Let us turn our eyes to another kind of appearance of value, one that the multi-millionaire and University of Hawaii School of Business benefactor has created. Mr. Jay Schidler (pronounced “shy”d-ler) has apparently offered the secret of his success in commercial real estate. I have heard reports of this formulation from various fora in which he has spoken.

First, he buys low, that is, shabby and run-down office buildings and the like. Then he does four things: paints the walls, adds tasteful new signage, adds plants, and adds lights to the plants. In viewing the other changes at his now eponymous College of Business, he also repairs the walkways (which sometimes requires reworking the drainage as well).

The leverage of these items is to increase the appearance of value. It points as well to the more important value appearing after these changes, which is the value that people hold to appearance, the aesthetic of our surroundings. This is the true value which this successful businessman creates. One we can learn from.

Taken psychologically and as an extended allegory:

* What are the drainage situations to fix, either in our physical surroundings, or our psychological environment and work practices? Drainage issues tend to show up regularly (when it rains) and can be represented by clogged and overflowing communication that does not have effective disposal processes in place.
* What plants could be added, making the surroundings more conducive to integration with the natural world? How should we better understand of what the natural environment consists? Please, let’s not use the tired phrase “sustainability” as that has been emptied of value. How can we make the planet, its variety of species more viable? How about only one plane flight per year? This would add plants by removing them from the “subtract” column.
* What signage should be added or enhanced? What are the symbols which point to the greater value present? More than a “new” font or logo, how can signage act as an inspiring aspect of our work, one that points the way forward?
* What lighting is needed, the bright light of the media or the dimmer background illumination of a website or social media presence? How can these lights show the integration with nature and the enhanced signage? What aspects of our work should be illuminated, not merely championed in public relations terms, but celebrated for doing things the right way?
* What walls need painting, and walkways need repair? Sometimes it is a matter of cleaning up old graffiti, such as removing the potty mouth or negativity that appears in online conversation. Monotony and repetition, while extremely valuable when it is about core values and mission, becomes tired if it is merely the repeated hawker’s cry combined with “this is new” “this is important” exhortation. Less is more.

Thank you Mr. Schidler for the inspiration.

If we leverage the [mnemonic tools previously discussed](http://jeffmcneill.com/2009/03/01/mnemonic-devices-memory-remembering-learning-cognitive-architecture-application-areas-and-mnemonic-techniques/), we can spend time to create a set of entry level learning tools which will be extremely relevant (and therefore worth the time in creating).

## Suggested tools ##
For given words and phrases identified

* [Phonemic imagery](http://www.buildyourmemory.com/foreignlanguage.php)
* Iconic images (simple drawings)
* Canonical script, including for alphabet
* “[Town language](http://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newTIM_10.htm)” Roman room mnemonic, extended as a metaphor via the Pattern Language of Christopher Alexander (at the level of vocabulary, and eventually as grammar)

I’ve been living outside of the United States for eight months now. The first 3.5 months were in Vancouver and Victoria, BC, Canada. The last 4.5 months have been in Bangkok (one week) and Chiang Mai, Thailand.

As someone adapting to different cultures on a 24/7/365 basis, the 2nd, 4th, and 6th of Cicero’s Mistakes of Man are particularly apt. Some farang who have lived in Thailand for 3 or 5 years still appear to make these mistakes with regard to the local culture. It’s comedic. Buddha save me from this fate…

It may be useful to conceive of [the Art of Memory](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art_of_memory) as having four broad __application areas__, a set of __techniques__ (often called __mnemonic devices__), and the underlying __cognitive architecture__ which indicate how and why such techniques work in the first place. Ultimately __mnemonic devices__ promise a significant return on cognitive and temporal investment — spend time learning these techniques and save a lot more time and effort over the application area.

## Background on Mnemonics ##
According to Aristotle, the art of memory was considered a part of rhetoric as much as dialectic in classical antiquity. Apparently, many mnemonic devices such as the __Method of Loci__ and the __Major System__ were taught in schools until at least the 19th century. It appears we have _forgotten_ these memory systems. Now may be a good time to recall them to mind.

## Underlying Cognitive Architecture ##
The underlying cognitive mechanism which are the basis for much of the mnemonic devices include the following elements, among others.

* __[The Von Restorff Effect](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Von_Restorff_effect)__ seems to be the basis for many other phenomena. The main point is that things that stand out are more likely to be remembered. This has many implications

* __[The serial order effect](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_position_effect)__ includes two features: __primacy__ (things first in a list are more likely to be remembered) and __recency__ (things last in a series are more likely to be remembered).

* __[The Picture Superiority Effect](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Picture_superiority_effect)__ indicates that according to dual-coding theory, memories can exist as verbal and/or visual, and therefore pictorially represented ideas have the advantage of being coded twice, enhancing memorability. __Use pictures and words when possible__.

* __[The Levels of Processing Effect](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levels-of-processing_effect)__ is a complex phenomena. It proposes that depth of processing increases memorability. __Semantic learning__ (meaning) is deeper than phonemic (sound) and orthographic (writing) learning alone.

* In addition, __specificity__ (the same medium of recall and production, such as auditory learning and recollection) increases depth. __Self-reference__ indicates a connection between the object of learning and the subject doing the learning. Self-reference increases depth as well. __Make learning specific in terms of medium, meaning (semantics), and learner self-reference (meaningfulness to the subject)__. _This could be termed the three Ms of Memory: medium, meaning, and meaningfulness._

* __Implicit recollection__ is easier than explicit recollection. Implicit recollection effectively has context and other scaffolding features rather than requiring recollection without any related stimulus. However this effect does not have clear-cut support.

* There is a hierarchy of sensory inputs for recall. __Vision__ and __touch__ are strongest with sound and smell less powerful sensory inputs. __Incorporate vision and touch into sound-based memory inputs and outputs when possible__.

## Mnemonic Devices and Techniques ##
* The __[Mnemonic Link System](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mnemonic_link_system)__ can be considered the basis of the __Loci__, __Major__, and __Dominic__ systems. The main idea is to create connections between two unrelated things, thereby forging a memorable connection.

* __[Peg systems](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mnemonic_peg_system)__ are a memorization of visual associations with numbers, such that the numbers can be recalled by recalling the visual associations in a given order.

* __The [Major System](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mnemonic_major_system)__ is a handy and flexible way of encoding numbers in sounds that can be memorized in words, and then decoded later to reproduce the original number. Created around 300 years ago, this is the most flexible system, though as it relies on sound it has a greater cognitive load rather than a straightforward peg system. However, it can be supplemented with software to help generate the most appropriate words to link to the target numbers. See also [this article](http://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newTIM_07.htm) and [this free software](http://got2know.net/2Know/index.html) that can help with numbers-to-words association to help with major system.

* __[The Dominic system](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mnemonic_dominic_system)__ is a shorter version of the Major system and associates numbers with letters, and pairs of letters with people. Then the idea is to memorize a set of people performing interactions, which can then be reversed back into the original number. (See also [this phonetic mnemonic system](http://memory.uva.nl/memimprovement/eng/phon_peg.htm).)

* __[The Method of Loci](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Method_of_loci)__ is ascribed to the classical orator Simonides, who was speaking at a banquet, was called outside, when the roof collapsed. The bodies were so damaged they could not be identified, but he was able to identify the victims of the disaster based on where the people had been sitting. Loci (locations) are a well-known visual space which can be recalled readily to mind. The idea is then to picture objects in these places. The strengths of visual imagery and self-reference are combined to construct a powerful mnemonic.

## Additional Practical Aspects ##
* In the book __Aspects of Memory: The Practical Aspects__, there is an interesting article __”[Memory Aids, known how, knowing when, and knowing when not](http://books.google.com/books?id=Vg4K3QUmPgcC)”__ introduces and discusses various memory aids (mnemonic devices) and their effectiveness compared with rote learning.

* Another article in the same book, __”[The Facilitation of Memory Performance](http://books.google.com/books?id=Vg4K3QUmPgcC)”__, discusses various memory and non-memory issues. Memory issues include using __warm up__, __presentation rate__, effective __instructions__, __repetition__, __distributed study trials__, use of __external memory aids__, and __physical presence__ of objects.

* Non-memory issues include __physical__, __emotional__, __motivational__, __environmental__, and __social conditions__. All of these non-memory issues are meant to increase both arousal and selective attention. __Physically__ we are faced with the obvious importance of enough, but not too much, sleep, food, and water. __Environmental issues__ include bathroom facilities, heat and cold, seating or standing, lighting, auditory and visual elements, and other comfort issues. __Emotional state__ regards stress and relaxation training including yoga, meditation, and exercise. __Motivation__ is a complex component best dealt elsewhere. __Social environment__ has to do with interaction with others to reduce shyness and provide positive feedback and support.

## Mnemonic Application Areas ##
* Remembering __Faces and Names__ are particularly important for rather obvious reasons. There are a few related systems, which usually rely on unique visual combinations, related to names, as well as previous memories and experiences, using the notion of self-reference.

* __[A reviewer of "Remember Every Name Every Time"](http://www.amazon.com/review/R1DCV2IFLS05H5/ref=cm_cr_pr_viewpnt#R1DCV2IFLS05H5)__ appears to provide most of the content of a given book, namely the two methods for remembering, the observational and associational systems.

* There are several resources available as technique variations. The useful __[Nutt's How to Remember Names and Faces](http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&id=DRls6770CHkC)__ is now in the public domain. There is a __[video on how to remember names](http://www.videojug.com/interview/remembering-names-and-faces)__. A blog entry on __ThinkSimpleNow__ has __[seven hacks to remember any name](http://thinksimplenow.com/productivity/7-hacks-to-remember-any-name/)__. And an additional site has __[more hints for name memory](http://www.psywww.com/mtsite/remnames.html)__.

* The __Major__ and __Dominic__ systems are designed for __numbers__, as well as reversing any __peg system__.

