My Bitcoin stash is falling in value!
Yes, I have about $100 in Bitcoin and today was a bad day. It droppped from around $630 to around $580. Am I a speculator? I guess, but my excuse is that I'm very interested in the underlying technology and there's nothing like having some to getting a feel for the space. Here's a great article about Bitcoin Mining.
For Virtual Prospectors, Life in the Bitcoin Mines Gets Real - WSJ.com:
Bitcoins are mined by a decentralized network of computers that guess solutions to a mathematical puzzle. As part of that process, miners keep track of and verify all transactions on the bitcoin network, so bitcoins are a kind of compensation for maintaining the ledger of transactions. The faster a person's computer system can find solutions relative to the rest of the network, the better chance he or she has of being awarded bitcoins.
Better to be a software developer than a college professor?
Other than the headline, which is amusing, I am not sure about the methodology or significance of this study in US News (do they still exist?). And it seems that many professions, e.g. College Professor, don't even get mentioned. Is it because they don't even make the top 100? I doubt it. Anyway, Here's more about the US News and World Report's assessments:
"All jobs aren’t created equal. In fact, some are simply better than the rest. U.S. News 100 Best Jobs of 2014 offer a mosaic of employment opportunity, good salary, manageable work-life balance and job security. Some careers offer just the right mix of these components – for instance, nearly 40 percent of our picks are health care jobs – but the list also includes strong showings from occupations in the social services and business sectors. And for the first time, our No. 1 pick is a technology job. Read more on how we rank the best jobs, and check out our complete list." Read the whole article and see the report in US News and World Report.
Jonathan Harris on being stuck
Jonathan Harris is the creator of several really interesting web sites that in
very creative ways combine art with computing. From his home page one might
conclude that he's a bit
"This is the website of Jonathan Harris. I make projects that explore the relationship between humans and technology, incorporating computer science, statistics, storytelling, visual art, and other techniques. I see our species evolving into a single meta-organism, brought to life by the Internet, even as we live our individual lives, searching for meaning and beauty. My projects straddle these scales of existence--from the planetary to the personal. I make work, give talks, write essays, run a storytelling community, and obsess about the number 27" (His web site is here)
Here's a very well written piece in which he talks quite personally about some
things that have challenged him emotionally and professionally. It's a great
piece even though it still is a little
I thought about stuckness, and about where I lost the flow. I remembered other times in my life I'd been stuck, and how the stuckness always eventually passed. I thought how life is a lot like that fountain, with its columns of water moving up and down, and how the low points are actually thrilling because the high points are about to come back, and how the high points are actually terrifying, because the low points always come next.
Good Grades Certainly Don’t Hurt
How to Get a Job at Google - NYTimes.com:
Don’t get him wrong, Bock begins, “Good grades certainly don’t hurt.” Many jobs at Google require math, computing and coding skills, so if your good grades truly reflect skills in those areas that you can apply, it would be an advantage. But Google has its eyes on much more.
The Cloud is Watching You
It's obvious if you think about it, but this article drives some points home. If you use some kind of web service to read, listen, watch, charge, use, borrow or share stuff, that company not only knows what you've (read, listened to, etc.) They also know much more specifically how you did so: Did you stick with it to the end, did you do it from a particular place, at a particular time? Did you do it in one sitting or over a day or a week or a month?
If you then combine such observation across a farily large group of peope you can learn amazing things. Like how many people finish your book, or how far through it they get before abandoning it. Do they listen to the whole song? At what episode of a series do people abandon it? A little scary as the 'art' we 'consume' gradually morphs into the 'art' we 'like'.
Not only will be be offered to buy new products that we are likely to buy, but the products themselves will be designed in a way that we will like them. Or the art will be created in such a way that we will want to experience it.
Good or bad?
As New Services Track Habits, the E-Books Are Reading You - NYTimes.com:
Scribd is just beginning to analyze the data from its subscribers. Some general insights: The longer a mystery novel is, the more likely readers are to jump to the end to see who done it. People are more likely to finish biographies than business titles, but a chapter of a yoga book is all they need. They speed through romances faster than religious titles, and erotica fastest of all.
