Liked Things
Below are many but not necessarily all of the things I like in life. In the case of technologies I've either used them or merely admire them from afar based on what I've heard or read. Some of these things are ideal in a theoretical way but may be impractical or problematic in real life, though should still be strived for or kept in mind. A few are just pop culture things or works of art, like movies, books or music. Some are people I admire. Some are ideals, concepts or patterns.
007, special agent James Bond
0x10c - never played it because still under dev but the announced feature set and the fact that Notch is making it is extremely promising and exciting (Minecraft meets Elite?)
12 Factor App, The - a set of best practices for web app architecture and operations
256-bit key lengths (crypto)
3 factor auth - (ideal form: something you know, plus something you have have, plus something you are)
3D printing, esp so-called 3D home/desktop printing (ala Makerbot)
37Signals, Basecamp (fan esp of DHH and Jason Fried; though not a fan of Rails or Ruby)
42 - the ultimate meaning of life, the universe and everything
5150 - Van Halen album
555 timer IC chip - never used it but admire its design
action, more; talk less; bias to
adhocracy (like the opposite of bureaucracy, is awesome)
adventure - esp educational, challenging, exciting... yet safe
advertise zero - the notion that it's cheaper in long run to not advertise, and healthier because in order for your product/service to catch on it truly has to be good, so good that new customers learn about it via word-of-mouth from existing ones; free samples and freemium upgrade are similar strategies
aerogel
AI (artificial intelligence) - whether good, evil, indifferent, specialized or general purpose
airless bicycle wheels - never again worry about glass, nails or thorns giving you flats
Airpod by TATA Motors ("air powered" tiny 3-person vehicle)
AK-47
Akin's Laws of Spacecraft Design
algebra
Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass, by Lewis Carroll
Aliens - probably the best scifi/action/alien/combat/macho/feminist/horror movie ever made.. perfect film
almonds
aluminum
Amazon
Android
androids
antirez (creator of Redis and Visitors)
Apache attack helicopter
API's
Apollo 11
Apple (my first computer, and my current favorite computer company; Woz era and iJobs era)
aquaponics
AR-15 / M4A1
Architecture of Open Source Applications, The - a software book, esp the free online form
Arduino
Are You Being Served? - British comedy TV series
ARM chip architecture
Armadillo Aerospace
artificial realities (only in healthy ways; examples: fictional stories, movies, imagination, directed dreams)
Asimov, Isaac
ASL (Advanced Squad Leader) - esp the MMP reboot and the SK's
asynchronous
atheism
Atlas, a robot by Boston Dynamics
autarky
automation (even just for the sake of automation like this)
Ave Maria sung by Pavarotti
Awful Green Things from Outer Space - great little board game pub by SJG, designed by Tom Wham
AWS/EC2
Axis & Allies - board game series
Bach, J.S.
bagels
bailouts for ordinary people (eg. Rolling Jubilee)
Balsamiq, Mockups and Peldi
bananas
Batman - esp in the Frank Miller or Alan Moore graphic novels, and most esp in the Nolan/Bale movies
batteries included - the term for a software pattern, element of best practice; an ideal to strive for at least
Baxter by Rethink Robotics
BeagleBoard
Beaker
Beatles, The
Beethoven, Ludwig von
Berlioz
Bernstein, Daniel J. (aka: djb) - his work in software and crypto
BFL (Buying For Life: buying things that will last your lifetime or at least a really long time. eg. very durable shoes, tools, utensils, etc.)
Bicymple by Josh Bechtel - will make you slap forehead; the side-sliding frame may be bad, but the elim of the chain and smaller size is awesome
Bigelow Aerospace - esp their goal of inflatable space habitats
binary numbers
bits
Bitcoin, the Bitcoin paper and Satoshi Nakamoto
Bitmessage - the basic idea and general design of it, though I have not played with it myself yet
BitTorrent
Bjork
black holes
blank slates (metaphorically, as in blank slate thinking, starting with a clean slate, empty page, zero assumptions, no rules, no legacy requirements)
Blender
Bocelli, Andrea, singing of
Boheme, La
Bond, James, Agent 007 -- at it's best and most ideal
boots
Boston Dynamics - the robot company
Bowie, David (aka Ziggy Stardust)
boxing - watching it
Bradbury, Ray
Brahms, Johannes
Braun Lectron System (circuits like LEGO bricks, w/built-in diagrams!)
