* “Soluto”:http://www.soluto.com. Soluto seems right up my alley – focused on simple common frustrations that we all have, promises to save me time. Install is a breeze and I really like the super sparse interface – such a difference from the overcomplicated software from Norton, etc. The software feels very light and the interface reinforces the promise of simplicity. And it does seem to make tuning up boot time simple, it pretty accurately understood all my boot processes and gave me reasonable suggestions. It’s browser diagnosis was less helpful, it found very little in Chrome to improve, and it didn’t look at my firefox install at all. Not sure why. Anyway, worth a trial and I will be interested to see how they go. A challenge they will have is getting users to pay – solving my boot speed issues is nice, but I only need to do that once and I have no enduring reason to keep on running the software – and thus am not going to pay much for it. They need to figure out a way to deliver me value every day. The only guys in the utility space that have done this are the virus/malware protection guys, who have latched onto consumer fear (and probably stoke that fear).

* “Splunk Python interface”:http://pypi.python.org/pypi/splunk-sdk/0.1.0. Really curious to play with this (disclosure, Ignition is an investor in splunk). I hadn’t installed splunk in a while, installs super simply on Mac and Win. and wow what a firehose of info you get from Splunk about your system. Next up, tie to python and try to write some simple scripts. A lot to play with here.

* “Calculize”:http://calculize.com/. Kind of like Matlab, in the browser. Might be useful. at times.

* “Keymando”:http://keymando.com/. Love the idea of hotkey utilities but I always seem to drift away from them. Because I can never keep them in sync across all my machines. And so I will probably never install this. But noted here in case I try.

* “timely.is”:http://timely.is/#/. Rand likes it which is a good sign. If I cared about readership and impact of my tweets I think I would certainly give this a whirl.

* “Onswipe”:http://onswipe.com/. This seemed really cool, but I thought it was basically a wordpress theme. It isn’t tho, it grabs your wordpress data and puts it behidn a new url. and it seems to be dependent on categories which I don’t use. so I will wait.

UPDATE: nice simple tip from the Keymando guys – use Git or Dropbox to keep Keymando settings in sync across multiple machines. This is a simple obvious brilliant thing I should do in general for my work and home Macs.

A bag of stuff I’ve read recently that was compelling:

* “Coffee as economic health indicator”:http://paul.kedrosky.com/archives/2010/05/coffee_as_city.html. Yay Seattle! Contrast with… * “World Class Orchestras”:http://reason.com/archives/2010/05/24/how-to-save-cleveland * “McKean’s Inversion”:http://whatever.scalzi.com/2011/08/11/mckeans-inversion/. Whatever you publicly espouse to be – you probably aren’t. * “Wicked Problems”:http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2011/07/wicked-1.html. * “A one page explanation of the Higgs boson”:http://www.adafruit.com/blog/2011/07/26/the-higgs-boson-a-one-page-explanation/ * On the lighter side, “Bacon Ipsum”:http://design-milk.com/bacon-ipsum/.

Kirk Cousins, the returning MSU QB, got all kinds of kudos over the last week for his nice speech about what a privilege it is to play college football, but I am underwhelmed. As others point out – “Kirk Cousins and Privilege”:http://www.elevenwarriors.com/2011/08/kirk-cousins-privledge – Kirk is letting himself be used by the monied powers in the system to protect their interests. The schools, the NCAA, the media companies are making billions of dollars off of college sports, and throwing peanuts to the players. And the players don’t even have a voice in the system – maybe the players would vote to spend all the proceeds from their sports on non-revenue sports, on university facilities, on salaries for university staffers, etc – but shouldn’t they at least have a say? Kirk, being part of a football team at a good college is a great experience, but that doesn’t change the fact that you are being used.

Frank Deford says it well – “Frank Deford on amateurism”:http://www.npr.org/2011/08/03/138919312/ncaa-still-stalled-by-amateur-hour-thinking. The time has come to abandon the amateurism requirement for college athletes in the revenue sports. A family friend made this same argument to me today in an email, I am all for it.

