I have been using this trick to get all the webpages I want to read bundled in an eBook that I can carry offline and read on my Nexus One. You can also use any ePub compatible reader, e.g. on your iPad too.
Requirements
1. Google Nexus One (or any other smartphone or mobile device which has an ePub eBook reader)
2. Aldiko on Google Nexus One (or your preferred ePub eBook reader on your device)
1. Add the Instapaper Read Later Bookmarklet to your browser bookmark bar.
To do that, on your account, click on Add+, then drag the “Read Later” bookmarket into your browser’s bookmark bar
2. On any webpage that you want to read later, click the Read Later bookmarklet to save it to Instapaper. When you’re done saving several webpages of different sites, that will constitute your eBook, proceed to step 3:
3. On Instapaper, Add a new folder and name it.
4. On Instapaper, in Unread, move all the pages you want to read into the folder you just created. Once done, proceed to 5.
5. On your Nexus One (or other device), browse to Instapaper.com.
6. Select the folder you want to create an eBook out of.
7. Click the ePub icon underneath the Download (Beta) section
8. The eBook will download. Once downloaded, Click on it and it will be imported in your Aldiko bookshelf and you can read it offline.
Troubleshooting
Sometimes, step 8 doesn’t work. In that case, just download the .ePub file from a desktop or laptop and transfer it to your device manually.
Aldiko settings
My preferred settings for Aldiko are:
- Disabled screen rotation: I want to be able to read resting on my side when in bed
- Use Volume buttons to flip pages (and disable touching the screen to flip pages)
- Page flip time at minimum
- Readable font size
To achieve true automated, general understanding and visualization, we will need much better machine learning, entity extraction, and semantics capable of operating at vast scale.
On that note — and in terms of future Internet innovation, the important question may not be how the Internet is changing how we think but instead how the Internet is teaching itself to think.
Other interesting perspectives from thinkers and writers I like include:
Totally great list. I use most of these myself. I also add to the chorus of gratitude to the WordPress team. WordPress powers YashLabs since 2005 after I compared it to Joomla and Drupal.
Also, the Nexus One is just a few days away, whereas the tablet has had some setbacks for the launch date. Make no mistake though: when the Apple tablet is released, it will be a truly fantastic product – the one you will use for reading books, watching clips and do video-conferencing, etc…
At the close of 2009, it is time to revisit my past predictions and see how I fared. I find that with time, my blog has become more self-referential as things I have envisioned years ago – sometimes up to 4 years ago – become validated or progress in the general direction I foretold.
I envisioned then as TechCrunch had featured a rumour that Google was going to buy GrandCentral, that Google was bent on becoming a Telco or ISP themselves.
The acquisition of GrandCentral and mobile ambitions – The Google phone?
GrandCentral provides you with one phone number linked to all your existing phone numbers, and many other features (thanks to Techcrunch for this great overview) through its website and also through your mobile.
There have been rumors of the Google phone before, and such a device with the mobile Google applications, linked to all the Google integrated goodies mentioned above would be pure bliss for managing and sharing data and event information with contacts when either online or offline thanks to Google Gears.
Google’s killer move
Here is what I predict will happen with Google Telecom. Based on the current state of Telecom, i.e. VOIP disrupting the industry with the old Telcos still charging too much while there are cheaper VOIP offers like the Gizmo Project, Skype, VBuzzer and Jajah, Google will adopt a similar strategy to Google Apps. With Google Apps, Google has a tiered access: free access for users and paid access for businesses.
I believe Google Telecom will offer free calls locally and worldwide to fixed telephone lines and mobiles to individual users and basic paid access for businesses and bring a more severe disruption of the Telecom industry as it will rely on getting more advertising through these channels. Alternately, Google could use the Google Web infrastructure to position itself as an ISP and offer free Internet access to all too.
That’s a killer strategy, and they can pull it off. Beautifully at that.
Months before the launch of the iPhone, I foresaw how the multi-touch device will change the way we make music, essentially because multi-touch is organic and enables the use of the device as Midi controllers.
However, the iPhone and the iPod Touch are a little too small for a big revolution. The forthcoming tablet will be different. Being bigger, we can expect many more practical uses like playing virtual instruments live, using the tablet as a virtual mixer and sequencer and so on.
