Ken Smith and I recorded an interview for the next episode of my podcast “Thinking About Tools For Thought“. Zoom works great for interviews! The new episode should be up tomorrow, we talked a fair amount about Drummer and using Old School. Should be a great episode!
August 2021
I added some content to my Federated Wiki instance today (some links to articles on pizza, and a link to the University of Kansas Community Tool Box). It was fun, and did not take too much effort to remember how to add new content. I should play around with Federated Wiki some more…
Whose list is it?
I make “to-do” lists all the time. I try to do them electronically, but the most successful ones are just written on a pad with a pen, and completed items get struck off the list.
My wife also makes lists of things to do, but when she does that, I tend to think of it as “her list”, not my list. If there was something on her list that I was going to do, I would add it to “my list”
So, it is important when making a list to consider “Am I doing the things on this list, or do I think someone else is going to do things on this list?”. It would be good to have direct communication with anyone you have an expectation of doing something on “your list”.
Recently, I saw Melody Kramer put out a call on Twitter for help with a project to document web presence of all local candidates for office in the US, and Ben Werdmuller on how a software engineer can help with climate change. The outpouring of responses was amazing to me. This is an example of how interactions on Twitter can pay off.
Turning off the trackpad
I had a problem with my new HP Spectre laptop. The arrangement of the trackpad and the keyboard is such that it is very easy to swipe on the trackpad with your hands in a regular typing position. I lost some text from a file recently as a result. Fortunately for Windows laptops, you can turn the trackpad off (since I use a mouse). Whew!
Thinking about Tools for Thought – Episode 001
I am starting a new podcast series titled “Thinking about Tools for Thought”, which will talk about tools and methods for helping people think. The following are links to different tools/resources mentioned in the podcast. I may move this to another domain, but getting started here.
Tools:
Weblogs/posts
- Dave Winer/Scripting News
- Ken Smith Drummer blog
- Andy Sylvester Drummer blog
- Organizing information for use
- Ken’s earlier post on this
- Mike Caufield’s post referenced in Ken’s post on “Organizing information for use”
- Ken on Twitter
- Chris Aldrich on tools (not mentioned on the podcast, but a good overview)
The podcast (link to file):
Use cases for Booklist Browser app
I have completed the initial use cases for the Booklist Browser app, available on Github for review.
The Jeopardy host discussion
My wife and I are big fans of Jeopardy. We were sad to see Alex Trebek pass away, and the series of guest hosts this past year have been interesting and fun. We enjoying critiquing their efforts and had some favorites, but we knew a decision on the hosting job would be made sometime.
With the decision by Sony Pictures to choose Mike Richards and Mayim Bialik as the new hosts, it looks like the new direction was set. However, there has been an amazing amount of “protest” of the decision by fans of other guest hosts. How did these people think they were going to influence the decision? No one ever said this was a popularity contest or reality show where the audience (or a large group online) chooses the new host. It is both amusing and sad, but it was said best by a number of guest hosts: the contestants are the stars of the show. Let’s try to keep that in mind as the new season begins.