Louis Pasteur is credited with the observation that chance can only help the well-prepared mind. I also think that my long string of lucky breaks can be credited to my mode of paying attention: I look at funny things and never hesitate to ask questions. Most people would not have noticed the dirty blackboard, or looked at the article that my uncle gave me because he was not interested.

via Edge: THE FATHER OF LONG TAILS — Interview with Benoît Mandelbrot by Hans Ulrich Obrist. For extra credit and an exercise in brevity and clarity, link or write in the comments the simplest definition of “fractal” as used by Mandelbrot and Obrist in the interview.

Murphy Schmurphy

Travel

“Today looks like it’s going to be a long day.” Oh Fate! Such a cruel and fickle force. It started shortly after the last post when I missed the shuttle to transport me across the UH campus to my car. Because of some sort of irregularity in the bus schedule, or perhaps just horrid management, instead of having a bus come by say every 7 or 8 minutes, they have two come every 15 minutes. Of course that is just for the Blue route, the other three routes just happened to have their buses come at the same time, so it takes forever for everyone to load up. The loading was made even longer by the fact that we had to load a wheelchair up too. Now I’m not complaining about that, as no one can help that situation, but I’m just pointing out that it is an amazing set of circumstances.

So I make it to my car. I can’t write the rest of the story, because it’s too painful. Too make a painful story short, I stopped to pick something up, left, left my wallet, went back, and when I started to leave for the second time my car would not start. So here I sit awaiting the white trucks of AAA to pick me up and tow me home. The timing couldn’t be better either, I have two important appointments this afternoon and I was planning to go to Austin tomorrow.Times like this I try my best to see the bright side of things, try to find of ray of light in this gloomy day. I guess things could be worse, but I don’t want to tempt Fate, or Murphy, again.

Update: Ray of light — it was just a minor battery problem.

The world is blue at its edges and in its depths. This blue is the light that got lost. Light at the blue end of the spectrum does not travel the whole distance from the sun to us. It disperses among the molecules of the air, it scatters in water. Water is colorless, shallow water appears to be the color of whatever lies underneath it, but deep water is full of this scatted light, the purer the water the deeper the blue. The sky is blue for the same reason, but the blue at the horizon, the blue of land that seems to be disolving into the sky, is a deeper, dreamier, melancholy blue, the blue at the farthest reaches of the places where you see for miles, the blue of distance. This light that does not touch us, does not travel the whole distance, the light that gets lost, gives us the beauty of the world, so much of which is in the color blue.

From A Field Guide to Getting Lost by Rebecca Solnit.

Just Saying Hi

Humor

I would like to take this opportunity to recognize some of the wonderful visitors to this site. While I love you all, sometimes I get the most amusement out of people who come here from search engines. Since I don’t actually know who these net travelers are, here’s an open letter. Warning: some of these searches are a little off-color, so be careful which ones you click on. As of this posting though I’m either in the top ten results or on the page I link to.

To why does my optical mouse move by itself? — You’re obviously having issues beyond what my simple review can address, so I would recommend seeking the assistance of a professional. When you find out what’s causing it, let me know, because I’m as curious now as you are. Is there any event that coincided with this newfound movement?

To sexy photos josh lucas, josh lucas pic, and the other Josh Lucas searches — Stop bothering me! Though I must admit my friends Lucas and Josh, whose pictures these people see when they click on my site from this search, get a kick out of it. (Josh Lucas is some sort of actor.) Good thing I don’t have any friends named Britney.

To kayak naked — Whatever floats your boat. In a matter of speaking.

To sexy photo google — I found these pictures of the Google people, but I’m not sure if that’s what you’re looking for.

To “best buy” extended warranty opinion laptop — I had good experience taking my laptop back, but just don’t try it with a camera.

To enron women nude — Get a life! You’re on the twelfth page of results! No one looks that far!

To matt sony — Sony has me in a death vise; I love their products and I can’t stop. Run, while you still can.

To “apple sticker” — Okay this one is a trick because I do know who this is, because she sent me an email. It’s Leander Kahney, a writer for Wired, who’s working on a book called “Cult of Mac”. The picture she found (on the tenth page!) is going to be in the book as part of a chapter on Apple stickers. Pretty cool, huh?

To meaning of clie — Communications, Link, Information, and Entertainment. Your guess is as good as mine as to where the accent came from in Sony Clié.

To first day of school i was nervous about the first day because…….however i soon realized…… — I like someone who knows what they’re looking for.

To ihatelongdomainnames (German?) — Me too.

To movie quote ahhh the lowercase a — I have no idea what this means.

To adjusting toshiba laptop screen brightness — On my old 5005 There was a function key, and if you pressed that and one of the function keys at the top of your keyboard. Two of the function keys had little suns on them, and those were the ones you could adjust the brightness of your screen with. Also cranking the brightness down really lets you ink every bit of battery life out of it.

Okay, I think that’s enough vanity surfing for the day!

The problem lies with the business schools which are at fault. What we’ve done in America is to define profitability in terms of percentages. So if you can get the percentage up, it feels like we are more profitable. It causes us to do things to manipulate the percentage. […] Christensen even suggests that in slavishly following such thinking, Wall Street analysts have outsourced their brains.

Clayton Christensen: How Pursuit of Profits Kills Innovation and the U.S. Economy in Forbes. Hat tip: Lane Becker.

Today the Jetpack plugin turns five years old. Who woulda thunk it? It’s one of the most popular plugins in WP history, and sites that include it as part of their WordPress install are more likely to to have engaged and active users — we’ve even seen it reduce churn on major web hosts. While there’s been a lot that’s happened in the Jetpack plugin so far, what’s around the corner has me even more excited. 😀 🚀 P.S. Check out that new domain.