Other college football reading today – “Bodog season win total odds”:http://sports.bodog.eu/sports-betting/college-football-team-props.jsp (hattip @darrenrovell). OSU and Wisconsin both at 9. I’d take the over on both.

* “Robopocalypse”:amazon by Daniel Wilson. Zombie robots rise up and attack humanity. Ok but many better zombie apocalypse books out there. * “Wild Cards I”:amazon, Ed. George R. R. Martin. Noir-ish x-men, with the significant inclusion of all the unfortunate people with less-than-useful mutations – uncontrollable sliming, terrible disfigurements, lethal mutations. Obbviously a lot like it, since a jillion more books have followed. Just ok. * “Leviathan Wakes”:amazon by James S. A. Corey. Solar-system-spanning conspiracies and war, fun stuff. No terribly new frontiers but quality space opera.

Oh and here is “NPR’s list”:http://www.npr.org/2011/08/09/139248590/top-100-science-fiction-fantasy-books of the top 100 SF/Fantasy books or series. Can’t agree with it all but a not unreasonable reading list.

Thank goodness that tickets arrived in the mail today! We can get back to playing football and enjoying the games, and quit focusing on all the activity off the field.

Despite all the offseason turmoil, or maybe because of it, I am actually looking forward to this season quite a bit. There is an uncertainty about OSU this season that has been lacking in recent years. Key positions are major question marks. A new coaching philosophy will be in play. That School Up North has a new staff and some new life. The entry of Nebraska into the league is great news, I would love to get to the OSU/Nebraska game this year. The divisional lineup of the Big10 is a new element. It all adds up to an exciting season.

OSU’s home schedule is interesting, tho not great. Nebraska and Michigan are away which is too bad. But Michigan State, Wisconsin, Penn State at home are great games.

No idea which games we are going to get to. Our schedule is very complex this late summer and fall. But hope to see some of you there…

I’ve got thousands of feet of spare cables. Cat 5, 5e, 6. Coax. Digital audio – copper and optical. Video with all flavors of DVI, HDMI, and older connectors. S-video. Component. HDMI. USB. FireWire. Audio. Speaker wire. Microphone cables. DMX512. AC power cables of all sorts – grounded, ungrounded, extension cords. DC power supplies and cables in many varieties.

And bags of converters of all types. Audio. Video. Male-to-female. Female-female. Splitters. Joiners. You name it.

With all these cables and converters, I needed storage solutions just for them. Bins, racks, etc. And I had to keep it all ordered so I could find stuff.

I am throwing it all out. Moving to a JIT system for cables – I’ll buy what i need on the fly. Because having a massive inventory of spares has never saved me a trip to Fry’s or a Newegg rush order. I always need the one connector I don’t have.

I love the fact that my Beats earbuds never tangle in my pocket due to their ribbon cable design. Ok they tangle a little but like one millionth the tangle frustration of typical buds.

But dammit, the in-ear gel plugs pop off constantly and get lost.

Speculation: the tangling of the cord actually protects and secures the removable gel plugs. Mathematicians, get on this one. (Or alternatively - the gel plugs actually attract the cable and encourage tangling, this seems less likely.)

And if so, then earbuds actually conform to a universal law. The sum of tangle frustration and lost plug frustration is constant. The greater the tangling, the less likely you are to lose the plugs. The more plugs you lose, the less tangling you get.

* “How to unhide your Library in Lion”:http://tidbits.com/article/12306?rss – chflags nohidden ~/Library. Yay. * “Making desktop web apps with Automator”:http://ihnatko.com/2011/07/22/making-desktop-webapps-in-lion/. All kinds of goodness in here. * “BBEdit 10 is out”:http://www.barebones.com/products/bbedit/bbedit10.html. Purchased. * “Marked”:http://markedapp.com/ seems like a super useful companion to BBEdit. * “Billguard is now free-er”:http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2011/07/billguard.html.

