Russell Beattie’s Weblog...because I can't shut up.Riddles in the Dark- June 18, 2008 I'm reading The Hobbit to my son before bedtime now, having gone to the library and bookstore and been completely bewildered at what a good book for my six year old would be. It seems like it'd be easy to find appropriately long and interesting books, but it's really not - at least not to me. So I went with an old standby to see how it would go over. It ended up working out pretty well - the story itself is interesting, filled with dwarves and wizards and elves, and the like, but Tolkien uses..http://www.russellbeattie.com/blog/riddles-in-the-dark How I think Watch Phones should work- June 17, 2008 I finally sat down and whipped up an image of a thought that I've been meaning to post for, oh, a few years now. I just happened to see another post today about the various watch phones that are starting to appear in the marketplace, and figured I should write about it before it was too late. Rather than expecting a user to have to lug around a Bluetooth headset in order to use a small mobile phone on their wrist, it should work like a normal phone does. Here's how: I bet that by adding a tiny.http://www.russellbeattie.com/blog/how-i-think-watch-phones-should-work Still Struggling with Social Networking- June 16, 2008 About four years ago I heard about MySpace for the first time and completely dismissed it. I don't remember when I first heard about Friendster, but I remember clearly thinking there was no "there" there. Once you signed up and added friends, then what Who cared Same thing for Tribe. I didn't even get to see Facebook until they opened up for non-college users. Even then I didn't see what the fuss was about. See the trend there I think the problem is that I've always looked at these sites from...http://www.russellbeattie.com/blog/still-struggling-with-social-networking Summertime!- June 13, 2008 It's been hot, the munchkin is now officially out of school, and we've spent some quality time at the pool over the past few days. I'm even getting a tan for the first time in about three years. It's still warm in my apartment (with the fan desperately trying to suck in some air from the outside where it's much cooler) and I'm exhausted from a long hot day which started at 6 a.m. and looking at another day pretty much the same tomorrow. It's great! In other words, slow posting for a...http://www.russellbeattie.com/blog/summertime My thoughts on fishing- June 11, 2008 I was reading this oped piece in the NYT about the Salmon fisheries drying up and thought to myself, again, that we're really screwing up the oceans. I'm really not an environmentalist and don't really like fish in general (either as food or general interest), so for me to be actually caring about this must mean something is really not quite right. I don't care how big the oceans are (and they are mind-bogglingly huge) - you can't have every country on Earth going out there day after day,...http://www.russellbeattie.com/blog/my-thoughts-on-fishing |