Author: Daniel

Daniel https://turnings.phrasewise.com/ In the 4th grade Daniel was asked to step in into the hall because he was coaching fellow students on a similarity assignment he provided the class. Since then, Daniel’s passion for helping people has propelled him to be a creative developer of software and systems, and a team coach who excels at successfully delivering business value. Daniel founded QuietlyHelping in 2009 in order to have a direct hand in helping families with the struggles of debilitating disease. QuietlyHelping is an organization of compassion and empathy that brings ease, comfort, smiles, laughter, healing, and love to people battling cancer and other diseases. Spare time activities include cycling, occasional work as a musician, woodworking, photography, and reading books he never got around to in school. Unsurprisingly, Daniel is able to cook minute rice in just under thirty seconds.
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Jason Alexander

Jason Alexander:

Best piece I’ve read in the aftermath of the Aurora massacre. I agree with every word.

[I can’t agree with every word because some of the words are factually wrong. However, I agree with the following:

“But this is not the time for reasonable people, on both sides of this issue, to be silent. We owe it to the people whose lives were ended and ruined yesterday to insist on a real discussion and hopefully on some real action.

In conclusion, whoever you are and wherever you stand on this issue, I hope you have the joy of family with you today. Hold onto them and love them as best you can. Tell them what they mean to you. Yesterday, a whole bunch of them went to the movies and tonight their families are without them. Every day is precious. ”

What Jason suggests is the one thing that we can do, because I do not believe that there is an answer in Washington for this problem, and never will be.]

Source: Daring Fireball

Speaker for the Dead

Speaker for the Dead:

At his funeral, I would have been called on to tell a story and would have had an impossible choice. The people wouldn’t have understood if I told the truth, even a very abbreviated truth. It would have been unfair to make them listen to it. They don’t need to know. But I am a writer, and I plan to, at some point, write this story. Without having a name for it at the time, I can now say I wanted to Speak for the Dead, and not tell a fake story. So I chose not to go.

[I loved the Ender books since I read them in early in my college days. And the notion of Speaking the Truth was a powerful one for me as well. Dave made a really difficult choice, atmo. It’s the sort of decision that makes me rethink integrity and its place in our lives, and what it is at a fundamental level. There’s a story I’d like to write one day.]

Source: Scripting News

The real reason Marissa Mayer left Google: She had to

The real reason Marissa Mayer left Google: She had to:

As a sidenote, it’s interesting that most of the press (although not this piece) has focused on Mayer’s gender. I look forward to the time when female CEOs are so commonplace that a new one is no longer newsworthy.

In Mayer’s case, it’s also worth asking why so much coverage hasn’t focused on a different issue. Every time Apple loses one of its Senior VPs, we see stories questioning Apple’s leadership and future, suggesting that there may be significant inner turmoil.

Well, Google just lost one of its top people.

[Yeah to both points.]

Source: Marco.org

Shep on Bass – Blog – Interview: Janek Gwizdala

Shep on Bass – Blog – Interview: Janek Gwizdala:

“Well what I’m going for, before you get anything in the signal chain, is control over my sound with my fingers. No EQ on either the amp or the bass, just a range of sonic motion using the wood, the strings, and my hands. Sometimes I’m successful, sometimes not, but that’s the concept at least.

[Amen. Still teaching students this for 30+ years of electric guitar playing. Sound via fingers… all else will follow.]

The End of Not Knowing

The End of Not Knowing:

Without even really thinking about it, I slid open my iPhone that was mounted on the dashboard playing music. I fired up the TomTom app, picked my destination. In a couple of seconds, the phone beeped to show that the obstruction was 1.1 miles from my current position and that the delay to my journey would be approximately four minutes.

It’s not that GPS navigation systems with live traffic data are particularly new; it was just the contrast between my experience and the frustrated, anxious driver in the next lane that made me think about this. It felt like I had a sixth sense: data.

