Author: smartpeopleiknow

TFW the New York Times asks you: Are You on Fleek?

The NYTimes.com dips into the latest slang with this: Language Quiz: Are You on Fleek? It’s fun to give it a try: I got 9 out of 12 and I have no doubt most people can do better. If you do worse, well by the end of it, you’ve learned a few new common slang terms.

If you want a better source for translating slang, you might want to head over to a site like this. Or wait long enough until The Oxford English Dictionary folks add it to the latest and greatest version of their book.

Notes for Parents on Summer Day Camps in Toronto

My kids spent many years going to summer camps in Toronto. If you have to or want to send your kids to summer camps, you might find these notes useful.

The first two things you need to do: 1) get out a calendar and 2) determine your budget. Do this in February. Really! When you get out a calendar, you will likely see that the kids have 9 weeks off in the summer (for some reason I used to think there were only 8 weeks off for the kids). Next, get a budget, because you will need to account for camp costs as well as transportation costs and extra costs like if you have to pick your kids up late. When you have a calendar and a budget, your camp options will come into clearer focus. Also, you can start thinking about other things happening in the summer, like vacations, visits from family, work assignments, and other things that will affect you.

As far as organizations offering camps, the cheapest camps by far – by far! – are the ones run out of community centers from the City of Toronto. They also fill up really fast. By March, if I recall. Book those first.

North Toronto Soccer had relatively lower costs than most camps. Great if your kid loves soccer. Note: ask how much time the kids spend outside. That can be a very tough camp in the middle of summer. (Not just NT but any outdoor camp.)

My kids liked the film camp at NFB, and it was indoors and so good during some weather, but one year was enough. Also, doing it with kids under 10 was better.

If your kid loves to do art, the AGO camps are great. If you are thinking of becoming a member and signing up, do both: members used to get a break on camp costs.

Harbourfront had some of the most interesting camps. DD loved them, but DS did not. Also, Harbourfront has buses that take your kids to and from camp from various locations around the city. Saves time, costs money. Can be a lifesaver.

Hockey camps are the most expensive, some going for $600 a week. UCC had relatively cheaper ones, but they fill up really fast too. UCC has lots of good camps, and they are in line with camps at places like AGO and NFB, but the hockey ones always filled up right away. Sign up for those first! Also there were hockey camps at Larry Grossman arena that were good and not as expensive.

Another benefit of hockey camps: the kids spend alot of time in not hot facility. Great experience during the hot days of summer.

To save some money, put your kids in camps with long weekends. That one day can save 20-50 bucks

To save more money, take time off and spend time with your kids. Note: this may not be cheap, either. If you plan to take a week off and plan to take your kid to a different venue every day, you will see it will add up. If you want to do this to save money, your goal should be to find activities you both like that aren’t too expensive, be it going to the Islands, having picnics, bike rides, kite building and flying, etc.

Don’t be too dazzled by camp promises. You might think: wow, my kid will learn SO much at this camp. They will learn things. And they will likely have fun. But think of camp as really good babysitting/daycare. Camps are mostly run by teens, and alot of camp time is getting kids to and from locations, feeding them, tracking them, etc. My son hated that. Also some councillors are really great, others are just there to do the minimum. One week my son went to a hockey camp and loved it because the councillors were great. He went to the same camp a few weeks later and didn’t because the councilllors had changed.

See if you and your kid’s friends can go to the same camp. Talk to other parents and try to make this happen, especially if your kid is not extroverted. Camp can be stressful for introverted kids: having old friends can help. Some kids thrive on camps and love them. Others can’t wait to be old enough not to go.

Try to pick up your kids on time. Once camps are done, usually around 4, the councillors will likely round the kids up in one place and more or less have them sit around until you get there. It is super boring, and it will likely make it harder for you to send your kid to such camps in the future.

My kids were done with camp by about 11. I know there were camps that go well into the late teens, but that wasn’t for mine. Likewise, overnight camp was not really an option for mine. Yours may be different.

Keep receipts for all camps. Keep them in one spot. You should be able to get a significant tax break from them, assuming you are paying taxes.

The Performance of Many Hedge Funds Comes Down to Owning *ONE* company

The one company? Apple. How dependent are the hedge funds? According to Bloomberg Business:

A group of companies representing the most popular long positions for hedge funds is up just 0.2 percent in 2015, compared to a 2.3 percent gain for the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index, data compiled by Goldman Sachs show. A 19 percent year-to-date increase for Apple, which is owned by one in every five hedge funds and is a top-10 position for 12 percent of them, has provided a needed boost, the firm said.

