Design Patterns stands as an programming classic. Although the book is from the 90’s, I’d heard from gurus that this is a seminal work. I have had to strap the seatbelt in–it’s a difficult read. Probably one of the meatiest introductions ever written. Was this intended to scare away the uninitiated?

Languages used in examples include C++, SmallTalk, and Eiffel. At this point, I am not even looking for Design Patterns in other languages, native languages such as Visual Basic. The hope here is to be versed and to converse in the universal concepts and applications. Classes should be used, inherited in such a way as to make the most efficient systems possible.

It’s a steep learning climb. I’m compelled to take it and apply it in as much work as possible.

If you smell something burning, look in my general direction.

Ever since first hearing about Really Simple Syndication (RSS), I have been looking at ways to use it–not only to prevent email clutter, but to have access to the content that appeals to me. At the moment, Google Reader is my tool of choice for subscribing and reading to RSS feeds.

There are some terrific items in my reader now, and at this point it occurred to me that sharing a few of my favorite articles from my reader should be highlighted. From that, I decided to set up a series of entries highlighting some strong, inspiring items discovered through the reader. Not from mass media, per se, but right from my own rss subscription decisions. And thus begins the RSS Finds Series.

Writing has, for many years, been a passion of mine. Writing of all kinds: short stories, poetry, songs, essays, reviews, all of the above and then some. Naturally, my feeder choices include items on writing and music.  This morning, BloggingMuses had an entry called 11 Irresistible Reasons to Write Everyday.  It sounded intriguing.  Now I’m still a fan of hard copy; but not everything gets committed to it from my screen.  If it makes it to paper, that’s saying something.  I printed out this entry, thinking of my wife, thinking of what a lovely, concise bit of creative inspiration and encouragement it brings.

With each and every day, a cumulative mass of information weighs uber-heavy on us.  In Irresistible was found a humorous, insightful list of why to stay connected to yourself, to hold onto that voice that is inside.  The author, Christine Kane, has a solid story and credibility.  Thank you, Christine.  I’ll certainly keep reading, and perhaps I’ll catch a show.  Kudos!

Getting Things Done, otherwise known as GTD–this is a tool which, hopefully, will help me restore order in my life. As each day comes, as each new piece of information surrounds and drowns, more and more it’s essential to learn how to deal with it, process it. I’ve got the book and am going head first in to making the program work.

GTD seems to be a movement–but is that all social media hype? I first found it on the web. Someone blogged it. Maybe it was a blink, or a digg. Wherever the post was, it proved intriguing, and I researched the program further. The reports and dialogue convinced me to grab the book and the Outlook plugin. The plugin is by no means perfect, but I moved to this after the Franklin Covey PlanPlus Outlook plugin completely bombed for me.

Using the Covey nomenclature, a paradigm shift is definitely in progress. GTD’s author, David Allen, developed a Workflow Diagram, which is on my wall. I refer to it often and will have it memorized soon enough. It helps you deal with overwhelm and develop a trusted system for retrieving the information you need, when you need it. More on this soon. Quite busy building files–and despite the assertion that all of our “stuff” will be electronic, there’s still an abundance of paper in my world. Off to conquer it.

Way back when, when the Year2000 was going to kill us all, I wrote a song about it. Here it is:

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Podcast: Play in new window

I re-encountered one of my favorite quotes recently.  The quote was on the back of a business card:

“The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs.  There’s also a negative side.”

Might this apply to the internet?  And with the largest music companies striking deals with myspace, might this not now be seeping into cyberspace?  I think it’s a myth that big music is not fully aware of the necessity of playing on the web.  With the ever-shrinking market for music, and cd sales tanking even further, there’s no other choice.

There’s hope for indies out here, the “good people” if you will, to find their niche and work within what appear to be well-established paths to success.  Any way to connect with fans is the way to go, however, web or no web!

Thought I’d head into a little reading this morning, via my iGoogle setup. Fished around, read a great Frida Kahlo quote via a Motivational Quotes gadget (you’ll need to have iGoogle). Then headed to the Scobleizer feed. In the midst of his recommendation to “turn off the internet”, he linked to a site called twittervision. If there’s anyone whose links I check out, it’s Mr. Scoble.

You could call it a glorified chat room if you’d like, a pointless exercise in assembling feeds, or tweets if you will; but this is an amazing work of technology. A very quick page source view revealed a bunch of javascript links. I was thinking it might be flash (there’s a 3-d view that is Flash, but it appears that “Classic View” is a google maps call). Too funny to call this “classic”. I thought classic meant 25 years old. Tell me this is 25 years old! <lol>

Well, I’ve got to check out more tweets. Hey, it may be easy to impress me–this blows me away. MegaMashup. OK, real work to do now.

The link came a while back from my friend Doak:  To the video of this last lecture, taken from an Oprah Winfrey show.  The lecturer, Randy Pausch, inspired completely, and now this experience is expounded upon in the new book The Last Lecture.  I had not known of this custom among orators to perform such a lecture, but learning of it let me appreciate the group more.  What a hold the video has taken, millions of views.

One of my favorite performing songwriters, John Gorka, has a line in a song–”get your compass and your sharpest knife, because people love you when they know you’re leaving soon”, and the situation reminds me of this line, the truth of it.  Pausch admits that the dying has so much to do with the attention.  The self-help literature talks about how you’d like to end up, what would people say at your funeral.  This lecture relates to that, though somewhat in a reversal of roles.  People love you also, or they have to reiterate it, when they know they’re leaving soon.  Mortality is such a core part of our world.  I feel more alive seeing, hearing and reading this brave set of words.

It has been one long hiatus from blogging here. But it goes on, for real.

The decision’s made–for now, WordPress is my blogging platform. The theme may change, but what should remain constant is my commitment to put some positive, insightful words down, try to share views on this ever-changing web/life/afterlife continuum, if there is such a thing. <g>

Thinking the last post’s been January, the last few months have been exciting, with new projects, opportunities. What joy lies ahead for us, in this presidential election year. How will the internet affect the outcome this year–or does it have an effect at all? My thinking is that the elections are decided on a different kind of net, a covert one. But I digress with conspiracy and secrecy theories.

The stable version of WP 2.5 is looking quite solid to me. As far as getting truly acquainted with all of the changes, I’m not there yet. If anything, there’s a little bit more crispness to the interface. I don’t think I’ll wind up doing any A/B comparisons. For now it feels solid. There’s always the WP Docs area–it’s definitely helped. The upgrade was straightforward, and in this nanocorner of the blogging world, upgrades have gone from 2.1 to 2.3 to 2.5, with a migration or two between hosting areas. All relatively painless.