As many of you who are regular readers know, I was kind of an early innovator in the realm of crowdfunding. I also regularly record and release my own music, which doesn’t make me a lot of money, but enough to occasionally pay for groceries and that sort of thing. As you probably also know, […]
Category Archives: Short Cuts
Random Thought
This is from something else I’m writing, but it didn’t fit, so I’m throwing it out here: A sort of inverse version of Metcalfe’s Law is that any node that is not part of a network loses value proportionally as the network gains nodes. A computer without Internet access was no big deal when the Internet had a hundred computers on […]
Thoughts on Occupy Las Vegas
I attended a meetup for the Occupy Las Vegas movement tonight, which is planning a protest march on the Las Vegas Strip on Thursday. By and large, I was glad to see so many people from so many different walks of life out to support this movement. However, I had some concerns and some suggestions […]
Corollary thoughts on auditory AR/ambient stuff
Many years ago I read about a dude who’d converted Unix server logs into a real-time auditory environment — specifically, a rain forest. Server load controlled the level of the rain, CGI calls were bird chirps, potential malicious attacks were the cough of a jaguar, etc. Sadly, I can’t find any info on this anymore. […]
Breakfast Dog
If you’ve ever thought to yourself “Man, my arteries are way too clear and free-flowing,” this is your meal. 1 hot dog 1 bun 1 strip of bacon 1 egg 2 slices of cheese 1 hot dog bun Wrap bacon strip in a spiral around hot dog, covering as much of it as possible. Use […]
If mechanics worked like doctors
So it takes three weeks to get a mechanic to check out your car, during which time you’re rescheduled four times. “But I have to get to work, and the electrical system is totally malfunctioning! I don’t know why and I’m afraid it might catch on fire or something!” you tell the barely-apologetic receptionist, who […]
An open letter to the Web/HTML job post area of Las Vegas Craigslist.
[I originally tried to actually post this to the “Web/HTML/info job listings” area of lasvegas.craigslist.org, but I had to fill out a thing and verify another thing, and screw it. So it’s here instead.] I’m sorry, but I’ve been reading this area of Craigslist for years now and I feel like I ought to say […]
Thought Of The Day
Contraception is sometimes attacked as ‘unnatural’. So it is, very unnatural. The trouble is, so is the welfare state. I think that most of us believe the welfare state is highly desirable. But you cannot have an unnatural welfare state, unless you also have unnatural birth-control, otherwise the end result will be misery even greater […]
An open letter to my mobile phone provider
Dear SimpleMobile Customer Service person, Hi there! As one of your customers, I have to ask: why can’t I pay my bill online with my Mac or my iPad? (Even though your site says Firefox ought to work, it doesn’t, at least on a Mac.) Assuming your bill pay system isn’t made of magic, but […]
I need help with an algorithm
So I’m finally building out Stikki.me’s advertising system, and I’ve realized I might need some help with a geometric sorting algorithm. Stikki’s advertising is geographically-based; an advertiser “sponsors” a location — most likely the real-world location of their business — with an ad, and users see that ad if they’re within a given radius of […]