Posts from — June 2008

Three parts of the essential morning routine.

Fallen tree in Naga-Waukee Park

We are heading out camping this weekend and I needed to make sure the camp stove was working.

Our little gardener.

Sure sign of summer - testing the water in the pool

I’m way behind on my feed reader, but came across a link to an online petition against the Orphan Works Act of 2008. I really question the efficacy of these online petitions, but the stance taken by the petition isn’t too radical and is worth supporting.

I also stumbled across a link to help you take action and send a message directly to your Congressperson and Senator opposing the legislation.  Again, writing your own letter or calling might be more effective, but every little bit doesn’t hurt. Given the terse, non-committal response I got from Sensenbrenner after my first letter to his office, I figured re-iterating my position wouldn’t hurt.  I really like the closing paragraph of their letter:

This bill was planned behind closed doors, introduced on short notice and fast-tracked for imminent passage. THERE IS NO NATIONAL EMERGENCY TO JUSTIFY RUSHING THROUGH ANY BILL THAT CONSTITUTES SUCH A RADICAL CHANGE TO THE OWNERSHIP OF PRIVATE PROPERTY. Please vote no on this bill and send it back to committee with a demand that it be subjected to an open informed, and transparent public debate.

[via Lessig.org & JMG-Galleries]

I subscribe to a number of life hack/productivity blogs, including the usually good Zen Habits, published by Leo Babauta. Leo is the master of the link bait headline, and recently put out a post entitled "Everything You Wanted to Know About Simplifying Your Life, and Way More" which goes on to list 28 previous posts on simplifying your life.  Of those posts, 9 of them have the classic headline formula of some number of things to do X (like my headline here or ‘Top 12 ways to get people to click on your links’).

Assuming Leo only has one idea in the non-numeric headlined articles (doubtful), I add up 295 ways to simply your life.  Let me give you a hint.  If you need 295 ways to simplify your life, I’d start by cutting down on reading about simplifying your life.

Like I said, Leo usually writes good stuff, but he might as well have linked to his archive page. Granted he warns you don’t need to read everything he links to, but if that sort of warning is needed, it should be enough warning to the author that the article needs some simplification.

[photo by nerovivo]

Warm up at T-Ball