Conclusion
The whole experience of how you make music within a sequencer with virtual instruments is about to be revolutionized by Apple with a forthcoming combination of multi-touch hardware and software based on Logic and running on at least Leopard.
The very act of recording, manipulating and producing music on a computer will become an organic performance in itself.
I don’t know when it’s coming, but I do know it’s soon, probably this year, and it’s going to be Apple and Leopard+.
A revolution is under way. It is one of those times when technologies developed separately converge and congeal. From this emerges a new system that is better than the sum of its parts.
3. The Web O.S. / The Cloud – October 10th, 2005
This begs the question of how to propagate technical requirements to an underlying platform to enhance the end-user’s experience with Web 2.0.
The first point of contact is the user’s browser.
…
My view of the Web OS is that it must be a combination of the computer’s OS and the browser. …
Given Firefox and AJAX and great web services, there will be an increasing migration of desktop applications to remotely hosted locations on the web. Of course, not all applications can be hosted this way yet – desktop installed apps will still be around for a long time.
But assuming increased hosted services, it is a simple and logical step to envision that the computer OS can itself be tweaked for Web 2.0 usage. In other words, you could enhance existing Web support, but in addition, you could also strip an existing computer OS from any superfluous capabilities and code. You would then obtain a low-cost alternative to the bloated (and sometimes expensive) OSes currently available.
These WebOS 2.0 PC’s, being cheaper, could be used to power schools, especially in developing and third world countries and businesses alike.
Businesses would also benefit of broadband connections to leverage hosted services.
Although schools in poor areas may have broadband, they would still benefit of the network architecture: imagine just one server providing the necessary web services to a class of pupils. They could all be writing their assignment with a software like Writely.
The whole of the software service maintenance is outsourced – this is less costly in time and money for anyone using a PC with Web OS.
Of note recently is the announcement of the partnership between Google and Sun for cross-marketing of their services. This fuelled a lot of speculation about whether a Web version of StarOffice would be in the works. In addition, people have been talking about a possible Google browser and GoogleOS.
I envision the future Web O.S. to be a stripped down Linux distribution with subsequent enhancements. And the single distribution which is poised as the best contender has to be Mark Shuttleworth’s forever free Ubuntu Linux.
Based on the above, I don’t think Google is preparing a browser or O.S. Because both the browser (Firefox) and the Computer OS (Ubuntu Linux) already exist, it doesn’t seem to be a good strategy to me.
…
My weapon of choice in this area is Firefox and it should be yours too. Mozilla’s awesome open-source browser is highly customizable through a variety of extensions. A personal favourite is GreaseMonkey which allows you to install scripts that personalize the browsing experience of some sites, removing annoyances in some cases or enhancing functionality in others.
My view of the Web OS is that it must be a combination of the computer’s OS and the browser. The advantage with a browser like Firefox is that it is already cross-platform and standards-based. It is therefore a candidate of choice for basing any development of the Web 2.0 services.
Ruby on Rails is a Rapid Web Development framework built using Ruby, an open-source and truly object-oriented programming language.
Ruby
I am quite fond of Matsumoto-san’s Ruby language and hence I founded a local Ruby user Group.
Ruby on Rails has made the development of new web services a disarmingly simple thing to do. The very implementation of the Rails framework enables you not to have to repeat yourself in your code. Actually, a lot of the code is automatically generated.
Thanks to David Heinemeier Hansson and thousand of other contributors, RoR is and will continue to be a driving force for evolving Web 2.0 because it’s now easy and fast to build new applications. It’s also worth mentioning that RoR now incorporates AJAX functionality by default.
6. Open-source
I have been involved in Linux User Groups and the open-source community for more than a decade and I use and recommend open-source software for that much to enterprises and individuals alike.
Open-source continues to grow as an influential way of building technology and businesses. Sometimes, the open-source product is better engineered than the commercial product, since:
Companies usually operate in an economy of resources mode and management often have no clue what development is about.
In the open-source world, “with sufficient eyeballs, all bugs are shallow”, meaning that someone, somewhere in the world is an expert in solving exactly the problem or bug that the software has and can do so in a small period of time.
Therefore, building proprietary solutions from scratch is an increasingly losing battle. It is much better to build around open-source software and open standards, ensuring interoperability and robustness.
By the way, Eric Raymond, the term ‘open source’ won – we rarely hear of Free Software anymore. However, let’s not forget the seminal work of Richard Stallman.
