Scott Adcox

Doing More With Less Since 1972

Tag: software

Daily Reading List — March 31st

March 31, 2017 / / 0 Comments

Free download of The BJJ Globetrotter eBook – Read the physical version last year and passed it on to a friend. Was really happy to see I can still have a copy. Fun read!

The Most Offensive Rugby Song Ever? – Wow. I hope these guys never learn the lyrics of some of the songs sang at the bar after the matches–at least in this country. To be fair, the English and the Welsh clubs have guys who can actually sing beautiful songs in beautiful voices.

American rugby clubs are the gangster rappers of rugby music.

Blockchain Will Transform Customer Loyalty Programs – Ripe for disruption!

The Blockchain Will Do to Banks and Law Firms What the Internet Did to Media –

NASA Free Software Catalog – Build, buy, or just use for free since someone else already decided to build instead of buy.

Why the World’s Fittest Navy SEAL Jocko Willink Does Jiu Jitsu –

How to Build a Compost Bin from Pallets – One of the next DIY I have coming up.

Tips for 40 Plus Grapplers to Stay ON the mats – I didn’t start until I was 43, so I feel like I’m playing catch up. I think the best way for me to catch up is to stay healthy and get more days/hours of training in.

Daily Reading List — November 17th

November 17, 2016 / / 0 Comments

Touch Surgery Surgical Simulator –

What So Many People Don’t Get About the U.S. Working Class – It's important to me that our kids understand that we're multi-generational working class, and that we don't lose sight of that.

That's one reason I drink "Old Man Coffee". "Old Man Coffee" is made in a regular old coffee pot (or press) from a can that is bought in bulk. It doesn't come from a Starbucks or a single serving made-especially-for-me-by-a-machine cup.

"Old Man Coffee" was good enough for my old man. It was good enough for his old man too.

It's good enough for me.

Google Play Music starts using your location & activity to recommend tunes – Needed. Why should I have to search for my "Sunday Morning Coffee" playlist every Sunday morning while I'm making coffee?

Why should I have to search for my "Old Man Rolling" playlist when they know I'm at the gym during jiu jitsu class.

Can't wait!

The Great Fall of Chyna –

Microsoft Flow Is Out of Beta, Ready to Challenge IFTTT’s Automation – Microsoft does its products well. But they always seem to be late. Now I need a reason to switch from IFTTT, and charging me $5/month for something I'm already getting somewhere else for free isn't a good reason to switch.

BTW, this post was bookmarked in Pinboard by me. IFTTT automatically tweeted it with a link to the article on my behalf (without all this commentary), and it also made an appended a draft version of a blog post that continues to grow until x number of entries have been made, then automatically publishes out to my blog, which is where you're probably reading this.

This didn't take very long to set up, but why would I want to bother doing it again?

How To Clean Burnt Stains off Enameled Cookware – Works so great, I wish I'd taken before and after photos. Next time.

Who Wins in the Gig Economy, and Who Loses – "There’s no way to avoid the truth that fundamental changes in the ways we work are here to stay and are creating a new set of winners and losers. But the proliferation of new opportunities in the gig economy to choose how, how much, where, and when to work is one big win for all."

Was listening to Joe Rogan's podcast the other day, and he noted that the whole corporate structured way to work is a pretty new phenomenon. If you look at it over the course of history, it's just a blip. An anomaly.

Says the guy with a full-time job.

The Elimination Of Reason – Vote today with the 2020 election in mind. #MakeAmericaAgain

Daily Reading List — September 5th

September 5, 2015 / / 0 Comments

8 of the Best Hikes Close to the Valley – Going to make a big dent in this list soon

How to Make Your Own Bitters for a Signature Stamp on Every Cocktail – Easier than home brewing. And gluten free!

The Most Violent Man in Wrestling Lays Down His Staple Gun « – New Jack. One scary dude.

This is What Happens to Your Body When You Stop Exercising – The biggest reason I clicked on this article was because I expected to see a picture of me on such a popular site.

Very disappointing.

How to Make Flavored Spirits That Are Way Tastier Than Store-Bought – Some good tips here. None of my previous attempts have been widely successful, but I haven't had anything come out undrinkable either.

Yet.

3 Families Every Young Man Needs – Worth your while to read the whole thing.

The Next Wave Of Enterprise Software Powered By Machine Learning – Some pie in the sky here, but I hope it pans out. There are several industries I can think of off the top of my head that are ripe for disruption *coughcough*

It’s Your Fault Email Is Broken – Limiting participation seems to work pretty well. Soon people start realizing that's just not the best way to communicate with you. That, or stuff gets solved without you intervening.

