It’s always bugged me that Yahoo! makes the exclamation point part of their name, but for now, I’ll give in. I discovered that they’re now offering unlimited storage for all Yahoo! Mail accounts, even free ones. Old ones, new ones, old interface, new interface, USA and abroad– they’ll all get unlimited storage.
Category Archives: Ideas
Finding housing in Santa Monica
For the past several weeks, I’ve been looking for housing in or near Santa Monica. I’m not picky. I’ll take pretty much anything. So that has given me a lot of options. And the fact that I was looking so early seems to have made things harder, because many of the places I looked at were taken before the date I wanted to move in. I want to move in tomorrow, May 29, 2007. It’s a short term deal. I’m just looking to get one room for three months, and I don’t care whether I have a roommate (I somewhat prefer one so that we can split the rent). Here’s where I’ll be going every day:
Why I love Google
It was Sunday, so I went to church. While there, a few people asked me about my internship with Google, so I talked about it. One thing that struck me is that people actually care about money. I can honestly say that I don’t. What matters about money is not how much you get, or how it compares with others. It’s what you can do with it. I was reminded of this idea when I finally got around to reading about Google as Fortune magazine’s #1 Company to Work For. In it, Fortune asks founder Sergey Brin:
As it gets bigger, does Google risk becoming less zany?
“Definitely,” Sergey replies, “At the same time, we have more resources. If we decided that we need to have a big island for some operation tomorrow, we could afford to buy an island. We have no such plans. But the resources do give us opportunities.”
Very true. And the magazine also quotes Sergey as saying, “It’s important for people to always ask, ‘Why not?’ What’s accepted is often arbitrary.”
My friend Phillip mentioned this article, too, asking whether it’s all true. You can do what you want? The company is flexible? There are swimming pools and great food?
Facebook is an inspiration for me
I’m inspired by Mark Zuckerberg. Is that a bad thing?
[Zuckerberg] began messing around with computers early on, teaching himself how to program. As a high school senior, at Phillips Exeter Academy, he and D’Angelo built a plug-in for the MP3 player Winamp that would learn your music listening habits, then create a playlist to meet your taste. They posted it as a free download and major companies, including AOL and Microsoft, came calling. “It was basically, like, ‘You can come work for us, and, oh, we’ll also take this thing that you made,’” Zuckerberg recalls.
He sounds just like me. I also began messing around with computers early on, and taught myself how to program. That was a long time ago now, but I still remember those days very well. As soon as I came home from school, I’d plug in my Cybiko and head to the Cybiko Forums to see what other developers were doing. I’d try coding some of the many, many ideas I had and quickly get stuck. So I IMed Greg Smith, the creator of the “B2C” or “Basic-2-Cybiko C” compiler. He would help me figure out what I wanted to do logically, put it into code, and actually write some real programs that did interesting things. I was hooked: finally I could create applications on my own– and very useful ones, too. I loved the fact that as soon as I announced a new version of my latest application, 10-20 people would be clamoring to download it. I’d get daily feedback from users of my programs, and I worked from their input to improve. That was a very early stage of programming for me, and I admit that my programming skills back then were severely lacking. Still, that’s how I learned the logic and syntax of BASIC and C, and lots of things about the practical aspects of how converters and compilers work. I learned how to work with variables of different types and to draw graphics on the screen. It was mind-blowing, and I loved it.
Techies want to be heroes
First, I think this blog needs more pictures, so here’s a somewhat-related comic strip from Helen, Sweetheart of the Internet. 
Over at the 37signals blog, David wrote the post Don’t be a hero: Giving up is good to do. I think it’s a very good thought that I should keep in mind for the future. He says that everyone, especially techies, wants to be a hero. However, he cautions us that this usually isn’t the case:
Not everyone agrees with SCALE
For the past week or so, a lot of students and professors have been up in arms over the issue of the school’s administration reportedly ignoring the SCALE student group. They’re the Student Coalition Against Labor Exploitation. While I don’t claim to know all the details, the essential issue is that they’re trying to stop USC from using sweatshops for the USC clothing that’s sold in the Bookstore. To do this, they’ve tried a number of protests. On April 10, they held a sit-in outside President Sample’s office in Bovard. I read that at one point, they entered the building and began interfering in order to get attention and try to open dialogue with the university. This has grown to be a big issue, even with a letter of complaint being published in today’s Daily Trojan and signed by a long list of professors. Well, I disagree.
Publish your book online
Leo Laporte and Amber interviewed Scott Sigler on net@nite episode 17, “There’s something wrong with the sheep.” This really inspired me to someday publish a book online, and I think you should definitely do it right away if you have the time to do so. And let me know if you do! I’d be happy to promote it. I highly recommend to this section of the podcast, about 12 minutes long:
Free PlanetSC.com email address
Interested in a free PlanetSC.com email address? Just in case you’re looking for a better email service (or homepage or calendar), I thought I’d go ahead and plug PlanetSC.com. I bought it for $10 about 4 months ago and it hasn’t done anything yet. Do you have any ideas? And just to make this post a little more substantial, I’ll include a brief update on Wall Posting.
English majors should learn computer science
At church tonight, we learned about missions in China. It was a very insightful experience, and I’m glad I got to be a part of it and have some fun with my church family. Near the conclusion of our time there, we passed around photos while praying to learn about some of the issues in China and address them. On the back of one of these photos was written:
Sensible curriculum
- Requiring English majors to learn computer programming for national test
I think that was meant to imply that English majors should not have to learn computer programming. Well, I respectfully disagree. Computer science is quickly going to become a crucial part of life in the modern age. No matter what you’re doing, computers are going to be involved.
This is an interesting post, in my opinion. I came up with these ideas myself, as far as I know. So please: if you have time, read on; and leave a comment if you have any response.