Fingertoe.com

Wow. I am impressed. Everyone will be looking for a way to emulate gmail soon.

I hate organization. Usually if something is where it goes, I don't know where it goes. Therefore, I tend to leave it where I can see it until it is buried by other stuff I don't want to lose. With Gmail, I can just type in what I am looking for, and the google computers sort through up to a gigabyte worth of data and dig it out for me.

I have spent hours today trying to design a note system that would provide this functionality. I have been thinking about it for months. I actually got a prototype working using Movable Type. But then I got the Gmail account, and I think I will be able to toss my notes over there, and they will be instantly searchable!

The only real downside is that gmail appears to block all of the executable attachements. That is okay with me, but I think it might be a hassle for some people sometimes.

Posted by Josh Reighley at 12:09 AM | Permalink | Comments ()

I just got a Gmail account... Now if I could only import my existing email from the Imap server, I would be a pretty happy camper!

I will let you know what I think. At a quick glance, I would say that it pretty much blows yahoo, hotmail and the like away...

Posted by Josh Reighley at 10:39 PM | Permalink | Comments ()

Dreamhost just boosted my disk space and bandwidth to 5120 MB and 64 GM/month. It is hard to believe I would ever use that much, but it is nice that they keep their customers happy by unexpectedly giving them new features every few months.. Certainly beats companies that take unexpectedly take away features..

Posted by at 10:49 AM | Permalink | Comments ()

There is an interesting story about a cheater who is blaming his university for giving him passing grades on his plagerized papers. It is interesting to see that this trend of blaming others for our deficiencies is not localized to the United states.

This victim mentality is another offshoot of the aversion to pain that I posted about earlier. Seems that whenever anyone has pain these days they want to be compensated. Pain happens however. It is nobody's fault. It is part of being human.

Posted by at 9:49 AM | Permalink | Comments ()

I think that a good portion of the problems in our culture stem from our strong aversion to pain. Pain is really a good thing. It is meant to tell us something is wrong. And that we need to change something, to correct a problem.

Rather than treat the problem, our society tends to take a pill to make the symptom go away. This provides instant gratification, but the underlying problem remains. The result is addictive behavior. People keep treating the symptoms, but the problem will not go away on its own.

I find it quite impressive to watch TV commercials these days. It seems like every one is either a drug commercial of some type, or another product being sold using the "it will make you feel better" drug pusher approach.

If a child grows up in a culture where every time they have discomfort they are given a drug to make it feel better, doesn't it seem obvious that when they reach the discomfort of puberty, they are going to want to take something to make that go away?

Hard work is painful, childbirth is painful, sacrificial love is painful. Some of the best joys in life come through persevering through pain. We need to learn to deal with pain in order to have the courage to live our lives the way they where intended to be lived. If we have no tolerance to pain, we will avoid living life.

I see a lot of people out there who are averse to living life. They will not commit to a relationship. They are not having children. They are not pushing themselves to hard to succeed. It is a pain free life, But the pain of loneliness and emptyness will catch up to them eventually.

Posted by at 6:06 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

I love legos. I think that the new Lego's mindstorms are going to change the way kids think. Just like computers became second nature to my generation, Robotics will become second nature to today's kids.

John Porcaro: mktg@msft: Robotic Rubik

Posted by at 9:29 AM | Permalink | Comments ()

Okay, I knew this part from a long time ago:

I have never taken one of these before however:

I would suppose I oughta get that schizotypal thing checked out. ;-)

I was inspired to torment myself into taking this test by a blog I enjoy reading: Consistently Chili

Posted by at 10:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

This story comes to me from my friend, Matt Stull. The Seattle Times: Local News: More modest clothing, please, girl asks Nordstrom
It pays to let people know what you think!

Posted by at 11:43 AM | Permalink | Comments ()

My BSF class finished for the year today. It was a great study "Isreal and the minor prophets"

I have noticed when I study the Bible, No matter which part I am readingI tend to get the same message every week. Then when I finally step out in faith and obey the lesson that I am being taught, I begin to hear another lesson every week. God seems to transform me one step at a time.

