Awesome DNA Art

20 Examples of Geek Art and Artists | WebUrbanist

This is an example of ‘DNA Art’, a visualization of an individual’s DNA on canvas. Customers have their DNA swabbed and it’s then analyzed in a laboratory, and made visible through a special process involving special coloring matter and ultraviolet light. A special camera is then used to take a high-resolution photograph. DNA Art UK, which created the picture above, claims to use the .10% of DNA that makes each person unique to create their DNA art.

Scobleizer — Tech geek blogger » Blog Archive The “Participation Premium” «

So, why do I have 5,000 more followers on FriendFeed than Mike Arrington does? Especially since he has more advantages than I do (10x more people listen to him on his blog everyday than listen to me — hence he should be able to get thousands to join a new service simply by saying “it’s cool”).

I call this difference the “Participation Premium.”

Let’s look at how Mike and I participate on FriendFeed:

1. Comments. Mike has only left 17 comments, while I’ve left 2,356 comments over the same time period.
2. Likes. These are votes on different items, they basically are telling other people that you think this item is important to read for some reason. Mike has only done 6 likes, while I’ve left 3,625 likes.

What this is telling you is that you can easily get noticed in any community simply by participating. Yes, other factors do matter, but just by participating you’ll build an audience that “the popular kids” can’t get to.

Gorgeous Blog

I’ve been thinking lately about doing my own blog design, just for fun. Yesterday I purchased sethtalks.com along with unusualfellow… both domain names I really like. Anyway, I really liked the design of http://www.blogdesignblog.com, and thought it might inspire me to start working on my own.

Test of ScribeFire

This really needs to explanation. I’m doing a test of the ScribeFire Firefox plugin… There is a small possibility that it will help encourage me to blog more. Who knows.

New Years Resolution

I tend to “bite off more than I can chew”. This is especially true with regard to new years resolutions. I usually start small, with a list of two or three seemingly manageable goals for the year and end with a dissertation. With all the things I want to improve upon this year, how in the world am I going to stay motivated and remember all these challenges? Well, instead of taking the suggested route, trimming my list to the point of manageability I’m going to take the ultimate new years resolution challenge. That’s right, I’m going to create a schedule. I plan to actually use iCal and the the calender on the iPhone to remind me when to do things. Although the prospect of having little alarms go off throughout the day sounds frightening, at least it’s predictable.

The main idea is to create an outline of my day, and have reminders to let me know what block I’m in. This would be similar to a class schedule. My hope is that I’ll get a better idea of how I spend my time and how it passes.

Onto the Core NYR requirements

• Eat three square meals a day
• Go to sleep and wake at regular hours
• Exercise daily
• Meditate an hour a day, once in morning and once at night
• Write daily goals in the morning and review them at night

I’ll be putting alerts in my phone for all of these, dividing my day into x segments… But first I have to downgrade to an unhacked version of the iPhone so I can sync to my MacBook. Hopefully this doesn’t brick my phone.

In other news LifeHacker has listed some interesting tools to assist us in sticking to our New Years Resolutions. As soon as I have some time I’ll review them and see how well they apply to building and sticking to a schedule. Don’t break the chain and Joe’s Goals look the most interesting at a glance. http://lifehacker.com/336991/free-tools-to-manage-new-years-resolutions

Swimming in my mind

Three days of consistent blogging and poof! No I haven’t given up on daily blogging or the concept of consistency, I just haven’t had my laptop or an internet connection for a week. But, alas I am back. This post is going to be even less structured than the previous ones, my goal is to get some ideas that have been floating around in my head out. 