* The linkword system is perfect for __learning foreign language vocabulary__. There has been useful research (constrained to case study) which indicates significant difference in using the linkword system. It is important that the linkwords, usually a visual combination based in L1 (first language) be focused on for a specific amount of time. Some studies indicate a 10 second time interval is useful and there is anecdotal evidence for great gains. Unfortunately, if native-speaker-level pronunciation is desired (which it usually is) then the linkwords must be created by bilingual teams who can work out the correct pronunciation. As we know languages have different sound sets, so even there a trained native speaker must conduct the listening and production aspects. For more thoughts on this topic, see [this](http://www.buildyourmemory.com/foreignlanguage.php) and [this](http://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newTIM_10.htm).

* __Textbook and Course Content__ is an obvious application area, though there is a sense that cramming is good enough for the majority of students, who don’t want to commit to memory much of their higher educational experience. There is a useful resource on __[mnemonics for textbook memorization](http://www.ict4us.com/r.kuijt/en_masteringtextbook.htm)__.

* Another site provides some techniques for __Listening__ in the article __["How to listen for memory](http://www.ict4us.com/r.kuijt/en_counseling.htm)”__.

## Final Note ##
To paraphrase Mark Twain, I didn’t have much time, so I wrote a long article. A shorter one will be forthcoming once I boil this down into a few simple techniques and guidelines.

## Two kinds: Serif and Sans Serif ##
Serif fonts have squiggly things on the letters, and sans serif do not (sans means “without). That’s the basic difference. The standard Serif font is Times New Roman and the standard Sans Serif font is Arial (with its younger sibling [Helvetica](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helvetica)). (For the true typographic geeks, there is a [eature-length film on Helvetica](http://www.helveticafilm.com/) and global design issues.)

## Comparing Serif Fonts ##
The Serif oldie is Times New Roman. The new one from Microsoft is [Cambria](http://bit.ly/KLk32). (For the Serif fonts, Georgia was inadvertantly left out. It can be considered in the place of [Verdana](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verdana) but for Serif fonts.) [Liberation](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberation_fonts), [Droid](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Droid_fonts), and [Libertine](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_Libertine) are three open source offerings. [Droid](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Droid_fonts) was designed for the Google An[Droid](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Droid_fonts) platform.

I have found good reaction to the use of [Cambria](http://bit.ly/KLk32). It is legible, and recognizable as a serif font, yet has enough of a difference to evoke an aesthetic response. I find it simple yet elegant.

## Open Source Serif Fonts ##
How do these three open source options compare? [Liberation](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberation_fonts) has less spacing between the letters. At first this might appear a disadvantage, but we read in chunks of words and phrases, not individual letters. The same is with [Droid](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Droid_fonts), which when one shrinks down the size of the font more and more, retains much greater legibility. Overall, [Droid](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Droid_fonts) is more narrow, [Liberation](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberation_fonts) taller than [Cambria](http://bit.ly/KLk32) which becomes squat, but retains legibility.

## Linux [Libertine](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_Libertine) ##
Linux [Libertine](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_Libertine) is an excellent comparison font at 6-8 point size. [Libertine](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_Libertine) retains a sense of 19th century elegance, which it is meant to. The Capital Q and W and lowercase w and the upward slanting tail on the lowercase u and the handles on either side of the capital T are all interesting. Because of the 19th century old school/steampunk sensibility, this is a great font for logos and taglines.

## [Droid](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Droid_fonts) Serif ##
I find the [Liberation](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberation_fonts) font to have some problems with the u and m. When they get small, legibility is hampered. As such, the [Droid](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Droid_fonts) Serif becomes my choice for reading text, including the Resume, if Serif is chosen (which signals more traditional and conservative sensibility as opposed to sans serif which is more modern and up-to-date).

## Comparing Sans Serif Fonts ##
[Verdana](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verdana) has been a solid update of Arial and great for web and print work. It is a safe font to use in many situations, though it is becoming a bit dated. [Calibri](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calibri) is the Microsoft replacement to Arial. Calibri has better spacing than [Verdana](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verdana), and is therefore more legible and a bigger font when provided the same number of linear inches. This makes it a more narrow font. [Verdana](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verdana) has a more square feel and uniform spacing per character.

## [Liberation](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberation_fonts) Sans ##
Unfortunately [Liberation](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberation_fonts) Sans does not fare well. The y appears to be too short compared with the z. The a is a bit out of place. And when comparing the letters o w and n in brown, the w appears to crowd the n but not give too much space to the o.

## [Droid](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Droid_fonts) Sans ##
[Droid](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Droid_fonts) comes out very strong against all other options. It has an interesting letter c and a. It doesn’t have as optimal a spacing as calibri but compares favorably with [Verdana](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verdana). It is a bit more narrow and taller.

## Bottom Line ##
I prefer [Droid](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Droid_fonts) Sans, [Droid](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Droid_fonts) Serif, and Linux [Libertine](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_Libertine) to compare favorably with Microsoft’s [Cambria](http://bit.ly/KLk32) and Calibri. Open Source offerings rise to the challenges and meet the typographic needs of today.

P.S., Don’t forget to embed the fonts in any PDFs you create. For Windows users, the free [CutePDF](http://www.cutepdf.com/Products/CutePDF/writer.asp) application adds a nice PDF printer driver to create great PDFs.

Font Comparison, originally uploaded by jeffmcneill.

Note: this comparison is with different font sizes, chosen to achieve a similar line length in Sentence case.

* Don’t like these fonts? Make your own with the Open Source tool [FontForge](http://fontforge.sourceforge.net/).

## The Power of Questioning ##
Questioning is valuable, but not at all times. One quote illustrates how questions are more important than answers:

“Computers are useless. They can only give answers.” -Pablo Picasso

The questioning of children when they learn the word “Why?” can be annoying as much as it is helpful to their learning. Questions can do more than just ask for an answer, they can be used in performative ways to delay, to hold power over others, to indicate status (especially in some cultures, only the big boss gets to ask questions of the workers, and workers and students would never ask questions of the boss or the teacher).

## A Process for Questioning ##
The best approach to questioning, especially group discussions, is to have a process. I highly recommend The Six Thinking Hats by Edward de Bono. His process breaks apart different kinds of questions (and their different goals) into a serial process. The operating metaphor is that people are trying to describe a house, standing around different sides of the house, they will argue with each other even though all of them have a legitimate view of the house. The Six Thinking Hats approach has people taking one perspective at a time and discussing that perspective, then moving to the next perspective. I have used this process in organizational as well as academic settings. It works very well.

## More Information ##
For more information, see the Wikipedia article, [Amazon.com book link](http://www.amazon.com/Six-Thinking-Hats-Edward-Bono/dp/0316178314/929-20/), and a [1 page PDF handout](http://www.docstoc.com/docs/1821169/de-Bono—Six-Thinking-Hats) (on Docstoc) with a brief description of each of the six “hats” and a process to use them.

## 0. Google Result item promotion ##
After [googling myself](http://www.google.com/search?q=Jeff+McNeill) today, I made a few discoveries, that seem interesting to share. The first discovery is that you can promote result items as well as remove them (see the little gray buttons to the right of each search result title link). Turns out promoting and removing items can make a difference on subsequent search results.

## 1. Use Identi.ca as you primary microblogging tool ##
My [Identi.ca](http://identi.ca/jeffmcneill) search result was the fourth result item (the first two are my blog and the third is a different Jeff McNeill). Twitter isn’t even in the top 100 results. This is a new development.

Use [Identi.ca](http://identi.ca/jeffmcneill) as your primary microblogging tool and set it up to [forward dents to Twitter](http://identi.ca/settings/twitter) (as well as subscribe to Twitter friends on Identi.ca). If you use a tool such as [Twhirl](http://www.twhirl.org/) it is possible to be logged into multiple sites and have a window into each of them, including identi.ca, friendfeed, and twitter.

## 2. Create evaluations and lists on Amazon.com (and make them public) ##
My [Amazon](http://www.amazon.com/gp/pdp2/profile/A3GPL1KOIQ25CH) profile and Amazon lists page are respectively the 5th and 6th result in the Google search. This requires more than just creating a profile. It is important to [review Amazon items](http://www.amazon.com/gp/pdp/profile/A3GPL1KOIQ25CH) (and receive good relevance feedback) and create [a set of thematic product lists](http://www.amazon.com/gp/richpub/listmania/byauthor/A3GPL1KOIQ25CH).

## 3. Create a full profile on Linked In (and make it public) ##
[Linkedin](http://www.linkedin.com/in/jeffmcneill) is the 7th result item. Create an account, link to friends, fill out the profile, and enable the public profile setting. This is likely the best online resume you will have so people, use a photograph that is “interview-worthy”. No sunglasses or muscle shirts. LinkedIn is not MySpace.

## 4. Enable a public profile on Facebook ##
[Facebook has public profiles](http://www.facebook.com/people/Jeff-McNeill/19510068), which need to be enabled and configured. It is not even possible to make a lot of information available, but these public profiles do turn up in search results. I found that out by discovering that someone else with my same name was turning up in the top 50 Google results a month or so ago. After enabling my public profile, it is now coming up to the top and is now the 8th result item for searching on my name.

## Extra credit ##
* [Friendfeed](http://friendfeed.com/jeffmcneill) is somewhere in the top 20 Google search results as well. Set up Friendfeed to import the various information streams from Identi.ca, Flickr, Amazon wish list, etc. This is automated and only needs to be done once, unless you want to engage in Friendfeed commenting, which can be entertaining. As mentioned above, Twhirl is a great client for FF.

* [Flickr](http://flickr.com/people/jeffmcneill) is in the top 20 Google search results as well. Use Flickr as your photo sharing site. Be sure to make friends and configure the profile page to encourage linking and friending activity.

Chiang Mai is an interesting city and province in Thailand. It has around 1 million people in the metro area and another 1 million in the rest of the province. While it is more spread out, it compares with Honolulu in terms of metro area population, and completely dwarfs it in terms of geographical area (more than 10 times the area). Chiang Mai province is two-thirds the geographic size of all of the Hawaiian Islands. It also dwarfs Hawaii in terms of the surrounding population which is nearly four times the size (there is a mere 300,000 population at best for all neighbor islands in the State of Hawaii).