Blue Jasmine – Woody Allen
I just saw Blue Jasmine, the latest Woody Allen movie. It is excellent and I recommend it. I also happened to read Nicholas Kristof's column in the New York Times where he reprinted many of the allegations against Woody Allen repeating various allegations that make him sound really evil in his personal life. I also saw the Golden Globes telecast where they showed a montage about his career and hear Diane Keaton give a speech on Allen's behalf.
Suffice it to say that I was confused about what to believe but biased agains Woody Allen, even though I continue to love his movies. This article is very helpful in that regard.
The Woody Allen Allegations: Not So Fast - The Daily Beast:
Twenty-one years after the first allegations that Woody Allen abused his adopted daughter, that incident is back in the news thanks to the director’s ex-partner, Mia Farrow, and estranged son, Ronan Farrow. But what does a closer examination reveal?
Interview Skills
This article: The Only Interview Question That Matters" makes a pretty good case for this being the most important single interview question:
What single project or task would you consider your most significant accomplishment in your career to date?
Goodbye to BlogBridge…
After
a glorious run of almost 10 years, regretfully, I've decided to decomission
BlogBridge. My longtime freinds and blog followers will remember that I and
Aleksey worked on BlogBridge quite intensively for several years, and then
gradually less and less.
Over the last several years BlogBridge was more or less on auto pilot, but still with a decent set of devoted users. And every week and month brought in additional users. Not a huge amount but enough to keep it interesting.
Our pricing model was very lopsided, with most of the features being available for free, and then two levels of paid use, the basic (for $20 per year) and publisher (for $100 per year.) While we should have done more experimenting on the pricing, the fact is that there were lots of good alternatives available for free. So it was a tough (bad?) market fromt he start.
It was a labor of love. A comparitively tiny amount of money was actually spent on it but really compared to the labor that went into designing and implementing BlogBridge, it was truly a labor of love.
So herewith the news that BlogBridge is no longer available as a supported product. While it still has innovations that have not been copied in newer products, the fact is that the interest in dedicated rss readers has passed and it does not make commercial sense to continue. Actually, it hasn't made commercial sense for several years, but I am sentimental about it!
If you are a user, subscriber, or fan, you can read some more of the nitty gritty here.
How does that song go again? "Thanks for the memories….."
Aruba vs. Curaçao
I admit I am always a little bit offended when I hear that a friend of mine (François?) chooses Aruba as a vacation destination. And it happens pretty regularly. Oh I always say that the two islands are very similar, but the truth is that I've spent very little time in Aruba, so… Anyway, for those of you who want to explore this delicate topic more deeply I present to you:
Aruba versus Curacao: Caribbean Showdown - Curaçao Chronicle:
At first glance Aruba and Curacao seem very similar. They're both Dutch islands, they are about 75 miles apart from each other off of the coast of Venezuela and they even have most of the same cultural influences. But believe me; the two islands couldn't be more different. These differences aren't a bad thing; it's just that some travelers will prefer one over the other depending on the type of vacation experience they're looking for.
Box.com – 50 gig for free!
Forget Dropbox , I just heard that Box.com gives you 50gig for free upon signup. I just signed up and it seems like I got it. Pretty cool:
Box | Secure content-sharing that users and IT love and adopt:
Box lets you store all of your content online, so you can access, manage and share it from anywhere. Integrate Box with Google Apps and Salesforce and access Box on mobile devices. Learn More
But I wonder: how can they do it? Is storage so cheap now? Yahoo gives 100Gig free with Flickr.com.
And I also wonder, who needs 50gig free for non commercial use on Box.com? My first idea was to fill it up with movies, tv shows and so on.
But then I got to thinking: what if box.com is a big front, a magnet, or honeypot if you will, for pirated content? What if the entertainment industry, or even the FBI was behind it? Not that I myself have any such pirated stuff, but I hear that the FBI spends a lot of time trying to track down and shut down such sites.
What do you think?