Just a Gwai Lo fun within prescribed limits [?]

Ian's thoughts on what's wrong with Vancouver's sputtering technology economy, and how to solve it..

Careful who you compare yourself too there dear!!

How have you figured out what your passion(s) is/are in life, and how have you translated that into a successful career involving your passion(s)? I am intentionallly not including details about myself and my situation because I don't really want specific suggestions about what might be good career directions for myself or what interesting areas I might pursue. I'm looking more for concrete examples of what steps you've taken to find out what drives you, and how you were able to make a career out of that.

I’m up at hollyhock for open everything, having an amazing time. Fantastic people and unbelievable conversations. In addition, want to say thank you to the emails and text-messages(!) asking me to blog on Palin. Okay, but be careful what you ask for…

There is a long and glorious history of baseball analogies in American politics. Among the most famous was during Jim Hightower’s 1988 Democratic convention speech when he roared: “George Bush was born on third base and decided that he’d hit a triple.”

More recently, Ohio Governor Ted Strickland rifted of this line at this years Democratic Party Convention, saying “You know, it was once said of the first George Bush that he was born on third base and thought he’d hit a triple. Well, with the twenty two million new jobs and the budget surplus Bill Clinton left behind, George W. Bush came into office on third base. And then he stole second.”

Playing along this theme, I’ve got a baseball analogy that sums up my thinking of the Biden and Palin VP nominations.

Biden was a good, safe hit. Probably a solid double. Nothing fancy - that’s for sure. But no baseball player will ever complain about hitting a double. No points scored, that’s for sure. But runners are in scoring position.

Selecting Palin was more like a bunt - specifically a squeeze play bunt. No one expects it, the defense isn’t ready for it. In this case, the crowd certainly wasn’t either.

Most critically the squeeze bunt is a low odds play. It’s only used by a manager desperate for some points on the board or worse, by one who has poor judgment. Is McCain desperate? Definitely. Has he exercised poor judgment? He’s definitely taken a serious risk but his judgment will be determined by the results.

The upside, regardless of all this, is that the choice got the fans excited. There is no doubt that we are all focused on Palin. The only question is… for better or worse?

Ultimately, we are about to witness an amazing race: Can Palin’s charisma and buzz keep her ahead of the scandals and baggage that are chasing her? The right wing blogosphere, seeing only the charisma and conservative bona fides, says yes. The left wing blogosphere, seeing only the scandals, says no. My sense, is if the republicans can keep her appearances completely managed - if she can avoid a single press scrum - she will be a dangerous weapon. The only Democrats who underestimate here, are those who’ve already forgetten they’ve been beat for 8 years by a man they repeatedly labelled the dumbest president in history. That didn’t stop him from beating them. Twice.

At some point Palin is going to explode - the only question is, can the republicans shape her to detonate against the democrats in an effective, populist attack, or will she explode while still in their camp. Either way, It’ll be fun to watch.

In August I hit two major goals I set for myself on January 1st of this year, and they were two goals I didn’t think I’d achieve. I surpassed 2,000 miles ridden and I did it just before completing my first century (100 mile) ride. Up until this year, I’ve always ridden about 600-800 miles between May and October and this year I pushed myself to ride all the way through Winter. I’m guessing I’ll be hitting about 3,500-4,000 miles for the year by the end.

The century went really well and didn’t feel like a 7 hour day in the saddle even though it was. The first 80 miles were pretty easy and a blast, but riding into a headwind the last 20 was kind of exhausting and I was glad to be finished at the end of the day. I also did the century ride to prepare myself for Cycle Oregon, which kicks off in less than a week. I knew even the worst day at Cycle Oregon (a 77 mile day with about 7,000′ of climbing) would be a bit less distance then the century (and the Portland Century featured about 5400′ of climbing) so if I could do the century, I should be ok for Cycle Oregon week.

On the diet front, I’m still down around the same weight as last month. Kind of frustrating that I haven’t really budged in several months, but overall I’m about 12lbs lighter than I was at the beginning of the year and I haven’t yo-yo’d back up, keeping fairly steady for the past few months. I’m hoping a hard week of riding at Cycle Oregon will kick off another five pound loss, though it sounds like they will be feeding us like crazy at every meal.

TRUE PROFESSIONALISM.by David H. Maister
WORTH IT!