* “Worth Dying For”:amazon by Lee Childs. Latest Reacher tale, he is in fine form cleaning up a Nebraska county. Like most Reacher fans, I am unenthused with “Cruise as Reacher”:http://screenrant.com/tom-cruise-jack-reacher-one-shot-sandy-123854/ but glad that the books are getting to the screen. 4 stars on Amazon. “3.93 on Goodreads”:http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8357992-worth-dying-for, this is a good Reacher tale. * “The Boy at the End of the World”:amazon by Greg Van Eekhout. Good tale of a lone boy in a post-apocalyptic world. A very quick read, a young-adult title. 4.5 stars on Amazon, “4.35 on Goodreads”:http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/9580832-the-boy-at-the-end-of-the-world, those are some high marks. I might not go quite that far but it is a solid book. * “Deadline”:amazon by Mira Grant. Not quite the emotional kick of the first in the series about post-zombie-apocalypse America, but still quite good as the conspiracy deepens. Looking forward very much to the final book. “4.36 stars on Goodreads”:http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8429687-deadline, 4.5 on Amazon, this is quite a good series. * “Buried Prey”:amazon by John Sandford. Nth in a series about a Minneapolis detective. Nicely done, the relationships between police and press are distinctive. I’d read more in the series. 4.5 stars on Amazon, “4.08 on Goodreads”:http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/9440448-buried-prey, clearly a good series. * “A Dance With Dragons”:amazon by George R R Martin. This book has generated lots of complaining about its perceived failure to advance main plot lines, and expansion of character set. I prefer to embrace the messiness and incompleteness of the author’s world. This series is not going to be tied up neatly with a bow, there is no happy reunion party in the Shire awaiting us. I thoroughly enjoyed the book and await the next with great anticipation. And looking forward to season 2 on HBO! “4.18 stars on Goodreads”:http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2782553-a-dance-with-dragons, just 3 on Amazon, I am a 4-star. * “7th Sigma”:amazon by Steven Gould. A retelling of Kim in a near future American Southwest ravaged by rogue nanotechnology. Fun tho characterization is pretty thin. “3.36 on goodreads”:http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/10136180-7th-sigma, 4.5 stars on Amazon (tho very thinly reviewed).

I was in a hurry today and needed a wireless router fast. BestBuy is all that is near and of course their shelves are stuffed with Belkin gear. My hat is off to Belkin marketing and business development, they own the shelves.

But their product sucks. The N600DB router can’t seem to see the Internet, even tho I can confirm the inbound connection is fine. The configuration app is utter garbage, doubling every character I type in as if my keyboard needs to be debounced. There is no more current app on the Belkin website. Going directly to the router web page does work, but after several simple configuration changes (notably turning the dhcp server off) the router becomes unresponsive. The Belkin phone number is plastered all over the box and software but I certainly don’t want to listen to some clown tell me to reboot my router 4-5 times.

This is the 3rd or 4th time I’ve been coerced into buying Belkin due to their distribution dominance and it never ends well. Shame on me.

The most important elements of my life are relationships. My spouse/partner. Kids, parents, siblings. My company, co-workers, project teams, classmates. Community groups that I am part of – churches, school communities, neighborhoods, charities, etc.

It is interesting that my most personal electronic item, my iPhone, does not really provide much support for these relationships. The top level apps are generic actions that work equally well with all my contacts e –mail, texting, calls, scheduling. There is little support for or focus on the most important relationships in my life.

