Joel's Scattered Thoughts

Notes on things that interest me

Archive for category General

All Art is Remix

Mar 7

Posted by Joel in General | No Comments

All Art is Remix is a fun video showing how  art builds on what has gone before.

happy things’s Tumblelog

Mar 7

Posted by Joel in General | No Comments

I ran across this today: happy things’s Tumblelog.  Itseems to be a collection of picture and quotes that struck the collector as happy things.  There’s some fun and thought provoking stuff in there.

“A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable, but more useful than a life spent doing nothing.”
Bernard Shaw (via lovemidori)

Why Can’t They Read?

Mar 6

Posted by Joel in General | No Comments

I found this Metaquote from fadethecat interesting.  The argument is that the reason people miss obvious warning signs is that they filter signs automatically:

I ignore the seven thousand signs on the windows and doors when I walk into that gas station, because they’re all just going to be implausibly enthusiastic renditions of “Buy this thing” interspersed with reminders that Illegal Things Are Still Illegal Doncha Know.

It’s not surprising that important  signs are missed – there’s so much noise that the signals are drowned out.

Food storage containers

Mar 5

Posted by Joel in General | No Comments

I find that our Food storage containers are in constant need of reorganization.  this post and the subsequent comments have some good ideas for cutting down on that.

Why A Salad Costs More Than A Big Mac

Mar 4

Posted by Joel in General | No Comments

I found this graphic interesting: Why A Salad Costs More Than A Big Mac – The Consumerist.

I don’t know how accurate it is and if nothing else I’m sure people can quibble about the decimal points.  At the same time, it’s hard to deny that eating healthier costs more.  Even if you grow all your food yourself, that food will probably cost you more in hours than it would take you to earn the money to buy it.   We spend less time and money on the food we need to survive than at any other point in history.  Now we need to figure out how to eat well and not just how can we eat enough.

Not wrong, just illegal

Mar 3

Posted by Joel in General | No Comments

I found this essay fascinating: Not wrong, just illegal – Winnipeg Free Press.    The essay itself is a fairly standard discussion of the issues with file sharing.  What I found interesting is that this essay was entered in an ethics writing competition and that it won!  Maybe there is hope.

(via Michael Geist’s blog)

Freedom

Feb 24

Posted by Joel in General | No Comments

This is a truth I try to keep in mind when I’m feeling trapped by life.  I can choose something different.  The barriers in my mind are far more powerful than the barriers that are actually there.

The part that bugs me is that I would be better off ignoring the rules from time to time, but I usually lack the courage or the energy to do so.

If you choose to ignore the rules remember that there will be consequences – good, bad, and neutral.  (At the same time, if you follow the rules, there will still be consequences – good, bad, and neutral.)

His mother had often said, when you choose an action, you choose the consequences of that action. She had emphasized the corollary of this axiom even more vehemently: when you desired a consequence you had damned well better take the action that would create it.
– Memory, Lois McMaster Bujold

Drywall Screw Pickup Tip

Jan 30

Posted by Joel in General | No Comments

This is one of those ideas that seems blindingly obvious now that I’ve seen it:Drywall Screw Pickup Tip – Fine Homebuilding.  Put a magnet in a can, wave it over the screws, put the can over a container, pull the magnet out of the can to release the screws, repeat.

Things You Really Need to Learn

Jan 24

Posted by Joel in General, Kids | No Comments

You know, I wish I’d learn these lessons: Things You Really Need to Learn ~ Stephen’s Web ~ by Stephen Downes.  Some I do well, but there are a lot of these that I do poorly.  I’ve always been better at head knowledge than heart knowledge.

(via Parent Hacks)

Loreena McKennitt at the 2009 Calgary Folk Music Festival

Jan 11

Posted by Joel in General | No Comments

I was listening to Loreena McKennitt at the 2009 Calgary Folk Music Festival · CBC Radio 2 – Concerts On Demand and I was overwhelmed again with all the wonderful things that I can enjoy.  I have more books than I can ever read available to me, it seems that I’m finding new musicians to listen to every month, there are not enough hours in a  day for the computer games I’d love to play, reading to the kids introduces me to forgotten classics and new ones.

Alexander cried when he heard Anaxarchus talk about the infinite number of worlds in the universe. One of Alexander’s friends asked him what was the matter, and he replied: “There are so many worlds, and I have not yet conquered even one.” (pothos.org)

2009 Cleanup

Dec 31

Posted by Joel in General | No Comments

Well, I managed to put up posts for 363 days this year.  I’d been shooting for 365, but didn’t quite make it.   I plan to post much less this year, though it is fun to look back at the things that caught my attention.

Anyhow, here are a pile of links I didn’t post anything about but still found interesting.  If you’re looking for something to read, you should be able to find something in here.

 

Merry Christmas 2009

Dec 25

Posted by Joel in General | No Comments

It was a lovely white Christmas here.  Snow fell pretty much all day and is scheduled to keep falling.  I’m really glad that we decided to stay home this Christmas as driving in this weather would be nasty.

