Archives for November, 2007
Contextless Links
- “There are people out there who love us, and they’re coming after us,” said a blushing John Michael McConnell, CIA director. “We currently have no leads as to who exactly has targeted the U.S. for its affections, but we can be certain our admirer’s feelings are real and not going away anytime soon. I strongly urge all Americans to be incredibly flattered but cautious.”
- If there was ever a solution looking for a problem
- Fray is coming out as a print publication
- Microsoft’s advice in case your PC starts randomly playing classical music.
- How to spot Arial
- Is Facebook crossing the line and selling out our privacy? This is nasty. Facebook is broadcasting your purchases made on other sites to your friends on Facebook. More on the Guardian. Looks like Jonny Baker was right about Facebook after all. I tend to agree with Om Malik’s concerns and the New York Times is wondering if the ads are legal.
- Careful on which WordPress theme you are downloading, some well known themes have malicious code inserted into them
- Apple’s Fear and Loathing branding
- Guy Kawasaki on what we can learn from Kiva
- SEO for Bloggers
- When lying/spinning becomes too easy
- David Fitch is discussing consumerism in the church
- Greenpeace responds to the rogue clicker forcing them to name their new whale “Mr. Splashy Pants.”
- AKMA is talking about how cool these are. I am thinking I wouldn’t mind one myself.
- I hate it when Karl Rove is correct :: The conventional wisdom now is that Hillary Clinton will be the next president. In reality, she’s eminently beatable. Her contentious history evokes unpleasant memories. She lacks her husband’s political gifts and rejects much of the centrism he championed. The health-care fiasco showed her style and ideology. All of which helps explain why, for a front runner in an open race for the presidency, she has the highest negatives in history.
- Climate change report from the UN warns that progress in the third world will reverse due to increased droughts and flooding.
- Under criticism from almost everyone, RJ Reynolds will cease print advertising temporarily.
- Signs of peace in Baghdad: Cabbies can again drive without fear of death.
- Zimbabwe’s chief statistician no longer able to calculate inflation due to lack of goods on shelves. September’s inflation rate was put at almost 8,000%, the world’s highest. Other reports suggest the rate could be at near 15,000% and the International Monetary Fund had warned it could reach 100,000% by the end of the year.
- What is really killing the Mounties?
- Warren Kinsella’s prayer sounds like the prayer many of us have had. He also has a good question for former Prime Minister Brian Mulroney.
- Taking hoarding to the next level.
Micheal Lewis on the odd life of kickers
From the New York Times Magazine
Field-goal kickers are still defined by the tiniest sliver of their professional career. “I made a lot of big kicks, but all anyone wants to talk about is that one,” Dempsey said. And, finally, there is still some faint resistance to the notion that a kicker could ever really do anything great. Brett Favre can throw 10 more game-ending interceptions and fans will still cherish his moments of glory. Reggie Bush may fumble away a championship and still end up being known for the best things he ever does. Even offensive linemen whose names no one remembers are permitted to end their days basking in the reflected glory of having been on the field. Kickers alone are required to make their own cases.
It’s Cold
Which means that the local paper has been running some articles on homelessness and the shelters. The article features a couple of quotes from your’s truly and for the first time ever, the paper spelled my name correctly.
Christmas
I guess I am officially in the Christmas mood. The snow and cold are here to stay in Saskatoon. Yesterday it was almost -30 with the wind chill. Just walking across the street from my car to work was enough to make me want to move.
Wendy and I did some Christmas shopping this weekend. We bought Mark a snowboard which was harder than we thought. We had some Canadian Tire money so I wanted to get it from Canadian Tire. At the same time I have always been told snowboards needed to have metal edges. After talking to a couple of people who do snowboard (I ski so I know nothing), I was told that for Mark’s age and type of hill he will be snowboarding on (the hill in A.H. Brown Park isn’t that big), the snowboard we got him would be fine until he is ready to graduate to an actual ski hill. After the Canadian Tire money, the snowboard was just a couple of dollars and we got him some snowboard glasses a couple of weeks ago. We also went to Toys R Us and I was amazed that the same toys that I played with as a kid have all made a comeback (or in the case of Star Wars have provided a steady stream of income for George Lucas for 30 years now). Mark has been fascinated by my PDA since I started using it again and we also found a Sponge Bob Squarepants PDA with a remarkable 2k of RAM. Not a lot but what does a seven year old need to keep track of.
