Month: February 2005

I’ve just received the approval for Google’s AdSense Program. I finished reading
their legal agreements, which for some reason reminded me of the first 2 rules of
Fight Club. And after a few clicks, and some javascript pasting…voila! So for those
of you seeing the site, and not reading through some sort of aggregator, down the
left you’ll see the difference. I’m not exactly sure how beneficial for me or how
it will turn out but we’ll see wont we. But why should I add advertising? There
are a few of reasons:

1. Why not?
2. Why not ( ah, fight club )?
3. I had the space for it.

It’s a win-win when it comes to the money part. It’s free for me, and could
translate into dollars in the pocket. After all, I pay good coin for my hosting,
and this will help towards it.

So click away my friend, click away!

Steve
has raised an interesting point about our goals and the daily pitfalls we
run into. How do we reach our goal and not let them accidentally slip through our
finger tips? How can we make sure another year goes buy and we don’t say “What if…?”
He has created his Personal Accountability System (PAS)
to help him.

Funny about the timing of this post. I’m in the process of figuring out my system.
How can I make sure I get everything done that I want? I saw a show on PBS
( I’m trying to hunt down more details. ) about an engineer who decided to schedule
every moment of his life. It was interesting and it displayed the ups and downs of
the process. It lead me to think and realize my lack of planning. I haven’t really
lead my life, so to speak. Once in a while I decide to leap, but other than those
moments I just lay back to the flow. Will that help me ultimately obtain my goals?
I don’t know anymore. Maybe when I was younger, but I think as we get older the flow
of life gets stronger. Which makes sense considering the older we get the more
influences we have. When we were children it was our parents, and that was pretty
much it. As we age the influences mount: our family, our job, bills, cars, rent,
and more and more things pop up. So if we don’t stand up and decide to navigate
our path, it’s easy for it to become lost in the forest of our influences. The
path less travelled could easily become the path not seen.

So, this is week 2 of my calendar days. I’m setting regular intervals to plan, to
dream, to write, to learn, to program, and of course for daily review. Right now,
I’m not exactly hitting the mark, but I’m getting pretty darn close. Which for me
is a great thing to celebrate. So, for tonight’s review, I’m going to look at
Steve’s methods, and see what I can do to make sure I don’t lose sight of those
big goals.

It just makes sense. It’s honest. If only everything was like this.

Hmmm, maybe all these internet networking portals could have down falls? Maybe I
should re-evaluate my little “digital networking” experiment? Christopher Allen,
at Life with Alacrity,
is warning us all about the hazards to internet networking
and how when it gets to be too large, how can we actually keep up with it? I believe,
it comes down to a great point about quality vs. quantity.

Our current breed of social networking services have focused on amplifying our
contacts not only because it serves us, but because it serves them. The more
contacts that you make, the more people they potentially have in their service.
However, in the long run this is unsustainable — a social networking service also
has to be useful — merely amplifying your contacts isn’t enough.

Also I believe that the digital network from what I’m seeing has an impersonal
element to it. And for me the personal connection is really what makes the
connection tick. I guess that give’s MeetUp an star in my book, for trying to
use the digital to enhance the tangible.

Note: from this there was mention of Spoke,
so I’m adding it to my networking links, to give a try

Back in my post Crying With Purpose I found that with the exercise Steve had
discussed, the message of purpose that got to me was:

To be at home with my head in the clouds and music in my heart.

But after almost a month of thought, I’m stuck with one simple question. What
the @$#! does that mean? I mean, why couldn’t I have shed some tears over
something that made more sense! I’m sure with some more work I can translate this
into something, but for now I’m completely at a loss.

In my walk away, I came across this. 100% Flash Magazines Nice!

Arghhh! It’s just one of those day’s where nothing you do seems to work. Everything I try backfires or I get “error”. Deep breath and walk away. Yeah, walking away is sometimes exactly what we need. And I need it.

On the note of backyards
check this one. Be sure to check out the Directors portfolios.

Now this is a great remix of “Singin’ In The Rain“, yet another example of great Volkswagen ads.

Got my recent iconoculture
in the mail. They had a piece about thinknets: cyber communities of thinktanks.
In particular it referenced Massive Change
which is striving to be one of these. Their forum
has some interesting topics. I don’t think it’s at the super “thinktank” level
yet, like the conscious city or anything like that, but it has good potential.
I’m keeping a watch on it. Maybe make a post or 2.

After reading the Massive Change
site, I woke up to some interesting thoughts about society. I shared one on the
site about Social Architecture
and my other one is this.

• Native myth and folklore teach values like communication and community
• Greek mythology teaches things like free will and astrology
• Viking stories teach values like exploration and battles

Now look at their societies.

If you look at these cultures, all of their core values are ingrained in their
myths and stories. The largest religious revolution has one of the greatest
collection of stories, The Bible.

Take a loot at the United States. What are their myths and legends? Independence
Day, The Civil War, The Wild West, all of these collection of stories are based
around the fight to choose, the fight for freedom, the fight for money, the fight
for oneself. It’s no wonder that it reflect in their social culture.

Now how about Canada. What about us? Look at our Greatest Canadians.
I see inventors, Socialists, Athletes. I think of things like the Montreal Expo. I
think of stories like the underground railroad. Where did that lead to? Canada.
Now look at our social culture in comparison.

Now it’s the chicken and the egg thought. Do we choose these myths and legends
because of our society, or is our society driven by these stories. I say that if
we can introduce the right hero’s, the right legends and the right myths into our
society we can effectively make change to its values.

What are your myths?