At the close of 2009, one of the most impressive companies of the decade relies heavily on Open-source software, contributes heavily to the Open-Source community and has evolved into a major player in several industries by building a hybrid business model:
Proprietary or closed-sourced core algorithms and technology
+
Heavily leverage open-source technology and contribute back to the community
That company is Google and is a great model for merging technology and business and succeeding in the digital age and the knowledge economy. Note that to replicate Google’s success, you also have to rely heavily on Engineers and Engineering in Computer Science.
I was hoping for this, and Al Gore deserves the Nobel Peace Price for his excellent work on making people more aware of Global Warming.
In turn I was hoping that this award, which follows the Oscar, would give more visibility to “An Inconvenient Truth“, the documentary which shows most of Gore’s presentation.
DemoCampMontreal2 happens tomorrow. Geeks, Entrepreneurs, Visionaries, Savvy Businessmen, Angel Investors and Venture Capitalists of The Montreal Tech Scene will gather freely to share a most fantastic 2 hours together, and maybe even a drink or two at the SAT bar while seeing five interesting demos.
Hugh is the mastermind behind project LibriVox, which harnesses open participation and open-source software together with the free content of Project Gutenberg to provide you with a growing collection of free audio-books for your listening pleasure.
Wasn’t that a long sentence? Well, through LibriVox, a volunteer could read it out loud, record it, upload it onto the site so you could in turn freely get it as a long audio sentence in mp3 for your media player. And if it’s too long, people can collaborate on the task too.
Come see his newest project, Collectik. It’s like mixtapes but for podcasts.
Or else he might also present a super-secret stealth-ninja-mode project. Something kept under wraps behind a second closed vault door or something.
A location-based mobile social networking project. Austin Hill is said to have gently persuaded Martin Dufort to present – something involving twisting arms.
Brett Gaylor was the host of the first impromptu Mashpit in Montreal so that an ad-hoc team of four (Brett, Hugh, Sylvain and myself) met around mostly Macs, a few Sleeman beers and some tasty end-of-night whiskey all soaked up in pizza to help bring his Drupal-based collaborative web-site to fruition. Brett is currently working on “Basement Tapes” a movie about free culture. During his project, he’s met some little-known people like Lawrence Lessig, DJ Girltalk and me.
Looks like Austin Hill will replace “Big” John Kopanas (a worthy successor of the UFC’s “Big” John McCarthy) as MC this time around, and multi-talented, omelette-engineering expert, Simon Law will fulfill photographic duties again.
Quick Presentation Tips
At DemoCamp, there are no slides. This can be tricky. Here are a few tips to keep in mind and also put in practice for your experience to be a success:
1. Know you goal for presenting at DemoCamp
2. Based on your goal, define your audience
3. Know which language and communication style you want to use with your audience
4. Communicate the benefits of your projects, your goals early.
For instance, if your goal is to find funding for your startup, then you know you want to reach angel investors and venture capitalists. You should then make it clear that your objective is to find funding but make sure also that you manage to make a convincing case of your business benefits very early. I’d say about 80% of your presentation should be about the business benefits and 20% about the technology itself to also cater for the geek audience in this example.
Of course there are other goals to presenting at DemoCamp, just make sure you communicate the benefits clearly to your audience. Clear communication will also make it easier for us to spread the good news about your projects and technology and about you too.
—-
If you’re an astute geek or tech-oriented business person who reads my personal blog at YashLabs, you are most probably already using FireFox and have installed the Operator plugin, which will enable you to easily add these events into your online calendar. All are open-source and free technologies.
In one entry made yesterday, , Microformats go large, the Listening Post provides some information about the Microformats presentation at SXSW Interactive. The Operator plugin for Firefox by Michael Kaply of IBM are again mentioned.
Et c’est ainsi que je rencontrai Panthère-Rousse. Je ne sus que bien plus tard que les Vieux Garçons semblent être deux bloggeurs qui se font appeler ainsi.
Je raccompagnai Feloisa jusqu’Ã l’avenue du Mont-Royal et elle me parla du lancement du livre du blog “Un Taxi la Nuit“, ce qui est quelque chose d’assez remarquable.
