Sound investment planning for the Apocalypse. Not a lot from IT Conversations piques my interest these days, but I'll tune in to most anything about the Singularity. This enjoyable presentation by PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel from the 2007 Singularity Summit titled "Financial Markets and the Singularity" suggests that we might as well invest aggressively in potential paradigm-changing technologies, cause if the singularity goes bad we're all in the crapper anyway. Here's an excerpt from a Wired.com article on Thiel's thesis which captured his presentation. "Leading up to the singularity, Thiel described 'a world full of massive manias, booms and busts on a scale unprecedented in all of history.' In essence, he argues that each of these booms represent different bets on the singularity, or at least on various things that are proxies for it, like globalization."
1.4 stands for FUN. BlogEngine.NET 1.4 was released yesterday. Congrats to Mads Kristensen and the rest of the core team. Some of the new features include a universal database provider, drag-n-drop widget framework, subcategories, better performance (better performance?), and more. Al Nyveldt, who does a great job with documentation and instructional BE.NET screencasts, put together a BE.NET 1.4 Installation Screencast and an Upgrade Guide.
Beach Week Coming Up! Saturday we fly for Raleigh, North Carolina and from there to Holden Beach for Beach Week 2008. This is pretty much an annual event for us, going back to the early 90's when we lived in North Carolina. Holden Beach is a quiet, residential beach community tucked away between Myrtle Beach and Wilmington where we rent a beachfront house and eat a lot of shrimp. DBVT.COM will probably be quiet as well, since WiFi access is unlikely. Here are Beach Week photos from 2006.
Ain't my Rhapsody. Funny how some companies just rub you the wrong way. Real Networks is like that for me, as I pretty much hate everything they do. I checked out Rhapsody for the full song play feature and MP3s. I needed to setup an account. Cool. A free account allows play of 25 tracks each month. Smart, actually. I get access, start liking the service and I start paying for it. "Your account is created!" So I go to play a song, I have to login again (lame), then I'm greeted with this message before I listen to a single song, "Your set of 25 full-length plays has ended, but if you upgrade now, running out of music will never be a problem again!" Yeap, just something else to hate from Real Networks.
The Song of the Day - Pilgrim by Eric Clapton. I first heard Pilgrim during the closing credits of Lethal Weapon 4, at the fade-out from the production album compiled during the making of the four films. "Why Can't We Be Friends" was playing for the production photos, and the transition into Pilgrim worked beautifully. Clapton's little known Pilgrim was the perfect song to end the Lethal Weapon series and, it turns out, this Everyman Links episode.