Watching a bunch of Jack Lalanne Youtube vids after reading this post on Whole Health Source.
Here’s Lalanne’s sample meal plan:
Another gem called “Sugarholics”
I love Lalanne’s style. He’s so passionate.
Another Gem:
Jack Lalanne Youtube Vids
June 2nd, 2008 ·
Tags: nutrition
Reading About Twitter Scaling and Some Other Interesting Stuff
June 1st, 2008 ·
My Sunday morning newspaper is now just a combination of Google Reader, Google Alerts about topics I’m very interested in, and SummizeReader topics I’m moderately interested in.
I keep tabs on what my friends are up to in a special folder in Google Reader, mainly because different friends publish in different ways: Tumblr, Wordpress, Twitter, etc. All of them have RSS feeds, though, so Google Reader is the best place for me to view my friends’ content all in one place.
Here’s some of my Sunday morning reading:
Twitter on it’s scaling problems
http://blog.twitter.com/2008/05/its-not-rocket-science-but-its-our-work.html
Hadoop + Python
http://blog.last.fm/2008/05/29/python-hadoop-flying-circus-elephant
Python SSH Tools
http://commandline.org.uk/python/2008/may/29/sftp-python-really-simple-ssh/
On the obesity epidemic in America
http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2008/05/exercise-didnt-keep-us-from-getting-fat.html
EC2 Boot Operations
http://developer.amazonwebservices.com/connect/entry.jspa?externalID=1085&ref=featured
Tags: desultory
Twitter - Good Idea, Poor Implementation
May 29th, 2008 · 3 Comments
Good quote from Nav:
Twitter is run by a bunch of dumb asses. Someone should buy twitter, buy summize, fire the twitter management, and let summize people run the show cause they obviously know what they are doing.
I don’t know if I feel quite that strongly, I do agree that Twitter does seem to be dropping the ball of late.
Imagine how angry you would be if you actually paid for Twitter–their service is slow or fails at least once every day or two, and yet we keep using it because they have a monopoly. They’re like a bad phone or electric company.
Someone should build a reliable Twitter clone that works exactly like Twitter AND uses the Twitter API to post all your messages to Twitter and pull in all your friends messages. You could transition without worrying about leaving your contacts behind, because the new service would have complete backwards compatibility. Then only difference would be that when Twitter went down, you wouldn’t notice, because ReliableTwitter would still work. You would slowly win your friends over by talking about how much better the new service is.
The same goes for Craiglist. Their user interface has been stagnant for years and they could seriously use a little CSS upgrade and some mapping features.
It’s quite a shame how little real innovation there is on the internet. One of the only companies I’ve seen doing anything interesting lately is disqus, a company trying to improve blog comment conversation, an area which has suffered years of stagnation.
…end rant…
→ 3 CommentsTags: business
Pagination is Hard
May 28th, 2008 ·
Tags: desultory
Stay Hungry
May 24th, 2008 ·
It’s a beautiful Saturday in NYC, I just lost a soccer game, and I’m waiting for my Mom and sister to get back from the Bronx Zoo with my Uncle before I meet up with them for dinner.
I’ve been tired this week and only working until about 11pm. I feel like I’ve lost some tenacity lately, and all I can think about right now is winning. I doubt the 90% of the competition is working today. Even twitter isn’t “working”–I keep getting a maintenance page.
>>> Update >>>
On the other hand:
http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/966-urgency-is-poisonous
Tags: business · productivity
The Entrepreneurial Imperative
May 21st, 2008 ·
I just finished reading a decent book called “The Entrepreneurial Imperative” by Carl J. Schramm. The book can be a bit preachy and propagandist-sounding at times, but the basic premise is interesting and Schramm makes some very interesting observations.
