Missing the forest for the trees

O'Reilly released a history of programming languages poster that is worth a glance. Jeff Atwood has some interesting ruminations based on this poster. Fun read, recommended.

How to deal with body insecurity the HP way

This is a really stupid move by HP IMHO. More information available at this Signal Vs Noise blog post.

Surprise bonuses

I am a subscriber to Fred Wilson's blog. He is a managing partner in two vc firms in NYC.

I live in Austin and we had ACL festival last weekend. Pretty big deal around this part of the country and for lots of serious music lovers. I did not attend it (apart from a sufjan stevens concert). But last night I scored cool points from the "hip young indie music generation" kind of girl who works at the nearby coffee shop. I asked her about the "nosebleed incident" and she gave me the "you are not all old and out of it" look. So did my wife Kim for that matter. ;-)

How did I know about this? Because Fred posted about this with pictures on his blog (which i started reading because I enjoy educating myself on technology and incubation) here and here. I think it is neat how I know more about my backyard because of a blog written from NYC resident. Good stuff indeed!


Have a fun story to share?

Is there space for you to innovate?

turkey-news
Originally uploaded by a.ma.r.

This screen shot seems to say yes. On the left is an ad (courtesy google of course) that to me seems to make no sense given my context as I am reading this page.
Islamic leaders in Turkey are pissed about the Pope's take on jihad and I am offered free dental cleaning in Turkey!?! Go figure....

Keyword matching is not context sensitive advertising. The former is a shotgun approach to the latters rifle approach. I think context sensitive advertising's growth will depend on the innovations we make in the area of semantic web. Till then, rejoice and try to do better than this ;-)

synchronicity

I just read this quote

Blessed with riches and possibilities far beyond anything imagined by ancestors who tilled the unpredictable soil of medieval Europe, modern populations have nonetheless shown a remarkable capacity to feel that neither who they are nor what they have is quite enough

on Chris Yeh's blog (which I came into contact with via the entrepreneur meta blog: My Way).
That is a powerful quote and exactly what I needed to hear today. I love quotes like these which help put things in perspective.

Now regarding the synchronicity part. The above quote is from the book "Status Anxiety" by Alain De Botton who is also famous for "The Consolations of philosophy" and "How Proust can change your life". Interestingly Steve Corell plays a washed out Proust scholar in the movie "Little Miss Sunshine", which I thoroughly enjoyed watching this weekend. Highly recommend the movie. I am getting the book as soon as I finish this post.

This is just Texas we are talking about....

Recap from this weekend,

• UT football team lost to OSU.
• Austin resident Andy Roddick lost to Federer in the US Open finals.
• Dallas Cowboys lost to Jacksonville Jaguars.
• Houston Texans lost to Philadelphia Eagles.
• Houston Astros lose to Brewers.
• Dallas Rangers beat Orioles.

and this is just Austin or Texas related news. Now who was telling me we are not a sports obsessed country.....

It is everyman's story but it still is an incredible story

I am newly married and I am still getting used to this awesome change in my life. I was recently trying to get a feel for how long before I get used to it and then I realised that maybe I got it backwards. The question I need to answer is how can I try to keep it fresh so I never get used to it.

What I am experiencing is not a single, dominating, easily describable change. It is the collection of thousands of little changes, each of which are capable of making me gasp a little with awe. So on those rare occassions when the cumulative effect hits me, the gasp is audible and I am left breathless. Like for instance the thought of sharing a bed every night with the woman I love is a totally incredible feeling. Something I have never experienced before. It has been two weeks butI continue to be amazed at my good fortune. I try to fight that grin of my face when I get up but I cannot and I even dare think that it looks a little smug.

I know that I will get used to this. I know that we will go down the well traversed path of marriage and family like millions of others. I wish there was some way to store and record this memory that is more visceral than the written word. I wish there is some way I can remind myself later how I feel now.

I am not trying to discount the future and I am pretty sure the future is going to bring its own share of experiences. I am just saying that 'now' is pretty incredible and I wish I could record-rewind-play 'now' as often as I want whenever I want to.