We also managed to make it out to Costco to look around. The carts were lined up to the back of the store. It was a sight to see and what I don’t understand is that Costco wasn’t running that great of sales so I have no idea what would be so important to stand in line for a couple of hours for. We browsed and looked around and took some notes but like I said, there was nothing worth standing around for.
Yesterday Wendy came down to the Centre and helped decorate the Residential Unit’s lounge’s and hallways. Some wreaths on doors, a nice Christmas Tree (we still need a star to go on top), and some other decorations for the front lobby. We have B.B. King’s Christmas CD playing and life is good. We have also been making some plans for making Christmas Day nice for the guys at the Centre which is fun.
Buy Something Christmas
Many friends and people I respect subscribe to the idea of a buy nothing Christmas. Christmas is too commercialized and how much stuff does the average person really need any ways. How about a different way of looking at it. Instead of filling a shoe box with a bunch of stuff and thinking we have done a great thing, how about making a difference locally? I did some media interviews today (one for French CBC Radio) with the cold weather descending on Saskatoon. In the one interview, I said the guys at the shelter could really use cold weather gear like wool socks, gloves, toques, scarves, used jackets, and stuff like that. You can drop them off at the Community Centre day or night.
Don’t “buy nothing” this Christmas but use some of your wealth to make a real difference in someone’s life. Guys come in all of the time with frost bite or half frozen. I think because we don’t see burning barrels on the streets we think people aren’t homeless during the winter but there is a segment of the population that not only do we give shelter to, they also need the basics to keep warm outside. There are a lot of other organizations that are doing excellent work in Saskatoon that would appreciate some help over the holidays. In other words, embrace the strangers in your community this holiday.
Getting Things Done with Palm Desktop
My Palm Desktop experiment in office organization has lasted a couple of weeks and I have to admit, it working quite well for me which is weird because it generally has failed in the past. A couple of things are different now.
I have to track far more information then I ever had to do at Lakeland or Lakeview Church. There are social workers, government agencies, NGOs, politicians, other agencies, and co-workers who need to be kept track of. Each of them has an e-mail address, fax number, address, cell phone, home and work numbers that may need to be called. While e-mail address books do a great job of tracking e-mail addresses, I find with many agencies, the fax still rules and I joke that there is still carrier pigeons in use. At work I have high speed Internet and a quick Windows XP based computer on a well built network.
I need to access the information from more places. Of course my office is used quite often but also while I am in other areas of the building (which is a lot) and I am on call 24 hours a day. While there is not a lot of calls at home, there are several calls a week and some of them require information.
The information is in two places. The Palm Desktop keeps my calendar, contacts, to-do list, and notes all in one place and generates alarms for things that are urgent. Most of that information is entered while in my office. As I get my voice mail off my phone, it is easy to enter much of the information needed into the Palm Desktop for future use.
Whenever I feel like it but always once a day, I sync my data with my ancient Sony Clie PEG-SL10 (which is a new case on a Palm III) This works well because part of every day I am working in the front desk area or am taking calls in other areas of the building. Also it travels home with me where I enjoy having it to add things once in a while to my to-do list.
I know a lot of people see a Moleskine and a PDA in the context of either/or but I tend to use them in conjunction. Using a PDA to keep notes in during a meeting is a pain and a notebook and pen still work pretty well. At the same time I enjoy having access to the information that my PDA gives me, especially the calendar and contacts. After any meetings, my notebook makes it way back to the desk and the relevant data is transferred back to the Palm Desktop or added to another program.
I know people have told me that an iPod Touch would do all of it but as a friend has proven to me, you can’t always get a wifi connection and the iPod Touch is not a great note taking machine, especially when compared to a pen and notebook.
All of this helps create a system where I can move tasks out of the mind by recording them somewhere. According to David Allen and the GTD theory, my limited is freed from the job of remembering everything that needs to be done, and can concentrate on actually performing those tasks. The Palm Desktop (and a massive filing cabinet) is my way of dealing with the information.
Related Links
- Palm Desktop download page (the software is free to download and you don’t have to own a Palm device either)
- Zire 22: Palm’s latest and cheapest handheld
- What is GTD?
