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2013

  • 2 min read

How do you fit a 365 day calendar on an index card?

I designed the calendar to the right to help me keep track of my piano practice. As you know, maybe, to learn piano you need to practice every day. Well I don't do that regularly enough, and as a result (and general clumsyness) my piano study is going at a snails pace. So of course, technology to the rescue.

Jerry Seinfeld described how he would force himself to do something every day. In his case, work on his comedy. He would put an X on each day in his calendar when he worked. He would then psych himself up to never break the string of X's, and the longer the string was, the more it hurt to break it. Sounded like a fine idea to me.

The idea with the piano calendar is the same. I put an X over each day that I practive and, so goes theory, I am more likely to respect a string of days and not break the chain. It kind of works.

But in the meanwhile I have a fairly clever design that fits all the days of one year on a tiny bit of paper. That's cool!

  • 1 min read

What do pig intestines and squid have in common

This is just funny. Ok it's also a little scary as I love Calamari!

"Calamari is on one side of the plate, sliced hog rectums are on the other. Which is which? We got a tip about a meat plant selling pig intestines as fake calamari, wondered if it could be true, and decided to investigate. Doppelgangers, doubles, evil twins and not-so-evil twins, this week. Fred Armisen co-hosts with Ira Glass." (from This American Life)

  • 1 min read

Get someone to clean your gutters for you

I am not being metaphorical, in fact, I am talking about gutters on your roof. A few years ago I wasn't regularly cleaning my gutters and had a close call with roof leaks when we had an extensive period of rain and freezing that caused ice dams and all kinds of ugliness to many New England residents as well as friends of mine. I had a scare and since then I've been paying someone to clean my gutters each year.

Here's a far more 2013 solution to the same problem. Yes, Robots are no longer just for sweeping your living room!

  • 1 min read

If you are in the tech community you've likely heard that Aaron Swartz committed suicide yesterday in New York. I didn't know him but I was in the same room with him, at conferences or conversations a few times about 10 years ago. I certainly knew of him.

I've read many things about him in the last 24 hours. Here are some of the ones that spoke to me the most:

RIP Aaron Swartz

The Truth about Aaron Swartz's Crime

Prosecutor as bully

Processing the loss of Aaron Swartz

  • 1 min read

Harvard Business School: No Women Entrepreneurs

I was surfing around preparing for my class and happened to look at this page on the Harvard Business School web site. The page is called "Entrepreneurs " and it says, among other things:

"A video archive that captures insights from learning members of the School's entrepreneurial community. Entrepreneurs speak on a common set of themes including their development as entrepreneurs, strategies for identifying opportunity, and leadership. (from Harvard Business School)

Notice anything?

Screen Shot 2013 01 12 at 4 08 43 PM

Not a single female in the picture. (And only a single female on the whole

list, Orit Gadiesh) I got to thinking, there are lots of prominent female entrepreneurs. Are we to conclude that for some reason HBS isn't generating them or that they were just overlooked by whoever made this page?

  • 1 min read

What happens if you set up an eRoom on the North Pole?

Here's a new product I just saw, Igloo. It's very nice and it reminds me of what eRoom might have looked like if we designed it 15 years later. They have a beautiful product. Here's what they say:

At its core, Igloo is about communication: In your day, you might give updates, have discussions and share files with your team. With Igloo, that all happens in one place. Igloo helps you communicate in an elegant and integrated digital workplace. You get visibility into what's happening throughout your whole team and your whole office. (From Igloo Web Site tour)

  • 1 min read

Virtual Assistant advice

I have a regular need for a small project to be done, a little bit of research, some following up on projects and so on. I've thought about using a "Virtual Assistant" for this but there is now so much noise in the area that it's hard to navigate. An example of many many is Zirtual.com

My needs are definitely episodic, so I don't want someone that I pay a fixed monthly amount to unless it's pretty small, knowing that it can go up and down depending on the work.

Any feedback on your experiences or thoughts about this would be really interesting!