SML Data

I have been building my CMS for a while now. The idea of building a database came from noting that I have lots and lots of content that needs to be indexed. I'd like to put everything happening in my life so that I can possibility find hidden structure (emergence) within the structure. I believe that my multitudes of interests (the leaves) are preventing me to discover what I'm about (the tree).

Coming up with the database structure and figuring out an efficient way of accessing those data with unknown criteria was problematic. I'm not a database architect, most certainly lack the know-how to structure a scalable database architecture that can index everything about my life. So I decided to create my outsourced my CMS and database--free CMS database via user-generated content sites.

It works something like this:

• bookmarks: delicious
• music: acidplanet
• writing: blogger (or wordpress, haven't decided yet)
• photography: flickr
• portfolio: flickr
• flash 'experiments': still looking for a good database
• videos: you tube
• books: librarything
• book recommendations: amazon
• mails: most likely gmail
• news: probably twitter

Utilizing ugc sites to manage my content has many benefits

• My data are hosted on very safe environment, usually with very good backup systems, all for free
• Management of the content can be performed using tools specifically created for the management of those content.
• The CMS on those sites will continue to improve as the next generation comes, and I save on the need to improve my own administrative tools, which can become time consuming
• Accessing data on the services are easy through the their respectively constantly improving APIs
• The application to drive all the content become very easy to host--as the size required to host the large database is no longer an issue

Putting my data access API together is still at the works since the original idea from 2007--but the important fact is that it hasn't stopped me from content creation. One of the key problems in many startup is not having data to play with. Now that all of my 3rd-party content portals have enough data to play with, the development effort has been moving much rapidly since the original idea inception back in 2007.

Paul Pangaro + SML

Thanks to the thoughtful and generous introduction from Hugh Dubberly (SML Wiki), I met up with Paul Pangaro at his place, where I enjoyed a delightful and inspiring conversation about his philosophies.

I had problems keeping track of all the topics discussed on my Moleskine, and so it was wonderful that Paul sent notes, links and references back to me as an email as we speak. SML Thank You

SML Notebook

Designing for Conversation

• ThoughtSticker / PP
• Various unfulfilled concepts, including 'YES AND NO" button concept. Instructions for Design and Designs for Conversation / PP
• Journalism and the Future of Media for conversations and concepts for design / Claudine Boeglin + PP
• The Non Sequitur— allows anonymity to see what changes as a result
• A model of Entailment Mesh / PP
• Mobile devices should be neither mobility nor devices / PP (PDF): piece written for Dubberly's column in INTERACTIONS about getting beyond "mobile devices and "social networks"
• ThoughtShuffler / PP

Random stuff

• Transcendental Meditation (Wikipedia) by Maraheshi Mahesh Yogi
• Occam's Razor

I also learned an important lesson from Dr Wires: "ideas do not have to be taken seriously to have an impact."

Related SML Universe

• SML Flickr Tags: Paul Pangaro

Mopeds, Euro sedan and high-tech tanks: the story of Windows, Mac and Linux

After 10 years since it was originally written, this passage extracted from Neal Stephenson's witty essay remains to be my favorite readings of or relating to Linux and opensource software. True to spirit, the author made it freely distributable online at the book's official web site a few years back. I thought that I'd share with you as it gives a great intro to my life-changing experience since I've switched my main OS from Vista to Ubuntu about half a year ago...

The analogy between cars and operating systems is not half bad, and so let me run with it for a moment, as a way of giving an executive summary of our situation today.

Imagine a crossroads where four competing auto dealerships are situated. One of them (Microsoft) is much, much bigger than the others. It started out years ago selling three-speed bicycles (MS-DOS); these were not perfect, but they worked, and when they broke you could easily fix them.

There was a competing bicycle dealership next door (Apple) that one day began selling motorized vehicles--expensive but attractively styled cars with their innards hermetically sealed, so that how they worked was something of a mystery.