In comparision, Thailand itself is more than 25 times the size of Chiang Mai province, and has an estimated 63 million in population. This is 20% larger in size than the state of California (about the size of France) and has about 70% greater population.

Many people compare Chiang Mai with Bangkok, which is something like comparing Honolulu with Chicago. As someone who recently lived in Honolulu for seven years, I find Chiang Mai comfortable in terms of pace and lifestyle.

Over the last four years, Hawaii has become extremely expensive for the working classes. The rent on my one-bedroom apartment more than doubled between 2005 and 2007. The middle class has acquired property and jacked up the rent on the working classes. The only reason there is not a mass exodus from the islands, especially Oahu and Maui is that many people living in Hawaii cannot conceive of living anywhere else (many have never lived anywhere else) and they cling to the islands with a multi-generational tenacity and resourcefulness which the pacific islanders in general are known for.

The differences? Well, Chiang Mai has rush hour traffic, as Honolulu does, but it can’t be described in the same sort of way…

Stay in School

The story was told to me by a 10 year veteran of Detroit middle schools. She left the United States because she has burned out on American schoolchildren, and wants to see if she can regain her motivation to teach again, here in Thailand.

• http://www.earthclassmail.com/ is a remote mailbox/remailer that can scan items into pdf. $9.95 x 12 at one time (March 17, 2009 + 9.95/mo. (for Seattle non-P.O. mailbox). Total cost per year = $238.80 + remailing charges (mostly not used, as PDF copies of my mail is usually good enough)
• http://www.faxaway.com/ inbound and outbound faxing. $10 to start, no monthly, decrement on outgoing and incoming. Inbound (206) fax number and faxing text/pdf from email with per use charges. Total cost per year ~$10 (low volume)
• http://www.gizmo5.com/ offers voicemail and inbound calling for $35/year (plus per minute) and for an extra $4/year outbound caller ID. This is much cheaper than the $60/year Skype for similar service, and more flexibility in terms of area code choices. Total cost per year ~$40.00
• Of course we have to use http://www.skype.com/ at various times, for per minute outbound and Skype-to-Skype. I did have $2.95/mo unlimited Canada and USA but no longer. Instead I stick with the 0.021/min to USA. Total cost per year ~$40. (Note: I also have a local phone sim in Asia and pay maybe $5-10/mo for local phone service, but this should not be included in virtualization costs.)
• http://www.postful.com/ for email text/pdf to snailmail which has per item charges. ~10.00-20.00/year

Total costs for the remote presence is around $360/year ($30/mo) to maintain a remote presence, as well as the convenience of managing the presence using the web and email.

* Softphone for Desktop Win/Mac/Nix
* Softphone for Mobile S60
* DID Provider

## Softphone for Desktop ##
A softphone is a software SIP phone implementation. SIP stands for [Session Initiation Protocol](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Session_Initiation_Protocol), basically an open standard for telephony. There are a few options out there, but essentially two categories: proprietary and open source.

### Proprietary ###
* [Gizmo5](http://gizmo5.com/), formerly GizmoProject, formerly PhoneGaim

### Open Source ###
* [QuteCom](http://www.qutecom.org/), formerly OpenWengo, has Win/Nix distributions that work, and appears to be one of the most comprehensive, having support for a wide variety of IM clients as well
* [Ekiga](http://www.ekiga.org/), formerly GnomeMeeting, has a Nix distribution of their latest 3.0 version
* [Kphone](http://sourceforge.net/projects/kphone/) is a Unix implementation, latest release is 2007 (as of 2008-10-03)
* [Linphone](http://www.linphone.org/) is a Win/Nix implementation

## S60 Softphone ##
* [Fring](http://fring.com) seems to be the only option that I can get working well on the Nokia n82
* Fring is proprietary, not open source

## SIP Stacks ##
For programmers, besides the open source projects mentioned above, the following are interesting SIP stacks for developing your own SIP applications:

* [pjSIP](http://www.pjsip.org/)
* Nokia’s [Sofia SIP](http://opensource.nokia.com/projects/sofia-sip/)

## Other projects ##
* [Asterisk](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asterisk_PBX) – PBX
* [Telepathy](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telepathy_(software)) – a Nokia project using Sofia SIP

Tachilek, Myanmar Market, originally uploaded by jeffmcneill.

Posted in flickr ]]> http://jeffmcneill.wordpress.com/2009/01/25/tachilek-myanmar-market/feed/ 0 jeffmcneill http://jeffmcneill.wordpress.com/2009/01/25/burmese-tea-and-cakes-21-baht-tachilek-myanmar/ http://jeffmcneill.wordpress.com/2009/01/25/burmese-tea-and-cakes-21-baht-tachilek-myanmar/#comments Sun, 25 Jan 2009 10:55:31 +0000 jeffmcneill http://jeffmcneill.com/2009/01/25/burmese-tea-and-cakes-21-baht-tachilek-myanmar/ ]]>

Burmese Tea and Cakes, 21 Baht, Tachilek, Myanmar, originally uploaded by jeffmcneill.

There were many other sights and sounds and gustatory experiences in Tachilek, Myanmar. However, I am growing less and less enamoured of simply taking out the camera (however disguised it is as my cell phone) and taking pictures. I will describe some of what was there for my brief stay, and encourage you, dear reader, to visit. Discover for yourself. My report is brief and meant to inform, but not replace direct experience. That is the most important, I am now convinced, for any sort of knowing.

• Writing predominantly in Myanmar and Chinese. Some speaking in Thai. A little in English. Much in Shan only (Tai Yai).
• Betel nut packages adorn roadside stalls, and their contents as red splotches on the ground.
• Many of the men wear the Longyi (sewn sarong), walking the streets, but jeans and other pants are more popular in the market.
• Women walk by with large wicker baskets held against their backs by woven straps supported by their foreheads. Both arms full of plastic grocery bags and the back packs half full.
• Tea shops and noodle houses. Some of the cooking done without ventilation beyond the open fourth wall.
• Islam and China, two influences which are much less evident in Thailand come on strong just across the border.
• Women in full black with only their eyes uncovered. This is a sight rare even in Indonesia, though I am not sure of how common it is in Indonesia. Perhaps these Muslims were immigrants and the dress uncommon for the area. Perhaps not.
• “Where are you from?” “I American, from Hawaii. Where are you from?” “I am Chinese.” “Myanmar-Chinese?” “No, all Chinese.”
• All in all, a good experience. I have my new longyi, and the second 60-day visa entry now begun.

Vexillologically speaking, George Vancouver gave King Kamehameha a British flag (a predecessor to the Union Jack).

Vancouver and the Hawaiian Islands

Captain James Cook was the first European to step foot on Vancouver Island in 1778, which was between his discovery and naming of the Sandwich Islands in 1778 (sailing into Waimea harbor, Kauai) and his return to Hawaii and subsequent death in Kaleakakua Bay, Big Island.

Those who do not learn from history…

I have lived in Hawaii for 7 years, and my subsequent abode for three months was Victoria on the island of Vancouver. I know better than to return to Hawaii after having left and visited Vancouver island. I will not be following in the footsteps of Captain James Cook, in this regard.

Happy 2552

Happy New Year 2552 B.E. from Chiang Mai, Thailand.

__Habits are simple, nature complex__. This formulation is meant to help understand how to talk about and act regarding the future. Change is necessary, and it is even possible. How do we conceive of this possibility? How do we talk about it?

The real question regarding talk, is to what degree is talking needed for change, that is action which creates change. Perhaps not at all. In fact, stopping talking can be such a powerful catalyst for change that perhaps the proliferation of social media inhibits needed change in our world. Action is the mediator between language and reality, not language the mediator between action and reality.

## Possibility and Predictability ##
David Ben-Gurion wrote that “all experts are experts on what has happened.” As we again try and focus our minds on the future, on possibility, is it possible to be an expert of the future? Again, the question of futurology and futurologists present itself.

In a November 4, 2008 article published in the Bangkok Post, Uri Avnery wrote:

In a world in which a person like Barack Hussein Obama can appear from nowhere and advance within a few years to the highest levels of world politics, nothing is predictable–and therefore everything is possible.

Here we have an insight that at first appears quite promising in terms of pregnant with possibility. But there is a fundamental error here. Predictability is about knowing. We precisely cannot say that “everything is possible”, since we don’t know that. All we get from this formulation is that we cannot predict, we cannot say what is possible. We most certainly, therefore, cannot say that everything is possible. Here there is a breakdown in what we can know, not a fundamental freeing of our mind from predictability. The problem is a mistake in thinking that an epistemological failure (inability to predict) has ontological weight (making everything possible).

This, then, is the problem of talk of the future freed from predictability. That is futurology loses its status as science, and attempts to don the robes of a prophetic voice, becoming a teller of stories, of possibilities.

## The Return to the Present ##
Meditations on the future are simply not fruitful, unmoored as the futurology has become from its presumed foundations. Instead it is precisely the present which deserves the attention and intentions. The complexity of possibility can be captured in the simplicity of the present moment. It is through the intensity of the present moment which change can take place. It is in the present moment that new habits are formed, and nature changed.

Talking about the future has two senses, the first is along the lines of “just talk” as opposed to action. The second sense has talking as a part of bringing the future into being.

The best way to predict the future is to create it. –Peter Drucker

### The Monk ###

There is a story somewhere which talks about a monk who was so devout and discerning that he only spoke the truth. He was never drawn into saying anything that wasn’t true. He never speculated, dissembled, or told anything less than what was absolutely correct. Needless to say, he didn’t have many opportunities for conversation; people are fond of their illusions.

It came to pass that the relation between the speech of the monk and the truth of the world was powerfully entwined. When the monk would talk about the future it would become true.

### The Futurologist ###

The futurologist is something of the opposite of the monk. Most futurologists use what is called scenario planning to try and understand the future. A scenario is a description of a “possible future”, in the lexicon of futurology. Good scenarios are vivid and compelling, much like a good story.

As the futurologists rely on the notion of possible worlds, it almost statistically impossible for a given scenario to actually come true. The futurologist necessarily lies. Of course the lie is meant to “tell the truth” of the future, much like the famous definition of painting.