breadboards - electronic project development kind
British comedy
Brooks, Mel - films; Young Frankenstein, Blazing Saddles, The Producers, Spaceballs, History of the World Pt 1
Buckminsterfullerene
Buddhism, especially Zen and Tibetan - I am not Buddhist but I like a lot about it; my only major religion statuary
Bush, Kate - easy to argue is a musical genius both in terms of writing, singing and dance and sense for drama and dream/myth landscapes; best albums generally considered to be Hounds of Love and The Dreaming, but they're certainly my own favorites of hers
business
Byrne, David - of Talking Heads
C - my 3rd favorite programming language, used to be my main, now somewhat rusty
caches
calls to action (CTA)
CalTech
Camelot
Cameron, James - his movies (Terminator, T2, Aliens, The Abyss, Titanic, Avatar) and his sideline as a sort of Elon Musk of undersea exploration technolgy
camouflage
Campbell, Joseph - the mythologist
Carol Burnett and The C.B. Show
carbon nanotubes
Carmack, John (Id Software, Commander Keen, Doom, Quake, Armadillo Aerospace)
Carmina Burana by Carl Orff - powerful, haunting masterpiece with a great unique personality; is example of great modern-day classic music, with both instruments and choir; the opening is most famous and dark but the less frequently heard remainder is amazingly good and beautiful as well, and more peaceful/relaxing; can you imagine being Carl and having this in your mind, before/as he wrote it? good online version is UC Davis 6/2007
Casablanca - masterpiece; perfection; powerful; timeless; history; war; romance; beauty; tragedy; impossible love; past mistakes; redemption; the lesser evil; pragmatism vs idealism; acting; casting; screenwriting; directing; humor; music; quotable; heroism; myth; Bogart & Bergman; the dialogue and music and sound effects are so well done and integrated that even if you couldn't see the visuals of the film, listening to the audio track alone would tell you the entire story, vividly and powerfully
caves & caverns
CC-BY, CC-NC-ND, etc. (see Creative Commons licenses)
CCW - in theory though maybe not necessarily in reality (undecided about the latter... but cool in movies!)
charity
Cheetos - unhealthy yes, but oh so forbidden donuts
certification via online content, web apps, games, simulations, mobile devices, smart phones, tablets
CFL bulbs - the light color, reduced heat and electric usage, but not the toxins req special disposal
challenges
charter cities - concept if not always every specific implementation
cheatsheets
checklists - simple thing to help reduce human error, esp when lives may be on the line (eg. pilots, hospitals)
checksums - yes I'm such a geek. but this is just one of many elegant ideas and little clever hacks for checking whether two pieces of data are identical or not, and whether corruption has occurred during, say, transmission/download of some kind
Chess - the musical soundtrack, not the game
chessboard analysis, aka CBA (a term I coined privately, which may be original, though the idea is certainly not original): a philosophy or analytical technique whereby you don't put much/sole weight on someone's words (especially a known opponent or enemy, but sometimes with supposed friends/allies/neighbors, as well) necessarily because they might be lies, after-the-fact excuses, propaganda or even just innocently ephemeral; instead study the state of the board and pieces, metaphorically speaking, along with the history of the moves to date, and then put a strong weight on what *you* conclude is actually physically possible and most likely to happen, both now and in several move sequence permutations from now; the result of that analysis is often (but not always) more trustable and thereful more useful as the basis for your own planning and behavior; good especially when evaluating politicians or anyone with a vested interest in scamming you, despite their ostensible claims to the contrary
chiptunes
Chomsky, Noam
Choose Your Own Adventure books or games with similar structure (like my online interactive story Overmind 3000)
Chopin, Frederic
Christiania cargo bike, the
circles
circuits
circular buffers - aka cyclic buffers or ring buffers
City on the Edge of Forever, The - masterpiece; the best episode of the original Star Trek television series; exemplifies the relationships between Kirk, Spock, McCoy and their personalities, the show's core message andt pollvision of the future, and Edith Keeler (Joan Collins) was luminous, eloquent, idealistic and a poignant love (that must be lost) for Kirk; written by Harlan Ellison, widely considered to be one of the greatest science fiction writers; in most polls City has been ranked #1 of all time by fans; won a Hugo the year it aired
Civil War, The American
Civilization, Sid Meier's - computer game series
classical music
clean tech
CLI's
CLIFMO: "CLI's First, Maybe Only" - a software development strategy and recommended series of concrete lifecycle stages I've been formulating in recent years
Clojure - admire from afar, done Hello World, not heavily into it yet but may change; exciting hybrid of Lisp-meets-Java with elegant designed-from-ground-up-to-support concurrency and parallelism features
cloud computing
CNC
collaboration
comedy
comic books & graphic novels
commuting innovation or elimination
computer game companies, early (especially the earliest ones like Sierra, EA, Infocom, Atari; see the book Hackers by Levy)
computers
Confucianism
Congress simplification, limiting, throttling, increasing transparency, tighter correlation with will of the people, reduced theatre/drama/rhetoric, reduced corruption
connections
Copenhagen Suborbitals
coroutines
Cosby, Bill
cosplay (adults into costumes, particularly of characters from scifi/fantasy movies/tv/anime/comics/books)
Coulton, Jonathan
counters (software kind and board/wargaming kind)
cover - military/combat concept
Craigslist - really nails the core need for generic online classifieds
crash-only software design (learn more)
cream cheese
Creative Commons licenses
crisis as opportunity, trying hard to see every
Crockford keyboard
crossed lines method of multiplication (popular in Japanese primary schools)
Crowe, Cameron - films; Say Anything, Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Almost Famous, Jerry Maguire
Cthulhu mythos, the (started in the stories of Lovecraft)
cubes
CubeSats - idea if not necessarily the total practicality of it (ex: no self-propulsion, no solar panels)
curation: more signal, less noise; trusted sources & lists
curling bridges
curses, ncurses (the software)
cyberpunk
D - exciting elegant next gen replacement for C by Walter Bright; done Hello World, admire from afar, may do more
D'Andrea, Raffaello, professor of robotics, a key guy behind soccor robots, quadcopters, and Kiva Systems
Datomic
Dawkins, Richard
