• Robots evolve to learn cooperation, hunting | Crave – CNET
  What could possibly go wrong?
  Tags: robots evolution hunting
• 10 Technology Blogs You Didn’t Know About
  9 good ones.
  Tags: dougkarr technology blogs
• Legal considerations when using free software in IT consulting projects | IT Consultant | TechRepublic.com
  TANSTAAFL
  Tags: copyfree copyright copyleft licensing techrepublic consulting

• InfoQ: Joshua Bloch: Bumper-Sticker API Design
  My other API is RESTful
  (thanks, Arjan)
  Tags: api design
• WordPress maker buys IntenseDebate commenting system
  Because we all need more intensity in our comments.
  Hey Cooper, looks like WordPress 2.7 could provide a good alternative to Brian's Threaded Comments.
  Tags: wordpress intensedebate automattic mattmullenweg commenting threadedcomments blogging
• Search online for IT consulting mentors
  "Mentors": right between "LOLcats" and "porn".
  Tags: consulting techrepublic mentors synergex kenlidster socialmedia blogs

• 101 Great Computer Programming Quotes
  “The first 90% of the code accounts for the first 90% of the development time. The remaining 10% of the code accounts for the other 90% of the development time.”
  (Tom Cargill)
  (tags: quotes programming humor computer)
• Why? | No Wicked Witch
  Cooper starts a new blog under the alias “nowickedwitch”. Not sure whether the negation is intended for “wicked”, “witch”, or both, but I’m subscribed.
  (tags: blogs)

• Blogs You Can’t Live Without | Should Be Famous
  How I made this list I do not know. To think that I could be worthy of mention beside the likes of icanhascheezburger — I’m… I’m overwhelmed.
  (tags: blogs)
• An introduction to object oriented languages
  For those who haven’t had enough of it yet.
  (tags: oop programming paradigms multiparadigmatic simula smalltalk java c++ c# objectpascal python ruby lisp perl php cobol synergyde inheritance encapsulation polymorphism)

Kent tagged me for round two of his swivel feeds experiment.  To recap: Kent, bored with many of his feeds, gutted his feed reader.  With only the meat and bones left, Kent asked for help with the stuffing.

So trying to keep your particular tastes in mind, here are my contributions to the recipe, Kent:

1. 1 teaspoon dried leaf sage, crumbled:  indexed by Jessica Hagy.  Jessica packs a lot of flavor into a small space — a chart on an index card.
2. 1/2 cup finely chopped celery:  [Geeks Are Sexy] Technology News.  Even though you read a lot of tech news feeds already, I like [GAS] because it’s succinct and well-written.  OK, and they also had me contribute some posts (shameless self-promo disclaimed).  Adds crunch.
3. 3 tablespoons finely chopped onion:  Middle Zone Musings, by Robert Hruzek.  Robert always gives you something to laugh about as well as something to think about.  Flavor and texture.
4. 6 tablespoons melted butter:  The Marketing Technology Blog, by Doug Karr.  Doug covers a lot of ground, from, um, marketing to, um, technology — and he carries on great conversations with his readers.  Gives consistency to the whole.
5. 1/8 teaspoon cayenne pepper:  Wonderland or Not, by cooper.  Cooper => Alice => Wonderland… or not.  An insightful 22-year-old anthropology student with an edgy sense of humor.  Adds zing.

Hope you enjoy my contributions, Kent!

Has anyone else noticed that TechRepublic seems to have their cranial and pelvic bones in close proximity?  Take a look at this TechRepublic newsletter I received today:

On my screen, the original message requires 1033 vertical pixels just to get to the first headline. As you can see, I had to take two screen shots just to show you the full magnitude of these space-spending advertisements.  That’s pretty much grounds for unsub in my book.

But that’s not all.  Last year TR shut down their member blogs, without providing any means of exporting the existing content other than RSS.  And of course, the feeds did not include comments.  Some members retyped their entries on other blogs.  A lot of content was simply lost.

Then they reinstated selected bloggers of their choosing.  Some of these I like to read and would subscribe to, except that TechRepublic no longer offers feeds for individual blogs.  You can subscribe to a feed of all  TechRepublic blogs, or none.

Think that over for a minute.  TechRepublic is an IT technology site.  With blogs.  That don’t have feeds.

I’ve also noticed more and more that I’m finding fewer and fewer topics of interest in each newsletter.  I scroll through all those ads just to hit Delete.

I’m tired of having my attention wasted.  Today I’m unsubscribing from all TechRepublic newsletters.  I’ll trust that other sources will throw me a link to any good stuff that gets posted to their site from now on.