- Blueline hardcover notebook (wonderful and cheap Moleskine imitation)
- David Allen admitting he uses a Palm and Palm Desktop to GTD
Saskatchewan Wins the 95th Grey Cup
The Saskatchewan Roughriders just won the 95th Grey Cup by beating the Winnipeg Blue Bombers, 23-19 in a game that should not have been that close except for the Roughriders offense sputtered quite a bit. My favorite was when Winnipeg’s coach challenged a video replay decision. Yes, he threw his challenge flag to challenge a ruling that had already been reviewed by the video replay official. Brilliant. This also means that we pass Sarnia on the all time Grey Cup wins list.
Cleveland goes old school
I have always enjoyed the Cleveland Browns, maybe because they can never beat the Denver Broncos when it counts but I enjoy the Dawg Pound and the rabid Cleveland fans. As I flipped to watch the Browns play today, I was wondering why they stenciled their numbers with Sharpies on their helmets. A quick look around the Internet told me that they are supposed to look this bad. Apparently they are wearing “throwback” uniforms which makes little sense to me because what makes the Browns uniform work is that it is basically a throwback uniform. The uniforms aren’t that much different but the bad numbers on the helmets not only look but seem to be applied inconsistently, especially Derek Anderson’s.
Time to Bury Sarnia
This came from Joe Manafo but if Saskatchewan wins today, we pass Sarnia on the all time Grey Cup championship list.
The Toronto Argonauts lead the way with 15, with the Edmonton Eskimos next in line at 13. Look wa-a-a-a-a-a-ay down and you will find four teams beside the No. “2” — Saskatchewan Roughriders, Sarnia Imperials (ouch), Balmy Beach (gulp) and Ottawa Senators (who says they can’t win the big one?).
Remarkably, Saskatchewan — the home of a beloved franchise with a history dating back to 1910 — is still mired behind the University of Toronto (four) and Queen’s University (three) on the all-time list. And the mighty Imperials, who captured the Cup in 1934 and 1936, have yet to be surpassed by the Riders.
Contextless Links
- Maureen Dowd wonders if Hillary is really that qualified :: “At a news conference, the Illinois senator was asked about Hillary Clinton’s attack on his qualifications. Making an economic speech in Knoxville, Iowa, earlier that day, the New York senator had touted her own know-how, saying that “there is one job we can’t afford on-the-job training for — that’s the job of our next president.” Her aides confirmed that she was referring to Obama.
Pressed to respond, Obama offered a zinger feathered with amused disdain: “My understanding was that she wasn’t Treasury secretary in the Clinton administration, so I don’t know exactly what experiences she’s claiming.”
Everybody laughed, including Obama.
It took him nine months, but he finally found the perfect pitch to make a trenchant point.
Her Democratic rivals had meekly gone along, accepting her self-portrait as a former co-president who gets to take credit for everything important Bill Clinton did in the ’90s. But she was not elected or appointed to a position that needed Senate confirmation. And the part of the Clinton administration that worked best — the economy, stupid — was run by Robert Rubin. Hillary did not show good judgment in her areas of influence — the legal fiefdom, health care and running oppo-campaigns against Bill’s galpals.
She went on some first lady jaunts and made a good speech at a U.N. women’s conference in Beijing. But she was certainly not, as her top Iowa supporter, former governor Tom Vilsack claimed yesterday on MSNBC, “the face of the administration in foreign affairs.”
She was a top adviser who had a Nixonian bent for secrecy and a knack for hard-core politicking. But if running a great war room qualified you for president, Carville and Stephanopoulos would be leading the pack.”
- Why the Kerry/Edwards marriage never really worked
- Friedman is calling for a new surge in Iraq. A surge in democracy
- Brad Wall is the new Premier of Saskatchewan :: The cabinet looks solid as well.
- 10 Ways to Pay for Christmas
- 15 Worst Holiday Gift Ideas and ways to avoid spending too much at Christmas
- How much has the War in Iraq cost? More than you think
1. We still haven’t secured our ports against nuclear terrorism. The $1 trillion we’ve probably spent on the war could have funded the annual budget of the Department of Homeland Security 28 times over.
2. The human toll of the war is dreadful: more than 3,800 U.S. soldiers dead and more than 28,000 wounded, plus more than 1,000 private contractors killed and many more injured. It’s harder to know how many Iraqis have died; some estimates claim that the war has caused a million or more Iraqi deaths, and even if that’s an overstatement, the toll is still very high. But it’s not just the lives that are gone; we’ve also lost the contributions that these people would have made to their families and to humanity at large.
