Aki and Travis

When you need cool stuff to think about...

Lately I've been spending a lot of time in situations where I need to just sit.  Reading/Phones are not really an option so I'm learning to think again...  its really cool.

Anyway, I find it helps to be inspired and the RSA Animate speeches are fantastic for expressing ideas and getting them to stick in your brain for later reflection.

Here is my favorite so far:

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Computers.

My laptop died today.   I got a loaner from work, plugged in my time machine backup and two hours later, after watching "UP" with Aki I had a working laptop.   Four months ago this would have taken me 5-10 hours of work over several days to recover from.  If this were a PC I never would have had such an amazing backup solution so in my opinion the Apple tax just paid dividends.

The loaner laptop I got was my second.  My initial thought was I could make do with an IBM Thinkpad loaner.   I've been using macs at work for 5 years now and I'm exclusively Mac at home as of last year.   Dealing with a Windows laptop for work was an extraordinary painful experience.  The hardware was a monstrosity, the OS (XP) was annoying at best, and the crap on the laptop to deal with the silliness (Virus, Malware, Wireless connectivity tools, etc) was maddening.   I've used Windows 7, and its still very rough around the edges.  Honestly, I'd love a competitor for OSX but there simply isn't anything else that comes close to working for me then OSX.

By the way, "UP" is a great movie.

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March Madness

Its a strange world when UNC doesn't make it to the NCAA tournament and UC Santa Barbara does. 

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A new way to think about legal reform

Ted had another conference and I've been watching many of the presentations.  Philip Howard goes beyond simply talking about tort reform and addresses the core problem with law in our society.

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Holi 2010 pictures

You know what religions are missing?  Parties... and really good ones.

Christianity? Islam?  Top this.

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Sanity from teachers unions?

From The New York Times:

OP-ED COLUMNIST: A Serious Proposal

The American Federation of Teachers should follow its president’s
recommendation to accept a form of teacher evaluation that takes
student achievement into account.

http://s.nyt.com/u/rC5


-Travis

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San Francisco. The worst run big city in the US

A depressing but enlightening article about the woes of San Francisco.

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40 year annaversary of the exploding whale

Yes, you've probably seen it before but every time I see it it brings me to tears of laughter.

"Well I'm confident that it will work.   The only thing is we're not exactly sure how much.. uh... explosives it will take to disintegrate this thing."

http://www.asylum.com/2009/11/25/exploding-whale-video-reporter-looks-back-4-decades-later/

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Apollo vs LHC

I've always been envious of the awe that kids felt during the days of the Apollo missions.  I think the LHC provides us with a taste of what it must have been like to see technology on such a scale.  This thing is simply beautiful.

Great pictures here:
http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2009/11/large_hadron_collider_ready_to.html

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Meeting Owen

We met Owen today. 

Pictures here: http://towhead.smugmug.com/Family/Meeting-Owen-1/10095644_RnCRk#692954755_jBPsB

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