I watched the video of Buzz Bruggeman’s talk from the Zap Your PRAM conference.

“Mental Impulse > Utterance > Predictable Result” is his mantra. He spoke of avoiding the typical intermediary steps currently imposed on us by current software software.

In an industry I am familiar with, pure PC based lighting control systems have not taken off, while the real jewels are expensive behemoths with motorized knobs and faders. The difference is that with a PC you have to move your mouse around, pick one item, and a manipulate it. During a live show you have want to just be able to think, and then move your hands in “preprogramed” manner. Mouses are lousy interfaces for many things in life.

It is common wisdom that modes are bad interface design. Yet essentially mice are very modal - the event that takes place when the mouse is clicked varies widely with the location of the cursor.

ActiveWords is a cool piece of software. One thing about ActiveWords that bugs me though is that it must be preprogrammed. Useful shortcuts are only useful if you have set them up. The Mac “equivalent” of ActiveWords, LaunchBar, though only used to launch applications, urls, documents, and emails, requires no setup and sneakily learns shortcuts as you use it.

Another remark that struck me was “After thinking, language is the most important human activity.” (Or something like that.) I’ve been doing quite a bit of thinking lately about language and it’s unnoticed importance.

I just noticed the ”Jupiter Research Analyst Weblogs”. It is interesting how each analyst has a specific area to be an expert in. This seems like a good idea for customer focused blogs.

The handiest text editor I found on Windows is Textpad. In my pre Mac days, this was the editor I used to build php powered websites. I’d not used it in a while, but recently since I am working off of a Windows PC at JAARS, I have become reacquainted with it. I still love it. Many thanks to Wayne Luke for first introducing it too me.

I watched “The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers” for the first time last night. It was outdoors under, projected onto a barn, with a fire burning for warmth. The evening was great. (But somebody turned an exceptional tale into a soap opera of movie. I’ll spare writing about what the movie did to the heros Elrond, Faramir, and Theoden. )

Watching the way the movie changed from the book, I was reminded of the way losers view winners. I used to play a lot of multiplayer computer games. I’ve found that both in games and in life, many people believe that personal success comes from one of three things - anger, some magic personal attribute, or treachery.

Anger

Mindless anger is not your friend. It makes you do stupid things, and is a very good thing for your opponent to have. Yet many people believe that if they get angry enough or passionate about something, that the emotion in itself guarantees victory. I have seen movie-watching newbie after movie-watching newbie work themselves into an angry passion, and then unceremoniously get stomped by someone with skill. One paintball game, a guy on his first game stood up from behind cover, began screaming at our concealed enemies. He was properly splattered out in short order.

Magic

My younger brother is a crack shot. Last year at the national matches he finished thirtieth in the nation out of eight hundred and fifty contestants. Watching him shoot, you would think that he is personally a magnificent shot, and yet what you do not see is the hours he spends outside on frosty mornings or hot summer afternoons practicing. The huge vast majority of people skilled at things are that way because of hard, smart work, not a mysterious “attribute”.

Treachery

My youngest brother is a skilled computer game race car driver. One of his favorite things is to get kicked out of an online race by the other drivers for “cheating” - Obviously anyone that can defeat top of the line Ferraris while driving a Ford Mustang must be cheating. This same pattern can often be seen in left political/economic debates - “these people have more money than we do; therefor they cheated, and we are entitled to take their stuff”

They are Distractions

All of these things are distractions from what really brings skill. And the sadness of their prevalence in movies is that people subconsciously believe that these are the ways to skill/success, and they miss the real path.

Perhaps, the reason for these bad ideas’ widespread appearance in films is that they are easy to portray. (“Never ascribe to conspiracy what can be explained by stupidity.”) Anger, personal magic, and treachery are all “easy” things. You can work yourself up to passionate anger in a moment, but spending an hour a day practicing in grueling conditions is both hard to do in real life, and impossible to film.

Real cluefullness is work.

I get strongly annoyed driving the speed limit. When the road is open, and the sky is bright, it calls for driving at a speed safe for conditions, not a bureaucrats idea of a safe speed for worst case conditions. But I drive the speed limit anyway.

Coming home from JAARS yesterday, I hit a pothole. My dashboard died. Every gauge went all the way over to zero. I continued my way home, and noticed about fifteen minutes into the drive that I was feeling strangely joyous. After few minutes of thinking I figured out the reason.

You see, while I am driving I take short, almost subconscious, looks at the speedometer. If it is at or above the speed limit I am sad. If it is below the speed limit I am happy, since I could drive faster if I wanted too.

Without my conscious mind noticing, I was checking my dead speedometer, and coming up happy every time.

I want a Phlink. But sadly, I have no excuse to get once, since I don’t have a land line, and only use a cell phone.

I am annoyed at my PIM’s. They have no concept of linking. I added another contact, who maintains my aunt’s web site. Their is no way to link him to my aunt so that two years when I need to call “that guy that does my aunt’s website” I can just go to my aunt and find him.

Or take todo items, or calendar entries. Last night I wrote up a plan to get something done. Along with it, I have several appointments I need to make, and todo items to do. But thier is no link between the plan document and the todo items referencing it or links to the conversation that sparked the plan.

PIM’s today are a bloody mess. They understand lists of things in folders. That is fundamentally the wrong approach.

Tom Chi wonders if sitting still is the cause of most bad ergonomics.

I know my desk at home is not comfortable to work from for long periods of time. But all the “ergonomic solutions” I have seen to not seem to make much difference. The concept of being able to move around easily while working might be the key.

Grandmother cam down from Williamsburg for a one night visit. As always she has lots of stories to tell about the international students she meets. (She lives very near the college of William and Mary) We heard about the 15 year old physics genius from Indonesia studying for her Doctorate and and who spent the blackout staying at grandmother’s.

After hurricane Isabel, a student from Turkey was very impressed with the way everyone pulled together to get things cleared up, and with the random strangers from out of town that showed up to repair buildings. “Your city is better than the city I come from. This is amazing. In my city none of this would be cleaned up. We would still be under trees, and everyone would be yelling and hating everyone else. The difference is that you are Christians.”

MCIV: “But what if the plane crashes, and I end up floating in the ocean, clinging to a piece of wreckage? Not only will all the electronics be useless, but the ink would run. M: “Oh, look: This ‘Uniball Vision’ pen says waterproof right on it. I’ll use that to make the list.”

Beth engages in some hilarious overthinking.