I am excited as in a few weeks I’m getting a new desk that adjust so I can work standing up or sitting down. I really like working standing up as it feels more focused and I seem to get more project based assignments done. At our old apartment we had a counter in the kitchen that was tall enough I could work standing up and I spent a few weeks working from there. And after that I decided I wanted to make the change. Standing up is supposed to have quite a few health benefits too, here are a few articles on it:

37 Signals on Standing Versus Sitting
New York Times On Sitting and Standing While Working
Businessweek Your Office Chair Is Killing You

That last article has a great title…

ETA to the new desk’s arrival is about two weeks and I’ll post how it goes then. I’m going to use the old desk as a work area in our upstairs living room for Joel and I.

Still super busy so can’t post much but I highly recommend this article on how to grow rich using a charter city idea. Very cool idea built on it’s success in history.

I’m not really sure what independent art means? Isn’t all art independent or has it been taken over? But I do love this site and their work, check out Resist Today, it features the work of a small group of visual artist who sell prints, wallets, bags, shirts, pillows, etc. Just awesome awesome designs, here are a few:

Check out their products at Resist Today, I wish them luck!

Here is a nice dueling paragraph:

Health insurer WellPoint blames the Great Recession and rising medical costs for its planned 39 percent rate increase for some California customers. To President Barack Obama, however, it’s Exhibit A in his campaign to revive the health care overhaul.

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, who received the company’s explanation in a letter Thursday, said “it remains difficult to understand” how premium increases of that size by can be justified when WellPoint Inc. reported a $2.7 billion profit in the last quarter of 2009.

Read more here.

Of course their CA subsidiary could be loosing money but the MAIN POINT HERE should be that insurance companies are good businesses in that they are TRYING TO MAKE MONEY. I don’t blame them for that, I blame our government because they either need to slap some draconian laws down or they need to take over the health care industry. Health care is a right not a profit making industry.

Just read this story over at TechCrunch, here is a quick summary:

Developers take note: if you’ve got a mashup built off of Craigslist’s data, don’t even think about showing it to anyone who works there. At least, that’s the lesson learned by developer Romy Maxwell, who says that Craigslist has blocked both his mashup and every single project built on Yahoo Pipes a few days after a friendly Email exchange he had with Craigslist founder Craig Newmark.

Hopefully this is all a big misunderstanding but I doubt it. Craigslist is a great idea that was made, has been a huge success, and has been left foundering for the last few years with zero new innovation. So much more could be done, alerts for when new items are posted, better searching, official support for mashups of housing on google maps, requiring people enter an address so the above works. All this would make it a much easier to use website.

I hope someone comes along and crushes them who has better features and an API.

I’ve been meaning to make this post for a while, I just wanted to say thanks to the Guinness Enterprise Center in Dublin Ireland. I was working remotely in Ireland a long time ago and they helped me get a small office, setup high speed internet for VOIP, and a lot more! They were absolutely fantastic and in particular I wanted to thank Dolores Dempsey for her help.

This is a really great center that helps Irish people start companies and they do fantastic work!

I went to San Francisco last month for a conference and just fun. It was a really cool city and I had a great time, I could easily live there!

I had an inspired idea last night, how fun would it be to open a bar called the “Burka Bar” where you are required to wear a burka! The vision: lines of burka wearing men and women doing flaming shots of delicious! Plus you don’t know who anyone is which adds to the mystery and appeal. Fear not tall people, I will happily keep an 8 foot burka in stock for when Shaq visits.

I might test first with Burka Night. Note to those lacking a sense of humor, please don’t blow me up, or my bar/house/car/family.

Man I am so tired of hearing this bullshit, it sounds like Obama is being forced to drop the government health care plan and that fucking sucks. Health care is a right not something to make a profit off of. If there is any reason why our country is entering a decline and eventual demise it is because of the right wing’s ability to spread disinformation and not to enter any debate with facts. Who the hell wants to kill old people? Nobody, but if you can extend someone’s life by a week yet that procedure and similar are costing everyone in the country 40% than fuck old people, they can pay for that out of their pockets. I’m all for denying reality (friends will attest) but death is not something to be afraid of, and I’m tired of the right / christian right thinking you have to keep people alive no matter what. It is such a deeply ethical and personal question but as a society its going to come down to cost, insurance companies right now screw you so how the hell can the government do once. Not a glowing endorsement but I trust our government a lot more than private insurance companies who screw everyone I know over pricing and options.

