Jodo Shu

Jodo Shu Buddhism... sounds interesting.
http://www.jodo.org/index.html

Adiago Tea Store

Supposed to be a good on-line store for green tea.
http://www.adagio.com/

The Trouble With Enterprise Software

It's like someone's reading my mind:

According to a multiyear study of over 400 companies by MIT researchers Jeanne Ross, Peter Weill and David Robertson,³ IT departments tend not to be innovative leaders within organizations, but rather conservative forces, viewed by business executives as cost sinks and liabilities. In many companies, it takes the IT department one to two years to implement a new strategic initiative — hardly the agility companies are striving for. The research shows the typical IT structure is so dense and extensive that it’s often a miracle that it works at all. The researchers observe: “Legacy systems cobbled together to respond to each new business initiative create rigidity and excessive costs. Every change becomes a risky, expensive venture.”

The Proliferation of Complexity

How did this happen? James Cordata, who has written extensively about the information economy, points out that as work became more complex and specialized over the 20th century, the use of data — numbers and facts — as fodder for more and more analysis and fact-based decision making intensified. And digital technology “was perfect for this kind of world.”⁴ Of course, digital technology not only supported that complexity but also played a large part in actually creating it, weaving a continuous web of unending data. “More computers are better than fewer” remains a key belief of American business, Cordata says. “There are no limits to how much is good.” Management became accustomed to the idea that buying more computers and more software would continue to cut costs and improve operations.

 

http://evora.mit.edu/smr/issue/2007/fall/01/

The Black Dahlia

 

 

Watched this movie with some hesitation because it sounded dull but had great names in it.

Well, it was dull. And confusing. And apathetic. An uninteresting attempt to ressurect film-noir. Perhaps the book was good, but the movie wasn't.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0387877/

Working Mobile

I've become frustrated lately with the inability to work from home. Don't get me wrong, work is great in this regard -- you can Citrix in or VPN. Great... but I want to work anywhere. And I want my data from anywhere. And I want to access whatever tool or site I want.

I know, I'm spoiled, but I've managed to achieve about 99% of what I want now through the following mechanisms:

Webdav

I've enabled a webdav folder on my web server. Webdav stands for web documents and versions and works via http. It would be a very cool protocol if Microsoft hadn't have fucked up the implementation so bad over XP and Vista but I digress. I'm already running Apache on my Linux box so I downloaded and installed Apache Mod_Dav. You turn it on very simply in your httpd.conf file ...

Dav On

You also have to configure a lock db (read the docs for this one), just make sure it's a folder that's writable by your http daemon and make sure the mod_dav modules are loaded.

Next, under XP (from work) go into My Network Places and add a network place, pointing to your server and folder. That's it, it's now mounted like a drive. 

I've transferred all the documents I need out of my "My Documents" folder at work into this folder at my home machine. Now it's accessible anywhere by any windows, Linux, or mac box. Very cool.

PHPProxy

Tired of getting websensed at work? Download PHPProxy and install it (assuming you're running Apache and PHP). It's not a true proxy but will fetch and render pages from your remote server beyond the touch of websense.

XRDP 

Work doesn't allow VNC traffic but does allow RDP (Microsoft Remote Desktop Protocol). XRDP builds a bridge between a VNC server on your Linux box and RDP. Plus, almost any machine you touch will be a windows box and have Remote Desktop installed.

Now you can RDP into your home Linux box and use any tool you want.

Google Reader

I'm in love with Google Reader. I had built a php feed aggregator myself but Google Reader just rocks. Very easy to use -- I can go through 300 or so news items every morning in 20 minutes. Very cool.

But the best part is that it's running off of Google's servers, which means that it doesn't matter if I hit it from work, home, my blackberry, or cell phone. It keeps track of my feeds and my unread items. Sweet.

It's annoying that I had to work so hard to be able to work the way that I wanted to -- anywhere, any time, from any device. But now that I've got the above set up, my work aggrevation has dropped and my productivity skyrocketed. 

Ghost Rider

I'll admit, I'm a Ghost Rider fan from way back. My uncle was kind of a hippie biker type when he was young, and I thought he was very cool. And so I read the odd Ghost Rider when I could hide them from my mom. This was back in the day when he looked like this:

 

He was very cool... the "spirit of vengeance" posessed by a demon that took out guys that spilt innocent's blood. How cool is that?

Now we have this Ghost Rider:

Cage's character was actually a pretty good take on Johnny Blaze, the one I grew up with. This wasn't a great movie. Eva Mendez did not do a great job and was not a very memorable or believable love interest. I think they just should've kept her out of it, it made the plot too cumbersome and silly.

 

The villains were stupid. There, I said it. Mephestopholes (the devil) was boring, not evil, and his "son" was the main enemy fought by GR during the movie. He was just a punky kid with some loser friends... and you didn't care when he won, when he lost, or how he died. 

 

 

 

 This movie wasn't bad. Worth a watch if you're a fan. The effects were cool, and Cage was good... really funny actually.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0259324/

Douglas Adams Interview: Is there an Artificial God?

 

In honour of Douglas' memory, Biota.org presents the transcript of his speech at Digital Biota 2, held at Magdelene College Cambridge, in September 1998. I would like to thank Steve Grand for providing this to us. Douglas presented this ''off the cuff'' which only magnifies his true genius in our eyes. -- Bruce Damer

This was originally billed as a debate only because I was a bit anxious coming here. I didn't think I was going to have time to prepare anything and also, in a room full of such luminaries, I thought 'what could I, as an amateur, possibly have to say'? So I thought I would settle for a debate. But after having been here for a couple of days, I realised you're just a bunch of guys! It's been rife with ideas and I've had so many myself through talking with and listening to people that I'd thought what I'd do was stand up and have an argument and debate with myself. I'll talk for a while and hope sufficiently to provoke and inflame opinion that there'll be an outburst of chair- throwing at the end.

Before I embark on what I want to try and tackle, may I warn you that things may get a little bit lost from time to time, because there's a lot of stuff that's just come in from what we've been hearing today, so if I occasionally sort of go… I was telling somebody earlier today that I have a four-year-old daughter and was very, very interested watching her face when she was in her first 2 or 3 weeks of life and suddenly realising what nobody would have realised in previous ages - she was rebooting!

I just want to mention one thing, which is completely meaningless, but I am terribly proud of - I was born in Cambridge in 1952 and my initials are D N A!

http://www.biota.org/people/douglasadams/