That’s a bad thing. A similar thing happened in Canada when fund managers held large holdings in companies like Nortel and RIM. It didn’t end well.

For more, see this: The Performance of Many Hedge Funds Just Comes Down to Owning Apple – Bloomberg Business.

If you are cleaning up an environment by deleting resources in Amazon’s EC2, here is a checklist to get you started

I just cleaned up an environment I had set up in Amazon years ago for a client. (The client wanted to use Amazon, so we did.) In doing so, I wanted to make sure I didn’t leave anything behind which would cause me to continue getting billed even though I was no longer actively using EC2. I believe that the following checklist was useful in insuring this.

My EC2 cleanup checkist:

  1. Delete my Elastic IPs
  2. Terminated instances – running and non-running  (I did this before deleting volumes, since it deleted alot of them for me)
  3. Delete remaining volumes
  4. Delete my security groups ( 1 will be left – the default one)
  5. Deregister AMIs
  6. Delete snapshots (you need to deregister your AMIs before you do this)
  7. Check your account balance
  8. In a few days, check your account balance to see if there are any charges you haven’t accounted for

After following this checklist, my EC2 environment was cleaned up. Depending on how you are using EC2, you may have more things to delete. Checking your account balance will help there: if you left things behind, they may incur charges. An increase in your account balance will help flush them out.

One thing to consider: you may delete something, but it doesn’t show in admin console. If that is the case, logout and then in. I did that when I was having trouble deregistering my AMIs. I logged out and then in and when I checked them, they were now deregistered.

The elegance of (some) IKEA furniture

Domaine makes the case on this page and here on this one .

Can you spot the IKEA in this photo?

How about in this one?

Of course, it’s the composition and layout of all the furnishings in the room (and the room itself) that makes the spaces look great. However, you can also see the IKEA pieces, as the centerpieces, more than hold their own.

If you want to become a consultant, you will need five key traits

That’s what this piece in the Globe and Mail says (Five key traits of successful consultants – The Globe and Mail), and as a long time consultant I find it hard to disagree. The traits?

  • intellectual capacity
  • self-confidence
  • moxie
  • adaptability
  • endurance

You could argue successful consultants have more common traits, but these are a good basis for anyone who want to provide such services to clients.  If you want to become a consultant, ask yourself if these apply to you. If you want more details on this, click on the link to the Globe.

Forget Barefoot; New Trendsetter in Running Shoes Is Cushioning – NYTimes.com

Oy. First we had the minimalist running shoe. Now comes this: Forget Barefoot; New Trendsetter in Running Shoes Is Cushioning in the NYTimes.com. Yep, we are swinging from minimalist shoes to maximalist shoes. Should you get them? I agree with Lauren here:

Lauren Fleshman, a national champion in the 5,000 meters, likened the maximalist upswing to past footwear phenomena, now rejected as passé.

“To me, maximalist shoes fall right in the line of every other shoe trend,” she said. “There’s some good reasoning, but we don’t know enough about how it affects the body longer term, and we won’t know until everyone has been using it a while and all the other research comes out about how it destroys your body or whatever, and then there’s a lawsuit, and then there’s a campaign about how to use the technology properly, and then in the midst of all this confusion the next trend takes off. There is no shoe savior coming for us.”

Bill Gates on inequality and Piketty’s Capital

Bill Gates has a strong post on Piketty and inequality and I think it is one of the better ones I’ve seen. That doesn’t mean I agree with everything Gates argues for. For example, to counter Piketty at one point in the piece, he refers to data from the Fortune 400 records. I think the data that Piketty has gathered is much more significant than that and it is not something Gates accounts for.  Still, it’s clear that Gates has thought hard about the book and his comments seem to reflect that.

Gates is on stronger ground when he points out areas concerning inequality that Piketty has left out or not touched upon. His assumption there, though, is that Piketty’s book is the end of the discussion on capitalism in the 21st century, when the better assumption is that the book is the start of a new and better discussion. I expect Piketty or followers and supporters of Piketty will be expanding into those areas based on the material in this book.

I am not surprised that Gates has wrote about this – Piketty uses him as an example at one point! Plus Gates is no stranger to wealth and capital and what to do with them. He’s a natural to write about inequality and the French economist.

All in all, a good read.

 

When someone you love is dying of cancer, knowing what you might expect

It is hard to know what to expect when someone you love is dying of cancer. I know that was my experience when my mom died of cancer a few years ago. There is no What to Expect when you are Expecting books to give you an education or a perspective. Yet just like we need information for when loved ones are at the start of their lives, we need information for when loved ones are at the end of their lives, too.

