Archive: May 20, 2009

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Wednesday,  05/20/09  10:13 PM

From Durham, NC, after having spent the day flying... I have been reading William Gibson's Pattern Recognition, enjoying it immensely, and I find that in the way of all great books the world it creates in your head it isn't just engrossing, it makes you think about the world outside your head, too.  The central character in P.R. is Cayce, a "coolseeker", who immerses herself in culture and can later tell, in an intuitive way, what "works" and what doesn't.  Reminds me that this doesn't only happen with consumer products, it happens in business; you have to understand your customers, immerse yourself in their business, to understand what "works" and what doesn't. In addition to being interesting and thought-provoking, P.R. is also of it's moment, early 21st century online, more so than any other book I've read; you can tell that Gibson immersed himself in the culture at the time in order to write this book.  Examples Palmed while reading: "a cellphone large enough to look passé or unusually powerful", "a James Bond set, Brosnan rather than Connery", and of course, "Palmed".  Google is featured, as are blogs and message boards, but you can tell it was published in 2003 and not 2009 because Facebook and Twitter are not :)  Post-911 security concerns are also more strongly drawn than they would be today.  I love the advertising people and their marketing; a character named Bigend comments "I was drawn to advertising when I realized the way products are positioned is invariably more interesting than the products themselves". Gibson himself is a coolseeker... the patterns are recursive... Yes of course the title of this post comes from P.R., you must read the book, silly :)

 

Wednesday,  05/20/09  10:37 PM

A travel day, Burbank to Dallas, long layover including an amazing dinner at Mr. G's in the Hyatt Regency in the middle of DFW (a game selection: Bison, Elk, and Quail, paired with amazing Burgundy, and an Italian cheesecake w cherries which was transporting), then Dallas to Raleigh, and here I am in Durham, blogging... I am still really loving my Kindle.  It allowed me to read Pattern Recognition all day, including during dinner in the very dark and formal Mr. G's, where I was able to continue reading by setting the font size to 6. One result of having watched Megan debate last weekend, I am thinking of many things in the "prop/opp" way; you have a hypothesis, and you have points in favor, points against, and rebuttals for each.  Proposition: the government should intervene to save large organizations from going bankrupt.  Argue for and against!  We can now consider California as one such large organization.  Wow... Apropos: voters don't just say No, they say No Way.  Hasta la vista, Arnold... CNet has an image gallery of online personal health tools: taking your health record with you.  Ah, but does it include the pathology information?  It should :)  Maybe my next book: Absinthe and Flamethrowers: Ruminations on the Art of Living Dangerously.  "I’ve spent the last two years writing my just released book Absinthe and Flamethrowers, an exploration of a single, important question: Are people who take risks happier than those who do not?"  Interesting; I keep thinking I might be happier if I took more risks, but I'm not willing to risk it :)  Dave Winer's big idea for the NYTimes: write about Twitter for your Twitter audience.  And let them write about it, too.  Huh.  I swear, I still don't get Twitter.  Everyone else does, I know, even Queen Rania of Jordan, but not me.  Another thing I don't get: researchers store optical data in five dimensions.  What does that even mean?  It can't just be a five-dimensional array, right?  Looks like VS 2010 is out, at least in Beta form, so it looks like I'll have to try it.  I am still using VS 6 for VB and VS 2005 for C++; I've done some experiments with VS 2008 but not for production.  Stuck in the stone age :)  Tomorrow is the big day at the Giro d' Italia, the Cinque Terre time trial which will likely decide the overall winner.  It is long and hilly, and most observers think the time gaps will be huge.  Go Levi!  I wish I could watch...

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