Some of the interesting lessons God taught me from this year's studies:

Compromise leads to more compromise. We should stand on the Truth of God's word, and not compromise. Once we compromise, one sin tends to lead to another.

Trust God, and act in your faith. In order to experience God's love, you have to give up control to him. It is difficult to measure God's presence in your life if you don't allow him to control anything. If you don't make any leaps of faith, you will not have a baseline to measure against, and you will not notice God's influence in your life. You must live faithfully in order to experience his faithfulness.

I find it astonishing how the prophesies of Christ are scattered throughout the old testement, and are so well fullfilled by Him. The Bible all fits together as a perfect puzzle, pained over thousands of years, with every piece showing us a part of Christ our Savior. To believe that all of these prophecies would coinidentally be fullfilled takes by far more faith that to believe that they where fullfilled because they where placed there by an all knowing all powerful God.

Posted by at 10:52 PM | Permalink | Comments ()

This article suggests using blogging software for managing information flow about projects in business. This seems like a very good idea to me. Often all of the info about projects are transmitted via email, and quickly lost in the mass of other emails. Instead, we could post all of the information that may be useful for further refrence to a weblog.
With very little work you could have a system set up where you could post and maintain general info. This also could be searchable by keyword, and catagorized by topic. Pretty slick

Welcome to the 'Plogging' World!

Posted by at 2:09 PM | Permalink | Comments ()

Pretty interesting activity over at Movable Type. They have published a new pricing stucture and their clientbase is revolting. The interesting part of the deal is that the Trackback feature in the software that they are trying to sell is contributing to the revolt.

Trackback allows you to see all of the Blogs that have linked to an entry on a blog. Mena's Corner: It's About Time

There is a lesson for everyone here.. If you don't want to pay for software, then you should not run propriatary software. Run something under the GPL. If you want to sell software, think through your pricing and marketing strategy well in advance.

It will be interesting to see how MT reacts to the revolt. I don't think they will be able to miss the cluetrain on this one.

I think I will stick with the old version for a while.. Although I probably should heed my own advice and find a GPL alternative.. I have been thinking about sending a donation to MT with my next windfall. Their product is pretty darn good.

Posted by at 8:26 AM | Permalink | Comments ()

I wish I had time to work on cool projects like this: The World's First Origami Folding Robot

Posted by at 6:53 AM | Permalink | Comments ()

NBCSandiego.com - News - Man Admits Breaking Into Home Of Man Who Outbid Him Online

The weirder the stuff you bid on, the wierder your competition I would suppose.

Posted by at 9:34 AM | Permalink | Comments ()

So I missed one of my hobbies. I have been enthused about programming microcontrollers for the last couple of years. I have an extensive collection:

Basic Stamp I have a version 1, and a version 2.

An oopic

Several PICs

A pretty nice LCD display from Scott Edwards Electronics

A Tini Board

A thermocron ibutton

Unfortunately most of this stuff is collecting dust... I have managed to display its blinky light functionality on most of this equipment, but I have never found a really good application to program at a time in which I could spend the time to get it done.

I have used the Thermochron ibutton at work to log tempuratures in various places and wow my co-workers with the fancy graphs..

I think that Micro-controllers are going to be a pretty core future technology.. Just like programming languages have made the computer more and more customizable, the next generation is going to be able to build small devices that intellegently do exactly what is needed. Robotics will be commonplace among today's youngsters.

Just like my Commodore 64 gave me the confidence to know I could program a computer, the next generation is learing to be comfortable with robotics using Lego Mindstorms, Basic stamps and the like.

I hope I am not too old to join them... Anyway, If you have any ideas of things that need simple automation that I could do with my gear, Let me know!

Posted by at 10:22 PM | Permalink | Comments ()

Wow, Now that I finally switched to Movable type, It looks like Blogger just added most all of the features that where missing! Check it out!

If anyone is thinking of creating their own blog page, I would highly recomend Blogger as a place to start. They can get you up and running with a pretty full featured blog in just minutes!

