Mărțisor

A new spring is starting today. And Romanians usually celebrate. Here's how the holiday looks officially:

Talking about official, Google is celebrating too, that has to mark it as an important date in the calendar

I think it supposed to stand for new beginnings and cooperation, so here's a kick-off to getting along better with others

Book trailers

They started making book trailers? Has this been going on for some time and did I just become aware of it now? I'm too lazy to investigate. Anyway the result was that it makes me want to read the book and I probably will.



And it has a follow-up which is apparently not as good as the first book.



You can check out the website http://incarceronbook.com/incarceron_sapphique/index.html
The event is apparently an American release of a British book. Another interesting thing about this book is that the wikipedia article mostly reads like a commercial.

Will the book be any good? I hope so. However, a trailer is not enough to convince me to put it on top of the priority queue, so I still have time to back down.

Wasting Time

We all have the tendency to waste some time, some people keep away from the distractions, others find excuses

There are complicated ways to do it

or easy ones

However, when applied right these techniques can greatly improve your output and performance, as is describe in Paul Graham's essay on procrastination. However, his point is more like you should procrastinate things that seem urgent but are not important. People seem to have something else in mind (notice how his point about the whole company picking it up is proven right statistically), and they even admit it.

Is Google Evil?

Already asking this about a company whose motto is "Don't be evil", is a major fail for them.
The article that started this minor problem for them was accusing Bing of stealing their search results http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/02/microsofts-bing-uses-google-search.html with screenshot evidence :)

Short form: Google suspected  Bing was stealing results and they organized a sting as presented in the original post (that's where the picture is from). Microsoft's defense is that they are using a lot of input signals, one of them being clicks on Google search results apparently.

However, as was noted here http://www.puremango.co.uk/2011/02/what-on-earth-are-google-doing/, this can hardly have any good implications for Google. If this is a marketing ploy I guess they can be considered evil, if they can't control public announcements they are in the wrong too and about the technical aspect of directly stealing results versus using all clicks, well... it's best to take a humorous view:

Of course they are frustrated and outraged at a competitor 'stealing' but Google could have taken a better approach I guess. Maybe making fun of them like this :) after all if they copy Google results how will they be relevant?

Best Movie Ever

If you were looking for Oscars go away this is something of much higher entertainment value.
I am glad and at the same time very sad that the best SF/action movie and (unintentionally ?) comedy has been made. Here is the short form.

Page not found

404
A site's 404 page is one of the best places to express creativity and keep the user entertained, and you don't have to worry about consistency and such, because nobody is supposed to see it right?
Anyway here is a collection of the most widely used examples:  http://blogof.francescomugnai.com/2008/08/the-100-most-funny-and-unusual-404-error-pages/

And if you want some more words around your examples to make one too, take a look here:  http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2007/07/25/wanted-your-404-error-pages/ and here  http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2007/08/17/404-error-pages-reloaded/

But the reason I wrote this post is because of the coolest one of them all, the one from Github:  https://github.com/404.
And because they might change it and just for fun here it is embedded in the blog post:

Btw. Did I mention you need to move your mouse over it?

Customer Care

I'm sure there was a time when you got frustrated with bad service or customer care. Well, that really shouldn't happen, but the good news is it can help you stand apart. Like this guy (you need to read the text):

This thing is so awesome it almost makes me feel bad about not trying to find this guy online and asking for permission to post his masterpiece, because that's what it is, it's the Mona Lisa of customer care.

If this got you interested and want to know more about how to do good customer care, have a look at Joel's blog, especially this: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/customerservice.html

Of course you could also be at the opposite side of the spectrum, like a bank let's say. That can help you stand out too, but maybe not in the way you wanted. And there is room for awesomeness here too... It's just that you're not the one doing it and it's sad.

Btw. If you feel you don't have the talent for this, you can still try, see the giraffe neck below:

The manliest thing ever

More words would just ruin the manliness, but if you don't want to buy this truck this is what it says about you:

Two rednecks, Bubba and Cooter, decide to go to college. Bubba goes first, and he is advised to take maths, history and logic.

-- "What's logic?" says Bubba.