Heri comments in a previous post about technologies we both saw at DemoCampMontreal1 – Sygenics‘ Evolution and Evonium’s DARWIN which relies on Evolution (all Montreal technologies). I started replying as a comment, but when I saw the length of the response, it turned out that it would be best as a post as he suggested, so here it is.
# heri Says:
March 9th, 2007 at 8:47 am e
hi there
I am quite impressed with the reports you are writing, it’s live blogging!
back to the point though, i was among the guys who didnt really understand the real benefits of darwin and evonium – and the implications of dynamic business information systems. i just have academic courses on business processes reengineering, but compared to your experience, i guess its nothing, so i was wondering if you would care write a post about it, what’s so good about live and dynamic business systems?
Hi Heri, it’s not nearly as live blogging as I would like it to be though. It did take some time for me too to understand the actual benefits and the implications. Thanks for the compliment.
The faster you can review your business process and the integrated Information Systems at their core, then the more agile you are compared to your competitors and towards the ever faster changing business environment.
Your organization then is a dynamically evolutive or adaptative organism. This is why the teams we saw used ‘Evolution’, ‘DARWIN’ and ‘Evonium’ as their names and trademarks. The metaphor however, rather refers to adaptability within a single organism instead of evolution through mating of two organisms (and cross-over + mutation).
With this architecture, Business Process Re-engineering can be more easily performed, as one of the bottlenecks in revising your enterprise data model is how relational database work.
New data model design => data-cleansing code => data-migration => new data access methods (C.R.U.D.) => new business logic => new forms to access them => new documentation => new training, etc…
The less time you take to do that, the more agile you are to step up your business process within the competitive industry (e.g. Porter’s Five Forces Model) and environment.
That’s what these technologies enable you to do: build business agility, adaptability. Also, the less time I take at any point within my business stack to revise things, the better I can optimize my profit margin (e.g. Porter’s Enterprise Value-Chain).
Now to further explore what is possible within this natural evolution metaphor, I can envision a Genetic Algorithm applied to a whole business stack to explore the whole solution space of all business processes as per a specific industry or business function.
I could even start with some Global Best Practices within the gene pool and launch the algorithm, monitor the results to find the optimal Business Process.
As I said the possibilities are amazing. You’re right, this should be a new post. If you have any additional questions, I’d be happy to oblige.
The Davis Guggenheim movie about Al Gore’s speeches on Global Warming wins a well-deserved Oscar for Best Documentary Feature. Congratulations! Let’s hope this award brings more visibility to this serious matter and that more people work on the bounty set by Richard Branson to find a solution.
In related news, Martin Scorsese wins for best director and it’s about time. I had watched the original film on which The Departed” is based and it was quite good – ‘Infernal Affairs’.
Earlier this month, the Nobel committee nominated Al Gore for the Nobel Peace Prize. This comes in the wake of his worldwide speeches, and also after the astounding movie “An Inconvenient Truth”.
If you haven’t warmed up to the importance of this film, and how utterly dire the consequences of Global Warming are, now is the time to get acquainted with it.
The movie has also been nominated in two categories for the Oscar: Best Documentary and Best Original Song.
“A prerequisite for winning the Nobel Peace Prize is making a difference, and Al Gore has made a difference” – Boerge Brende
Coincidentally, Jacques Chirac announced that the U.S. may be subject to a Carbon Tax on the exports of its goods if it does not sign agreements on reducing greenhouse gases.
This makes much sense, especially if you have seen the movie. In it, Gore describes how the melting of ice masses in Greenland, for instance, would cause another ice age in Europe because of the way the ocean current belts function.
I do wish the movie gets the Oscar for Best Documentary. This will probably mean more to most people than a Nobel Peace Prize (which is unfortunate in a way).
Congratulations on your nomination, Mr. Gore. Here’s to hoping I’ll get to congratulate you again in the near future. Well done.
Patrick and I arrived on the spot about 10 minutes early just in case we got lost. And get lost we did, as we couldn’t really find a way to go upstairs initially.
A screen was all ready to be used and there was some music playing. John Kopanas, who had posted about DemoCampCUSEC1 on the MLUG mailing list was there, MCing through the presentations. John is also one of the co-founders of C.U.S.E.C., an international software engineering conference which had Dave Thomas of the Pragmatic Programmers fame as a keynote speaker this year.
First up were the Frysk guys, Mike Cvet and Nurdin Premji.
Frysk is a system monitoring and debugging tool which runs on Linux. It looks quite advanced and was mostly coded with Java.