* Why, when I start to compose an email and type “Liz” in the address book, does the mail app suggest all the “Liz”s I have ever known with equal importance, including people I haven’t contacted in 8 years? Why doesn’t my phone know that I mean the Liz in my immediate family? * Why do I have to click as many times to send a text to my spouse as I do to send a text to a co-worker? Shouldn’t it be super quick to send a text to my spouse? * Why is it 1000x easier to share my calendar with my co-workers than with my spouse? Part of this is an Exchange back-end problem, but… * There are 100 apps to try to keep track of where your potentially cheating spouse is, but why are there so few good ones focusing on the positive scenarios? (Glympse:”www.glympse.com” is a good positive tracker, a recent Ignition investment) * The best way to see my children’s latest photos is to navigate to their facebook page – why aren’t these as easy to see as my photos?

And so on. It ought to be extra-easy to communicate with the closest people in my life – but it is no easier than communicating with some distant friend or business associate. It is easier to play a game on my phone that to communicate with my family.

Android and Windows Phone have much better support than the iPhone, enough to make me consider switching some days. Just being able to pin a contact to my home screen as I can with Android would be a nice first step.

I’d really like an app on my first iPhone page that is my spouse/partner app:

* A thumbnail of him/her * A count of important items I need to respond to – email, texts, vmails * quick buttons to call, text, email him/her * his/her current mood – each of us can quickly set this and it transmits to the other’s phone immediately * what’s on their/our calendar today and this week * their photostream from facebook, twitter, their phone, etc * the latest messages we’ve exchanged * countdown to birthdays, anniversaries * where they are right now (ie Glympse functionality) * honeydo lists – things she/he needs me to do * and so on. The app probably needs to be very customizable as every relationship is different.

And I’d like something similar, not quite as much info, for my kids, my parents. And maybe key friends or coworkers. Right now, my phone is a distraction from my personal life, rather than a tool that helps me to improve my personal life. For this most personal of technologies, that just seems wrong.

I’ve plowed thru much of the Hugo nominees in the last couple weeks, thanks to the great deal to get them all in ebook form.

* Novels: “Cryoburn”:amazon by Lois M. Bujold. At first I thought, well, this story has been written before. But ended up feeling like very compelling. “Blackout”:amazon by Connie Willis. Eh. Gave up. Vaguely ridiculous plotting. “Feed”:amazon by Mira Grant. Read this earlier in the year, it is a great tide. My vote. Still two more to read tho.

* Novellas: The Lifecycle of Software Objects by Ted Chiang. Interesting speculation on the maturation of artificially intelligent programs, a little mechanistic but interesting. The Lady Who Plucked Red Flowers Beneath the Queen’s Window by Rachel Swirsky. A nearly immortal sorceress thru the ages, good but not great. The Maiden Flight of McCauley’s Bellerophon by Elizabeth Hand. Fanciful, touching, not really my taste. Troika by Alistair Reynolds. Russians exploring a uniquely russian alien spacecraft, yawn. The Sultan of the Clouds by Geoffrey A. Landis. Very nice tale of a far future Venus, where the atmosphere is settled by humans. I like the Landis tale.

* Novelette: Eight Miles by Sean McMullen. Steampunk, an exiled martian and balloonist partner up. The Emperor of Mars by Allen M. Steele. A touching story of a Mars colonist dealing with incredible grief. The jaguar House in Shadow by Aliette de Bodard. Intrigue in a modern day Aztec empire. Nice atmosphere, would love to read more. That Leviathan, Whom Thou Hast Made by Eric James Stone. A Mormon missionary in the sun, reaching out to plasma beings – original. Plus or minus by James Patrick Kelly. Disaster strikes a cargo hauler on way from asteroids, some quality characters. Both the de Bodard and Stone stories are memorable.

* Short Stories: Amaryllis by Carrie Vaughn. Life on a resource-constrained world. Lots of characterization in a short story, could certainly support a longer tale. Ponies by Kij Johnson. Wow, super nasty dark story about kids and cliques. The Things by Peter Watts. The thing, told from its perspective – Nicely done. I really like the Watts story

About a month ago, Tressel resigned under pressure from the university as the many allegations swirled around the program. Cars, cash for memorabilia, cover ups, etc etc etc. A tough day for Tressel and a tough time for the program.