•  Neuroplasticity + Web 2.0 = ? Is there room for simple web-based brain games?
  • Compete against high scores (local and global)
  • Master skills in the form of games
  • Typing
  • Speed reading
  • Logic
  • Quantification 
  • Visualization (Spacial)
  • Memory
  • See how you compare to averages (age, gender, field, etc.)
  • 
    
• If I didn’t force myself to not look at the keyboard while learning how to touch type would I still hunt and peck after all these years? Thank you Mavis Beacon. Seriously though, so much of learning a new skill is analogous to not looking a the keyboard.
• The importance of leaving your comfort zone in order to grow, learn new skills and be creative.
• Evolutionary principals applied to problem solving, game strategy, martial arts… Why is MMA effective against specific martial arts that have been honed over centuries of practice.
• Mastering the rules/basics/principals to ultimately bend and break them. Bending and breaking the rules of a system is meaningless to the untrained, but the masters evolve the art form by playing on the outskirts of the rules.
•  Measurement. Progress can’t happen without measurement. 
• Consistency. (Previously visited)
• Mindfulness 
• Biofeedback and meditation. Cheap EEG hooked up to a linux box teaching you how to change brainwaves.
• It takes 10 years to master something. What should my next ten years be dedicated to? Does the Kurzweil’s Singularity have an effect on how I make this choice.
•  Webapp that teaches pitch, uses mic to and does analysis of waveform to see how close you can get… Web 2.0ish musical training games.
• Reality mining
• Power of subconscious in problem solving, pattern matching etc.
• Cognitive restructuring 
• Modifying and creating new patterns
• 
  

And I delivered exactly what was promised… A Core Dump http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Core_dump of the inside of my head.

  

Analysis Paralysis or Consumer Vertigo

Today turned into an exploration of the best tools to help manage my time. So many tools, so little time! What started as an adventure into time management and productivity solutions has ultimately left me overwhelmed. Working to devise the ultimate system to pump up my productivity and organization I explored dozens of different utilities and combinations of those utilities, not getting very far in the process. This is definitely a case where the more options that are available the less likely a simple solution emerges.I’ve explored:

•  Todo list managers (RememberTheMilk)
• Calender systems (iPhone, Google Calender, iCal, Plaxo)
• Project management (BaseCamp)
• Time tracking (RescueTime)
• Notes (Mail notes, iPhone notes, Google notes)

I’m left with more questions than answers. Should I take my notes with iPhone notes and have them sync to Mail.app daily or should I use Google notes and have immediate access to my note from the web? What if the internet is slow, will I just default to iPhone notes? Should I use a private twitter account for notes and use SMS from the phone and IM from the macbook? Maybe being logged into Jabber/AIM to send twitter messages when at the laptop isn’t a good idea and I should just use the nifty twitter dashboard widget…

 

RememberTheMilk looks like a fabulous application for personal todo lists but is it robust enough to handle projects like BaseCamp? Is their room for both or should I try to use only one of these applications? How about calender integration? Should I setup a Plaxo account and use Google calender when I’m away from the computer and use iCal on the laptop because of the iPhone integration? If I update the calender on the web from google calender will the fact it doesn’t automatically get pushed to my iPhone calender be an annoyance? 

 

Furthermore… Should I not be trying to mix and match solution from different sources? If I go the Google route should I stick with Gmail, Google Calender, Docs, Reader, etc? If I go the apple route should stick to iCal, Mail, etc? Where does this leave applications that look great but don’t fall into either camp? Am I left with decideing which route to go based on the integration into either system? Is mixing and matching inherently a bad idea? Should the fact I’ve bought into apple hardware, iPhone and MacBook dictate my decision? But I love the idea of never having to sync because of being always on, which is why Google apps are so appealing… But ATT internet sucks on the iPhone and not being able to access Google apps would be torture… Speed is also an issue.

 

As you can see getting everything to work together, choosing the right utilities and keeping the whole system simple enough to actually stick with seem to be real challenges. I’m sure someone out there would recommend that I ditch all the tech and get a MoleSkine journal. Maybe they are right…

 

The simplest solution is always best, but attempting to devise the ultimate solution is far too seductive to ignore.

 

A final thought for a future post. My main struggle, besides the fact that I’ve chosen to explore the area of time management instead of working to manage my time is the center of a paradigm shift occurring before my very eyes. The iPhone embodies two competing paradigms within the same simple device. Applications can exist both in software running on the iPhone’s OS and as web applications. Google’s suite of utilities on the web are directly competing with the native iPhones applications (and hacked ones). The pros and cons are clear. With a webapp I can access my application from any computer, the software follows me wherever I go… The problem is that high-speed, totally reliable internet isn’t always available. The iPhone software is always fast, quick to access (no browser navigation) and always available, yet you have to connect to a computer to sync and the software doesn’t follow you anywhere, it’s just on your phone and laptop.