### The Possible ###

However, the future doesn’t exist in our common sense meaning of the term. The truth that is being told is rather about the possible worlds notion of the future. In possible worlds, the _future_ can be understood as various possibilities, not as an emergent actuality.

Possible worlds do not have a clear relationship to an actual, emergent future. Of course there is likely a feedback mechanism between talking about the future (future possibilities) and which possibilities may become more likely through those conversations.

### Perception of the Future ###

Scenario planning in organizations was pioneered in Shell Oil. They credit their planning of scenarios with sensitizing their management to what was happening during the oil embargo in the 1970s. The unrestricted access to oil fields by oil companies was unquestioned at the time. One scenario, though considered unlikely, was that there would be restricted access at less favorable terms by the sovereign nations who controlled the oil fields. Shell was able to adjust their organizatinal strategy (stop building tankers and refineries, switch resources to exploration activities).

This approach makes scenario planning and perhaps other methods of futurology as adaptive responses to changing environments. So far so good. This approach understands the future as a changing environment that the organization must adapt to in order to survive and thrive.

The world now knows, more clearly than ever before, that the possibilities of the future astound us, even when we know that to be the case. The day before the election, Uri Avnery wrote in the Bangkok Post:

In a world in which a person like Barack Hussein Obama can appear from nowhere and advance within a few years to the highest levels of world politics, nothing is predictable–and therefore everything is possible.

### Talking helps Thinking ###

Talking about the future, in semi-structured approaches such as the futurologists scenarios, helps us think and understand future possible environments. These are fictions that train the mind, much like story problems in algebra class.

But how do we take the next step from thinking to action? How can we engage with the real, felt future?

The goal is not to understand the world but to change it. –Karl Marx

End of part 2, part 3 to follow…

A bit of reflection will reveal how much we know this to be a mistake.

* The current future was created by developing countries. In other words, developed nations emerged through development. Development, however, is far from a specific trajectory.
* The developed world is largely stagnating in terms of population and economic growth. Of the G7, countries are shrinking in population or encouraging massive migration from the developing world. China is entering this situation as well. The future will come from places such as Brazil, Vietnam, India, Thailand, South Africa, and Indonesia
* Greater economic connections between countries is seen as the best way to stabilize and manage risks in the global economic environment.
* The developing world resembles the developed world only insofar as it wants to, and only insofar as the viewpoint is from the perspective of the developed world.
* Most importantly, looking to the future is about trying to understand change, what will be different. And what will be different, even in the most hegemonic approach, is how things will be different in the integration of developing markets and political systems.

The developed countries are shrinking in relative population and power. Why would the future belong only to those aging countries or be made in their image?

This is a brief update and holiday wishes. I am in Thailand and have been since Nov 2. This followed on 3 months in Vancouver and Victoria, British Columbia, which was nice and enjoyable. I am currently in Chiang Mai and have been here after a week in Bangkok. The Bangkok airport closure has only affected me by thinning out the tourists in Chiang Mai, and there are no safety issues.

As far as travelling, I have been doing the same thing I do whereever I am, which is teaching and taking classes online. Instead of being on vacation, I just happen to be living in a foreign country.

There have also been some interesting marketing consulting opportunities regarding cross-cultural issues in the Chiang Mai market, with web and traditional publishing and translation issues. Intriguing and quite different when much of the workforce is not online, and a certain portion of it is strictly speaking illiterate in any language (though multi-lingual in speaking).

As you know, this decision to become nomadic was one forced by rising rental prices in Hawaii. I am very fortunate to be where I am, and am thankful that I can not afford to live in my own country. Why thankful? Simply because traveling is a great passion and a wonderful learning experience. The trick to traveling is to make friends wherever you go, and to slow down and hang out with local people. At least, that is what I find the most interesting and engaging.

One opportunity that has arisen recently, since the school semester is at an end, is for me to spend 10 days in the Vipassana meditation center at Wat Rampoeng. I will be there from 16-26 of December. I will not be available for any communication during that time.

After that I will be heading to Cambodia to visit Angkor Wat and hang out in a few places. Originally I was going to head over to Vietnam but I have put those plans on hold and will reenter Thailand before the spring semester begins, and stay in Chiang Mai for the first few months of 2009. I want to have a stable base for getting the semester underway with teaching and taking classes, and have another business opportunity to pursue as well. At that point the schedule has not been worked out, but I am thinking about Sri Lanka around March or April, and then up to northern India for the summer.

I hope you have had an awesome 2008 and wish you the best in this holiday season and for the coming new year.

##Smallest Practical##
The main advantage to this device is that it is about as small as a computer one wants to use as a complete computer. The screen is 10.2″ and the keyboard is smaller than standard, so this pushes the envelope in acceptable interfaces, however it is as good as it gets without upgrading to a 12″ screen or downgrading to a more hunt-and-peck compatible 8.9″ screen. The MSI Wind also has this footprint (see head-to-head MSI Wind vs. Asus EeePC 100H).

I imagine that an 11″ or some kind of futuristic folding screen, such as below, will make this obsolete. For now, it works quite well.

##Keyboard##
I do have more typing errors with the keyboard, however it is not unusable or too annoying. Having tried the Asus and Dell Mini 8.9″ model keyboards, the 10.2 screen form factor provides a more usable option. One problem is that there is no visual indicator for the Caps Lock, and it sits (as usual) perilously between the tab and the shift key, both much used.

##Trackpad##
There are well-known issues with the trackpad buttons being too firm for clicking. However, the trackpad allows for finger-tap button-clicking as well as multi-touch. Not bad. I plug in a full-sized microsoft usb optical mouse most of the time. Am considering switching to a bluetooth mouse.

##Wireless support##
The EeePC 1000H supports wifi (802.11a/b/g/n) and bluetooth. I have connected over 802.11n networks and they are very speedy.

A handy software device controller in the Windows system tray allows for turning on and off the wifi, webcam, bluetooth, and switching between the 1024×600 and 1024×768 (which is a scrolling interface). This is a great utility, though dedicated buttons (as well as dedicated audio buttons) would be better.

##Media##
There is a great SD Card reader. I use a MicroSD Card adapter and just switch between two MicroSD cards in my cell phone/camera. That is way faster than any usb or bluetooth connector and software. Call me old school here.

##USB##
Three, count-em, three USB.

##Screen and Video##
The screen is sharp and bright. A great screen for watching videos on a desk with another person, or on a lap. My settings are the 1024×600 with top refresh and colors, with fonts at 120% size. This is pretty good and only causes problems on some websites (vertical scrolling) and larger documents. Use of full-screen in Firefox 2 works pretty well.

One issue that arose has to do with the windows dock. After much experimentation, I have set the doc to the left-hand side of the screen with auto-hide turned on. Another issue is that many software interfaces for the web have been written for a 768 width and do not work with 600. Since there is the toggle utility mentioned above, it is not a huge annoyance. However, I would caution all developers to consider 600 as the more appropriate maximum width and consider that the widescreen is here to stay, 4:3, buh bye.

I have not used the external VGA connector, but the video card can support display across multiple monitors and a wide selection of resolutions on external monitors. Since this is largely a low-power shared-memory Intel video card, it is no surprise that a quick foray into Second Life was a rather painful experience (though it did install and run). On the other hand, Google Earth works acceptably well.

##Audio##
Audio is not loud enough in general, and the speaker placement at the bottom front of the computer is trouble, especially when placed on a lap. However, the sound quality is pretty great when using headphones. There is a bunch of equalizer and noise reduction setting options, including various Dolby technologies. Using the [Creative Labs EP-630s](http://www.amazon.com/Creative-Labs-51MZ0085AA007-EP-630-Headphones/dp/B000LVIC58/975-20/) (a great sounding, tangle-free earbud) produces a great sound experience.

The microphone built into the case just below the screen is flawed. Any times I have used it has produced unacceptable results. This forces me to use a headphone with microphone, which makes everything much better.

There is another issue that has the sound not working after waking up from sleep mode. Reinstallation of the latest Asus drivers fixes this.

##Webcam##
The webcam I have had mixed results with. Not the best video, but in certain settings, good lighting, and not a lot of motion, it can work well.

##Battery##
I get about 5 hours with wifi on, and 6 hours with it turned off. This does not include primarily use of video. I think it drops down to 4 hours or so in just viewing video. Not sure about that. Basically, this blows away anything I have had in the past (except the NEC 770, which could last 6 hours, but ran Windows CE and had a RAM drive). The battery recharges fairly quickly. Sorry that I don’t have exact times on this, I haven’t beenn rigorously testing. But it charges faster than it discharges.

##Bottom Line##
This is a game changer. Apparently [Asus has sold a whole lot of these](http://www.liliputing.com/2008/10/what-recession-asus-ships-700000-netbooks-in-september.html), and there is no end in sight. There are many other models out there, such as Acer, MSI, and now Dell, as well as a bunch of other lesser-known brands. As a traveler I am seeing quite a few of these and their smaller brothers and cousins everywhere I go. Some are as low as $300. I purchased my Asus EeePC 1000H for $504 with shipping and an upgrade to 2gb ram. A similar model (with bigger hard drive) was available in Chiang Mai, Thailand for about $550 USD with tax.

Duck over rice, yum! This is about 50 meters from my lodging in Sukhumvit, Soi 38, Bangkok, Thailand

It is ~33 Thai Baht to 1 USD. That makes this a $1.20 dish.

##Habit and Nature##
Some might suggest we are human doing, rather than human being. I believe it was Aristotle who suggested it is what we do that makes us what we are. There is no essential being underneath our actions, per se, but the actions and the beings are concomitant. If so, then what we do right now is of vital importance. Our habit, what we do regularly, _is_ what we are.

##Habit and the Future##
In some strong sense the future is about change, otherwise it would be as Lao Tze would have it, that if people kept their customs and worshiped the ancestors, he could tell you what life would be like in 10 generations. The point is that people do not keep customs and worship the ancestors as was done in the past. Things change, and even people change. This means that habits can change.