It is interesting to look at some things that have happened since then:

* “The car investigation has largely been dropped”:http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2011/football/ncaa/06/21/ohio.state.cars.ap/index.html?sct=cf_t2_a6. There were no special deals done for the players or families. Pryor may still have some issues but there is no wide ranging scandal here. * “More and more players deny selling memorabilia”:http://www.dispatch.com/live/content/sports/stories/2011/06/22/more-buckeyes-deny-selling-memorabilia.html?sid=101. The feeling that there was even more dirt to uncover doesn’t seem to be warranted. * “The North Carolina allegations have dropped”:http://aol.sportingnews.com/ncaa-football/feed/2010-08/unc-investigation/story/north-carolina-football-facing-several-serious-ncaa-violations. Academic fraud, improper benefits, agent involvement – this is what a mess really looks like. It is interesting that North Carolina so far is standing by its coach. Ohio State is held to a higher standard – by itself, and by outsiders. I wouldn’t want this to change. * “OSU’s Football APR top among top 25”:http://www.ohiostatebuckeyes.com/ViewArticle.dbml?DB_OEM_ID=17300&ATCLID=205157100. Clearly the program has been doing some things right. * “John Hicks comments on Tressel’s motivation”:http://ohiostate.rivals.com/content.asp?CID=1233937. Responding to Desmond Howard’s idiocy, Hicks makes the argument that Tressel was focused on player welfare – admirable, even if it leads one astray at times.

Clearly mistakes were made; coverups always turn out bad, and Tressel has paid a significant price for his role. But looking at all the accumulating evidence about the state of the program and what was provably a violation, it certainly seems that the opinions on Tressel should have bottomed out and should start to rebound. And you have to wonder if perhaps the University didn’t move a little too fast, and was a little too responsive to the flurry of press coverage. Allowing due process some time to run might have served everyone better. The University and the program may have arrived in exactly the same spot, Tressel did make mistakes, but allowing investigations to run their course might have been prudent.

I’ve fallen out of the habit of talking about Ignition portfolio news up here, but it has been a busy week and I am re-motivated to talk about some of these companies.

* “Bromium”:http://vator.tv/news/2011-06-22-bromium-gets-92m-to-make-the-cloud-more-secure has a great team and working in an exciting spacen – the intersection of security, cloud computing, and virtualization. I am very interested to see how this team evolves, I can personally see myself using their technology. * Continuing in the cloud space, “ScaleExtreme”:http://www.scalextreme.com/ is making it really simple to manage all your servers in the cloud, I am also excited to try this out. And check out the super sweet “pic of Frank”:http://www.thewhir.com/web-hosting-news/062111_ScaleXtreme_Closes_11_Million_Funding_Round_Names_Board_Member in this press piece! * “StorSimple”:http://www.storsimple.com/press-releases/bid/59821/Latest-Funding-Establishes-StorSimple-as-the-Safe-Bet-in-Enterprise-Cloud-Storage integrates enterprise storage with the cloud, giving the benefits of local storage performance and cloud backup/archiving/tiered storage. Probably not something I can ever personally use, but a great space to be in. * In a whole different direction, “Glympse”:http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/technology/glympse-raises-75-million-to-help-you-share-your-location-a-few-hours-at-a-time/2011/06/22/AGfztafH_story.html lets you share your location with friends and family. I’m not a big public checkin user (foursquare, etc), but keeping family and close friends up to date with my location is a lot more compelling to me. Great team and a nice intersection of our software and mobile investment biases.

I’ve wished for years that someone would come up with a “software-defined lens”:http://theludwigs.com/2003/07/camera-as-a-data-gathering-device/. A surface that would capture all inbound photons and let me decide later about focus, depth of field, etc.

It looks like “Lytro”:http://www.lytro.com/ has done it or something on the way towards it. Hope it is reality! Put my name down for one.