CircleCount helps you better understand Google+

2013-06-14 07:22:38 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 2 +1s)

"On the dock Yarrow stood and watched them go, as sailor’s wives and sisters stand on all the shores of all Earthsea watching their men go out on the sea, and they do not wave or call aloud, but stand still in hooded cloak of grey or brown, there on the shore that dwindles smaller and smaller from the boat while the water grows wide between."

2013-06-13 12:39:41 (0 comments, 1 reshares, 0 +1s)

App Camp for Girls was launched 3 days ago at the Apple WWDC. It's already raised more than its initial goal, $58,000, but we should fund it to the moon. It's an incredibly worthwhile idea. 

Here's some of their blurb:

"App Camp for Girls wants to address the gender imbalance among software developers by giving girls the chance to learn how to build apps, to be inspired by women instructors, and to get exposure to software development as a career. Our goal is to grow our non-profit organization into a national force, with programs in multiple cities, helping thousands of girls.

We are launching this summer in Portland, Oregon. This summer, we'll be holding two sessions with girls 12-14 so that we can build and refine our curriculum. With experience and an established program, we'll move forward over the coming year with plans to expand the camp for... more »

2013-06-10 01:00:06 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 0 +1s)

GTD Best Practices

This is my own collection of best practices that I have developed and adapted from the GTD (Getting Things Done) methodology. For background on GTD, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Getting_Things_Done

The thing I have found most important about using GTD is to be flexible. I have created my own implementation of GTD, and I'm not afraid to bend the rules when necessary. I also try not to get bogged down in process, because GTD should make things easier, not more difficult.

Information Management

I used to carry a pen and paper to all of my meetings. I would take notes, and then file those papers in a folder for the relevant project. But I had a hard time locating those notes months or years later when I needed them. This, and working at Google, taught me that if data is not searchable, it's not very useful.

Now, I... more »

2013-06-09 20:11:32 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 0 +1s)

Interesting if you are into Pinterest, but actually even more interesting for thinking about metrics, data analysis, algorithms for image analysis, etc.

In the wake of PRISM, I can't help thinking about the use of techniques like these on, say, images of demonstrations, strikes, college campuses, etc.

2013-06-07 07:29:05 (1 comments, 0 reshares, 0 +1s)

Now THAT would be awesome. Our own neighborhood supercomputer!  Take that NSA!

2013-06-06 22:18:42 (2 comments, 0 reshares, 0 +1s)

My next (non-fiction) read:

The Spectacle of Disintegration: Situationist Passages out of the Twentieth Century
by McKenzie Wark
Acclaimed author follows the work of the Situationist International after May 1968.
Following his acclaimed history of the Situationist International up until the late sixties, The Beach Beneath the Street, McKenzie Wark returns with a companion volume which puts the late work of the Situationists in a broader and deeper context, charting their contemporary relevance and their deep critique of modernity. Wark builds on their work to map the historical stages of the society of the spectacle, from the diffuse to the integrated to what he calls the disintegrating spectacle. The Spectacle of Disintegration takes the reader through the critique of political aesthetics of former Situationist T.J. Clark, the Fourierist utopia of Raoul Vaneigem, René Vienet’sea... more »

2013-06-02 01:47:47 (1 comments, 0 reshares, 2 +1s)

The Chronicle of Higher Ed. publishes a piece entitled "Aaron Swartz Was Right," puts it behind a paywall.

2013-05-31 04:47:42 (0 comments, 1 reshares, 3 +1s)

love how they include #women of all ages in this article!  never too late to keep learning and challenging yourself.  that's my motivation for the week!

2013-05-22 20:17:25 (1 comments, 0 reshares, 0 +1s)

The default title for this thing is a bit of teaser, but the truth is actually pretty grim.  Some kid cuts school and makes a boosting post on Facebook about how he's going to be a famous rapper, but includes a comparison to the Boston bombing. And ends up in jail, without bail, on terrorism charges.  No specific threat, no weapons, no bomb making material. And clearly, really clearly, nothing beyond normal teenage stuff - wanting to be a famous rapper, thinking the government is shit. Even with attempts to cut and paste things together to make him look worse, there still doesn't seem to be ANYTHING there to warrant ANYTHING.  Maybe a detention for cutting school. 20 years in prison, though?

2013-05-20 19:57:05 (4 comments, 0 reshares, 0 +1s)

NASA Designs the Scientifically Perfect Space Meal

2013-05-17 05:26:13 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 0 +1s)

In Wired’s binary California Ideology, it’s either ‘bad regulation’ or no regulation at all. The article contains gems like: “Profit is a much more powerful driver for quality than regulatory compliance.” Contrast this with the extraordinarily good work of Shareable magazine, in trying to make municipal regulations sharing-friendly and even sharing-constructive.