Here are three essays that I believe can help you with this.

When someone you love is dying of cancer, your life becomes much more difficult. Knowledge can help with that difficulty.

Resources to help the homeless deal with the cold in Toronto

If you see someone in Toronto who appears to need help in dealing with this cold weather, and you aren’t sure what you can do,  this page is worth reviewing: the City of Toronto’s Extreme Cold Weather Alerts page. It has numbers you can call and other information, including links to TTC Token Distribution Locations and information on 24-hour drop-ins available during extreme cold weather alerts.

Beyond resources related to cold weather, the city of Toronto has additional material on how to get involved to with the problem with homelessness in Toronto.

Obviously there are many more ways to help the homeless in Toronto throughout the year. These links are just a starting point if you are looking for information.

How to build an igloo, 21st century style

There’s a nice story here about how some University of Alberta students build an igloo in their backyard over at canada.com.

You want to check it out just for the video on that page. The video is a little over 4 minutes, but the time it takes to build the igloo is many hours. Now if the builders didn’t stop to take so many selfies, it might have gone a little faster. 🙂

Fun!

This is why we can’t have interesting politicians or politics

Vox has a good piece on the mistake that Obama recently made (“Randomgate”) and how the resulting follow on stories about that mistake illustrates why we can’t have interesting politicians. Their conclusion?

Long-term, the problem here isn’t just news consumers find themselves listening to bullshit gaffe stories. It’s that politicians learn the same lessons over and over again: unscripted moments are dangerous and generally to be avoided. Don’t give interviews and don’t stray from talking points.

The media will bemoan lack of access and robotic, scripted answers. But it will also punish deviations from the script. And it will do so in the most trivial ways. No minds were changed during Randomgate and nobody learned anything. A couple of spokespeople had a bad afternoon. Some websites (including this one) got some extra pageviews. And every politician learned to be that much more boring in the future.

I think this way of dealing with politicians doesn’t just make them uninteresting: it also make our politics dumber. Here’s hoping this changes, though if anything, I think it will get worse before it gets better.

How to relax using white noise, winter edition (the joy of simulated warmth and coziness)

In the winter, I think one of the nicest forms of white noise is a fire. It’s not the same as having an actual fire, but if you have a computer or big screen you can Chromecast this to, I recommend this video:

I’ve watched quite a number of these videos, and this one is my favorite so far: really good sound, and it looks realistic. (Oddly, this matters to me, even though I know it merely a video).

If you want the feeling of being warm and cozy inside while it storms outside, I recommend this video for white noise:

On adults around you doing science experiments on large populations of children

Right now there are many adults around you doing science experiments on large populations of children. Here are three examples.

#1) The city of Calgary is currently doing a science experiment by removing fluoride from Calgary’s water supply (Dental decay rampant in Calgary children, pediatric dentist says | CBCNews.ca Mobile). The results from that experiment:

Dentists and dental hygienists are seeing an increase in child tooth decay and Dr. Sarah Hulland says the decision to remove fluoride from Calgary’s water supply three years ago is playing a big role.

“I’m seeing a lot more children having a lot more cavities,” she said. “I’m seeing a lot of decay on 19- to 20-month babies, and this is even before they’ve got all the teeth in.”

#2) We have a rise in measles and other infected diseases because of parents decided to experiment and not vaccinate their children. That experiment is not going well either. According to the CDC, measles cases in the United States reach 20-year high:

Two hundred and eighty-eight cases of measles were reported to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in the United States between Jan. 1 and May 23, 2014. This is the largest number of measles cases in the United States reported in the first five months of a year since 1994. Nearly all of the measles cases this year have been associated with international travel by unvaccinated people.

“The current increase in measles cases is being driven by unvaccinated people, primarily U.S. residents, who got measles in other countries, brought the virus back to the United States and spread to others in communities where many people are not vaccinated

#3) Climate change. This is potentially the biggest science experiment of all, affecting the largest population of children. See Climate Change: Vital Signs of the Planet: Evidence, if you haven’t seen enough evidence of this.

I think, and likely you agree, that performing these experiments is wrong and unnecessary. Somehow too many people do not.  Too many think there is a need to disagree with the science behind fluoride in water, vaccines, and climate change.  It is true that science is not dogma, and it needs to be challenged.  But the way to do that is scientifically and in a way that minimizes or eliminates harm to the subject of the experiment. I would think that would be especially true when it comes to children.