Jeremiah Owyang started a new meme: The Media Consumption Diet. Even though Jeremiah didn’t tag me, his question interests me enough to respond. Here are my media inlets:

Feeds. Most of my inbound communications come through feeds. I like the way feeds are unobtrusive and by (my) invitation only. Spam does not exist in my feed reader, and nothing pops up in my face when I don’t want it to. I can give it just the amount of time I choose, when I choose. Less than two years ago, my feed consumption was zero. Now it’s my primary source. I prefer written posts over podcasts, since I’m a visual person who can read a lot faster than I can listen.

Web search and surf. Google leads me to lots of information. I’ve set up vanity searches in Google, Bloglines, and Technorati as feeds so I don’t have to think about them. I also use Wikipedia often, though I have mixed feelings about its worth. When I can’t find what I’m looking for, Clusty often surprises me.

Email. I try to move as much of my inbound email as possible to feeds, for the reasons stated above — the main one being spam. I have yet to find an email spam filter that doesn’t let a ton of spam get through, snag a lot of false positives, or both. And I get mountains of spam as a result of having my e-mail address posted on the web since 1997. Nevertheless, I still use email a lot — in fact it’s my primary means of communication with clients. I have some clients that I’ve never met or even spoken to over the phone. I’ve thought about setting up private blogs for client communications instead of using email, but I’ve never gotten around to doing anything about it.

IM. Instant messaging is very intrusive, so I only use it with a few special people (you know who you are). A while ago I dropped off of Windows Messenger in favor of GTalk. But apotheon tells me some good things about Gaim, so I’ll have to give that a look.

Telephone. The telephone intrudes even more than IM. I have to drop whatever else I’m doing and talk. Being a very visual person, I find it much more difficult to follow a conversation in sound rather than in writing. There’s no backing up to examine what was said. It gives you less time to consider your responses. If I could do away with the phone, I would. Unfortunately, many people feel more comfortable discussing things in voice, so I have to keep that channel available. But I let my answering machine help to mitigate the intrusions. Bless caller ID.

TV. I have no doubt that someday soon TV and the web will become one. In the mean time, most of the programming on TV doesn’t qualify as worthy of wasting my time. We have four TV’s in our house — two of them HD big screens — yet I watch maybe one hour a day, usually winding down with my wife in the evening. Until baseball season. Then that will change to about three hours a day, more on the weekend. Go Mariners, TD (who doesn’t have TV service)! I have a lot of respect for people who have taken TV out of their lives. I’m not quite ready to go there yet.

Music. At work I listen to jazz over Pandora. It’s much better than pre-programmed radio because I can tell it what I like and what I don’t like. It’s also better than just listening to our private collection of CD’s, because Pandora introduces me to new music that’s similar to what I like. Every now and then it makes a very wrong guess, but all I have to do is give it the thumbs down and it goes on to something else. In the car, I listen to radio (KPLU). At home we sometimes listen to CDs that we’ve owned for years. Every now and then we buy something we already know we like.

Books. I love to read a variety of books. Any genre, by any author, from any period. Check out my reading list since 1990. History, philosophy, and the classics top my favorites. Someday paper will become as obsolete as clay tablets and we’ll all be reading books online, and that will make me just a little bit sad. We’ll need leather-bound laptops (or whatever replaces them).

Movies. Every now and then we go to the cinema, but it’s such a waste of time and money. Much better to wait and rent the DVD. We can drink wine for half the cost of theater soda, and eat much better food. Pause for bathroom breaks. No sticky floors. No big heads seated in front of you. And nowadays the screen and sound quality are almost as good. That said, we don’t rent much either. Maybe ten flicks a year, at most.

Magazines go right into the recycle bin. I subscribe to none. This is a job for RSS. TCP/IP beats the Postal Service every time.

Newspapers. Why kill a tree? Feeds for me. The only paper we subscribe to is the local Bainbridge Island Review, and that’s only because their best parts aren’t provided online. And they don’t have a feed. Luddites.

Mobile. I don’t yet use my phone for web access, although I’m sure that will come in time. I turn on my phone only when leaving the house, so I can be reached in an emergency. I don’t use mobile for business, because if I’m not in front of my computers I can’t do much anyway. One day I suppose I’ll have a decent enough notebook with wireless internet, and then mobile communications will make more sense. But even then, I’ll need to have pockets of time when I’m unreachable, for sanity’s sake.

How about you? What are your media eyes and ears?

Your online life becomes even more virtual, as opposed to virtuous. (via Bloggers Blog)

Hugh plans to keep his wings intact. Ties in with this discussion.

Into the promised land. This would be absolutely awesome. (Thanks, Armchair Anarchist).

Randy’s strategy for eliminating telemarketers: make them regret the call. Reminds me of one time I was visited by Mormons when I was in the middle of writing my senior paper in Biblical Literature. I had a lot of fun sharing my thoughts on the trustworthiness of Joseph Smith’s translation services. Now if only we could devise a similar strategy for spam.