Either way…

Daily Reading List — June 19th

June 19, 2014 / / 0 Comments

3 Trends That Are Changing The Way We Work Today – Yes. Yes. And yes.

"People don’t share because they like a project or brand … they share to help people who they want to see succeed."

To it's logical end…if you're only sharing with yourself, you only want to see your self succeed. Q.E.D.

Five Libertarian Lessons in HBO’s Game of Thrones – I would say there's a sixth lesson as well…the rule of law binds everyone. At least everyone with honor.

After Ned lost his head, there probably wasn't a more honorable guy in all of Westeros than Stannis Baratheon. Not the most charismatic to be sure, but he at least respects the rule of law. I mean, the guy didn't even really want to be king…he was just doing it because it was his duty.

Stannis acts on principle. And it doesn't really matter to him how many people have to die for the principle to be followed.

I'd better stop. That last sentence is a pretty good argument for political pragmatism.

The DOs and DO NOTs of running your first marathon – DO chase down people in your office who are trying desperately to get away from you talking about your training. Sprinting after these people counts as intervals.

Google Fit: Another Try At Health Data? – Until I can get an on-the-wrist HRM that doesn't spend more time completely dead in the water *cough Garmin cough* than it spends monitoring my HR, I'm going to sit it out.

Then again, I guess my only real option is to continue struggling with a HRM that is usually completely dead.

Cartagena, Colombia added to 2014 World Cup schedule – This would be a really cool place to race! #jealous

Everything Is Broken–All Software Is Bad – Hello World! At least the Pinboard->Twitter->WordPress plugin that will autopost this onto my blog works.

Well…most of the time.

School cancels reading program rather than promote “hacker culture” – Related…I'm currently reading "Natural Born Learners", which is about homeschooling/unschooling and very hacky itself in a lot of ways. Every kid is different, and every family is different. But I'm more and more convinced that your best bet at getting an education (whatever that means) is to hack it together yourself.

Focus – "Success comes from doing the hard part. When the hard part is all you've got, you're more likely to do it.

And this is precisely why it's difficult to focus. Because focusing means acknowledging that you just signed up for the hard part."

Word.

Daily Reading List — April 23rd

April 23, 2013 / / 0 Comments

Do You Run Enough? – No. That was easy.

A Bomb Is the Opposite of a Marathon – "But when two blasts rung out around 2pm, running experienced violence. We were violated. Those two blasts introduced pain without effort. Suffering beyond endurance. A bomb is quick, thoughtless, grotesque, impatient, unfeeling. It's all externality, no internality. All destruction, no training. All noise, no silence. All damage, no strength. A bomb is the opposite of a marathon."

Read the whole thing a couple of times.

6 Coding Apps For Kids – Get them young'uns schooled up!

Pucs: rechargeable ice! – I looked at some re-usable stones as cubes a while back, but I like the look of these better. I may participate in this one when I get more allowance.

Random Link Dump of Recent Readings

August 17, 2012 / / 0 Comments

It’s been a while since I posted a random sample of the stuff I’ve been reading. If you only read one of these articles, read the very first one.

Everyone a Harlot

In healthy patriarchies, men push themselves to earn the respect and admiration of other men. They work to prove their strength, courage and competence to each other. Men pride themselves on their reputation for mastery of their bodies, their actions, and their environment. They want to be known for what they can do, not just how well or who they can screw.

‘Marathon blues’ can affect Olympians and recreational athletes alike – Someone once told me there was a high rate of alcoholism for former top-level runners and former astronauts for this very reason. I haven’t seen numbers on that though.

This Handmade ‘Game of Thrones’ Board Game Is Gorgeous – The young’uns are loving strategy games these days. Can I justify this?

Cycle Workouts To Improve Your Cadence – Perfect for cross training workouts while marathon training, and a good investment.

Lost Photos – discovering lost photos in your email account – One of these days…

How To Make Caricatures Using GIMP – I hope to get around to doing this at some point.

The Benefits Of A Negative Bike Split – Wait…tell me one more time. It may actually sink in this time around.

Importing SharePoint 2007 list templates (STP) into SharePoint 2010 – Kick Aise. Quick and easy!

How the Lunar X Prize Is a Preview of the New Space Age – Popular Mechanics –

How to Develop Film Using Coffee and Vitamin C! Srsly! | Photojojo – Is there anything coffee can’t do?

TURNING TURDS INTO TRIUMPHS – What she said!

An Act of Great Cunning – Whoa!

Senate rules do not allow a filibuster when the bill under consideration has to do with imposing or repealing a tax. If the Republicans take the Senate and the Presidency, they can now repeal the individual mandate. They will not need sixty votes.

What’s Missing From Every Help Desk App

March 5, 2012 / / 0 Comments

If I were designing a Help Desk application from the ground up, there’s one feature I’d put front and center: Requester Competency Rating.

