Jasmeet.net Blogging in Bullet Time

Here’s an Idea at Las Tres Y Media De Mañana

Google Earth is a great app. One gets to magically fly around the world, view photographs people have taken, Wikipedia articles and much more. I just have one idea for it, and in some ways, this could be applied to Google Maps & Yahoo! Maps too.

Picture this as opt-in. You go to a certain location, like North Michigan Avenue in Chicago. But one has an immediate need to go pee. Should the map just sit there doing nothing while you pee? Hell no.

That maps need to start downloading as much information as it can in the next two minutes (or however long it takes one to pee). Zooms into the city. Surrounding areas. Cache all that, so if I got some reason have this overwhelming desire to visit the corns on the cob (Marina City) on North Dearborn Street, I don’t have to wait for the Satellite view to download. It’s already cached. If you’re using such map services, there’s a pretty good chance you’re on some kind of un-metered broadband, so what’s spending a little idle time downloading zooms and surrounding areas?

Naturally, let’s make this all opt-in, with some method of disk space control. The last thing I want is Google Maps occupying 100GB’s of disk space. Or who knows, maybe I do. Maybe ISP’s will stop doing bullshit plans like where you get 20GB’s of bandwidth per month. I see a revolution.

Dying in a Web 2.0 World

An interesting thought came to me while I was taking a shower earlier (as do most of my great thoughts and ideas).

What happens to your web 2.0 services when you die?

I’m particularly curious with services such as Flickr that require an paid annual memebership. When I die, and my membership expires, my account is reverted to a ‘free’ status and you can only view 200 of my images.

That sucks ass.

I’m getting more and more into photography, and a firm believer of Thomas Hawk’s The best photographs in the world have yet to be taken. But what happens if I happen to take some of those pictures, but no one gets to see them cause you’re dead?

Granted you could have family members or friends renew your account for you, but they gotta die sometime too.

I remember sometime ago, MetaFilter first learned about a user that had passed on. I don’t have a link handy, but whatever contributions this person made, will be preserved because their dues were paid ($5, one time fee).

Which is pretty much what I’m getting at here. When you die, what helps keep your services going? Email accounts get deleted/disabled after a period of inactivity, Flickr will not show more than 200 photos, etc.

This might be the right time for some kind of insurance company to preserve your presence online? A service that you pay a certain amount of money to every month or whatever, and helps keep your work available to the masses for years after you’re demise? It could help pay for your web hosting bills, your typepad account, your flickr account, and maybe even start closing up accounts that you no longer use, like e-mail, or twitter even.

I have weird thoughts when I shower.

Getting my life on track

Since last night, I’ve been writing and writing, trying to figure out how to get my life a little bit more on track. Making lists and lists and lists that should have been mind maps by now. Journler, IGTD, SchoolHouse, Tadalists, Remember the milk, blah blah blah.

And by God, it feels good. Maybe things are only slowly getting accomplished, but damnit they are getting done. I’ve moved my random notes onto something that’ll work better for me in the long run, and I’m slowly breaking down how to use the various apps for different purposes. Schoolhouse can be used for school, iGTD for things in general that need to be done, and Journler for a repository of crap.

Now I have to cut down on the amount of tasks, to-do lists sites that I’m a member of. Keep it down to just the good ones.

My New Policy on LOLCats

My New Policy on LOLCats,
originally uploaded by jasmeet.

Comprende?

Credit to Foofy @ FooBuilder

Google in 20 years? How about… now?

Google in 20 years !,
originally uploaded by the.voyager.

You can do something like it if you’re willing to go through some extra steps.

Create a text file that you know Google indexes with it’s Google Desktop software (You have this installed right?). At the end of the day, in the text file, write out where you put your f’ing keys.

The next day, when you’re getting over your hangover, do a search, and voila. There’s your keys. Maybe, hopefully.

Oddness

You know, I’m one screwy kid.

During a regular semester, it’s hard to keep my head buried in the books. There’s so much else I want to do online, photograph, or be anywhere else, but them schoolbooks.

Now that the semester is over, It’s hard finding anything to do online. Once I’m done with my feeds, I’m bored. I’ve like, lost the inspiration to do anything other activities that I wanted to do when I’m in session. I want to fix this.

-I want to go out and do more photography

-I want to read more. Not just online, but offline. I really want to finish reading all these books that I started on, but never finished. I want to buy more books to read.

-More than anything, I want to develop a semi-GTD system, something that can keep working when this break of mine comes to an end.

I think I could do this. I just need to remain focused on one subject and make sure I don’t let myself astray from the objective. A couple of days ago, I had to do something simple for work, and when I made myself not do anything but it, I had a weird sense of accomplishment after finishing said task.

Maybe it would help if I went to bed at a decent hour, and woke up early.

Appreciating Film

Overturned,
originally uploaded by Jasmeet.

Before starting this semester, I was all about Digital Photography. I had a sweet Sony DSCM-1 which did just about everything I wanted out of a point and shoot. But at some point, I knew I was gonna need to move on to something more.

I took my intro to Black and White photography as a method of learning Aperture, and Shutter speeds, types of film, blah blah blah blahbedyblah. Why I didn’t think I would leave that class with was an appreciation for film, black and white photography and even making prints.

Yeah, no doubt about it, making prints is a bitch. Dodging, burning, blech. I will say though, it really does feel more artistic, and very involving. But I will still hire a print maker that I can boss around.

Nevertheless, I’m not forgetting the beauty of film. I just bought 5 different rolls of film, and can’t wait till the semester is over so I can go shooting with the old SLR.

Which is odd, since I actually have a DSLR too. Whoops.

When I become a real Photographer

a) I’m hiring someone to make my prints or:

b) I’m going to a buddhist monastery for a year to learn patience

Web 2PointHeadache

You know what the problem is with Web 2.0? Too much choice. Every duplicate service does something different that makes you like it. Here’s an idea for a Web 2.0 product; Something that helps you bring together all other Web2.0 products.

Unknown Person

Just met a guy who works on Blogger who apparently had never heard of me. Neat.

Evan Williams via Twitter