us at Conway dwell,
And two are gone to sea.

"Two of us in the church-yard lie,
My sister and my brother;
And, in the church-yard cottage, I
Dwell near them with my mother."

"You say that two at Conway dwell,
And two are gone to sea,
Yet ye are seven!--I pray you tell,
Sweet Maid, how this may be."

Then did the little Maid reply,
"Seven boys and girls are we;
Two of us in the church-yard lie,
Beneath the church-yard tree."

"You run about, my little Maid,
Your limbs they are alive;
If two are in the church-yard laid,
Then ye are only five."

"Their graves are green, they may be seen,"
The little Maid replied,
"Twelve steps or more from my mother's door,
And they are side by side.

"My stockings there I often knit,
My kerchief there I hem;
And there upon the ground I sit,
And sing a song to them.

"And often after sunset, Sir,
When it is light and fair,
I take my little porringer,
And eat my supper there.

"The first that died was sister Jane;
In bed she moaning lay,
Till God released her of her pain;
And then she went away.

"So in the church-yard she was laid;
And, when the grass was dry,
Together round her grave we played,
My brother John and I.

"And when the ground was white with snow,
And I could run and slide,
My brother John was forced to go,
And he lies by her side."

"How many are you, then," said I,
"If they two are in heaven?"
Quick was the little Maid's reply,
"O Master! we are seven."

"But they are dead; those two are dead!
Their spirits are in heaven!"
'Twas throwing words away; for still
The little Maid would have her will,
And said, "Nay, we are seven!"

We were out of town for Thanksgiving and as we we were a block from our house, I told the kids to be thankful if our house hasn't burned down while we were out. Our house was fine but two doors down they did have a fire. No one was hurt and they have insurance. I've offered my help and told them that my house burned down when I was six. There is much to be thankful for. "Reflect upon your present blessings, of which every man has plenty; not on your past misfortunes of which all men have some." - Charles Dickens I watched a decent chunk of the tourney. The winner, Leenock (Korean, 16yo) caught my eye early on. Beautiful adaptive play. A lot of comebacks too, not just dominating from the beginning. His last opponent, Naniwa (Sweden) was playing brilliantly before he got to Leenock, but Leenock figured out that the key to beating Naniwa was hurting him early on. Leenock's not even a full-time player because he has school! Well earned $50,000 by Leenock!

A good and kind friend of mine from high school died. It's been a rough week of mourning, weeping, writing, and staring. I can't sustain this, and yet I don't want to let go because thoughts of her are all I have left of her. I'm hoping a public posting and a poem will purchase some closure for me.

Thank you Judy B.

As year goes on to year:
Light after light turns dark.
Some lights glow long and strong,
Some lights spark.

You were my saving star
in my darkest hour.
A moment of grace,
in a cruel place.

You may have gone where I cannot see.
And I cannot repay my debt to you.
But the light of kindness you passed to me,
I can share with others, that I can do.

Thank you Judy B.

Say hello to my little friend: ELI. "Extreme Light Infrastructure Ultra-High Field Facility, known as "ELI," would concentrate 200 petawatts of power -- that's 100,000 times the world's power production -- and fire it at a single point for less than a trillionth of a second."

"by giving spacetime a hernia, it is hoped that theorized "ghost particles" may spill from the fissure, providing evidence for the hypothesis that extra-dimensions exist and the vacuum of space isn't a vacuum at all -- it is in fact buzzing with virtual particles."

If I can believe (and test) that the Internet is passing terrabytes of data through my nose right now, then why not believe (and test) that my nose is also buzzing with ghost particles/anti-particles?

I was outraged by the video of "Judge William Adams beats daughter for using the internet", but I let it slide because others are on it. However this video of Fox News saying that Mr. Rogers is a evil Man is outrageous! I didn't like Fox News before, but it's getting to the point where I cannot comprehend or make excuses for the likes Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, and Ann Coulter. Mr. Rogers may have forgiven Fox News, but there are somethings that are irredeemable and unforgivable.