DayZ - zombie apocalypse survival computer game; have not played it yet but drooling over the gameplay vids
Dead by Zombie
Death Star, the - it's no moon, it's a battlestation
Debussy, Claude
democracy (with twists and caveats; ideally weighted & meritocratic)
Democracy Journal magazine
Democracy Now! - news org
Desertec
Devo
DHT (distributed hash table)
Diamandis, Peter (X-Prize founder, etc.; aerospace eng and doctor; MIT and Harvard)
diamond skyscrapers - the idea, not sure if feasible, but attractive
Diplomacy (board game, a mixture of chess-like rules combined with amateur diplomacy)
distributed computing
do things people want, tell them about it - a simple hack to maximize career success
Doctor Who
Dominion - board game
dominoes
Doritos - unhealthy yes, but oh so forbidden donuts
Dread Space Pirate Richard, The - a sci-fi adventure comedy book I wrote (first of planned 20+ ebook & audio episode series; the sequel The Man in Black is already being written (as of 2013 Aug 21)); check it out at Reddit and at Amazon
drills - the practice/readiness kinds
DropBox
DSL's (domain specific languages; software term)
duct tape - conceptually and as a tool, but believe me I don't sit around all day staring at it in wonder
Dulfer, Candy - very good saxophonist (and pretty blonde) associated with Prince
Dune
Dvorak, Antonin
Dwarf Fortress
Dylan, Bob
Dyson, Freeman
Dyson Sphere
Dyson vacuum cleaners
E, Sheila
Eagles, The - the American rock/country band
economics (love it; lots of ongoing amateur study of it; came close to majoring it)
Edison, Thomas
Edison2 - very light, very sleek, one-person electric car (v1 won X-Prize)
education
education, higher: decreasing cost, increasing speed, increasing access
efficiency
electric vehicles
electricity - I don't think most people appreciate just how amazing it is, close to magic
electronics - harnassing electricity to benefit humans
Elekshun - name of one of my ideas and speculative side projects to build an improved alternative to the current US national election system, which features: ranked choice list voting, instant runoff, merit-weighted votes, nearly instant winner determination, 24x7 & mobile access, modern crypto & identity features, fully digital pipeline with paper receipts, and fully open/auditable software and hardware
ElementTree - prefer it over most other Python XML parsers
Elfman, Danny
Ellsworth, Jeri - female electrical engineer & chip designer (rare combo, esp cute one), programmer, entrepreneur, now at Valve (which is more evidence that Valve (a) is elite, (b) has excellent taste and (c) is probably developing their own game console (prob with Steam and Linux, and innovative controls))
empathy rather than sympathy
Empire (computer games by Baldwin and Bright)
engineering
entrepreneurship
environment
Escher, M.C.
Esperanto - the spirit behind it, if not the reality/practicalness of it
evacuated tube transport technology (there are lots of little niggling complexities with it, but the core idea is brilliant and the net value proposition for society and the economy is huge)
event-driven programming
event horizon of a black hole
everyday carry (EDC) kit optimization
Excalibur, the sword, the idea of it, the name
executive function - this is a relatively rare ability among humans currently, for whatever reason, and those that have it are in high demand by the market and thus can make higher incomes
executive summary - concise overview and summary of some thing or issue, usualy prepared by others for folks whose time is extremely valuable or limited, but needs to evaluate & possibly act on a lot of information in a brief time; receiver can always dive deeper if desired
exercise
extreme weather-proof homes; especially: hurricane-proof homes in hurricane-prone zones; tornado-proof homes in tornado-prone areas; flood-proof homes in flood-prone zones, quake-proof homes in quake-prone zones
factorization diagrams (esp by Brent Yorgey)
facts
fail-safe (example: standard modern elevator design is that if all power goes out and/or cables cut, the car grabs onto shaft's side rails and stop moving, so no fall occurs)
fairness, but not necessarily equality (no two people, ideas, animals, objects or arguments are identical or of equal capability or merit, this is a fantasy in most cases; only fundamental building blocks or mathematical qualities, like atoms or numbers, can be equal/identical)
fake it til you make it
Fallacies of Distributed Computing, The
fate-sharing (engineering design philosophy/ideal)
fault tolerance (CS/EE sense)
Federation and Empire - strategy war game in a classic Star Trek universe
Feynman, Richard
filters (software kind but also air, water, sound and information)
financial transaction tax - a good start, though I'd prefer a universal/flat/generic payment tax
Fincher, David (dir of Social Network, Fight Club, Girl with the Dragon Tattoo)
finite state machines (FSMs)
Firefly - the Joss Whedon series. TV masterpiece. insane was cancelled and so quickly
FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition in Science and Technology) - Kamen's org
first principles, fundamentals and facts - thinking by these rather than by tradition, analogy, belief or fear (the big breakthroughs or inventions or innovative new companies seem to come from folks that think based on the former rather than the latter; see Tesla, Ford, Jobs, Musk)
fitness
flanking
flat organizational hierarchies; less middle-level roles/titles and less policies/rules/bureaucracy the better
FLIP ship, the
Flying Spaghetti Monster (aka FSM; from Pastafarianism)
football - watching it
force multipliers
forcing functions
Foreign Affairs magazine
forts, fortresses and fortifications
F/OSS (free and open source software) - code must also be good and useful, of course; examples: Linux, Python, nginx, gcc, Django
Foundation - the Asimov book series
Fountainhead, The - though I'm not a Randian
FPGA's
FPS - esp the more 'realistic' ones
free software
freedom
Fried, Limor aka ladyada
frugality
funnel equations (like the Drake Equation for probability of sentient life in the universe, or, a website user traffic signup/pay conversion funnel model; example: 10B x 0.5 x 0.2 x 0.1 = the qty of thing we're interested in)
funk
Fusion Drive by Apple - a hybrid SSD + traditional spinning magnetic platter hard drive there the OS exposes them as 1 drive and under-the-hood will try to keep most/recent used files on the SSD and rarely used files on the hard drive
future/now: think about the future, take action now
fuzzers and fuzz testing
games
Gandalf
