Year: 2005

Safecracking and security

This has been lurking in my aggregator since earlier in the year.
Fascinating analysis and yet another example that “security by
obscurity” strategies are, at best, a very high-risk strategy.

Safecracking. Matt Blaze has written an excellent paper: “Safecracking for the computer scientist.” It has completely pissed off
the locksmithing community. There is a reasonable debate to be had
about secrecy versus full disclosure, but a lot of these comments
are… [Schneier on Security]

Some Knowledge Management Blogs from Bill Ives

A nice list of blogs that deal with KM topics from Bill Ives. I'm
flattered that Bill chose to include mine among the list. You should
definitely check out the rest of the list as well.

Some Knowledge Management Blogs.
When I was at Braintrust 2005 last week, someone asked me about good
blogs to read. Since it was a knowledge management conference I put
together the list of 17 below. Eight are cases in our own business blog
book… [Portals and KM]

Alan Kay on programming language design

Always worth seeing what Kay has to say. The slashdot thread has its moments as well.

How Heraclitus would Design a Programming Language. CowboyRobot writes “Developer of Smalltalk Alan Kay has an interview on ACM Queue
where he describes the history of computing and his approach to
designing languages. Kay has an impressive resume (PARC, ARPAnet,
Atari, Apple, Alan Turing Award winner) and has an endless supply of
memorable quotes: 'Perl is another example of filling a tiny,
short-term need, and then being a real problem in the longer term,'
'Once you have something that grows faster than education grows, you’re
always going to get a pop culture,' 'most undergraduate degrees in
computer science these days are basically Java vocational training,'
'All creativity is an extended form of a joke,' and 'nobody really
knows how to design a good language.'” [Slashdot:]

Interview: father of “life hacks” Danny O’Brien

More on life hacks. What makes all of this interesting to me, besides
the potential productivity value of the hacks, is O’Brien’s observation
that alpha geeks are early adopters of practices that mainstream
knowledge workers are likely to be practicing in 12 to 18 months.

Interview: father of “life hacks” Danny O’Brien.
Just about a year ago, technology writer Danny O’Brien strung together
the words “life” and “hacks” and fired off synapses throughout the geek
community. After an infamous talk entitled “Life hacks – Tech Secrets
of Overprolific Alpha Geeks” at the… [Lifehacker]

Life hacks at Etech

More insight into Life Hacks from Cory. His notes walk this clever balance
between making me regret that I couldn't be there myself and feeling as
though I still got much of the benefit anyway.

One note that I'm sure others will pick up on. Danny talks about
wanting to find a keyboard macro program for Windows. One excellent
answer of course is ActiveWords. I predict a phone call from Buzz to Danny in the near future.

ETECH Notes: Life Hacks Live!. Cory Doctorow:
Here are my notes from Danny O'Brien and Merlin Mann's Life Hacks Live,
at the O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference in San Diego. Danny's
been doing variations on his Life Hacks talk since the last Emerging
Tech conference — it's basically an effort to research the
productivity patterns of very prolific geeks and convert them to wisdom
that anyone can follow. Merlin has been adapting the fantastic
productivity cookbook Getting Things Done into a series of tools for geeks, on an equally fantastic blog called 43 Folders.
They're now working on a book version of their stuff for O'Reilly
called Life Hacks, and today's session was a preview of it — it was
uproariously funny and incredibly inspiring.

Here's a recap of last year, in bumper stickers:

HACKERS HEART PLAIN TEXT

Geeks store what they do in text and spurn big apps, using plain
text editors. Simplicity and speed, ease of search and extraction, cut
and paste. All you need in a filing system.

MY OTHER APP IS IN ~/BIN

If it wasn't plaintext, there's one app that they loved, like
mail, Excel, PowerPoint, etc. The rest was little glue scripts in
~/bin, secret scripts they are embarrassed about and don't share with
others, though it turns out that they're all really similar.

SUPER PROLIFIC GEEKS DO IT IN PUBLIC WITH COMPLETE STRANGERS AND LIKE IT. OH YES.

(don't put this on your car)

Geeks get their credibility and prolificness out of sharing
everything — put it in public and the public organizes it for you. Put
it on a Wiki and others will fix it.

A Swiss Army Knife Approach to Project Management

I’m running a bit behind these days. That makes it a bit ironic that my
most recent column at Enterprise System Journal looks at the topic of
project management.

The column actually appeared last week and looks at project management
from a minimalist perspective. Jim Powell, my editor there, decided to
title it A Swiss Army Knife for Project Management.
My launching point was to ask what everyone needed to know about
project management rather than what the specialists needed to know.

My thinking on this topic has certainly benefitted from the excellent Focused Performance Blog by Frank Patrick and Hal Macomber’s Reforming Project Management.
I’ve also begun to take a close look at basecamp and at ubergroups as
toolsets that are trying to simplify project management for all of us
in place of supporting the complexities that only a small handful of
experts actually need.

Go ahead, make them look bad

I've been enjoying Mark Brady's Fouroboros for a while now.

Here he gets at some important truths about those who propose change
inside organizations. There was a time when I thought this kind of
response was appropriate even when I was upset by it. Now, it simply
annoys me and Mark provides some ammunition to address the underlying
fear it ultimately represents.

When you do decide to run anyway, might as well run with scissors as well.

Take it easy. You're making us look bad.

“We ha…

Take it easy. You're making us look bad.

“We have to walk before we can run.”

Overheard that nugget being used to flog a really smart person today.

Bullshit.

Infants have to walk before they run. But they only run if their
parents let them; only if those parents remember that falling and
getting a boo-boo is part of growth and ambition.

But “walk before we can run” gets used by 45-year olds overseeing
30-year olds all working for 75-year old companies. Not too many
diapers in those boardrooms. Just plenty of “wubbies.”

No, “We” don't run because those who can grant permission–encourage
the running–prefer to walk. Walking is a higher percentage endeavor in
their eyes. A lower exertion one, too. Running is not their ambition, exposure makes them anxious. Horizons make them squint.

Problem is, people are hard-wired to run. And to admire the fleet of
foot. And to follow them. In business and evolution, running is a primary adaptation that allowed man to climb to the top of the heap. Running ahead too far has it's dangers
certainly, but those are issues of direction and purpose, not
speed–running just to run, to feel or look busy, not to get somewhere.
Too bad Darwin proves the “walk before we run” business people wrong.
Too bad, for all of us, that what “walk before we run” people really
usually mean is: I prefer camouflage to speed. And average over ambition.

Run. As soon as you can walk. You'll encounter more numerous
useful experiences. You won't get eaten as easily. And you'll like who
you become. [8Fouroboros]

Lego Death Star II Coming Soon

Definitely want one of these. I also have been lusting after the Imperial Star Destroyer.

I did the Millenium Falcon a few years back, but it has been salvaged for parts by my younger son. I'm sure Han Solo would understand.

lego_death_star_1_.jpgIf
you're the type who'd give anything for a Red 5 to complete your Star
Wars Customizable Card Game collection, you might be interested in
Lego's Death Star II set from Episode VI. For $300, you'll finally have
a gigantic, incomplete base of operations for your wayward TIE fighters and bombers.
Of course, if you're anything like I was when I was nine, you'd have
your father spend six hours putting the whole set together just to
smash it into a wall in a tragic “accident” 10 minutes later. Lego says
it'll be available on September 30th this year.

Catalog Page [Lego via GadgetMadness]