I came across a sentence that seems to be pertinent to my feelings, and in a way gives me an awareness of the unsettled thoughts that sometimes pervade my otherwise tranquil and comfortable space.
"I cannot know where I most wish to be because I have not seen all that there is."
Saturday, July 26, 2008
Monday, July 14, 2008
Tales from the other end of the leash
My thoughts of contemplation whilst enjoying the simple pleasure of walking my dog...
Fullfillment
I've been thinking about fulfillment and how as we grow older, it seems that we require or demand more of the world or of ourselves to feel/be happy. Well it is what I am realising at the moment for me personally, and I am sure it this sentiment echoes for more than a number of people.
When you are young, your experience is limited to your immediate surroundings, learning, navigating and discovering this world both real and imaginary. As you get older, you have several experiences to compare, and it is exactly this comparison which sometimes takes away the simple pleasures that we took for granted as a kid.
E.g When I was a refugee, not yet 4 years old, our family of nine was escaping from the remnants of the defeat of South Vietnam. I recall the only thing that we ate during what would have been quite a tough, long walk from Vietnam to Thailand's refugee camps, was rice and salt.
That's all I can remember eating during that journey, for breakfast or lunch, actually it probably was once a day. Then, as we finally arrived at the camp, I had my first taste of sardines with tomato sauce. Boy, was I was in rapture!! this sweet yet sourly taste, was to me the best thing I ever had in yet my young experience, tasted. As you would have guessed, no more rice and salt to this day, although everytime I occasionally have sardines, I feel a certain sense of contentment to how far I've come since those circumstances.
The ability to seemingly run faster than the wind, the first stolen kiss of your young lovers' lips, and the unforgettable sound of the ocean still resonating in your memory the first time you put your ears to a seashell.
So do I need a nice fancy car, a huge house and expensive clothes to attain my next level of fulfillment? I might if I listen to enough ads.
Although travelling around during the past 3 years, with all of my possesions bundled up in my large heavy back pack (sometimes being poor has its moments ), my wealth wasn't measured by how much I had in my backpack, it came from the people I got to meet and know. True wealth, I realised came from the richness of your relationships.
Fullfillment
I've been thinking about fulfillment and how as we grow older, it seems that we require or demand more of the world or of ourselves to feel/be happy. Well it is what I am realising at the moment for me personally, and I am sure it this sentiment echoes for more than a number of people.
When you are young, your experience is limited to your immediate surroundings, learning, navigating and discovering this world both real and imaginary. As you get older, you have several experiences to compare, and it is exactly this comparison which sometimes takes away the simple pleasures that we took for granted as a kid.
E.g When I was a refugee, not yet 4 years old, our family of nine was escaping from the remnants of the defeat of South Vietnam. I recall the only thing that we ate during what would have been quite a tough, long walk from Vietnam to Thailand's refugee camps, was rice and salt.
That's all I can remember eating during that journey, for breakfast or lunch, actually it probably was once a day. Then, as we finally arrived at the camp, I had my first taste of sardines with tomato sauce. Boy, was I was in rapture!! this sweet yet sourly taste, was to me the best thing I ever had in yet my young experience, tasted. As you would have guessed, no more rice and salt to this day, although everytime I occasionally have sardines, I feel a certain sense of contentment to how far I've come since those circumstances.
The ability to seemingly run faster than the wind, the first stolen kiss of your young lovers' lips, and the unforgettable sound of the ocean still resonating in your memory the first time you put your ears to a seashell.
So do I need a nice fancy car, a huge house and expensive clothes to attain my next level of fulfillment? I might if I listen to enough ads.
Although travelling around during the past 3 years, with all of my possesions bundled up in my large heavy back pack (sometimes being poor has its moments ), my wealth wasn't measured by how much I had in my backpack, it came from the people I got to meet and know. True wealth, I realised came from the richness of your relationships.
Tuesday, July 08, 2008
Web browser statistics
Just some research I'm looking at for trends in internet usage, so it saves you from looking..
As the world’s most popular search engine, Google record the user agent client version data from the billions of web searches made by an estimated 75% of Internet users, and is therefore one of the organisations most likely to be able to provide an assessment of the current state of web browser security (Microsoft’s MSRT also has excellent data, but only for the ~450 million users regularly running Windows Automatic Updates). However, for obvious privacy reasons, this data has not been made available to the public.
source: http://www.ukhoneynet.org
As the world’s most popular search engine, Google record the user agent client version data from the billions of web searches made by an estimated 75% of Internet users, and is therefore one of the organisations most likely to be able to provide an assessment of the current state of web browser security (Microsoft’s MSRT also has excellent data, but only for the ~450 million users regularly running Windows Automatic Updates). However, for obvious privacy reasons, this data has not been made available to the public.
An interesting survey was released yesterday by Google Switzerland, IBM ISS and the Computer Engineering and Networks Laboratory of the University of Zurich, which provides the first systematic study of the browser data from around 1.4 billion Google users during the first half of 2008. They analysed Google’s client version data and correlated this with vulnerability data from sources such as Secunia’s PSI, in an attempt to assess how many vulnerable browsers were in circulation at a particular time.
