I will be your Dixie chicken,
if you'll be my Tennessee lamb.
We can walk together
down in Dixieland.
Craaaaash into me.
Craaaaash into me.
Craaaaash into me...
-- Dave Matthews Band
11:25 PMYahoo.com believes that if you type in one of the following phrases, you are trying to find elan.org:
- female yoga pictures
- female orgasm mp3
- increasing weight of britney spears
7:20 PMWell, you know Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston didn't have a Jewish wedding ceremony based on the wedding rings they used. I recently (re)learned during a meeting with the cantor for my brother's upcoming wedding that the rings at Jewish weddings must have no diamonds or decorations on them. Actually, at an orthodox wedding, there is only one ring--the one given to the bride.
3:30 PMResourceful Ron Khoury always finds the counter point of view. Organic food may be more dangerous to you than the stuff grown with pesticides. The article says organic food may contain more bacteria and could be worse for the environment because organic farmers require more land. Ron found this transcript of a recent discussion on ABC's 20/20. The transcript goes into further detail than the article.
12:57 PMSunday, July 30, 2000
I watched X-Men last Thursday. I recommend it to anyone who has ever fantasized waking up one day to learn that you have special powers. Powers that you could use for good or evil, giving you a tremendous responsibility. You already have that tremendous responsibility, but it seems like the responsibility would be so much greater if you had special powers.
Earlier that same day, I read an unrelated article that led me to this page on punctuated equilibrium. I believe the theory of punctuated equilibrium is the basis for how X-Men, the mutants, came to exist. Early in the movie, the narrator states that the human species has stayed relatively unchanged for a while, but now humans with mutations have appeared. Punctuation equilibrium summarized: "instead of a slow, continuous movement, evolution tends to be characterized by long periods of virtual standstill ('equilibrium'), 'punctuated' by episodes of very fast development of new forms."
5:51 PMThese are good tips (via brig), tips that clue you in for when things aren't right in your 'net startup. I know from experience. I like experience.
5:45 PMWhy does it have to be the airline I have the most miles on? (via cam)
5:44 PMSaturday, July 29, 2000
In life you can never be too kind or too fair; everyone you meet is carrying a heavy load. When you go through your day expressing kindness and courtesy to all you meet, you leave behind a feeling of warmth and good cheer, and you help alleviate the burdens everyone is struggling with.
-- Brian Tracy
11:02 AMThursday, July 27, 2000
Apparently, somebody (Linda) at About.com likes this web site. I am one (two actually) of this week's About.com sites of the week! That gives me the pleasure to display this logo (and I will only do it here so you are not forever annoyed by its existence like say, on the webcam page):
In honor of this award, I put the live video features from last week's Cammunity's showcase back online. You can watch live video, obviously, from the webcam page.
6:22 PMI love seeing my friends recognized for their passions. Karyn Young and I met in 1996 at IBM while working on alphaWorks. We hit it off right away and spent the next few years eating Indian food while debating principles of the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, yoga, meditation, rolfing and life in general. At that time I was a web developer and a student, and she was in product marketing. She went off to become an Information Architect and now I do similar work as a designer. Now we mainly debate web design and argue about the best way to create interactive web sites.
Well, today I was ecstatic when I received the ACIA newsletter. Karyn was interviewed by Lou Rosenfeld for her role as an Information Architect at IBM. She said some pretty smart stuff! This stands out to me as profound and well-explained:
Karyn: The Internet is about shifting customer interaction from something that occurs between humans to something that primarily happens between a human (e.g., a customer) and a web site. In such an interaction, what customers need hasn't changed much; how it gets delivered has. Information architecture addresses the how.Kudos to Karyn!
Most companies know what their customers want; otherwise they wouldn't be in business. But traditionally companies employed humans (e.g., salespeople) to deliver on the customers' needs. And these humans essentially had an information architecture in their heads, and existed to sort it out for customers.
But in network-enabled businesses you remove the human being from the delivery. As an industry, we're just beginning to understand the impact of this. After all, salespeople didn't just walk into a customer's office, drop a brochure with a list of product features on the desk and then leave. As an industry, our sites need information architectures that meet the needs of users the way a human did in business past. This is most definitely a paradigm shift and something information architects can help address.
