Some metaphors feel so clichéd that you avoid making use of them – even if they are true to the core. Gardening has been likened to many phenomena. Programming may be like gardening. Picking the best ideas to guide your work and life may be. Once the first of them appeared out of nothing. A…
Tag: Random Thoughts
The Future of Small Business?
If I would be asked which technology or ‘innovation’ has had the most profound impact on the way I work I would answer: Working remotely – with clients and systems I hardly ever see. 20 years ago I played with modems, cumbersome dial-in, and Microsoft’s Netmeeting. Few imagined yet, that remote work will once be…
Random Things I Have Learned from My Web Development Project
It’s nearly done (previous episode here). I have copied all the content from my personal websites, painstakingly disentangling snippets of different ‘posts’ that were physically contained in the same ‘web page’, re-assigning existing images to them, adding tags, consolidating information that was stored in different places. Raking the Virtual Zen Garden – again. (Voice from…
About 14,5 Random Thoughts on Blogging and Social Media
I have been blogging on WordPress.com since nearly three years, and I noted the following: Blogs have a half life. Many decay after 2 years. Blogs I had followed had been deleted, or bloggers had suddenly stopped publishing without notice. There are tons of single-post-blogs. A user-friendly editor motivates people to get started. But blogging does…
On Resisting the Bait
I don’t mean click-bait. I mean write-bait. That article that wants you to launch your 2.000 words rhetoric missile, and click the red button: Publish. I am pondering about one of the most successful genres clicked and shared on social media: a blend of popular psychology, life hacking, and business wisdom, perhaps enriched by trusted…
The More Content You Have Created
… the more time you need for curating. My first ever attempt at tweeting an aphorism. But it is true for me, and it defines the way I use online spaces. As a contributor of online content, I am operating in different modes: Creator, with emphasis on creating something original – including unintended re-invention of…
Looking Foward to ‘The Glass Cage’ – Random Ambiguous Thoughts
On September 29, Nicholas Carr’s book The Glass Cage – Automation and Us will be released. I have quoted Carr’s writings often on this blog, and his essay All Can Be Lost: The Risk of Putting Our Knowledge in the Hands of Machines might anticipate some of the ideas he is going to explore in…
On Learning
Some years ago I was busy with projects that required a lot of travelling but I also needed to stay up-to-date with latest product features and technologies. When a new operating system was released a colleague asked how I could do that – without having time for attending trainings. Without giving that too much thought, and having my…
Blog Cleanup – Raking the Virtual Zen Garden Again
I am proud owner of a full season of Monk on DVD, and as a child nobody ever had to tell me to tidy up my room. I indulged not only in cleaning my Lego(*) world with a fine paint brush but I rather re-organized all my belongings in Feng-Shui-meets-OCD-style quite often. (*) Lego is…
Gödel, Escher, Bach, and Strange Loops: Nostalgia and Random Thoughts
I am curious – who read the book, too? Did you like it? I read it nearly 30 years ago and I would also tag it one of the most influential books I read as a teenager. [This might grow into a meandering and lengthy post with different (meta-)levels – given the subject of the post I…
Stargate: Succumb to the Power of the Ritual
Thanks for your prayers, voodoo magic, encouraging tweets or other tweaking the fabric of our multiverse: Yesterday I have passed my final exams and defence – I did very well, and I am a Master of Science in Sustainable Energy Systems now. As the sensationalist title indicates I tried to play it cool but finally…
I Screwed It up – I Feel Stupid
I had mistyped the title of the previous blog post. I failed to get a complicated word right the first time: En-tre-pre-neur-ship. And WordPress doesn’t spell-check titles (and I didn’t paste it into Word and spell-check, as usual). So there is one more reason to ridicule me (<– this is an allusion to the intro…
So-Called Zen Capitalism and Random Thoughts on Entrepreneurship
In this blog and in the comments’ section of other blogs I have repeatedly ridiculed: management consultants, new age-y self help literature and simple-minded soft skills trainers. Let alone all other life-forms in the lower left quadrant of the verbal skills vs. quant skills diagram. Now it is time that I give you a chance…
Missing Policies for the Mad Tea Party and What to Learn from The Jabberwocky
I am trying to re-gain control over the blog award nomination process, or I pretend to do so. postmoderndonkey had called it a Mad Tea Party of a nomination process – and right he was. You may accuse me of making this blog the strange attractor of a self-referential loop of weird referrals to itself…
Liebster Blog Award: This Time I Try to Respond in a More Normal Way
It happened again – I have been bestowed a blog award despite the way I handled my last nomination. This time I will respond in a different way. I – the Subversive El(k)ement – will adhere to the rules! Geeks, please bear with me though! I still think that blog awards are just ridiculous chain…
Blogging Anniversary with Post No. 63. Equal to: 42 Plus (42 Divided by 2)
Captain’s log: In my time zone, it is now March 24, 2013, 00:16. [Voice from the future – March 2019. Some links don’t work anymore. In order to preserve the spirit of this post and to make my life easy, I will leave the web.archive.org-ifying exercise to the reader. But those links will be marked…
On the Hierarchy of Needs and Needless Things
Yesterday The Curtain Raiser has reminded that a well-versed blogger should celebrate the first blogging anniversary. I hit the Publish button first on March 2012, 24, so I should consider writing something pivotal in three days. But I am not there yet, rather the opposite. Having just announced on Twitter and Google+ that my posts…
Crowdsourcing of Art: Poetry from Search Terms
Since I had access to the log files of my first hosted web server (in the past millennium) I had been addicted to analyzing my log files – browsing text files with a simple text editor. In particular, search terms submitted to search engines had intrigued me. I know I am not the only one. People (……
Less Irony
I am asking myself: Am I in need of Less Irony? Or does the ironic tone of my most recent posts resemble My Real Voice more than the solemnity of the posts I published this spring and summer? This is an open question, and writing this blog and related websites is an open project to explore this. However, irony…
elkemental Force 