OddThoughts

What does this mean?

A Note: -> a “promise or certificate” that an amount will be paid to you. as apposed to a Draft (ie: cheque), which is an order that an amount be paid to you.

So the “idea” is this. Orginally if someone did a “service” for you, or provided you with a “product”. Then you would be in debt to them.

The barter system is the exchanging of one form of goods/services for another. Later things like gold and silver were traded for goods and services (to pay of this debt).

Legal Tender is the “forced requirement” for a person to accept the bank note (cash bills) as payment for debt.

So if you go to the store, and purhase groceries totalling $50.00, the grocery carrier has to accept your cash as payment for the goods. (They are not required to accept cheques, credit cards, debit cards), but they must accept cash. The currency of the nation as defined as “legal tender”.

(it’s double quote day “” for everything)

Reference:

What is a negotiable cheque? 

A lesson in economics

I had a big of a “discussion” with my wife th other morning regarding the concept of “Daylight Savings Time “.

For those unfamilar with the concept, many areas at different times of the year, push their clocks ahead 1 hour (in the spring) and back 1 hour (in the fall) . Essentially what this means is in the spring months there will be less daylight in the morning, and hense more daylight in the afternoon.

The problem we had was with the notion of “savings”. Technically, you are not really saving anything. Although we adjust the clock, we do not save any time. We simply adjust the period in which the light is used.

So an agreed upon defintion would be that at certain times of the year we adjust our clocks in order to make “more efficient” usage of the daylight hours.

So it is unlike a “savings account”. Where you bank your money with the anticipation of using it at a later time.  You can’t “bank” the daylight and use it later. We can only adjust our notion of where the daylight occurs, or essentially adjust our lives.  It’s not like you can “save” this hour and use it at some point in the future.

So I prosed that the concept of “savings” may have multiple meanings. In addition to being something that can be “held on to” and used later (like money), which got me thinking about efficiency.

Efficiency is often described as “doing more.., better”, or doing more in less time. Efficiency implies savings. If something is efficient it must have saved us something right? If it didn’t save us anything (time, money, resources) it wasn’t really effecient was it?

So we can’t even save time then can we? Time will pass regardless of what we try to do about it.  No matter how organized you are, your day still has 24 hours, your week 7 days, your year (well you get the idea).

If we adjust our tasks in such a way as to get more done in the same amount of time, we call this efficient, and we consider that we have “Saved time”. But you can’t put that time in a time bank account and spend it later.

Often it seems in life, that the more time we “Save”, the more work that fills in the gap. So our “Reward” for saving time, is to get more work.. doesn’t seem fair does it?

Just a few random things for you to ponder.

Wait! Before the religious jelots come attacking me with torches please allow me a moment to explain.

I’m not saying that the bible is wrong, or that it isn’t good, or even that God did not have a hand in it.

I’m saying it was written by human beings, beings which are imperfect, make mistakes and have a free will. Beings who form  committees to decide which of the words sound best and which need to be thrown out.

We know the bible was written by human beings; they in fact often name themselves (eg: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and of course the authors of the old testement, some of which are anonymous or use Pen names)

It is often argued, however, that the hands that wrote the bible were “guided” by the hands of God and are therefore his (or maybe her) words. Perhaps this is true but does not change the fact that it was written (and translated over and over by the hands of man (and women).

The first “law” of the universe (or law granted by God if you prefer) , is that humans are given “free will”. The ability to choose.

God would not take away that ability for any reason (hence explaining the reason that evil exists)

Free will also causes humans to intrepret, paraphrase, and adapt to information. So even if the almighty guided the hand of the authors of the bible, and deciding which parts to include and which to exclude, humans also had a part in this. They were not “zombies” only able to do the will of God.

And therefore; all those “errors” or “contridictians” that seem to appear are either

a) Mis-interpretations by the humans reading the words

b) Incorrect details recorded by the humans who wrote the words

Most likely, it is a combination of both. In a similar manner there are “so many different” religions again because humans have the ability to choose.