Getting Real - the 37Signals book, of course, but also the very similar but independent/older idea/strategy of trying to minimize meta/proxies/standins/overnalaysis/prediction/stereotypes/biases/delusions wherever reasonable and instead 'get real'; eg when job applying/interviewing, try to do something real as quickly/early/cheaply as possible (the applicant/contractor does something beneficial for the employer/client that they request, and gets paid, even some small amount; repeat, iterate, start small and scale up in complexity/scope as you go if desired, always doing real/endgoal things, since that's the best test of whether the real/endgoal things can be achieved, better and more reliable than meta/guess/proxy/standin things; employers moan about how hard it is to find people that can do the work, and are available, affordable, interested, as they wade through tons of applications/resumes/interviews, and yet smart/accomplished/hardworking/friendly/available applicants moan about being ignored for jobs they clearly have done, can do and do well: so a solution for both sides is to just 'get real' as early as both sides are comfortable, even with a small test project/period, that way both sides can more accurately and earlier learn if they're going to get what they want out of the relationship; this is just one example, lots of other areas where it can apply; other examples: don't know if will enjoy a party or not? go to it; not sure if a business proposal would be accepted? submit it; think won't enjoy the taste of mustard? taste it; as long as your trial costs are small and the realistic worst-case downside outcome is acceptable and capped, just do it, get first-hand evidence, learn, tune/tweak and move forward)
GIMP
git
git flow - the term I'll be using for what I think is one of the better DVCS RM methodologies (not new/unique to git, but an older one simply adapted to it)
GitHub
global/local: think global, act local
Glock
GMT Games
Go - the prog lang (from afar; its features; no Hello World yet)
go bag (also the similar idea of a bugout bag)
goto tools
Golden Rule, The - ("Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." - a good simple ethical system, though incomplete and with exceptions)
Goldie Hawn
Gone With The Wind (movie) - masterpiece of a movie despite an annoying (but understandable/semi-sympathetic) female protagonist
Google
Gorilla Glass
government/political/voting/law improvement
goth - not Goths or Gothic; think emo wannabe vampires who only wear black
GPG
GPIO pins
GPS
Grameen Bank of Bangladesh
Graphite (the software)
Graham, Paul - programmer, investor/mentor and very clear thinker and writer, mostly about startups and software (Y Combinator, Hacker News, ViaWeb, On Lisp, ANSI Common Lisp, dozens of great essays)
Graham's Hierarchy of Disagreement - may not be the first attempt at categorizing/prioritizing them but is decent
graph paper
graphene
GraphViz - esp dot syntax
Grease - the movie, mostly it's soundtrack
Green Party, The - much of their platform's ostensible goals, though maybe not their effectiveness (which, for whatever reason, seems close to zero in the US currently)
green tech
GreenArrays chips by Chuck Moore - 144 cores, stack-based, very elegant, simple and energy efficient
GTD (Gettings Things Done by David Allen; I indep reinvented a system similar to this for my own projects)
Guardian, The - the journalism biz
GURPS (the idea and many of their books, if not everything about the execution; for example it's almost impossible for indie authors to create GURPS-compatible adventures and advertise them as such, due to SJG's overly controlling rules)
Hacker News - though sadly it's getting worse as more/worse/younger people join it
Hackers, the book by Steven Levy
Hagbard Celine (character in Illuminatus! book trilogy)
hair cut sustainability: cutting one's own hair (quickly and well) as a lifelong little hack to save money and time
Hanlon's Razor
headless systems (computer term)
health
Hedges, Chris
hedonic treadmill - esp downward: a nice technique to minimize personal expenses and maximize happiness; be aware of it, your susceptibility to it, and try to minimize how much it effects you; be frugal even as your income/wealth rises
Hegelian dialectic (thesis, antithesis, synthesis)
Heinlein, Robert
heiroglyphics, ancient Egyptian
helmets
Henson, Jim
Heroku
hexadecimal
hexagons
hexaflexagons
HexBug
high availability - in the software architecture sense
histograms
history
Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, The
Hobbit, The
honesty
horizontally scalable architecture
Hornsleth Deep Storage Project - idea if not necessarily everything about the execution of it
Houston, Whitney - master pop singer in her prime
HTTP-based API's
Huang, Andrew "Bunnie" - electronics/chip designer/programmer: Chumby, XBox hacking, and Novena
Hughes, John - the movies he wrote or directed (Vacation, Ferris Bueller's Day Off, Weird Science, Breakfast Club, Pretty in Pink, Sixteen Candles, Plains Trains and Automobiles, and Home Alone)
hydrogen-powered vehicles - like Hugo Spowers riversimple company's mini car
Hyperarchy
hypnosis
hysteresis
Id Software (Carmack, Doom, Quake)
idealism
Illuminati (SJ game) and Illuminatus! (books by Robert Anton Shea and Robert Wilson)
immutable state in shared memory
InboxZero (Delete, Delegate, Respond, Defer, Do)
Inc. magazine
incremental development & progress
Infocom
innovation
insurance, real vs supposed; example: having a gun or shovel or flashlight is real insurance (you buy it, you definitely have a certain benefit/capability/option/tool when the need arises) whereas being forced to pay for car/health/life insurance is a kind of supposed insurance (you definitely pay something out, you may or may not get something back in return, and a profit-maximizing provider may try to minimize how much they give back, if anything at all, via complicated fine print riddled with exceptional cases and legal/accounting shenanigans)
invention
investment - almost all kinds except the Wall Street kinds; best kinds are what I call either real investments (like buying/building a new tool, business or other passive income generating asset) and self-investments (exercise, study, skill gaining/growth, socializing, promoting); Wall Street kinds more like pure gambling, help feed a taker/parasite class, and help fuel price bubbles contributing to bubble-bust economic cycles
iOS, iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch - as user more than as developer; am both; the enduser/consumer UX is bliss, like a fantastical toy sent backwards through a space-time portal from the future; but the dev UX is painful/verbose/bureaucratic/controlfreaking compared to how it could be (Android is better in this area in many ways). The irony is that they've been so sucessful with endusers and popular with devs precisely because what they offer, despite all its warts, was *better* than the alternatives in the smartphone space. And they have been incrementally improving the dev experience, though its still far from what it could be like in ideal world.
