Author: Scott (Page 46 of 80)

My Next Great Idea – The USPS Stimulus Package

November 12, 2010 / Scott / 0 Comments

After reading this article on the USPS losing $8.5 B (yes, that’s $500 million AFTER THE DECIMAL PLACE!). With all the hyperbole over evil corporations, at least their management has to answer to shareholders…at least they have to answer to someone. I was talking about it with a couple of people on Twitter:

[blackbirdpie id=”3124711739363328″]

[blackbirdpie id=”3116082235711488″]

Obviously, they aren’t huge fans. Come on…what’s a few billion amongst friends? But then I saw these articles about the Swedes storing emails and texts and our own government getting ready to grace us with an Internet Czar and a light bulb went off…

USPS Stimulus package!

Just set up (yet another) federal agency to track and log every single piece of electronic communication. This will have the (un)intended consequence of forcing…err…encouraging people to go back to sending coded messages through the USPS and hoping they are delivered within a few days. Think of how many USPS jobs this could save or create!

IKEA Homemade is Best Cookbook

November 8, 2010 / Scott / 1 Comment

What does IKEA mean to you? To me, it means flat packaging, easy to follow assembly instructions with pictures instead of words, and stuff that is so cool and affordable that I usually end up buying something I hadn’t planned on.

Check out IKEA’s “Homemade is Best” baking book.

Flat? check
Easy instructions with no words, with beautiful photos by Carl Kleiner? Check
So cool and (presumably) affordable that I’ll definitely be buying one on my next trip to IKEA, even though I hadn’t planned on buying a cookbook for the rest of my life? Check

The Facts and Science of QEII

November 5, 2010 / Scott / 0 Comments

The newly announced monetization of debt…ERRRRR…devaluation of the currency…ERRRRR…quantitative easing announced by the Federal Reserve on Wednesday has many Americans confused and baffled. What does this really mean for us? After all “facts and science and argument does [sic] not seem to be winning the day” with the collection of hilljacks that is the American people.

Maybe what we really need is an easy to understand analogy to explain in terms that we can relate to.

Let’s say the money supply is a big pile of rich, high-grade manure we are using to to fertilize our gardens. Now, imagine that a big stud horse (the Fed) comes along and, with increasing frequency and volume, adds to our supply of manure. I guess the theory is that we’ll respond by just planting more crops. But how long would it take for us to stop calling this big stinking pile of crap “fertilizer” and start calling it “a big stinking pile of crap”?

Over time, the manure’s value to us would be greatly diminished, and we’ll be lucky if we can load a bunch of it up in wheel barrow and trade it for a loaf of bread from our neighbor. Meanwhile, no one knows who owns the damned horse that keeps adding crap to the pile.

Oversimplified? Maybe so. But it’s pushing the limit of what our government educated brains can handle. Best to leave it to the horse to decide what is best.

Mexican Standoff In Congress?

November 3, 2010 / Scott / 0 Comments

There’s a possibility we could be looking at two years scripted by Quentin Tarantino. Maybe the standard finger pointing that we’re used to seeing is about to be replaced by something far more complicated.

Democrats have lost a lot of their Blue Dog numbers. I’ve actually read some people spinning this as the people in their districts were frustrated that they weren’t taking a “progressive enough” stance. If you really believe that, go pop some popcorn and enjoy what’s about to happen amongst Democrats as their leadership tries to pull them even further to the left. That would be disastrous for the Left and good for the country, so I’m not going to discourage it at all.

And, unless they get co-opted by the “Trent-Lott-Carl-Rove” Republicans, we’re probably going to see some infighting on that side of the aisle too. Again, probably bad for Republicans, but good for the country. Marco Rubio’s speech was dead on–last night wasn’t an embrace of the Republican Party, just a second chance.

If things don’t change, we could *gulp* be looking at a serious third party next time around. And if the establishment Democrats and Republicans aren’t careful, they may actually be that third party–on the outside looking in.

I’m generally happiest with a federal government that’s not doing much of anything. The less they try to create jobs (that’s a function of government?), bail people out, spend our money on our behalf, impose morality (love the irony), prop up favored industries, etc. the better off we all are. This usually happens when we are lucky enough to have opposing parties in the executive and legislative branches. Maybe now we’ll have so much debate of ideas going on that only the really good ones that have been properly vetted can float to the top.

