The new EricMartindale.com is an experiment in data aggregation, and might have a few bugs. Feel free to explore, and then provide feedback directly to @martindale.
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Since I subscribed to your feed (in early 2005), I have received and read every post you've made using my RSS reader of choice (Google Reader, currently). Your excerpts have been enticing, with well-written post titles and seemingly interesting topics. The idea was good, to aggregate content and discussions about Search Engines from multiple locations at one central blog.
Unfortunately, I've found that your articles are less informative than I'd have hoped, with frequent referrals to other locations where the conversations are actually taking place. Instead of effective bullet points and topic reviews, I find quick and hastily-written overviews of the content and discussion in question.
Not only that, but you're only providing partial content in your feeds! When I come across your posts in my daily reading of over 500 posts, you've caught my attention with your title - and because you're only giving me the partial article text, you've got me clicking through to your site (hoorah, ad impressions!). Unfortunately, half the time I'm wasting even more time by being forced to click through to yet another page to follow the conversation.
I rarely (if ever) find myself sharing your content, and from what I can tell from a cursory glance - you've never shown up in my shared items feed. (PS, when will I be able to control this page, Google? I hope this link juice means something in the future. Maybe even market that page in a bit more of a controlled fashion. I digress.) I've maybe starred one or two of your articles for future reading, but again - when I do finally read the posts, I find that I'm disappointed by your article quality and content.
What's up with that?! Alright, rabid feedreaders and social media evangelists - tell me if I'm in the wrong here, but I'm going to unsubscribe from Search Engine Roundtable.
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250 GB 5400 RPM SATA II (I considered a bigger hard drive, but I have a NAS at the house and honestly plan on taking advantages of synchronized OSes like ChromeOS in the very near future, so I decided against it)
So far, I'm absolutely lovin' it. The hardware is very clean and Apple-like, with no disgusting third-party stickers plastered all over the thing. There's a System76 logo sticker on the back, which I could easily remove with some isopropyl if I so chose. Part of System76's sales pitch is pre-built Ubuntu boxes (which is what sold me, to be honest), so it came with Ubuntu 10.04, my day-to-day operating system of choice (especially since Backtrack makes things oh-so-awesome.)
I do have some minor complaints:
I had a dead pixel on my LCD. They won't replace it unless "there are more than 6 dead pixels. :(
As a result of the hinge design, the screen won't fold back more than ~35°. A bit of a pain in specific use scenarios.
A lack of one-button volume controls. The volume controls are only available through function keys, sadly. Some buttons on the top right for volume up, down, and mute would make this already awesome laptop perfect.
I don't know how much control System76 has over these hardware-design issues, but fixing them would seal the deal on any of my future purchases. ;)
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As a corporate business insider I can offer a perspective from the "enemy's" den. Many people agree that this movement has gained momentum and has the potential to become as big or bigger than the Tea Party Movement. I grew up in the same generation as many of those protesting today and I understand the innuendo behind Anonymous, I understand point being made by the zombies, and I understand what general sense of anger is meant for. However, keep in mind that you are generally a younger generation trying to speak to an industry dominated mostly by an older generation of people. To these people this movement appears random, chaotic, and annoying simply because they don't even know what this movement's demands or goals are. Indeed for almost all of September I don't think Wall Street even understood exactly what they were protesting, and just recently have they gotten some kind of vague idea as to what these people want done. Most people relate these types of sit-in's to hippies from their generation and view them as more of an unorganized annoyance. To my friends who I work with in NYC, comments I hear from them are to this effect (I am summarizing several people's opinions as one): "It's just stupid, they block traffic and cause trouble nearby. We have to exit buildings from completely the opposite side now just to avoid them if we're wearing a suit regardless of our purpose. No one is there during the day but all of a sudden they pop up during rush hour. They wreck local businesses and drive customers away. The corporations they protest are unaffected but the small businesses nearby are the ones they are actually hurting. We don't even know what they want."
My bosses have gone to meetings with Bernanke and Geithner it is unclear still whether these protests will actually have any influence over policy. At an executive level they still appear confused as to how to handle situation, mostly because they do not understand it. But understand this, from their perspective they have changed the following: In terms of big banks, their balance sheets have been improved light years beyond where they were in 2008 with more liquidity and more capital on hand to prevent these types of shocks to the system. They have repaid any tax dollars received and are often significantly more efficient at implementing change than the government is in making up it's mind on what to do. The majority of issues occurs because of the indecisiveness in Washington. Think about these issues: 12 people are tasked with cutting $1.7 Trillion in the next 5 weeks -- The only way that is going to happen is if they cut large dollar programs. That means Healthcare, medicare, social security, and of course military but that is even less politically viable than the other three. There is also gridlock on what will happen with the tax system in the future. Those main issues where indecisiveness has been are also some of the largest possible expenses a corporation could have. How do plan for variable expenses that could go up or down by 50% in EITHER direction? Corporations have no idea how to plan for healthcare, medicare, or social security plans for their employees because there is no decisiveness on what will occur in the future. They do not want to hire people that they cannot afford to keep a year later because of law changes. So even if they have the money for it now (which they do), they are unable to hire because of the risk of causing liquidity issues later and the massive negative PR associated with hiring and then firing. These banks also receive criticism for not lending money out, but this is not their fault. They ARE lending money out, but there is no demand. It is not supply side issues, there is plenty of money out there to be had. You can get a loan today no problem, don't believe me? Go try it at any bank you want. There is just no one who wants to take a loan. So all that free capital that we spent 3 years trying to push into banks is now stuck there.
This issue is not business related anymore. It is purely political. My above statements are not to absolve corporations of responsibility in 2008, but they are more to explain the current situation here and now. Europe is a whole other book to write about another time.
In a world where politicians and talking heads can call the greatest capitalist of our time Warren Buffett a socialist, and get away with it as "news" is the real issue at hand.
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There are occasionally inconsequential miner fees for transactions (pennies on the hundreds of dollars). This fee is presumed to go up in the future as the miner payoff continues to split. But it will likely never be close to current credit-based transaction fees.
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You made some great choices... the only one I'd add would be Heifer.com... I know a great many of the 'children's charities' are complete scams... but one must invest in our future.
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Cyber war! You can't subdue any one with that. They can learn this too and launch counter attacks tomorrow. The bigger guy with more net based economy will suffer eventually. Expect a future with peace talks on cyber wars.
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+Heidi Schabziger not necessarily, but it doesn't have to be either. The changes in our culture are already in motion; if it's a bubble, it will burst, but our youth will continue to gravitate towards technology as they know it is what steers our course into the future.
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+Eric Martindale when I logged into Facebook I was asked if I wanted to preview the new timeline. On clicking yes it said I'd get an invite in the future. So I think they may be phasing it in but developers first (and only those looking to write new verb based apps).
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What does the future of open education look like? Learn about our founders' vision for open source education in our latest interview by +Anthony Pompliano.
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“And I sincerely believe, with you, that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies; and that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale.” - Jefferson’s letter to John Taylor, May 28, 1816
So, yeah, it’s not a direct quote...but pretty damn close. And +Ian D., I’m really sorry you are too lazy to do the approximately 45 seconds worth of research that ‘assignment’ took.
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I've been building a lot using Node.js lately. My experience with it has been good, from the ease and simplicity of setting up a realtime die-roller [1] to building an entire education platform [2]. It's a little strange getting your head around the constant callback mentality, but it's otherwise intuitive.
It's good reading some legitimate criticisms of Node.js, though. The author of this post has a point about how using it creates a tightly coupled system, contrary to existing UNIX patterns and presumably creating a maintenance nightmare in the future. I think time will tell, however--especially as parts of the toolchain and deploying solutions mature (I'm looking at you, Joyent!).
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I've been building a lot using Node.js lately. My experience with it has been good, from the ease and simplicity of setting up a realtime die-roller [1] to building an entire education platform [2]. It's a little strange getting your head around the constant callback mentality, but it's otherwise intuitive.