After chasing kids back to bed till 4 am, I had expected an early start to the day.  Surprisingly, the last of the kids had to be woken up around 8:30 to open presents.  The kids have been opening presents for the last three days so it’s good to have that over with.

Christmas Day 2009

Tiny Move Trackers

Dec 23

Posted by Joel in General | No Comments

The Quantified Self has a post on Tiny Move Trackers – little gadgets that you wear to track your activities through the day.  These are high-tech versions of a pedometer.  They track your activities throughout the day.  The big advantage of these over regular pedometers is that they have automatic upload capabilities so that your can easily view your progress online. I suspect that these would fall in the gimmick category for me – cool toy but after playing with it for a while I’d leave it in a drawer.   Maybe my mythical next generation cell phone can double as one of these?

.

Copyediting 1A: Nitpick Your NaNo

Dec 13

Posted by Joel in General | No Comments

Kestrel’s Aerie has some advice for Copyediting 1A: Nitpick Your NaNo that looks like good advice for any copy editing project.  I like the way he breaks it down into a step -by-step process to help you find problems in your writing.

I’m not very good at editing my own work so it would be helpful to run through these tips whenever I’m sending a report out to a client.  Hopefully with practice this will become an automatic process.

Tags:

Canadian Recording Industry Faces $60 Billion Copyright Infringement Lawsuit

Dec 7

Posted by Joel in General | No Comments

Michael Geist – Canadian Recording Industry Faces $60 Billion Copyright Infringement Lawsuit.  It’s a good thing the Recording Industry shut down Napster to protect the artists, right?  Otherwise people would have been listening to the songs and no money would have been paid to those who made the music.

Tags: ,

Negative Influence

Dec 6

Posted by Joel in General | No Comments

You misdirected me as surely as if you had said the world is flat and north is west and two plus two is four; i.e., not utterly wrong, just wrong enough so that when I took the opposite position – the world is mountainous, north is east – I was wrong, too, and your being wrong about the world and north made me spend years trying to come up with the correct sum of two and two, other than four.  YOU GAVE ME THE WRONG THINGS TO REBEL AGAINST.  My little boat sailed bravely against the wind, straight into the rocks.  Your mindless monogamy made me vacillate in love, your compulsive industry made me a prisoner of sloth, your tidiness made me sloppy, your materialism made me wasteful.
– Garrison Keillor, “Lake Wobegon Days

I am influenced a lot by not wanting to be like certain people.  I was warned a lot about peer pressure growing up, but I didn’t get many warnings about misdirected rebellion. Misdirected rebellion is when you rebel against a position because of those who hold it rather than because of a problem with the position itself.    You’re still being shaped by those you rebel against.

If you really want to rebel – act according to what you believe and not against what your opponents believe.

Rubin's vase

Like father, like son?

Dec 5

Posted by Joel in General | No Comments

I wonder the theory that we just can’t handle considering that many people as people is one of the reasons that we’re so eager to create divisions.  If we can lump whole groups of people together, we don’t need to think about them as individuals and can deal with them as a class of objects.  I wonder if we’ll eventually come up with a way to surpass that limitation or we’re just going to be stuck with temporary workarounds?

Tags:

All the Things You Don’t Need

Dec 2

Posted by Joel in General | No Comments

The Art of Non-Conformity » All the Things You Don’t Need is one of those pieces of wisdom I’m trying to keep in mind.

I can’t possibly try drawing because I don’t have a proper sketchpad and a complete set of charcoal pencils.  When I get the sketchpad, I can’t draw because I don’t have an easel, or a subject, or the book “How to draw things in 4965 easy steps.”

Instead I’m trying to assume I have everything I need to get started.  If I get to a point where I really can’t go further with what I have, that’s the time to be looking for more.  At that point I have a much better idea of what I actually need and I have the momentum behind me to keep going.

How much can you do with what you have?  Is the limiting factor you or your tools?

Tags:

10 Geeky Things to Be Thankful For

Nov 25

Posted by Joel in General, Tech | No Comments

Canadian Thanksgiving is long over, but this is still a great list of 10 Geeky Things to Be Thankful For | GeekDad | Wired.com.  I’m most thankful for broadband Internet – for me it brings most of the rest with it.

I Hate Homework

Nov 19

Posted by Joel in General | 1 Comment

Photo by jin.thai

Photo by jin.thai

My kids aren’t in any kind of special scholastic program.  They go to a good-quality public school.  Despite the name changes, it’s the same school I attended.

On a normal night, my kids do more homework than I did over the entirety of high school.

Some of that is because I did my homework very quickly in class while the teacher explained things.  I suspect that I was there when the trend was for less homework while my kids are there at the other end of the pendulum swing.  I didn’t do a very good job on my homework – my focus was on acceptable quality at maximum speed.

Still, this is a brutal way to force me to make up for all the homework time I skipped in high school.