Technolog - Wozniak likes his Android phone a lot

Technolog - Wozniak likes his Android phone a lot

Someone messed with Texas, after being clearly told, "Don't mess with Texas."

Texas Redrawn: Voting Rights, States' Power In Court : NPR

US troops scramble to hand off last-minute security 'details' to Iraqis - CSMonitor.com

I am glad the Iraq occupation is coming to an end, and it's great that so many troops will be back for Christmas. I do however find it surprising and perhaps foolish that we are leaving behind so little equipment for the Iraqi forces to maintain security. I wonder what the rationale is on that.


US troops scramble to hand off last-minute security 'details' to Iraqis - CSMonitor.com: The performance of the Iraqi soldiers has been all the more impressive, US troops here note, given that the Iraqi security force unit with responsibility for airport perimeter security has only one pickup truck and one small Humvee.

Xmas tree lighting

At the  Daley center for the xmas tree lighting!

GAAS - Gameplay As A Service

I just read an interesting article by Michael Hugos in CIO that has really got me thinking.  If games are becoming more acceptable in the workplace, and we've got services like Amazon's Mechanical Turk, could it be possible that the two concepts converge into something like Gameplay As A Service?

In this scenario, workers would be in a game environment but would do actual work, and that work could be structured and packaged so that organizations could purchase the service in a manner similar to SaaS.  Immediately science fiction examples of this come to mind, like the book "Ender's Game" and the movie "Sleep Dealer".

The thing is, all these pieces are in place, and people seem to be aching to do the work.  I was recently given a demo of a virtual world that a friend built in a mining simulation game.  The complexity and effort that was put into what he built was absolutely stunning.  Couldn't (or perhaps even "shouldn't") that desire to create and build be put into the marketplace somehow?

Speed costs - How fast do you want to spend?

Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry Into the Value of Work by Matthew B. Crawford

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


This book is fantastic. As a former carpenter, who at the risk of sounding self-congratulatory thought myself a craftsman, I found his writing to open up a deep sense of kinship. This is a man who cares deeply about his work and his society. As someone who now works extensively with technology and computers, I found his mild technophobia a little misplaced but highly likeable. I see no difference between working with physical objects and working with bits and bytes, but that's my personal feeling and no reflection on the book; Crawford's yearning for quality, self direction and improvement rings true. Readers may find deeper appreciation for their own jobs after reading this.



Some reviewers complained about the language being overly complicated or "hard", and that just makes me sad for books generally and the American education system specifically. His writing is as beautiful and well crafted as it gets, and those people should stop expecting pabulum, whip out a dictionary, and grow up.





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CDC provides Zombie Apocalypse protocols

Talk about disaster preparedness, the CDC has Zombie outbreak recommendations, just in time for Halloween...

CDC EPR Social Media Preparedness 101: Zombie Apocalypse - Blog