Improved Lives, a blog that I stumbled upon recently, has a great post about 112 quick and easy exercises that we can all do that will help us stay positive, and live a more fulfilling life. It's the simple things in life that we always fail to do, and it's those same simple things that can make a tremendous difference in our perceptions and attitudes.


I can't say it enough, it's these simple acts when deliberately acted upon that make life easier to live.

So for the next month or so, I will take several of the exercises from ImprovedLives and try them out and see what kind of results I get, and every week, I will record the the results, and the stories that come from them in this blog. Excite bike.

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Addict(ed)-O-Matic

Addict-O-Matic


Interesting way to search the web. Aggregates search onto one page allowing you to search not only all engines, but also video, images, and blogs. Very cool robot mascot design.



Wish I had a robot.

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Recycle, Reuse, Reduce, and Rethink

Here is an interesting article from Wired Magazine. It's about Rethinking how green, our environmental practices are. This article reminds me of how I view Vitamin Water. You see Vitamin Water has vitamins and minerals right? So when you drink Vitamin Water, you think that you are doing your body a favor by filling it up with B12, Vitamin A, Vitamin C and the like. Actually the drink itself is basically sugar water, no better for you than a regular can of cook. Might as well wash down a multivitamin with a can of Coke. But Vitamin Water is neither here nor there. This is about rethinking green living and changing the way we approach thinking about the green lifestyle.

Here is one inconvient truth that changed the way I thought about green living.



Used cars, even a used hummer, are a better purchase than a new hybrid. The basic gist is that by the time a hybrid hits the road, due to the amount of energy required to produce it, when converting that energy into road miles, the hybrid is already 100,000 miles in debt. With a modest 10,000 miles per year, it would take almost a whole decade to repay that debt. It's this kind of thinking that helps us come to a better understanding and evaluation of our practices, and how we can make better choices in the way we approach our attempts to green.

In response to this article there is also a counterpoint for those who didn't notice it, it is also on the same link, but here is a direct link to it.

It's not just carbon, Stupid.

Enjoy!

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Connecting (to) the Internet

Facebook and Myspace have recently announced open data availability initiatives. These initiatives will allow for the data uploaded to either your myspace, or facebook, to be shared across the many social networks that you are part of.



For example if you are part of photobucket and upload pictures onto your myspace the myspace platform will allow you to share that content you just uploaded with photobucket. Essentially it makes myspace and facebook a dashboard for your online identity.

I think this is a great move, as it has become such a hassle to maintain multiple social networks. This is creating an internet that is more and more connected. I think we are going to see more sites allowing for this kind of sharing of data. Social media has made the world a smaller place, these open data initiatives will make it even smaller.

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Seeing is believing

With the ridiculous amount of data and information at our hands, the use of our senses to understand things becomes more and more important as time goes on and technology grows exponentially. Currently in order to understand data we have 2 ways, we could analyze the numbers in a spreadsheet and compare them to other statistics, or we could visualize them in linear and boring graphs and charts. But artists, scientist, and designers are working towards creatively visualizing our datasets in order create a more intuitive snapshot of what the numbers are telling us. With this, we are seeing more sophisticated methods of visualizing our datasets, and general information becoming more visual.



Here is an amazing website that is dedicated the information visualization Infothetics it's just a nice browse to see how data is becoming more and more visual. In the future I think data and information will be smelt, tasted, and felt. It'll be amazing once things like that become more viable.

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Vintage Blog Post

Here is an old xanga post. It's fun to read old entries, I really liked this style of writing. It was entertaining, and top of the mind stuff. Inspiring.