5:58 PMGoogle delivers with this treatise on why alarm clock snooze buttons are nine minutes long, though I'm not content with the answer. I found another reason, but I can't tell if it's a joke or not.
12:22 PMArticles like this bring me close to tears. Everything I've read and seen about Tiger Woods is awe-inspiring. He makes me want to be great.
9:50 AMWho decided alarm clocks will have nine-minutes between alarms when you snooze? Who propagated that standard? Am the only one who finds that strange?
8:59 AMWorld leaders met and argued over genetically modified food. President Clinton takes the economic side, supporting genetically modified food farmers in the U.S., and Europe and Japan take the cautious conservative side. I side with the latter. We need more people eating organic produce, not genetically modified food.
8:31 AMWednesday, July 26, 2000
Wow, Russians have proverbs... :)
Happiness is not a horse, you cannot harness it.
-- Russian Proverb
By the way, I get these proverbs from Proverbs Plus a service of DailyInbox.com. You are welcome to skip me as the middle man and receive them directly.
4:10 PMWhen it isn't playing music, the Aiwa stereo in my house keeps playing games of slot machine with itself. Any idea how to shut it off? I find it amusing. To think, the stereo is gambling with itself. My how we humanize technology in our minds...
3:36 PMEither I drink too much Snapple or I'm just too lucky when it comes to choosing the right Snapple. As though winning two free Snapples wasn't enough, today I won a Snapple Portable CD Case! Next up on the prize list is a Snapple Baseball Cap. Odds are that I only need to drink another 38 Snapples to get the cap. Wish me luck or just send me Snapples (regular iced tea, please).
3:11 PMA friend of mine urged me to watch Taxi Driver because Robert De Niro's character, Travis, said something cool. My friend said Travis said something you would never expect a De Niro character to say. I watched the movie last night expecting some profound saying or quote, but instead Travis said something like this "Hopper Ave. Fair Lawn, NJ 64582." Cool, huh? Hopper Ave. is a few blocks from my old house.
That's the second occurrence that I know of where Fair Lawn was mentioned in the movies. The other is in Ransom. During the chase scene at the end of the movie, Mel Gibson's character supposedly drives into a mining area in Fair Lawn (although there is no mining area in Fair Lawn). They briefly showed the exit sign to Saddle River Rd., which is right before the exit to my current home.
By the way, Taxi Driver was a good movie. Albeit, a bit strange, reminding me of Henry Fool, both movies being emotionally compelling and disturbing.
2:57 PMTuesday, July 25, 2000
Amir finally shared pictures from his birthday and going away party. I appear here, here and here. Someone took a picture of entire group and here is a picture of some of the cute women I had the pleasure of sitting next to and dancing with.
10:12 PMFall down seven times, get up eight.
-- Japanese Proverb
Fall down seven times, learn how to walk.
-- Amy Lipman
4:32 PMAt some point in time, I think I've broken every rule of Palm etiquette mentioned in this article (via Jen), except beaming to stranger. I never beam with strangers. Eventually, though, Palm use grew into a normal part of my routine and with that, standard rules of etiquette took over.
1:01 PMMy brother is getting married in September. Now, I know his fiancee is going to be my sister-in-law, but is her sister also my sister-in-law?
11:07 AMFrom a book of slogans for training your mind:
... "Don't be so predictable," which has also been translated as, "Don't be so trustworthy." It's an interesting one. It's getting at how predictable we are, as everybody in the advertising world knows. They know exactly what to put on those billboards and those ads to make us want to buy their products. Even intelligent people like ourselves are sometimes magnetized by this propaganda because we're so predictable.I read that today in Start Where You Are by Pema Chodron, a book of Buddhist slogans to help you get your head and heart in order.
Particularly, we are 100 percent predictable in that if we don't like something we'll run the other way, and if we do like it we'll spend quite a lot of time and effort trying to somehow eat it whole. If someone does something nice for you, you always remember it and you want to repay their kindness. But if somebody hurts you, you remember it for the rest of your life and you always want to get revenge in one way or another. That's the meaning of this slogan "Don't be so predictable." Don't always react so predictably to pleasure and pain. Don't keep taking the wrong medicine for the illness.