“Yolanda, it’s cool baby. It’s cool! We’re still just talkin’. Come on point the gun at me. Point the gun at me.”

Stuff You Should See– October 13th through October 28th

October 28, 2010 / Scott / 0 Comments

‘Stranger Danger’ and the Decline of Halloween – "We can kill off Halloween, or we can accept that it isn't dangerous and give it back to the kids. Then maybe we can start giving them back the rest of their childhoods, too."

Amazing Beans: Black Lentils/Kidney/Garbanzo – Giving this a shot soon.

YOU are Superman – Mamapedia™ Voices – “If eight park moms and one visionary principal could pull our little neighborhood school out of its twenty-five year nose-dive, surely others could do the same thing. If Waiting for Superman could spark a national grassroots school reform movement that would pull us all out of the giant mess we’re in, now wouldn’t that be something?”

A ‘Do-Over’ on the Mortgage Market? Project Mayhem Fallout – I won't even entertain the idea, but it's an entertaining read.

If Every Website Got A Dramatic Movie Adaptation – Damned clever.

3 Simple Ways You’re Missing Out On Mobile – Great post by my buddy Gavin!

Hell In A Cell – A Mick Foley Parenting Tip

October 21, 2010 / Scott / 0 Comments

Mick Foley penned a great guest post for GeekDad on “The Talk”:

Have a talk with your kids. Tell them about some of the unfortunate realities of life, and assure them that you’ll be there for them in good times and in bad, in sickness in health. Let them know that a parent’s love is indeed unconditional and that they can turn to you in any situation. Just don’t let them know that you’re taking parental advice from a pro-wrestler

While my M.O. up until now has been based on the question “WWDLRD?”, I think it may be time to reconsider and change strategies to “WWMFD?”. DLR isn’t quite as literate as Foley.

Have A Nice Day!

Moving America Forward, One Rasslin’ Promo At A Time

October 19, 2010 / Scott / 0 Comments

Was this filmed when Barack Obama was a community organizer? The abundance of gray hair makes me think it’s pretty recent, but the quality of the video makes me think it was shot in the hallway of a 3,000 seat arena somewhere in flyover country to promote the “big event, right out there at the fairgrounds on November 2…we couldn’t have it on October 26th ’cause the flea market is that week.”

Watch and learn. THIS is how you correctly do a rasslin’ promo:

Van Gogh Self Portraits in Action

October 18, 2010 / Scott / 0 Comments

Too cool.

Van Gogh from Philip Scott Johnson on Vimeo.

Password Security and Complexity

October 14, 2010 / Scott / 0 Comments

Twister MC has some good advice on what to do about your passwords and protecting your accounts with multiple passwords, but…

Remembering multiple passwords suck, especially the harder they are, but it’s important that you take your security into your own hands.

There’s an easy way around that–come up with your own “password algorithm” and remember that instead of the actual passwords.

Here’s an example: Begin all of your passwords with the last 8 (or fewer) letters of the name of the street you live on spelled backwards with all vowels substituted with alternate symbols or letters (a=@, e=3, i=!, o=0, u=V), followed by the number of letters in the domain name you are creating the password for, followed by all of the vowels in the domain name. So if you live on Maple St.:

Google password = 3lp@M6ooe
Yahoo password = 3lp@M5aoo
Facebook password = 3lp@M8aeoo

Then, all you have to remember is the rule for creating passwords, not the passwords themselves, and they’ll be different for every site. This has kept me from having to go through the “Forgot My Password” process countless times!

You can come up with an infinite number of ways to structure your password algorithm that is easy for you to remember, and you can make them as simple or complex as you like. The only problem comes from some sites that don’t allow special characters (boo) or have a maximum password length that can’t handle your algorithm.

Microsoft and Facebook Need To Go One Step Further

October 13, 2010 / Scott / 0 Comments

Today’s event hosted by Microsoft and Facebook highlighted some changes coming to Bing that will factor in your social group opinions, Facebook “Likes”, into your search results. That’s great, and it’s definitely a step in the right direction, but…

Just because your FB friends like something doesn’t mean it’s something you would like. Being friends with someone doesn’t necessarily mean you respect their opinion on sushi or books. How about a option to tell FB whether or not you want an individuals opinions factored in to your search results? It sounds like they are going to algorithmically figure out who the experts are, but FB’s whole model with photos and groups is sort of built on the idea that humans can organize this data much better than a computer.

