by Alan Langford | 2011-04-13 | Observations on Everything
It’s probably pretty obvious from this blog that my political philosophy most closely aligns with the Liberal Party. What’s less obvious is that it’s hardly a tight fit. Its more of an alignment of averages. Some probably perceive me as radical left (for example I believe in a guaranteed annual income for all Canadians), some as radical right (along with guaranteed income comes the cancellation of many social assistance programs). I believe in competition, but I don’t subscribe to the interpretation that competition requires traditional capitalism. (more…)
by Alan Langford | 2011-02-08 | Observations on Everything
About a year ago, I came up with the idea of doing a series of video interviews with Canadian entrepreneurs. Hardly a unique idea, but my take on it was to focus on the experience and process of starting and running your own business instead of just talking about what the business does.
I subsequently put a fair bit of effort into getting everything set up: build a site, bootstrap a platform… all in my “spare” time. Then I stalled. That platform will never be ready because it suffers from the chicken and egg syndrome. There’s no site without content, and there’s no content without a site. Frustrated, I’m solving that problem by redefining it away. This post is the egg. (more…)
by Alan Langford | 2011-01-25 | Featured, Observations on Everything
The theft of perfectly functional manufactured goods for scrap value has become a serious issue over the past decade. The number of stories of small to medium scale theft, primarily of copper, has gone from rarity to ubiquitous. The United States Federal Bureau of Investigation has declared copper theft a critical threat to infrastructure. The size of the problem has grown because the recovered value of many easily recycled raw materials is exceeds the risk of getting caught.
This can be generalized. If raw materials aren’t cheap relative to wages, civilization collapses by dismantling itself. This is a grave matter, and I find the implications profound. (more…)
by Alan Langford | 2011-01-14 | It's a Code, Code World
I Twittered this but it deserves more permanence. I’ve been using it for years and unfortunately it still summarizes my frustration with browser based Javascript “WYSIWYG” text editors:
WYSIKSWYGBNQ = What You See Is Kinda Sorta What You Get But Not Quite.
by Alan Langford | 2011-01-08 | Observations on Everything
I’ve been engaged with social media since forever. Always found it fascinating, even exciting. I really like Twitter. Now Quora seems interesting, but in a semi-social-media sort of way. There’s a bit of a shift happening. A lot of “early adopters” have been doing the Quora thing for a while and now it’s on the upswing of that familiar knee function of exponential growth.
Meanwhile, Twitter seems a little less vibrant. Is it because all the cool kids are playing with Quora? Partially. After all anyone with a real job only has so much time to dicker with this stuff, unless you’re a rare beast: a Professional Social Media Guru that’s a real job. So maybe Twitter is a little less shimmering with excitement because really interesting people are spending less time on it.
But that isn’t all. That only explains part of it. (more…)
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