• Where Work Is a Religion, Work Burnout Is Its Crisis of Faith — New York Magazine
  “People who are suffering from burnout tend to describe the sensation in metaphors of emptiness—they’re a dry teapot over a high flame, a drained battery that can no longer hold its charge.” via http://www.43folders.com
  (tags: gtd motivation work productivity)

• VMTN Discussion Forums: Very slow network throughput …
  If you find your access to your linux network services really slow via windows vmware (or vmplayer) session - try this fix
  (tags: linux vmware network)

• Convert Flash Video .flv Files to .mpg or .avi and Other Media Formats » My Digital Life
  mencoder input.flv -ofps 15 -vf scale=300:-2 -oac lavc -ovc lavc -lavcopts vcodec=msmpeg4v2:acodec=mp3:abitrate=64 -o output.avi
  (tags: tech tools youtube flv archos)

• How to record audio streams
  (tags: tools linux sound recording)

• OLPC News: New Life for Old Games on the Children’s Machine XO
  …”If the One Laptop Per Child project is to be a success, it has to look at previous computers that have gone down in history…”
  (tags: olpc opensource educationalsoftware)
• Slashdot | The Birth of Quantum Biology
  Is this relatively new area of science going to bring us some earthshattering new insights? …”Just when you finally have grasped the concept of quantum mechanics, it’s time to wake up and to see the arrival of a nascent field named quantum biology.”…
  (tags: science toread tofollowup)

• Linux.com | Consolidate your radio streams with streamtuner
  Streamtuner is a point-and-click GUI browser for the thousands of Internet radio streams available today. It lets you play streams and manage your favorites in a single window — like a Linux tuner for Internet radio
  (tags: tech linux internetradio)
• IT Manager’s Journal :: How standards and a database can improve your project management
  Organizations sometimes avoid adopting project management standards because they fail to recognize their practical application or fear unnecessary overhead — until it becomes painfully clear that standardization is necessary. However, you can create an e
  (tags: IT toread ProjectManagement)
• IT Manager’s Journal :: The importance of management plans
  “Have you ever felt there must be a better way to keep up with the tasks that overwhelm project managers as they wrangle projects to completion? Do you find yourself pulled between managing your team and their issues, managing your sponsors, and keeping u
  (tags: IT tech software ProjectManagement)
• Wishful Thinking » Blog Archive » 5 Reasons Why Enthusiasm is Better than Confidence
  5 Reasons Why Enthusiasm is Better than Confidence
  (tags: culture design motivation toread)
• Virtual Linux
  An overview of virtualization methods, architectures, and implementations
  (tags: tech linux ibm virtualization)
• Whistle while you work to run commands on your computer
  Use open source software and microphone-enabled laptops to listen for specific tonal sequences and run commands
  (tags: fun tech linux ibm toread)
• Main Page - Avidemux2
  Avidemux is a free open-source program designed for multi-purpose video editing and processing, which can be used on almost all known operating systems and computer platforms. This website contains lots of information about downloading, compiling, configu
  (tags: tech linux video archos software)
• 5 Software Development Mistakes to Avoid
  5 Software Development Mistakes to Avoid
• IT Pros Advised to Address Information Overload
  According to the report, in the current information economy, knowledge is everything but can be also stress-inducing, from e-mail overload, instant message intrusion on screens and unpredictable interruptions from PDAs and cell phones. An abundance of com
  (tags: tech information)
• Petscii Forums “PETSCII.COM” - Unveiling the Picodore 64 - a Commodore PDA!
  this looks really cool - would love to have one…
  (tags: diy projects tech c64)

Craig Cook writes a good piece on the different (but equally important!) mentalities to be borne in mind when going about the business of working with websites.

As I alluded too in my last posts, I am coming to the end of a project I have spent working on for over a year. During the course of that project, learning was one of the main components involved. As part of that learning, the three disciolines/modes had to called upon, but were restricted in parts by the technology used - but in fairness - also partially aided by it.

“These three disciplines—writing, engineering, and artistry —are not so different from one another. Each demands creative problem solving, and though each suggests a slightly different angle of attack, the target remains the same. “

and in my case, where I think things were going,

“When you’re able to think easily in all three modes one by one, you will soon find yourself thinking in all three simultaneously.”

Good read,

R

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the project I am working on at work is on its way into the support stages, as such, a lot of documentation needs to be updated and written.

this guide “Screencasting how-to“, however, might help with documenting some of the actions that are needed, as I have often found that visually seeing something, helps to understand and learn it that bit better

(via Ubuntu blog)

• Survey: Carbon from Computing (TreeHugger)
  TreeHugger would not exist without all of those people reading us on their computers, but; multiple choices allowed- What are your computer habits?
  (tags: green energy environment)
• Second Life Avatars Consume As Much Electricity As Brazilians (TreeHugger)
  …”Perhaps introducing carbon offsets – real or virtual – to Second Life is in order… Has anyone done that yet?”
  (tags: green energy environment)
• Rough Type: Nicholas Carr’s Blog: Avatars consume as much electricity as Brazilians
  in the words of Nicholas Carr …”Tony Walsh has, as others do, some doubts about whether Second Life is sustainable as a business. But he also poses another question that I hadn’t come across before: “Is Second Life sustainable ecologically?”…
  (tags: energy environment green)

A young man, Abdusalam Abubakar age 16, for his project on “attempting to crack the most hacker-proof encryption system in the world”. The Irish Times has minor details of the winner of this years EsatBT Young Scientist awards.

His project apparently had something to do with RSA encryption, and he (from Irish Times article)

“…based his initial work on partially successful attacks on the world’s most widely-used encryption system, RSA, mounted by two mathematicians. He decided to take the best aspects of both and generalise a new approach, which he believes has the potential to tackle at least some less complex coding systems.”

More details on this project would be great - but sadly even the EsatBT site does not currently have any details about the project. The Irish Independent also has a story on this (registration required), but does not really delve any further into the details. In the meantime, congrats to Abdusalam! R

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• A Pale Blue Dot
  words of Carl Sagan “The earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that in glory and in triumph they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think o
  (tags: space philosophy)

• Ipkg - Handhelds.org MoinMoin Wiki
  iPKG is a very lightweight package management system. It was designed for Linux installations with severe storage limitations such as handheld computers. iPKG is more than just an embedded Linux flash image builder, (although it does that fairly well). It
  (tags: opensource PMA400)

• The K-Zone: Archos PMA430 (and other Archos AV) stuff
  Archos PMA430 (and other Archos AV) stuff
  (tags: archos linux software PMA430 PMA400)