Friday, August 1, 2008

Morning Thoughts, Evening Thoughts

Hollerith Card


Morning Thoughts

I think I finally got up on the right side of the bed today. I took the train in to work this morning. I napped most of the way in. But, towards the end, I started reading The Future of the Internet and How To Stop It by Jonathan Zittrain. He has licensed it for free over the internet under Creative Commons license. http://futureoftheinternet.org/download

I think this is kind of interesting. It means you can look it over on the computer then see if you want to buy it in print. The book so far focuses on the difference between generative technologies like the internet and tethered technologies like mainframes. Generative technologies are open to use and programming by everyone, and tethered technologies are designed to be used for specific purposes. An xbox game console or an ipod would be a good example of a tethered technology. A personal computer would be an example of a generative technology.

I have various things piled up which I need to do. I have two copies of the New York Times Book Review to look through and a variety of legal material to process.

I think today should be interesting. I have to return all the numerous books, dvds and graphic novels which I took out for the weekend.

Several books have come in for me to read. By Schism Rent Asunder by David Weber, Kellory The Warlock by Lin Carter, and The Post American World by Fareed Zakaria. One of the people who reads this site asked me to review The Post American World. I am going to read this after I finish reading The Future of the Internet.

Right now, I am just catching up on things. Doing things like writing monthly reports and checking how my work is going.

I worked some more on ordering for the graphic novels section. This of course includes newspaper comic strips. I went and picked up the Daily News and tried to order books on the comic strips that are in one of the local papers. I ordered books based on several comic strips including Zits, Pearls Before Swine, Sherman's Lagoon, Dilbert, Mother Goose and Grimm, and Rose is Rose.

I also ordered a few science fiction and fantasy titles.

As part of the process, I put a few titles on hold for myself to read, Slanted Jack by Mark L. Van Name which is the author's second book, Reaper's Gale by Steven Erikson which is the seventh book in an excellent fantasy series, and Saturn's Children by Charles Stross. Saturn's Children by Charles Stross is supposed to be a tribute to Robert Heinlein's Friday. Saturn's Children is a tale for adults.

Evening Thoughts
I took the car out for a short drive in preparation for my road test tomorrow.  I drove around the neighborhood as well as down to the mall and stopped at Barnes and Noble.  I hope my car passes the state inspection tomorrow.  I have put over a hundred miles on it.

This evening, Internet Explorer was not working correctly.  I download Opera 9.51 and found it worked fine for my site.  Internet Explorer was not working with Entrecard or this blog.  It was also giving me errors with several other sites.  So far Opera has been doing a fine job.

2 comments:

Patricia Rockwell said...

I will be interested to see what you think of the computer book particularly in conjunction with the "post American" book.

John C said...

I went to using Opera mini browser on my smartphone, since it integrated RSS feeds decently.

The picture of the Fortan input card gave me a flashback to the first contact I had with computers in my youth. lol