Trillions from MAYAnMAYA on Vimeo.

I’ve always thought of myself as an 80 percenter. I like to throw myself passionately into a sport or activity until I reach about an 80 percent proficiency level. To go beyond that requires an obsession and degree of specialization that doesn’t appeal to me.
-Yvon Chouinard founder and owner of Patagonia, Inc.

Replace the phrase ’sport or activity’ with ‘technology or project’ and you have me. CSS, C#, PHP, Photoshop, SQL, MySQL, Flash, GIS, etc… etc… I’ve had a passion to learn each… I learn each more than the average bear, but never to the point of mastery. It really frustrates me. I wish I had the focus to learn at least one technology to a 90-95% mastery level. But alias that goes against my nature. I really need to think about this… do I remain a random generalist, or become more focused, albeit, limited specialist.

Not to give up a wrote a quick hackish PHP application that reads by subscribed feeds from Google Reader and displays them in a very basic HTML page. If there are any Kindle users out there that would like to test it I’d love some feedback. It’s very basic, but works… Let me know if you’re interested…

Here it is… enjoy… If you want player controls, first download the video and then watch it in the QuickTime player.

Here’s one example of our irrational behavior… if you could save $7 by driving 15 minutes out of your way for a $25 dollar pen would you? Most would say yes. But if you could save $7 by driving 15 minutes out of your way for a $455 dollar suit would you? Most would say nope… not worth it… But the reality is it’s the same $7 and 15 minutes…

If you like Malcolm Gladwell you will love this book. Below are a few thoughts from each chapter. If any one of them strikes your fancy buy the book… you’ll love it.

You should also pay particular attention to the first decision in a long stream of decisions. It may seem like it is just one decision, but that first decision may have impact on future decisions for years to come.

Zero/free is a source of irrational excitement. This is called the “zero price effect.”

If corporations started thinking in terms of social norms, they would realize that these norms build loyalty and–more important–make people want to extend themselves to the degree that corporations need today: to be flexible, concerned, and willing to pitch in. That’s what a social relationship delivers. A salary alone will not motivate people to risk their lives. Police officers, firefighters, soldiers–they don’t die for their weekly pay. It’s the social norms–pride in their profession and a sense of duty–that will motivate them to give up their lives and health. Money, as it turns out, is very often the most expensive way to motivate people. Social norms are not only cheaper, but often more effective as well.

We have problems with self-control, related to immediate and delayed gratification. But each of these problems has potential self-control mechanisms. If we can’t save from our paycheck, we can take advantage of our employer’s automatic deduction option; if we don’t have the will to exercise regularly alone, we can make an appointment to exercise in the company of our friends. These are tools that we can commit to in advance, and they may help us be the kind of people we want to be.”

The “endowment effect” means that when we own something, we begin to value it more than other people do.

In 210 BC, Xiang Yu led an army against the Ch’in Dynasty. While his troops slept, he burned his ships and smashed all the cooking pots. He explained to his troops that they had to either fight their way to victory or die. His troops won 9 consecutive battles. Eliminating options improved the focus of his troops. We feel compelled to preserve options, even at great expense, even when it doesn’t make sense.

When we believe something will be good, it generally will be good, and when we think it will be bad, it will be bad. But does finding out the truth after the experience change one’s mind? Nope…

We care about honesty and want to be honest. The problem is that our internal honesty monitor is active only when we contemplate big transgressions, like grabbing an entire box of pens. For little transgressions like taking a single pen, we don’t even consider how these actions would reflect on our honesty.

For a complete book summary see this link… Or better yet read the full book!

In the software world, the first, second, and third versions of any product are really pretty good because everyone can use them. Then companies start adding more and more stuff to keep their existing customers happy. But you end up dying with your customer base, because the software is too complicated for a new people.

Well said… I can think of a lot of good examples where this is true. One that hits home with me recently is Microsoft Word. Most people I know could get by with the features present in Word 6.0. If I had to, I myself could get by with Word 6.0. How do I know? Because recently I’ve started using Apples Pages, a part of their iWorks package. On the surface it’s a very simple word processor. Instead of bombarding the user with a million buttons, drop-downs and pickers layered in a ribbon bar they show only a very simple menu bar (a inspector window is available for the more complex items).

I think the fundamental difference in the two products, Word and Pages, goes to the types of questions the developers ask in their product meetings. I have to think the the Microsoft meetings focus on the question of “What features are our customers wanting in the next release?” while at Apple I would bet the question is “How can we make it easy for our customers to make a kick’n document that will impress their boss?” Really, isn’t that second question what we’re looking for in a word processor?

I would recommend that you take a look at Pages to see what a word processor should be. It’s amazing how you can make an incredible looking document in just a few minutes. It almost doesn’t matter what words you use…

In closing… I really like this quote from E.F. Schumacker on simplicity. Read it and ask yourself, “What will I make simpler today.”

“Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius - and a lot of courage - to move in the opposite direction. ” E.F. Schumacker

tell application “Finder”
try
mount volume “smb://ccvonline.com;jedmiston:xxxxx@ccvfs1.ccvonline.com/Creative Technologies_ccvfs”

on error
display dialog “There was an error mounting the volume Creative Technologies.” & return & return & ¬
“The server may be unavailable at this time.” & return & return & ¬
“Please inform the Network Administrator if the problem continues.” buttons {”Okay”} default button 1
end try

try
mount volume “smb://ccvonline.com;jedmiston:xxxxxx@ccvfs.ccvonline.com/home/jedmiston”

on error
display dialog “There was an error mounting the volume home.” & return & return & ¬
“The server may be unavailable at this time.” & return & return & ¬
“Please inform the Network Administrator if the problem continues.” buttons {”Okay”} default button 1
end try

try
mount volume “smb://ccvonline.com;jedmiston:xxxxx@ccvfs.ccvonline.com/30 Day Drop”

on error
display dialog “There was an error mounting the volume 30 Day Drop.” & return & return & ¬
“The server may be unavailable at this time.” & return & return & ¬
“Please inform the Network Administrator if the problem continues.” buttons {”Okay”} default button 1
end try

end tell

(be sure to substitute your password in place of the xxxxx’s)

Save this script as and Application and set it as one your your ‘Login Items’ and your ready to roll.

The data presented on the various parcels is read real-time out of a SQL database. We refresh the database once a day. We do this so that we can de-normalize the data for speed.