Something Random

With all due respect to religious differences, I'm quite insistent that all the brouhaha around death is for the sake of the living, not the decedent. The primary function of all the formality seems to be to attend to the emotional needs of those affected by the death. I think this all became really apparent to me when my dad died. Why did we end the funeral with a brass rendition of When the Saints Go Marching In? Was it for the benefit of the contents of a certain hermetically sealed box prominently displayed in front of the stage for all to see? No, it was for my mom's benefit.

A series of experiences in my life have opened my eyes to a whole new train of thought about my digital life. I don't think I even saw it coming. It was like an idea that crept up on me stealthily, once step at a time, and then suddenly pounced on me without any warning.

It began with my dad's illness and eventual death. My dad knew he was dying and he wanted to make sure that his affairs were in order before he met his end. That meant asking me to help him write up a simple will. He didn't have much, but he wanted to make sure that there was no question that everything he had would belong to my mom, his wife of thirty years, when he died. I looked up some templates and together we wrote and printed his will. In the process of going over his assets, he concluded it would be easiest if I scrapped his car for him. He was no longer fit to drive and he didn't want my mom to have to deal with the title while she was mourning his death. Then, we sat down as a family and planned his funeral.

People don't pay for digital goods--not really. What people are really paying for when they download an ebook or a song are service and convenience. Companies like Amazon and Apple (in the form of iTunes) make their money concentrating a diverse collection of content into a single convenient and searchable portal. This spells trouble for Microsoft, who is in the business of selling Windows, because people are becoming increasingly resistant to the idea of being charged for digital goods.

Nice people are jerks. Their behavior tends to be inconsiderate or even selfish. They're shallow and make poor friends. They lie to your face and abandon you when it will do the most harm. Yes, I'm talking about nice people here, those smiling faces you see at the grocery store and religious or social functions. One of those smiles may even be yours.

To explain, I'll tell you about a guy named Joe. Joe thinks he has lots of friends because he knows so many nice people. Joe is completely clueless about what jerks nice people are. In fact, Joe may not have a friend in the world.

Kid's aren't cogs and education isn't an assembly line. The key point that I took away from this short speech is that we've misapplied the lessons of the Industrial Revolution to education. We've come to treat kids as identical, mass produced cogs to be inserted into the machine of society.

In English, the word free most often means without cost, but it can also mean without limitation. How interesting then that my introduction to the former would ultimately lead me to the latter.

Growing up in a climate where -20 degree temperatures are a normal (though generally unwelcomed) occurrence and -40 degree temperatures aren't unheard of, I'd always heard that if throw boiling water into the air on a cold enough day it will freeze or evaporate before it hits the ground. Somehow, I'd never tried it before. This video was made both for my own amusement and to document for my friends in less hostile climates that I'm not just crazy. I woke up early and discovered that it was -30 degrees, but by the time I headed outside with my pot of boiling water the temperature had dipped to -35 degrees.

I made a new friend recently and in seeing a lot of myself in him, I learned some things about myself. I realized that some of the things that make me who I am, including some of the things I struggle with, are typical traits of what I call geeks. The following is a generalization, based my knowledge of many geeks, not a confession based solely on my own geeky quirks and flaws. This includes the fact that all of the geeks I remember from my life have been male.

This is a test post to see if the Ping.fm module for Drupal works the way I think it should.

Check out this 3d printer from the Fab@Home project. I want one! Did he say you could "print" in chocolate? Mmm...I wonder what some hobbyist confectioner could think to do with that?