A Little Ludwig Goes a Long Way

A smattering of opinions on technology, books, business, and culture. Now in its 4th technology iteration.

Recent books -- an eclectic mix

22 March 2007

* “Remainder”:amazon by tom McCarthy. The tale of a severely brain injured man attempting to recover his life. Vaguely promising premise but I could never really identify with the main or secondary character. Certainly a unique tale though. * “The Shia Revival”:amazon by Nasr. i am not very well educated on modern islam – sunni, shia, wahabi, sufi, all means little to me. this was a fine first book to read – explained enough of the history to understand the genesis of the various strains, and explains the regional politics that are intertwined with the divisions in islam. and brings it all forward to the current situation in iraq, iran, and the rest of the middle east. a very helpful text. i am sure this author has some biases, it would probably be smart to read a few more texts to get a start on understanding the current conflicts. * “Creative concrete ornaments for the garden”:amazon by Hunter. Nice intro to basic concrete techniques. Purely decorative uses, not for structural elements. * “About Alice”:amazon by Trillan. Short soothing sweet read about lifelong love. Quietly inspiring. Calming.

Web2.0 -- Over and Out

20 March 2007

EarlyStageVC: Web 2.0 - Over and Out – great article. Hard to get excited about Web2.0 ideas, they have entered the realm of the ordinary. When a startup says “we are going to have a social network and user generated content and feeds and etc etc etc”, it is about as distinctive as saying “we are going to have an office with a copier and a fax machine.”

Vista reliability monitor

20 March 2007

Is Vista Reliable? Using Vista’s Reliability Monitor – useful tool. My Reliability Score was at 10 the first day I started up the system and has dropped every day, I am now at 5.02. In my ~4 weeks of running vista on one machine, i’ve had

* 11 Miscellaneous Failures – “Disruptive Shutdown” – whatever that is * 6 Windows Failures – “OS Stopped Working” * 4 Application Failures – “Stopped Responding” * and a whole load of failures that vista hasn’t recorded for some reason. Daily app hangs. a half dozen BSODs. One reboot where Windows told me my BIOS was no longer ACPI compatible (went away on next reboot).

Oh and I still have never been able to get a print driver working for the printer shared by the XP machine in my office. (So how do I print? You’ll find this hilarious. I open up a remote desktop connection to the XP machine and print the file from that machine.) And any number of apps I have tried to install aren’t Vista compatible.

Early early halloween planning

20 March 2007

One thing I have plenty of is fog. Between my whole yard fog system and my 4-5 point fog systems, i have fog galore.

This year I’d like to do a little more with fog and lighting. Fog Machine Vortex is one idea i may try. Another I am working on is to project a ghostly image onto a dense area of fog – kind of like fogscreen but way cheaper.

More stuff I don't need but want

19 March 2007

* Toolmonger Finds: Snap-on’s New Micro Pneumatics – small pneumatic tools. * Yoggie, the miniature security appliance. Not sure why, it is just cool. * A bookshelf made of…books.. Wonderfully recursive. * The linksys kiss. Kind of a dvd player but with some media extender wireless goo whacked on the side. I wonder if 3 years from now anyone will still have a vanilla dvd player – i wonder if we won’t all have various combo devices (game consoles, media extenders, etc) instead. * Unbreakable screwdrivers * Wood case computers and peripherals – Suissacomputers, Woodcontour. Probably a really bad idea but cool.

Ignition Blog roundup

16 March 2007

* Network Magic gets some love up at [eHomeUpgrade Why Network Magic Kicks Windows Vista’s Butt in Networking and File Sharing Usability](http://www.ehomeupgrade.com/entry/3670/why_network_magic “eHomeUpgrade Why Network Magic Kicks Windows Vista’s Butt in Networking and File Sharing Usability”) * Andy loves referral hiring -- spontaneous support for jobster * Rich has all the blackberry pearl tips and blackberry games info * Phil cranks out another version of Beyond411 for the blackberry. He also ponders the ineffectiveness of googlebase * Martin (an ignition alum) has made another clean tech investment

VC transparency

14 March 2007

Via Techcrunch, TheFunded which tracks feedback on VCs by funded companies. This s awesome, more transparency and communication is always good. I note Bessemer is rated highly, I’m on a board with some Bessemer folks and I would have to agree, they are great. I hope all the Ignition portfolio companies rate us, and rate us honestly.

More Products I Don't Need (But Want)

14 March 2007

* Tong Family Blog: Camcorder Recommendations – rich does a nice job of reviewing high end video cameras. for the 27 minutes of filming i do a year, i don’t need any of these, but… * A projector with an ipod dock! Who doesn’t need one of these. * The USB flute. And to the writer who sneers at “rocking out (with a flute?)” – go dust off your Jethro Tull LPs. * Etymotic earcord winder. OK I might actually need this. * MoGo mouse. This looked very cool when I saw rich with it. * Super Paper Mario for the Wii. Mario. Wii. * A chumby of course * The Vectrix 3-wheeler because it is just awesome. * The Callaway FT-i, this is all that separates me from Tiger Woods. (I kick myself that I’ve never invested in a golf enthusiast company, because golfers will buy anything). * The MSR Reactor because you never know when you need to cook in gale force winds.