Final thought for the day, taken from the book "Creative Intelligence"
Einstein went so far as to use one type of soap for everything so that he could focus his energies on more important matters.
Umm? Way to go, Einstein.
Yes. Must remember this piece of trivia for my planned encyclopaedic tome, "Bathing Habits of the Great Thinkers."
Good showmanship is one part of profitable software. As Shakespeare first said:
All the software's a stageTaking the metaphor further, here's how the roles are mapped between theatre and software.
| Theatre | = | Software |
|---|---|---|
| Actors and Play | = | Software and System |
| Audience | = | User |
| Script writer | = | Coder |
| Director | = | "Architect" |
| Lighting, Costume, Make up artists | = | Graphic and Interface designers |
| Producer | = | Employer or Manager |
| Promoter | = | Salesperson |
| Rotten tomatoes | = | Abusive email |
| Clapping, cheering, flowers | = | Silence. |
To stretch the metaphor a little further...
In response to yesterday's 'home computer of 2004' hoax, the excellent and amusing James Roberts commented:
I was there (in 1954) and that is exactly what they would have shown as the home computer of the future. They were big on future then. It was a time when men mowed the grass wearing a tie.There will be some changes over the coming weeks.
According to a business consultant, this company lacks vision.
Hence, starting now we'll be topping up the coffee pot with liquid LSD.
The new corporate vision should be a strong one.
A DHTML 'favelet' that lets you float over a webpage and find out what html is behind each screen element.
http://slayeroffice.com/?c=/content/tools/suite.htmlA friend forwarded me this gem from his workplace (name withheld)
I'm digging the australian business number web services. Useful for validating ABN's. Info available at their web site
Did you backup your home computer today? Did you?
Probably not. And I hope you wake up tomorrow to find that:
Regarding the lightning-strike possibility: don't snigger. It happened to my parents about two years ago, along with several other houses around them. Computers, microwaves, televisions: all sorts of things were destroyed. Naturally there were no backups.
If you're the geek in your family (and I know that you are) then you have an obligation to use your geekery for good instead of evil.
The third of the month is the day when you back up your home PC -- and you insist that your family and friends back up their's as well.
So how do you actually do one of these?
I think there are two types. Type one is a 'complete' backup, an image of your hard drive. This is impractical and unneccessary for most home users, so I'll ignore it. Type two, which is relevant here, is to backup your most valuable information. A stepped list is provided below.
On the 3rd of October I might solicit more details about how to achieve each of these steps. People who read this blog are cluey enough to perform a backup and take it off-site.
Don't overcomplicate it. Just get on with it.
Best of Luck!
A geek, of course, is a man who lies in a cage on a bed of filthy straw in a carnival freak-show and bites the heads off live chickens and makes subhuman noises, and is billed as having been raised by wild animals in the jungles of Borneo. He has sunk as low as a human being can sink... from "JailBird" by Kurt Vonnegut.
Vonnegut is great, but he's a bit hit and miss. This book, JailBird, is one of the good ones.
Slaughterhouse Five, his book about time travel and what happened to him during the bombing of Dresden, is possibly the best novel yet written.
This guy might be nice enough to give you one. And Rory was all over the situation earlier today.
I gave away what I had, but may get more later. If you leave your name and email address (in some spam-proof form) in the comments here I'll invite you if I get the chance.
Hungry for more utilities? Look at:
"gCount is a menu bar and/or Dock item that displays the unread status of the inbox ..."
Geeks (like you and me) often act as 'Family Computer Technicians', called upon to solve the technical issues encountered by our relatives and family friends.
Some excellent articles by Scott Hanselman have fired me up about raising the standard of this help, and improving the security of the PC's we're responsible for.
I want to start a bandwagon. And I want you, my excellent readers, to jump on board.
One day each month (let's say the 3rd day of the month) we will remind each other to achieve certain simple things on our home pc's, and the home pc's of our Mum's, our Dad's, our Uncle's, Aunts, in-laws, grandparents -- any home PC's we come in contact with.
The Goals to be acheived are:
If all of that is achieved I think the world will be happier place.
For the first month I want to focus on our own computers. So on the 3rd of September, I'll be trying to focus attention toward backing up home computers.
More to follow -- but let me leave you with this question: when did you last backup your home PC?
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