I Am Free

http://www.bspcn.com/2008/08/28/the-truest-graffiti-message-youll-see-all-day-view/

Flor De Copan

Strong but smooth. A real joy to smoke, especially in celebration (finally) of the stock options I've been waiting 5 years to vest.

Loaded with robust and peppery flavors, the Flor de Copán is one of the strongest cigars produced by the Altadis factory in Danli, Honduras. This cigar's taste and aroma will capture the attention of even the most experienced cigar connoisseur.

http://www.jrcigars.com/index.cfm?page=cigars&brand=FLOR%20DE%20COPAN

Ubiquity

Ubiquity In Depth

An experiment into connecting the Web with language.

Ubiquity is an experiment two parts. It’s both an interface and a development platform. Ubiquity 0.1 focuses on the platform aspects, while beginning to explore language-driven methods of controlling the browser.

Read about the release here, or download it.

In this post, we’ll talk first about the interface, and then the platform. For those who are really impatient, and just want to see how the prototype version works, check out all of the pretty screenshots and use-cases in the Ubiquity Tutorial.

The Problem: The Web is Disconnected

You’re writing an email to invite a friend to meet at a local San Francisco restaurant that neither of you has been to.  You’d like to include a map. Today, this involves the disjointed tasks of message composition on a web-mail service, mapping the address on a map site, searching for reviews on the restaurant on a search engine, and finally copying all links into the message being composed.  This familiar sequence is an awful lot of clicking, typing, searching, copying, and pasting in order to do a very simple task.  And you haven’t even really sent a map or useful reviews—only links to them.

This kind of clunky, time-consuming interaction is common on the Web. Mashups help in some cases but they are static, require Web development skills, and are largely site-centric rather than user-centric.

It’s even worse on mobile devices, where limited capability and fidelity makes this onerous or nearly impossible.

Most people do not have an easy way to manage the vast resources of the Web to simplify their task at hand. For the most part they are left trundling between web sites, performing common tasks resulting in frustration and wasted time.

A Solution: Universal Access

Ubiquity’s interface goal is to enable the user to instruct the browser (by typing, speaking, using language) what they want to do.

http://labs.mozilla.com/2008/08/introducing-ubiquity/

Conan the Conquerer

The book is fast-paced, action packed, and carries the eerie atmopshere that so many Howard stories do (what is it about authors who shoot themselves that seems to tie them so closely to great story-telling?). Conna faces insurmountable odds in losing his kingdom, and naturally, he eventually overcomes them. The fun of the tale is in following his adventures as he travels the world to find the means to defeat his enemies.

Obviously, Howard isn't everyone's cup of tea. There is an air of fatality and finality looming over all of his best works, including this one. Despite Conan's ultimate victory, you almost sense that Howard knew, and by extension Conan knew, that all victories are short lived and would soon pass.

Regardless, if you have an interest in sword and sorcery, this is must reading and probably a good starting point for people new to the genre. Howard is essentially the father of the genre and is still the best in that area in my opinion.

Just looking at a lot of the deriviative junk that has grown around the whole Conan mythos, you really have to wish that Howard had lived longer and continued to write more about Conan, although at the time of his death, Howard was moving away from the genre to what he considered better paying markets.

I give it five stars because it is in many ways the peak of Howard's writing. And thirty-five years later, I still occassionally pick it up and re-read it, which may say a lot about how well-written it is, since I long ago left fantasy reading behind me.

 

http://www.amazon.com/Conan-Conquerer-9-Robert-Howard/dp/0441115888/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1219247540&sr=8-1

Homestar Ruiner

Downloaded and played Strongbad's Cool Game For Attractive People Episode 1: Homestar Ruiner. Finished it in about 3 hours with help from Gabe.
Game was a lot of fun and worth playing. Check it out!

http://www.telltalegames.com/strongbad/

My Productivity System

We've had several shakeups at work lately due to the crazy labor market in calgary as well as the recent outsourcing at work. I've been given the work of 3-5 people in total to do, essentially to have oversight/governance of IT -- both operations and projects.

To achieve this, I've dramatically revamped my productivity system.