I just attended the morning session of poetry assembly at my kids' Burley elementary school. The courage and quality of the group is always moving. I was inspired to throw together a few lines myself:

Each generation

Each generation is beautiful in body, face, and mind;
Each act of joy and sharing, out shines the acts unkind.

Knowledge of beliefs --true and justified-- are wonderful to behold;
But without love and beauty, such treasure fast grows cold.

Weariness and routine bring nihilism nigh;
So shine a light and pass it on, then sweetly you can die.
But realize, dear friend, the best light, shines in your eye.

Steve Jobs passed away yesterday after struggling with cancer for almost a decade. Thank you for making the only PC that I've kept after I retired it: A Mac Classic with 9 inch black and white screen. Thanks for Pixar. Thanks for belief, vision, and style. Thanks for sharing.

"Death is very likely the best invention of life. All pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure, these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important."
-Steve Jobs (1955-02-24/2011-10-05) in 2005.

Here a set of thoughts that are mixing around in my head. I'm going to spill them out here before they vanish.

I don't know if theres a thread connecting the thoughts, but if I were to guess it's something Tao-ish, something along the lines of "Practice not-doing, and everything will fall into place." That is, how to do things best while making it easy like play.

There are several ways to do this on an individual and collective level. That distinction is fairly clear. The distinction that gets blurry is betwen tactical and strategic because the two go back and forth. Every individual is tactical in that they deal with what at hand; Every individual is strategic because they have a larger picture in their head. Similar things can be said for collectives. Collectives are masses of individuals making tactical and strategic decisions individually, but with a net result of collective tactics and strategies.

Bridging the individual and the collective is key. One of the tools I like is the triplet of Interested, Informed, and Involved. An introvert may start out with an interest then gets more informed, and eventually more involved. An extrovert may start out with getting involved with people, then getting informed to stay involved, and may develop a genuine interest. A person may get informed in order to do make money, then get more informed and involved to do the job better.

Bridging the tactical and the strategic is also key. Talented individuals can have great tactics and strategies for themselves and the collective. However the whole can be greater than the sum of the parts. Individuals who can work with a collective in a productive, involved fashion, can produce a whole greater than the sum of its parts. "Great men are rarely isolated mountain peaks; they are the summits of ranges." - Thomas W. Higginson. Greater vision can be acquired by standing on the shoulders of others. The tactics come from experience gathered, shared, and practiced. Strategy is applied tactics with vision and insight. Choosing between attacking by direct assault, or attrition, or by out flanking, requires data, experience, insight, and intuition.

Now the trick is to make all this natural, intuitive, easy like play, and yet challenging, difficult, and fearful. A task requires no courage if there is no fear to face. Flow is matching tasks with ability. "There's a difference between interest and commitment. When you're interested in doing something, you do it only when it's convenient. When you're committed to something, you accept no excuses; only results." - Ken Blanchard. How do you motivate folks to become more than just interested, but committed? How does you motivate folks to move beyond themselves and get involved with others? How does you motivate folks to move beyond the answers they know and get more informed?

Part of the problem is the language. In the phrase "How do you motivate folks to ....", does the "you" refer to an individual or a collective? do "folks" refer to an individual or a collective? Yes and yes. The individual and the collective must be bridged!

From there you move on to the motivation problem. Part of it is expectations, setting up expectations. Not just theoretical virtues, but real problems requiring real virtues, real action. You must reach through the bosom and grasp the living heart.

And so I've come once again to soul searching. What is my mission? What am I committed to? What is my job? What would I cry and bleed for? What should I do before I die? The goofy thing is that some people are good at grabbing the heart but don't do something with it. That means that they haven't gotten there yet --they are merely righteous. Some people have committment handed to them, but they still have to work on being informed and involved, otherwise they too are merely righteous.

That's where I stand. We all have our talents. We can all be informed, involved, and interested. But what am I committed to? Tick-tock, tick-tock.

I put my family health data in spreadsheets: Without clear success stories in Personal Health Records (PHRs), I couldn't justify doing data entry in a particular PHR, especially since we don't know which, if any, are here to stay.

In contrast I know that I use Google Contacts on the Web and on my phone, so I know that it is beneficial to enter contacts in Google --but those entries are less frequent and less laborious than health records.