The opening line pretty much sums up the book: “For the United States to survive and continue its economic and political leadership in the world, we must see entrepreneurship as our central comparative advantage.” Sound interesting? If so, check out the book:
Here are some of the quotes that tickled my fancy:
In short, entrepreneurship in our businesses and universities; in our approach to both government and foreign policy; and in our personal lives is the only answer if we hope to continue to thrive. (p. 1)
Technology isn’t the answer, since everyone now has the same technology or can easily obtain it. (p. 1)
Entrepreneurship is the process in which one or more people undertake economic risk to create a new organization that will exploit a new technology or innovative process that generates value to others. (p. 4)
[E]ntrepreneurial capitalism is our single most important export! (p. 10)
Discomfort–and it may be intellectual discomfort–is the source of all entrepreneurial activity. (p. 12)
From a letter to his children:
Never count on anyone but you to create your destiny (p. 81)
Awesome:
There is a new course at Stanford jointly run by its medical and engineering schools. Four people how have just completed their undergraduate degree or a professional degree (e.g., MD) make a team. The team is then placed inside Stanford Hospital with the ability to go anywhere and hang around with anyone. In two months, the team must come up with three hundred ideas of how some part of the practice of medicine or the running of the hospital could be improved. (p. 84)
IBM tells us in its ads that it is a consulting company, and, in fact, the majority of its revenue is now derived from selling IBM’s expert’s time. This is the new corporation–people and ideas. (p. 110)
Bureaucracy is the enemy of innovation, the arterial plaque in an economy. (p. 153)
In particular worth reading are all the letters Schramm has written to friends, colleagues, and family and included in this book. If anyone wants my copy, hit me up ( @kortina ), I don’t need it anymore.
Tags: book review · business
Product Beta: labs.laan releases Summize Air App
May 21st, 2008 · 1 Comment
My good friends at labs.laan.com just put together an air app that will replace Twhirl and other twitter clients for me. Rather than using the Twitter API, they use the Summize API, which allows you to create a much more customized dashboard than Twitter would.
Here’s a dashboard I threw together in 30 seconds:
I can’t wait to start hacking on this thing with the bros laan.
Download page:
http://labs.laan.com/blog/summizereader/
Jason’s post:
→ 1 CommentTags: apps · labs · product
Product Launch - PhiladelphiaSheriffSales.com
May 16th, 2008 ·
When I read Marx in school, I took away this message: “You’re a chump for renting. Get some land and join the bourgeoisie as soon as you can.”
This advice is easier said than done, especially when you’re trying to pay for school or financing startups by accruing credit card debt. I’ve always sort of thought that buying a house would be pretty unattainable for quite some time, but got excited about it again when Iqram approached me with an idea for a website that lists very attainable real estate opportunities on a map.
Although it will still be a while before I myself can take advantage of these auctions, I was surprised at the kinds of deals you could get, eg:
We haven’t implemented all the features we want, but PhiladelphiaSheriffSales.com has gotten to the point where we find it useful, so we have decided to open it to the public and follow a “release early, release often” strategy.
This weekend, while I’m in Philly for Alumni weekend, Iqram and I plan to meetup with real-estate tycoon, fellow Penn alumn, and owner of phillyliving.com, Dave Friedman, to brainstorm and get ideas how to improve the site. If you have any suggestions / comments / feedback, comment on this post, email me, or hit me on twitter @kortina.
Tags: desultory
Must Watch Nutrition Vid
May 16th, 2008 · 1 Comment
Mark Bittman’s Ted Talk, “What’s wrong with what we eat” is the most concise condemnation of the American diet I have seen. If you’re at all concerned with nutrition or eating healthy, watch this. It covers most of the important points I have found in entire books and will only take you 20 minutes to watch.
In a nutshell:
less meat, less junk, more real food
→ 1 CommentTags: nutrition · video
tinydb.org facilitates sharing
May 8th, 2008 · 1 Comment
Jason and I got bored at the Google AppEngine Hackathon today and built a serivce called tinydb.org.
tinydb’s potential merits a longer blog post. Right now, I’m imagining a dozen different web services that can be built on top of this platofrm.
A longer post explaining the potential of tinydb is forthcoming. For now, the hackers among you can play with the _c and _f paramaters for returning data as json with callbacks.
Post your widget ideas in the comments.
→ 1 CommentTags: apps · labs