Here is a neo-libertarian, netarchical take, excerpted from ARUN SUNDARARAJAN, that tells us: always trust the intentions of business and their capacity to self-regulate:

2013-05-16 18:08:13 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 2 +1s)

We've come pretty far.

2013-05-15 20:09:56 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 0 +1s)

I love this idea - a very creative way of pushing back against A&F's comments and image.  There are issues about sensitivity to the homeless that should be considered, but overall this is really creative and likely to be fairly effective - certainly much more so than, say, a demonstration outside some A&F flagship store, which is usually what ends up happening in situations like this. 

#abercrombieandfitch   #socialmediamarketing   #goodcause  

2013-05-15 19:19:02 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 0 +1s)

Charles Simic has a superb piece on the NRA in the New York Times Review of Books.  Among other things...

"Any discussion about the influence of the NRA and other gun lobbies ought to make it clear that their chief mission is to drum up business for the 1,200 gun makers in this country. Guns, as even half-wits ought to realize, are manufactured not by freedom-loving patriots, but by people for whom private profit outweighs public good. That is why they are against the background checks that 90 percent of Americans say they want. Preventing criminals and mentally ill people from buying guns would cut into their earnings."

#NRA   #guncontrol  

2013-05-14 00:46:46 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 0 +1s)

Trailer for the new Simon Pegg / Nick Frost / Edgar Wright joint.  Which is one of the summer movies I am most looking forward to.

2013-05-10 23:43:15 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 1 +1s)

San Francisco teens into the environment and gardening...

Check out the Summer 2013 BEETS 
(Band of Environmentally Educated and Employable Teens) Program

#SanFra   #summerjob   #teens   #gardening  

2013-05-03 04:50:33 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 0 +1s)

#terrypratchett  

2013-04-19 19:14:15 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 2 +1s)

Ria Chhabra is a Women in STEM hero!  And organic food hero, too. And I bet her parents are pretty pleased with her, as well.

#womeninstem   #riachhabra   #organicfood  

2013-04-15 18:14:35 (1 comments, 1 reshares, 1 +1s)

Libertarian free-market philosophy, making all our lives better. "Intuit has spent about $11.5 million on federal lobbying in the past five years — more than Apple or Amazon. Although the lobbying spans a range of issues, Intuit's disclosures pointedly note that the company 'opposes IRS government tax preparation.' The disclosures show that Intuit as recently as 2011 lobbied on two bills, both of which died, that would have allowed many taxpayers to file pre-filled returns for free." (ProPublica):

http://www.propublica.org/article/how-the-maker-of-turbotax-fought-free-simple-tax-filing

2013-04-07 23:09:59 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 0 +1s)

Cool #raspberrypi  hack

2013-04-06 17:46:29 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 1 +1s)

2013-04-04 20:36:02 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 1 +1s)

2013-02-21 21:16:07 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 0 +1s)

San Francisco's awesome Bicycle Coalition is looking for a membership manager.  These are terrific people. I might apply for this job myself...

#bicycle   #sanfrancisco   #jobs  

2013-02-21 03:41:30 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 1 +1s)

2013-02-16 20:00:51 (3 comments, 0 reshares, 2 +1s)

"A few minutes later, [she] begins to snore. There is no doubt that her snoring has not changed in two years. It has a double-reeded hum, the bumblebee continuo of Mongolian throat-singing. It has the slow grandeur of a whale's respiration."

from the book I'm reading...

2013-02-07 23:56:03 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 0 +1s)

2013-02-01 21:22:40 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 2 +1s)

2013-01-30 23:24:34 (1 comments, 0 reshares, 1 +1s)

Playing around with Mozilla's Thimble "webmaker" fully gamified training tool - I earned a badge.  It seems pretty excellent.

2013-01-29 17:38:58 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 0 +1s)

Remember when I said (slightly controversially...) sitting is the new smoking?

Well, it turns out walking is the new... jogging?  Jenny Craig?  gym membership?

#fitness   #dieting  

2013-01-27 00:27:24 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 2 +1s)

#raspberrypi  

2013-01-26 01:59:55 (4 comments, 0 reshares, 0 +1s)

Pursuant to my earlier post on sitting as the new smoking...

The UCSF Library has installed a couple of "walkstation": computer workstations on standing desks above low speed  treadmills.

Ask me how AWESOME I think this is!  I totally want one in my office!

#walkstations   #treadmills   #sittingisthenewsmoking   #UCSF  

2013-01-25 18:14:36 (10 comments, 0 reshares, 0 +1s)

Sitting as the new smoking...

(He writes, from the desk where he sits for the better part of 8 hours, 5 days a week.  Well, at least I watch TV lying down rather than sitting...)

2013-01-23 23:49:11 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 0 +1s)

Not that we need more reasons to love having dogs around, but an interesting brief look at what made it possible for them to do so

2013-01-22 18:19:53 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 0 +1s)

Has any one else noticed these life cycles of new G+ users?