The results are very interesting, with Internet Explorer taking 78% (1.1 billion) of the browser share and Firefox getting 16% (227 million). Drilling down deeper into the IE market share shows roughly half of IE users have now moved to IE7, whilst most FF users run the latest release. More worryingly, less that 50% of IE uses had the most secure version of their browser (rising to 83% in FF). For the month of June 2008, the authors suggest that over 45% web surfers (roughly some 637 million people) accessed Google with a browser that contained unpatched security vulnerabilities.source: http://www.ukhoneynet.org
Sunday, July 06, 2008
within the chaos inside
Sunrise in Schwaebisch Hall Bahnhof
A question of identity, memory and faith
I've spent 2 months back in Australia now, and still trying to adjust to the sense of having my thoughts to being here. Actually, just having the sense of anchoring myself to a place during the travels of the last 3 years has been a new experience that is both exciting and at the same time like cutting yourself from who you were originally, painful and lonely.
It is this sense of belonging that I feel for me; brings meaning to place, the people and your thoughts. What if you don't feel you belong to your past anymore?
That you have been so used to change, adaption, of strangeness, of discovery, knowing that you are a temporary moment that leaves a ripple in the sand, only to be washed away with the coming tide of change.
What if we could replace our memories selectively? because who we are at this very moment comes from the recollection of who we were yesterday, the day before..... ten years ago.
To a degree, this retrieval of identity is circumspect, as who can really say that their recollection of the past is infallible? So in a sense the Buddhist/Zen belief that we are walking around in disreality starts to gain traction. The world we create, contributed by past memories is but one perspective coloured by emotion, exaggeration, and ego amongst things.
So where is the real you hiding?
Random thoughts I had whilst walking my dog Yasmin...
Rules of the simple life
It's not "me me me me" it's "what about you?"
It's not "buy buy buy" it's "I have enough.."
It's not "what's next..." it's "savouring the moment..."
Monday, June 16, 2008
project management 101
Estimating: What and How to Charge
Estimating projects is a developed skill - it will mostly depend on your ability to properly estimate scope (how big is the project really?) and client management (how much time will it take to educate and control the client?).
When to invoice?Invoicing expectations should be established prior to the start of work. A normal payment schedule is 30% upon approval of the proposal or Project Plan, 30% upon approval of the visual look and feel, and the remainder upon delivery of the final site. Be clear that any additional charges will be clearly identified and approved at any point in the development process where they apply and that those charges will be added to the final invoice.
source: http://www.web-redesign.com resource: http://www.pmi.org
Friday, June 13, 2008
Stuck in time
The “abstract framework of divided time” became “the point of reference for both action and thought.” --the impact of clocks on human behaviour
In deciding when to eat, to work, to sleep, to rise, we stopped listening to our senses and started obeying the clock.
source: http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200807/google
From the article- Is Google making us dumber?
When the Net absorbs a medium, that medium is re-created in the Net’s image. It injects the medium’s content with hyperlinks, blinking ads, and other digital gewgaws, and it surrounds the content with the content of all the other media it has absorbed. A new e-mail message, for instance, may announce its arrival as we’re glancing over the latest headlines at a newspaper’s site. The result is to scatter our attention and diffuse our concentration.
The Internet is a machine designed for the efficient and automated collection, transmission, and manipulation of information, and its legions of programmers are intent on finding the “one best method”—the perfect algorithm—to carry out every mental movement of what we’ve come to describe as “knowledge work.”
Most of the proprietors of the commercial Internet have a financial stake in collecting the crumbs of data we leave behind as we flit from link to link—the more crumbs, the better. The last thing these companies want is to encourage leisurely reading or slow, concentrated thought. It’s in their economic interest to drive us to distraction.
As we are drained of our “inner repertory of dense cultural inheritance,” Foreman concluded, we risk turning into “‘pancake people’—spread wide and thin as we connect with that vast network of information accessed by the mere touch of a button.”
In deciding when to eat, to work, to sleep, to rise, we stopped listening to our senses and started obeying the clock.
source: http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200807/google
From the article- Is Google making us dumber?
When the Net absorbs a medium, that medium is re-created in the Net’s image. It injects the medium’s content with hyperlinks, blinking ads, and other digital gewgaws, and it surrounds the content with the content of all the other media it has absorbed. A new e-mail message, for instance, may announce its arrival as we’re glancing over the latest headlines at a newspaper’s site. The result is to scatter our attention and diffuse our concentration.
The Internet is a machine designed for the efficient and automated collection, transmission, and manipulation of information, and its legions of programmers are intent on finding the “one best method”—the perfect algorithm—to carry out every mental movement of what we’ve come to describe as “knowledge work.”
Most of the proprietors of the commercial Internet have a financial stake in collecting the crumbs of data we leave behind as we flit from link to link—the more crumbs, the better. The last thing these companies want is to encourage leisurely reading or slow, concentrated thought. It’s in their economic interest to drive us to distraction.
As we are drained of our “inner repertory of dense cultural inheritance,” Foreman concluded, we risk turning into “‘pancake people’—spread wide and thin as we connect with that vast network of information accessed by the mere touch of a button.”
Thursday, May 15, 2008
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