On the other hand if I knew my doctor was actually going to look at health info I entered, then I might have some incentive to enter it in their system.

Science with Sci Fi goodness! Go, go sea monkeys! "What makes time-shifting sex hazardous to health is something called antagonistic coevolution, a way that different species (parasites and hosts, for example) or members of the same species (males and females) adapt to each other to promote their own individual reproductive interests." The stuff about the vagina as a hostile environment rocks!

They DNA-tricked a human embryonic kidney cell to have green fluorescent protein (GFP, like first found in bio-luminescent jellyfish), then placed it between mirrors, and zapped it with blue light. The GFP acted as the gain medium, the light bounced back and forth between the mirrors until it got strong enough to come out of the semi-transparent mirror as a laser beam! The kidney cell survived just fine.

This is the first time they've used living tissue as a gain medium. They have all sorts of ideas for applications, even Townes couldn't predict what we eventually used the laser for.

Soon we can have frickin sharks with frickin laser beams!

Chicago's history includes Al Capone, speakeasies and bootlegging, as well as a reputation for corruption. Can Chicago draw upon the "dark side" with out succumbing to it? Yes: If we can keep everything legal and transparent. Can we do so with class? Yes: If we can have visionary architects that take local civic, social, and financial problems into mind.

Imaginative code is more important than tested code.

We all know by now that Test Driven Development is a best practice. And so is having 100% of your code reviewed. And 70% unit test coverage. And keeping your CCN complexity numbers below 20. And doing pre-sprint grooming of stories. And a hundred other industry 'best practices' that in isolation seem like a great idea. But at the end of the day, how much time does it leave for developers to be innovative and creative? A piece on O'Reilly Radar argues that excessive process in software development is sucking the life out of passionate developers, all in the name of making sure that 'good code' gets written. 'The underlying feedback loop making this progressively worse is that passionate programmers write great code, but process kills passion. Disaffected programmers write poor code, and poor code makes management add more process in an attempt to "make" their programmers write good code. That just makes morale worse, and so on.'

The music cloud wars are upon us.

Get your music from anywhere (Apple, Amazon, etc), sync them and store them at Google's cloud. Like Amazon Cloud Player, you don't have to worry about space. Apple's music cloud should be coming out soon. Microsoft?

It shouldn't just be music though. It should be contacts, books, videos, photos, files, whatever. Key issues include syncing multiple sources, monetizing, and selecting subsets for when your offline with little space.

One of the first things that the Verizon person did on my new phone was install "Advanced Task Killer". I let it happen but a task killer is not necessary because Android handles it automatically. You can do it manually if you feel like it: Settings, Applications, Manage Applications, Running, click an app, then Force stop.

Of the articles I've read, this one has the most detail so far.

According to John Brennan, White House counterterrorism coordinator, the SEALs first tried to capture bin Laden but he resisted and used a woman, initially thought to be one of his wives, as a human shield as he fired shots at the attacking commandos.

Gaah! What scum!

The one flaw in the mission caused a brief moment of tension for President Obama and senior officials as they watched the operation unfold in real time Sunday afternoon at the White House, Mr. Brennan said.

The intelligence official said the one-acre compound, with two main buildings, was designed as a fortress, with walls up to 18 feet high, balconies with seven-foot-high privacy walls, and barbed wire along the top of the walls. The residents, unlikely to be mere neighbors, burned their trash as a security measure and it was equipped with two gates with opaque windows. Mr. Obama was first made aware of the Abbottabad compound in September and ordered action against it “as soon as he concluded that the intelligence case was sufficiently strong,” this official said. “A range of options for achieving the mission were developed, and on Friday he authorized the operation.”

A senior intelligence official said Monday that both visual identification at the scene and later DNA tests confirmed bin Laden was killed. His body was buried at sea from the USS Carl Vinson around 2 a.m. Monday in the north Arabian Sea.

Just a recently: I woke up from a dream, then I let my mind wander, and then I realized that I was not likely to go back to sleep. Usually I lay there and try to go back to sleep if it's early enough, but today I've decided to try writing.