I understand people having concerns and worries about technology. The way to deal with those thoughts about technology is to become better educated and to developer numeracy so that you can have a better understanding of the science involved. If you can’t do that, at least develop better sources of information, so that if you have to depend on authorities, make them the best ones you can find. I would think that is especially the case when it comes to science that has to do with children.

On the Jonathan Chait p.c. discussion

I joked that when this article by Jonathan Chait came out, I would wait three days, and then comment. My joke being that in three days the whole story would have blown over and there would be nothing left to comment on.

I was clearly wrong here, and instead it has gone on for some time. If you click on this: chait political correct – Google Search, you’ll see what I mean. Given this, I feel I should say something. 🙂

I don’t have much to add to the content of the argument going back and forth, and there are much smarter people than I who have commented on the topic: if you go through some of the results of the search, you can find them.

However reading the various pieces, instead of the content, I had some thought on the format and structure of the pieces. Specifically, I had four impressions:

  1. The first impression was that many writers do not like Jonathan Chait. Even a number of writers defending what he had to say would start off by saying disparaging things about him. I found it odd they had to say that, as if supporting the argument wasn’t enough. They needed to show somehow they were on the side solely of the argument and not of Chait.
  2. The second impression is how much of the evidence one way or another was anecdotal and not data or statistical driven. I don’t doubt the anecdotes and examples given: I just didn’t seen any hard data in the pieces that I read. Maybe it is some and I just missed it. Examples are relevant, but data is better to me.
  3. The third impression I had was how in arguments the people arguing often did not agree on the terms of argument. I realize the writers are not philosophers, but I felt sometimes that the definitions used were twisted to suit the argument of the writer.
  4. The fourth impression I had was how much invective was pulled into the pieces for or against Chait. It wasn’t enough that the authors had to disagree with Chait: they had to disparage him.

It’s important to stress these are impressions. I read roughly 6-10 pieces, including the original one by Chait. I’d be happy to be corrected on these.

The things about the impressions is that while I didn’t find the argument that Chait made had merit, but it wasn’t because of the pieces critical of him. If anything, it was just the opposite. Maybe I should dislike him, but even if I did, if he had a good argument I should listen to it, and if he doesn’t have a good argument, then it should be enough to dismantle it to discredit him or his supporters. This may be naive, but it is what I look for when someone is making an argument for or against something. If anything,  name calling and invective towards someone tends to persuade me to go in support of that person. In this case, perhaps I am not the audience, and the writers do not care if I am persuaded or not.

This had me thinking about a bigger thing that I have been thinking about for some time. And that is the topics of influence and attention. I think influence and attention are the key attributes writers want to have associated with their work on the Internet.

This idea of the importance of influence and attention  requires more thought though. For now, I wanted to jot this down, to get it off my mind, if anything.

Thanks for your attention. I hope this influenced you in a positive way.

Forget Google Glass: here is where wearable technology is going

As digital technology gets more and more compact, expect to start seeing it combined with new and unexpected things. Wearables will not just be watches and sports-bands, but clothing and jewellery. For example: Meet Ear-o-Smart The World’s First Smart Earring.

Anything you wear, anything you touch, anything you own: all of it will soon have sensors and digital technology in it to talk to your computer and your phone. This is just starting.

Reasons to be optimistic in 26 charts

The folks at Vox have put together this: 26 charts and maps that show the world is getting much, much better.

One of my favourite statistics/charts is this one:

Even hardcore pessimists have a difficult time with that one. 🙂

The other 25 charts are worth checking out. They highlight significant areas where life is getting better. If you need a reason to be optimistic or to be more optimistic (or to be less pessimistic), you owe it to yourself to see the Vox post and then think about it.

 

Git 201: how to get to the next level with git


There are quite a few really good introductions to git. I’ve written about them here. Once you get past “git 101”, where do you go to learn more and be more productive with git? I’d like to recommend this article:
developerWorks: Learn the workings of Git, not just the commands. It should help you get to the next level. I particularly like the diagrams: there are alot of them, and they help you better understand the flow that can occur when you really start capitalizing on git.

Why you should be wary of any tech pieces in the New York Times

I used to feel the urge to write posts whenever the New York Times did an article on something that was centered around IT, because they would get so much wrong. It isn’tt just something that happens occasionally either: it seems to happen often. That’s why you should be wary of tech pieces in the Times.

Case in point, the story about Sony being hacked. For this story,  someone has done the work for me: Anatomy of a NYT Piece on the Sony Hack and Attribution | Curmudgeonly Ways. I recommend this piece.

