Juha Haataja: Universally PersonalWhat I Almost Didn't Do Today.Writing well- July 16, 2008 Dosh Dosh refers to Paul McHenry Roberts's essay How to Say Nothing in Five Hundred Words, listing nine points about good writing. Some of the points were trivial, but these are profound:Avoid the obvious content Take the less usual side Slip out of abstraction Call a fool a foolThere are also nice instructions on how to improve the writing. Of course, in real life writing is done often in a hurry (although it shouldn't be), and thus there is a limited time for making improvements. But practise.http://radio.weblogs.com/0112083/categories/universallyPersonal/2008/07/16.html#a4927 No anonymity on the net- July 15, 2008 Can it be trusted that GoogleViacom Agree To Preserve User Anonymity In Data Shakedown I don't really think so. Even though ip addresses or user-ids and such would be anonyminized, tt is quite easy to identify users based on their net activity. Often quite few data points are enough. People look for personal information, data they are familiar with etc. This case shows that big companies like Google can't be trusted with preserving anonymity on the net.http://radio.weblogs.com/0112083/categories/universallyPersonal/2008/07/15.html#a4926 Photo blogging at Light Scrape- July 14, 2008 I started today testing photo blogging from Flickr to Blogger, see Light Scrape. Using blogger via Flickr is quite easy, and you can submit photos even by email. I'm not sure if I can sustain the interest, but currently I'm very keen on photography, taking 50-100 shots each day. Some of them are better than others. And I'm still thinking about getting a new camera. I was almost committed to getting a Canon G9, but got cold feet. Maybe a G10 is soon announcedhttp://radio.weblogs.com/0112083/categories/universallyPersonal/2008/07/14.html#a4925 Constant Finnish weather- July 14, 2008 The weather is really stable (for Finland) for the next few days.http://radio.weblogs.com/0112083/categories/universallyPersonal/2008/07/14.html#a4924 How to write to please- July 14, 2008 Dosh Dosh ponders Kurt Vonnegut's Eight Principles on Successful Blogging and Affiliate Marketing, where the principles in question are:Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.Every sentence must do one of two things --- reveal character or advance the action.Start as close to the end as possible.Be a...http://radio.weblogs.com/0112083/categories/universallyPersonal/2008/07/14.html#a4923 Vampires, porn, and our humanity- July 13, 2008 Is it true that "today's young women are being pulled between complete chastity and utter sluttiness" NYT has an interesting article about A Virginal Goth Girl, discussing "The Twilight Saga", a bestselling series of vampire novels aimed at girls (and young women). I agree that it is good for people to read, but I hope the current role models (porn, vampires etc.) don't mess up with our humanity.http://radio.weblogs.com/0112083/categories/universallyPersonal/2008/07/13.html#a4921 Digital natives- July 8, 2008 Alla Land discussed digital natives, meaning youth who were born digital - or don't remember a time before computers and the Internet. I felt old.http://radio.weblogs.com/0112083/categories/universallyPersonal/2008/07/08.html#a4919 The generative internet - is the bell tolling- July 7, 2008 I have been reading an article by Jonathan L. Zittrain on the so-called generative internet, that is the "capacity for unrelated and unaccredited audiences to build and distribute code and content through the Internet to its tens of millions of attached personal computers". The impact has been huge, and the growth and innovation has made it possible to engage in all kinds of new endeavors. However, there has been a backslash, trying to restrict innovation, the freedom of speech, and building...http://radio.weblogs.com/0112083/categories/universallyPersonal/2008/07/08.html#a4918 Much ado about the end of theory- July 3, 2008 Backreaction discusses The End Of Theory, a proposition that data management and analysis will make obsolete the model-bases scientific paradigm. I beg to disagree. Science is currently going to the exactly opposite direction. Huge amounts of data have been gathered in, e.g., biosciences, but still we don't know much about how biological systems work. Trying to find insight from a huge pile of data produces noise - accidental correlations and similar artefacts.To make progress we...http://radio.weblogs.com/0112083/categories/universallyPersonal/2008/07/03.html#a4917 |