First I'm going to write about the kinds of dreams that wake me up. Why first? Because I want to write about it while I'm fresh from sleep. I can't say for sure because I haven't been logging it and therefore have no data collected, but I think I'm waking up more easily these days.

It seems that all I need is a dream that changes my heart rate a bit and that wakes me up. Here are typical dreams that wake me up:

• I'm having a social, romantic or sexual encounter that's heating up. I wish I could stay asleep and enjoy the good ones. I don't mind interrupting the bad ones, but I would prefer to do without the mental aftertaste. In the dream that woke me up up this morning, I was talking to some girl in high school (I don't recall who), and she kissed me out of the blue, and I popped awake.
• I'm about to die, am dying, or have died and have continued onto some afterlife. Whether good or bad, these are usually very interesting. Just last night I dreamt that I was hand scribbling some notes in bed as an elderly person; then I realized that my time was arriving so I noted the time and told myself "oh good, I have enough time to wrap up my current notes."; then I could feel my awareness of my body functions, especially my breathing and heart rate, slow and slip away until my time arrived; then I was in utter null for a few moments and then I thought that I would either really die or wake up; then I woke up.
• Some amplified embarrassment or difficulty at school, work, or life. I don't recall any of my dreams specifically at the moment but others have written of this type of dream before.
• I've also had dreams of motion (flying, swimming, running, fighting, etc.) or dynamic visualizations (EG: Permutations of geometric formations), but I can sleep through those except that sometimes there's a sudden change: In the motion dreams, my leg may suddenly twitch. In the visual dreams, the visuals may suddenly alter or stop.

Enough about dreams. Next I wanted to jot down a few notes about general topics of controversy (sex, violence, religion, and politics) and parsing them with simple tools (preferences, consent, and tolerance).

• Sex. People have different personal sexual preferences. As long as there's consent between people having a private sexual encounter, then people should be tolerant. Morally defensible sexual complaints can be made against lack of consent, such as rape or public lewdness (the latter is "sexual second-hand smoke"); or cases of public safety (STDs), or unintended pregnancies, or social relationships. However protesting against consensual private sex acts just because it conflicts with your personal taste is not morally defensible. Folks also use religion for sexual intolerance but that's beyond the realm of rationality.
• Violence. Intensity (whether physical, chemical, financial, emotional, geologic, etc.) is amoral violence; it's moral violence that's controversial. Some cases of moral violence are easy (such as clear self-defense), but others are more interesting. A pen is tolerable because it's most likely to be used for writing, but it could also be used for mortal reasons. A knife is similar: I could use it for utility or mortality. A sword or gun has no utility and is all mortality -- although there are other factors such as deterrence, defense, and physical/character development in martial arts. Some people have guns. Some nations to have nukes. Violence is not just concerned with the quality of life but the existence of it. Tolerance for pens/knives/guns is a matter of taste: I have taste for it and obstructing it interferes with tolerance for self-defense, but others may not have a taste for it and rely on the police/military for defense. Going by the "tolerance for all but the intolerant" principle, most folks have a lower tolerance for nukes because nukes may be intolerant of our entire species: As species we can recover from many mistakes but not a mistake in nuclear war.
• Religion. For most people their preferences on religion was probably set by their parents and their environment. Some are able break out of a mold and see outside of the box or cave (a la Plato); they may go into another box but awareness boxes is key. Going by the "tolerance for all but the intolerant" principle, most religions should be tolerant of other religions; The exceptions are those that have hubris in their dominance. I'm a humanist: I don't care what your religion/box is as long as we can discuss our important differences rationally or productively. What I dislike most about religion is that it closes so many conversations.
• Politics. Politics in the sense of "promoting and protecting your own interests" is something everyone does and should do. However while science demands truth, politics does not; Politics is about winning, getting the votes, persuasion, spinning, and so on. In spite of the Web's potential for more information, transparency, diversity, discussion, etc., the Web also has great potential for misinformation, redirection, propaganda, herded audiences, echo rooms, and so on. People are so concerned about winning, looking good, justifying their gut feelings, etc., that productive discussions between diverse views are scarce. We need politicians skilled in politics who engaged with by experts and large groups, both of which are diverse, bold, informed, and engaged. That's what we should do on the Social Web.