I would warn you to be careful in coming to any conclusions about a matter related to IT based on what you read there.

A good reminder that Kickstarter in not just for multimillion dollar projects

It is easy to think of Kickstarter as mainly a platform for massive projects. One example of that is the insane success of the recent Kickstarter project, Exploding Kittens (it raised the money it needed in 20 minutes and now is raking in millions of dollars), but it is only one example of many over the last few years.  I started to associate Kickstarter solely with such projects.

But Kickstarter is for lots and lots of people, many of them raising modest sums to do something worthwhile but on a much much smaller scale than “Kittens”. A good example of that is this project, Naked by Betty — Kickstarter.

The project is “A series of (self portrait) photographs capturing the beauty of the human body beneath the skin.” (The image above is from the project description.) The artist was looking to raise $680 to pay for material needed to complete the work. It’s a reasonable amount, and the ability for projects like this to be successful is what made Kickstarter great to me.

I highly recommend this project. (I also backed it.) And there are lots and lots of projects like that out there. I recommend you look past the high profile projects on Kickstarter and other such sites and look to the smaller projects instead. You (as a project sponsor) and the project owners will both benefit.

How to be more efficient online: the very big list

The folks at Buffer have put together a very big list of 100 tools, tips and tricks to work more efficiently online. I have gone over it and there are lots and lots of good tools and tips and other advice to help you be more productive and get the most out of being online. Stop wasting time on social media** and start being more productive by clicking on that link now.

** Reading this blog does not count as wasting time on social media. 🙂

Feeling stressed? You need some crayons! Really

It’s Wednesday. You are feeling stressed. Maybe you should go out on your lunch break and get some crayons and do some art work. According to this,
Coloring ….Can Actually Help Adults Combat Stress.

And if you think, “who does that?”, you should know that in France, the UK and Spain, coloring books for adults are very popular.

There are worse ways to deal with stress than adding some color to a blank book. Might be worth a try.

 

On rejecting most criticism and giving license to the best criticism

We come into a lot of criticism in the course of our lives.  Just on social media alone there is a lot. Some of it is directed at you, while other criticism comes at you indirectly. Some of it comes from people you like, while other critiques will come from people you barely know. You can be criticized for the things you say, the things you do, even for who you are: a man, a woman, a person of a certain race or financial class or nationality. Pick a trait you have and nowadays you can find someone saying something critical about it.

Given that you do have to deal with a lot of criticism, you can do take a number of actions. It’s not advisable, but you can run away from it. (For example, giving up on certain forms of social media, like twitter.) You can get into arguments with people. This seems like a good idea, but I often find it frustrating, endless, alienating, and the opposite of how you may want to be. You can learn to ignore it, though learning to ignore it is not always easy. Sometimes the criticism is invalid or worse, then it’s easy to ignore. But some of the criticism is valid and when that happens, it can get under your skin. It’s great if you are thick skinned, but if you are not, you need to do something else. You need to learn to manage criticism.

One approach to managing criticism is to use understand the idea of a license to criticize. This borrows from the famous Eleanor Roosevelt quote: no one can make you feel inferior without your consent. The idea of a license to criticize is that you should only accept criticism from a small group of people, regardless of how many valid and invalid criticisms you come across. A license is different from a right. As an adult, no one has a right to criticize you: you give them that ability. Even when you do give them the ability to criticize you, it is a privilege or license.  It is a license you are free to provide or revoke. They do not own it, and you get to say when they can or can’t use it. You should treat that license as valuable, and you should only give it to people whose criticism is going to result in you and your life being better as a result of their criticism.

In your life you will want to accept criticism. Accepting criticism from people you respect and who have an interest in seeing you succeed makes sense. You become a better person and enjoy a better life from such criticism. Accepting criticism from people you don’t respect and who have no interest in seeing you succeed makes no sense. That type of criticism just makes you miserable and ruins your life.

The next time you are offered criticism, ask yourself:

  • Do you respect this person?
  • Do you respect their criticism?
  • Is the purpose of their criticism to help you succeed?

If you answer Yes to those questions, then you will likely want to accept and act on that criticism. Otherwise it is in your best interest to ignore it and look for someone who can make you answer Yes to those questions.

Finally, the number of people you should give license to criticize you should be a very small number of people. It should not be something given out to just anyone you know, never mind just anyone on the Internet.

If you are running outside, you need to warm up in more ways than one

If you are going to be running in cold weather, having a warm up to get you started will help. Here’s a good one to try: Winter Prep Workout from Runner’s World.

