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Tom Peters Apple Prediction

xan — Sun, 01 May 2011 17:19:18 +0000

I used to follow Guy Kawasaki in the early Mac days, and I recently noticed he has a new book out. I haven’t seen it, but the announcement prompted me to check out some of his older books from my local library. One was called Hindsights: The Wisdom and Breakthroughs of Remarkable People and contains interviews with successful people. Only a few of the interviews are very insightful; Mary Kay Ash was probably the best.

In spite of the book’s theme, Tom Peters decided to show off his foresight:

I can’t imagine a scenario where Apple is a leader twenty years from now. Maybe it will be ten times bigger … but setting the agenda? That’s an insane thought.

The book has a copyright date of 1993, so the interview must be from about twenty years ago.

Running with Thieves?

xan — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 18:35:04 +0000

After owning an iPhone for only two weeks, I’ve already lost my earphones. Searching for replacements, Google led me to bestofferbuy.com, which I know nothing about. At $3.50 and free shipping, I figured it was too good to be true and went elsewhere.

The interesting part was the “customers also purchased” list:

Four of the items are related to breaking locks. I wonder if these earphones are popular with people that steal iPhones and iPods.

Carmine’s of Chapel Hill

xan — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 22:21:25 +0000

It looks like my (mild) promotion of the term gluten freendly hasn’t caught on, but I have discovered another gluten freendly local restaurant. Carmine’s of Chapel Hill is a new Italian restaurant in the space that used to be Sal’s Pizza. I haven’t eaten in an Italian place since my Celiac diagnosis, but Carmine’s carries gluten-free pasta and even a gluten-free beer.

Both times I’ve been there, the chef-owner came out to assure me the gluten-free noodles would be cooked in fresh water and that my entire entree was gluten-free. I had the Veal Marsala, which was delicious, with a wine sauce made with real cream (no flour thickener!).

Willow 1996 – 2008

xan — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 00:29:17 +0000

Last week, Willow ended a brave struggle with bone cancer. She stayed active until the end, never failing to remind me when it was time to hit the trails for a walk or a swim any day I was home past 10 a.m. She is missed.

Obama Tie-dye

xan — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 13:54:48 +0000

I figured out a folding pattern to make the Obama logo in one pass. After I made the first one for Beth, I made a second batch for other friends, though I think the first one came out better. I keep thinking I know what I’m doing, but it’s hard to reproduce a tie-dye pattern. Here’s the first one on the left and one from the second batch on the right.

Now, if only I had thought of this a year ago, they’d be all over the country…

Unsophisticated Art Review: 10 by 10

xan — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 02:20:42 +0000

I imagine a lot of art pieces start with a single good idea and get expanded with supporting content that isn’t as good as the original idea. In the “10 by 10″ format, each of the ten plays is only ten minutes long, so there’s no time for supporting content — you just get the good idea. It seemed like that way at the Ten by Ten in the Triangle show we saw at the Carrboro Arts Center last week.

Technically, most of the plays ran a few minutes more than ten minutes, but no one was complaining as the quality was good throughout. The entire show of ten plays and intermission took 150 minutes. The set changes between plays was very fast, often less than a minute when they just had to move a couple of chairs. The minimal sets did forgo the extra dimension of set design in the presentation.

Speed Mating was probably my favorite. Written by a mathematician, it featured four cicadas in their brief emergence to mate after 17 years underground. The actors made the most of their wings and bug eyes to capture the stages of cicada activity.

Dead Cat was also notable just because it seemed like an exercise in how much can we put into a ten minute play. Narration was mixed with “live” scenes and flashbacks. It all went together seamlessly, but I don’t remember the message.

Misplaced Pirate Apostrophe

xan — Sun, 22 Jun 2008 16:05:53 +0000

A week in Myrtle Beach and the only photo I took was of this misused apostrophe at a miniature golf course. Not quite as interesting as misused quotation marks, but it’s still surprising how many errors like this make in onto signs.

At least someone else got a shot of me riding a wave in. The weather was perfect all week, and early June fell nicely between biker week and high school graduation season.