Inspired By:Weekend Philosophy: Alan Watts on Nothingness — Waxing Poetically: Addressing Culture with a Twist of Poetry

Any discussions involving nothing will immediately lead to a paradox yet for some reason we use the word nothing all the time. Those of you mathematicians out there, of which I certainly am not, have devised a nice mathematically representation of nothing which they call zero (0). Well could you please explain something to me? Okay by the definition of nothing (0) and the definition of 1. I will agree that 1 + 0 = 1. Which only makes sense, we are taught if Joe has 1 apple and I give him no apples (or take no apples from him) than Joe still has 1 apple. Even I, with my limited mathematical knowledge understand that, what I don’t understand is 1 X 0 = 0. I was told to memorize it since the third grade. The definition of X is to add the number (in this case 1) 0 times. If I put that into English I would be saying this: Joe has 1 apple and he never(0) adds no (0) apples to it so he now has no(0) apples. Okay, so I agree that 0 X 0 must be 0 because that statements says: I have nothing and I never add nothing to it at all (which is a double negative in English) so I still have nothing. By the mathematicians very words he eliminates a definition for never dividing nothing up. (0/0). From what I do know about mathematics everything must solve (0/0) since all objects of any kind X 0 = 0. All I’m saying is we base a great deal of mathematics on a paradoxal concept which even leads to error’s in English such as the above double negative. As a matter of fact a computer does not even understand this concept of nothing and will undoubtedly complain should I ask it to tell me (0/0). Calculators do the same thing.

Well I still didn’t tell you what nothing is have I? (that sounds like an interesting statement) When all else fails, when all idea’s have been exhausted, when thought breaks down into elementary concepts, and when we are absent from all we know to be TRUE what is left then is nothing.

You can’t touch it, you can’t smell it, you will never see it but it “exists” nevertheless. What is between any two objects in a vacuum? The moral is be VERY careful when using a concept such as nothing.

Okay the last concepts I wish to discuss is the word GOOD and the word RIGHT. These are two other concepts that the dictionary conveniently jumps around on. RIGHT I think I can easily define because I have already defined TRUTH. In this book what is RIGHT is what is held to be TRUE. Keep in mind that this means that RIGHT is as individual as TRUTH and it is not collectable as society might make it appear to be. We only make it appear so because we do function in a society and as such we must “bend” the “truth” so everyone will believe one thing is RIGHT and another is WRONG.

The concept of Good is a difficult one because it involves some emotional assumptions that won’t be discussed in detail until later in this book. An individual does GOOD when he/she commits an ACT believed to be RIGHT, also believing the consequence of that ACT to be RIGHT and furthermore having a “feeling” that the ACT benefits people as a whole. The “feeling” is the most important part of this definition because we “feel” Good when we do Good.

I hope your not bored with all this defining business but just look at it as bookkeeping so later on when you disagree with something I’ve said you can just go back to the definition and try and see it from my point of view. Of course you must agree with my definitions and I hopefully have convinced you of their validity. Here is the biggest application of my definition, which is the scope of this entire book. In other words if you skipped this entire chapter you should READ at least this part:

All knowledge in any form, whether spoken, written, acted, once it has ended you are left thinking. This is the key of a good story but after a while that thinking subsides and other things enter your mind. I want to leave you thinking with this book and continue thinking the rest of you life this is DOW. The end result of all knowledge is the same if we think about it long enough. From Stephen Hawking, to All My Children, to Sesame Street. They all DO the same thing. They all invoke thought and when we invoke thought we open up worlds which otherwise would never be possible.

Well I hope you can see how one definition can spawn a number of different things about life. I should stress that I am not saying we should let everyone out of prison just because they’ll promise to be good. However when a person really does believe they can feel remorse…when they really do feel it of there own accord and when they are prepared to re-enter society then those people deserve the a chance to start over because those are the people who will not go back to prison and those are the people who have earned it. It just takes some longer than others.

What it is:

Simple Blog is a framework for both PHP/ASP that allows the “once-in-awhile” blogger to maintain an ongoing list of entries on a regular basis.

Background:

Many people are interesting in blogging, but don’t have the time to devote to it on a regular basis, it is just a small hobby, something to pass the time.

The problem with this is simply it is hard to get people interested and addicted to your blog when you write on a semi-regular basis.  Most people like to be able to count on regular entries that they can ‘count’ on. Would you subscribe to a newspaper if it only arrived once in a while at random times?