IPv6
IRC
iRobot (Roomba, PackBot, etc.)
iterating
Jackson, Michael - his songs+dancing+videos, in his prime, an epic musical genius
Java - my 2nd favorite programming language/tech for professional work, behind Python, though used to be my main; perfect for enterprise/BDC development, but non-ideal for startup/agile; Clojure, Scala, Jython can lessen its negs by putting a friendlier developer interface around the runtime
jazz
Jobs, Steve
jQuery
JSON
Kamen, Dean - national treasure, engineering role model, the other RL Tony Stark along with Elon Musk
Kanban - the so-called lean/JIT production process techniques
kata - the code & keyboard kind, not swords
kawaii
Kay, Alan
Keaton, Alex P. - char in TV series Family Ties
Kelly Johnson (Skunk Works) and his 14 Rules of Management
Kevlar
Khan Academy
Kickstarter.com
King, Stephen
Kiva Systems (robotic shelves for warehouses, used by Zappos and Diapers.com; acquired by Amazon 3/2012) - other robotic warehousing companies are interesting too like AutoStore by Hatteland Logistics of Norway
Krugman, Paul
Kubrick, Stanley
Kuratas - RL Japanese mecha/anime robot
Lagrange points
Lamb Lies Down on Broadway, The - concept album w/great musical craftwork by Genesis (Gabriel, Collins, Rutherford)
Lamport, Leslie - his CS papers
Lamport timestamps
language sound personality - just an idea based on characterizing the sound of a language based on the tone & pace as perceived by a native English speaker; example: French sounds like gay seduction, Italian like straight seduction, Japanese like sneezing, Chinese like whining, German like ordering, Mexican Spanish like excited chattering
latches
latex
learning via games
learning via projects and hands-on activities
learning via role-playing
learning via simulations, passive or interactive
learning via story consumption
learning via trial-and-error
LED bulbs and lamps
legalization of more/all non-harmful, victimless activities (and consistency; for example either legalize marijuana, OR, illegalize alcohol and cigarettes); and the converse: banning or more heavily regulating activities that are clearly harmful and hurt innocent bystanders (like Wall Street shenanigans)
LEGO
lemons into lemonade, try to turn; looking for opportunities to
lenses
levers
Liberte - great board game with a French Revolution theme
life extension, immortality
life hacks
LifeStraw
line charts
Linode
Linux, UNIX, QNX, FreeBSD
Lisp - the prog lang; admire from afar for its elegance, ease of parsing, and obvious syntactic power -- though I'm only an utter newb (hello world ++)
Lispython - one of my two names for an imaginary prog lang taking the best of Python and Lisp (see also Ython)
Lit Motors C-1 electric enclosed motorcycle (with self-stabilizing gyros) - awesome but prototype stage
LLVM
location-based services (LBS)
logic
Lojban - the spirit behind it, if not the reality/practicalness of it
Long Now Foundation, The
long-term thinking & planning, esp by government (the current US govt political typically does none at all, thus their continued non-effective action on what are clearly huge dire issues related to the climate, ecosystems, infrastructure and the budget)
Lord of the Rings, The
Lovecraft, H.P.
luck as preparation meets opportunity
Lucy Ball
Mac, OS X
mad scientists
MAKE magazine
Makerbot
male-female electronic cable connection pair design (the human equivalents aren't so bad either)
Manhatten Project, The
MapReduce
markets
Markov (chain, process, model)
Mars the planet, Mars Direct, The Case for Mars, Zubrin, Bradbury's Martian Chronicles
martial arts
Marvel Comics
M*A*S*H - TV series, NOT the movie
masks
Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs
mathematics
Matragi, Blanka - dresses by this Czech fashion designer
McKenna, Terence - "Culture is not your friend", etc.