John asked them what they wanted out of this presentation, to which they replied “Applause”.
John asked which university they came from.
- the University of Toronto (Applause from the crowd).
They are interning at RedHat (More applause from the crowd). Good for you, guys.
Alex Ionescu and somebody else asked quite a few questions about the nitty-gritty.
They offered some Fedora 6 DVDs, mostly on the table, and threw one Frisbee-style in the audience. One audience member valiantly caught it with his forehead.
Alex was next and presented ReactOS, an operating system designed from scratch, destined to be compatible with Windows. The demo went quite well. Alex installed ReactOS within a virtual machine and the installation was blazing fast.
ReactOS in a more advanced form could be potentially very interesting for developers, graphic artists and musicians who wish a very stable and compact environment without all the unnecessary fluff.
Initially, I was thinking that they should have started off with a small Linux distribution with WINE or a virtualizer software and work from there, but they could be on to something. Time will tell.
There are currently approximately 20 developers worldwide working on ReactOS.
I would love to see a version of ReactOS specifically optimized for Music Production, for instance.
In fact, wouldn’t it be great to have a computer with Linux’s stability, compatible, with the sheer number of varied apps available for Windows, and the GUI of Mac OS X? Sounds terribly like an Intel-Mac running Parallels Desktop virtualization software in coherence mode with Windows XP, doesn’t it?
Next up was Pascal Charest. Pascal talked about the HAL project, which is linked to île-sans-fil. HAL is meant for people who want to distribute their creations through île-sans-fil.
Pascal managed to take up the 15 minutes allotted after presenting and answering questions.
Worried looks as the music is turned on higher and higher by Emily, signaling that the 15 minutes are over, Oscar Ceremony-like.
After this, Derek Mahar, who is on the Ruby Montreal User Group mailing list, showed how he solved a practical problem about blog migration using a simple and compact script he wrote with Ruby, my language of choice.
He described how he was stumped at one point because of unspecified date formats, but some kinds souls on the internet helped him out partly and he also had to delve into other files to find the solution.
In the demo, Derek showed how he succeeded in migrating contents from several blogs into a live WordPress one. Impressive.
Notice the ‘photographer’ here.
Subsequently, Gili Tzabari, a friend of John, talked about Desktop Beautifier, a software which automatically changes your desktop background, while showcasing works from artists on DeviantArt.
While the idea may sound simple, it is so only because Gili cleverly made it so. In fact, a lot of background image processing is done to the images to fit different resolutions, and to keep your icons and overlay text messages readable.
A small community is building around Desktop Beautifier, and it actually helps artists demonstrate their works. What’s not to like ?
Note how the ‘photographer’ also doubles up as a techie when connecting laptops to the projector. Actually, that’s the spirit of BarCamp. Everybody’s a participant. This does not detract from the fact that our photographer here is multi-talented as you will soon see.
I was hoping that Sugar would actually look like Ruby, but it turns out Sugar was written in Python. (Well, if you were coding Sugar in Ruby, you’d probably actually keep a very Ruby-like syntax or use a subset of Ruby itself). If it were only me, I would write everything in Ruby or a very high-level pseudo code language, and XML+XLST it into anything else.
Hmmm, I am also working on an ultra-secret Project Optima Society which is based partially on social networking. There are no coincidences.
I think it was also Austin in the audience who said that they are thinking to open-source Sugar in the future.
Sugar is a great idea.
An idea which one would do well to generalize (see my previous post).
It turns out that nobody wanted to go really. So, the techie-photographer revealed he had a presentation if we wanted it. With John spurring him on, Simon Law (for this is his name) proceeded to get some eggs out of his bag.
Then a few books, including a very large one about cooking. Then a portable gas-stove.
Don’t you just love synchronicity? A few page views into Digg today while updating this post revealed that the second book, “The Wealth of Networks” is available freely under a creative commons license in PDF format.
Er…. better get the fire-extinguisher ready!
Simon: Don’t worry. I swear I won’t set anything on fire.
Hugo: yeah, right.
“Guys, just in case, here’s the EXIT.”
About Simon’s presentation: I wouldn’t want to read any unintended clever metaphor about Software Engineering into it. It WAS about cooking omelettes, Simon, wasn’t it? Right? RIGHT? The jury is still out on this one.