The Solution:

The simple blog solves this problem by keeping regular posts to your site from other contributors. So you are free to write whenever you feel like it, meanwhile you blog continues to grow from others content (who also are probably writing only on a semi-casual basis)

I had this interesting idea. Wouldn’t it be nice, if my cellphone knew my location and could respond accordingly.

So I was hacking around with some bluetooth settings and stuff, so then when I arrive at
work, or at home, my computers recognize my presence and run various interesting little scripts.

I then further postulated, what an interesting idea this would combined with other locations. Stores could
have software with bluetooth keys, or using the phone’s internal GPS to tell the phone it’s location and respond accordingly.

Now, I just heard all about this today on TWIT 151, basically discussing the exact same idea ! I see a lot of potential.

Concept:

A simple java J2ME App that would execute various scripts/send SMS/update your twitter, or send your reminders based on the phone’s location.

Basically, the app would have 2 modes. (MAP MODE, and SCAN MODE).

MAP MODE:

Functions: Load a MAP, Save a MAP, Create an Entry

Create an Entry -> An Entry is a grid (basic shape co-ordinates, squares or
rectangle). You enter the GPS co-ordinates of area) and define a custom
name \”Eg: The Mall\”. If you don’t know the GPS co-ordinates, you could
simply walk to the corners of the area and click ‘get sample’ which
would grab the co-ordinates from the GPS and input them automatically.

Entry would contain 2  scripts which would execute, “ON_ENTER” and “ON_EXIT”.
These would be run when the phone enters and leaves the grid area respectively while in SCAN MODE.

Load A MAP/Save a MAP -> Simply saves the map location, names, and execution scripts to a file
(probably XML File). The idea would be people could upload these maps or send them to one other to share their areas with others.

SCAN MODE:

Scan mode mode would be pretty simple. A background process, would
periodically (say every 2-3 minutes) get the GPS location, and compare
to each item in the grid of maps stored on the mobile device. When the
phone moves into one or more of the grids, the ON scripts is executed,
and when it leaves the GRIDS the off script is execulted.

Possible Uses:

1) Could be implemented with your TASK list. So if you have an item “Pick
up milk” you would get a reminder when you arrive at the store

2) Smart Devices: When you arrive at home, your computer could log you in, or send a twitter message. When you at work, it could start your messenger etc.

3) Location based advertising: Your device could get “advert” reminders when you arrive in a location. Good for
advertisers, maybe bad for cell phone users. UNLESS perhaps this makes the cell phone usage cheaper to recieve adverts !

Now Wait!

Before you get all high and mightily telling me how those magazine selling businesses are a \”waste of time\”. Just please give me 2 minutes of your time.

I’m not suggesting that you sign up for Avon, or Tupperware, and try to sell their products.

I’m suggesting you create your own product line and have others do the selling for you!

Why be at the bottom of the pole, when you can start at the top?

First you create a simple website, that lists all of the products you want to sell, perhaps it’s a custom T-Shirt business, or eccentric geek gadgets, or even a book club. Decide what your buisness will be, (once you get it up and running you can then lauch others!)

Create a set of instructions and marketing materials to give to people explaining on how to sell your product. This should include

a) A catalog of items available for purchase

b) A price list containing prices for your sellers to “sell at”. Give you sellers the ability to customize this list and include their own customized ‘mark up’ to their situation.

c) Instructions for hosting a “party\ for your sellers to sell the wares.

You don’t have to actually have your own product list.  Instead you create a special site that lists the items in your catalogs and uses affiliate links to other products.

You seller buys the items from your affiliate pages (which are made to look like your catelog) and you get the commission. They then buy the items from the items collected and keep the difference (or pay you a %age of the sale as well).

Yep, it should be obvious right?..Well not always, especially if you’re trying to start a new business, or part-time business.

Let’s start with the basics:

A Job -> You make money

A Hobby -> Costs you money

Makes sense right?

Here’s what happens when someone tries to start their own business for the first time (ie: it happens to me and I’m sure I’m not alone)

You have an idea - it’s a great idea, you’re motiviated to work on it, and your all gung-ho so you start working hours on end, you put your blood sweat and tears into it - hopeing, waiting for others to pick it up and for it to be the huge success that you just know it’s going to be.