It's good reading some legitimate criticisms of Node.js, though. The author of this post has a point about how using it creates a tightly coupled system, contrary to existing UNIX patterns and presumably creating a maintenance nightmare in the future. I think time will tell, however--especially as parts of the toolchain and deploying solutions mature (I'm looking at you, Joyent!).
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I've been building a lot using Node.js lately. My experience with it has been good, from the ease and simplicity of setting up a realtime die-roller [1] to building an entire education platform [2]. It's a little strange getting your head around the constant callback mentality, but it's otherwise intuitive.
It's good reading some legitimate criticisms of Node.js, though. The author of this post has a point about how using it creates a tightly coupled system, contrary to existing UNIX patterns and presumably creating a maintenance nightmare in the future. I think time will tell, however--especially as parts of the toolchain and deploying solutions mature (I'm looking at you, Joyent!).
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I've been building a lot using Node.js lately. My experience with it has been good, from the ease and simplicity of setting up a realtime die-roller [1] to building an entire education platform [2]. It's a little strange getting your head around the constant callback mentality, but it's otherwise intuitive.
It's good reading some legitimate criticisms of Node.js, though. The author of this post has a point about how using it creates a tightly coupled system, contrary to existing UNIX patterns and presumably creating a maintenance nightmare in the future. I think time will tell, however--especially as parts of the toolchain and deploying solutions mature (I'm looking at you, Joyent!).
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I got a haircut last night - I'm down to maybe half a curl of hair. I don't have any pictures yet, but as soon as I do I'll post them here. Tonia killed me two or three times over when she found out. Sorry!
On another note, I'm writing this post in Google Docs. Since I'm using the Blogger Beta, I wasn't able to do this up until about a week ago, but I'm only now testing it out. It's a fairly easy setup, all I've had to do is select "Blogger (Beta)" from the Blog settings here in Docs, and then enter my username, password, and finally which blog I'd like to post to. This last bit of information is optional, and they said that they'll post to the first blog they find if you don't specify it.
We're (GWing Roleplay) looking at some excellent affiliate options, and will be presenting the community with a good number of resources in the near future. There are some outstanding opportunities that have presented themselves, and we're striving to give GWing the best environment possible for the roleplayers. We'll keep you updated as things progress, we promise!
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Open Source is the Future of Education If you're familiar with coding, chances are you've seen how the open source software landscape has changed over the past few years with the advent of +GitHub. With my new company +Coursefork, I'm hoping to incite the same kind of change in the world of #education .
+Jason Hibbets from +Opensource.com interviewed me recently about how we're building a better education, but it can't stop with us—he correctly identifies that the most important ingredient is the community of people who will be a part of the social fabric of education as we move forward.
Check out the interview and let me know your thoughts.
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Open Source is the Future of Education If you're familiar with coding, chances are you've seen how the open source software landscape has changed over the past few years with the advent of +GitHub. With my new company +Coursefork, I'm hoping to incite the same kind of change in the world of #education .
+Jason Hibbets from +Opensource.com interviewed me recently about how we're building a better education, but it can't stop with us—he correctly identifies that the most important ingredient is the community of people who will be a part of the social fabric of education as we move forward.
Check out the interview and let me know your thoughts.
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Open Source is the Future of Education If you're familiar with coding, chances are you've seen how the open source software landscape has changed over the past few years with the advent of +GitHub. With my new company +Coursefork, I'm hoping to incite the same kind of change in the world of #education .
+Jason Hibbets from +Opensource.com interviewed me recently about how we're building a better education, but it can't stop with us—he correctly identifies that the most important ingredient is the community of people who will be a part of the social fabric of education as we move forward.
Check out the interview and let me know your thoughts.
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Open Source is the Future of Education If you're familiar with coding, chances are you've seen how the open source software landscape has changed over the past few years with the advent of +GitHub. With my new company +Coursefork, I'm hoping to incite the same kind of change in the world of #education .
+Jason Hibbets from +Opensource.com interviewed me recently about how we're building a better education, but it can't stop with us—he correctly identifies that the most important ingredient is the community of people who will be a part of the social fabric of education as we move forward.
Check out the interview and let me know your thoughts.
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Hi guys.. TODAY. Sept.29,at 11:00 PM EST the Singularity Circle is going to have a talk with Mr.+Frederic Emam-Zade One of the firtst Executive graduated from Singularity University.+Frederic Emam-Zade is presently the Chief Economist of Fundación Global Democracia y Desarrollo (FUNGLODE), a multidisciplinary Think Tank founded in October 2000 and Chaired by Dr. Leonel Fernández, who is presently the President of the Dominican Republic. Formerly, from August 2004 to August 2009, Mr. Emam-Zade was the Director General of FUNGLODE.
Would you like Frederic to talk about a specific Singularity topic? Feel free to suggest topics or ask questions here!*
So, circle +Frederic Emam-Zade and stay tunned to this amazing talk about Technological Singularity, Future, Machine/Human and more!
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Hi guys.. TODAY. Sept.29,at 11:00 PM EST the Singularity Circle is going to have a talk with Mr.+Frederic Emam-Zade One of the firtst Executive graduated from Singularity University.+Frederic Emam-Zade is presently the Chief Economist of Fundación Global Democracia y Desarrollo (FUNGLODE), a multidisciplinary Think Tank founded in October 2000 and Chaired by Dr. Leonel Fernández, who is presently the President of the Dominican Republic. Formerly, from August 2004 to August 2009, Mr. Emam-Zade was the Director General of FUNGLODE.
Would you like Frederic to talk about a specific Singularity topic? Feel free to suggest topics or ask questions here!*
So, circle +Frederic Emam-Zade and stay tunned to this amazing talk about Technological Singularity, Future, Machine/Human and more!
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I'm so pleased that +Coursefork made +Opensource.com's list of the top 10 open-source projects for 2013... this puts us alongside +Docker and +OpenStack, a true honor in my book.
If you haven't heard what the team has been working on, Coursefork is building an open-source collaboration tool for educators. In the same way software creators can re-use open-source resources to get ahead in the development cycle, we want to enable teachers to re-use materials and improvements thereof to allow for the accretion of teaching techniques in place of continual re-invention.
“We're creating the pull request for courses, and the process of getting there means creating the tools necessary to support the community of a new open future for education.”
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Coursefork Among Top 10 Open Source Projects of 2013 I'm so pleased that +Coursefork made +Opensource.com's list of the top 10 open-source projects for 2013... this puts us alongside +Docker and +OpenStack, a true honor in my book.
If you haven't heard what the team has been working on, Coursefork is building an open-source collaboration tool for educators. In the same way software creators can re-use open-source resources to get ahead in the development cycle, we want to enable teachers to re-use materials and improvements thereof to allow for the accretion of teaching techniques in place of continual re-invention.
“We're creating the pull request for courses, and the process of getting there means creating the tools necessary to support the community of a new open future for education.”
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Coursefork Among Top 10 Open Source Projects of 2013 I'm so pleased that +Coursefork made +Opensource.com's list of the top 10 open-source projects for 2013... this puts us alongside +Docker and +OpenStack, a true honor in my book.
If you haven't heard what the team has been working on, Coursefork is building an open-source collaboration tool for educators. In the same way software creators can re-use open-source resources to get ahead in the development cycle, we want to enable teachers to re-use materials and improvements thereof to allow for the accretion of teaching techniques in place of continual re-invention.
“We're creating the pull request for courses, and the process of getting there means creating the tools necessary to support the community of a new open future for education.”
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Coursefork Among Top 10 Open Source Projects of 2013 I'm so pleased that +Coursefork made +Opensource.com's list of the top 10 open-source projects for 2013... this puts us alongside +Docker and +OpenStack, a true honor in my book.
If you haven't heard what the team has been working on, Coursefork is building an open-source collaboration tool for educators. In the same way software creators can re-use open-source resources to get ahead in the development cycle, we want to enable teachers to re-use materials and improvements thereof to allow for the accretion of teaching techniques in place of continual re-invention.
“We're creating the pull request for courses, and the process of getting there means creating the tools necessary to support the community of a new open future for education.”
