Visible Earth: Wonderful location to get images like the below

 

"Everyone has an iPod. For some reason, I would rather find and purchase the 'hidden gem' MP3 player that is less popular," said Miller, a Wilmington, Delaware-based musician. "I don't like the idea that nearly everyone has an iPod. I feel this way about other things, too. I appreciate obscurity."  Don't want an iPod?

Continuing on this train of thought, someone at work sent me an interesting picture last week.  It was a picture of a very large college classroom.  Everyone had a laptop.  Almost everyone of them was an Apple.

 

It could be considered petty, but there is something unseemly about this.  When I think about Apple and why I have been a true fan for so, so long, some of it is about technology (I love Objective-C, Cocoa, AppleBasic (from Microsoft actually), ...), but if I am going to be truthful, it is about the being different than everyone else.  Not conforming.  Being a Steppenwolf.

 

Being even more truthful, Apple just wants my money and they know exactly how to get it from me.  That is something that they have been able to do for a long time (Joel has a great piece on some of this in his recent California post), but for me it was an old //c (below) and the Think Different (below as well) ads.

 

When I see a room full of Macs or everyone with an iPhone, that feeling goes away for me.  Apple won't get any more money of my money unless this changes.  Hell, I have been actually considering buy one of the new Zunes.

 

Well worth reading...

"Systems Thinking" and Me: Never the Twain Shall Meet

Interesting browsing experience...

SpaceTime™

Love it.  Certainly on the right path.

First look at Resolver, an IronPython-based spreadsheet « Jon Udell

I liked this quote so much I had to post it.

"Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch.  Liberty is a well armed lamb contesting the issue." -- Benjamin Franklin

 

A lot of folks ask me what I am working on these days.

My answer is typically the same:  Making my mom into a programmer.

Once I say this, I get some strange looks.

Then I remind them what it was like 20 years ago to create professional quality photographs, modify them (crop, red eye, etc.) and then create a personalized photobook.

I remind them what it was like 20 years ago to create a professional quality multi-track musical recording and distribute this to a broad audience.

I remind them what it was like 20 years ago to shoot, edit, and release a quality video production.

Back in 1987, this was the domain of 'professionals' in these fields.

Today, this is the domain of anyone with iLife.

Programming as art.  Programming for my mom.  That is what I am working on.

"Doctors in China have discovered 26 sewing needles embedded in the body of a 31-year-old woman.  They think they were inserted into Luo Cuifen's body when she was a baby by grandparents upset she was not a boy."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/6983435.stm

I clearly don't have all the data here, but reading this story makes me sick and reenforces (admittedly mostly on an emotional level) my personal belief in Moral Universalism, although I am a fan of the "graded absolutism" variant, which suits my pragmatism.

During this football session I am going to try to adopt the Seahawks as my "home team".

I have been following the Dallas Cowboys since I could watch TV, so this is going to be hard.

One of the benefits of being a Seahawks fan is integration with your digital life.

The Seahawks actually have an option to let you import their 2007 schedule (including channel information) into your Outlook calendar.

http://seahawks.com/gameday/gameday.aspx?id=50040

The word is that dasBlog supports Windows Live Writer by default now.

I am putting the 'word' to the test right now.

Since this post is exactly as information-free as any other of my posts, I just leave this one in the feed.

Updated: Works like a charm.