It typically takes 5-10 minutes to warm up when you go running. (Some people can take much longer). During those few minutes, I found I am cold and sometimes miserable. This warm up can help reduce the misery of winter running and also help you from getting injured.

Anything that makes winter running easier is worthwhile.

Is the TTC’s Metropass worth it? Yes. But it depends…

In this otherwise really good piece by Ed Keenan – Six things we learned from John Tory’s transit announcement: Keenan | Toronto Star – he made this comment

At a new price of $141.50, a Metropass costs almost as much as 51 tokens or 47 cash fares. For most weekday commuters, that math doesn’t add up.

At first thought, this seemed right to me. If you only use the Metropass to go to and from one location each business day, it isn’t worth it. For example, assuming most months have 22 working days, then that is 44 tokens, which is less than the 51 tokens it is worth.

Where the Metropass math adds up is when you start to be a heavier use of the TTC.

If you travel on the TTC daily, then you can get in as many as 62 trips/tokens on the TTC and a Metropass will be a good buy for you. Even in February, that is 56 trips/tokens. Daily users easily benefit from it. But if you don’t travel every day on Toronto transit, there are other ways to make the Metropass worthwhile.

For people who use it to go to work and then do after work activities, the Metropass is a good idea.  For example, if you take trips to and from work, as well as using it to go to meet friends or to take after work classes or to go to the gym, then you can benefit from having and using a Metropass. For example, 44 tokens for work plus 3 trips a week to classes plus one to friends adds up to 16 more tokens a month for a total of 60 tokens.

For people who have to stop to pick up their kids from childcare, the Metropass is good value. I used to pick up my son daily after work. That was 3 tokens every day, so most months that was 66 tokens.

For people who can share it, the Metropass is great value. For example, if a couple works different shifts, then together they potentially need 88 tokens each month to get them back and forth to work. Sharing a Metropass could save alot for such a couple.

Even people who don’t use the TTC all that much can still make the Metropass work for them if they can reduce the cost of it. For example, people who can buy the Metropass on subscription can get it for a lesser amount. That means you need to take less trips to break even. And if you pay enough taxes to break be able to claim your Metropasses as a tax expense, then you also need to take less trips to break even with the purchase.

If you take your total transportations costs, including taxis, Zipcars, etc, then you might find that having a Metropass is worth it. For example, you might find you grab a cab a few times each month because you don’t have tokens or cash. Switching to a Metropass, you find you do that less and therefore your overall spending on transportation each month is going down.

Cost aside, the other great benefit of the Metropass is convenience. All the hassle of dealing with buying tokens is gone. That convenience means you may be more likely to use the TTC when you have a Metropass, which leads you to make your money back from getting it. Also, you may find you enjoy yourself more by getting out more. It’s an intangible benefit, but a good one nonetheless.

I think for heavier users of the TTC, the Metropass is definitely worth it. And to be fair to Ed, he acknowledged a number of these points in a discussion he had on twitter.  Whether or not the Metropass is worth it to you will depend on your own use of the TTC and your own math.

P.S. Thanks for reading this. If you have found it useful and you’d like to say thanks by buying me a coffee, you can do so here. Thanks! That’s awesome!

CP/M and Computer History Museum


If you are an old geek or interested in computing history, especially the early days of the PC, then I highly recommend you check out the section of the Computer History Museum on CP/M. Before Microsoft and Apple there was CP/M. You can even download the source code! Fun! 🙂

See Early Digital Research CP/M Source Code | Computer History Museum.

Are you a couch potato? Do you want to get in better shape? Then read what former couch potatoes did

I don’t think highly of lists that supposedly help you to get in shape. I am happy to make an exception for this one: 15 Former Couch Potatoes Share Their Best Tips For Getting In Shape.

It’s not so much a list as it is 15 different stories. Each person has a different approach to getting in shape. What worked for one person may not work for you, but there is a good chance that out of the 15 stories, there will be more than a few new ideas that you can steal and use.

I also liked that it is not a list of advice from people who were athletes or people who were in good shape already. The people on this list were out of shape, and they lost weight and became fit using the sensible approaches they took.

I don’t usually recommend Buzzfeed articles, but this one is a very good exception.

If getting in shape was one of your resolutions for the New Year, this is a good thing for you to read now.

If you are thinking of writing apps for a living, this is still worth reading

This came out awhile ago (As Boom Lures App Creators, Tough Part Is Making a Living – NYTimes.com) but if you are thinking about writing apps for a living, then you should read it.