The big dealership responded by rushing a moped upgrade kit (the original Windows) onto the market. This was a Rube Goldberg contraption that, when bolted onto a three-speed bicycle, enabled it to keep up, just barely, with Apple-cars. The users had to wear goggles and were always picking bugs out of their teeth while Apple owners sped along in hermetically sealed comfort, sneering out the windows. But the Micro-mopeds were cheap, and easy to fix compared with the Apple-cars, and their market share waxed.

Eventually the big dealership came out with a full-fledged car: a colossal station wagon (Windows 95). It had all the aesthetic appeal of a Soviet worker housing block, it leaked oil and blew gaskets, and it was an enormous success. A little later, they also came out with a hulking off-road vehicle intended for industrial users (Windows NT) which was no more beautiful than the station wagon, and only a little more reliable.

Since then there has been a lot of noise and shouting, but little has changed. The smaller dealership continues to sell sleek Euro-styled sedans and to spend a lot of money on advertising campaigns. They have had GOING OUT OF BUSINESS! signs taped up in their windows for so long that they have gotten all yellow and curly. The big one keeps making bigger and bigger station wagons and ORVs.

On the other side of the road are two competitors that have come along more recently.

One of them (Be, Inc.) is selling fully operational Batmobiles (the BeOS). They are more beautiful and stylish even than the Euro-sedans, better designed, more technologically advanced, and at least as reliable as anything else on the market--and yet cheaper than the others.

With one exception, that is: Linux, which is right next door, and which is not a business at all. It's a bunch of RVs, yurts, tepees, and geodesic domes set up in a field and organized by consensus. The people who live there are making tanks. These are not old-fashioned, cast-iron Soviet tanks; these are more like the M1 tanks of the U.S. Army, made of space-age materials and jammed with sophisticated technology from one end to the other. But they are better than Army tanks. They've been modified in such a way that they never, ever break down, are light and maneuverable enough to use on ordinary streets, and use no more fuel than a subcompact car. These tanks are being cranked out, on the spot, at a terrific pace, and a vast number of them are lined up along the edge of the road with keys in the ignition. Anyone who wants can simply climb into one and drive it away for free.

New users of Linux are almost always exposed to it through a member of the userbase, insuring that they have at least one person on-hand who can answer their inevitable questions and undo their horrible mistakes. The above is a romanticized description of the Linux experience, because it implies that the ubiquitous Linux veteran is not a factor. Unfortunately, Linux was not designed for end-to-end ease of use -- in that respect, it was not "designed" at all.

Customers come to this crossroads in throngs, day and night. Ninety percent of them go straight to the biggest dealership and buy station wagons or off-road vehicles. They do not even look at the other dealerships.

Of the remaining ten percent, most go and buy a sleek Euro-sedan, pausing only to turn up their noses at the philistines going to buy the station wagons and ORVs. If they even notice the people on the opposite side of the road, selling the cheaper, technically superior vehicles, these customers deride them cranks and half-wits.

The Batmobile outlet sells a few vehicles to the occasional car nut who wants a second vehicle to go with his station wagon, but seems to accept, at least for now, that it's a fringe player.

The group giving away the free tanks only stays alive because it is staffed by volunteers, who are lined up at the edge of the street with bullhorns, trying to draw customers' attention to this incredible situation. A typical conversation goes something like this:

Hacker with bullhorn: "Save your money! Accept one of our free tanks! It is invulnerable, and can drive across rocks and swamps at ninety miles an hour while getting a hundred miles to the gallon!"

Prospective station wagon buyer: "I know what you say is true...but...er...I don't know how to maintain a tank!"

Bullhorn: "You don't know how to maintain a station wagon either!"

Buyer: "But this dealership has mechanics on staff. If something goes wrong with my station wagon, I can take a day off work, bring it here, and pay them to work on it while I sit in the waiting room for hours, listening to elevator music."

Bullhorn: "But if you accept one of our free tanks we will send volunteers to your house to fix it for free while you sleep!"

Buyer: "Stay away from my house, you freak!"

Bullhorn: "But..."

Buyer: "Can't you see that everyone is buying station wagons?"