Just Another ITS Systems Guy

• Your People – Rand in Repose: “Your People will piss you off because the relationship is genuine. They do not coddle and they do not spin. Consequently, Your People error-correct you in ways that others cannot.”
• Wordle: ” Wordle is a toy for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide.” This looks like a great way to make designs for tshirts or posters. Imagine doing these for your organization, covering all the words that describe your mission statement.
• justniffer: a packet sniffer that outputs common log format style information on your packets. Nifty!
• piwik: Someone’s gone and done it … an open source clone of Google Analytics.

1. Rand in Repose: Your People — Rand talks about the idea of Your People.
   

   “These are a strange lot of people you’ve discovered in a motley array of places because you were searching for them. [...] while Your People may be less work, they are harder people to have in your life. These are not people that let you sit in place, these are people who hold a mirror up to your [screw-ups], and who explain, in excruciating detail, exactly what you don’t want to hear. If they did not do these things, they would not be Your People.”

2. Ars Technica: “Anonymized” data really isn’t—and here’s why not —
   

   As Ohm notes, this illustrates a central reality of data collection: “data can either be useful or perfectly anonymous but never both.”

   The government hasn’t created 1984. The consumers have.

3. Dan Gilbert asks, “Why are we happy?” — Cool TED talk about how the “psychological immune system” works to make happiness … well … work … even if the plans we made never come together.
4. Seth Godin’s Blog: Achievable avalanche opportunities —
   

   “The specific jackpot, sure we’ll sign up for that, but amorphous and ethereal is largely beyond our ability to imagine and sacrifice for.”

Great video from MythBuster’s Adam Savage on the topic of failure.

I’d embed it, but WP is being wonky about the code.

I think the story on the film school set was very poignant. Sometimes you just have to realize that there’s nothing you can do for a failure but learn from it.