Every time help desk personnel handle a call or request, they should be able to rate the technical competency of the person on the other end of the phone. Right now, the default position for every support call is that the person asking for assistance is a pre-schooler, and you build up from there.

Case in point: a month and a half ago I registered a request for help with a vendor. I’d already spent a couple of weeks identifying a problem and eliminating as many possible causes as I could think of, documenting every step with data and including this information in my request. I was finally granted my request for a remote session today, where the person helping me spent over an hour performing the exact steps I’d already performed and included in my request.

The problem is that I have logged several requests with this vendor in the past, and each request has been in regards to an actual problem with their system that I’d identified and isolated. Wouldn’t it make sense to have a system that can flag any new requests I make in the future? Shouldn’t the default position be “incoming request from a guy who it’s safe to assume has already read our manual, read the community support forums, and still has a problem”?

Help desk people who deal with internal users (behind the firewall) probably develop a pretty good idea of who has technical skills and who doesn’t already, but there should be an easy way for them to share this information among themselves and for any new people who join the support team. Every time the phone rings or a ticket is submitted, the person who will be handling the request would have a huge leg up if they already knew what kind of user they are going to be dealing with.

And that’s not meant as an insult to non-technical users either. They need (and deserve) to have their hands held a little more than a tech savvy user, and there’s nothing wrong with doing that. It just doesn’t make sense to waste the time of someone who has already done half of the help desks work by isolating the issue for them. Why not leverage them to help provide better service to everyone?

I’m reading– December 29th through January 4th

January 4, 2011 / / 0 Comments

China Up, America Down – If them folks cain't swim, they bound to drizown. Hard to argue with these points, until China starts trying to bully other countries. In 5, 4, 3…

RunKeeper Pro– Free Through January – Normally $10 for the pro version, get it free!

Delicious In Purgatory – I would be SO gone already (I already have a contingency plan in place) if all of my Delicious bookmarks weren't being used to generate permanent blog posts for me. And my notes in Delicious (like this one) work better as comments in a blog than they do in Twitter, or my problem would be solved already.

And just like that, the plugin I use to generate posts from Delicious adds support for Pinboard. Outta here Delicious!

Stuff You Should See– June 29th through July 29th

July 30, 2010 / / 0 Comments

Free Nature Work/Sleep Mix You Control – Awesome…sometime music is too distracting. Want to try an mp3 for running.

Gmote Turns Your Android Phone Into a Remote Control for Your PC –

TweetEffect- When did you lose or gain twitter followers? –

FreshBooks – Online Invoicing, Time Tracking & Billing Software – Pretty cool for people who are one man shows.

Hey, Michael Moore, I’m calling you out – Random Mumblings – Big stick time.

Shit My Kids Ruined – I caint have nuthin' nice.

Appcelerator Developer Center – This looks cool…write your app in JavaScript and Appcelerator maps it to native code for multiple mobile platforms. Hmm…..

101 Fast Recipes for Grilling – Grillicious! Can't wait to get back to regular grilling. And by that I mean entertaining the kids in the pool while the real grill master does her thing.

Dishwasher Rules to Clean By – The "Quick Rinse" is my new favorite dishwasher feature.

Fannie Mae Cracks Down on Strategic Default – Do you really need someone to tell you that "strategically" defaulting on a mortgage is wrong? Sorry, but I don't feel pity for someone who is behind on their mortgage while they have sea doos and dirt bikes in their garage.

Agile Software and Agile Legislation

March 4, 2010 / / 2 Comments

Neville’s latest, What if Congress Adopted the Agile Manifesto, is truly great.

You can read the whole post at the jump, but here’s my favorite part:

10) Simplicity–the art of maximizing the amount of work not done–is essential.
…I think Congress skipped this step. Oh well, it was the only “essential” step.

I’ve long been an advocate of Congress getting as little “work done” as possible. Congress working means us either paying higher taxes or losing liberties–often times both. If you ever hear your Congressman bragging about how many pieces of legislation he’s had passed, vote that guy out as quickly as possible.

Oh, and if you aren’t familiar with the Agile Manifesto principles for software development, well…why are you still reading this? Click the link.

Delicious Link Dump– December 29th through December 30th

December 30, 2009 / / 0 Comments

Calendar Reform – I’m all for it. But can we please keep Congress away from it? I like the idea of WorldDay, which would fall outside the calendar and not be a marked day at all (Friday, Saturday, WorldDay, Sunday) once a year. That should help it get bilateral acceptance, right?

Go to Nashvegas with Gavin Baker – That’s not an insult, it’s for real. He’s heading to Social Fresh. Details are at his place after the link.

Sonrisa Salvaje – I’d totally forgotten DLR made this record. Can I write this off as an education expense to learn Spanish?

