lucid vagary » slawrence

The 21st century President

slawrence — Sun, 16 Nov 2008 16:45:48 +0000

The NY Times web site has an interesting article on the seperation anxiety president delegate Obama (he won’t be president elect until the electoral college votes him in) might be having about the impending date when he will have to relinquish his cherished BlackBerry. Being an avid mobile communicator myself, I certainly can appreciate the discomfort one experiences when seperated from a device such as a BlackBerry (full disclusure, I moved from the BB to the iPhone a few months ago… I miss the BB for it’s ease of use). In this instance, though, here is a man rising to the height of global power who will have an army of staffers to inform him and attend to trivialities such as writing correspondence but is report to possibly still miss the unfettered access to raw information and feedback. Quite the quandry.

Nice PHP article from the Masters

slawrence — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 21:25:59 +0000

It’s a nice read and I love that there are outright conflicting viewpoints on the use of frameworks. Ultimately, you have to do what is best for you but this is a good article from people who know what they are doing and their insight is invaluable whether you agree with it or not.

Chrome is here but the best part

slawrence — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 02:20:42 +0000

Is that Scott McCloud wrote and illustrated a really fun introductory comic book.

This could be useful at some point

slawrence — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 02:52:06 +0000

A nice photoshop template for iPhone mockups. With more and more services being geared toward mobile platforms this could be very useful soon.

Textual visualization

slawrence — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 18:23:23 +0000

I am a huge fan of data visualization. Here is a nice overview of some interesting textual visualization techniques. Other than tag clouds this rather new to me. Personally, I find this literary organism maps rather aesthetically interesting.

Paradoxes of the Creative Personality

slawrence — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 06:26:06 +0000

Coming across this article on Psychology Todays web site was a little unsettling for me. PT is usually rather “soft” psychology and I don’t find it very worthwhile but the author of this article is by someone I respect a great deal who was the former chair of Psychology at the University of Chicago. Mihaly Csikszenmihaly wrote very engrossing books on the topic of ‘Flow‘ aka optimal experience in a book of the same title. He expanded upon it in the Evolving Self. Having worked with Creatives for years and being a so-called ‘knowledge worker’ myself, I found that this article confirmed many things I already new or suspected about the type but it still illustrated ome interesting insights particularly in the way the electical engineer has to sort of trick himself in to working on the more mundane aspects of his job.

An interesting turn of events

slawrence — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 13:37:08 +0000

According to the Telegraph, millionaires are seeking to transform the world through purchasing large segments of land and converting them to conservation areas. This might be an incredible example of philanthropy at work. I only hope that they really do commit to this in perpetuity. This reminds me somewhat of the Nature Conservancy’s mission. I am not sure if I would encourage such wealthy environmental enthusiasts to donate to such organizations or to to pool their own resources to optimize the effectiveness of such endeavors and create their own non-profit organization rather than having a series of independent ventures. Overall, it is a great step in a positive direction yet still fraught with complexities and ultimately it is their money. Not to mention, personally I’d rater hear about environmental habitats being created rather than a new monumental edifice being erected. Apparently, there is a similar effort being undertaken here in the US as well.

Water Theater

slawrence — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 03:01:16 +0000

I saw this on the Discovery Channel. It is one of the most stunning examples of the congruence of engineering, design and technology all in the pursuit of a practical purpose: providing clean water for people. The Water Theater is a new approach to desalination that will allow humanity to derive fresh drinking water from the oceans. Amazing.

Great example of org design

slawrence — Sun, 17 Aug 2008 23:37:40 +0000

Leave it to the people at Walt Disney to be pioneers in information design. Here is a Disney org chart from 1943. It captures both teams and process. It’s a very sophisticated bit of information design, in my opinion.

Worse of than mediaval peasants??

slawrence — Sat, 16 Aug 2008 21:50:29 +0000

One of my personal areas of interest is human potential. It always amazing me how policy, governmental, corporate or otherwise in America always seem to overlook the necessity of time off. Now a study appears to be suggesting that Americans receive less time off than our medieval peers did.