OK, that's enough for now. It's several hours since I woke up. On with my day.

A very respectful presentation of a good meat cutter. I appreciate this video on several levels. I am a carnivore, I have hunted, and I have a keen sense of spiritual gratitude for the creatures we eat. Also as a former Veterinary Assistant who has had to kill many pets -- pets who the owners and I considered to be family, I take the killing and handling very seriously. Also as a martial artist who has pondered killing and dying to a certain depth for decades, and as someone who has lost kin in the military, the humanizing and dehumanizing aspects of it all is not just mental but sensory, physical and tangible.

When I cut my hand on the 8th, I knew I needed stitches. The gaping wound and blood were obvious clues but the key factor was the location. The webbing between the thumb and hand is frequently drawn taut and the cut would have be prone to re-opening without stitches.

So I got the stitches, had them removed a few days ago, and will be ramping up my workouts. But it was odd avoiding using my hands. This experience has made me notice how so many exercises involve stitch-free hands: Jump ropes, heavy bags, barbells, kettlebells, dumbbells, medicine balls, pull-ups, push-ups, weapons, rings, basketballs, handstands, crawls, swimming, biking, rolling, etc., etc.

To answer the initial question, here's a typical workout I did while I had the stitches:

• 50 squats.
• 30 sec planks on forearms: Prone. Left side T. Supine. Right side T. Left arm and right leg. Right arm and left leg.
• Slow kicks. Repeat this set 7 times with one leg then 7 with the other: Front thrust, side thrust, and back thrust. Works on balance, strength, and flexibility while having a martial component.

There was also walking, running, some yoga positions, chasing, hoola hooping, hacky sack, and tomfoolery. I'm sure I could have come up with more, but luckily my hand is getting better.

Good and simple. Here are just the bullet points:

• Work the Fundamentals
• Do Strict Chins and Pull-ups
• Keep it simple
• Stick with a challenge
• Think outside the Zone
• Strength Train
• Get rid of the “one size fits all” program
• Have some standards

My laptop is almost a month old now. I got a new one because the graphics card on my old laptop died trying to play StarCraft II. I'm going to document the various installs and stuff I've done so that I look at the entry years from now and laugh.

I received my brand new Alienware M15X laptop from Dell. Beautifully packaged. It felt like an event. It even came with a hat! The basic specs:

• Intel Core i7 740QM Quad Core Processor, 1.73GHz (2.93GHz Turbo Mode, 6M Cache)
• Windows 7, 64 bit
• 128 GB SSD. No, it's not even a TB, but solid state is fast and quiet. I use the main HD for apps, and put data online or in an external drive.
• 8 GB RAM. 4x as much as I had before.
• Graphics card NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460M, 1536 MB GDDR5
• Display 15.6" WLED FHD 1920x1080
• Camera 2.0 Mpixel

I only have two complaints about the hardware:

• The touch controls at the right and above the keyboard are annoying. There's no way to deactivate them. It's a minor shame that I have to cover some of them with a bit of paper and tape.
• The laptop also only has 2 USB ports but I can get a USB hub.

Next I did some mandatory stuff:

• I set up my user name, password, computer name, and Internet connection.
• Set up printer. In order to scan and stuff, I had to download from hp.com because the CD for my older HP Photosmart C7280 All-In-One Printer only went up to Windows Vista.
• Installed anti-virus and security stuff. I installed "FortiClient Endpoint Security Standard Edition 4.2.0.250" because it's free and because I use it to connect to work by VPN anyway. Did full scan and set up schedule.

Through out all this I gradually did a bunch of Windows tweaks. Here's some of what I did.