But manage to engage the audience, he did.
And feed them too.
John tasting the omelette.
Fred had strategically waited for John to taste the omelette first.
Fred: How do you feel, John?
John: I feel alright
Fred: Ok, let me have a bite.
I briefly spoke with Derek, John, Hugo and FredNgo (who helped organize the first BarCamp Montreal) and left my contact details before I left with Patrick for a drink at Thursdays (it was Thursday after all – maybe these guys use some clever subliminal marketing technique. Like Second Cup.).
DemoCampCUSEC1 was a great success. A very informal and relaxed environment where technophiles and geeks were just happily sharing their joy of hacking things up into better things. Thanks John and all organizers and participants.
I am looking forward to the future BarCamp (as I promised Fred I’d try to come) and DemoCamp.
It was much fun to connect with the techie/geek/hacker/IT/SoftEng community here in Montreal.
This Wednesday, I met with Patrick and we went to a nice Vietnamese restaurant on avenue Mont-Royal. There was a generous serving and it was delicious for a very good price. And being seated next to the heater was a good thing too on Wednesday, believe me.
Patrick and I share the interest in RAD tools. He’s an expert on WinDev and Windows development and although I sometimes hate the way Microsoft does business and technology, I do give credit where credit is due – that is, at least one thing they did well – and really well – is Visual Basic as a RAD tool.
Using VB, I successfully engineered a prototype for a Business Platform used as Management Information Systems and also for daily operations for IMM, an Offshore Management Company with approximately a total of 30 employees and about 600 clients at the time. The prototype was meant to test the possibility of a total re-engineering of the business process together with the information systems application they were stuck with – a mess of FoxPro for DOS (not Visual FoxPro). Ultimately, their long-term goal was to use an ERP to manage their business, but in the meantime, they needed help with mission-critical software.
To be effective, a prototype must be built rapidly and also help to diagnose any potential pitfalls of migrating to a new platform. Subsequently, you can either choose to do the actual implementation of the new platform in a whole new framework or language, or else convert the prototype itself into the production platform.
Well, the VB client-server platform I developed was really such a significant improvement on their previous way of working that they kept it. It ran for about 4 years without glitch till they successfully migrated to J.D. Edwards.
I’ll probably write a more complete post on this project later, but the technical architecture relied on VB 6 and windows 98/XP, SQL Server 7 on Windows NT 4, and Word and Excel automation (also through VB/VBscript macros).
Being a Systems/Software Engineer helped me analyse and design the architecture, and my experience working as a Business Analyst for an Andersen Worldwide representative (DCDM, where I learned to apply Andersen’s Method/1 and Global Best Practices) helped me use best practices for business process re-engineering (crucial use of the Parallel Run before complete migration), software engineering and Project Management.
And the points I’m trying to make are:
- Had I been using C/C++/Java instead of VB, I would have taken 10-20 times longer – possibly more
- VB 6 is so good it can be used to not only rapidly prototype a business platform, but also convert into a mission-critical platform used by 20+ employees simultaneously on a daily basis for a Business in the Finance Industry.
It is with this perspective in mind that Patrick’s description of WinDev was really interesting. I watched the screencasts of WebDev too on the PCsoft site and the environment looks fantastic. Screencasts are an excellent marketing tool.
Which brings me to Ruby and Rails. I love Ruby and Rails, but what they sorely lack is a powerful RAD environment/IDE/Framework. At least something as powerful as VB. (There are some projects which exist and I wrote about these in my posts to Rubidius, the Mauritius Ruby Users Group, but they are not as advanced as VB).
While we were talking about RAD, WinDev, Ruby and Rails, I two Patrick of two ideas of mine, two things which are so good they should exist but they don’t really yet – or at least I don’t know about them yet (do chime in if you’re in the know):
1. A RAD/IDE totally decoupled from the GUI toolkit/library it uses.
In other words, the RAD/IDE outputs an XML-based, neutral and standard description of GUI objects (their size, location, properties, appearance, etc…). This, in turn can be automatically translated through XSLT, XML processing to target any GUI toolkit or libraries like wxWidgets or something else.
Why?
- Because I don’t have the time nor the desire to learn yet another RAD/IDE. Make one good one, and make it versatile.
- I don’t have the time to learn a new GUI toolkit and I certainly don’t want to write code when it can and should really be automated.
