E.J. Svoboda

One of the things that I probably resist doing more than any other is taking out the garbage if I’m told to do it.  I have no idea why but it’s been a constant issue for 30 something years.  A close second seems to be emptying the dishwasher.  Both of these tasks take less than two minutes . . . maybe three minutes tops.  What I’ve found is that I can couple them with other activities like warming up food in the microwave and they are easier to accomplish.  To remind myself of these items I created a list in my planner called “@daily”.  The objective is to make these short actions habits and the only way to do it for me is to codify them into a list.  Because in two minutes or so I can knock off one or two of these and the end result is a happier house and a happy wife.

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It’s impossible or nearly impossible to be running at maximum speed all of the time.  Race cars can’t do it and humans can’t do it.  Eventually if you over rev or run at the limit of performance you will break.  That may mean that you get sick or you just need to veg in front of the t.v.  I have found that whenever I read a particularly deep or intense book that I need to follow up with something either a fair bit lighter or something that is of a very different topic.  I call this “letting my brain breath”.  Studies have shown that people actually remember things better if they have some time to let new ideas work through their heads.  I’m many times more excited about the ideas I get a week or two after reading a book than the ideas that are brought forth during the process of reading.

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Wish You Were Here – The Official Biography of Douglas Adams by Nick Webb started out a bit slowly.  The pacing early on just wasn’t to my liking.  Thankfully it picked up and became, as the English would say, quite a delightful read.  Some wonderful stories and insight into an author who is quoted regularly by technologists and geeks every day.  I’d give it four out of five stars.

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“The best way to predict the future is to invent it” – Alan Kay

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https://www.photoshop.com/express/index.html?bypass&wf=testdrive

This is a pretty cool little site they have designed.  I like the 2 GB of storage and the controls are really well thought out for manipulating photos.  Unlike photoshop, you do not need to know how to use unsharp mask instead you select “sharpen” and choose from different option presented much like a film strip (who remembers those!).

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I read an article today talking about a company in Japan who has managed to do a wireless transfer over a modified 3G network at 250 MB per second.  They’ve also managed to hack a 4G connection to 5 GB per second.  4G is suppose to hit 1 GB out of the box.  Now wrap your head around that.  Today we’re impressed with having a 8 MB cable modem.  Can you imagine having 80 MB or even 800 MB?  This type of service has major impacts on both home use and business use.  Today most businesses pay $450 to $550 per T1 (sometimes more sometimes less depending on the carrier).  A “bonded” circuit that will carry 3 MB is going to cost $800 to $900 per month.  If the carriers are able to show that a 4G technology has a greater or equal up time than high speed circuits available today then I believe you will see a number of companies adopt such technologies.  Even if the technology proves to be slightly less reliable than wired connections I still believe a number of businesses will look into the technology as an emergency fail over option.

How does any of this relate to convergence?

Well the main thing to keep in mind is that I believe we will live in a world where TV/Phone/Internet Connectivity/To Be Determined Cool Technology is delivered over the same fat pipe.  The more portable the better.  Being able to take my connection with me on vacation or when traveling would be an interesting paradaigm shift.

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For years I used to talk about how one day I would be able to drive along I-55 between Chicago and St. Louis and never lose a high speed connection.  That day is pretty close to happening.  The next step in the process of Ubiquitous Convergence will be driven by the demand of consumers to use one connection method for transferring all of their data.  With this in mind it seems obvious to me that ultimately mega band wireless connections will be the norm.  I’m not sure exactly how the technology will shake out – will we carry laptops that have undockable phones?  I’m not sure.  Who’s to say if someone doesn’t come up with a rollable laptop with a touch sensitive or even virtual keyboard.  But one thing remains clear to me – access everywhere is what consumers want and it is what they will get.  One day we’ll no longer have to deal with marginal call quality no matter where you are across the nation.  But it all comes down to massive bandwidth, technological advances and time.

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As mentioned previously I have signed up with GTD Connect over at the davidco.com site.  Yes the price per month is a bit higher than I would like but I am finding regular value with what they offer.  They also have a piece they call the “Intention Journal” that basically will send out periodic email reminders based on a schedule that you define.  This solves my quest for a product that would this for me.  The solution I had come up with was to program one myself in php and then use a mysql database to store these items.  Not rocket science but why spend the time to do it when someone else has created a more elegant solution.  Plus I’m paying for it.

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Since I’m allergic to milk I must either drink Soy Milk or some other kind of beverage that approximates milk.  I mostly drink water.  Tonight I thought it would be great to make some rice pudding.  A quick google search turned up a promising recipe and best of all it looked like it would be quick to make.  One small problem – the recipe was wrong.

What was meant to be a 30 minute recipe turned into a 90 minute act of me adding more and more soy milk until the rice cooked.  Then removing some of the finally cooked rice to another pan and then modifying the levels of sugar, salt, cinnamon, and vanilla extract until it tasted like I wanted.  All of this resulted in me coming up with my very own Soy Milk Rice Pudding Recipe.  Maybe I’ll share it with the world once I make it a couple of more times as it just wouldn’t be right to unleash the first version on the world.

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My good friend Jim Glass blogged (http://gandalfe.spaces.live.com/)about www.pandora.com which is an interesting new website from the music genome project. Essentially, you put in an artists name or a genre and it creates a dynamic playlist. You can have 100 channels of customized music. Right now I am listening to the Gustav Mahler channel that I created. I’ve been given a nice selection of Mahler, Beethoven, Berlioz, and right now I am hearing for the first time a wonderful piece by Bedrich Smetana.

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