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I'm arguing that serverside, there's nothing better than Linux. It's more widely used, even. I'm also saying that clientside, there's nothing better than Windows. My extensive point is that Windows would never improve if Linux wasn't a competitor. Even with Server 2003, Linux still blows the rest of the market away. Sure, I'd love to use a fully compatible mainstream box that doesn't crash. But without competitors, Windows will never become that. Thanks to Linux, we have improved greatly since the beginning.
Then there's the Mac thing. At this point, you're probably asking, "I thought he was a PC guy?" and I am. There's no denying that touching a Macintosh makes me feel sick. However, let's give them some credit, right? Look at what the iPod has become. Apple has the potential to become the biggest, the best, and the most used. They're getting there, and stepping over to the Intel chipset was a GREAT move. But, it just isn't enough to give them the kick in the ass that they need, yet. I'm speculating that if Microsoft doesn't clean up their act soon, whether it's Vista or Live... Mac will dominate the future market.
Of course at this point people will STILL be using their own Linux boxes off in the background, and the market share will be about the same. So here I am, using Windows to access my Linux server - with an old iMac in the other room sitting in a pile of junk.
-- Eric Martindale IT Professional Admin of GWing.net
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You're right, +Debbie Coultis. The problem is that more often than not, any customizations made to the existing open resources (+MIT OpenCourseWare, for example) never make their way back "upstream", or otherwise made available to future educators or students who might have use of them. I talked a bit about how +Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), specifically with software, was involved in the open-source community very early on, but perhaps I should've gone into more depth here.
There are many free (and some open) educational resources emerging, but we need deeper interchangeability between them if their innovations are to be capitalized on.
+Bob Calder I don't know if Robert Panoff was in the audience or not, but you're right. +Coursera isn't the answer, but it is at least a step forward in increasing the availability of the delivery system. Once we're able to edit that content and the processes (e.g., make everything hackable), we'll close the loop on collaboration in education.
Thanks, +Nathan Greenling! Once +Coursefork ships more robust composition features, I'll attach the slides into the YouTube video at their corresponding points and perhaps include some further speaker notes.
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Now that it's public i'd like to share some tips that i think enrich your experience here and help your art be heard and seen and some new ways of profiting from it.
1. Re think your marketing strategy I see a lot of artists still using the site like twitter or facebook and just posting songs and not giving any inside story about how it came to be or what influenced it. Give people a reason to comment on your posts and continue that discussion.
2. Collaborate with artists outside your medium One of the most rewarding things about this site is the quality of the community here. As a musician, think of ways you can collaborate with photographers, graphic artists, software engineers etc.. This idea i think is the future of how artists of all mediums can be profitable and retain their artistic integrity ( i have a collaboration with +Colby Brown and +byron rempel that i'm working on right now that will showcase this)
3. Be Humble or at least be real The major change for artists that i feel is coming is how this amount of engagement and deeper connectivity will promote certain types of artists. Don't think that no matter how talented you are you can get away with thinking your art is enough to stand on it's own. Also, promote who you are and get people invested in who you are as a person and let them find out about your art if they want to know more about you, but don't push it on to people.
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Now that it's public i'd like to share some tips that i think enrich your experience here and help your art be heard and seen and some new ways of profiting from it.
1. Re think your marketing strategy I see a lot of artists still using the site like twitter or facebook and just posting songs and not giving any inside story about how it came to be or what influenced it. Give people a reason to comment on your posts and continue that discussion.
2. Collaborate with artists outside your medium One of the most rewarding things about this site is the quality of the community here. As a musician, think of ways you can collaborate with photographers, graphic artists, software engineers etc.. This idea i think is the future of how artists of all mediums can be profitable and retain their artistic integrity ( i have a collaboration with +Colby Brown and +byron rempel that i'm working on right now that will showcase this)
3. Be Humble or at least be real The major change for artists that i feel is coming is how this amount of engagement and deeper connectivity will promote certain types of artists. Don't think that no matter how talented you are you can get away with thinking your art is enough to stand on it's own. Also, promote who you are and get people invested in who you are as a person and let them find out about your art if they want to know more about you, but don't push it on to people.
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In June of 1971, just days before his 26-year-old son, Michael, got married, future-U.S. President Ronald Reagan sent him the following letter of advice.
Michael Reagan
Manhattan Beach, California
June 1971
Dear Mike:
Enclosed is the item I mentioned (with which goes a torn up IOU). I could stop here but I won't.
You've heard all the jokes that have been rousted around by all the "unhappy marrieds" and cynics. Now, in case no one has suggested it, there is another viewpoint. You have entered into the most meaningful relationship there is in all human life. It can be whatever you decide to make it.
Some men feel their masculinity can only be proven if they play out in their own life all the locker-room stories, smugly confident that what a wife doesn't know won't hurt her. The truth is, somehow, way down inside, without her ever finding lipstick on the collar or catching a man in the flimsy excuse of where he was till three A.M., a wife does know, and with that knowing, some of the magic of this relationship disappears. There are more men griping about marriage who kicked the whole thing away themselves than there can ever be wives deserving of blame. There is an old law of physics that you can only get out of a thing as much as you put in it. The man who puts into the marriage only half of what he owns will get that out. Sure, there will be moments when you will see someone or think back to an earlier time and you will be challenged to see if you can still make the grade, but let me tell you how really great is the challenge of proving your masculinity and charm with one woman for the rest of your life. Any man can find a twerp here and there who will go along with cheating, and it doesn't take all that much manhood. It does take quite a man to remain attractive and to be loved by a woman who has heard him snore, seen him unshaven, tended him while he was sick and washed his dirty underwear. Do that and keep her still feeling a warm glow and you will know some very beautiful music. If you truly love a girl, you shouldn't ever want her to feel, when she sees you greet a secretary or a girl you both know, that humiliation of wondering if she was someone who caused you to be late coming home, nor should you want any other woman to be able to meet your wife and know she was smiling behind her eyes as she looked at her, the woman you love, remembering this was the woman you rejected even momentarily for her favors.
Mike, you know better than many what an unhappy home is and what it can do to others. Now you have a chance to make it come out the way it should. There is no greater happiness for a man than approaching a door at the end of a day knowing someone on the other side of that door is waiting for the sound of his footsteps.
Love,
Dad
P.S. You'll never get in trouble if you say "I love you" at least once a day.
Thank you, Letters of Note, for sharing this incredibly prescient tidbit.
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In June of 1971, just days before his 26-year-old son, Michael, got married, future-U.S. President Ronald Reagan sent him the following letter of advice.
Michael Reagan Manhattan Beach, California June 1971
Dear Mike:
Enclosed is the item I mentioned (with which goes a torn up IOU). I could stop here but I won't.
You've heard all the jokes that have been rousted around by all the "unhappy marrieds" and cynics. Now, in case no one has suggested it, there is another viewpoint. You have entered into the most meaningful relationship there is in all human life. It can be whatever you decide to make it.
Some men feel their masculinity can only be proven if they play out in their own life all the locker-room stories, smugly confident that what a wife doesn't know won't hurt her. The truth is, somehow, way down inside, without her ever finding lipstick on the collar or catching a man in the flimsy excuse of where he was till three A.M., a wife does know, and with that knowing, some of the magic of this relationship disappears. There are more men griping about marriage who kicked the whole thing away themselves than there can ever be wives deserving of blame. There is an old law of physics that you can only get out of a thing as much as you put in it. The man who puts into the marriage only half of what he owns will get that out. Sure, there will be moments when you will see someone or think back to an earlier time and you will be challenged to see if you can still make the grade, but let me tell you how really great is the challenge of proving your masculinity and charm with one woman for the rest of your life. Any man can find a twerp here and there who will go along with cheating, and it doesn't take all that much manhood. It does take quite a man to remain attractive and to be loved by a woman who has heard him snore, seen him unshaven, tended him while he was sick and washed his dirty underwear. Do that and keep her still feeling a warm glow and you will know some very beautiful music. If you truly love a girl, you shouldn't ever want her to feel, when she sees you greet a secretary or a girl you both know, that humiliation of wondering if she was someone who caused you to be late coming home, nor should you want any other woman to be able to meet your wife and know she was smiling behind her eyes as she looked at her, the woman you love, remembering this was the woman you rejected even momentarily for her favors.