• Moved Taskbar to the left. Some people hate this but there's more horizontal space than vertical.
• Taskbar buttons never combine.
• Add Quick Launch to Taskbar. See http://www.techspot.com/guides/196-recycle-bin-on-windows-7-taskbar/.
• Pinned stuff to the Taskbar. FYI: Win+1 (up to 9) opens the pinned program.
• Tweaked desktop to just the recycle bin.
• Mouse: Snap To. Show location with Ctrl key. Scroll: 1 line, 1 char. Keep touchpad on even if pointer device in.
• Region and Language: Short date: yyyy-MM-dd. Short time: HH:mm. Long time: HH:mm:ss.
• Windows Explorer: Folder Options: Always show menu. Show extensions of known file types.
• Various Windows updates and patches.
• Windows: Power Management. Default settings: Balanced:
• Power Button. Battery: Sleep. AC: Sleep.
• Sleep Button. Battery: Sleep. AC: Sleep.
• Close Lid. Battery: Sleep. AC: Sleep.
• When to Dim Display. Battery: 2 min. AC: 5 min.
• When to Off Display. Battery: 5 min. AC: 10 min.
• When to Sleep. Battery: 15 min. AC: 30 min: Changed to Never. Sleep stops, i.e. is like pausing a DVD player, but hibernation stores state, then turns off.
• Wake via: Pressing Power Button.
• Notification Area Icons: Always show, but "Only show notifications" for most except for usu. Windows, Skype.
• Set up user picture.
• Tweaked Start Menu to show most stuff as menus.
• Desktop: Set up to go randomly cycle through a folder I have for wallpaper images. Thank you wallbase.net!

Besides Windows 7, I was pleasantly surprised that there was very little extra pre-installed software:

• CyberLink Power DVD 8. DVD/BD player.
• CyberLink YouCam. Web cam software.
• Nero. CD/DVD burning.
• Alienware software. Most of it was annoying.
  • AlienFX. LED backlighting. The back lighting is useful, but I just leave it on blue.
  • AlienFusion. Power management. Silly because it does exactly the same stuff as Windows Power Management.
  • AlienTouch. Touchpad management. Fair, but all I really need is to have it off unless there's no mouse or I explicitly turn it on.
  • AlienSense. Face recognition. I played with this quite a bit but it's just annoying. I always, always lock my computer (Win + L) if I step away.
  • AlienRespawn. System recovery disks, backup, and restore. Yes, I did create Recovery Media.

Web browser stuff. Chrome is my main browser these days. FYI: At work I work with Chrome 8, and test with FF 3.6, IE 8, Safari, and Opera.

• Chrome 8.0.552.224. I tweaked the bookmark bar, search engines (especially for Wikipedia and Google Maps, and extensions (Smooth Gesture and Yet Another Google Bookmarks Extension). Upgraded to 9.0.597.19 beta. Installed Google Voice and Video for chats.
• Installed Firefox 3.6.13. Upgraded to 4.0 beta 8.
• Installed Internet Explorer 9.0.7930.16406.

Installed StarCraft II. Oh yes! Many more frames per second!

Here's some work stuff:

• Installed Notepad++ 5.8.5. It doesn't work with Windows 7 jumplists. See http://sourceforge.net/projects/notepad-plus/forums/forum/331753/topic/3446291.
• Installed UltraEdit 16.30.0.1001 and UltraCompare 7.20.0.1009. Sadly this version of UltraEdit is buggy in Windows 7 64-bit! It's the only app I've had a problem with on Windows 7. UltraEdit has better RegExp than Notepad++, but otherwise Notepad++ is my main text editor these days.
• Installed SQL Server 2008 R2 Express. 253 MB.
• Installed MySQL GUI Tools 5. To access MySQL 4. The current MySQL Workbench only supports MySQL 5.
• Installed FileZilla Client 3.3.5.1.
• Installed TeamViewer 6 . Set up so I can provide remote support, pluse so I can remote into to work vice versa as an alternative to Remote Desktop Connection by Windows.
• Installed Microsoft Office Home and Student 2010. I use Google Documents for most stuff, but I need Microsoft Office for some work related stuff.
• Installed Skype 5.0.0.152. I find Skype annoying but work requires it.