2. A very high level-language like pseudo-code – one programming language to rule them all. Ok, we already have Ruby and Boo, we can stop here.
Similarly here, I don’t have the time to learn a new language. I rarely code these days, as I’d rather spend my time solving strategic business and information systems integration and global/humanitarian issues instead. Having to learn a new syntax for a language without there being any real innovation is not a good use of my time and energy. But if I have to code, I use Ruby or VB.
Although I can program in C/C++, using languages with complicated constructs and in which I need to manage pointers, like C/C++/JAVA are a waste of my time (my opinion based on my priorities and time spent on actual, real-life business projects – not an ignition for a language war, ok?). I prefer to spend time thinking about an optimal algorithm or clever architecture, and business optimization issues (high-level problem solving), not battling the language’s syntax and readability or spend an uncertain amount of time on bug-hunting (low-level).
From this high-level pseudo-code (ok, let’s say it’s Ruby), one can always transform it into XML and XSLT it into any other language provided the programming constructs can me matched.
The next day Patrick and I had decided to attend Montreal’s first DemoCamp at the C.U.S.E.C., organised by John Kopanas, and we saw something similar there at least in principle. More on that later as I will do a write up with pics for DemoCamp soon.
All in all, Patrick and I also agree about writing less code.
As I always say, the essence of computing is to make the machine do all the repetitive and boring stuff automatically. So whenever you find yourself doing the same things over and over again, like writing down the same code, typing when you could do it with a single mouse click, ask yourself if there isn’t an opportunity to delegate this to the computer and automate it.
This is what David Heinemeier Hansson did when he built Ruby on Rails – Don’t Repeat Yourself – D.R.Y., the essence of computing.
And use a RAD/IDE. Type less code, especially in cases where you don’t need to. Please.
“…For example, I personally believe that Visual Basic did more for programming than Object-Oriented Languages did. Yet people laugh at VB and say it’s a bad language, and they’ve been talking about OO languages for decades.
And no, Visual Basic wasn’t a great language, but I think the easy DB interfaces in VB were fundamentally more important than object orientation is, for example…”
In Part 1, I wrote about Morgan Spurlock’s Super Size Me and Fast Food Nation, a dramatization by Richard Linklater of Eric Schlosser’s best-selling book. Initially, Schlosser serialised the text in Rolling Stones Magazine. It can be read here.
Howard Lyman – The Mad Cowboy.
Now, as Jordan and I were dining at Les 3 Amigos, I remembered how when I started researching nutrition, I came across the blog of a couple who turned vegetarian or vegan and they mentioned the story of a fourth-generation farmer who had also turned vegetarian and had been an inspiration to them. He had inherited the farm from his father and as I recalled what I had read only partially, I told Jordan about how he revealed what went into cattle’s food. I couldn’t remember his name or moniker at the time but I was determined to search for the information once more.
Memory gave me these Google search terms: fourth-generation +farmer +vegetarian.
As I had told Jordan, he revealed that cattle were fed cattle, thereby turning them into cannibals. This is quite a horrifying thought and led to a polemical Oprah Winfrey Show, where both Lyman and Winfrey were sued. Lyman also writes about the rendering farms where dead animals were crushed into powder for feeding cattle. Other animals than cattle being fed to cattle are, according to Lyman, roadkill as well as euthanized pets.
Also interesting is what Lyman says about the prions which cause Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy or Mad Cow Disease. Lyman says that a quantity of prions to fit the tip of a needle are enough to spread the disease. Now, imagine that one diseased cow is crushed into a fine powder and that this is fed to many cows simultaneously.
Also, realize that the chunk of beef in your burger is actually a composite of many animals, many cows, and you can see the danger of the whole process.
Lyman also points out how health inspectors in the USA do not inspect all animals.
Lyman’s testimony of how he started industrializing his feedlot is very telling. Read the excerpts and if possible, the book. It’s quite damning to Agri-Business.
3. An Inconvenient Truth with Al Gore.
This is a very surprising and moving film. It’s about Al Gore’s speeches about Global Warming that he presents around the world. The facts he presents and the science are powerful evidence. Gore also talks about the spin that big companies or the administration have put on greenhouse gases emission, namely that scientist are supposedly divided about whether G.W. really happens.