Mike, you know better than many what an unhappy home is and what it can do to others. Now you have a chance to make it come out the way it should. There is no greater happiness for a man than approaching a door at the end of a day knowing someone on the other side of that door is waiting for the sound of his footsteps.
Love,
Dad
P.S. You'll never get in trouble if you say "I love you" at least once a day.
Thank you, Letters of Note, for sharing this incredibly prescient tidbit.
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In June of 1971, just days before his 26-year-old son, Michael, got married, future-U.S. President Ronald Reagan sent him the following letter of advice.
Michael Reagan Manhattan Beach, California June 1971
Dear Mike:
Enclosed is the item I mentioned (with which goes a torn up IOU). I could stop here but I won't.
You've heard all the jokes that have been rousted around by all the "unhappy marrieds" and cynics. Now, in case no one has suggested it, there is another viewpoint. You have entered into the most meaningful relationship there is in all human life. It can be whatever you decide to make it.
Some men feel their masculinity can only be proven if they play out in their own life all the locker-room stories, smugly confident that what a wife doesn't know won't hurt her. The truth is, somehow, way down inside, without her ever finding lipstick on the collar or catching a man in the flimsy excuse of where he was till three A.M., a wife does know, and with that knowing, some of the magic of this relationship disappears. There are more men griping about marriage who kicked the whole thing away themselves than there can ever be wives deserving of blame. There is an old law of physics that you can only get out of a thing as much as you put in it. The man who puts into the marriage only half of what he owns will get that out. Sure, there will be moments when you will see someone or think back to an earlier time and you will be challenged to see if you can still make the grade, but let me tell you how really great is the challenge of proving your masculinity and charm with one woman for the rest of your life. Any man can find a twerp here and there who will go along with cheating, and it doesn't take all that much manhood. It does take quite a man to remain attractive and to be loved by a woman who has heard him snore, seen him unshaven, tended him while he was sick and washed his dirty underwear. Do that and keep her still feeling a warm glow and you will know some very beautiful music. If you truly love a girl, you shouldn't ever want her to feel, when she sees you greet a secretary or a girl you both know, that humiliation of wondering if she was someone who caused you to be late coming home, nor should you want any other woman to be able to meet your wife and know she was smiling behind her eyes as she looked at her, the woman you love, remembering this was the woman you rejected even momentarily for her favors.
Mike, you know better than many what an unhappy home is and what it can do to others. Now you have a chance to make it come out the way it should. There is no greater happiness for a man than approaching a door at the end of a day knowing someone on the other side of that door is waiting for the sound of his footsteps.
Love,
Dad
P.S. You'll never get in trouble if you say "I love you" at least once a day.
Thank you, Letters of Note, for sharing this incredibly prescient tidbit.
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In June of 1971, just days before his 26-year-old son, Michael, got married, future-U.S. President Ronald Reagan sent him the following letter of advice.
Michael Reagan Manhattan Beach, California June 1971
Dear Mike:
Enclosed is the item I mentioned (with which goes a torn up IOU). I could stop here but I won't.
You've heard all the jokes that have been rousted around by all the "unhappy marrieds" and cynics. Now, in case no one has suggested it, there is another viewpoint. You have entered into the most meaningful relationship there is in all human life. It can be whatever you decide to make it.
Some men feel their masculinity can only be proven if they play out in their own life all the locker-room stories, smugly confident that what a wife doesn't know won't hurt her. The truth is, somehow, way down inside, without her ever finding lipstick on the collar or catching a man in the flimsy excuse of where he was till three A.M., a wife does know, and with that knowing, some of the magic of this relationship disappears. There are more men griping about marriage who kicked the whole thing away themselves than there can ever be wives deserving of blame. There is an old law of physics that you can only get out of a thing as much as you put in it. The man who puts into the marriage only half of what he owns will get that out. Sure, there will be moments when you will see someone or think back to an earlier time and you will be challenged to see if you can still make the grade, but let me tell you how really great is the challenge of proving your masculinity and charm with one woman for the rest of your life. Any man can find a twerp here and there who will go along with cheating, and it doesn't take all that much manhood. It does take quite a man to remain attractive and to be loved by a woman who has heard him snore, seen him unshaven, tended him while he was sick and washed his dirty underwear. Do that and keep her still feeling a warm glow and you will know some very beautiful music. If you truly love a girl, you shouldn't ever want her to feel, when she sees you greet a secretary or a girl you both know, that humiliation of wondering if she was someone who caused you to be late coming home, nor should you want any other woman to be able to meet your wife and know she was smiling behind her eyes as she looked at her, the woman you love, remembering this was the woman you rejected even momentarily for her favors.
Mike, you know better than many what an unhappy home is and what it can do to others. Now you have a chance to make it come out the way it should. There is no greater happiness for a man than approaching a door at the end of a day knowing someone on the other side of that door is waiting for the sound of his footsteps.
Love,
Dad
P.S. You'll never get in trouble if you say "I love you" at least once a day.
Thank you, Letters of Note, for sharing this incredibly prescient tidbit.
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The author of the particularly famous Wheel of Time series passed away yesterday due to cardiac amyloidosis. Diagnosed with the disease in March of 2006, Jordan, born James Oliver Rigney Jr., vowed to fight the disease and continue his legendary writing career for many years to come. It is a great loss to the fantasy community, and on behalf of RolePlayGateway, we send our condolences to his family and friends, who will no doubt be the most affected by his passing.
It is with great sadness that I tell you that the Dragon is gone. RJ left us today at 2:45 PM. He fought a valiant fight against this most horrid disease. In the end, he left peacefully and in no pain. In the years he had fought this, he taught me much about living and about facing death. He never waivered in his faith, nor questioned our God’s timing. I could not possibly be more proud of anyone. I am eternally grateful for the time that I had with him on this earth and look forward to our reunion, though as I told him this afternoon, not yet. I love you bubba.
Our beloved Harriet was at his side through the entire fight and to the end. The last words from his mouth were to tell her that he loved her.
Thank each and everyone of you for your prayers and support through this ordeal. He knew you were there. Harriet reminded him today that she was very proud of the many lives he had touched through his work. We’ve all felt the love that you’ve been sending my brother/cousin. Please keep it coming as our Harriet could use the support.
Jason will be posting funeral arrangements.
My sincerest thanks.
Peace and Light be with each of you,
Wilson
Brother/Cousin
4th of 3
To Catalyst: Never, never loose faith. RJ did not. Harriet hasn’t. I haven’t. Going through what we have, our faith is only strengthened. Besides, if God didn’t exist, we would have never had Jim. We did. God does. Remember my Brother/Cousin, my friend, think of him fondly and glorify God’s name.
Editor’s Note:
The entire staff of Dragonmount.com would like to extend its most deepest sympathies to Robert Jordan’s family. He touched all of our lives in some way and we wish him the rest and peace he deserves. We will be posting information in the near future about where you can send condolences. Please check the News Section for these updates.
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A favorite quote of mine from my favorite physicist, Richard Feynman, on the importance of play. Dr. Feynman was a Nobel Prize-winning physicist who was notorious for being multi-faceted, in both his personal hobbies and his grasp of science. He worked on the Manhattan Project with Einstein, was part of the panel that investigated the Challenger Disaster, and his work plays a major role in the modern understanding of quantum computing.
“Then I had another thought: Physics disgusts me a little bit now, but I used to enjoy doing physics. Why did I enjoy it? I used to play with it. I used to do whatever I felt like doing - it didn’t have to do with whether it was important for the development of nuclear physics, but whether it was interesting and amusing for me to play with. When I was in high school, I’d see water running out of a faucet growing narrower, and wonder if I could figure out what determines that curve. I found it was rather easy to do. I didn’t have to do it; it wasn’t important for the future of science; somebody else had already done it. That didn’t make any difference. I’d invent things and play with things for my own entertainment.