Post 1
Hello World
Post 2
So how does this work
Post 3-12
Shameless company plug
Post 13
     Either
  A) End of story Rage Quit; or
  B) Posts Deep introspective touching personal tidbit after they realize that this isn't twitter & we only talk to humans here and adds a few personal photos...
Post 14-
Continued Interactions with other G= G+enius humans
...and maybe a random trolling
Expand this post »

#GooglePlus #olrs  

2013-01-22 18:16:35 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 0 +1s)

Has any one else noticed these life cycles of new G+ users?

Post 1
Hello World
Post 2
So how does this work
Post 3-12
Shameless company plug
Post 13
     Either
  A) End of story Rage Quit; or
  B) Posts Deep introspective touching personal tidbit after they realize that this isn't twitter & we only talk to humans here and adds a few personal photos...
Post 14-
Continued Interactions with other G= G+enius humans
...and maybe a random trolling
Expand this post »

#GooglePlus #olrs  

2013-01-20 20:22:39 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 2 +1s)

Bad Day Recovery Technique #113:  Anything that involves a quokka showing you a leaf.  Or any quokka at all.

"Thish ish my favorite leaf, guysh!"

2013-01-17 03:19:20 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 1 +1s)

A great video of my favorite new band, #AdmiralFallow  performing live during their (not) recent (enough) US Tour...

This comes reasonably close to capturing how good they were when I saw them live at Cafe du Nord in San Francisco.

2013-01-17 03:10:59 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 0 +1s)

Shared from a good friend of mine because she knows I have two boys.  This is unfortunately fairly accurate.



RAISING BOYS - 24 POINTS TO PONDER
 
The following came from an anonymous Mother in Austin, Texas...
 
Things I've learned from my Boys (honest and not kidding):
 
1. A king size waterbed holds enough water to fill a 2000 sq. ft. house 4 inches deep.
 
2. If you spray hair spray on dust bunnies and run over them with roller blades, they can ignite.
 
3. A 3-year old Boy's voice is louder than 200 adults in a crowded restaurant.
 
4. If you hook a dog leash over a ceiling fan, the motor is not strong enough to rotate a 42 pound Boy wearing Batman underwear and a Superman cape. It is strong enough, however, if tied to a paint can, to spread paint on all four walls of a 20 x 20 ft. room.
 
5. Youshould ... more »

2013-01-17 03:05:10 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 0 +1s)

Android 4.1, a 1.6GHz dual-core processor, a quad-core graphics processor, and 1GB of RAM, a 1,024x768-pixel resolution IPS screen, 8GB of internal storage with a microSD expansion slot, a 0.3-megapixel front camera, and 2-megapixel rear camera, Micro-USB and Mini-HDMI ports...

$170

Sounds like a winner.

#tablet  

2013-01-17 03:02:17 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 3 +1s)

Should you check your #email  ?

2013-01-16 20:51:54 (2 comments, 0 reshares, 2 +1s)

from: http://www.greens.org/about/unix.html

How to spell “unix,” 
with links

The name can be spelled three ways:
UNIX
This commercial trademark has been owned by Bell Labs/AT&T, The Santa Cruz Operation, Novell Inc., Unix International, and the X/Open Consortium, now known as The Open Group. It refers to any computer operating system package that is derived from the code base developed at Bell Labs beginning in 1969.
The Bell Labs documentation was very careful to always spell UNIX in all capital letters, and small caps whereever possible.

The name pokes fun at a mainframe operating system called MULTICS. The authors of UNIX thought MULTICS was far too complicated for what it does. Excessive complexity is considered a sign of poor software design, and indicates poor software design management.

unix
This is a generic name for allUNIX-... more »

2013-01-14 21:37:43 (1 comments, 0 reshares, 11 +1s)

#weepingangels   #doctorwho  

2013-01-10 16:27:46 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 0 +1s)

2013-01-09 22:08:14 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 0 +1s)

This looks like an excellent introductory course - and the price is right!

2013-01-07 20:28:28 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 1 +1s)

"The truth is that we’ve just experienced a colossal failure of economic policy — and far too many of those responsible for that failure both retain power and refuse to learn from experience."

#economy   #financialcrisis  

2013-01-02 22:24:50 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 0 +1s)

Interesting article in NATURE, one of the most important peer-reviewed science publications, that looks at "Probabilistic cost estimates for climate change mitigation"

#climatechange  

2013-01-02 08:54:05 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 0 +1s)

"Modest"?!?  "Modest"?!?

#newtown  

2012-12-28 19:49:49 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 2 +1s)

It's a mind blower!

2012-12-24 23:04:27 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 2 +1s)

This is all kinds of awesome. Not just because Stephen Fry is in a Santa outfit.

2012-12-24 23:01:42 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 1 +1s)

It's snowing! Merry Christmas everyone!