"I shouldn't've been so surprised, but I hadn't anticipated to what extent people like to see other people get hurt."

More evidence today that when it comes to public transit, the Conservatives have the wrong approach that puts getting electoral credit above good, sound public policy that will get people out of their cars and into an efficient, well-run transit system:

The TTC is looking to end a major incentive for Metropass holders, charging them up to $6 a day to park in its jammed commuter lots.

A staff recommendation to be voted on at tomorrow's Toronto Transit Commission meeting calls for eliminating free parking for Metropass holders, who make up 80 per cent of the drivers using the lots.

The move, which could be implemented in about six months, would hit more than 10,000 drivers who use the TTC's 16 parking lots. They'd have to pay the same daily rates other drivers do – from $6 at the huge Finch Ave. subway station lot, to $2 at the Lawrence Ave. E. RT station.

There's not one single silver bullet when it comes to building an effective transit system, and encouraging people to make the move from car to transit. It takes a lot of different elements, and free parking for Metropass holders is definitely one of them. It makes a lot of sense. Rather than drive downtown clogging the roads and then pay to park, park for free at the end of the subway line and take the subway in. Start charging to park, and many will decide to just drive instead. They may have been on the edge about transit already; this will flip many back onto the car commuter side.

What does this have to do with the Conservatives? A lot, actually. The TTC is considering this move because they're starved for operating funds. They want to divert the money they're spending subsidizing parking to improving, and really just maintaining, service levels. If they had more operating funds they wouldn't have to consider this move.

Rather than pump new, long-term, stable operating funds into public transit across the country, Stephen Harper and Jim Flaherty made a conscious decision to give a tax cut on monthly transit passes, like the TTC Metropass. It made sense politically. Every year when you do your taxes, you remember that Conservative tax cut. It's not good policy though, if it's not coupled with more operating funding, and indeed its counterproductive to the goal of getting people on transit.

How so? Well, sure, a tax cut on transit passes will get more people to give transit a chance. But when they get on board, what do they find?

They find a system that is straining to meet the demands of increased ridership without increased operating funding. More crowded buses and trains, longer waits as full ones pass by. The system becomes strained and begins to buckle and the new riders don't like what they see, so they go back to their cars. And you wind up with the TTC considering cutting parking to ease that operating strain, but that just makes it an even easier decision for people to ditch transit.

Politicians like capital spending too: they love to cut ribbons. But again, without operating funding, we end up with the scenario where the TTC nearly shuttered the Shepard line to make ends meet.

Operating funds aren't sexy for politicians. There's no ribbon to cut. People aren't reminded of it when they file their taxes. But if the goal is a greener Canada, if the goal is less cars on the road, if the goal is really an effective, efficient public transit system, then we absolutely must increase, in cooperation with the provinces, direct operating funding assistance to transit systems across Canada.

Too bad the Conservatives are more concerned about political credit and building unneeded lines through Conservative-friendly ridings than actually making transit work.

kk+ posted a photo:

Gotta love finding an old roll of film.

Brooklyn based artist/musician Bjorn Copeland’s visual/audiovisual creations are a strange potpourri of geometric shapes, forms and fluorescence that test the limits of sound and vision.

More here, here and here.

How long does it take for 250 super-connected Gnomedex geeks to raise $2,500 for Cambodian kids? Just 90 minutes. Truly an example of social media at its finest!

The New York Times surveys the end of every subway line in the city, from Ozone Park to Coney Island. At most stops, they find a gritty existence. A beautiful page of photos accompanies the article.

read more

ég var svo glöð að sjá strákana okkar brosa á pallinum þegar þeir fengu verðlaunin.. ég lá í sófanum og svaf yfir leiknum, ekki að gera sig svona snemma... eflaust hefði heppnast betur að halda mér vakandi ef við værum að vinna en mikið er ég ótrúlega montin af þeim áfram ísland!

loved a song on Last.fm Latyrx – Balcony Beach August 23 at 9:25 pm - Comment

loved a song on Last.fm Nouvelle Vague – A Forest August 23 at 9:14 pm - Comment

loved a song on Last.fm k-os – Sunday Morning August 23 at 9:09 pm - Comment

I didn’t sign-up for the infamous get a text message when Barack Obama picks his VP thing (wasn't worth the 15 cents to me). I did, however, sign-up for the e-mail option. I would be the first to know when Barack picked his running mate, I was told.