De futuris contingentibus non est determinata veritas. –Aristotle

##How Then, Change?##
How, then do we change? And is the discourse of change, or of the future, a part of this change? Or can it be a false substitute for taking action? I know I have been as guilty as anyone in terms of talking about the future more than taking the necessary steps to bring it into being.

##The Role of the Discourse of Change in Actual Change##
Of course it is possible that talking about the future is a necessary, but not sufficient condition for it to come into being. Sort of how we need to talk about change, engender belief in change, before we can have a candidate for change, who then can be elected and actually create change (we hope).

_End of part 1…_

The man then announced that he would now pay $20 for each one. This renewed the efforts of the villagers and they started catching monkeys again. Soon the supply diminished even further and again they ere ever harder to catch, so people started going back to their farms and forgot about monkey catching.

The man increased his price to $25 each and the supply of monkeys became so sparse that it was an effort to even see a monkey, much less catch one. The man now announced that he would buy monkeys for $50! However, since he had to go to the city on some business, his assistant would now buy on his behalf.

While the man was away the assistant told the villagers. ‘Look at all these monkeys in the big cage that the man has bought. I will sell them to you at $35 each and when the man returns from the city, you can sell them to him for $50 each.’ The villagers rounded up all their savings and bought all the monkeys. They never saw the man or his assistant again and once again, there were monkeys everywhere. Now you know how the stock market works.

via email.

## Confused ##
I have been confused, and quite annoyed as well, by this whole bailout fiasco. My sense was don’t do it. Now I am reaching the conclusion that it needs to be done (but not how it was done). Thereby we may actually have doomed ourselves, rather than doing good. But the predominant experience of all of this is still quite a bit of confusion. I think now I know why…

## What Happened ##
It all comes down to policies. but there are several different kinds of policies. If we can parse them out, perhaps this will all make more sense. Let’s rehearse the policy timeline:

* Congress, with the help of McCain and Bush, deregulate investment banks, making reporting to, and regulation by, the SEC optional. Big news, none of those banks actually reported to the SEC.
* Billions (trillions?) of dollars in bad loans were created based on the demand for the most profitable financial instruments, US mortgage-backed securities.
* Those companies which were the first to create these securities, slice and dice them up, and sell the parts, have all failed, been acquired, or (the final two in existence) transformed themselves into commercial banks. No more investment banks exist.
* With the failure of mammoth Lehman Brothers, credit markets effectively seized up. Short term credit had become the vital lifeblood that an astoundingly large segment of the financial sector to survive, as leverage had gotten out of hand.
* So the cause of all of this is bad judgment which was able to grow to the scale it had through a combination of greed and lack of oversight.

## The Bailout ##
* Secretary of the Treasury Paulson and Chairman Bernake should serve terms in Prison for criminal negligence, as far as I can tell. A cell mate should be Chairman Greenspan. They had been overseeing the crisis (bailing out Freddie and Fannie, etc.), and came to the conclusion that the only way to deal with this issue is to encourage the banks to get some transparency into their books.
* The way they could do this, the thinking went, would be to reward transparency with purchase of bad debt. Hence the $700bn bailout package was aimed at banks in that way. The basic concept was that transparency would somehow help restart the seized credit situation.

## The Policy Problem ##
* The problem with the bailout is that trying to solve a monetary problem, caused by a regulatory problem, with a fiscal solution. Let’s parse through these different policy areas and see what goes where.
* __Monetary policy__ has to do with the amount of money in circulation. The only real lever on this is the interest rate for central banks to lend to commercial banks. Greenspan realized that we had lost control over monetary policy during the last rate increase he oversaw because as he raised interest rates, the flow of money was not thereby controlled. Why? Because the world had become global and money was raised offshore, from the Chinese government and other sovereign wealth funds. Note that the Federal Reserve comes under the Executive branch of the US Government.
* __Regulatory policy__ is the ability of Congress to regulate commerce as well as international trade. The regulatory gutting which began with Regan, continued under Bush Sr. and Clinton, reached a frenzied spectacle and apotheosis under W. and the Republican-held congress.
* __Fiscal policy__ is the budget making process which is held by Congress. Of course the Executive can veto, but Congress can override.

## What Really Happened – The Short Answer ##
Here we are back to the point of confusion. Why would the Executive (in terms of the Federal Reserve, which sets and executes Monetary policy) actually request of Congress a change to Fiscal policy, which was due to a lack of Regulatory policy?

* Short answer: Because we are in deep doo doo.
* Longer answer: Because Monetary policy doesn’t work very well anymore, and Regulatory policy is not well understood by people such as Secretary Paulson who has run organizations on Wall Street (and is himself worth hundreds of millions because of it) and whose career is avoiding such regulations.

## What Should have Happened – And Will Happen Next ##
* It is likely that the credit markets are seizing up, and the $700bn didn’t actually solve anything (other than create another $700bn in debt for the US, which is not a good thing).
* We should have waited until the markets unwound and then went through all the books. That would have gotten us the transparency we needed.
* We should then (and still will likely have to) set some short-term Fiscal policies which will look like a bailout but would be (what it really is) a nationalization of certain market segments
* And finally, regulatory policies should be put in place that make sense and prevent a repeat of this same sorry state of affairs.

Sigh.

## Update 2008-10-15 ##
* [Told you so](http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/15/business/economy/15bailout.html)

Stairmaster West Bay Victoria BC, originally uploaded by jeffmcneill.

Posted in flickr ]]> http://jeffmcneill.wordpress.com/2008/10/08/stairmaster-west-bay-victoria-bc/feed/ 0 jeffmcneill http://jeffmcneill.wordpress.com/2008/10/08/sharing-pdfs-and-other-documents-four-options/ http://jeffmcneill.wordpress.com/2008/10/08/sharing-pdfs-and-other-documents-four-options/#comments Wed, 08 Oct 2008 22:45:06 +0000 jeffmcneill http://jeffmcneill.com/?p=1354 ]]> ## Scribd ##
* [Scribd](http://scribd.com) could be consider the leader in this category, but there are several issues with this service.
* The most prominent problem is the way that they deal with illegitimate takedown requests. Who can trust a service that will not restore a document that is ones’ own when some other author has claimed that it is theirs? The inability to have private documents which are taken down for the same illegitimate reasons? While I liked Scribd in the beginning, they really need to get up to speed on legal issues. This is not only an issue of fair use (a copy of a paid for document uploaded and not shared), but an issue of actual intellectual property being denied inside of their service. No thank you.

## Docstoc ##
* [Docstoc](http://docstoc.com) is really the best out there in terms of functionality, though it is fairly ugly in terms of interface. Functionality beats beauty, however, in the absence of an equally functional competitor.
* There are friending/sharing options, as well as marking documents private.
* Unfortunately there is no group function, as there are (limited as they may be) in Scribd. This is one area I expect (and hope) there to be improvement soon.
* One great new application allows for direct [synchronization between a desktop and the user file system on Docstoc](http://www.docstoc.com/Sync/). I am testing this out now, and it seems to be working pretty well.
* Docstoc also has a nice [email attachments application](http://www.docstoc.com/oneclick/) that uploads and generates URLs for email automatically.
* Note that both Scribd and Docstoc do support more than PDFs for sharing.
* [Friend me on Docstoc](http://www.docstoc.com/profile/jeffmcneill).

## Issuu ##
* [Issuu](http://issuu.com) has a nice look and feel, and showed the real possibilities of flash paper, namely with artistic magazine layouts (as opposed to the business document). While this first overview and tour piqued my interest, a number of annoyances were soon encountered. There are some issues with Issuu…
* The uploader timed out at 100% when I tried an upload
* There were literally a dozen required fields before the upload would take, including several drop down menus (which are slow), as well as limited categories
* While there is an “invite my friends” option, when I used gmail to identify three friends who were users, it did not add them as people I am following. Presumably it sent them an invitation to friend me, but the people do have public profiles and potentially public documents to view, or at least documents tagged/favorited.

## Edocr ##
* [Edocr](http://www.edocr.com) allows for uploading and public sharing, and their viewer is nice.
* Unfortunately they don’t appear to have any privacy settings.
* They do have groups to join and other uses can be added to buddy lists as well as messaging between users.
* The uploader was somewhat annoying with all fields required and a 10 word minimum in the description field (which wasn’t stated ahead of time, had to submit and get an error).

## Slideshare ##
* I’ve included [Slideshare](http://slideshare.net) here as a fifth possible option, because I was able to upload a regular (non slideshow) pdf and it showed up fine on their site (as a single slide vertically scrollable document). However, the embedded player doesn’t seem to work with this kind of document (player never finishes loading).
* Slideshare’s groups, follow, and privacy settings (with secret urls and embedding allowed for secret or private settings) are excellent. They have had a lot of latency and very slow to fix certain bugs in the past, however they have a good set of early adopters and there is a lot of good content up there as of now. This makes them hard to ignore.

Q: I can’t quite figure out what you do, can you tell me?

A: That’s an answer that would take more than 140 characters.

I cannot get this private twitter conversation out of my head. My suspicions are that the individual in question does not know what they do, or cannot say what they do. The answer simply cannot take more than 140 characters, at least the short answer. The beginning of the conversation is 140 characters or less.

##Resource##
* [Write a 140 character resume for Business Week](http://blogs.businessweek.com/the_thread/blogspotting/archives/2008/05/write_140-char.html)

Note: we cannot use the word __sustain__ or __sustainable__ because it is being used as a marketing term that is now completely devoid of meaning. Instead, let’s refer to what we mean here by __ecologically sound practices__ (ESPs).

I believe that there will be no miracle resource such as oil that has been widely developed, but there will be many different miracle resources. For construction, we turn to the humble Bamboo, of which there are “91 genera and about 1,000 species” ([Wikipedia article on Bamboo](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bamboo)).

Bamboo is a group of woody perennial evergreen plants in the true grass family Poaceae, subfamily Bambusoideae, tribe Bambuseae. Some of its members are giant bamboo, forming by far the largest members of the grass family. Bamboo is the fastest growing woody plant in the world. Their accelerated growth rate (up to 3-4 feet/day (1.5-2.0 inches/hr)) is due to a unique rhizome system and is dependent on local soil and climate conditions.