Here's some random stuff:

• Installed IrfanView 4.27. Set main window color to gray because black works poorly for some images with a transparent channel. Installed plugins and GhostScript (for PDFs).
• Installed Java 6 update 22.
• Updated Adobe Reader 9.1.2 to 10.
• Installed WinDirStat 1.1.2. I love treemaps of my files!
• Installed Bulk Rename Utility 2.7.1.2.
• Installed Microsoft Silverlight for the beloved Netflix.
• Installed TomTom HOME for my GPS.

My new computer is awesome! After all this, I still have more than half of my hard drive free. I have to do stuff like Inkscape and GIMP though. I'll probably get a multi-touch screen monitor, a keyboard, and a USB hub. My laptop is a mobile workstation, but for more mobility I intend to get a tablet later.

So the "alien" is from California! The most frequent Sci Fi elemental substitution is Si instead of C, so who would have guessed that As instead of P?!

At their conference today, NASA scientist Felisa Wolfe Simon will announce that they have found a bacteria whose DNA is completely alien to what we know today. Instead of using phosphorus, the bacteria uses arsenic. All life on Earth is made of six components: carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus and sulfur. Every being, from the smallest amoeba to the largest whale, share the same life stream. Our DNA blocks are all the same. But not this one.

I just solved a thorny little problem at work so I'm going to reward myself with a quick little post. I haven't had much of a cyber life lately because my laptop at home broke. (It's part of a class action lawsuit against Dell/NVIDIA because of a bad GPU.) The system I want is game ready (StarCraft II!). So I'm looking at a desktop plus a multi-touch monitor. Too bad the All-In-Ones have lame GPUs.

For mobility, I want to get another machine ca. 2011-05 when my Verizon contract comes up for renewal. I don't want to game when I'm out, but I'd like a real keyboard, a paper-sized screen (Most PDFs were meant to be read at that size), and I want it to be low in mass. The iPad, Galaxy, and other tablets so far are too small and too trivial. I'd like something like the upcoming Dell Inspiron Duo but with a larger screen and lower mass. It needs a SSD, not a regular HD! And why isn't USB 3 on all the new stuff yet?

To replace my semi-smart phone, I'd like a smarter phone that's also a WiFi hot spot so I can use it for my "tablet" too. Why would I want to pay for 3G/4G that's just for my tablet when I can share it?

I haven't seriously surfed the Web for around 2 months now. There has always been conflict between Digg and Reddit (See http://www.flickr.com/photos/25036088@N06/4192738180/sizes/o/ and http://www.raterush.com/pages/digg-reddit). But while I was out Digg has gone down the toilet (See http://www.google.com/insights/search/#q=%22digg%22%2C%22reddit%22&date=today%203-m&cmpt=q).

Competition is good so it's sad to see Digg falter. (BTW: Alas poor onemanga.com.) Google Reader and Buzz is no substitute for finding real content. Power to the users!

Thursday: Rain. The light changed. The traffic looked clear. I crossed the street with my umbrella opened over my right shoulder. I got to the middle of the street and was surprised to find myself getting hit by a freaking taxi.

I took it on the right knee, bounced of the hood, then did a side fall onto my left side. Soon there's a firetruck, an ambulance, and police. The left side bruising wasn't bad and the x-rays showed no fractures. Rest, ice, elevation, and Advil were prescribed.

I learned several things:

• Take the offered ambulance --It gets you to and through the ER faster.
• When they ask about your pain level, aim on the high side --It gets you through the ER faster.
• You meet interesting characters in the ER.

You can add vertical tabs to the Chrome browser in Windows with these steps:

1. Right-click your shortcut to Chrome.
2. Select "Properties".
3. Add --enable-vertical-tabs to the end of the "Target" field.
4. Open Chrome

It's not quite as good as the TreeStyle tabs Add-on in Firefox but it's getting there.

Chrome is so close to matching Firefox. I have a list of feature differences between the various browsers but between Chrome and Firefox, here are my top differences:

• Print Preview. Firefox only.
• Google SS Shortcuts. Firefox good. Chrome has to use AltGr+: instead of CTRL+:.
• Best tabbing between tabs: Firefox.
• Fastest startup: Chrome.
• Right-click on a tab and select "Use side tabs"

Here are a few things that I used to have an issue between the browsers:

• Chrome's native Web Developer tools is comparable to Firefox's Firebug.
• Chrome's "Yet Another Google Bookmarks Extension" is comparable to the Google Toolbar for Google Bookmarks.
• Firefox 4 is getting closer to Chrome for maximizing real estate.