Posted by at 9:27 PM | Permalink | Comments ()

Looks like the "just a sausage" lady is getting another 15 minutes of fame Forgiveness is a undervalued virtue in today's culture. I hope she does well in her future pursuits.

Posted by at 12:34 PM | Permalink | Comments ()

So, here are some odd hobbies that I have had over the years.

Bat houses. I built a Bat House a few years ago.

Float tanks. I visited a float center and spent an hour in a sensory deprivation tank. I thought about building a tank in my basement, but I think that phase has passed.

Powered Parachutes I have always wanted to learn to fly one of these. Haven't done it yet, but is looks pretty do-able.

I would like to build a Clay oven in my backyard someday. I bought a book on how to build one, but have not done it yet.

I used to brew my own beer. We don't drink much anymore, but I still have quite a collection of brewing equipment gathering dust in the basement.

I bought stuff to make soap from scratch a few years ago. That is collecting dust as well.

Posted by at 10:25 AM | Permalink | Comments ()

I have a pretty good setup for my email. This is how I do it.

1. I have an account with Dreamhost.com that allows me to host my domain, reighley.net This allows me to create email boxes and email forwarding addresses. Dreamhost offers accounts for under 10 dollars per month for people with average needs. I have been using them for 5 years now, and have always been quite impressed with their reliability, ease of use, and honesty.
2. I set up an 30 dollar per year account at Spamcop.net.
3. I set up an super secret email address at reighley.net.
4. I set up email aliases on my dreamhost account and i.e. josh@reighley.net direct them to forward to my spamcop account. I also set up all of my email software to use the email alias as the outgoing email address. This makes sure that all replies go to the public address instead of my super secret one.
5. I direct spamcop to filter my email, and forward the good stuff to my super secret reighley.net account. Spamcop fiters my email for Viruses as well as for known spammers.

I set up my email client to use IMAP instead of Pop3. The advantage of this is that my email remains available to me from every computer I choose to view it from. If I read a message and file it from my home computer later I can be at work and open the folder using my webmail client to review the message. People like me who run a small business should have access to all of their communications from any location. The disadvantage to using IMAP is that It uses quite a bit of space on the server. Luckily, Dreamhost is pretty genorous with space.

So, When you email me at josh@reighley.net, your message gets forwarded to my spamcop account. Spamcop looks at it, makes sure that you are not sending me a known virus or a known viagra advertizement. If the email is kosher, then it forwards it to the email account that I actually use. Works pretty good!

Posted by Josh Reighley at 9:12 AM | Permalink | Comments ()

Floppy Raid

Some people amaze me!

Posted by Josh Reighley at 7:46 PM | Permalink | Comments ()

The politicians are all saying that this Iraqi prisioner abused scandal is contrary to everything that America stands for. I think that this statement is wishfull thinking. The problem is that America does not stand for what it used to stand for. Everything is relative, and nothing is black and white.

Americans spend 12 billion dollars per year on pornography. More than the is spent on The NFL, NBA, MLB, and NHL combined. This figure is also well above the revenue of the major TV networks comined. Pornography is the number one source of entertianment in America. It is not too surprizing that our soldiers would resort to partaking in this kind of dispicable entertainment, Especially if they thought that there was some psycological warfare advantage that they might gain to boot.

What does America really stand for? I bet you would be hard pressed to interview any sample of people and find a consensus. Morality has been marginalized and shunned as intolorant. Vices such as substance abuse, gambling, pornography, fornication, have become mainstream in the last 35 years or so. These days if you think that all of those things are universally wrong, people consider you to be some sort of right wing radical...

When you raise a few geneations without morality, it seems pretty inevitable that you will have immoral activity in every institution of our society.

Posted by Josh Reighley at 3:26 PM | Permalink | Comments ()

Another person with way too much time on their hands!
The subservient chicken

Posted by Josh Reighley at 1:23 PM | Permalink | Comments ()

Okay, this is worth checking out... Newsmap

Thanks to Frank Patrick for pointing it out.

Posted by Josh Reighley at 7:30 PM | Permalink | Comments ()