Dienstag, Oktober 25, 2005

This is a neat new site which I'm sure will be acquired by Google or Yahoo in the very near future: Frappr. For free you can create groups where anyone who knows about the group can enter their location, a little picture if they want to, and a shoutout to the group.

So, faithful readers, here's your chance - go to the johnstephi-blog group I just created, and post where you are in the world.

Let's see how many thousands of people actually read my blog. OK, maybe it isn't thousands, maybe...it's 4? 6? :)

Donnerstag, Oktober 20, 2005

A very surreal thing happened to me this week

I'm walking down the street, and suddenly notice a car stopped in front of a pedestrian crosswalk (one of those without a traffic light or anything). What's weird is no pedestrian is crossing or wants to cross, but the driver has this blank look like she's waiting for someone. OK, so she's spaced out, I think. But the taxi driver behind her and the car driver behind the taxi driver have the same blank look. Nobody's getting impatient with her at all for just standing there. I seriously am staring at this situation for a full 20 seconds at least before a truck comes up behind these three cars, honks, and everyone starts driving again as if nothing weird just happened. You have entered The Twilight Zone...doodoodoodoo....

Oh, another funny thing: Someone's listening to rap music in the subway so loud everyone can hear the music. Again, nothing special, except for the music: The chorus's beat is the loading sound of a shotgun and the shotgun shoots every 2nd beat. Writing this down I wonder if you all think that's as funny as I do. I couldn't help but laugh, in any case, and hope the guy doesn't pull out his own shotgun to shoot me. :)

Cool link of the week: Right here.
Click on one of those pictures for a year-long time-lapsed satellite shot of the States with each hurricane very visible. VERY VERY cool.

Dienstag, Oktober 18, 2005

Us Three


Us Three
Originally uploaded by epaga.
Hi, just a quick pointer to our Flickr site, especially for this picture, this is the only picture of the three of us that we have, since usually one of us is snapshooting the other two.
Anyways, I think it turned out nicely (especially Joshua's drool line, very artistic).

Mittwoch, Oktober 12, 2005

Sorry for the delay, o great and mighty faithful readers. :)
Wow, I just noticed Stephi blogged! Sweet!

Anyways, my thoughts on that article - it's kind of a sensationalist article, since naturally the Catholic church still says the Bible is true, just not meant literally in all passages.
However it still shows a shift in their thinking - the Bible is losing more and more of its sovereignty - it is now subject to scientific interpretation: If something like Genesis is hard or impossible for scientists to accept as literal truth, then it's interpreted symbolically. But that's definitely a slippery slope. Which scientists decide what is to be interpreted symbolically? Do we take a vote?

In other news, I'm TOTALLY into "Getting Things Done"(GTD) lately, a book on stress-free productivity by David Allen.


I really think that after long years of searching (seriously!) I might have struck gold here on a system that actually works for me. I noticed there are loads of techie geek blogs saying the same thing so I think the system works especially well for techie geeks, although I'm sure the author would disagree and say it's for everybody. ;)
Here's a pretty good summary of the book in practical terms.
Here's a very cool blog on "life hacks", that is, productivity tricks.
Here's another very cool blog having to do with various GTD things.

Enjoy.

Donnerstag, Oktober 06, 2005

Catholic Church no longer swears by truth of the Bible - World - Times Online

This is a pretty intense article. Read it for yourself. Thoughts later.