In the meantime, I’ve been getting regular messages about why John McCain sucks and what not, which is to be expected I suppose but was getting annoying and had be considering unsubscribing. Stay the course though, I told myself, I’ll be one of the first to know when Barack makes his VP pick.

Well, I got this message at 12:54 AM EST from CNN:

CNN Breaking News

From: CNN Breaking News (BreakingNews@MAIL.CNN.COM)

Sent: August 22, 2008 9:54:29 PM

Reply-to:newseditor@MAIL.CNN.COM

To: TEXTBREAKINGNEWS@EMA3LSV06.TURNER.COM

-- CNN confirms Sen. Barack Obama has chosen Delaware Sen. Joe Biden to be his vice-presidential running mate.

>+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+
CNN covers the conventions: the Democrats live from Denver starting Monday and the Republicans live from Minneapolis-St. Paul starting September 1 on CNN and CNN.com. http://www.cnnpolitics.com
>+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+

Clicking send/receive again, and again, still no e-mails from my buddy Barrack.

And meanwhile, over at BarackObama.com they’re still teasing me:

Mainstream media 1, Web 2.0 0. Was a nice idea though. Maybe the text messagers fared better.

From Xenothemis to the Avro Arrow to Ben Johnson, some of history's most fascinating stories are its failures. Article discusses 15 of the world's most notorious screw-ups.

"Attractive young females" may be the bellwether of success on new public transit systems, according to a transit consultant who was in the Twin Cities to advise about a planned bus rapid transit line.

read more

I work with a lot of individuals who run their own businesses and I am often surprised by the variety of email addresses from these clients and service providers. Nearly all of them have their own websites, but yet only some of them actually use their website address as their email provider as well.

Back in the early days of the Internet I think this practice was less common. If you had a domain, you used it. It is a good promotion strategy for your website if people can find your product information, right?

So what happened?

You probably won't be surprised to learn that SPAM was likely the main cause of this. People keep getting more and more SPAM so some big companies with interests online decided to try and authenticate email. The idea is that you send a message to someone, then the recipient will "look you up" to see if you are who you say you are. If the email is not from you, it gets rejected. That means less spam for everyone becuase spoof emails get cut out of the picture.

This is an improvement on the "as-is" system of processing mail where most everyting goes to junk mail unless it comes from someone (or some organization) that you regularly correspond with. That isn't good if you're trying to follow up with a contact who has never received an email from you before.

Of course, big companies never get along so there are many ways of authenticating users. Here are a few:

• Sender Policy Framework, or SPF, which is an open standard
• Sender ID, a Microsoft variant that tries to do what SPF does, even going as far as copying the syntax and calling itself "SPF2" (sigh)
• Domain Keys Identified Mail, or DKIM, a variant pushed by Yahoo which requires each message to be modified before it goes out, and lastly:
• DomainKeys, the original Yahoo creation that spawned DKIM

Whew. That's a lot of stuff to configure.

If you go through the process though you will get less "false positives" going into your recipients junk mail folder so it is worth the effort. If you are sending out newsletters, these technologies might be a vital step to increase your open rates.

Who is using email authentication?

I know almost all webmail services use at least one form of email authentication to verify incoming mail. I know of some offices with off the shelf firewalls that also check this information as it comes in. What is surprising though, is that many email marketing companies, the ones who send things out, such as Constant Contact and Cvent, do not provide a means of authenticating email. This is probably why they are so cheap compared to providers like Responsys which publish their email authentication records so their client messages get through to all of their subscribers.

You can test your configuration by following the verification steps on this page or by sending an email to a test server which is also discussed in this article about SPF records. For a server without any of these services you should always get "neutral" as a response for each test. If you have these services configured, you should see "passed" for each method you setup.

Currently I have implemented Sender Policy Framework and Sender ID for all of my hosting clients. These two are the most widely deployed and also the most easy to implement. If you could only do one I would recommend Sender Policy Framework as many services should respect those settings as they are similar to Sender ID. If you absolutely must get into Hotmail inboxes I will always recommend both.

I am not certain that DKIM & DomainKeys will last due to the complexity of the setup. If they do last awhile longer I will probably add these methods to the server too, but for now I am taking a wait-and-see approach.