I’m Going To Turn My Grandmother Into A Radical Libertarian – I’m down like four flat tires. I don’t have much hell to unleash, but I’ll do what I can.

Van Halen-Panama – Get your New Year’s party started early

Great Examples Of Coming Soon Pages And How To Create Yours – Some great examples here. They are probably more promising than the actual websites will be once they are launched. Still, I could use something like this. I have hundreds of ideas that are in “coming soon” state, and I’m adding more and more every day.

Songbird – Ahhh…synchs with Android. Likey.

The best series of the decade – I’m sorry. I’m not going to argue the placement of any of these series in this list. I’ll just say this and end it–if you don’t have The Wire (the best show in the history of television) anywhere in the list, you aren’t qualified to compile a list of TV shows. I hate to be mean, but that’s just the truth.

Delicious Link Dump– December 22nd through December 28th

December 28, 2009 / / 0 Comments

2009: The Year of the Failed Narratives – I love story time! I have to admit that I'm a little disappointed that none of the stuff they are trying to sell us involves dragons or unicorns. I mean, if we're going to write fiction, let's go all the way with it.

Ghetto Kool-Aid – The word "ghetto" is over-used. The word "Kool-Aid", however, is not.

The New Flight Security Rules, So Far – When you can count on showing up for a flight four hours early, not being allowed to access your carry-ons (the whole purpose for carrying things on when you have children), not being able to hold objects in your lap (try explaining that to a toddler), and not being able to go to the restroom for the last hour of the flight…why on earth would anyone fly anywhere with kids? This will definitely be changing our travel plans in the future.

Is cable worth it? – Not even if they paid you to watch the commercials

Top 10 Bad Things That Are Good For You – I don't set things on fire and put them in my mouth, so weed is out. Can I double down on the beer instead? And I won't need the LSD to counter the extra beer for a few years. I won't knock the maggots until I've tried them.

Obama, Left Behind – What he really needs to fix this is a new web site and a fresh Twitter account. They'll be back in no time.

Mortgage Applications Drop to 2-Month Low – I have to believe this is mostly due to the fact that people are hanging out waiting on short sale approval letters. *hint hint*

Learn to Let Go: How Success Killed Duke Nukem – Shake it baby! This is the first and only shoot 'em game I ever bought, but it was pretty good. I'm not that into video games, so I didn't really keep up with the drama that was the continual delayed release of the sequel.

Stripper For Christmas – Ho Ho Ho! Yeah, that wasn't very original.

Delicious Link Dump– December 17th through December 18th

December 19, 2009 / / 0 Comments

Using Google Apps? 5 Ways to Avoid Getting Hacked – I really need to get around to doing these things. Looks like you could make it happen in less than 15 minutes and save yourself a lot of heartache.

WordPress 2.9, oh so fine – Just updated, and this should force a post. The image editor and easy video embed are nice!

Common Laptop/Netbook Positions to Avoid – I'm just going to pretend I didn't see this.

Nullification: Friend of Liberty – Well Texas?

Jesus Was Cool – "Be nice to each other." Pretty simple. But wait, there's more…

Developer Resources for Android – This is on my to-do list. I swear. I even have an app idea that will be huge for a very small market.

Jerry Taylor discusses global warming on the premiere of Stossel – I missed this inaugural episode and haven't had a chance to watch this yet, but it looks to be interesting

Drunk Four Year Old Steals Christmas Presents – Shock and awe.

Delicious Link Dump– October 16th through October 20th

October 20, 2009 / / 0 Comments

Homes: About to get much cheaper? – Hmmm….time to sit in an apartment and wait?

MediaMonkey – Looking for the best way to sync an Android phone for music. Nothing out there like iTunes yet, but this is good.

Remember Why We Have a Department of Energy? – Oh, but it will be different with banking and health care. Right?

The Most Inappropriate Halloween Costumes Possible – Two of my favorite things–inappropriateness and Halloween.

Newscoma Sums UP BarCamp Nashville and Blogging – "Blogging is one of those things that folks either get or they don’t, but it has been a gift to me since the first time I opened up one of these silly things and realized that it was a lot of fun."

Free Trigonometry Tutorials and Problems – You got that? FREE PROBLEMS!!!! One of the many things on my nerd checklist is that I did ALL the problems in the trig book…not just the ones that were assigned. I would do them in all my other classes. I even had a set of colored pencils I used to draw the vectors in different shades. Yeah, you wish YOU'D thought of that.

Clean Your Computer Screen From The Inside – It really works!!!

Paranormal Activity –Don’t Need To See It – I'm a scary-movie-wimp. I hate them. I'd rather just read spoilers (like this one) and know that it would scare me if I saw it.

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