Wisdom of the Chinese
This is from a book I stumbled on a few weeks ago at a used book store in town: The disciple Kung-too said: “All are equally men, but some are great men, and some are little men; how is this?” Mencius replied: “Those who follow that part of themselves which is great are great men; […]
Tenacity and Tech
So, a few years ago there was this TV channel called Tech TV. And the most popular show on that channel was The Screen Savers, a call-in tech variety show in which two guys and a crew of geeks covered all sorts of technology news and trends and such. Then, Tech TV died. So what […]
RescueTime – Not For Me
I’ve been testing out RescueTime, a service that tracks and plots your computer usage. The idea is that it’ll give you an idea of what’s wasting your time. You install a small app and let it run. Every few minutes, it uploads usage stats to www.rescuetime.com, which you can access at any time to check […]
Busy
Henry David Thoreau writes: It is not enough to be busy….The question is: What are we busy about?
It’s Ready
I’ve just put the finishing touches on Your Online Life. It’s a web-based course in web trends and technologies, covering a large set of sites and services. You can learn about online photo sharing sites, user-contributed news sites, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and a host more—both how they work, and exactly how to sign up with […]
Cool Hand Luke
Finally got a chance to watch Cool Hand Luke recently. It’s one of those films that are frequently referenced but infrequently seen. Cool Hand Luke works mostly on the effectiveness of its actors. It’s an intensely character-driven piece, with very little action. It’s all about the relationships between the characters, how the bounce off each […]
Smile, Blast You!
Some websites are informational. Some are entertainment. The Institute of Official Cheer is both. It’s an archive of old newspaper ads, comic books, children’s books, and strange magazine inserts. It pokes fun at the past, but with a twinkle in its eye; the proprietor (James Lileks) knows that they were just doing their best. I […]
Self-Publishing on the Kindle
I published my Kindle Fan Guide several months ago, to quite some success. I’ve sold almost 300 copies so far. I learned a lot during the process of publishing it. I had to log in to Amazon’s Digital Text Platform, though fortuately anyone can log in using an existing Amazon account. I then selected the […]
Ratliff
Let me tell you about Ratliff. Stephen Ratliff wrote fanfic (fan-written stories) about Star Trek: The Next Generation. I have nothing against fanfic. Most of it is bad, but most of anything is bad (Sturgeon’s Law). Fanfic’s a good training ground for writers. Ratliff’s stuff, in comparison, was cheesy in a way that rivalled the […]
The Productivity Video
Because a number of folks have expressed interest in knowing how one person has implemented a productivity system, I’ve uploaded a video where I walk through mine. I take it from writing down a note to myself, through to processing it into my system, and how my system works.