Some interesting products using bamboo include the [Dell Studio Hybrid](http://www1.ca.dell.com/content/products/productdetails.aspx/desktop-studio-hybrid), and the [SimpleTech Redrive](http://www.simpletech.com/products/storage/redrive). There are bamboo [houses](http://www.bambooliving.com/), bamboo [flooring](http://www.bamboozle.com.au/), bamboo [paper](http://smockpaper.com/sustain/bamboo/), and bamboo [cloth and clothing](http://www.bambooclothes.ca/). Of course there is the [bamboo bicycle frame](http://www.bmeres.com/bambooframe.htm). Urban Addiction has a number of [interesting and informative posts](http://www.urbanaddiction.com/archives/cat_bamboo.html) on Bamboo. And Softpedia has a [nice article](http://news.softpedia.com/news/The-Amazing-Bamboo-82013.shtml) on all the various uses of bamboo. For folks in the USA there useful information site [American Bamboo](http://www.americanbamboo.org/).

* [http://www.eurodns.com](http://www.eurodns.com/)
* [http://www.europeregistry.com](http://www.europeregistry.com/domains/domains-search.htm)

Some are costly per year (100 euros or so) and better deals might be had, but for the one-off search across possible domains, both of these are great consumers of time.

Enjoy!

### … Paved with Good Intentions ###
Now of course I was well intentioned; I wanted our network more secure. One part of my job was to assess, propose, and promulgate more and better security. After all, it would be harder for the bad guys to get to our company’s confidential data if we made the passwords harder to crack. I demonstrated this by running a network crack tool against the computers and thereby cracking somewhere between 10-20% of the enabled accounts.

### Less Security, Not More ###
But the policy resulted in a less secure network. Why?

* People could not remember the new passwords, so they wrote them down on paper, and placed them near their computers.
* People could not remember the new passwords, so they had to be reset, which meant there was an amount of time when the people could not do their work because they were waiting for an administrator to help them (not to mention that the administrator could not do other work when helping them).

### What is Security? ###
If we take a step back, we need to ask the question of security _for what_. That is, what does security mean? I have a presentation somewhere that flushes out all the meaning to the concept of access. Reliability, data integrity, access control, all of these come down to access. If security is cashed out in terms of accessibility, then we simultaneously denied access to our own resources to our own people, at the same time making those people who had a more secure password less secure by forcing them to create new and hard-to-remember passwords.

Yes, yes, I hear you say _but there are mnemonics to help with password recollection_ and I completely agree. I have taught them to many people. However, what are we really doing here?

### Intervention at the Edge ###
This approach of a monolithic policy caused havoc and a loss of productivity, while at the same time giving us a warm and fuzzy feeling of being more secure. We have an enforced policy! The lawyers were proud. A defensible position, in legal terms.

We can contrast this with another approach, which I don’t have a good name for, but let’s call it __intervention at the edge__. This is where instead of creating a policy, let’s say about firing all people who watch pornography at work, we just drop in a network sniffer and send anonymous messages through the browser that those few people having a naughty peek at work shouldn’t be doing that. Wow, behavior changes, problems averted. No HR involved, no attorneys, no careers ruined. Much less time involved, results achieved.

### Outsource Yourself ###
Those network administrators working in corporate IT departments should take as their goal their own outsourcing. That is the only way to really conceive of the changes that are going on in the industry and the appropriate response to them, professionally. This is also, paradoxically, the only way to make oneself valuable and prevent ones’ own outsourcing.

What I mean is this: consider that every action taken (policy or non-policy) will result in more work or less work in the future. Also consider that every action will result in more or less work for the non-IT people. Consider finally that every action will have an effect on access, the core concept of security.

If a course of action will take more of your time, more time of others, or give yourself or others less access to resources, it should be regarded with deep suspicion.

### Folly of the Administrator ###
I have recently heard of the ongoing folly of administrators who do such things as block access to YouTube and Gmail. Why? If employees are spending company time and network resources on non-work activities, then there is a bigger problem that should be dealt with at the level of individual performance. However, is it conceivable that these and other blocked sites might be useful to an organization? If so, then blocking them is denying access to resources. In addition, the idea of turning wasteful employees into virtuous ones through legislation is a folly that has existed for millennia. There is plenty of evidence found in the histories of Seutonious and Tacitus.

Silicon Valley is considered the most productive place on the planet. This the place where Gmail and YouTube were invented, and no less consumed to the highest degree. And yet, this contradiction of dramatic productivity and equally dramatic time-consuming activity with these seemingly irrelevant resources doesn’t give pause?

### Policies should be about the Future ###

I have had the sad task of being a part of a committee promulgating network policies for a university. The experience was one where I found myself as the lone voice crying out for us not to legislate the current ad hoc administrative practices (turning them into rules that would then require action by the Board of Regents to actually change). As the only student on the committee, it was seen as natural by university administrators that my suggestion be ignored.

Policies should help guide future actions, not past practices. Policies should be about giving more access to more resources, and not restricting access. In other words, we need to do __the exact opposite__ of what network administrators tend to do.

### MyFax ###
* [Myfax](http://www.myfax.com/)
* $10/mo or $110/year for receiving 100/sending 200 faxes, for the moderate to heavy organization. Free international faxing to [a number of countries](http://www.myfax.com/pop_countries.asp?bt=p). Toll free or local number.
* __Bottom line__ – Good for international outbound faxing. Costs only $10 for first month to begin using.

### Interfax ###
* [Interfax](http://www.interfax.net/) Is a great service that uses a pre-pay and per-fax model instead of subscription billing. A toll free number is the only option. Inbound phone number is $13.95/mo. Simple, easy-to-use interface works fine. Menu pricing for faxing to different countries.
* __Bottom line__ – Costs as little as $10 to begin sending faxes, $25 to begin receiving. For heavy fax users, likely the most economical approach.

### Efax ###
* [Efax](http://www.efax.com/) offers $12.95/mo in the US (different prices for different countries) for a local or toll-free number inbound and up to 130 pages faxing either direction.
* __Bottom line__ – Free 30 day trial. Cheapest to begin using for inbound faxing (until we get to K7 and Faxaway offerings below).

### Faxpipe ###
* [Faxpipe](http://www.faxpipe.com/) has the [lowest pricing per year](http://www.faxpipe.com/account_billing.html) ($3.95/mo = $47.40/year prepay for full year) for 25 pages faxed. The disadvantage is that they don’t actually allow you to manage your account via the website. This seems like a throwback to the early 1990s where every FAQ question is answered by a “call us at 1-888-blah-blah”. Free trial.
* __Bottom line__ – Cheapest per year sending/receiving (until we get to K7 and Faxaway offerings below).

### Faxzero ###
* [Faxzero](http://faxzero.com/) offers a free faxing service (3 per day, 3 pages max, advertisement supported) or low cost $1.95 (paypal only) fax up to 15 pages.
* __Bottom line__ – Free or low cost per fax sending. Great for those who almost never send faxes and don’t need to receive them.

### K7 Unified Messaging ###
* [K7 Unified Messaging](http://www.k7.net/) is definitely an _I fell down the rabbit hole_ kind of offering. Free voicemail and fax reception? Um, ok… They require regular usage to keep the account (defined as once per month voicemail or fax reception). 206 (Seattle) area code only.
* __Bottom line__ – Absolutely free receiving voicemail and faxes. Wow.

### Faxaway ###
* [Faxaway](http://www.faxaway.com/) is another offering of the K7 folks. This offers the same inbound voice and fax, as well as an outbound faxing with a pre-pay ($10) and per minute transmission charges and a $1/mo account maintenance fee.
* __Bottom line__ – It doesn’t get much better than this for the light fax user. Per minute charges higher than for Faxpipe.

### Final Bottom Line ###
* Moderate to heavy international fax senders look at [Myfax](http://www.myfax.com/) or [Interfax](http://www.interfax.net/)
* Heavy users should probably go with the [Interfax](http://www.interfax.net/) offering
* Light senders and receivers will like [Faxaway](http://www.faxaway.com/)
* Absolutely free one-off, 3 page fax can be sent via [Faxzero](http://faxzero.com/)
* [Efax](http://www.efax.com/) free trial for 30 days of inbound and outbound up to 130 pages

Urm, good Monday morning…

### Requirements ###
* __Outbound calling__ preferably with a caller ID
* __Inbound calling__ with a local phone number in USA and Canada
* __Voicemail__ with voicemail notification/alert
* __Mobile client__ for Nokia n82 S60 client, preferably with the same per minute calling plan

### Skype – Skype In – Skype Out ###
[Skype](http://skype.com/) is likely the most popular consumer and business VOIP solution, purchased by Ebay for an ungodly sum, but essentially running as a stand-alone unit

* Skype Out is the dial out option which has per minute or [monthly subscriptions](http://skype.com/allfeatures/subscriptions/) including an unlimited US/Canada for $2.95/mo
* Skype In is an inbound phone number with outbound caller ID for $60/year, with numbers available in [21 countries](http://skype.com/allfeatures/onlinenumber/) (for some reason not including Canada)
* Skype has [quite a few nice options](http://skype.com/prices/), including 25-person conference calls, send text messages, etc.
* Skype also offers a service called Skype-to-go which enables a local calling number that then uses Skype as a backbone to another number in another country. This is limited to only a handful of countries currently, but is worth looking into if you are interested in bridging between the following countries: Australia, Chile, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Ireland, New Zealand, Poland, Sweden, UK and USA.
* There are various Skype clients for the mobile phone at the [Nokia Mosh](http://mosh.nokia.com/) site, however the [Fring client](http://www.fring.com/) really works best for me. It is a free VOIP and IM client that supports Skype, SIP phones, Twitter, Google Talk, Jabber, etc.