[I know that feeling and I agree. Also, the phones have quickly gotten better at this stuff than the gear installed in your car. The auto designers ought to be building iPad holders and such into the dashboard, and connectivity for GPS/Cell antennas etc. There’d be a far greater return for the car owner, and you could still charge a hefty amount for it…]

Source: Fraser Speirs

Apple and the EPEAT, sitting in a tree…

Apple and the EPEAT, sitting in a tree… – The Next Web:

Let me shake my translation ball one last time. “Whatever standards we’re going to use to test the Retina MacBook Pro will be updated to take into account Apple’s fancy new manufacturing techniques.”

There are, Frisbee is careful to point out, rare cases where a product is added to the registry, fails to meet standards, and is forced to be removed. Can you see that happening to Apple?

[I’m not sure if I smell a rat here or not. If the standard doesn’t keep up, then what’s the point. But if the standard moves to accommodate then what good is *that*. Most likely a rat says my more cynical self.]

Amazon same-day delivery: How the e-commerce giant will destroy local retail.

Amazon same-day delivery: How the e-commerce giant will destroy local retail.:

Why would Amazon give up its precious tax advantage? This week, as part of an excellent investigative series on the firm, the Financial Times’ Barney Jopson reports that Amazon’s tax capitulation is part of a major shift in the company’s operations. Amazon’s grand strategy has been to set up distribution centers in faraway, low-cost states and then ship stuff to people in more populous, high-cost states. When I order stuff from Amazon, for instance, it gets shipped to California from one of the company’s massive warehouses in Kentucky or Nevada.

But now Amazon has a new game. Now that it has agreed to collect sales taxes, the company can legally set up warehouses right inside some of the largest metropolitan areas in the nation. Why would it want to do that? Because Amazon’s new goal is to get stuff to you immediately—as soon as a few hours after you hit Buy. (Disclosure: Slate participates in Amazon Associates, an “affiliate” advertising plan that rewards websites for sending customers to the online store. This means that if you click on an Amazon link from Slate—including a link in this story—and you end up buying something, Amazon will send Slate a percentage of your final purchase price.)

[This and the credit card swipe fee changes (which will be bungled by most greedy people/businesses) are serious game changers for retail operations.]

Hövding Invisible Bicycle Helmet

Hövding Invisible Bicycle Helmet:

The process from design to device took seven years of intensive research and development, recording hundreds of hours of cycling footage and studying accident recreations with the Swedish Stunt Group and crash test dummies. Research has proven that shock absorption from an airbag is actually much greater than that of the polymer foam inside a traditional bicycle helmet. With this research data, Haupt and Alstin were able to acquire the proper government certifications needed to sell bicycle helmets

[Interesting. Wonder if this could work for the cycling style snobs?]

Lance Armstrong: Victim?

Lance Armstrong: Victim?:

But it’s not the what of this case that bothers me, it’s the how. Ends do not always justify means, and sometimes, in order to preserve higher values, you have to let guilty parties walk. In this instance, I’m less concerned about proving that Lance’s yellow jerseys are smudged than with the fact that USADA keeps mutating into what looks like a law-enforcement body, which it isn’t.

USADA, which participated in the federal investigation, isn’t part of the U.S. government and isn’t a judicial body. Newspaper stories tend to shorthand it as a “quasi-governmental” entity, but that’s not accurate. USADA is a private non-profit corporation hired to manage the anti-doping program for American athletes who hope to participate in the Olympics as well as various local, regional, national, and international competitions. And it’s gotten out of control.

[Worse yet, there’s nothing in this for anyone (outside the folks with the vendetta). It’s all ancient history from a sporting sense, and if you care about who winds up being listed as the winner of the races, there probably isn’t anyone in the top ten that I think was clean in those days. This simply seems predatory. Just when they thought Lance was gonna have to deal with the same sort of stuff Barry Bonds etc. did, there was no case. Now this smack of anger and retribution. Stop wasting everyone’s time and money. It’s over.]

[and…]

Think about that for a moment. The current anti-doping superstructure started out as an effort to prevent cheating in privately run games. Now we’re talking about Interpol and international treaties and fudging American legal principles.

That’s why, if experts are correct—and Armstrong’s lawyers are setting up an attack on USADA’s methods and authority—we could be in for a big and very important battle. Even if you are a Lance hater, and it pains you to think that he doped and might get away with it, you might want to pull for him this time.

[This reeks. And it has nothing to do with Armstrong. It’s fundamentally wrong.]