Feb

21

Don’t be afraid of the machines!

Filed Under automation, changing the world, geeky, ideas, innovation, technology | Leave a Comment

A BINARY STEP COUNTER?! OH MY! This is *amazing*, you have to see it. This reminds me of a rudimentary transistor, and how we keep cramming more and more of them into a piece of silicon we call a microprocessor, on top of which we have this thing called a computer, on top of which we have this thing called web two dot oh, … and ..

From TED. Watch his commercial here:

Sep

30

Extending the number of operations without thinking

Filed Under automation, quotes, things to ponder about | Leave a Comment

We advance our civilization — or at least our own best interest — by extending the number of operations we can perform without thinking about them.
– Dr. Roy F. Baumeister, Social Psychology Area Director and Francis Eppes Eminent Scholar (Princeton University)

The more I ponder about this, the more I find it to be true. The more processes you can automate with a machine, or if human-intervention is required, then the more projects you can outsource, such that the more things you can accomplish without having to actually “having to be there” or actively think about, the more you advance and move forward.

Same with saving money for retirement — you save the money and let time generate more money for you. That’s why good financial advisers always say that young people should start saving for retirement when they are young. So that you can put time to work for you, which in effect, is just another operation which does not require your active engagement.

To apply this concept into my career — I like automating stuff as much as I can. Let the machine worry about the processes. The more the machine can take work off my hands, the more time I have free to do something else and move forward. Some people actually like not automating stuff, because then it gives them some form of “job security”.
Read more

Oct

5

Schedule wake-up calls to your mobile phone from Skype

Filed Under automation, mobile, technology | 3 Comments

Lifehacker has this post on a command line feature that will invoke Skype to call a phone number. Looks like it works! Now you can schedule wake-up calls to your cell via Skype. The command (for Windows) is:

c:\Program Files\Skype\Phone\Skype.exe /callto:001XXXXXXXXXX
(replace X’s with 10 digit phone number)

1. Run command

2. Skype initiates outgoing call

3. Phone rings!

Cool stuff. Now all you gotta do is write a script that will initiate the call at a certain time to fully automate it. Maybe throw in a web based interface and hook it up to the web so that you can schedule these “reminder” calls from anywhere with internet access.

* At time of writing, Skype offers free PC-to-phone calls to US and Canada