A smattering of opinions on technology, books, business, and culture. Now in its 4th technology iteration.
23 July 2003
Great article – SecurityFocus HOME Infocus: Forensic Log Parsing with Microsoft’s LogParser – found by way of Furrygoat
22 July 2003
22 July 2003
OK in my previous post I used the word “typewritten”, meaning an 8-1/2 by 11 document, doublespaced, courier or times font, right justified, produced by pc and word processor. Of course it is not really typewritten – it has none of the signature artifacts of a typewriter – strikeout, whiteout, mishits. It could have been fully justified, creation of which is painful and clumsy on a typewritter. So i need a word to take the place of “typewritten”. “Laserwritten”, “laserjetted”, “inkjetted”? All are tradenames, all imply a certain technology which may or may not be in use. “Pc-generated”? This has none of the style of “typewritten”.
22 July 2003
Great counsel – Fool.com: Living Below Your Means [Post of the Day] July 17, 2003 – we lived well below our means for the first 10-15 years of our married life and it has paid off huge. We didn’t really miss any of the “stuff” we didn’t have then, and our savings then contributed to our improved lifestyle later.
22 July 2003
At Cannon Beach for the last 5-6 days – stayed at the Ocean Lodge. Beautiful new lodge, good service, tho some oddities – stained typewritten hotel guide; a cardboard sign out front naming the hotel; AC in only some of the rooms; very stilted praise of one of the owning partners in the hotel guide. I just got the sense that something odd was going on behind the scenes, there were just enough little details that were askew. Maybe the owning partners are at odds? We’d stay there again, tho the Stephanie Inn right next door is nicer and has none of the odd signs. Weather was great. And of course the beach was the beach, best beach in the Pacific Northwest? Sadly I broke my toe last day of the stay and am now hobbling.
22 July 2003
When I go on a little vacation I always take a bag of paperbacks, books which I don’t mind if I leave behind. This last weeks bag of books: The Braided World – OK sci fi with a strangely similar planet to earth; Link -- so-so action/thriller about the origins of humanity – not very original; Curtain by Agatha Christie – another great Poirot story; Area 7, a very entertaining albeit highly improbable action thriller. It didn’t break my heart to leave any of these behind at the hotel.
22 July 2003
Tinderbox sounds like a cool app.
22 July 2003
anil dash points towards amazon’s payment service, coming soon for our use. Very cool.
16 July 2003
Met Frank Boosman this week – great guy, anyone who even remotely compares me to Tiger Woods and Yao Ming is ok by me. Oh and by the way there are other great ex-MSFT VCs too – my partners here at Ignition for instance, or Pete at Second Ave, and many others I am forgetting.
15 July 2003
Dana points to the CarChip, a digital recorder you can plug into the standard interface in a car and collect diagnostics. Looks like fun! A great holiday gift for geek friends.
15 July 2003
S.U.V. Owners Fight Back – We drive SUVs in large part because we want the laws governing momentum to play out in our favor in an accident – delta-V is a bad thing for your body. I don’t love having all these big vehicles on the road but I am not going to unilaterally compromise my family’s safety to support a principle. Now I would love to see us as a society remove big heavy vehicles, including semi-trucks, from passenger vehicle roadways, but I am not holding my breath.
15 July 2003
WERBLOG – a worthy read.
15 July 2003
Wow this is cool – HAG - Haunted Ambience Generator a tool to create arbitrary sound tracks for your haunt.
15 July 2003
Satoshi found QCode and is excited about it – a nice way to pass around digital data on paper. I’ve thought this seemed like a great idea for a while, tho many barcode schemes have come and gone – remember the Cauzin Softstrip? Maybe this one will stick since cameras on phones are nearly ubiquitous and we need something useful to do with them.
14 July 2003
From the NY Times – The Most Popular Magazines. Wow I guess this says something about me – I don’t even know what 5 of these magazines are. Other fascinating top ten lists on this page as well – the number one advertiser on the Web is Estee Lauder?