meditation
memcached
memristor
meritocracy
message passing interfaces
metric system, aka SI
microcontrollers
micro-loans
micro-nations
military: reduced power/influence of the so-called defense industry over US and all other national governments, especially of large corporations or multi-nationals
military: reduced US foreign military presence and adventurism
military: reduced US military spending
military: cheaper cleaner safer more precise weapons (less dmg to non-coms and environment)
military threat analysis, strategy and tactics, operational planning, logistics, R&D
Millenial Project, The - book by Marshall T. Savage
Mindstorms
Minecraft
mirrors
Miserables, Les - the original book by Victor Hugo; only read say the 1st third before stopping because it was so depressing; but it was amazing in terms of the language, story situations, and characters; hard to describe why it is so great; hope to re-read it one day and finish it
MIT
mnemonics
modal and modeless UIs: both extremes are ideal in certain situations; former better for experts, latter for newbs
model village projects, like Rimbunan Kaseh (link and link and link) in Malaysia by IRIS Corporation Bhd. (business HQ in Kuala Lumpur; founder and Managing Director is Tan Say Jim)
modules and modularity
Moleskine
money
MongoDB
Monocle magazine
monorail, human-powered, suspended (like here) -- note that it emits no pollution, requires exercise (good for health), consumes no grid energy, is mostly immune from serious accidents/collisions, and protects passengers from weather and bird droppings
Montessori education
Monty Python's Flying Circus
Moore, Chuck - of Forth and GreenArrays
Morpheus (The Matrix)
motors
Mozart, Amadeus
multi-platform apps
multimeters - admire from afar but not used one yet. soon. SOON.
multiplexing
Muppets, The
music
Musk, Elon - national treasure; SpaceX, Tesla, SolarCity, PayPal; engineer/entrepreneur role model; like RL Tony Stark
Mystery Science Theater 3000 (MST3K)
mythology
natural/organic foods (like vegetables) rather than artificial food (like Twinkies)
Nessun Dorma sung by Pavarotti
NetHack
Nielsen's Ten Usability Heuristics
nginx
NMI (New Monastic Individuals) per Morris Berman
Nolan, Christopher - films; dir of The Dark Knight and Inception
Novena - an attempt by Bunnie Huang et al to make a fully open laptop; things like this will be needed to help fight back against a potentially growing national surveillance state, and/or a corporate vendor walled garden, and/or to help implement a fully open & trustable (in theory) election or banking system
NuVal nutrition scores for food - a single number from 1-100 to give rough guide as to how healthy/nutritional a given food item is, much simpler than the little FDA required table/ingredients
Occam's Razor
Office, The - US TV series, esp early years with Steve Carrell
Office Space - movie
OHIO principle, the, aka Only Handle It Once - a general tip for max. productivity dealing with email or like
one-time pads
One Person Problems (OPPs) - a problem that can clearly be solved, or a task that can clearly by performed, by just one person, with no others needed, though having multiple people may be helpful (or harmful, depending on the situation); startups and small informal teams esp can take advantage of OPP to help run rings around larger/more-established/more-specialized/more-formal organizations; note that me writing this does not mean I'm anti-team, I'm pro-team where team is the better choice, and for large specialized teams where that produces an overall clear net win. but it is important to never acquire a kind of 'everything obviously requires a team' myopic lens because you may miss out on ways to do things faster, cheaper or better, in some cases; there is a well-known effect, where if you create a 3-person team to accomplish a thing, it will take 3 people; but if you create a 10-person team it will take 10 people to do it (and perhaps start to seem like you need to add 5 more!), and so on; whereas if you assume it might be able to be done by only 1 person, assuming the right person, and you find that right particular person (in terms of skill mix, interest, experience, availability, affordability, etc.), than magically it only takes 1 person total; OPP is related to, but distinct from, the Mythical Man-Month coined by Brooks
OODA loops per John Boyd
open source software
OpenCV
OpenGL
opportunities everywhere, just have to know how to look
opportunities proportional to how much you do that people want, multipled by how much people learn of it
optical illusions
Orff, Carl
oscilloscopes
Overmind 3000
overwatch
ownership
paleo diet and paleo exercise: eat only natural/real/ancient foods (fruit, vegetables, seeds, nuts, meat); lifting, hunting, chasing, fighting, fleeing, sprinting
palindromes
panic rooms
pantheism
pantheon (general term, not the specific Ancient Greek building)
Panther - the German Panzer Mark V tank, fielded in WWII, in many ways one of the best designs of its time
Parallella SBC - I think, from the desc it sounds cool, not played with yet
Paranoia (RPG, not state of mind)
parody
Passivhaus - home energy conservation design standard
Pastafarianism
Pavarotti, Luciano
pears
pecans
peephole transformations (the software compiler sense, not pervy)
Peldi (the maker of Balsamiq Mockups)
PEP8
perfect forward secrecy
permaculture
Phantom of the Opera, The - sung by Brightman & Banderas, but not the live perf video
philanthropy
physics
Picatinny rails
Pink Floyd
pistachios - especially when roasted, salted, still in split shell
Planetary Resources, Inc.
planning as useful; plans not restricting or taken too seriously
Poe, Edgar Allen
poetic language structures - though I dislike 99% of poetry (rare exceptions like Poe's Raven)
Police, The - band Sting became famous in
polygons
Pomodoro technique (for time/work management) - promising, sounds perfect for certain work but not others, have not used it a lot yet
Popinator
ports - computer, naval, air
pragmatism
prediction markets
preferential voting, aka ranked choice, Condorcet, instant run-off, etc.