If you have a great idea for an app and a passion to develop it, you should. Just finish the above piece in the Times and keep it in mind.

Google Glass is dead

And the BBC has a good story on it here: BBC News – Google Glass sales halted but firm says kit is not dead, including this comment that sums things up in a nutshell:

Google has tried to present this announcement as just another step in the evolution of an amazing innovation. But make no mistake – Google Glass is dead, at least in its present form.

I would say it’s been dead for sometime, and while wearable technology is alive and well, this piece of it is long overdue to be written off.

Read the BBC story: it has a good review of the history of Glass, what will happen next, and why Glass never had traction.

How to prevent sites from tracking you – five good links

Do you find it weird when you search for something, then go to other sites, and it seems like the product is following you around? Do you worry that sites are tracking information about you and you want to stop it?

I’d like to say there is an easy way to put an end to such tracking, but it doesn’t seem to be so. If anything, companies like Facebook, Google and others have a big financial interest in tracking you, regardless of what you think, and they are going to make it hard for you to put an end to it all.

That said,  if you still want to take action, I recommend these links. They highlight tools you can use and steps you can take to limit tracking. You don’t have to be technical to read them, but you have to be comfortable making changes to your system.

  1. How to prevent Google from tracking you – CNET – this may be the best article that I read. Mostly focused on Google. There are useful links to tools in here and plugins you can use, like Disconnect and Ghostery. Somewhat technical.
  2. Facebook Is Tracking Your Every Move on the Web; Here’s How to Stop It – This Lifehacker article has more on how to deal with Facebook tracking you than Google, but it is also good.
  3. How to Stop Google, Facebook and Twitter From Tracking You – this piece from ReadWrite talks mostly about the Disconnect tool, but it does it in conjunction with discussion of some other tools. Seems less technical than the first two, if you found the first two links too hard to follow.
  4. How to Stop Google From Tracking You on the Web on NDTV Gadgets has tips that are more manual in nature, if you don’t want to download tools. Also some good information on how to deal with mobile phone tracking.
  5. Delete searches & browsing activity – Accounts Help via Google comes straight from the source of the tracking.

Some thoughts of my own:

  • Consider using two browsers: one for your Google use (e.g. Chrome) and one for other uses (e.g. Firefox or Safari). The non-Google browser you can lock down with blockers and other tools, while the Google oriented browser could be limited to just what you need to integrate with Google.
  • Avoid sites that track you, like Facebook.I know, it isn’t easy. If you have to go on Facebook — you get a call from a sibling asking why you haven’t commented on the new baby pictures there — limit yourself to a few thumbs up and leave it at that. (Knowing Facebook, they will still find a way to do something with even that data.)
  • If you are really concerned, avoid Google altogether and use other search engines, like DuckDuckGo, and other email services, such as Outlook.com. There can still be tracking, but in theory this should make it harder.
  • If you use any of tools, get into a habit of using them and keeping them up to date.
  • Don’t forget to do the same thing on your mobile devices. Facebook can track your activity on your mobile phone, regardless of what you may be doing on the web. You can be tracked via apps just as easily as you can be tracked from your browser.
  • If you do anything else, install the Disconnect plug in and then activate it and go to a newspaper site. You will be amazed just how much tracking is going on. (Also, you do NOT have to sign up for the premium version to get it working.)

How to learn Python: fast, slow and somewhere in between

As one of my areas of skill development this year, I am teaching myself Python (the programming language). I had a number of different sites offering help with it, but I have found these three the most useful, so far. I have found each of them useful, but I have spent the most time on “medium”. If you are interested in learning Python, I recommend you check these out:

Fast: Tutorial – Learn Python in 10 minutes – Stavros’ Stuff. Great as a cheatsheet or a quick intro to Python or if you used to do work with Python but haven’t done it in awhile.

Medium:the Python Tutorial from python.org. If you know other programming languages, this is a good starting point.

Slow: Learn Python the Hard Way. Good if you don’t know much about programming and want to make Python the first language you know really well.

Some thoughts on Charlie Hebdo, outrage, and social media in general

Well before the end of 2014, I had decided that I was no longer going to participate or contribute to anything outrageous or political on social media generally, and twitter in particular.

