I’ve always liked to write. When I was in elementary school I loved making up stories and spending the whole afternoon putting my ideas down on paper. When I got to high school I found that I liked writing in a journal. In college I found that I really, really liked to write papers. And today, still, I write in many forms–email, blog, irc, and IM.

It’s something that just comes easy and naturally to me. In other subjects like math I have always struggled. Memorizing formulas and doing the same problems over and over again (and getting a different result every time) is pretty frustrating. And yet, I can pick a topic and write about it 10 different times and come up with 10 different essays–and not be bothered by it at all. Weird…

I’ve always been a person that spoke more softly than others and had trouble putting my thoughts into actual spoken words. When I write, I know that I can make as many modifications to my statements as I want. The final draft, the one I present to the world, is the written version of my thoughts modified to perfection. I could never say what I feel the first time. I have to write it down.

In my last semester of college I was asked to give a presentation on “writing with a strong voice”. I wasn’t exactly sure what my professor was asking me. I thought it might have something to do with some small part of the readings I was supposed to do but forgot or skipped. When I asked her to elaborate she simply said to do what I felt was best. This was in May of 2004.

Fast forward 10 months and I find this post by one of my favorite writers. In his brief essay he states everything that I’ve come to believe in over the last 30 years of writing. Interestingly enough, just about everything Mr. Graham writes in the above essay was everything that I mentioned in my final college presentation.

If you have any interest at all in writing well, I highly recommend that you read the entire essay (shouldn’t take you longer than 4 minutes).

Below are what I believe to be the most important ideas:

Write in a conversational tone
Don’t try to sound impressive
Use simple, germanic words

And finally,
Learn to recoginize the approach of an ending, and one appears, grab it.

Tivo and Netflix get married
Looks like you’ll be able to download movies your Tivo, thanks to a new partnership with Netflix. No more fiddling with clunky DVD’s. Just pick the movies you want to watch and they are sent to you over the Internet to your Tivo.

VOIP
Heard of VOIP? NO??? VOIP stands for Voice Over Internet (Protocol). Basically this technology allows you to make quality “phone” calls over the Internet for free. As time goes on more and more homes are outfitted with super high bandwidth Internet connections. At the moment this means DSL and cable, but soon it will mean fiber. Currently phone companies such as SBC are testing fiber to residential homes in select markets. I wonder if this is part of their future strategy to be The One provider of all things Internet and entertainment?

Cell phones #1
These days everyone has a cell phone. In fact, the gubmint just released a report that stated there are more cell phone numbers in the United States than land lines. That comes as no surprise to me, really. I remember years ago I told my dad that one day everyone would have a cell phone and nobody would have a land line home phone. He said I was crazy…

Digital revolution to hit TV next?
Back in the day the first cell phones were analog. This meant that each cell phone had its own band. The problem with this was there are a finite number of bands. Then came the digital revolution. Instead of transferring data in analog mode via individual bands, the new digital phones and networks could transfer data via 1’s and 0’s over single bands. I was thinking the other day what’s to stop that happening to TV sets? Why do I need to be tethered to a cable for TV entertainment? I mean, the TV analog bands are already there, why can’t they transmit a bazillion channels in digital form over a single analog band?

VOIP wireless cell phones
OK you’ve heard of cell phones of course, and I’ve already mentioned VOIP. I’m sure most of you are familiar with wireless Internet for like laptops and stuffs. What about VOIP wireless Internet mobile phones? As long as your special mobile is near a wireless Internet connection you can make VOIP phone calls! With the proliferation of Wi-Fi these days, and some cities even offering free wireless Internet throughout, is this the next big thing?

Super high speed, high definition wireless
For connecting things like speakers, DVD players, TV sets, computer monitors and anything else electronic. Sort of like Bluetooth but much, much better. I know they are close to releasing it (the first generation will be available this Christmas). I forgot the official name unfortunately, but that doesn’t really matter does it? One day soon you won’t have to connect any wires to anything, it will all be wireless. The only wire will be for power.

I found a plugin for Movable Type today that should help me combat all the spam I’ve received in the past, while allowing readers of the site to post comments without having to go through the hassle of registering with TypeKey and all that.

Back in the day there was a decent amount of chatter from family and friends in the comments section of each of my posts. In fact, there were more comments than there were posts!

And then I started to get some spam. Then more spam. It got to the point where I had to police my site daily to delete spam comments and ban IP addresses. This got to be too much of a hassle, so I switched over to Movable Type’s registration system. This effectively shut down the spammers! Unfortunately, it was too much of a hassle for my friends and family to register with TypeKey, remember their logins and passwords, and all that stupid stuff. So the legit comments pretty much went away. This made me sad.

Since then I’ve struggled with some plugins and hacks to beat the spammers, but they always seem to be one step ahead of me. I think and I hope that this has changed with my latest plugin/hack. I won’t mention what it is for fear of giving the spammers an edge (if you really want to know what it is, send me an email).

At any rate, comments are now open again, no registration, logins, passwords required! So let the comments flow once again!