So I got this new attitude. Now that I am burned out and I’ll never accomplish anything, I’ve got this nice position at the university teaching classes which I rather enjoy, and just like I read the Arabian Nights for pleasure, I’m going to play with physics, whenever I want to, without worrying about any importance whatsoever.
Within a week I was in the cafeteria and some guy, fooling around, throws a plate in the air. As the plate went up in the air I saw it wobble, and I noticed the red medallion of Cornell on the plate going around. It was pretty obvious to me that the medallion went around faster than the wobbling.
I had nothing to do, so I start to figure out the motion of the rotating plate. I discover that when the angle is very slight, the medallion rotates twice as fast as the wobble rate - two to one [Note: Feynman mis-remembers here---the factor of 2 is the other way]. It came out of a complicated equation! Then I thought, ‘Is there some way I can see in a more fundamental way, by looking at the forces or the dynamics, why it’s two to one?’
I don’t remember how I did it, but I ultimately worked out what the motion of the mass particles is, and how all the accelerations balance to make it come out two to one.
I still remember going to Hans Bethe and saying, ‘Hey, Hans! I noticed something interesting. Here the plate goes around so, and the reason it’s two to one is ...’ and I showed him the accelerations.
He says, ‘Feynman, that’s pretty interesting, but what’s the importance of it? Why are you doing it?’
‘Hah!’ I say. ‘There’s no importance whatsoever. I’m just doing it for the fun of it.’ His reaction didn’t discourage me; I had made up my mind I was going to enjoy physics and do whatever I liked.
I went on to work out equations of wobbles. Then I thought about how electron orbits start to move in relativity. Then there’s the Dirac Equation in electrodynamics. And then quantum electrodynamics. And before I knew it (it was a very short time) I was ‘playing’ - working, really - with the same old problem that I loved so much, that I had stopped working on when I went to Los Alamos: my thesis-type problems; all those old-fashioned, wonderful things.
It was effortless. It was easy to play with these things. It was like uncorking a bottle: Everything flowed out effortlessly. I almost tried to resist it! There was no importance to what I was doing, but ultimately there was. The diagrams and the whole business that I got the Nobel Prize for came from that piddling around with the wobbling plate.”
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A favorite quote of mine from my favorite physicist, Richard Feynman, on the importance of play. Dr. Feynman was a Nobel Prize-winning physicist who was notorious for being multi-faceted, in both his personal hobbies and his grasp of science. He worked on the Manhattan Project with Einstein, was part of the panel that investigated the Challenger Disaster, and his work plays a major role in the modern understanding of quantum computing.
“Then I had another thought: Physics disgusts me a little bit now, but I used to enjoy doing physics. Why did I enjoy it? I used to play with it. I used to do whatever I felt like doing - it didn’t have to do with whether it was important for the development of nuclear physics, but whether it was interesting and amusing for me to play with. When I was in high school, I’d see water running out of a faucet growing narrower, and wonder if I could figure out what determines that curve. I found it was rather easy to do. I didn’t have to do it; it wasn’t important for the future of science; somebody else had already done it. That didn’t make any difference. I’d invent things and play with things for my own entertainment.
So I got this new attitude. Now that I am burned out and I’ll never accomplish anything, I’ve got this nice position at the university teaching classes which I rather enjoy, and just like I read the Arabian Nights for pleasure, I’m going to play with physics, whenever I want to, without worrying about any importance whatsoever.
Within a week I was in the cafeteria and some guy, fooling around, throws a plate in the air. As the plate went up in the air I saw it wobble, and I noticed the red medallion of Cornell on the plate going around. It was pretty obvious to me that the medallion went around faster than the wobbling.
I had nothing to do, so I start to figure out the motion of the rotating plate. I discover that when the angle is very slight, the medallion rotates twice as fast as the wobble rate - two to one [Note: Feynman mis-remembers here---the factor of 2 is the other way]. It came out of a complicated equation! Then I thought, ‘Is there some way I can see in a more fundamental way, by looking at the forces or the dynamics, why it’s two to one?’
I don’t remember how I did it, but I ultimately worked out what the motion of the mass particles is, and how all the accelerations balance to make it come out two to one.
I still remember going to Hans Bethe and saying, ‘Hey, Hans! I noticed something interesting. Here the plate goes around so, and the reason it’s two to one is ...’ and I showed him the accelerations.
He says, ‘Feynman, that’s pretty interesting, but what’s the importance of it? Why are you doing it?’
‘Hah!’ I say. ‘There’s no importance whatsoever. I’m just doing it for the fun of it.’ His reaction didn’t discourage me; I had made up my mind I was going to enjoy physics and do whatever I liked.
I went on to work out equations of wobbles. Then I thought about how electron orbits start to move in relativity. Then there’s the Dirac Equation in electrodynamics. And then quantum electrodynamics. And before I knew it (it was a very short time) I was ‘playing’ - working, really - with the same old problem that I loved so much, that I had stopped working on when I went to Los Alamos: my thesis-type problems; all those old-fashioned, wonderful things.
It was effortless. It was easy to play with these things. It was like uncorking a bottle: Everything flowed out effortlessly. I almost tried to resist it! There was no importance to what I was doing, but ultimately there was. The diagrams and the whole business that I got the Nobel Prize for came from that piddling around with the wobbling plate.”
Replies are automatically detected from social media, including Twitter, Facebook, and Google+. To add a comment, include a direct link to this post in your message and it'll show up here within a few minutes.
A favorite quote of mine from my favorite physicist, Richard Feynman, on the importance of play. Dr. Feynman was a Nobel Prize-winning physicist who was notorious for being multi-faceted, in both his personal hobbies and his grasp of science. He worked on the Manhattan Project with Einstein, was part of the panel that investigated the Challenger Disaster, and his work plays a major role in the modern understanding of quantum computing.
“Then I had another thought: Physics disgusts me a little bit now, but I used to enjoy doing physics. Why did I enjoy it? I used to play with it. I used to do whatever I felt like doing - it didn’t have to do with whether it was important for the development of nuclear physics, but whether it was interesting and amusing for me to play with. When I was in high school, I’d see water running out of a faucet growing narrower, and wonder if I could figure out what determines that curve. I found it was rather easy to do. I didn’t have to do it; it wasn’t important for the future of science; somebody else had already done it. That didn’t make any difference. I’d invent things and play with things for my own entertainment.
So I got this new attitude. Now that I am burned out and I’ll never accomplish anything, I’ve got this nice position at the university teaching classes which I rather enjoy, and just like I read the Arabian Nights for pleasure, I’m going to play with physics, whenever I want to, without worrying about any importance whatsoever.
Within a week I was in the cafeteria and some guy, fooling around, throws a plate in the air. As the plate went up in the air I saw it wobble, and I noticed the red medallion of Cornell on the plate going around. It was pretty obvious to me that the medallion went around faster than the wobbling.
I had nothing to do, so I start to figure out the motion of the rotating plate. I discover that when the angle is very slight, the medallion rotates twice as fast as the wobble rate - two to one [Note: Feynman mis-remembers here---the factor of 2 is the other way]. It came out of a complicated equation! Then I thought, ‘Is there some way I can see in a more fundamental way, by looking at the forces or the dynamics, why it’s two to one?’
I don’t remember how I did it, but I ultimately worked out what the motion of the mass particles is, and how all the accelerations balance to make it come out two to one.
I still remember going to Hans Bethe and saying, ‘Hey, Hans! I noticed something interesting. Here the plate goes around so, and the reason it’s two to one is ...’ and I showed him the accelerations.
He says, ‘Feynman, that’s pretty interesting, but what’s the importance of it? Why are you doing it?’
‘Hah!’ I say. ‘There’s no importance whatsoever. I’m just doing it for the fun of it.’ His reaction didn’t discourage me; I had made up my mind I was going to enjoy physics and do whatever I liked.