3. Another major hidden cost: Many of the wounded have severe brain injuries or other traumas and will never return to “normal” life. Furthermore, Washington will find it far harder to recruit and retain quality troops and National Guardsmen in the future.
4. Don’t forget the small statistics, which are often the most striking. According to John Pike, the head of the research group GlobalSecurity.org, an estimated 250,000 bullets have been fired for every insurgent killed in Iraq. That’s not just a waste of ammunition; it’s also a reflection of how badly the country has been damaged and how indiscriminate some of the fighting has been. Or take another straw in the wind: The cost of a coffin in Baghdad has risen to $50-75, up from just $5-10 before the war, according to the Nation magazine.
5. Above all, governing Iraq has, so far, been a fruitless investment. According to 2006 figures, U.S. war spending came out to $3,749 per Iraqi — almost as much as the per capita income of Egypt. That staggering sum hasn’t bought a lot of leadership from Iraq, or much of a democratic model for its Arab neighbors.
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England misses European Championships :: Comeback Sven! Comeback!
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Notre Dame isn’t that far from getting back to the top according to Yahoo! Sports :: I wonder if a blogger in Lincoln, Nebraska is writing the same thing about the Cornhuskers.
Is 4 a.m. the new midnight?
Kyle Martin IM’d me and while we were chatting, asked me what the video was that was shown to kick of Soularize. I had no idea but after looking and looking I finally found it.
So what did I find?
“The slam poet/tech artist/paper sculptor Rives does eight minutes of lyrical origami, folding history into a series of coincidences … all » surrounding that most surreal of hours, 4 o’clock in the morning. This elusive hour, both very late and very early, appears often in art in literature as a way to describe the most extreme states of affairs. Rives — aided by a nimble mind and extensive online research — reveals 4 a.m. as an iconic moment, drawing hilarious historical connections.
The shorter version is it is a funny link worth clicking on.
Steven Johnson on The Ghost Map
Vive Le Saskatchewan
I always thought Western separatists were an urban myth but according to this website, there is a Western Block Party which exists to separate the west from the rest of Canada. I would assume Peter Lougheed would be named our honorary head of state. I don’t know about you but My Canada includes Saskatchewan via
Contextless Links
- Caribbean Reef Shark: The kind of sharks we swam with while at Soularize
- 8 Things to Do Before You Quit Your Day Job
- The Top Ten Climate Change Sceptic Arguments (and a response)
- Meet Arriana Huffington 2.0
- 5 Gmail Shortcuts You May Not Know About
- Redesigning your website to honor the Saskatchewan Roughriders? 30 websites all designed in green.
- Is Facebook replacing Flickr for photos? Flickr usage for all cameras is trending down.
- MT does forums
- The Washington Post has some ideas for making an impact on the blogosphere
Saskatchewan Roughriders are headed to the Grey Cup
I moved to Saskatchewan in 1984 and the Saskatchewan Roughriders have let me down more often than not but this year has been different. A new coach in Kent Austin and the amazing play of Kerry Joseph have actually led to a year that Saskatchewan can be proud of. After their first home playoff game in 19 years, they beat the Calgary Stampeders and then headed to Vancouver for the Western Conference Final against the B.C. Lions. They won that game and are now headed to the Grey Cup against the Winnipeg Blue Bombers (who are without their star QB, Kevin Glenn who broke his arm in the victory). Expect a lot of Saskatchewan Roughrider links in the next week.
Our Cabin Weblog- Recently listened to music
- David Gray – Be Mine October 19, 2008
- David Gray – December October 19, 2008
- David Gray – Knowhere October 19, 2008
- David Gray – Real Love October 19, 2008
- David Gray – Last Boat To America October 19, 2008
- Recently additions to my library
- Rediscovering Church: The Story and Vision of Willow Creek Community Church by Lynne Hybels October 26, 2008
- The Teeth of the Tiger, A Novel by Tom Clancy October 26, 2008
- The Agenda Inside the Clinton White House by Woodward Bob October 26, 2008
- The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership: Follow Them and People Will Follow You by John C. Maxwell October 26, 2008
- The Sum of All Fears by Tom Clancy October 26, 2008
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