Sleep now.

Not much to say about the day. Spent much of it doing bookkeeping tasks that are sufficiently simple that taxlady can farm them out to me. So, I got some stuff done, but that's about all I can say. At least I'm almost done with the pile she gave me.

Ill Wind Dept.

No, this post is not about flatulence.

For those who haven't heard, there was an issue of a Danish newspaper recently in which a cartoonist depicted Mohammed as a terrorist. A number of Muslim nations have taken offense and are boycotting the country. So far these include Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, but it looks like more are going to follow.

In support of free speech, some web sites like this one, are listing Danish exports that can be bought in North America as a sort-of counter boycott. As a result, I have now found out about The Danish Foodshop and The Danish Deli, two online exporters of fine Danish food.

Now when taxlady next has a serious hankering for some obscure foodstuff I've never heard of, I know how it can be obtained.

As they say, Tis an ill wind that blows no one any good.

A sudden thought about meme vector incubation.

( The context behind the thought, which got kinda long, so I'm cutting it. )

Just now it occurred to me though, that if one wants a virus or a germ to be happy and grow and spread, you put it in an incubator with lots of the right sort of material to infect. The same is undoubtedly true of memes. The web and LJ are both good environments for the art meme to grow and spread in, but could they be better?

This is relevant to me because in the next day or so I'm writing a proposal for the creation of a new online social networking system to compete with LiveJournal, MySpace, Friendster and the rest. I already have a bunch of ideas on how the state of the art can be improved and the online experience made simultaneously more inclusive and more closely tailored for a given community.

What I hadn't thought of before was that it could have specific features to aid and abet in the spreading of the art meme. After all, why wait for a Reburgeoning when one can hasten its arrival? So, does anyone have any suggestions for features, functions, aspects, etc of a social networking system that would make it easier for you to pursue your arts, or would help encourage you to do so? What kind of art communities do you think would pull you in?

I understand that these are vague questions, but I'm really just fishing for any insights into the nurturing of the creative process that I should keep in mind while designing this new puppy.

There is, of course, no guarantee the proposal will be accepted, or that the site will be created as designed, even if its funded, but an idea once expressed is nigh unto immortal and can easily survive the death of many projects until it finally gets realized.

Death by Risk Aversion.

Thanks to peaceful_dragon for pointing out this article on the harm done by avoiding risk. Its a flaw I have in my personal life that I've been working on. (Sure, I can think outside the box and invent a new idea with what I think is huge profit potential, but am I willing to, for example, sell my house and mortgage the cats to raise the money to try and make it real -- no way.)

It also bears a relation to my previous post, but I'm not sure how obvious that is to anyone but me.

I've been meaning to post about the uniqueness of obviousness for over a week now, but haven't had the time. Its also possible that when I've more fully digested the above article I'll have more to say on that topic as well.

Oh, and I loved the illustrations.

Radioactive Panda.

Its on my extremely slow list of online comics, but Radioactive Panda is great because it understands mad science. The two latest pages illustrate that wonderfully.

As I putter away...

Still doing vast amounts of data entry for taxlady. While so engaged my brain doesn't have a lot to occupy me, so I've been mentally re-engineering the Quickbooks program I'm using to enter the data.

Its actually not a bad program, but it could be far smaller, far more general, and simultaneously more powerful and easy to use. The key is the recognition that what it is doing is essentially performing general spreadsheet-type calculations (with some minor constraint propagation) over a large number of cells that are imbedded in pretty forms and stored in a database. They have specialized forms for all sorts of things, when what they should have is a completely general engine and a way to build and edit custom forms and to explain the relationships between the cells, just like you can do in a spreadsheet.

The resulting program would be more flexible, more customizable, easier to maintain, and could support such things as activity templates so that when I am entering all the mileage for a vehicle, I don't have to keep telling it that yes, its for the same damn vehicle as the last 400 entries...

Given such an underlaying engine, one could also build the ultimate spreadsheet, which I'm still surprised no one has written. (I designed it when VisiCalc first came out, but I assumed it was an obvoius progression and it would soon arrive. It never has.) One could also make a day-timer style calendar, contacts list, appointment minder, etc database as well.

I wonder if I could turn this idea into a money-making project?