I went on to work out equations of wobbles. Then I thought about how electron orbits start to move in relativity. Then there’s the Dirac Equation in electrodynamics. And then quantum electrodynamics. And before I knew it (it was a very short time) I was ‘playing’ - working, really - with the same old problem that I loved so much, that I had stopped working on when I went to Los Alamos: my thesis-type problems; all those old-fashioned, wonderful things.
It was effortless. It was easy to play with these things. It was like uncorking a bottle: Everything flowed out effortlessly. I almost tried to resist it! There was no importance to what I was doing, but ultimately there was. The diagrams and the whole business that I got the Nobel Prize for came from that piddling around with the wobbling plate.”
Replies are automatically detected from social media, including Twitter, Facebook, and Google+. To add a comment, include a direct link to this post in your message and it'll show up here within a few minutes.
A favorite quote of mine from my favorite physicist, Richard Feynman, on the importance of play. Dr. Feynman was a Nobel Prize-winning physicist who was notorious for being multi-faceted, in both his personal hobbies and his grasp of science. He worked on the Manhattan Project with Einstein, was part of the panel that investigated the Challenger Disaster, and his work plays a major role in the modern understanding of quantum computing.
“Then I had another thought: Physics disgusts me a little bit now, but I used to enjoy doing physics. Why did I enjoy it? I used to play with it. I used to do whatever I felt like doing - it didn’t have to do with whether it was important for the development of nuclear physics, but whether it was interesting and amusing for me to play with. When I was in high school, I’d see water running out of a faucet growing narrower, and wonder if I could figure out what determines that curve. I found it was rather easy to do. I didn’t have to do it; it wasn’t important for the future of science; somebody else had already done it. That didn’t make any difference. I’d invent things and play with things for my own entertainment.
So I got this new attitude. Now that I am burned out and I’ll never accomplish anything, I’ve got this nice position at the university teaching classes which I rather enjoy, and just like I read the Arabian Nights for pleasure, I’m going to play with physics, whenever I want to, without worrying about any importance whatsoever.
Within a week I was in the cafeteria and some guy, fooling around, throws a plate in the air. As the plate went up in the air I saw it wobble, and I noticed the red medallion of Cornell on the plate going around. It was pretty obvious to me that the medallion went around faster than the wobbling.
I had nothing to do, so I start to figure out the motion of the rotating plate. I discover that when the angle is very slight, the medallion rotates twice as fast as the wobble rate - two to one [Note: Feynman mis-remembers here---the factor of 2 is the other way]. It came out of a complicated equation! Then I thought, ‘Is there some way I can see in a more fundamental way, by looking at the forces or the dynamics, why it’s two to one?’
I don’t remember how I did it, but I ultimately worked out what the motion of the mass particles is, and how all the accelerations balance to make it come out two to one.
I still remember going to Hans Bethe and saying, ‘Hey, Hans! I noticed something interesting. Here the plate goes around so, and the reason it’s two to one is ...’ and I showed him the accelerations.
He says, ‘Feynman, that’s pretty interesting, but what’s the importance of it? Why are you doing it?’
‘Hah!’ I say. ‘There’s no importance whatsoever. I’m just doing it for the fun of it.’ His reaction didn’t discourage me; I had made up my mind I was going to enjoy physics and do whatever I liked.
I went on to work out equations of wobbles. Then I thought about how electron orbits start to move in relativity. Then there’s the Dirac Equation in electrodynamics. And then quantum electrodynamics. And before I knew it (it was a very short time) I was ‘playing’ - working, really - with the same old problem that I loved so much, that I had stopped working on when I went to Los Alamos: my thesis-type problems; all those old-fashioned, wonderful things.
It was effortless. It was easy to play with these things. It was like uncorking a bottle: Everything flowed out effortlessly. I almost tried to resist it! There was no importance to what I was doing, but ultimately there was. The diagrams and the whole business that I got the Nobel Prize for came from that piddling around with the wobbling plate.”
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After a year and a half working with some of the smartest and most competent engineers I've ever met, it's time for me to part ways with BitPay. I've had the opportunity to be deeply involved in the design, implementation, and deployment of some incredible technologies, but we're turning a page in the story of Bitcoin's rise and it's time to start exploring the new chapter.
BitPay continues to paint an incredibly compelling picture as to what the decentralized future looks like – we worked on some incredibly far-reaching and massively impactful ideas, including:
- [ChainDB][chaindb], a distributed database backed exclusively by the Bitcoin blockchain.
- [Copay][copay], a truly decentralized wallet & identity management platform.
- [BitAuth][bitauth], a secure authentication mechanism for peers on the web, using the `k1` curve.
- [Impulse][impulse], a method of securing zero-confirmation transactions.
- [Foxtrot][foxtrot], a completely encrypted data transmission network.
- [Bitcore][bitcore], a library of common software functionality to glue everything together.
You might notice a few common themes. Let me point out the two most important.
Firstly, that everything here is open source (with the notable exception of ChainDB). Open source, and more importantly [free software][free software], is a very big deal to me. Prior to joining BitPay, I was [open sourcing education][coursefork], [contributing to open source software](https://github.com/martindale), and [speaking on the importance of open source](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iuYLWdG-lP0). Some of the things I'm most proud of are the things _other_ people built with the things _we_ gave away – _that's_ the real power of open source.
Secondly, that everything here is based on Bitcoin, not some alternative blockchain. BitPay was a firm believer in Bitcoin as the exclusive platform that would secure the post-fiat era, and that belief has held strongly with me before and after my departure. Until a more compelling alternative to Bitcoin emerges,
One of the other exciting things to come out of BitPay was the emergence of [DECENTRALIZE][decentralize], which we formed last fall with a few of our fellow employees. DECENTRALIZE has become [an acclaimed content source][cointelegraph:decentralize] in the latest resurgence of decentralized thinking, and now it gets to be a much bigger priority for me.
Before I joined BitPay, I'd put a lot of work into [Maki][maki], a framework for making full-stack application development significantly easier. Maki took a bit of a back-burner position while I was focusing on my work at BitPay, so I'll be redoubling my efforts to see that vision through. In fact, I think now's as good a time as any to share that vision.
To that end, I'm starting a new project named Fabric. I'd like to entirely eliminate centralized servers on the Internet and catalyze the development of an entirely new class of economic actor. More details soon.
As we embark on our next journey, let's always remember the carefully selected input used to create [the Genesis Block][genesis]:
> The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks
[chaindb]: https://bitpay.com/chaindb.pdf
[copay]: https://copay.io/
[bitauth]: https://github.com/bitpay/bitauth
[impulse]: https://impulse.is/
[foxtrot]: https://github.com/bitpay/foxtrot
[bitcore]: https://bitcore.io
[decentralize]: https://decentralize.fm
[free software]: http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.en.html
[coursefork]: https://coursefork.org/
[maki]: https://maki.ericmartindale.com/
[cointelegraph:decentralize]: http://cointelegraph.com/news/114496/leaders-in-bitcoin-broadcasting-pandoras-box-is-open-and-theres-no-going-back
[genesis]: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Genesis_block
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Yes, we're expanding. While +Wells Fargo [1] and +Wikipedia [2] start exploring #cryptofinance, we're also moving full steam ahead towards getting every company in the world to accept #bitcoin as a payment option.
Not only have we hired the best from companies like +Red Hat, +IBM, and Visa into our senior leadership, but we've established a firm position in the marketplace–we're now performing over $1,000,000 per day in transactions with Bitcoin, and there are now over 1,000 new businesses accepting Bitcoin every week. Now, we're hiring to support this investment in the community.
If you're interested in building anything related to #cryptofinance, give me a shout. We're extremely focused on #OpenSource and #cryptography , and will be spending a lot of our time [3] participating in the support of developers building applications in the space. If you want to build something that will shape the future of the world, #cryptofinance is the right space to be in.
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BitPay Expands, Fueled By Bitcoin Demand Yes, we're expanding. While +Wells Fargo [1] and +Wikipedia [2] start exploring #cryptofinance , we're also moving full steam ahead towards getting every company in the world to accept #bitcoin as a payment option.