Sunday, May 29, 2005

One of my goals in life is to invent a universal dipping sauce that replaces ketchup as the number 1 dipping sauce in the world. Im thinking of something sweet, something not too salty, with alot of flavor, and that's nutriously good for you to the point where every dip is like taking a multivitamin, omega-3 fatty acids, and any other vitamin or mineral thats heart, mind and body friendly, all with just one dip. That reminds me, yesterday i was thinking about dunkaroos. What a great snack. I remember putting it in my lunch bag as kid. Too bad they had to discountinue it, but i have this idea where im gonna make a spin-off of Dunkaroos, im gonna call them BuDunkaDunks. BuDunkaDunks will come with nicely shaped austrailian ass crackers, and some sweet pink frosting for dipping. I think they would fly off the shelves. hahahah what a dumb idea, but i bet they would be delicious. But anyways you guys gotta watch this show called WONDER SHOWZEN on MTV2 and BSTV on VH1. I would say those are the best shows on tv today. I was waiting for Tv to produce some quality shows for awhile. With the likes of shows such as the Swan, Joe Millionare, and Paradise Island plauging our Television nowadays, Wonder Showzen, and BSTV give me some hope that the world isnt as bad as i thought. Or maybe TV has just sunk to my level. Either or these shows are delightful. Kinda like Koala Yummies. I just realized the Austrialian plot to take over our snacking industry. Wow what a good idea, i gotta think more like austrailians. Isn't Russel Crowe Austrailian? yeah, hes a good actor. One of the things i wanna do before i die is throw a bomb and then jump the other way, and have it make one of those real epic explosions that propels you like 500 feet with all this dust, debris, and shrapnel flying everywhere!.............. ALL IN THE NAME OF JUSTICE!!! Im all about justice. I think im gonna make a marsupial shaped cracker and pair it with my universal dipping sauce, and BAM!! I'm a Trillionaire who owns all the hearts,minds and souls of american children, and the wallets of unsuspecting soccer moms who purchase my product when its their turn to bring the half-time snack!!!! muhahahahah........diabocle........ yes, crazy......possibly...........genius.....MOST DEFINITELY!!!!

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TED: A concept worth spreading

This is the end of the point and click. No need for mouses and keyboards, and physical instruments that we have to conform to, it will be the other way around. Take sometime to watch this demonstration it's from TED (technology,entertainmnet, design) TED is an inspiring organization and I would suggest anyone to browse their site and watch some of the different talks ranging from ideas on poverty, wii hacks, and the power of storytelling. TED makes it brain hard, inspiration at its finest.

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SEX!!!

Now that I have your attention please read on.

"The market for sex ultimately determines a price like any other industry. Sex was one of the first goods ever traded. It commanded a price even before the days of shell companies, complex money-laundering schemes and diamond rankings. I look back on my post from a year ago and recognise my ignorance: high-end prostitutes do have a unique skill-set."

I pulled this quote from a MoreIntelligentLife.com article which explores the economics of high-end prostitution. It's an interesting read, and a very poignant read at that. It's a primer (although a bit gratuitous in its subject matter) on basic supply and demand, and the determination of value. I like it, its outside the ordinary.

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Nice Rack

I've been meaning to spread the word about this fantastic site I came upon months ago. It's called Alltop. Forget google reader or rss feed, Alltop helps declutter our information intake with a simple design and snack sized portions of the publications it aggregates.


Alltop positions itself as an online magazine rack. It includes the top blogs and voices on a variety of subjects including design, technology, lifehacks, you name it they probably have something for it. If you don't see a topic you like, suggest one , the number of categories have grown since its beta stages. If you are too lazy to set up a reader or a rss feed and you've been meaning to, forget about it, just visit Alltop once in awhile, I promise you'll find something you'll like.

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Coloring Outside The Lines

This blog is about ideas that are fun and interesting(most likely not mine, just ideas I think are worth thinking about). It'll probably include a list or two, probably plenty of hyperlinks, and images with or without captions, videos embedded from youtube, podcasts too probably, maybe a Powerpoint presentation, and hopefully within all of this, I'll be able to extract and impart a bit of knowledge andor entertainment to those who stumble upon my blog.

Andor is not a typo, I meant to do that, BECAUSE the conventional elements of style do not apply when you are coloring outside the lines.

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