Whoot! We have laser cannons!

During the test, the Navy's Laser Weapon System (LaWS), guided by Raytheon's Phalanx Close-In Weapon System sensors, engaged and destroyed four UAV targets flying over water near the Navy's weapons and training facility on San Nicolas Island in California's Santa Barbara Channel, about 120 kilometers west of Los Angeles.

I made this just now:

Time's running out!
What to do? What to do!
My spine crackles and slants.
What have I done? What should I have done? What
Time runs out.

It's nice how the military keeps on the cutting edge of military, martial, and physical conditioning matters.

However dropping bayonet training is a mistake. The bayonet is the direct descendant of the spear, not the sword. I train and fight with the sword and spear (as well as other things). The bayonet is a short spear: The training manuals from medieval times to the present show this pretty clearly. The spear was the predominant military weapon before firearms. If you are hunting, you would probably pick a spear over a sword or knife. A bayonet knife is much lighter than a sword and you could use it as a knife for many thing besides just as a bayonet.

One of the only good reasons for dropping bayonet training is that the standard issue rifle has become a carbine, i.e. shorter, and therefore less like a spear. In which case then the range is similar to just using a knife, however you wouldn't have the advantages of the spear such as using the haft for defense, leverage, and so on. Also if you're gun back up is a knife, then why not have that knife be bayonet capable?

I like this comment from the thread: "Funny thing I learned in Iraq 6 years ago; If you point a loaded M16 at guy he will just look at you, but if you put a bayonet on the end of that M16 and point it at him he will do whatever you tell him to do."

Well yes. The article states some stuff that's obvious to some of us, but I support erring on the side of stating the obvious. There are many times where I assumed certain things were obvious and then later I end up wishing that I had said something sooner.

Obvious #1. Yes Mac has always been about a captive audience. They have always wanted to control the hardware, the operating system, the apps, the design, the look-and-feel. Apple equals proprietary. I personally prefer open.

Obvious #2. Hardware, software, and Internet connectivity is getting cheaper, faster, and cooler. Monetizing and staying on the curve is business. Ubiquitous HW with 4G+ and cloud storage and apps is the way to go. Beautiful, powerful, intuitive interfacing is the way to go. Ubiquitous media capture (txt, pic, aud, vid) and geolocation is the way to go.

Obvious #3. For most users the following apps will suffice on an iPad: Media Players (pics, audio, video, books), Browser, Office-like suite. There will of course be hundreds of apps that users want, but the emphasis should be on what users need. What should come soon: Skype/phone-like communications, FTP. Specialized tools that may never come but should: Power editors (text, pics, video, etc.), Remote Desktop access, Development IDEs, Database and Sys Admin tools.

Personally I'm itching to buy a tablet but the iPad is too weak to replace a smart phone and my laptop.

What a wonderful, beautiful, and thought provoking piece. Individual cells may be far more powerful than we realize.

After all, whole living cells are primarily autonomous, and carry out their daily tasks with little external mediation. They are not subservient nanobots, they create and regulate activity, respond to current conditions and, crucially, take decisions to deal with unforeseen difficulties.

We're so self-impressed, that we can barely appreciate what's going on.

For me, the brain is not a supercomputer in which the neurons are transistors; rather it is as if each individual neuron is itself a computer, and the brain a vast community of microscopic computers. But even this model is probably too simplistic since the neuron processes data flexibly and on disparate levels, and is therefore far superior to any digital system. If I am right, the human brain may be a trillion times more capable than we imagine, and "artificial intelligence" a grandiose misnomer. I think it is time to acknowledge fully that living cells make us what we are, and to abandon reductionist thinking in favour of the study of whole cells. Reductionism has us peering ever closer at the fibres in the paper of a musical score, and analysing the printer's ink. I want us to experience the symphony.

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