### Gizmo Project – Gizmo5 ###
[Gizmo](http://gizmo5.com/) is a project of [SIPphone](http://sipphone.com/)

* Gizmo allows for forwarding to another phone number for per-minute Gizmo Call Out rates.
* Gizmo offers $12/3 months and $35/1 year (USA number price, higher for other countries or particular prefixes) call-in VOIP with no additional per minute charges for incoming calls, with numbers available in 28 countries (including Canada)
* For $4.00 Gizmo adds Caller ID to the Gizmo Call Out calls
* There are additional features like [sending and receiving free text messages](http://gizmo5.com/pc/products/features/two-way-sms/), free [conference call-in numbers](http://gizmo5.com/pc/products/features/conference-calling/), and [interoperability with other IM networks](http://gizmo5.com/pc/products/features/multi-network-chats/) and [group chats](http://gizmo5.com/pc/products/features/group-chat/) and call [recording](http://gizmo5.com/pc/products/features/call-recording/).
* Gizmo works on Win, Mac, Linux and Nokia Tablets. There are Gizmo clients for mobile phones but they increase the per-minute call out price. Just as with Skype, the [Fring client](http://www.fring.com/) supports Gizmo for call out and call in, though for the chatting, it is better to go with the Gizmo5 client on the S60 platform.

### VBuzzer ###
[Vbuzzer](http://www.vbuzzer.com/) is a little-known Canadian VOIP provider with some great pricing and options

* A Toronto area code number costs $50/year. Prices are as low as 1.5 cents/minute for North American calls
* One reason I did not go this route is that I could not get a Vancouver area code number at the time (even though now I am in Victoria)
* On the Vbuzzer blog is an entry for [Nokia SIP VOIP settings](http://www.vbuzzer.com/blog/nokia-e61-e51-configurations-vbuzzer), and the Fring client can work because Vbuzzer is a SIP-compliant VOIP provider.

### SIP ###
SIP stands for [Session Initiation Protocol](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Session_Initiation_Protocol) and is a 3GPP standard for multimedia session management, used most often with VOIP. With the use of standards, there are more options for SIP providers that SIP client and server implementations and interoperability, unlike the proprietary protocols used by Skype. [XMPP](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extensible_Messaging_and_Presence_Protocol), aka Jabber, is another open standard messaging protocol that has a similar role with regard to instant messaging.

### Final Decision ###
At the end of the day, for flexibility and cost savings I made the following decisions

* [Skype](http://skype.com/) for dialing out with $2.95/mo unlimited calling to US and Canada
* [Skype](http://skype.com/) for computer-to-computer calling (easier for others to install and call)
* [Gizmo](http://gizmo5.com/) for dialing in with a Seattle phone number for $35/year
* [Fring](http://www.fring.com/) for the S60 client for dialing out with Skype and receiving calls with Gizmo
* Final costs will run about $70.40 for the year of calling in and out internationally
* The main disadvantage is that I have given up the idea of using the regular telecom networks and have to rely on computer and broadband and wifi networks for the calls. The main advantage is a huge pricing difference that has actually increased my use of telephony and reduced the amount of transportation I use to have meetings.
* Note, the use of [Zoho Meeting](http://meeting.zoho.com/) for desktop sharing and presentations is a strong supplement to voice communication (and the occasional video call).

Little River Valley from Klahhane Ridge; Olympic NP, WA. 8489

### Introduction ###
The six Fs are __fame__, __family__, __force__, __fortune__, __freedom__ and __fun__. The notion is that an organization should pick two of these as the priority of the organizational members, and recruit on that basis. Ask yourself which two of the six Fs are your primary motivators?

### Fame ###
* Become known and recognized by peers and strangers

### Family ###
* Relationships outside of work, aka time and flexibility

### Force ###
* Be a force in the world, power to change things

### Fortune ###
* Money, money, money

### Freedom ###
* Ability to choose and shape your work

### Fun ###
* How much enjoyment that can be had in your work

### Question ###
Which two of these Fs motivate your work?

## Browsers
* [Firefox](http://www.mozilla.com/) __-s-__
* [Flock](http://flock.com/)
* [Opera](http://www.opera.com/)
* [Seamonkey](http://www.seamonkey-project.org/)

__Of the following extensions, all work in Firefox, and many (most) work in Flock and Seamonkey.__

## Improve Firefox Functionality
* [Adblock Filterset.G Updater](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1136) __-s-__
* [Adblock Plus](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1865) __-s-__
* [Autohide](http://www.krickelkrackel.de/autohide/) – improved F11/fullscreen __-s-__
* [Tab Mix Plus](http://tmp.garyr.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=9178) – improved tab management

## Improved Web Applications
* [Better Flickr](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/8010)
* [Better GCal](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/5299) __-s-__
* [Better Gmail 2](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/6076) __-s-__
* [Better GReader](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/6424) __-s-__
* [CustomizeGoogle](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/743) __-s-__
* [Google Gears](http://gears.google.com) __-s-__

## Integrating apps with Firefox
* [Delicious Bookmarks](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addons/versions/3615#version-2.0.64) – note v. 2.0.64 only
* [Goolge Earth Plugin](http://code.google.com/apis/earth/)
* [Google Gears](http://gears.google.com/) __-s-__
* [Google Toolbar for Firefox](http://toolbar.google.com/) __-s-__
* [Mobile Barcoder](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/2780) – QR codes for mobile phones to read
* [Picnik](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/4889) – online image editor
* [Remember the Milk for Gmail](http://www.rememberthemilk.com/services/gmail/)

## Greasemonkey Scripts
* [Greasemonkey](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/748) __-s-__
* [Clean Gmail Print](http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/26189)
* [GMail GTD Tickler](http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/7676) __-s-__
* [Flickr AllSizes+](http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/6178)
* [Flickr Groups Organiser](http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/4131)
* [Flickrati](http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/6273)
* [WikED](http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/12529) – mediawiki enhanced editor __-s-__
* [Download YouTube Videos as MP4](http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/25105) __-s-__
* [Youtube High Quality](http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/23702) __-s-__

## Development Tools
* [ColorZilla](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/271)
* [Firebug](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1843)
* [Live HTTP headers](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/3829)
* [SQLite Manager](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/5817)
* [YSlow](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/5369)

There are many useful concepts illustrated in this book, including:

• Gutenberg diagram–Primary optical area and terminal anchor
• Ambient signifiers by Ross Howard – color, size, transparency level
• The goal to create positive moments, with a great example of the use of autocomplete
• Video!
• Display validation pre-submit, aka check boxes which activate next to a validated form as the user tabs through the interface
• Many other nuanced goodies

One of the greatest compliments is that this book doesn’t go far enough, yet its core message is to go further than we have gone, hence it is a book on the path…

Some criticisms

• Talks smack about former client
• Doesn’t go far enough in reducing instruction text
• In showing character count in Twitter, does not indicate a “going over limit” could be handled
• Use of the phrase (e.g., me@mydomain.com) after an attendee email form field label–do we really have people who don’t know what an email address looks like? And if so, are they really going to learn it on this website?
• Repetitive use of text, e.g., attendee first name, attendee last name, attendee email
• Heavy use of drop-downs
• Wants to (needlessly) coin the term protocast, for a screencast used for a demo/walkthrough
• Inconsistency in handling question marks as helper links in an interface (uses both ? and what’s this? instead of simply ?

But these complaints are largely trying to hold the book to the standard it is trying to create for the interface designer. In other words, any of its detractions and failures are largely seen as indicators of its success in making us think more deeply about what it means to design for the moment.

Thank you sir.

I am new to the bridge thing, which essentially are one way feeds of dents from identi.ca or Leo Laporte‘s army.twit.tv or any other laconica installation.

From what I can tell there are currently three ways of doing this bridge, though I am sure this will multiply very soon, and I likely have missed a few (please add them in the comments).

Update – as of 2008-08-28 only the TwitterFeed solution is reliable

• Build your own with the rss feed from any laconica instance, for example http://identi.ca/jeffmcneill/rss and TwitterFeed –note that twitterfeed actually supports creating laconica posting of feeds as well
• Ken Sheppardson‘s bridge at http://bridge.kshep.net/ currently works with identi.ca accounts (there is a drop-down list which may include additional laconica servers to choose from at this point). Update: Svenbilt and the TWiT Army are now drop-down items as of 2008-08-27
• Brad Williams has a bridge over at webdevstudios. Currently this is for identi.ca only.

Update 2 – screenshot of settings for Twitterfeed identica-to-twitter

Interestingly, none of these are listed in Wikipedia’s List of Project Manager Software, mainly I believe because they started as source code management in the cloud, and not as project management. The rising popularity of distributed source control systems has made such offerings more and more compelling.

What follows is a brief review/overview of Github, Launchpad and Assembla, neither sophisticated, nor exhaustive. I just think it may be important to start putting these more prominently on the map. I intend on using Assembla, and will report back on how that all worked out.

Github

• The strongest features is the fact this is Git hosting, and a number of pricing options, with great functionality for free. As well, Github offers a set of JSON hooks and messages for roll-your-own integration with other tools and services such as Campfire and Lighthouse. Git, of course, is the Linus Torvalds project for managing the Linux kernel project. Ruby on Rails and quite a few other projects besides the kernel use Github.

Launchpad

• Launchpad uses the Bazaar DSCM, a Shuttleworth project to manage the Ubuntu distribution. Launchpad offers some interesting cross-project management features, and has quite a few prominent projects hosted there, such as MySQL, Zope and Firefox as well as Ubuntu. Additional features include Bugzilla and Trac plugins (as well as an integrated bug tracker), a new API, translation, team management, blueprints and milestones, build tools and package construction. Very nice interface.

Assembla

• Assembla has all the same sorts of things that Github and Launchpad in terms of bug tracking (native and TRAC integration) source code management (SVN, Mercurial, Git or Github connector), as well as chat, scrum, and time tracking, an image annotation tool and an enhanced HR component (Launchpad has something similar). Crazy.

There are a few open source project management tools worth a look (beyond the cloud):

• dotProject
• ProjectPier
• Project.net
• Openproj
• Trac which can be integrated into Assembla

For the cloud computing environment, there is of course the venerable 37 Signals Basecamp

Oh, and lest I forget, FogBugz from Joel Spoolsky’s Fog Creek Software is pretty neat, though it doesn’t have a source control component. Great bug and project management tool for the cloud.

P.S., see this article for a brief discussion on the use of CVS/SVN compared with Bazaar/Mercurial (best to also read the comments).