pretirement - reverse notion of traditional employee-in-cubicle-fifty-years-first retirement; retire now, then figure out how to make the money work aftewards to stay in acceptable lifestyle, which of course may mean continuing to work for others in some fashion, or acquire passive income-generating investments, etc.; can strike a better balance between happiness/satisfaction and money/security
Prince - music genius, at least equal to and probably beyond MJ
Princess Bride, The - movie
Pringles - unhealthy yes, but oh so forbidden donuts
privacy, publicity, anonymity, secrecy, transparency - each extreme is ideal for certain situations
prizes
probes
problems and solutions; almost all so-called problems have solutions, and we choose not to apply them; some solutions can solve multiple distinct problems; I'm not impressed by people who re-solve problems that already have good/free/cheap/easy/obvious solutions (yet another Text Editor or TODO App... really?!?!) ) -- better to spend time on unsolved problems or problems whose current solutions significantly suck
processes over threads (software design preference)
producer-consumer pattern and problem (in CS)
profit
prototyping
programming
progress
Protestant work ethic, the (so-called; see: wikipedia entry)
provide things people want - one simple key to success
public key cryptography (aka public-private key pairs, ala PGP, GPG, Bitcoin)
pumpkin seeds - dried, salted
Python - my favorite language for Getting Things Done
QR Codes
quantum detangling tactical bubblegum
queues
quotes/sayings of wisdom (example: "Just because you can do a thing does not necessarily mean you should do a thing.", "Don't try to solve a major life problem too soon out of college.", "Give a man a hammer and everything becomes a nail.")
RabbitMQ
Rachmaninov
rain boxes
rapid development (software)
Raspberry Pi (if the price/features lives up to the early promises. 35$?!)
reciprocity
rectangles
recursion
Red Green Show, The - (so full of win. example, the lodge pledge: "I'm a man. I can change. If I have to. I guess.")
Reddit
Redis
refactoring
relativism
remote/untethered work, telecommuting, telepresence
renegades - sometimes a source of progress, achieved more efficiently
replication - in the distributed software architecture sense
RepRap
Rethink Robotics
reuse
RFID
rice
Ringworlds
robotic cave exploration
robotic fire-fighting (like models by Howe & Howe, or QinitiQ)
robotic home defense - fixed or patrolling sentries
robotic surveillance drones (against battlefield enemies, or known criminals, not against random innocent citizens)
robotic space exploration
robotic underwater ocean exploration
robotic warfare - in geeky intellectual way, though there are extreme dangers to society if takes off in RL; not sure of chance a 'robot apocalypse' could happen, but if it did, if you'd rather not have to be saying, "I for one welcome out robot apocalypse overlords!" then your best chance to survive/win is to have certain engineering & programming skills -- which are good skills to have on your side anyway
robotics
Rocky Horror Picture Show, The - original musical cast soundtrack more so than the movie, song timing is better
Rogue-like games (Rogue, Hack, NetHack, Angband, Moria, Dead By Zombie)
Rolling Stones, The
Rosetta Stone - the historical artifact not the software company/product
ROWE (results-only work environments)
rubber
Rube Goldberg machines
rules, especially simple ones, especially a small number, especially in games; not so much in life or by govt
SaaS
safe houses
Sagan, Carl
Sankey diagrams
satire
saxophones - I once played it
Schubert, Franz
science
science fiction
Scott, Ridley - Alien, Blade Runner, Gladiator, Hannibal, Black Hawk Down, American Gangster and recently Prometheus
scrappiness
screenplays
sea monsters
SEALs, US Navy - and similar elite special forces; closest thing to living supermen or professional heroes
Secrets Man Was Not Meant To Know - fictional but eerily resonating notion from Lovecraft's Cthulhu mythos
SEDA (Staged Event-Driven Architecture)
selective input & environment filtering - on an everyday human level, the practice of trying to ignore or eliminate personal exposure to sources of idiocy, ignorance, lies, propaganda, hate, fear or unhealthy criticism or pedantry
self-sovereignty
semantic versioning
sensors
sensory deprivation - as a voluntary mental exercise and therapy, not as torture/involuntary
shims
Shipping, Always Be
shipping container, standard
shoot & scoot - good combat tactic but also applies sometimes in everyday life as well
shortcuts
Shriekback - the band
Shostakovich, Dmitri
SICP (Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs) - probably the best single foundational book on programming/CS; this is your desert island book; even has a free PDF version!