The problem — In this heightened state of \”busy-ness\”, you don’t really think about measuring the effectivness of your work. In particular, you spend what you think you need, probably go over your initial budget, and you have yet to actually get any earnings.

In this initial state - you simply have an expensive hobby - until you start actually making money (profit) it is not a business. Perhaps you have loans, and investors, perhaps it’s not your money that you are spending, never-the-less, if you not making money it’s a hobby. Most (if not all startups) begin simply as hobbies.

This is not too big a deal, except when several years have gone by and you have convinced yourself you have a good business but you are still not making any money at it. You caontinue to justify all of you hard work as \”fruitfull\” and \”valuable\”, you take time away from family in friends and convince yourself that it is because you are working at trying to make some money, all the while you are really just working on your hobby.

So am I suggesting that you quit when you reach a dip in the road? - Not at all - but I do have a few suggestions to keep you on the right track and learning the right thing to quit and keep from getting trapped/confused during this process.

1) Set your Goals Upfront ->

Be honest with yourself about what you are trying to do, and actively plan where you would like to be in the future. Set Metrics/Mesurables that you can compare to and be sure your keeping yourself on track

2) Watch your Spending ->

It can be easy to get trapped in (I’ll buy everything now, and get paid back later when the money rolls in). Especially if you have some angel startup investor giving your the intial capital to get yourself rolling. But, it’s better to invest only what you need and add funds slowely while keeping in the black (or at least close to it), and continuing to re-invest your profits into biulding your business, otherwise you can find yourself in a mountain of debt and worrying about this could ultimately lead to the demise of your business

3) Decide your “end-point-if” and re-evaluate as necessary ->

Are you willing to loose hundreds of thousands of dollars year after year, on your business? If so, you’ve simply picked a really expensive hobby. If your already a millionaire then you can probably even afford this hobby.

Ask yourself - at what point will I admit to myself that it’s just a hobby and not a business. If you don’t think about this upfront, you may continually tell yourself that “it’s going to get better, it’s going to get better”. But unlike the movies, you can’t just click your heals three times and everything will turn out alright!

Good Luck !

Here’s the idea.

In the best of worlds, people would go about their daily lives, and the economy would be good and strong for everyone in society. People would work hard, make money, buy goods and services, and we would be all “happy go lucky”

However, we watch the news, listen to the radio, read the paper. All these things tells us about something called the “economy”. It’s in a downturn, people are losing money, the sky is falling, etc. etc.

This “economy” to which you hear in the news. It’s not real!!.

The truth is if the thing called the “Dow Jones” drops 500 points, your life still goes on and continues the way it always did.

Maybe I’m being too critical, the problem is not with the economy. The problem is a very common error people make in analysis and creating self fulfilling prophecies.

You go through life, you encounter problems, you try to figure out the cause of your problems, you try to define an action plan to solve these problems. (at least that’s what I do)

Whether you are an analyst or the average ‘joe plumber’. You still do these things. Some of us maybe more conscious/aware of it, but we all do it on some level.

Certain “events” in life happen, to society in general. “The Economy” is one of those events.

As humans, it is a natural (intrinsic) human trait to point to one of your problems and attach one of these “socieity events” as the cause. We all do it; and this doesn’t mean we are right, but it’s very easy to do. Although it might make us ‘feel good’ it doesn’t really solve the problem.

So let’s say you are the “typical” person, you probaby have lots of credit cards and “consumer” debt. If the economy takes a downturn perhaps you start experiancing pain. The debt collectors get ansy and want their money back; and you don’t have it to give to them. Perhaps you start to panic? Perhaps everyone in the society starts to panic, and everyone just stops spending and the economy slows down even more; and the news/media reports the problem is getting worse, and you get more scared, and the cycle continues…

You start to feel powerless, nervous, and you don’t know what to do. You see the problem is not with the economy. “The economy” is a simply reflection of the actions of people re-acting to what they see/hear in the news. As hard as it sounds; stopping listening to this trash and focus instead on what you can control, what you are responsible for. And things will get better..PROMISE !