Newly subscribed: Joe Mathlete Explains Today’s Marmaduke. Just the premise in the title made me LOL, and the execution does not disappoint. Found in Best Blogs of 2006 that You (Maybe) Aren’t Reading.

A lesson I’m still learning: be yourself.

The other day I read with astonished interest from The Assimilated Negro (who also likes Nietzsche, BTW):

At that very moment, Erin bangs on the door and barges in. I instinctively and simultaneously sit up, while reaching for things that need to be concealed. It’s a muscle reflex I’ve had since I was a child, but there’s nothing in front of me. So that’s slightly annoying. Admittedly I’m a little more jumpy and secretive with Erin. She has a powerful brain, and if she knew everything there is to know about me I’m sure that -

Wow, I do the very same thing when my wife walks unexpectedly into the office. That’s been about the only bright side to her recent injury: now I can hear her walker coming down the hall minutes ahead of time. But the odd thing is that just like TAN I really have nothing to hide. I’m a grown man, fercrisesakes. And even if I do play around a little online, I’m responsible enough to get my work done, so why do I instinctively close whatever I was doing when she walks in (even when it’s work)? My wife has asked me that very question several times, and my best answer so far has been to sort of mumble unintelligibly. I’m sure she suspects that my screen was adorned with something far worse than blogs or backgammon.

Am I the only one who often has the nagging feeling that I’m a fake who’s about to be found out? Maybe it started back when I got into the software industry with no formal training. Every step in my career seems like one more time I pulled the wool over their eyes. But actually I’ve put in a lot of time over the last 28 years learning this stuff, so I really shouldn’t doubt the efficacy of my experience.

Maybe it’s because I spent a lot of time when I was younger hiding some mild OCD tendencies. Call them superstitions, if you will. I knew they were meaningless behaviors so I hid them, but I felt relieved when I could secretly do them. Sometimes I still do. That’s a part of myself that I never fully embraced, nor do I think I really want to.

Psychologists might say that secretiveness and uneasiness with oneself are all part of being a child of an alcoholic. But that really isn’t helpful, now is it? Can’t change that.

When I first started blogging, the biggest attraction for me was finding an outlet for myself: a place where I could say whatever was on my mind and let myself out of my shell for a while. Granted, at first I was kinda like the newbie at the open mic (though thankfully nobody was listening), but after a while I started to open up and let fly.

Then came the audience. Not a huge one, mind you, but enough to flatter my vanity. I found myself thinking more and more about my readers, and writing for them. I began to develop a sort of stage personality, once more pushing the real me under the covers.

Or maybe not. Maybe it’s just that my rate of increased self-revelation has slowed. Looking back over the old posts, I was pretty reserved in some of them, though at the time I felt quite liberated.

In any case, I intend to pursue greater authenticity from here on. Sure, it’s fine and good to use reader feedback and search data to give you ideas for posts, but you have to make sure that what you write about each topic represents exactly what you think, instead of what you think your readers want to see.

Some seeds for these thoughts were planted by Yvonne, Kent, and a lot about Shelley. Randy might call this post gay, but personally I wouldn’t want to insult homosexuals by equating their preferences with my self-absorbed neuroses.

Let me rephrase that lesson at the top:

Trust yourself.

• m00k13 dot com
  “Comments from a self-proclaimed nerd” and user of my tag cloud widget
  (tags: linux music tagging tagcloud widget wordpress)
• Subcess | the daily:whatever
  Another German blog using the tag cloud widget
  (tags: wordpress tagging tagcloud widget)
• fullfeeds.com – a petition against intentionally disabled feeds
  Gotta go full text. Very few feeds can remain in my aggregator with partial text. Thanks, Yvonne.
  (tags: rss fullfeeds)
• Raganwald: Wasabi cannot cure rotten fish
  Very true. Tools may be better or worse, but they require a craftsman to create a masterpiece. Thanks, assaf.
  (tags: programming methodology management development)
• [Geeks are Sexy] technology news: The Dirty Dozen: 12 Suggestions For Making Your Mark In The Blogosphere
  Good suggestions for bloggers
  (tags: blogging tips linklove)
• Exclusive Concepts’ Internet Marketing Blog: Weekly Update, September 22, 2006
  It took a few months before my “Jazz of Writing” post got noticed by anyone, but now it seems to be steadily making the rounds of the marketing and PR blogs, thanks to Shel.
  (tags: linklove jazz blogging)
• Technorati does adhoc RSS – The RSS Blog
  Soooweeet!
  (tags: search blogs rss)
• SOB: Scion Of Backronymics » Is the dream over?
  A warning to watch out for our liberties before it’s too late
  (tags: libertarianism liberty bush billofrights)
• 5 H4x0red – iBLOGthere4iM
  Randy Morin, h4xx0r xtr0rd1n41re. But I guess Marjolein was too smart for him.
  (tags: linklove hacking)