11:00 AMMonday, July 24, 2000
Okay, I guess I kept the functions active for a very short while. :) They may come back in a smaller form, but I don't have time to work on it right now. More later...
12:51 PMThe party is over, but I'm keeping some of the features active for a little while, as an experiment.
1:29 AMSunday, July 23, 2000
Come join the live video, audio and chat broadcast! (link has been disabled because these functions are no longer available)
9:54 PMDon't forget to come back and visit elan.org from 10PM to Midnight tonight. Cammunity.com is showcasing my webcams. It will be fun to be here. Here is a snippet from an e-mail I sent out today:
In honor of tonight's showcase, I will be introducing some new features. Some features maybe for tonight only, but some may stay.
New features include:
- Live video: no longer do you see images that are 1 minute old, now you can see images that are one second old and continuously every two seconds or so
- Live chat: no longer do you have to come to the web site, see me pick my nose and leave, but now you can stay and chat (the typing kind of chat) with me and other people visiting the webcam
- Live audio: no longer do you wonder what I'm saying when the camera catches me with my mouth open, but now you can hear me swearing at my parents, my computer or you
I'm going to be at the computer from shortly after 9pm to at least midnight. I'll be doing stupid things, drinking, eating and wearing funny clothes. There may even be a visitor here on my side of the cameras. Come and visit, I'll put up the new features around 9pm tonight.
1:26 PMNo, we can't have Bibles being distributed in our cereal boxes. What might the kids think? God? Who's that? Besides, which Bible are we going to let the kids read?
11:30 AMFriday, July 21, 2000
Constance shares information about a concert this coming Thursday in Central Park:
WHO: Yungchen Lhamo, Lama Gyurme & Jean-Philippe RykielI plan on being there. Anybody else coming?
WHAT: free concert! The word as an instrument of pure magic. Chants, laments, hymns and songs of Tibetan Buddhism. An evening of compassion and determination. A quiet moment within the busy city. Clear and stirring.
WHEN: Thursday, July 27th, 2000. 7:30 PM.
WHERE: Central Park Summer Stage, Rumsey Playfield, 72nd St., mid-park enter park at 72nd street, east or west.
11:56 PMI just came back from watching Sunshine with my mother. I felt many things during the movie. I felt sympathy for my parents and lives they have lead. I felt hatred for humanity and the crap we do to each other under the guise of ideals. I felt lost at the condition of being human and the never-ending cycle of suffering. I felt amused watching Hollywood at work--making the main character, a fencer, take his mask off between points just so the movie audience could be appeased and not confused. I felt sure that every family has a story and each story is worthy of being shared. I felt.
11:51 PMAnother reader responds "science is the best truth that we have." I can understand that, but some part of me believes there is a more profound truth that we can find and trust, that originates inside us, and I don't believe science plants that seed of truth.
10:56 AMThursday, July 20, 2000
Dave Grossman caught my controversial use of the word "truth:"
Science is not truth, Elan. Never believe that. Science merely presents the best hypotheses to fit the facts as they are currently known. They may be presented as truth, but they're not. It's only truth until it gets disproved.It's not even truth before it gets disproved, but it serves us well sometimes to believe it is. It helps to motivate us if we believe that what we are doing is the final answer. It helps scientists to believe that they get up everyday for years to find or discover the final answer to something. Although, I think we need a regular reminder that what we hold dear and true, really isn't. We need to hear something like "Science is not truth" at times to bring us back down to reality.
9:03 PMA little over six years ago during senior year of high school I sat in physics class. Mr. Nihen told the class that nothing can travel faster than light through a vacuum. I even remember the speed: 186,000 miles per second. The textbook said the same thing. I relearned the same fact in freshman physics at Lehigh. I even heard the same thing while listening to A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawkings. What is the point of learning all this truth if it will be proved wrong? Light May Break Its Own Speed Limit.
12:01 PMRobots are being built that are powered like humans--with a digestive system.
11:50 AMSo far readers have recommended: The former looks to be the best choice for a beginner. Any other recommendations?
11:26 AM