Shabbir's Diary

Pandora and the Music Genome Project

This is the busy season at work now, so you're not going to hear much from me.  My morning time is spent with Moishe, bringing you that photo on the top right that you see daily and practicing my velociraptor impression.  (Apparently that's the baby's favorite noise now, and he does it sometimes in response to you doing it, so I like to try and 'talk' to him a lot.)

I'm currently enamored with Pandora, a music player that uses the Music Genome Project's database to create channels of music you like based upon your ongoing feedback.  "I like this", "I don't like this".  I have to confess it's pretty accurate.

The most disturbing discovery is that it keeps playing Rod Stewart and I'm embarassed to say I actually like it.

Internet gaming on 60 Minutes

If you didn't see the 60 Minutes piece last night about online gambling, you missed one of the best spokespeople for the industry around.  Nigel Payne, who runs UK-based SportingBet.com, practically begged the US to regulate them so he could pay taxes and help legitimize the industry.  It certainly what you expect to hear from a business owner, but it makes sense.

And just why do you need all that space?

Sunday's Washington Post has a great story about how people who buy the new McMansions have neither the time or money to furnish them, nor the inclination to use all their space.  Says one McMansion builder:

They figured that their house, which is still under construction, would represent the high end of what people wanted -- until a client recently requested a 23,000-square-foot rambler, a size approaching that of the Taj Mahal, which is about 35,000 square feet.

Canada finds case of bird flu in commercial duck

And now it's on our continent..

Link: Bloomberg.com: Canada.

China confirms first human bird flu cases

First human case of bird flu.  We're all so screwed.  Do we really think this is truly the first case?  This is just the first one they've caught.

CNN.com - China confirms first human bird flu cases

Most D.C. Property Priced Out Of Reach

In today's Washington Post, D'Vera Cohn reports that "Most D.C. Property Priced Out Of Reach."  80 percent of the properties for sale in the District were out of reach of the average city household's income.

It's the net, stupid.

On a lark, I posted a humorous account of my friend Eric's and my attempt at refilling an aesthetic but highly unusable pepper mill.  It's now one of the most trafficked pages on my site.  People come to the site constantly to see the photo instructions for refilling the grinder.

Go buy Po Bronson's book

Po Bronson is a busy man.  He's also extremely good with people, such that saying Po is a friend of yours is probably something ten thousand people could do today.  Po's new book is about to come out and I want you to buy it.  I'm not saying you should buy it because I like Po, you should buy it because Po is a great storyteller.

Saying Goodbye California Sun, Hello Midwest - New York Times

In a recent article in the New York Times, "Saying Goodbye California Sun, Hello Midwest", the current diaspora of of people from cities with expensive housing to cities with cheaper housing.

This is something we've seen with people moving out of NYC and Washington DC to Philly, or to more rural parts of Virginia, and it's not going to stop any time soon.  Housing in the expensive dense urban areas is way too expensive, and when the market cools it's more likely that prices will simply flatten where they are than plunge precipitously.  It will still be expensive, but it won't be more and more expensive every year.

Turn off the e-mail

Everyone with a new Windows PC and a freshly updated copy of Outlook has noticed that neat little feature at the bottom right.  When you receive a new e-mail, it slowly fades into view, shows you the subject line, the sender, and gives you some options to open it up or delete it on the spot.

I've been experimenting with my productivity for a few months now with it both on and off, seeing which setting makes me more productive.  My advice: turn the fucker off.