John Turner

A lot of people see being “green” as a political statement, and take it one step further by generalizing that anyone “green” or environmentally friendly is liberal or left-wing. A “treehugger”, if you will. This is incorrect, as should be obvious. You can be green without being political, and even if you are political, you can be green and support political platforms at any point in the spectrum.

I see being green from an engineering perspective. It just makes sense. Being green means doing more with less (recycling and reuse) and preserving future resources. That’s why I was pleased to read a recent release from Apple: A Greener Apple.

I switched to a Mac at home over a year ago. Even before that, I was using a G4 Powerbook as my primary laptop. Having a history with Windows-based PCs spanning more than a decade, I took a lot of grief from friends and colleagues when I started using a Mac. The common criticism was always “Macs cost more for the same features as a Wintel PC.”

My replies were always two-fold: a) I’m not stupid, and b) sometimes there’s more to a purchase decision than price and benchmarks. I can compare prices as well as the next person, and believe me, I’ve compared the prices between Apples and any other PC hardware. Apples are more than competitive on price. When I purchased my G4 Powerbook, for example, the nearest comparable Dell laptop was $400 more based on features alone, and that wasn’t even counting things like getting a real UNIX-based OS on the Mac (which, for an old UNIX greybeard like me, is a serious plus). When I bought my Mac mini, there wasn’t a comparable PC desktop available for the same price, assuming you counted things like having a footprint slightly bigger than a CD jewel case and running completely silent the same as CPU speed, amount of RAM, and hard disk size. And I do.

And, as I said above, sometimes there’s more to a purchase decision than price and benchmarks when it comes to technology. For example, supporting elegant, efficient design and engineering. In effect, voting with your wallet to show support for products that take the long view, that constantly evolve, iteration after iteration, getting better and better each step of the way. Take a conventional PC desktop…has it evolved? No, it hasn’t. Sure, the colors have changed, but basically big companies like Dell and HP blast out rectangle boxes with chips in them. All that changes is the chips get faster or smaller or have higher capacity. But the end result hasn’t changed. It is still a box with some stuff in it, made with the same processes they’ve always used.

By “better and better”, I include being more green. Getting rid of toxic materials that can’t be recycled, using less energy both in production and use, implementing take-back programs and basically just going about your business in a very smart, elegant, effective, efficient manner with more than a passing quarterly-earnings glance at the long view. Thanks, Apple, for putting into black and white and confirming what I already suspected.

A friend of mine sent me a link the other day. The link was for a “keyword bookmarklet” that apparently helps you figure out what niche websites will be the most profitable. Potentially profitable, anyway. I have to admit to being completely dense as to how folks are making so much money with ads…I get how AdSense works, but if I make enough to cover my hosting bill I’m happy. I need to figure out how people are making hundreds and thousands of dollars just from their websites!

My buddy Peter pointed me to IMified today, so I set it up and I’m checking it out. This is a test. Hmmm…I had to edit this post in the WP admin tool. It seems IMified can’t handle HTML or URLs in posts sent via GTalk. If I have time this week I’ll check out the IMified forums and see if anyone else has seen this problem.

Coolest site I’ve seen in a long time: ClickShirt. It’s cool on multiple levels. First, the site design is clever and intuitive, making it easy to use. Second, it was done with OpenLaszlo which looks like the rich web application environment I’ve been trying to find for years. Third, it’s a front end to CafePress, which means the author is making money off of every shirt without having to actually deal with the hassles of running a t-shirt business. Very smart all around. The guy behind it (Bret Victor) also designed two synths I like very much, the Ion and Micron from Alesis. Nice work!

I haven’t been playing much poker lately. When I have played, it has been in heads-up tournaments, mostly because they seem to move faster and I get impatient. What I also did was read “The Professor, the Banker, and the Suicide King: Inside the Richest Poker Game of All Time”. It really changed my perspective on the poker world. Until I read the book, I had thought that the superstars you see and hear about, like Howard Lederer, Ted Forrest, Doyle Brunson and his son Todd, Jennifer Harmann, Barry Greenstein, etc. all had some sort of magical knack for never losing at poker. The book points out, though, that every one of the poker greats you see and hear about has 1) worked their butts off for years to get where they are today, and 2) had times in their lives and in their poker careers when they were flat broke, or worse, in debt to someone else because they lost at poker. I realize now that I shouldn’t feel so bad that I am not regularly doing better in tournaments after a year of playing off and on at the amateur level. The important thing is to keep playing, keep learning, and work harder to make better poker decisions while remembering that it is about the long run, not the short run.

I went to see “300″ yesterday. It was pretty good. Not as good as the hype, but pretty good. Another movie I saw over the weekend was “The Holiday” on DVD. The movie was pretty good, but for me the highlight was seeing the house that Cameron Diaz’s character lived in. My entire house is basically the size of that house’s living room, but I gotta say the decorating really grabbed me. I loved the neutral walls, dark wooden floors, and natural toned rugs and furniture with splashes of different colors. It looked really calm and soothing…I think I’ll try something similar in my own house.

I got a big boost on my home studio acoustic treatment plans the other day from the guys at Ready Acoustics. They offer a free consultation service…I had my doubts, but decided to give it a try. I sent them a JPEG export of my SketchUp file, [Read more →]

Whew…haven’t posted in awhile. Been busy. Big projects are heating up at work (you wouldn’t think that would be true, given the news headlines, but it is what it is) and the weather is warming up here, which means I’ve been gearing up for projects outside. A work friend sent me this link the other day. It is an analysis of the cost of owning a house vs. renting. There’s a lot of info there, pretty dense, but the guy makes a convincing argument. I sent him an email, though, and pointed out that his analysis doesn’t apply in some areas of the country, especially someplace like Michigan, which has the worst economy in the entire country. That isn’t a good thing, obviously, but what it does do is offer people who are savvy with their money some pretty good deals. And not just on houses, either. The point: in some areas of the country, it actually makes sense to own rather than rent, assuming your lifestyle fits. If you’re one of those people that travels all the time, or you don’t want to do any maintenance or improvement, you’re better off renting regardless.

Just watched “Stranger than Fiction” on DVD (thanks, Netflix!). All I can say is “wow”. What a wonderful, brilliant movie. It was exceptional on so many levels, it really can’t be described. Highly recommended…if you have the opportunity to see it, do so! I’m going to be adding it to my “Top Ten Movies of All Time” list, I think!

This winter, my main indoor project has been to build out my home studio. I can’t go hog wild crazy with making it for recording and music only, as it also doubles as my primary work space (shhh…don’t tell the IRS Just kidding. No, seriously….) Anyway, I’ve been reading as much as I can about studio design, acoustic room treatment, etc. I don’t really get all the math, but I don’t really have to, as there’s lots of people out there that can do the heavy lifting and distill it down to plain language for the rest of us. [Read more →]