As a small business owner whose team works remote it is ridiculous to think American can compete with the Aussies/NZ/UK/Rest of the world if we don’t provide health care to our citizens, espicially when our health care industry is 100% profit driven. I can hire quality people in Aussie and Europe and don’t have to worry about paying for their health care. America still has the biggest pool of quality labor but that is going to change as salaries have to compensate for health care that is going through the roof. Eventually it will make more sense for us to higher a full time doctor than buy health care (just half kidding).

On a personal level I see my dad screwed by the lack of affordable health care in that he can’t retire until he can get on a government plan at X age. And I personally have been at the hospital, asked how much something was by someone who does that procedure 20x times a day, and been told he has no idea as they outsource pricing. Crazy? Yes that is crazy. If you hook up someone to check their heart you should know what it costs for everyone. Instead some other agency checks your background and insurance and makes up some price.

This country is going to shit, luckily countries don’t matter any more and smart people are going to go to nations that provide them with what they need. I’m just waiting for Singapore or another smart country to start giving citizenship and free health care to people that are smart or making above X a year. Watch for a mass exodus of Americans over the next 100 years, I’m all for being a free agent citizen. Being American is a set of core values and beliefs, it is not tied to a government or geographic location.

/rant,
Ben

I decided to go to the Defrag Conference November 11th and 12th as it sounds really cool and is hosted here in Denver. Time to take advantage of living in a big city! The ticket was $995 so I’m hoping it was worth it, sounds like a cool group of people and I’m really interested in the topic, plus the blog posts spawned by the previous year all were fascinating reads.

I just got back from spending a week in Seattle, very cool city and had a fantastic time hanging out with friends and playing ultimate. I also crept across the border to Vancouver Canada which was impressive.

I was lucky to snag this link and you have to check this out! A company in Japan (of course) is coming out with something they are calling an “Augmented Reality” Dennoh Figure Alice (aka Virtual Doll). So how does this work and why do I care?

Basically when you guys this you are getting a small cube about 2 inches by 2 inches. You then install some software on your computer and point your webcam at this cube. Then on top of this cube is a fully animated Alice Maid/Girlfriend type figure. You can then interact with her by using the included squares and “virtual tongs”, which is a weird concept as you are using physical items to interact with something virtual. Being from Japan you get to slap her, take her clothes off, and all that snazz. For pictures of how this all works go here and there is a video below.

I think this is just amazing and really reminds me of a couple of sci fi books I have read lately. I think this might really be something we adopt in the future future as it is an awesome blending of reality and virtual. Just imagine walking down the street as you normally do but you are wearing glasses that can see this augmented reality and gloves or a couple embedded sensors in your fingers in order to interact with this second layer of reality. So stores might have cubes out front or whatever they want that has these figures that then interact with you, or answer basic questions, store times, or even could run transactions. Or public information cubes that give you directions, call for help, etc. Just amazing possibilities, especially as basic AI gets better! Would even be cool to have one of these sitting on your desk with a basic API and be able to view it with those glasses and feed it commands (adds personality to the tech).

Just super awesome, I’m trying to see if I can import one to test with. Here is a video below:

An article I wrote on PageRank sculpting is a finalist for a 2009 Semmy in the SEO category! If you want to read the article it is here or you can view the other great articles that made it here.

You can vote for my article to win here too!

I applied for a 1 year work holiday visa to Australia and got it about 7 days ago… My plan was to play Ultimate Frisbee in Melbourne while traveling throughout Asia while working on a new web project with Joel. But plans change…. About 3 days ago a business opportunity popped up that I’ve been wanting to do for the last years. So and we have decided to pursue that for it. So for now I’ll be staying in the USA and trying to decide on a location to move too, more details to come as everything gets locked down and the contract finished.

I decided to cancel the GMAT I scheduled for October and not pursue business school right now. I took the GMAT in Egypt but wasn’t happy with my score and would need to raise it to be admitted into a really good school. I decided I was pretty excited about some upcoming work projects we are doing and I’d be happier working on those for the next few years. Plus I won’t have to spend a lot of money on a MBA badge. It has a lot of pros and cons but for right now I’m going to put it on hold.