Not only have we hired the best from companies like +Red Hat, +IBM, and Visa into our senior leadership, but we've established a firm position in the marketplace–we're now performing over $1,000,000 per day in transactions with Bitcoin, and there are now over 1,000 new businesses accepting Bitcoin every week. Now, we're hiring to support this investment in the community.
If you're interested in building anything related to #cryptofinance , give me a shout. We're extremely focused on #OpenSource and #cryptography , and will be spending a lot of our time [3] participating in the support of developers building applications in the space. If you want to build something that will shape the future of the world, #cryptofinance is the right space to be in.
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BitPay Expands, Fueled By Bitcoin Demand Yes, we're expanding. While +Wells Fargo [1] and +Wikipedia [2] start exploring #cryptofinance , we're also moving full steam ahead towards getting every company in the world to accept #bitcoin as a payment option.
Not only have we hired the best from companies like +Red Hat, +IBM, and Visa into our senior leadership, but we've established a firm position in the marketplace–we're now performing over $1,000,000 per day in transactions with Bitcoin, and there are now over 1,000 new businesses accepting Bitcoin every week. Now, we're hiring to support this investment in the community.
If you're interested in building anything related to #cryptofinance , give me a shout. We're extremely focused on #OpenSource and #cryptography , and will be spending a lot of our time [3] participating in the support of developers building applications in the space. If you want to build something that will shape the future of the world, #cryptofinance is the right space to be in.
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Compelling Narratives using Augmented Reality +Google Glass has, for better or worse, shaped the narrative around augmented reality this past year. We've seen the arms (eyes?) race rapidly develop, culminating recently with the +YCombinator-backed +meta announcing their "SpaceGlasses" [1], one of the first truly compelling experiences built around a convincingly capable device [2].
The hardest part of augmented reality is not the hardware, nor the computer vision software—both extremely difficult academic challenges in their own right, and certainly not to be taken by the faint of heart—but in the experience.
These problems will be solved, through no small effort, but they will be solved. The most daunting challenge is to build a compelling story that binds the available data (read "the Internet") to the real world, and exposes it in an unobtrusive and seamless fashion. This too will emerge naturally, but early pioneers in the space need to think carefully about the application of augmented reality in order to succeed; no one wants a world filled with advertisements [3], and in fact—some even try to eliminate them [4].
Here, +Field Trip attempts to builds one such compelling story. The experience of contextual information making itself available without interrupting your interactions with the real world is so tantalizingly close you can feel it, but one wonders just how much control the user will have over the frequency and relevance of the information "popups". In the early days of the software industry (late 60s, early 70s), an ongoing debate between the [then] default of free software vs. closed software unfolded, setting the foundation for today's conversation around open source and free [5] software. I'll be talking more about this in a presentation at the upcoming #RTP180 : Open Source All Things event [6] in North Carolina.
It's another step forward for ubiquitous augmented reality, an exciting one indeed, but one that won't achieve mass adoption until the user can control their own experience [7].
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Compelling Narratives using Augmented Reality +Google Glass has, for better or worse, shaped the narrative around augmented reality this past year. We've seen the arms (eyes?) race rapidly develop, culminating recently with the +YCombinator-backed +meta announcing their "SpaceGlasses" [1], one of the first truly compelling experiences built around a convincingly capable device [2].
The hardest part of augmented reality is not the hardware, nor the computer vision software—both extremely difficult academic challenges in their own right, and certainly not to be taken by the faint of heart—but in the experience.
These problems will be solved, through no small effort, but they will be solved. The most daunting challenge is to build a compelling story that binds the available data (read "the Internet") to the real world, and exposes it in an unobtrusive and seamless fashion. This too will emerge naturally, but early pioneers in the space need to think carefully about the application of augmented reality in order to succeed; no one wants a world filled with advertisements [3], and in fact—some even try to eliminate them [4].
Here, +Field Trip attempts to builds one such compelling story. The experience of contextual information making itself available without interrupting your interactions with the real world is so tantalizingly close you can feel it, but one wonders just how much control the user will have over the frequency and relevance of the information "popups". In the early days of the software industry (late 60s, early 70s), an ongoing debate between the [then] default of free software vs. closed software unfolded, setting the foundation for today's conversation around open source and free [5] software. I'll be talking more about this in a presentation at the upcoming #RTP180 : Open Source All Things event [6] in North Carolina.
It's another step forward for ubiquitous augmented reality, an exciting one indeed, but one that won't achieve mass adoption until the user can control their own experience [7].
Replies are automatically detected from social media, including Twitter, Facebook, and Google+. To add a comment, include a direct link to this post in your message and it'll show up here within a few minutes.
Compelling Narratives using Augmented Reality +Google Glass has, for better or worse, shaped the narrative around augmented reality this past year. We've seen the arms (eyes?) race rapidly develop, culminating recently with the +YCombinator-backed +meta announcing their "SpaceGlasses" [1], one of the first truly compelling experiences built around a convincingly capable device [2].
The hardest part of augmented reality is not the hardware, nor the computer vision software—both extremely difficult academic challenges in their own right, and certainly not to be taken by the faint of heart—but in the experience.
These problems will be solved, through no small effort, but they will be solved. The most daunting challenge is to build a compelling story that binds the available data (read "the Internet") to the real world, and exposes it in an unobtrusive and seamless fashion. This too will emerge naturally, but early pioneers in the space need to think carefully about the application of augmented reality in order to succeed; no one wants a world filled with advertisements [3], and in fact—some even try to eliminate them [4].
Here, +Field Trip attempts to builds one such compelling story. The experience of contextual information making itself available without interrupting your interactions with the real world is so tantalizingly close you can feel it, but one wonders just how much control the user will have over the frequency and relevance of the information "popups". In the early days of the software industry (late 60s, early 70s), an ongoing debate between the [then] default of free software vs. closed software unfolded, setting the foundation for today's conversation around open source and free [5] software. I'll be talking more about this in a presentation at the upcoming #RTP180 : Open Source All Things event [6] in North Carolina.
It's another step forward for ubiquitous augmented reality, an exciting one indeed, but one that won't achieve mass adoption until the user can control their own experience [7].
Replies are automatically detected from social media, including Twitter, Facebook, and Google+. To add a comment, include a direct link to this post in your message and it'll show up here within a few minutes.
BitPay Expands, Fueled By Bitcoin Demand Yes, we're expanding. While +Wells Fargo [1] and +Wikipedia [2] start exploring #cryptofinance , we're also moving full steam ahead towards getting every company in the world to accept #bitcoin as a payment option.
Not only have we hired the best from companies like +Red Hat, +IBM, and Visa into our senior leadership, but we've established a firm position in the marketplace–we're now performing over $1,000,000 per day in transactions with Bitcoin, and there are now over 1,000 new businesses accepting Bitcoin every week. Now, we're hiring to support this investment in the community.
If you're interested in building anything related to #cryptofinance , give me a shout. We're extremely focused on #OpenSource and #cryptography , and will be spending a lot of our time [3] participating in the support of developers building applications in the space. If you want to build something that will shape the future of the world, #cryptofinance is the right space to be in.
Replies are automatically detected from social media, including Twitter, Facebook, and Google+. To add a comment, include a direct link to this post in your message and it'll show up here within a few minutes.
Compelling Narratives using Augmented Reality +Google Glass has, for better or worse, shaped the narrative around augmented reality this past year. We've seen the arms (eyes?) race rapidly develop, culminating recently with the +YCombinator-backed +meta announcing their "SpaceGlasses" [1], one of the first truly compelling experiences built around a convincingly capable device [2].
The hardest part of augmented reality is not the hardware, nor the computer vision software—both extremely difficult academic challenges in their own right, and certainly not to be taken by the faint of heart—but in the experience.