-- "Well, let me give you an example," says the professor. "Do you own a tractor?"

-- "Sure do," says Bubba.

-- "Okay. Then I assume, using logic, that you have a yard."

-- "That's real good," says Bubba, in awe.

-- "Logic also tells me that since you have a yard, you also have a house. Is that right?"

-- "Gawly!” says Bubba.

-- "And since you own a house and a house is tough to take care of by yourself, the odds are that you have a wife. Right?"

-- "Betty Mae! This is incredible!"

-- "Finally, since you have a wife, logically I can assume you are heterosexual. Is that right?"

-- "You are absolutely right! Why that's the most fascinatin' thang I ever heerd of. I can't wait to take this here logic class!"

Bubba, proud of the new world opening up to him, goes back into the hallway where Cooter is waiting.

-- "So what classes are ya takin’?" says Cooter.

-- "Maths, history and logic," says Bubba.

-- "What in tarnation is logic?"

-- "Let me give you an example," says Bubba. "Do you own a tractor?"

-- "No."

-- "Then you’re gay."

Meaning of Words

Do you believe in coincidence? At least according to Wikipedia, you should, because they are inevitable. The coincidence was that I just read two completely different texts complaining about the distortion in the meaning of some words.

But let's look at the word coincidence itself.
<GeekAlert> Did I mention I like defining stuff? Hopefully this is the only place where you will see me doing it </GeekAlert>
When approaching the problem etymologically you see that its meaning was of multiple (co) events happening (incidence) at the same time. The only place where it is still being used with a literal meaning is physics ( and there incidence has been translated as falling upon, making it a polysemantic word ). So where did the "unusual" part of every definition come from? My guess is that the meaning got distorted with the passage of time, gaining connotations from the context it was being used in most frequently. Synchronous would be another word to describe more than one event happening at the same (syn) time (chronous). But let's be serious, who uses that (except for geeks obviously)? So a theory of "coincidence" filling up a gap seems rather shaky.

Now whether you went through that boring paragraph or just skipped it, which might be just as well, let me reward you with a funny interlude. Hope you appreciate his humor, if not I'll sum up for you: he is bitching about the misuse of the word "epic", of epic fail fame, until it's not epic anymore, but trivial and thus useless.
When I say epic, I think Lord of the Rings, but that's just me. I guess you could consider the ocean, cosmos and other lengthy written works epic.



Ok, now that we have a little bit of color in place we can get to the serious part. C. S. Lewis talking about the meaning of the word "Christian" (it appears the spell-checker wants me to capitalize it :) so be it). But, sly fox that he is, he graciously avoids this word people are bound to be very opinionated about and goes on to talk about the word gentleman instead. This is done in the introduction to his book Mere Christianity, which I can't readily link to as it's not public domain ( just kidding, I found this link, not sure how long it will be valid for though ). So what is a gentleman? Originally it seems to have meant someone who had a coat of arms (although you may find a lot more detailed information in the usual place), so applying it to someone as a praise would be useless, as there are plenty of adjectives for that, I would favor chivalrous. Furthermore it shifts from saying something about the described to person to saying something about the speaker, namely that you admire him. Nowadays gentleman is often used to mean just man, having lost all its original meaning. So what about Christian? Well it should be used in the way it was meant to: someone who believes in the teachings of the apostles of Christ. nowadays that would be the church (any church will do, denominations are not really important, I am referring to Lewis's "mere" Christianity anyway).

Instead of a conclusion I will admit to having beaten around the bush when my real purpose is just that one phrase about what a Christian is as I plan on writing quite a bit about religion and how it plays nice with science. If you want to know about the meaning of a word just ask Wikipedia or Google ;)


BONUS 1 I know I promised not to just throw in random stuff anymore, but you can see how something called "Words" fits into this post, right? Well, I wanted to recommend this:



Just because the first part of it, about the man without words is good. How good? Well, it touched me in a soft spot in my soul. The same one that was previously tickled by WALL-E, coincidentally himself a non-speaking, yet strangely relatable character.

