Isaac and Ishmael

July 12th, 2006

I was watching the West Wing episode, Isaac and Ishmael, Aaron Sorkin’s response to 9/11. It was the first time I saw it.

I found it protective of Muslims and sympathetic to the backlash American society was having on them. But I also found it, for some inexplicable reason, pro-Israel when it didn’t have to be — with Toby Ziegler telling a story about a Jew in a Nazi concentration camp and a student posing rather posed question about “a society that has to just live every day with the idea that the pizza place you are eating in could just blow up without any warning” to which Sam Seaborn gives the obvious answer.

The episode also oversimplified the solution to terrorism from extremists, with Josh Lyman saying ” You want to get these people? I mean, you really want to reach in and kill them where they live? Keep accepting more than one idea. It makes them absolutely crazy.”

In the end, I had to ask, what did 9/11 have to do with Isaac or Ishmael, the fathers of today’s Jews and Muslims? It’s an analogy — but hopelessly forced and obtuse.

Sleeping pills for toddlers

June 27th, 2006

They’ve got kids-versions for just about everything. So why not sleeping pills too? Parents, you know what I’m talking about.

Yogafu

June 24th, 2006

I’ve decided to invent my own style of martial arts and stand legs-akimbo along the path to fame, fortune and a really long pony tail. I call mine Yogafu. It’s limb-bending and torso twisting… just not your own.

Links for 21-06-06

June 21st, 2006

1. Feedyes.com - A feed scraper site. Works great.
2. Geeks4free.com - If you’re a developer, sign up to projects and work for free to gain work experience
3. Oveconfidence is a disadvantage in war - “Overconfident people are more likely to wage war but fare worse in the ensuing battles, a new study suggests.”
4. Wordpress Theme Viewer - Add your own theme here.
5. Video Downloader - Grabs videos from Google Videos and Youtube and Break.com. It’s illegal and Youtube will rewrite their code within a day or so to stop it from working.
6. Nokia turns cellphones into webservers - Tested on Nokia 6630.

Blogging 2.0

June 21st, 2006

It’s only been six months since I last wrote, but I think I know a bit about how Robinson Crusoe felt going back to England. It’s like home, but somehow unfamiliar.

I work in advertising now as a copywriter. It’s a stable job for me, pays better. I wasn’t very comfortable without a stable situation. Advertising is what I trained at university in and what I spent most of my formative years doing.

Getting back into advertising after spending a couple years working in internet brand planning, didn’t feel as strange as this. But spending more time at a desk instead of on the internet isn’t the main reason why I stopped blogging. The internet just seemed to get a lot less interesting.

A few years ago, we were all talking about web design standards and CSS. It elicited a lot of debate, new ideas, even a few new paradigms. Then it was RSS. In the midst of that, there was a lot of enthusiasm about monetizing the web for amateurs or self-employeds. And in the midst of that, there was a lot of interest in Web 2.0 and building applications for the web. There was even talk about a new browser that never lived up to its expectation.

The point is, a lot of the flurry has died down in the past year. People have moved on. Many have gone back to the drawing board, some of them in the enlightenment that if you build it, they don’t always come. Web 2.0 is now passe. And Web 3.0 ain’t no glamour puss. If I see another bookmark or meme-tagger service, I’ll scream. A recent wade through Del.icio.us Popular suggests a lot of disparate subjects are being brought up. But nothing I’d really like to sink my teeth into. Nothing I could get behind and say Yeah! That’s really cool!

So this is me easing back into blogging. I’m looking for the next big thing. Until then, it’s going to be a bit of a link blog for a while until I figure out what strikes my interest.

Web Developer (Ruby) Wanted

January 31st, 2006

Here’s the good news: Right before Christmas, I entered into an agreement with an angel investor for Nuposts.com. We are go!

For the past month, he has been looking for developers and we’ve both been briefing them, preparing the ground and refining the project outline.

Here’s the great news: We are looking for a web developer. Someone with experience with Ruby. We already have one Ruby developer and we need a second one to get the project off quickly. If you or anyone you know wants to get involved for a couple months (or thereabouts) in a great new project that’s going to change the way the internet consumes content from blogs, email me quick!

TV commercial blog

December 12th, 2005

My experiment with locating TV commercials around the internet to create blog content is working out surprisingly well. At first I thought I’d be posting a few a week. But it looks like there are so many good TVCs around the web that I can promise to post three new ones every week day. And I’ve been running it for over two months already. Of course it’s only my opinion of what is a good commercial. Feel free to submit your own, I’d love to find out more about what’s out there.

http://adblog.wordpress.com/

Wifi phones

December 5th, 2005

This news about Philly’s metropolitan wifi LAN (MOWLAN) experiment isn’t new news. They’ve been talking about it for years. I came across the story a few years ago when I was researching a new idea that has yet come into fruition.

My idea was to eradicate cellphone networks and replace cellphones with wifi phones. Phones that work using VOIP.

I was inspired by the development of MOWLANS in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, where there is currently the world’s largest MOWLAN. Wifi phones would allow calls to other wifi phones to become absolutely free and calls to land-line phones or cellphones anywhere in the world to be cut as much as 50%. Wifi phones use practically the same technology to communicate by voice as you do using Skype.

Wifi phones aren’t new. Currently, they work exclusively with hotspots like the ones at Starbucks or the ones being established by more and more offices. There are two things holding back the development of wifi phones.

First, there is the lack of network coverage. But with the creation of MOWLANS, this is becoming a moot point. Already, MOWLANS have been established in small towns in the US where cabling is harder to setup and maintain than an internet connection via satellite.

Second (and this was the problem with the establishment of wifi phones in Malayia), the cellphone companies are too powerful. They blocked any talk of wifi phones and the spread of MOWLANS using threats of legal action.

So far, the Philly story hasn’t spoken a single word about wifi phones. But I’m pretty sure that VOIP companies like Vonage are already on the ball.

Iamspeechless.com

December 4th, 2005

You know what would be a really cool name for a blog about comment spam? Yup, Iamspeechless.com (or the other four-word variation Thismakesmespeechless.com). I get dozens of these comment spams a week with just those three words and a bunch of irrelevant links.

Akismet.com

December 2nd, 2005

I’m really happy that Ozh recommended Akismet.com to me. It’s a comment spam catcher for Wordpress. For the past couple months I’ve been getting more and more comment spam every day — the kind that looks like it was sent by a real person and doesn’t use any of the comment blacklisted words.

Akismet caught 26 for me in the last 24 hours. Zero false positives. If you aren’t using Akismet yet, all you need to do is sign up to Wordpress.com.