Watch this film. Better still, pledge to watch it, and also make the maximum number of people you know watch it. Watch it till the end credits as there are a lot of messages in there. And then, just as the metaphor in Fast Food Nation (see part 1), ACT.
You can see the whole of Al Gore’s speech on Google Video. The quality is not that good so you might not be able to make out the slides presented very well but it’s still interesting to be able to watch it.
Now, three slightly coincidental events happened around the time I watched this movie.
1. Gore speaks about how a large chunk of Antarctica broke off some time ago and how this had surprised many scientists. In the news recently, a piece of the polar regions of Canada broke off. Also, Greenland is melting. Fast. And in the movie, Gore warns that if melting occurs in this region and because the way the ocean currents work, Europe could be faced with a rapid ice-age.
2. Emission of Greenhouse Gases should be reduced as is evident in Gore’s speech. However, although he focuses on the Car and Oil Industry, in recent news one could read that cattle have passed cars as the number one cause of greenhouse gas emission in the world.
3. Since watching this movie, I came across another one which was released about the Car and Big Oil industries:
It’s a very interesting film on many fronts, about a nice electric car developed, released and killed by General Motors.
The movie has a type of documentary feel to it but also proposes to find the culprits among the consumers, the hydrogen fuel cells, the government, Big Oil and Big Car companies.
I read since then, that GM is preparing another electric or hybrid vehicle.
In the meantime, Toyota is running rings around everybody else with their hybrids, namely the Prius line of vehicles.
Cattle, Factories, Vehicles. But wait, there’s yet another way of polluting the already heavily stained air we breathe.
5. The Insider with Al Pacino and Russell Crowe.
This movie has made me ask the same question time and time again: “If this movie has been released, why do people still smoke?”
There’s a good summary of the contents written by by Kenneth Chisholm {kchishol@execulink.com} on IMDB:
This film tells the true story of Jeffrey Wigand, a former tobacco executive, who decided to appear on the CBS-TV News show “60 Minutes.” As matter of conscience partially prodded by producer Lowell Bergman, he revealed that, the tobacco industry was not only aware that cigarettes are addictive & harmful, but deliberately worked on increasing that addictiveness. Unfortunately, both protagonists of this story learn the hard way that simply telling the truth is not enough as they struggle against both Big Tobacco’s attempts to silence them and the CBS TV Network’s own cowardly complicit preference of putting money as a higher priority over the truth.
So, my top 5 eye-opening movies I’ve seen in order is:
1. An Inconvenient Truth
2. The Insider
3. Fast Food Nation
4. Super Size Me
5. Who Killed the Electric Car?
I don’t miss my car here. I love to walk, even in the relatively harsh cold. I take the subway and the bus. And if I get a car, I’ll choose one carefully so that the greenhouse gases emission are low or nil.
I’ve brought down my power consumption to approximately 10$ monthly and use Compact Fluorescent Bulbs which reduce my carbon emission footprint.
I’ve registered on some of the newsletters of environment-friendly sites to keep abreast of what’s happening and if I can help.
I am not eating beef meat. It’s bad. It’s bad (the milk and the meat) for my health. I don’t need it. I do fine eating vegetables, fruits and salmon and tuna and sardines and other fish.
While it is true that the hectic pace of today’s life sometimes forces us to consider packaged foods, I know I can eat at Subway, but not at McDonald’s, and I rather prepare my own food from basic and healthy ingredients. I eat oily fish for the intake in Omega-3 and Omega-6, but I’m careful in choosing either as fresh a fish as possible, or wild fish instead of farmed fish when in cans. The trouble with large fish is that they concentrate toxins the more they are up the food chain. Farmed fish have been found to be more toxic than wild fish. Guess what some farmers have been feeding to their fish? Yes, that’s right, dead fish reduced to powder.
Not only these decisions help my health, but the very fact that there is a consumer less for beef may pave the way for less cattle feedlots and therefore less junk food and less health problems in the world and less greenhouse gas emissions globally. Of course, I said “may”, not “will”, because for it to be possible, I need to be joined by millions.
But this is my decision, my responsibility, my action. And I have more power than a misguided government representative who buckles under the pressure of big companies for a crucial point of law (see Who Killed the Electric Car?).
My action makes me somebody who sacrifices some of his life for the possibility of a better world for you and your kids because I am not the cause of all these problems, but I can surely do something so as not to make me an accomplice of the malpractices.
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