This week I let down my guard and did participate and comment on the recent events in France, mainly because I was stunned by the act of violence.
After considering it for over a week, I think that was a mistake and I am writing this partially to insure I don’t make that mistake again. If you are curious, the next few lines explain my thinking around that resolution. The last four paragraphs talk about what I am going to do instead: feel free to skip down to there.
I have been using social media for a long time, relatively speaking. At first it was merely a curious experience. Then it went to being a positive experience. But more and more it has become a negative experience.
Once social media, and twitter in particular, was for people sharing status. It was random: some good, some bad, nothing focused. However, one really good thing about it was that you got to know people. People you might never get to meet before: the famous and the fabulous and the funny and the friendly. It was a great experience. I know from my own experience that my life was greatly improved by this greater network that I got access to.
While my feed of updates  was once rather random, over time people started focusing their use of it. Celebrities used to to promote their work. Politicians did too. Activists started to try and rally people to their cause. Artists tried to make it into a new form of writing. That was still good.
Among people on twitter, a growing belief was that the benefit of twitter over a site like Facebook was that you could hang out with people you liked but didn’t know (as opposed to hanging out with people on Facebook that you knew but didn’t like). I never agreed with that knock against Facebook, but I did like the people I encountered on twitter. They were good people.
Then not so good people came along. People with no other interest in twitter and social media than to cause problems. It was like a pile of aggressive drunks showing up at a party and getting into fist fights with the rest. Twitter, the company, seem to have no plan in dealing with this. Perhaps it was a result of this, or perhaps it was something else, but the level of aggressiveness and negativity rose on twitter as well. It was a variation of Gresham’s Law, where instead of the bad money driving out the good, the antisocial behavior drives out the positive social behavior. Whatever it is, what I found was that the amount of positive sharing seemed to diminish. People tended to communicate with people they had a previous relationship with, and people seemed more likely to share negative things.
I believe as a result of that, we now see these ever increasing outrage storms on twitter. Where once the outrage over events of the day — if you had any at all — would be limited to yourself or your small social circle, now you can share it with hundreds or thousands of people. Those people can take that and share it with the people they know. And then to add to that, there will be people who disagree with you, and they will express their displeasure to you directly in a way they never could or would if you knew them personally.  This all adds up to an enormous cloud of negativity.
Last December, I noticed people saying 2014 was a terrible year. That surprised me. I am older than many people on twitter, but most people on twitter are educated and experienced enough to know that relatively speaking, 2014 was not a particularly terrible year for many people in the world. I could think of many years in recent memory that were much worse economically, that had much more violence, that had much more disease and suffering. There were terrible things that happened in 2014, but terrible things happen every year and 2014 was no exception.
I believe that people thought 2014 was a terrible year because all of the feedback that they constantly get that gives a strong impression that it was terrible. And feedback is the right word. More and more of the things shared on twitter are negative. Either they are personally negative or there is something in the world that we see which is terrible.
I used to think that sharing such information on twitter could make a positive difference, and that by sharing such information, even if it is upsetting, then it was worth it if something good could come from it. I no longer believe that. Topics change so frequently on twitter now that it is easy to miss them if you are not on twitter for a few days.
Instead, I find social media to be more and more upsetting and aggravating with little upside. There are times when people need to be upset and aggravated if it helps them achieve something they want but can’t achieve otherwise. But too much “stick” and not enough “carrot” is just a form of voluntary suffering.
There have been many times when I wanted to give up on twitter. Back in the fail whale days, the lack of availability was frustrating. Then I was angry when twitter started taking over my stream. In both cases there were technical workarounds to those problems. But this is a social and a culture problem, and those are hard if not impossible to fix with technology.
Ultimately I could give up on twitter. But I have come to like a lot of the people on twitter I follow, and I would hate to lose track of them and what they are doing. It would be nice if there were better ways to filter and manage the information that shows up in my feed, but Twitter the company seems to have decided it is not in their interest for me to do that.
Given all that, my own remedy is slight. The one thing I can do is try and change my own contribution to twitter and try to focus on contributing more constructive and positive updates. I’d encourage you to do the same. Enough positivity and constructive updates can make a big difference eventually.
Also, I am going to try and spend less time vegetating in front of twitter much the way other people crash and vegetate in front of TV. I actually read every tweet in my feed. (Hey, the people I follow in India and Australia and Germany tweet later so I have to read it all:)). Instead of vegetativing like that, I hope to spend my time reading more books, making things (from bread to furniture) and generally get out and do things. I would encourage you to do that as well.
Finally, I am going to look for a select group of causes I can contribute time and money to and focus on the little I can do with the limited resources I have at my disposal. I think I can have more of a positive effect on the world that way than I can contributing to the latest outrage storm on twitter. I would heartily encourage you to do that as well.
If you have made it to this point, I want to thank you for reading this. You may not agree with it, but I hope you were able to take away from it something positive and worthwhile.