Job #1 was to revamp Outlook. I've never been an Outlook fan and one of the major piss-offs from using it is that there's no real "Dashboard" to allow you to work in any kind of coordinated fashion between your inbox, calendar, and task lists. I found the "Outlook Today" feature which worked great except that it didn't actually show you your fucking inbox, just the number of unread items in your inbox. Big help.

Then I discovered that you can hack outlook today. A few lines of code later, and what I came up with is below:

The left column is a full folder view of my inbox. The middle column is an agenda-style view of the meetings that I have scheduled for today and tomorrow. Top right is today's tasks, and bottom right is my inbox. This allows me to see my whole day at a glance.

Email

Email is the #1 productivity killer out there. I have 4 simple options to keep my inbox clear:

1. Scan and delete it. Immediately.
2. Respond and delete it. Immediately.
3. Create a task or meeting out of it. Clicking and dragging it into tasks or calendar works.
4. Archive it. I've got a simple folder in my inbox marked "Archive". Use sparingly.

Tasks

Decompose all of your projects into 1-2 hour tasks if possible. Whole days are the limit. Give each task a schedule and priority so it shows up on your dashboard for that day. 'Nuff said.

Calendar

If a meeting request comes in that you don't understand or doesn't have a clear agenda that is relevant to you, decline or send a delegate.

Daily Warm Up

Book yourself a half hour meeting first thing in the morning to do the following:

1. Review today & tomorrow's calendar -- are there any meetings coming up that I can cancel, defer, or need to prepare for?
2. Review today's tasks to confirm that the priority, timing, and need hasn't changed. 
3. Answer the question: What do I want to get done with my day?

Daily Cool Down

Book yourself a half hour to cool down from the day by:

1. Reviewing tomorrow's schedule and tasks, updating as required.
2. Review the tasks that got done today and the ones that didn't -- reschedule them as needed.
3. Clean out your inbox. No excuses. No emails belong in your inbox by the end of the day.

When to get your tasks done?

Between meetings. If you can't find the time, book time out of your calendar or cancel some meetings. Move from the top of your to-do list down. You'll find that some big tasks become quite short once you get into the zone and have clarity about what needs to get done.

Spare time

You might actually find you end up getting your stuff done with time left in your day. The odd day at least. Here's what I use the time for:

• Networking. Linkedin is great for this, but even better is hooking up with your workmates (present or past) and going for coffee, beer, or just a walk.
• R&D. Constantly better yourself.
• Tomorrow's tasks.
• Leave early! If you're done, you're done. A boxer doesn't stay in the ring after he's won the fight. Go home and relish the fact that you're done. This is something I've been very upfront with my boss about -- let me handle my own schedule and you'll be happy with the results. And he has been.
  

The Chessmen of Mars

Not Burrough's best work by far, however it functions as a servicible pulp adventure novel.

Book Description
1922. After a rambunctious youth and series of short-lived jobs including door-to-door salesman, accountant, a peddler for a quack alcoholism cure and finally pencil sharpener wholesaler, Burroughs found his calling as writer. As the story goes, one of Burroughs' duties was to verify the placement of advertisements for his sharpeners in various magazines. These were all-fiction pulp magazines, a prime source of escapist reading material for the expanding middle class. Burroughs spent time reading those magazines and decided he could write those stories just as well. He was lucky his first time out and sold Under the Moon of Mars. The Tarzan series followed this and Burroughs was now a full-fledged writer. In this volume of the Mars series, Helium, a spoiled princess and John Carter's daughter, rejects Gahan, Jed of Gathol, as a suitor and foolishly flies off into a great storm. Gahan gives chase. By the time he finally catches up to Tara, she has forgotten who he is, and he assumes the name Turjun, a panthan mercenary. Together they challenge the power of O-Tar, Jeddak of Manator, whose barbaric nation of Red Men have preyed upon Gathol for centuries. The Manatorians have elevated Jetan, Martian chess, to an unprecedented level of skill and excitement: they use live chessmen who fight for live princesses. Gahan finds himself fighting for Tara on the chessboard of Manator, and haunting O-Tar's palace.

http://www.amazon.com/Chessmen-Mars-Ace-Classic-F-170/dp/0441061702/ref=sr_1_12?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1218661252&sr=8-12