Useful Meme

Posted on April 9, 2008
Filed Under Philosophy |

Now for something completely different. HT to Richard who first did it. You can see all the posts responding to this meme with their own suggestions here. (Which right now appears to just be me)

Instructions

1. Copy these instructions.
2. Link to the original ‘useful meme’ post.
3. Share 5+ things that may be of benefit to your readers — useful facts, advice, product recommendations, etc.

(1) Amazon

First get Amazon prime. (It’s on sale right now for $79 rather than $99) This gives you free shipping for everything not coming from an other store. If you order a lot of books this will pay for itself quickly. (I have an Amazon credit card and get Amazon credits when I use my card. So I order a fair number of books off Amazon.)

Second if you have young toddlers or baby look at diapers. You can order them off Amazon with free shipping cheaper than any place I’ve seen. For the diapers and wipes we buy Target had the lowest prices. Amazon ended up being about $4 cheaper.

Third think about buying bulk food. I already do this at Costco. But compare prices with Amazon. They don’t ship much by way of canned goods. But for cereal and such it’s really worthwhile. Plus it saves going to the store.

You’ve already probably paid off the Amazon Prime fee by now. But check out other stuff as well. It’s amazing how much stuff Amazon carries. A lot of it had shipping fees that made it uneconomical to buy off Amazon. With Amazon Prime suddenly things like bike trailers for kids become economical.

(2) Books

I just don’t read a lot of fiction. But I’ve recent read Richard Morgan’s Takeshi Kovac’s novels. The first is Altered Carbon. The series get better with the next few books. It’s a cyberpunk novel so think hard sci fi in a bleak dystopia with a strong film noir influence. The sci fi element in these is that personality and memories can be recorded and placed in other bodies. Whether artificial or even the bodies of someone else. Give it a whirl.

I usually do posts on non-fiction books so I’ll not mention those.

One fiction book that I always recommend is Gordon R. Dickson’s Childe series. Unfortunately he died before he finished it. But it’s an incredible book.

An other of my favorite series is Steven Brust’s Vlad Taltos series. He has a bunch of books set in the same universe but not featuring Taltos. I don’t care for those though. They are written in a style mimicking the romance adventures of the late 19th century. However, by and large, I hate 19th century literature. So this was a big negative to me. The Vlad Taltos books are amazingly well written and a lot of fun. Think Philip Marlow by way Erol Flynn in a fantasy world making use of a lot of Hungarian legend all the while making social and political commentary.

(3) Philanthropy

There’s really a lot one can do. Unfortunately if, like me, you have small kids you probably don’t have a lot of time. But check out your local soup kitchen. Around here everyone is so charity driven there’s a waiting list to volunteer there. However also check with your local city government. Usually they have lists of things that you can serve on. Finally check out the United Way which has tons of places you can serve with.

Outside of those check out nursing homes. We’ve brought our kids there since many of the older people enjoy small children coming by. It also instills into your children how important being charitable is as well as get a better understanding of community.

I’m a big proponent of doing service beyond just donating money. I admit most charities could use money. And you should do that. But also look around your local community for places to serve. There’s usually more than you expect. Plus there’s always just the “be a good neighbor” kind of thing. Shovel the sidewalks on your street and even other peoples driveways. (I’ve been very grateful when neighbors have done this for me) Find an area of town that has a lot of trash and organize a clean up. Or just take an hour a week and wander with a garbage bag making a dent. Usually these bottom up activities get other people doing it as well. And that leads to a better community.

(4) Computing

Get a Mac. Seriously. Yeah you’ll pay a few hundred dollars more but you won’t regret it. Mac’s aren’t quite as secure as is made out. But as a practical matter you won’t be getting trojans, viruses or have your computer turned into a zombie for the Russian mafia’s spam attacks.

If you have a Mac think about getting the following applications:

iKey: A great little macro recorder. I use it for the most part to run scripts. Applescript, while a horrible language, is amazingly useful. I have one that pauses iTunes for instance. I then have others that do complex things (such as auto-generate a FedEx mailing label and then an invoice/packing slip for orders to my business). It’s amazing what you can do with a little Applescript. Try to locate things you do all the time, break down the steps, and with iKey and Applescript automate it. If you’re more computer savvy consider learning Python and running appscript. It’s basically Applescript done via Python. I find it much more powerful to script in Python rather than Applescript.

Adobe Acrobat: I don’t just mean the reader. Get the full thing and a scanner. Then digitize all your bills and any correspondence that might remotely useful to access in the future. That way if you have a question you can just do a quick search in the Finder and find it. It’s amazingly useful to have backed up all these sorts of things. The scan is also OCRed so you can cut, paste and search. Now I’m a bit biased since whenever you search in Acrobat you’re actually running code I wrote. But still this is something everyone should do. Digitize important records. And with Leopard on a Mac accessing and using the data is very easy and flexible. (Much more so than under Windows or Linux)

Skim: The one weakness in Acrobat is the limitations in editing and annotating PDFs. You can do it but the interface isn’t terribly elegant. Often it’s pretty clumsy. This is a program that displays PDFs but lets you draw on them, put text on them all in a much easier and more flexible manner than Acrobat does. I heartily recommend it.