These problems will be solved, through no small effort, but they will be solved. The most daunting challenge is to build a compelling story that binds the available data (read "the Internet") to the real world, and exposes it in an unobtrusive and seamless fashion. This too will emerge naturally, but early pioneers in the space need to think carefully about the application of augmented reality in order to succeed; no one wants a world filled with advertisements [3], and in fact—some even try to eliminate them [4].
Here, +Field Trip attempts to builds one such compelling story. The experience of contextual information making itself available without interrupting your interactions with the real world is so tantalizingly close you can feel it, but one wonders just how much control the user will have over the frequency and relevance of the information "popups". In the early days of the software industry (late 60s, early 70s), an ongoing debate between the [then] default of free software vs. closed software unfolded, setting the foundation for today's conversation around open source and free [5] software. I'll be talking more about this in a presentation at the upcoming #RTP180 : Open Source All Things event [6] in North Carolina.
It's another step forward for ubiquitous augmented reality, an exciting one indeed, but one that won't achieve mass adoption until the user can control their own experience [7].
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One of the sites I own and run (RolePlayGateway) has a pretty large forum, with several customizations and features that I've added on to the base install of phpBB3. As time went on, we continued upgrading the servers (moving from GoDaddy shared hosting to GoDaddy virtual dedicated servers, then onward to MediaTemple's (gs), and now we're on the second tier of MediaTemple's (dv) hosting) in an effort to keep the hardware moving as fast as possible.
As I'm sure you know, hardware can be pretty expensive! One month, while on MediaTemple's Grid Server, we racked up $600 in CPU time overage charges. (Ow.) Now that we've moved onward to bigger and better packages, we're shelling out just about $100 per month for a rock-solid server solution that can be upgraded seamlessly in the future. But since upgrades can only go so far without being prohibitively expensive, I thought it was time to take a look at some of our coding approaches.
Enter memcache, the distributed database caching solution originally designed by LiveJournal to help them deal with massive databases and large volumes of users. DavidMJ has written some shiny ACM modules to help phpBB3 make use of some caching systems, and a memcache module was among them.
That didn't work so well. It gave about a 50% boost to phpBB3's performance (which was great!), but we were still choking the server, and ended up upgrading to a bigger and more robust package with MediaTemple. So I started looking into more options, and DavidMJ suggested xcache. So I go grab xcache and compile it, then enabled it in php. Bingo! There's a 500% boost in our page compile times, and across most of our pages we're now well under 0.1 second compile times. (With the exception of viewtopic.php, which frequently approaches 2 seconds due to bad coding on my part... this will be fixed soon.)
So now that I've got the thirst for speed, let's take a look at how we're performing. To do this, use the apache benchmarking tool:ab -n 100000 http://www.mydomain.com/my_page
This will test the URL you specify 100,000 times, and give you some feedback about how the page performs. You'll end up with something looking like this:
Server Software: Apache/2.2.3
Server Hostname: www.mydomain.com
Server Port: 80
Document Path: /my_page
Document Length: 0 bytes
Concurrency Level: 1
Time taken for tests: 15.30100 seconds
Complete requests: 1
Failed requests: 0
Write errors: 0
Non-2xx responses: 1
Total transferred: 715 bytes
HTML transferred: 0 bytes
Requests per second: 0.07 [#/sec] (mean)
Time per request: 15030.100 [ms] (mean)
Time per request: 15030.100 [ms] (mean, across all concurrent requests)
Transfer rate: 0.00 [Kbytes/sec] received
Connection Times (ms)
min mean[+/-sd] median max
Connect: 0 0 0.0 0 0
Processing: 15030 15030 0.0 15030 15030
Waiting: 30 30 0.0 30 30
Total: 15030 15030 0.0 15030 15030
Some tweaks to the default xcache config that I recommend:
Set the number of caches to one per processor on your server!
; set to cpu count (cat /proc/cpuinfo |grep -c processor)
xcache.count = 4
This post will be updated as I explore phpBB3 and more server side options. (I wrote part of this post, then stopped writing... and figure I'd publish it a couple days later anyway!)
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RPGChat is one of the other large roleplaying forums out there, and they've been around since about May, 2001. Since then, RPGChat has gone through many evolutions, and has expanded rapidly - they started with a forum, grew into a decent sized roleplaying chat, and finally removed the chat and went back to forums.
You'll immediately notice the large number of forums, which for most boards isn't an issue. In today's roleplaying world, RPGChat's index fits right in.
They've got four basic navigation options at the top of the page, which are images instead of text, which isn't very good for SEO. The four menu options are Home, Forums, Chat, and Rules. I gave each of them a shot, but it looks like only the "Home" and "Rules" link work.
I'm going to take a look at their code, because using images for links isn't horrible if you specify the right attributes. Let's have a glance:<a href="http://forums.rpgchat.com/index.php">
<img src="header/but_home.jpg" border="0">
</a>
Yikes! Not only does the anchor not have a title attribute, but the image doesn't have an alt attribute! Search engines won't be able to understand the context of these links, and the flow of link juice to the two working links won't be very beneficial.
I participated on these forums for a few months as the username Alighieri, for that period, I became the single most active user in their welcome forum. I posted in several other topics, but got pretty frustrated with the limitation on the length of a post (20,000 characters).
When attempting to post a profile for one of my characters, I was immediately snubbed by the limitation. This makes well-researched posts difficult to make, specifically with the citations that must be put in place for accurate references. Ultimately, I was forced to cut out portions of my character's history to fit it into the post.
After posting for a few weeks nonstop in the Welcome Forum, I headed off to the The Arena area, where turn-based fighting is largely popular. I opened a topic with a list of the top turn based fighters, placed into a neat little image and posted right into the topic. It took a few days to get any response at all, (save for a few people who contacted me over AIM) and when I did get a response, I logged in to RPGChat to find that I had been banned for "advertising on multiple occasions", much to my surprise.
However, while my visit was cut short, I met some good friends, and had some great discussions. Unfortunately, the forum does not allow any links to external sites of any kind, and also does not allow signatures, which makes it very difficult to spread the word about the topics you start there. This isn't very good for encouraging member interaction, and makes it very difficult for momentum of any sort to be gained within the community.
After speaking with someone who had messaged me on AIM prior to my banning, I confirmed my worst fears - RPGChat is a closed community, and is not very open to outside communities or positive interaction with those communities. This is the number one concern mentioned to me about RPGChat and their future, and there is ongoing fear of the community continuing to stagnate without any growth other than direct referral.
I sent a request via the site's contact form, as listed at the bottom every page, which merely opened a new email to their support address, forums@rpgchat.com - I sent a couple questions in my email, and I identified who I was, but I haven't yet received a response. It'd be great if we could get an interview with an admin from RPGChat on the history of the site!
In terms of organic visitors, a search for pages on RPGChat has about 16,200 results. When digging through the pages, I noticed that only 477 pages were in the primary index, with the remainder in the supplemental index. That's scary!
Let's take a look at their search results:
As you can see from the above search, we can confirm that there is some duplicate content problems. However, from what we've seen - most of RPGChat's traffic is a result of direct referral. We can identify with the importance of defensible traffic, but organic traffic is also a high-quality method of driving laser-targeted traffic to your site, and it looks like RPGChat is seriously missing out on this.
RPGChat has a relatively active forum; 63,708 threads, 1,925,709 posts, and 59,352 "active" members. While that's only an average of about 30 posts per thread and only about 32 posts per user, they do have some great quality and style elements in their posts that you simply don't see in many other places in roleplaying forums these days. I think it would be a great move for them to deactivate a lot of their older and inactive members, and send out reminders to these users to come back and join in on the fun.
It also seemed like a consensus that the single best area on RPGChat was the Clans & Guilds forum, which most users simply called "C/G" for short. It looks like most other forums' version of a multiverse, where roleplay is freeform, and most action is player-driven with rules being defined by the status quo.
Lack of availability aside, RPGChat leaves a pretty strong impression, and if you're careful to follow their 500 wordlist of rules, you can likely make some friends and enjoy some great high-quality roleplay. The administration needs to do some overhauling if they're going to keep the community healthy, but for the time being - RPGChat makes for a great roleplaying destination.
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