1. Create your own content – make money through distribution and/or advertising – Lonelygirl15, Hulu
2. Create someone else’ content, video production – get paid by content creators/owners – Searider Productions
3. Support user-created content network – get paid by advertising and viewstream aggregation – YouTube
4. Video upload and statistics management – premium service to producers – Tubemogul
5. Premium content aggregation – higher-end advertising deals – Mevio (used to be podshow)
6. Video ecommerce – sell or rent video online – Apple, Amazon, Netflix
7. Niche advertising networks – aggregate advertisers and content together – VideoEgg, Brightroll
8. Low latency network video delivery – get paid by content creators/distributors – Brightcove, Amazon S3

There is a ninth business model (perhaps a half dozen more) but that one I am saving for later…

Chips and Rouille are quite good, and the Mussels are huge and fresh, caught nearby, as one would expect. $12

Take a look at all the various sports, and

Elements

1. Geographic features given advantage or needed by a sport
2. Sports with strong following within the country and culture
3. Sports with high degree of competition
4. Sports dominated by poorer or strife-riven countries
5. Sports with larger number of medals and higher number of events per athlete
6. Newer sports
7. Sports without dominant countries or ones where dominance has changed between countries
8. Sports with shorter training times
9. Sports with strong following worldwide
10. Sports with long careers

With these, the various sports, medals, competitor teams, etc., can be evaluated in terms of a relative attractiveness, much as entrepreneurs and and business strategists use Porters’ Five Force Analysis to evaluate the attractiveness of an industry.

Athletes are products, medal events are markets, coaches and teams are organizations, and countries are large organizations with portfolio strategies.

Note that when I arrived in Hawaii I had two 7x4x4 crates follow me, shipped as a partial container load. Since rent went up atrociously in the last three years, and I have moved to smaller and smaller surroundings, I have divested myself of nearly all of my belongings.

In the morning of the 22nd we landed at Seattle International, and after a two hour wait, I boarded a turboprop for a 1 hour flight to YVR Vancouver, BC, Canada. A quick jaunt through customs and I was officially traveling in a foreign country, w00t!

Changed my money (which on the 22nd a US Dollar was worth less than a Canadian Dollar). In Canada it is common to see US as well as Canadian coins (they are pretty much interchangeable, at least in BC).

YVR is a great airport, including an A&W with a special on burgers that I couldn’t resist, as well as free wifi throughout. I got on the local bus, made a transfer, and then walked six blocks to the hostel in the West End of Vancouver. Basically in the center of a real city.

Stayed there for a week, then a week in Jericho Beach (between UBC and Kitsilano). After that I got on the ferry over to Victoria on Vancouver Island and have been here for nearly a week. I’ve been staying in hostels which are $20-30 night and have free wifi and kitchens.

Victoria is neat, with a lot of great architecture and cultural elements, and tasty vittles. I look forward to exploring more of Vancouver Island which is basically three times the size as the big island and has a lot of wildlife (bears and cougars, check). About 700,000+ population with half of it in Victoria.

I’ve been able to continue working and communicating online throughout my travels and stays in various places. Lots of cafes here as well. There are many things here that I missed in California (and Colorado) before moving to Hawaii. I am enjoying experiencing them again, such as the cafe culture, excellent used bookstores, and food options that extend beyond “local” and asian. I also feel very safe here in Canada, wherever I have been. Safer than in Hawaii and in the bay area of California.

I found a furnished room in a small house that I will be staying in (have been in hostels for the past three weeks). Rent will be $460 for everything (electricity, internet), so that is an upgrade from Hale Manoa at the East-West center. It isn’t perfect (ideally I want my own little cottage or something like that) it is very flexible and inexpensive and close to everything, so that is good.

One drawback I have encountered in my travel is that I re-injured my knee and have been hobbled a bit, but that is starting to heal up. Before that happened I was walking all over Vancouver downtown and Stanley Park, which is really awesome. I will get my seven boxes from Seattle soon and then get a bicycle, and I will be gearing up to work on the dissertation and teach online in the fall. My summer online class has one more week, so I have been busy with that.

It has been good for me to get out of my comfort zone, meet new people and explore new places. What I have seen of BC is really beautiful. Great weather, and the people are all nice, and I feel safe here. Victoria is awesome with the old colonial architecture and the neo-hippy scene. It is a cafe and used bookstore culture here, as well as very outdoors and active-oriented (everyone walks and lots of bicycles everywhere).

I’m trying not to fall in love with this place, but it is difficult. Check out my flickr photostream for various goodies.

1980 Commemorative Statue to Capt. George Vancouver by Vancouver artist Alan Chung Hung

Vancouver never did find the Northwest Passage, though he did refute the incorrect assumption that it was at a lower latitude.

Q: Where did you grow up?
    A: That would assume I have.
    A: I’m not sure that I have.
    A: That hasn’t happened yet.

(clearly this dialogue is evidence of its own statement)

Ok, so I’m a ham. I entertain myself with these same old jokes, over and over. One of my favorite responses to You’ve got a haircut is I got them all cut. I amuse myself. However, in this case, there is a longer version of the story. There are a few takes on this, each telling a different story.

Pennsylvania

I was born in Bellefonte, Pennsylvania in Centre County. One of the seven of 67 counties carried by Barack Obama in the Pennsylvania Democratic primary vote (and the only one in the center of the state, hence the county name). My father was studying for his PhD at Penn State in Mathematics studying Differential Systems.

Michigan

At the age of two we moved to Marquette, a town in the upper peninsula of Michigan, as my father accepted a position at Northern Michigan University. For those who don’t know about the upper peninsula (51st state) it is not physically connected to the lower peninsula (though it is to Wisconsin).

Canada is closer to Marquette than the lower peninsula. The lake effect of Lake Superior (largest freshwater lake in the world) is such that Marquette gets hundreds of inches of snow every year. Yes, we played hockey in the street. As my mother says, they have two seasons: winter and August. And you wonder how those damned mosquitoes survived each winter. We had 30 degree below zero (Fahrenheit) not uncommonly.

I lived there for ten years, and basically grew up in an extremely homogeneous rural town of 25,000. For diversity we had Swedes, Norwegians, and Poles. For entertainment we mainly played outdoors (when we weren’t snowed in, and many times when we were), which was mostly woods.

South Carolina

My mother made an error in navigation and in 1978 we moved to Greenville, South Carolina. This was a one-year education in poverty, racial segregation, religious bigotry, ignorance and hypocrisy. I still value the discovery of my own naivete and how the years of 13-14 were such an eye-opening experience–not so much at the time as for future reflection.

Colorado

Eleven years, bookended with education on on end from 8th grade through 11th and a G.E.D (I did not graduate from high school). On the other end, my last two years were spent at the Community of College at Denver, achieving an Associates of Arts degree.

California

Eleven years in California, bookended with undergraduate and graduate degree at UC Berkeley and five years in the middle of work at two companies in San Francisco.

Hawaii

Seven years I lived in Hawaii, with many an adventure. I have been in school the entire time. (Is there a pattern here?)

Next?

At this moment–August 1st, 2008–I am sitting in a hostel in Victoria, British Columbia on Vancouver Island. For how long? I don’t know. And to be honest I never knew how long I was going to be in any one place. Still writing that bit of history…

Self-motivated, self-starter, interested in online social-media and social networking for public relations and marketing strategy execution. You will work with a local nonprofit (901c3) to execute its early-state social media marketing and public relations strategy. You will manage the social media properties and plan upcoming events, interface with the media, and generally get to kick some public relations ass.

Most of this work is very flexible around the schedule and done online. Specific responsibilities include managing a blog, facebook, myspace, flickr, youtube, and twitter accounts to promote an authentic social identity through collaborative media. This is not spamming but permission-based conversations. Learn how to leverage these modern tools for public relations and search engine optimization.

You will work under the guidance of member of the nonprofit board as well as have access to technical support. A combination of social media savvy and strong interest to learn more about how these tools work is needed.

See the Com495 Internship website for course requirements. If interested, email Jeff McNeill (jeff@jeffmcneill.com) with your contact and availability information (days/times in Fall), two references (names, context for reference, email address), and a list of social media account links (facebook, myspace, twitter, etc.). Make sure that the links point to your account and not just the homepage for *any* account. This is a 10 hour/week internship for the fall semester, but is very flexible around school schedule. Deadline August 7, 2008

Excellent resume-builder and opportunity to learn how to use social media for public relations.

There’s no bad weather, only bad clothing. If it weren’t for the rain this would be an overrun tourist destination like Hawaii.

Tofino’s a natural for seeking a wild refuge, The Star, July 26, 2008

• Amazon
• Google books

My friend Ian Kitajima gave me this book last week. It is a compelling read because not only did I finish it, I find myself writing this review. This book recounts stories of being lost at sea, lost in the wilderness, mountain climbing accidents, Apollo moonshot, firefighting, and other high risk situations. One thing that is great is both telling stories of those who lived and those who died.

The stories are gripping and while ultimately there is an attempt at summary at the end, a more loose set of concepts emerge which are not available in summary form. In particular there is the notion of "secondary emotions" (which can be both positive and negative). The discussion is not ultimately fulfilling or complete, but definitely interesting. The kind of training that experience and perception generates and recalls (sometimes inappropriately).

There is a bit of repetition in this book. The same stories are referred to at different points throughout. In many cases without benefit, though sometimes this is needed as different themes are present in the same stories.

These criticisms should not dissuade the reader, as this is an excellent book, and truly engages one in thinking about survival in extreme circumstances, and also how situations and environments can quickly become extreme.

However, this book has a more fundamental mission (which comes through most clearly when the author is discussing his father, which happens often). This book really can be considered nothing less than a modern day introduction to stoic philosophy. Marcus Aurelius, Herodotus, and most often Epictetus figure prominently throughout.

The core doctrine of Stoicism concerns cosmic determinism and human freedom, and the belief that virtue is to maintain a will that is in accord with nature. (Wikipedia)

Assessment – A worthwhile read.

The author has a new book "Everyday Survival" to be released later in 2008.