I love to be inspired. Especially by great thoughts and ideas. TED does this for me, every time.

We believe passionately in the power of ideas to change attitudes, lives and ultimately, the world. So we’re building here a clearinghouse that offers free knowledge and inspiration from the world’s most inspired thinkers, and also a community of curious souls to engage with ideas and each other.

- About TED

If you haven’t watched any of these videos, then you really should. I’ve found them to be some of the most inspiring and thought provoking talks. Here’s a few of my favourites:

• Do schools kill creativity? by Sir Ken Robinson. A very humorous and inspired challenge to our notions of education.
• A journey to the centre of your mind by Vilayanur Ramachandran. A fascinating view into the way our minds work when impaired by some very specific mental disabilities.
• My stroke of insight by Jill Bolte Taylor. Jill’s a brain scientist and has had an amazingly unique experience - she was able to analyse her own stroke as it occured.

Take some time out of your day and listen to a few TED talks. You’ll be glad you did it.

When can you expect the unexpected? When your crystal ball is working at full pelt.

I received this email yesterday from a vendor we do some work with:

Subject: ACME Corp. will experience an unexpected power outage tomorrow between 8 am and 12

Dear Client,

We have been notified of an unexpected power outage in between the hours of 8 am and 12 noon, Thursday 15th May, 2008. This means that we will be without power, network and phones.

I’m hoping to get them to visit our site to help us predict any unexpected issues we might have with our own systems.

@ameel’s recent tweet prompted me to drag up some blog posts I used to read on sleeping. I’m a big fan of this activity, but in my many years of practice, I have yet to master the technique.

The article Ameel pointed me to is about catching up on lost sleep. I used to have a tendency of waking up quite early in the morning, looking at my clock and then worrying about not getting enough sleep for the remaining hours before my alarm went off.

This behaviour cost me considerable hours of this precious resource. I would continually watch the clock and cause myself worry about how little time I had left to sleep.

The solution? I changed my behaviour and stopped looking at my clock. Now, when I wake up in the dark hours, I just turn around and treat myself to more sleep. I no longer worry about the time and how much of it I have left.

By doing this, I have trained my body to fall back asleep quickly. So whether I have 2 hours or 30 minutes left before my alarm goes off, I make the best use of it without worry and with some good quality rest.

If you’re interested in reading more about sleep patterns and the like, then Steve Pavlina has written a number of articles on this. It’s a great log of his personal experiments with getting up early and Polyphasic Sleep. I just wish I had the time to spend playing around with this stuff.

(I stopped reading his blog when he began crapping on too much about “intention manifestation”. Something I have written briefly about before.)

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Hat tip: Futuristic Play by Andrew Chen

This is from an article written in November 1968 in the Mechanix Illustrated. It’s an article on what life would be like on November 18, 2008.

Some of it is pretty close to being spot on. Other bits sadly haven’t yet eventuated. Wish I got flown to work in a car, worked a 4 hour day, holidayed at an underwater resort and had a housewife who made my microwave dinner for me!

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Hat tip: Modern Mechanix

If you’re the type who loves audio books and short stories, make sure you selectively share your iTunes library. The first few I bumped into below were fine, it was the last one which made me blush!

In an attempt to get this site fired up again, I thought I’d post something about this twitter stuff I’ve started using. As usual, it’s been around for a while now but I’ve just gotten onto the bandwagon.

Twitter is kind of a micro-blog. Whilst blog posts tend to be a past description of events and somewhat wordy, a twitter is much more temporal, to the point and immediate. I’ve only got a few “followers” so far but am following 14 others. Haven’t yet had that light bulb moment, so am still unsure on how this will eventually be useful for me.

I have discovered that it’s becoming difficult to keep all my bits and pieces up to date. Between twitter, facebook and this blog, it quickly became overwhelming. So, with a few plugins and rss magic, here’s where I’m at now …

Twitterific

This is the desktop (Mac / Windows) tool I use to keep up to date with other people’s twits and to submit my own into the ether. It saves me from having to go to the twitter website to keep up to date.

Facebook - TwitterSync

This is the facebook app I use to automagically turn my twitter updates into facebook status updates.

Wordpress - Twitter Updater

This wordpress plugin automagically sends a twitter message whenever I make a new blog post. TwitterSync from facebook picks it up and then everything knows about my new profound posting.

Scott has been anxiously waiting all holidays for pictures of my next backyard adventure, so here they are.

I spent a number of days shoveling soil and rock in 40° heat. Just so we could “finish” our backyard in time for New Years Eve. So in summary …

We started here:

And ended up here:

and here …

A job well done by all if I say so myself!

Like a first love or a first car, a first computer can hold a special place in people’s hearts. For millions of kids who grew up in the 1980s, that first computer was the Commodore 64. Twenty-five years later, that first brush with computer addiction is as strong as ever.

- CNN.com

The C64 was also my first computer. I had it for years. Played games on it, programmed it and used it to do my homework. Twenty-five years on, I’m glad to see the legacy has lived on with www.c64.com.

“I have an earache…”

2000 BCE: “Here, eat this root.”
1000 CE: “That root is heathen. Here, say this prayer.”
1850 CE: “Prayer is superstition. Here, drink this potion.”
1940 CE: “That potion is snake oil. Here, swallow this pill.”
1985 CE: “That pill is ineffective. Here, take this antibiotic.”
2002 CE: “That antibiotic is artificial. Here, eat this root.”

- Anonymous