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Thursday, November 29, 2001
New meanings for "stocking stuffer" 
| | This Christmas, give a Turd Twister. (Hey, at least it doesn't come in flavors.) |
| | As long as we're in a co-scatalogical frame of mind, check out PooP Machine ("The missing link in logs.") That one came from Blogdex, which also links to the Erotic Computation Group at the MIT Media Lab, which appears to be almost serious: |
| | The Erotic Computation Group seeks creative, hard-working, team-oriented, and sexually competent graduate students. Successful applicants possess varied skills in computer programming, electrical engineering, and mechanical engineering. Special sexual abilities are also important assets. Oral and written communication skills are essential, as our work is regularly presented to visitors and submitted to major conferences and journals. |
Jabbing away
| | I just added some more to the Jabber thread at the LJ site. Some other good responses too. Check 'em out. |
Next step: Cellwidth
| | Great piece about WiFi (802.11) by Kevin Werbach at ZDNet. I love connecting wirelessly, like I am right now, typing on the kitchen counter while the floor of my office dries (no, the roof didn't leak.. it's another whole story). My fantasy, however, is being able to connect wirelessly everywhere there is cell service. Partly that's because I've had some serious hang-time (yes, consulting — I still do that, sometimes) with Arraycomm, the company started by Marty Cooper, who fathered the cell phone when he was at Motorola. Arraycomm's system uses smart antenna technology to give you fat personal bandwidth over cellular connections. And it works over existing cellular sites. We're not talking about brand new networks here. Just optimizing the existing networks for better voice and WiFi-like data bandwith. All we need is for the cellular companies to get with the program. Hey, AT&T and Verizon, I'll pay. And I'm not alone. The demand is there. |
| | My fantasy is to park somewhere along East Camino Cielo, high atop the Santa Ynez mountains, whip out the laptop, and work away on the Net. Getting a good cellular connection at my house down in one of the valleys wouldn't suck either, especially since there's a moratorium on new cell sites all through Santa Barbara and other towns in the area. |
| | Maybe we should call it WideFi. Whaddaya think? Want some? |
Truth in blogging
| | Mike Sanders' blog today is about Truth, and a bunch of good questions for which I think the title of his blog is the best working answer: keep trying. Or as Dave puts it, keep digging. |
| | One of my many mentors, a deep guy named Peter Rengel, once said that truth comes in layers, and our calling as human beings is always to dig down to the deeper ones. And, he added, the paradox is that we always have to choose the level of truth at which we're willing to live. So I guess all idols have clay feet, but that's the only way they can get around. That's what makes them idols. And the Quakers say the best idol is none. And another of my mentors, Fr. Seán Oloaire, says there are some truths so deep that only stories can tell them. |
| | All those things feel true for me. And still not quite. Gotta dig deeper. |
| | Is that what we're here for? I think so. |
| | And I don't think we can do it alone. |
Found
Growing the menschlist
| | So I'm sitting here with Pamela Hawley (whom Joyce & I met at a party at Dave's house in '96, by the way — after which, Pamela just asked me to say, Joyce became her first good friend and in Silicon Valley after returning to the area from Los Angeles), showing her how weblogs work (an exercize by which I discovered the item below)... and we just ran across the "What if VCs were mensches?" item at Scripting News. Well, it so happens that Pamela's dad, Wally Hawley, is both a genuine VC and a genuine mensch. (Her mom rates too.) |
| | Venture capitalist Wally Hawley, a founder of InterWest Partners, is proof that conceding some negatives about the dot-conomy won't cripple the great march of capitalism. He scoffs at the growing ranks of entrepreneurs and venture capitalists who ''keep score and count toys'' like jets and in-home theaters. ''Three years ago, I said: 'I've made a lot, I don't need more.''' He opted out of InterWest's latest fund and started trying to make the nonprofits he works with more effective--while challenging fellow businesspeople to make a commitment to investing in philanthropy and social good. |
| | Not quite unrelated: Pamela went to Duke, where I used to live and work, becoming quite a Duke basketball fan. She's also the same age as my daughter Colette, shares the same love of the arts, social consciousness, etc. |
| | And a moment ago our friend Freddy stopped in to see how the house held up in the rain last night. Freddy is a semi-retired actor who's been working on our house before he goes back to writing scripts for HBO and stuff like that. He fixed the leak in our roof yesterday. He read Cluetrain last night and reported his agreement, among other things. After he left, Pamela said "I think you've just found the Mars on Earth you've been looking for." |
| | Related: witnessing the authoring and posting of all this, Pamela is highly jazzed to start a blog. One more for the menschlist. Cool! |
Eat my links
Bravo
| | Sonicbue is going ahead and selling something customers want, in spite of the TV networks' collectively wadded shorts. |
| | Background: a great Michael Lewis piece from a few months back. |
Uh oh.
No?
| | Am I wrong or is there more spam than ever? Are there any stats on this? |
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