key to the Industrial Age (more)

I need to write lots of Python on my MacOs X IBook... (more)

the gaping maw of Consumerism (more)

process of doing a Route Around the Book Publishing process (or Music Industry, etc.) after Writing A Book. (more)

page was renamed from z2009-05-08-ShawEuroDjangoCon (more)

Bruce Sterling's talk at Sig Graph - "When Blobject-s Rule the Earth". Neologism by Karim Rashid. Having conquered the world made of bits, you need to reform the world made of atoms. Not the simulated image on the screen, but corporeal, physical reality. Not meshes and splines, but big hefty skull-crackingly solid things that you can pick up and throw. That's the world that needs conquering. Because that world can't manage on its own. It is not Sustainable, it has no future, and it needs one... But they (Blobjects) haven't started ruling the Earth yet. Because they're still too primitive. They're not sustainable, so they're merely optimizing the previous system. They are a varnish on barbarism... Up to the present day, during previous history, we humans have had. and made, four different classes of possible objects. These classes of objects are called, in order of their historical appearance, Artifacts, Machines, Products, and Gizmos... Gizmos are made and used by end-users... An end-user is the historically evolved version of a consumer... Blobject-s tend to be a subset of the class of Gizmos... A Gizmo is not manufacturable by any centrally planned society. A Gizmo is something like a Product, but instead of behaving predictably and sensibly for a Mass Market of obedient consumers, a Gizmo is an open-ended tech development project (Platform)... The true signs of a Gizmo are that it has a short lifespan and more functionality crammed into it than you will ever use or understand... Now, I could redesign this Gizmo to make it into a simple Product. But then this Gizmo would become a commodity... So there are good reasons why a Gizmo is almost impossible to use. It's because a Gizmo is delicately poised between commodity and chaos... The next stage is an object that does not exist yet. It needs a noun, so that we can think about it. We can call it a "SpIme," which is a neologism for an imaginary object that is still speculative. A Spime also has a kind of person who makes it and uses it, and that kind of person is somebody called a "Wrangler.".. A true Spime is going to get ahead of the curve by bringing you inside the tent of the designers and developers and engineers, and the sales and marketing people. Wranglers are the class of people willing to hassle with Spimes. And it is a hassle. An enormous hassle. But its a fruitful hassle... This is not a vision of utopia. This is a historical thesis... Are there dark sides to this vision? Oh yes indeed.... Steve Jobs has neuroendocrinal pancreatic cancer. That's because, like everybody else in the world, like you and like me, Steve Jobs is carrying a load of carcinogens in his flesh. Silicon Valley, as an industrial clean-up site, is rather well known for its mutagens... We need ways to keep these substances organized and contained, and, eventually, designed out of the production system entirely... We live in debris and detritus because of our ignorance. That ignorance is no longer technically necessary. (shades of Bucky Fuller)

online Self Publishing platform (more)

PayPal is forcing Smash Words to modify is policy for erotic fiction to exclude works that contain bestiality, rape-for-titillation, incest and underage erotica, and to remove any works that contravene the new policy. Some assumed it was the Credit Card companies pushing PayPal in this direction, but Visa says they had nothing to do with it.

Michael Mace says Mobile devices need a way to auto-customize promotion of certain types of software to new purchasers, so the user can get more value/satisfaction (Mass Customization). I believe that a mobile device has to solve a Compelling problem before people will buy it. Solving fifteen problems is too hard to market, so there needs to be one flagship function or usage that gets a device sold in the first place. In this respect, I think the "mobile device = appliance" folks are right. But once the user gets a mobile device, I think many customers will allow it to blossom into more usages - if that blossoming process is handled properly. That's where I think the mobile data world fails today, and that's what I think we need to fix... Even among the Palm enthusiasts, there was never a single "killer" application everybody used. Instead, everyone had a different set of personal killer applications that met their own individual needs. Each person was a vertical market of one, the exact opposite of a Mass Market... In addition to creating the Guides, we ran a couple of contests soliciting first person usage stories from users. They were big successes, generating several thousand stories. They ranged from comical to heart-wrenching - people using handhelds to overcome disabilities or start new careers. Almost every story featured different apps... When the user first gets started, the device asks the user a few questions about their work and interests. Based on the user's responses, the device suggests the installation of appropriate software. So, for example, if the user is a doctor and a boy scout troop leader, the device suggests a selection of medical software, and a boy scout troop management program (yes, there's an Expert Guide on that, listing about 70 relevant applications, including knot-tying instructional software - something critical for a Scout). If the user agrees, these are downloaded to the device, and the user's wireless account is automatically charged for them.

One of my newbie peeves is having Python find a new library I may download. This involves 'sys.path' (more)

Energy sources beside Cheap Oil - prefereably Renewable Energy (Sustainable) (more)

Time to actually do some Django For Simplest Thing development work.

external Hard Drive line I'm using for my home Back Up system (more)

shorthand for How To Raise Reality Hackers

Trying to get a Private Wiki running on my Nokia N810, to replace Wiki On Zaurus. (more)

Mar'2012 - it looks increasingly likely that the US will end up in a war with Iran, mainly because Israel wants to maintain monopoly-tho-unofficial status in the Nuclear Club of the Middle East. (more)

Server that layers some type of info/interaction on top of a 3rd party's "base". (more)

PythonCard is inspired by HyperCard, built with Python and WxPython (for GUI widgets). *PythonCard is designed to be an application development framework for (more)

aka BlogTypes (more)

Happy Cog and others are experimenting with the idea of using Twitter posts instead of Blog Comment-s. (TweetBack) (more)