BONUS 2 Did you notice the link to the Birthday Paradox on wikipedia? If not, you should read about it. It is one of the simplest and most likely to encounter things that will blow your mind, by being completely unintuitive. A year has 365 days so how many people would you need to get into a room so that 2 share the same birthday?  The probability reaches 50% at 23 people, meaning you are more likely to have a collision than not to. And it gets to a staggering 99% with as little as 57 people. Doesn't that kind of make you regret all the math you forgot?

A Quiet Place

I thought to myself: I need to start writing. Hence this little thing here, called a blog.
It's funny actually how the idea came to me. I was discussing with my friends how we should be starting an anti-blogger movement to counteract the annoying little voices twittering in our heads the whole day. But that idea seems rather useless, without even considering the petty, sad side of it. So if you can't beat'em, join'em right? So stand back cause here comes the noise, a mash of everything you may find on this blog, hope you enjoy.

So do I think I have something better to say? You're damn right about that. I mean it would be hard not to. Like with everything else 90% of writing is crap. Well then surely this is a good idea. Ummm, maybe not so. The other factor which got me to writing is this little bit of insight: this would just mean creating more noise.
As I see it the problem with noise can be one of two things:

1. You stop listening. Which is what I would expect most people to do
2. You start to like it... you know, like the music on MTV or that you hear at the radio or in clubs

Now the biggest problem is to get people to realize that they have a problem. If people don't know they have a problem they're not going to solve it. So why throw more clutter to make clutter go away? Well, because I hope to figure out on the way the means to get people to solve their problem.
Go ahead, watch this video in which Seth Godin talks about clutter:



Now, don't you feel just a tiny bit smarter for having watched that? Doesn't it get you to thinking?
So what I'll be trying to accomplish here is to stimulate thinking, by following Seth's receipe. Get people to start talking about something, give them something worth talking about (more on TED at some later time). The thing is I am trying to go about this from a different angle. Your average Joe Blogger writes about day to day stuff, random thoughts, starts a blogroll where he puts a link to his friends so that his friends put a link to him, so that they can Hi five! each other... well isn't that swell? I on the other hand will be starting by writing for myself, because thoughts encourage other thoughts to form. The idea is to link previously unrelated stuff in your mind, simple thoughts to form ideas, and in the end maybe even a way of looking at life (and I mean a philosophical system, and here you thought that was some complicated shit...).

The thing is we call these connections THINKING. I was wondering why my dog is so stupid, why can't he close the door behind him? I mean he surely knows the concept of door (he opens them when he can and he calls for us to let him out by looking out the door) and he knows about cold too, that's the reason he wanted to get inside in the first place. The problem is he can't connect the two. He literally cannot. Just as mice cannot form the idea left of the blue wall, although they know what blue is and what a wall is, strange thing is humans can't either until they are about 6. I got this revelation about my dog from a pretty cool show which I will be generous enough to share with you:



The point that the people talking there are making is that thoughts first start out not in the mind, but in the channel, in speech. Then you get to talking to yourself, and finally to talking to yourself silently. While social media in general tends to stop at the first, let's try to go a bit further. So if you want to join me on this journey go ahead, I am going to go sit in a corner quietly.

Actually, I was lying. I'll try to do some persuasion work here too. What I suggest is that we learn more. Now if the thought of MORE INFORMATION scares you as much as it does me, remember we are not the first to have these problems. They are just normal manifestations of a sort of revolution. Take the printing press, it scared and annoyed the hell out of the brightest people of that age.
But what can you do? The world is evolving. Due to printing we evolved to a society of readers, now we are evolving to a society of writers (thought it may take a shorter time than a few centuries). Also that may not be exactly what we should be doing.
I don't expect you to buy the book (although if you do, it would be nice if you followed this link so that in couple of years I can buy myself a kebab), I just think these links from amazon are pretty cool :) but you should read the summary from the link above, just for the idea of evolution of societies from an information point of view.
What I am upset about is that while to me blogging seems to be "real writing" it is a part of social media instead. And that makes me shudder. Really? social media?

I call bullshit.

PS. I promise I will not subject you to random jumps of thought anymore. At least, to the best of my ability, I will try.