Contagious Curiosity : Annoyances

Death by Email

llangit — Sun, 19 Oct 2008 01:00:26 GMT

Ever feel like you just can't get on top of this? It's startling to think that I have over 1 GB of work-related email now. That is, of course, only one of my six or so various email accounts.

How many messages do you receive per day? How many do you process per day? How many do you delete per day? How much time do you spend doing this each day?

Interesting to look at the referenced article that is nearly 7 years old. Not much progress here. How can we get better? What do you think? I'd be interested to know.

Email: too much of a good thing?: November 05, 2001 issue of New Thinking

Watch a developer evangelist multitask

llangit — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 01:41:11 GMT

At CommunityNext in Hollywood (a dimly lit bar on a Saturday morning, wierd), networking, listening to Scoble now, working on the demos for the presentation shown below for Monday, twittering, texting, IMing, debugging WCF, talking with Heather about DigiGirlz Camp, talking about Twiistup4, consuming milk-based beverages so that I can attend (and participate in) yet another party this evening, oh, and my phone is ringing now...

| View | Upload your own

Sore arms, but not from coding

llangit — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 18:47:41 GMT

rather from the last of my vaccinations. 8 in total, I am supposedly ready to go anywhere in the world for 10 years now.

The big question this year is whether I'll have time to go anywhere. It had been my plan to return to Lusaka, Zambia to do in-country work for the SmartCare project (I do work remotely throughout the year), however some challenges are popping up. But then, life is curvy, isn't it?

Where do you want to travel to? I'd like to return to Africa, but also I'd very much like to spend time in both India and China. I think it would also be fun to visit New Zealand or Iceland. Hey, I just got invited to join a SharePoint UG from Sri Lanka (via Facebook) - maybe I should put that on my list too.

FriendFeed - ok, I give up

llangit — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 07:02:17 GMT

I simply can NOT keep up with all the social networking 'stuff' out there. Now, there's this 'friendfeed' thingee. What do you think - should I do it?

Now really, do you actually know what all of those little icons that you can 'hook together' really do? Maybe I'm just 'socially fatigued', but...

FriendFeed - About Us

Why Data Mining Matters

llangit — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 05:24:06 GMT

When I tell people that I am writing a second book on data warehousing, business intelligence, OLAP cubes and/or Data Mining, I generally get the same response, "Huh, wow, that's deep stuff". Well, yes it is, but I don't have any formal training in math and I can 'get it', so can you. Really - even stuff like this diagram below.

Here's a link to article from which I grabbed this cool generalization graph.

Now, about the WHY you care. I was having a pleasant day at the Huntington Gardens this morning, when my phone started to ring and ring. Do you know why? Data Mining - or more precisely, the results of it. It appears someone had got one of my credit card numbers and was attempting to charge a couple of 'little' things - the purchasing pattern was unusual for me, (called an 'outlier' in data mining terms) and was immediately flagged and blocked pending verification from me. Although a bit inconvenient, intelligent use of data mining algorithms saved me from bad charges and helped me to cancel the card immediately.

Does your company use Data Mining? What are you waiting for? Here's our SQL Server site to help you get started.

Oh, and since I am talking about this stuff, given the pattern of fraudulent charges (I asked), I can pretty much tell how my credit card information was 'leaked'. You can bet that I'll be calling that company to let them know about the problem AND, importantly, that I will NEVER, EVER do business with them again. Are you protecting sensitive information, coding using best best practices, inviting independent security audits of your code? I could go on, but you get the idea.

Is Facebook over?

llangit — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 06:34:08 GMT

Is it just me, or are you bored with Facebook already? It started off as a curiosity, then evolved into a kind of fun and amusing site, now, for me, at least, it's bordering on the dull. I notice that when I do send messages or posts, my friends tend to respond quickly. This indicates to me that we are just all kind of an entropy-filled group, sitting around waiting for something interesting to happen.

Oh well, at least I'm perceived to be reasonably solid on being 'on time' and on 'having a good smile'. I think I have to work on the 'cool factor' thing though :)

What do you think - is Facebook over? If so, what's next?

Facebook | Home

I don't do snow

llangit — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 09:58:33 GMT

Nah, not for me - you see, I got quite enough of it, growing up in Fargo, ND. For those of you who've never experienced a North Dakota winter - here's a view of the 'front yard' of my house one January when I was about 9 years old. I would be the one on the right.

Southern California 'weather' suits me just fine. Tandem biking at the beach in December works for me. For those of you reading from somewhere other than here - be safe, drive slowly and keep warm out there.

Snow, Ice Storm Rips Across Northern US - Forbes.com

It's lonelygirl15's world, isn't it?

llangit — Sat, 29 Sep 2007 04:05:22 GMT

It's lonelygirl15's world, isn't it? Maybe not yet (at least for me)

After spending a day at the New Media and Podcast Expo, I am thinking that the 'next Web' is all about micro-content.
Well, that and oddly-colored hair if the attendees are actually influential.

Viral video presenters on a panel with me, talked about 'shows' with lengths of 60 seconds to 5 minutes long each.
Oh, and of course, sex sells (some things don't change). Everyone just wants their '15 minutes' although now I think it's more like 15 seconds, their 'quarter Life', or just whatever...

Another trend seems to be virtual lives - including participation in the "lives" of characters in microshows and beyond -
that is, thier 'character's' blogs, social network sites, even 'real life' events, etc...all of which are, of course, fake.
Kind of a Second Life on steroids, I guess. It seems also to be all about emotion (especially spectacle - even better if it is fake) - divorced from thought. The line 'spectacle first, story second' was kind of a mantra.

This attention frenzy is a bit much for me. My response is to feel like reading a book, slowly and for a good long time.
Fortunately, I've got one that interests me particularly now - linguistics and semantics - now there's a topic that I
enjoy giving some dedicated attention to. Sometimes the best thing to do is just to unplug for awhile...

It's 4, not 3

llangit — Tue, 13 Feb 2007 07:26:00 GMT

Well, for the first time ever (in over a year of frequent air travel), I had the bad luck to get the picky security lady. Oh, you know the one - she reads the size label on each of your toiletries and delights in telling you which ones are not allowed "That's a four ounce container, nothing over three ounces is allowed". Of course, reason is of no help "But, if it's not full, then it's not actually four ounces is it?" So, if I look a bit scruffy at this week's events, you'll know why.