And don’t look now, but Facebook has just given all of those people who’ve been calling for a “Dislike” button for all these years a platform to stand on. The “Like” button is great for steering me towards products and services I should buy, but what about steering me away from products I should avoid? If I’m looking at a vacuum cleaner and one of my trusted friends bought one last year and hated it, shouldn’t that factor into my decision to purchase it as equally as the opinion of my friend who bought and loved it?

Again, a huge step in the right direction, so I’m not hating on what they are trying to do. This is going to push Google to really step it up. If Google Me (or whatever it is called) doesn’t catch on, Big G could be put on the ropes a little with this innovation.

Side note: I got a kick out of Zuck calling Microsoft the underdog. I’m sure Bill Gates appreciated that compliment.

Stuff You Should See– September 3rd through October 13th

October 13, 2010 / Scott / 1 Comment

Top 5 things to HATE about Marathon Runners -Ha! Best list since “Stuff White People Like”. I made every annoying thing on this list!

Amusing Ourselves to Death – Awsum.

Higher education bubble poised to burst – "The people running America's colleges and universities have long thought they were exempt from the laws of supply and demand and unaffected by the business cycle. Turns out that's wrong."

Market: Over 12 Year Period You Made More on 1st Day of Month.. – That is a pretty amazing fact.

What if the Postal Service runs out of money? – Cheese and crackers! Just let it die already!

Testing Teachers On Math and Reading – I can just hear their excuse now…"I may not be able to lay an egg, but I can tell a good one from a bad one" or "Do you think Tiger Woods' golf coach is better than Tiger at golf?"

Google SEO Starter Guide updated

The Most Influential Consumers Online are on Twitter – The easiest way to get a lot of retweets is to write an article praising Twitter users.

Can Exercise Make Kids Smarter? – "Stupid jock" isn't always true.

Stop Repeating Yourself: Set Up a Workplace Wiki – I tried this at a former job a few years ago. The result–I used it. Then we had the middle management who would copy the contents of a help file somewhere and paste it into the wiki. That gets you bonus points for authorship when you show it in your PowerPoint!

IEEE Spectrum: Get on the Optical Bus – Good news for 3rd party software vendors. Now they can blame software issues on the fact that you don't have hardware with optical bus!

A few fabulous homeschool rants – heh.

I Was Wrong

October 11, 2010 / Scott / 0 Comments

Ok, not really in this instance, but a couple of years ago I wrote a little post on why I give full articles in my feed. I think that, at least for the time it was written, this was a reasonable and logical notion.

Things are different now.

At the time, RSS was the best thing going. For many of us, it still is. I love RSS and Google Reader and still rely on them pretty heavily to keep up with the sites and blogs I follow. But the rules of the game have definitely changed in the last couple of years. I’ve noticed much more traffic being driven by Twitter and Facebook than feed readers ever did. I think the question to ask now is whether your audience and the market as a whole are more likely to follow your blog with RSS or with Facebook or Twitter.

Obviously, there’s no way to get a full feed on a Tweet, so that’s not an issue. But the way Facebook handles blog integration through the Notes application means you probably don’t want to give full feeds there either. If you do, you aren’t leaving any reason at all for anyone to visit your site. Post on Facebook, comment on Facebook, and stay on Facebook–that’s what I’d do.

I’m going back to summaries only in my feed. I think the best strategy these days may be to write a good headline, get an interesting thought or two in the first couple of sentences (thanks for the practice Twitter), and pull people in to your site that way. I also found a nice little plugin that integrates Facebook comments straight to your blog.

Interested to see how this little experiment plays out. I can always switch back later.

Some Simple Campaign Advice

October 11, 2010 / Scott / 3 Comments

If you go door-to-door campaigning, or if you have people going door-to-door for you, it’s probably not a good idea to wear mirrored sunglasses.

You may be knocking on doors in an area that is safe for your candidate, simply reminding people to get out and vote on election day, but even if those people agree with (most) of your positions, there’s a chance they’ll be distracted and put a little bit off-balance by the fact that you aren’t looking them in the eye and telling them exactly what you (or your candidate) stand for.

And if the people you are talking to disagree with you, you’re going to look downright shady–confirming every paranoid and ridiculous opinion they’d formed about you.

Politics isn’t a poker game. In politics, it’s reasonable for people to expect you to look them in the eye and lie instead of hiding behind mirrored glasses.

Gettin’ After It!