my passion for the internet

Funny thing happened about a year ago now. I changed jobs. That isn't the funny thing but I have to say that my last job gave me the freedom to explore and investigate the internet with all the latest and greatest things happening. Now, I am so busy at work I hardly have the time to lift my head up to see what is happening around me. So I guess I must have mistaken boredom for my love of the internet. O well... I have 2 kids behind me destroying my house so I guess I better get back to reality.

falling to the bottom

I managed to migrate to the bottom of Taras' blogroll so I was wondering if he made a conscious decision to place me there or if he was doing some kind of funky things based on last post date. In any case, I thought I better post something otherwise I might disappear entirely...

mr potato

Kids say the darndest things.... Last weekend my daughter was sleeping beside me in bed and when she awoke, she punched my shoulder and said 'Wake up potato'. I have no idea why I am now a potato - I guess I best accept it though.

MBA or piano?

This certainly cannot be an oft blogged about topic. Should I get an MBA or learn to play the piano? This is the thought I was pondering over Christmas. My wife is working on getting her CGA so as a result - she is spending a lot of time studying and doing courses. I thought I should be doing something productive with my time as well so I considered the piano / MBA option. Originally I sided with the MBA for no good reason. It is more that I believe I could do it and do it well so why not prove it. Of course - who am I proving this to..... I seem too often to set out to prove something when there is no audience present to prove to - but that is an all together different issue. So the MBA option seemed good and I got support from a few friends on the idea but one night while having drinks with another friend, I brought up teh MBA topic and he challenged my thinking on it. Really he just got me more focussed on my passion which is not really anything realted to an MBA. So, in the end, I got a new job to help deal with the passion issue and then picked up a Yamaha keyboard to begin my piano learning journey rather then do an MBA. So far I practiced one night but I am not quite an expert yet. Wondering why this is taking so long.

In the end, if I am 70 and look back on my life, would I say - gee that MBA was the greatest thing I ever did or would I say - I love playing the piano. I believe the latter and am content with my decision. I jsut have to see if I will be able to stick to this.

The Best Things In Life Are Free

I find myself sending out the same emails time after time so I figured I may as well as put a summary of those things in one place. So - here goes my list of the best free things out there.

Free Culture
Lawrence Lessig, Creative Commons, Cory Doctorow, EFF. Very interesting stuff. It is all about sharing and promoting a culture where we can take each others knowledge and works and build on them. For quick introduction to what Larry Lessig and Cory Doctorow are all about, just search for their names on ITConversations and download a few of their presentations. The work these guys are doing is great and we will all benefit from it. They also practice what they preach. Both are authors and both have their books available as a free download.

Free Software
Ubuntu, Firefox, VMWare Player, SourceForge. It is unbelieveable that you can download an ISO image, burn the CD and then boot right into an OS without an install. The Ubuntu Live CD comes with OpenOffice to handle all MS Office document and FireFox for all your browsing needs. Pretty cool. Alternatively, if you want to still be able to run Windows but have Linux too, you can run Linux inside the free VMWare Player. Just download the preconfigured Browser Appliance. This is a Ubuntu Distribution already configured to run inside a VMWare Virtual Machine. When you start to look at some of this stuff and realize how powerful it is, it is hard to believe it is free. It is starting to make me thing that all general home use software should be free and in fact, when you look - a lot of it is.....

Free Books
Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom and Free Culture. These are 2 books both available in bookstores but they are also online for free. All Cory Doctorow books are actually available as downloads and they are worth a read if you like SciFi. Free Culture is a book that highlights "How Big Media Uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture and Control Creativity". Very interesting and thought provoking.

Free News
Google Reader, MyYahoo. I cannot imagine ever watching TV news again. 99% is what I don't want to hear so I waste 30 minutes for that 20 seconds of information I wanted? Newspapers are far better but then again, they might not even cover what you are most interested in. So - then next better is a web site - usually pretty good but you may have to go to several sites before you get what you want. So then what? RSS. Could anything be more beautiful? Strip out the banners, the adds, the stories you don't care about and give me only the news I want as a text feed. Beautiful. So - to get started, try Google Reader or MyYahoo. The great thing about Google Reader is that it is online so no matter what PC I use, my read and unread items are the same as well as it is the same feed list.

Free Emails
JDJ, Sohomail, JOHO, Word of the Day, WAG. SYS-CON is one of the best techie magazine publishers out there and all their stuff is free online. How cool is that. I cannot tell you the number of great useful things I have read from Java Developers Journal and I am not even a Java developer. SohoMail and WAG are quite similar to each other. They both have a very strong emphasis on morals and social responsibility - it is a very fresh perspective in a "Shareholder Value" driven mindset.

Free Education (Podcasts)
TWiT, ITConversations, Security Now, Inside the Net. Podcasting is amazing. I feel like I live 2 minutes from work now because I no longer dread my 75 minutes of commuting each day. I just download podcasts / keynotes / presentations and I get to be educated as I drive.

Free Information
Wikipedia, Answers.com, Thinkexist, snopes. Wikipedia is the most awesome encyclopedia out there. The whole concept of a Wiki is pretty amazing as well. Answers.com is a mashup of all sources of info for a given word. Thinkexist is a great Quotes site. Find out the real quote and who said it. Then for anyone who gets folklore emails - simply reply with the snopes site that debunks the email.

The world is unfolding around me....

The world is unfolding around me. Everywhere I look things are changing - most of it good which is all that concerns me for now. I have been hooked on the internet for a decade and I am befuddled at how much it is still evolving. So - in this sea of change, where do I fit in. I feel incredibly informed and aware but what is it doing for me. I guess the more relevant question is - what am I doing with it. Presently absorbing. The way I see it, I will figure out my place and migrate there right about the time that Dot Com Crash V2 happens. So is Web 1.0 dead and Web 2.0 is here? So - like when 1.0 crashed, when will 2.0 crash? How about I post when I have migrated to my calling - then you guys all sell whatever it is you own at the time related to Web 2.0.

So what is so cool? Folksonomies, Wikipedia, and anything great that has come from the people. It was the people that brought the internet. Then business jumped in and muddied the waters but now again - it is the people who are helping the greatest achievements of the net bubble up. It is scary when I find wikipedia more informative about SSE3 in Intel XEON MP processors then the Intel site.

forgetfulness

When you have kids, you tend to focus much more on some things and less on others. A simple example would be our lawn. The only important part of the lawn is the bit that the kids use. The rest is unimportant. As a result we have the most yellow boulevard on our street. On the weekend I was asked if I wanted to put up a sign on my lawn that stated I didn't use pesticides. My reply was - "it is already blatantly obvious that I don't". In any case, my real point is this - after a long day at the zoo, we unloaded the kids from the van and went in the house. We had a bit of dinner, put the kids to bed, rested a bit ourselves and went to bed early. When I went to leave for work today, I looked outside and saw the side door on our van was wide open. Interesting. After further observation I noticed that a creature of some sort had noticed that as well and proceeded to hop in and take advantage of the fact that this was a kid transporter. Yesterday, my daughter had crumbled bits of cookie onto the floor (the bits without Chocolate Chips) - they were gone. There were Ritz Scuba crackers in a baggie - missing now. Denise's purse was in the van and it was investigated for Baby Mum Mum's (puffed Rice crackers for babies). I know there was a donut bit in a bag that could no longer be located. All in all, some creature had a smorgasbord of snacks thanks to my distractions and absentmindedness. Maybe at a subconscious level, it was my attempt to give back to the animal community after we had spent a day at the Zoo enjoying them.....

my story of the day..... I am laughing to myself as I read this. This is my life now..... and I love it!