 

Thought experiment: What if the only software on the iPhone was Safari and Wifi was ubiquitous? The ultimate mobile thin client. No memory, no software besides a browser, all voip, all open. Instead of Android, another specialized OS for mobile phones all I want is coast to coast reliable wifi and a device that does a single thing well, let me browse the web. 

 

Adobe is trying to meld the connected and unconnected world of webapps… A similar melding is what we need on the iPhone. Let everything be a webapp, but allow those webapps to behave properly without an internet connection. 

 

(This post needs serious re-factoring… I predict a future challenge will be deciding whether to revise this post into a decent article or move on)  

Almost no post…

Post two almost didn’t happen. That’s right, the second day of “consistent” blogging was almost prevented by cheese cake and the movie “True Lies”. So the question I intend to explore is this post is clearly “What makes creating new patterns so damn difficult?”. With the greatest intention and commitment yesterday I set out a goal to blog consistently, to create and foster a new and positive pattern and only a day later it seems like a vague memory.In order to stick with something consistently and create a lasting pattern there are required conditions. Conditions like: 

• Accountability
• Desire
• Interest
• Reminders
• …

I’m sure there are plenty more. Accountability is at the top of the list for a good reason. Somehow, even without interest, desire or reminders, accountability seems to get most of us off our butts to get things done. For most people little would get done through our academic lives or careers without someone holding us accountable for our actions. Homework needs to get done or grades are poor, work needs to get done or you lose your job. The real challenge occurs in areas of peoples lives where there is no external accountability. This is why new years resolutions rarely seem to pan out, and also why I almost failed to write this second blog entry. 

 

Yet, on day two, here I sit, typing away once again. What moved me to turn off “True Lies” and not go for that second piece of delicious cheese cake? Self-accountability. I did something strange and held myself accountable for my actions. The truth is, I set this blog public and told people in my life my plans to blog everyday. Setting this blog in motion in the way I did put that little extra incentive into following through. I simulated external accountability.

 

If for most of our lives we are motivated by external sources, why not simulate those very external sources of motivation to help us focus our energy, be consistent and follow through? Too often people find themselves using negative reinforcement… berating themselves for not staying on task, following through or losing that pound. It’s a pattern that rarely works, yet most people repeat it so often it naturally becomes an ingrained pattern.

 

That’s the power of consistency. Look at the things in our lives we don’t want to do, yet we still do. Non-physical addiction is a classic case. Once patterns are set they are powerful actors in our lives, the good ones as well as the bad ones. If we can find creative ways to hold ourselves accountable in a way that simulates the powerful motivators that have succeeded in our past, maybe creating lasting positive patterns doesn’t have to be so difficult.

 

meta-blogging

So here I am, sitting in a comfortable chair with a new black macbook on my lap typing away into my first wordpress blog. You see, to help justify the purchase of this gorgeous laptop I decided to commit myself to blogging everyday. Why? Good question, time for a bulleted list.

• To keep track of my hopefully increased productivity
• To do something consistently
• To become a better writer
• To see where I’ve spent my time
• To exchange and explore ideas with family and friends 
• To help me organize and explore my thoughts

Now for three related questions in bulleted form (to be answered in the following post)

• Why have I not started a blog already?
• What are my expectations concerning the benefits of blogging?
• What are my expectations concerning the hinderances of blogging?

I like the top ten list format I’ve seen on Kawasaki’s blog, so I may emulate that in the future. So everyday I’ll be blogging, rain or shine. I’m also going to be tracking my time with RescueTime (http://www.rescuetime.com) an interesting web 2.0 time management utility,  which I’ll blog about that as well. Ah and there will be rules regarding my blogging.I may not blog for more that an hour a day or less than half an hour. These rules may change and will be refined in a future post, but consistency is a core requirement in this experiment.