Quicksilver: An amazingly useful program. You type ctrl-space and then a few letters and it launches or switches to applications. It also learns so you are training it. So, for instances, I hit ctrl-space me and it launches Mars Edit. You can also use it to launch files, play tunes in iTunes and so forth. Check out this tutorial to see examples. It really speeds things up.

Circus Ponies Notebook: The best note taker for the Mac in my opinion. Makes doing outlines or taking notes at conferences a breeze. I’ve been recording audio notes with a mic on my iPod and downloading them into Notebok. It’s great. A new version is supposed to be out soon that’ll let you take freehand notes. i.e. draw like you do on paper. That’d almost make getting a little Wacom table worthwhile. The best thing about taking notes on a computer is how easy it is to search them. Effectively you always have the information available.

(5) Audio

Well, if you are into that sort of thing, check out XTorrent which is the current P2P music downloader of choice. I find myself pretty happy with the music I have right now. I’ve found myself the last couple of years listening to music less and less and to podcasts more and more.

My favorite podcasts are tech ones like TWIT, MacBreak Weekly, and Security Now!. Although I have quite a few. Then there’s science and philosophy ones like Philosophy Bites, The Philosophy Podcast, NPR Science Friday, and Nature Podcast. Then news and business like BusinessWeek, The Diane Rehm Show, Instapundit, and Wall Street Jounral this Morning. I find myself even listening to the radio less and less since I can usually find podcasts that match my interests and more importantly education level.

One problem I notice is that a lot of cool audio files are put on the web as video. Richard suggested a Windows YouTube extractor. Media Snap for OSX does the same thing but also lets you save YouTube videos as Quicktime to play on an iPod or TV.

(6) Exercise

Here’s a tip. If you have home exercise equipment like a stair climber or treadmill put a small monitor in front of it and plug your XBox or PS3 into the monitor. (You might need a cable adaptor) Then play video games when you exercise. My wife doesn’t like me playing video games so this gives me some justification to do it. Plus you end up exercising more. It’s not as good as going to the gym but probably will get you more exercise. Plus games like Halo are much harder when your jogging! It makes play kind of more fun if you can believe it.

Get rid of pop. Yeah I’m a hypocrite in this as I have a nasty diet Coke habit. But the carbonation is really bad both for losing weight but also for your ability to engage in physical activities. I really want to get back into rock climbing this summer so I have made it a goal to get off carbonation. It’ll really improve your energy.

Comments

6 Responses to “Useful Meme”

The Taltos books are great. I, of course, actually like the earlier ones. But the core series is well worth reading. In particular, Vlad Taltos really deepens as a character throughout the series as he begins to pay the price for and become disenchanted with his mafia-style youth.

I tried Altered Carbon a year or more ago but the very explicit (pornographic I would say) sex scenes turned me off. Morgan is an excellent writer and the book is set in a very interesting universe. Unfortunately, Morgan is at the extreme end of a very bad trend in modern science fiction: it’s all geared to adult audiences. The idea that a science fiction novel can capture the imagination of a teen (in a positive way) seems to have gone the way of the dodo. It’s a shame.

There were a few for sure. Although given the context at times (the seedy underside of San Francisco in the future) I think it fits. But yeah, a warning ought be in order that there is a lot of explicit talk in the book. Some you can skim over; others are more key to the plot.

William, could you explain what you mean by “I, of course, actually like the earlier ones.” I’m not quite sure what you mean by liking the early ones. Does that mean you dislike the later ones? Or do you mean the books in the Dumas style? And what is that “of course” indicating? Did I miss a post at your blog?

Ever since accidentally picking up book #5 (Phoenix) at the UF bookstore, I’ve been a huge fan of the Steven Brust books. The Khaavren Romances take some getting used to, but I found that they grew on me, particularly the odd stilted dialogue. The original series, though, I heartily recommend to all my friends. =)

I’ll have to try XTorrent out. I think I’m still in Demonoid withdrawal, and FileMP3.org has been down for over a week now.

I meant that I like the ones in the Dumas style. The “of course” is because I figured my aesthetic preferences as stated over the years in various fora you and I both frequent have betrayed my basic fussiness and predilection for backward looking experiments in fiction.

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My favorite podcast of the moment (although only 3 so far): Stephen Fry’s podgrams. Funny and witty, but also Fry nibbles at some interesting philosophical and aesthetic issues.

My other favorite podcast is the best music podcast around: Sound Opinions. I enjoy their record reviews and interviews, but they also do a good job of covering the music business (and it’s slow dive and the inherent contradictions and head-scratching moments that occur as they flounder about trying to figure out what to do about this whole downloading thing).

Ah. I’d forgotten about your enjoyment of Dumas. That was why I was confused.

Sorry - I’ve done so little blogging of late until recently that I’ve forgotten much.

I’m listening to Stephen Fry right now.

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