signs
signals
simulations
sinusoids
skepticism
SketchUp
Skunk Works
skyTran - something like it; but should allow private & public pods
Skype
sleep
Smashing Pumpkins
Schneier, Bruce - crypto & security expert, writer
social safety nets -- but NOT socialism
Society for Creative Anachronism (SCA) - idea if not the practicality of it; admire it from afar
Socratic Method, the
software transactional memory (STM)
solar power
solar suitcases
solar powered public trash bins
SOLID software design principles (though OOD tactical techniques are often the wrong arch focus; better to have no OO than extreme "good" OO)
Somewhere in Time
sour cream
space colonization, whether perm groundside colonies on foreign bodies or inside free structures
space exploration, esp robotic and small/cheap/fast/scalable
space exploration computer games
space industry, esp private
space orbital junk cleaning service, commercial - could be automated/robotic
space tourism, esp private
SpaceX
spaceships
SparkFun
sparklines
speaking up for oneself; speaking up for what's right
spectra
spend less than you earn
spheres
Sphero by Orbotix
Spielberg, Steven - films
Spock
spoonerism
sqlite
Stackless Python
Stanford
Star Trek -- at its best
Star Wars -- at its best
stateless protocols for server processes
Stefani, Gwen
steganography
Stephenson, Neil
Steve Jackson Games
stockpiles
storytelling
Strandbeests by Theo Jansen
Strategy & Tactics magazine
Strauss, Richard
Stravinsky, Igor
suckyness reduction - thumbnail guide for life: identify things which suck, then think how you can make them suck less
submarines
subprocess - the Python module; does seem to be better than most/all the previous similar standard modules
Sugru
sunflower seeds - roasted, salted
support vector machines (SVMs)
surveillance
survivalist - thinking/planning, but not being paranoid/obsessive/ignorant/apocalyptic
sustainability - whether involving energy, pollution, financial, social/political, health
switches
syntax diagrams, railroad
tab autocompletion (you either know what this is or its irrelevant)
tablets
tabs and slots
Talking Heads, The
TALON robots by QiniteQ
Taoism
Tarantino, Quentin - films
Tarsnap
task queues and workers
tau as better than pi in the role of default taught/used circle constant
tax simplification, unification, flattening & automation
TaxZen - name for one of my ideas and speculative side projects to massively simplify/fair-ify the tax system
Tchaikovsky
technocracy
tennis - watching it
Tesla Motors
Tesla, Nikola
text
They Might Be Giants (TMBG)
ThinkGeek
Third World (and developing world) improvement: anything that brings them up, ideally without bringing us down, and ideally for a profit
threat prioritization ordered by actual impact (eg. cancer kills more each year than terrorists; coal power kills more than nuclear)
Time to Say Goodbye, sung by Brightman & Bocelli
tiny houses - the ideal/goal if not every impl
Tobin Tax
Tolkien, J.R.R.
toolboxes
toolmakers
tools
Tor
Tornado
Torvalds, Linus
toys
transactions - in the software sense
Transporter, The - movie
Traveller (RPG universe, if not the game rules)
TRON and Tron Legacy
TrueCrypt
truth
tsunami survival pods
Turing, Alan
Twilio
Twisted
Twitter
two-factor authentication - example/especially: something (only) you have PLUS something (only) you know
Tyson, Neil deGrasse
UAV, UAS - when used against enemies or in disasters; not domestic gov use against citizens
Ubuntu
Unicode
UML (parts of it; though often just a "boxes-and-arrows-and-text" ad hoc approach works just as well)
USB
Valve Software
Veblen, Thorstein
vector clocks
vector graphics
velomobile - a recumbent tricycle with aerodynamic bodywork (which also protects rider from weather and mud), esp if also electric/hybrid; better than bicycle in many ways, and better than gas-powered car in many ways, and better than electric car in many ways; much less energy/money cost to travel in an electric velomobile than an electric car like Nissan Leaf or Tesla Model S
Verdi, Giuseppe
vi, vim
Victor, Bret
video
video calls, FaceTime
virtual reality
visualization of music, in one's mind - i can do this in my mind, but *always* voluntary/directed, not happening by default; an example
Vivaldi, Antonio
vodka
walls - increase quiet, privacy, defense
walnuts
Waits, Tom - singer/songwriter
wargames, strategy games, turn-based, real-time, board games
Warner, Silas S. - the programmer behind RobotWar, Castle Wolfenstein and Beyond Castle Wolfenstein, and later worked at MicroProse
Watchmen, The
water
watermelons
web apps
web.py
Weber, Andrew Lloyd
Weird Al Yankovic
Weird Science
Wells, H.G.
Westinghouse, George
Whedon, Joss (creator of Buffy, Firefly/Serenity)
When Harry Met Sally - the best romantic comedy movie of all time. "I'mma let you finish but.." - Kanye West
Wilder, Gene
Williams, John - American movie soundtrack composer (Star Wars, Raiders, Jaws, E.T, Jurrasic Park, Superman, Home Alone, Harry Potter, Lost in Space, etc.)
win-win situations or deals
Wiz-War (board game)
words vs reality - love both but latter is better; sometimes they don't match; sometimes words lead the way (well, ideals then designs then words then, hopefully eventually, reality)
workplace & employment innovation
World at War magazine
world consolidation on metric system (US is notorious holdout)
world consolidation on English (slowly happening, let's get it to 100%)
world consolidation on single currency (delicate; lots of stuff needed to make it viable)
world consolidation into single nation (lots of catches and potential downsides, but huge potential upside including massively decreased military spending, reduced wars and reduced government propaganda; long incremental process to achieve this, if ever possible)
World War II
Wozniak, Steve (The Woz)
Wrath of Khan, The - aka the 2nd Star Trek movie; the best; masterpiece of it's form and medium; the return of Montalban's Khan, and the heroic death of Spock, sacrificing his life to save the Enterprise, Kirk, etc.; perfect cinematographic visuals and dramatic tension (reminding me of John Carpenter at his best); also features Kirk's old love Carol Marcus and his unknown/lost son; Khan eats up every scene he's in; this is Spock at his best; and Kirk, near the close, says of his dead friend: "of all the souls ... his was the most human"; ends with a mysterious shot and a glimmer of hope, and for the first time we hear Nimoy speak the opening narration, "These are the voyages of the Starship Enterprise ..."; if you see only one movie based on the original Star Trek series, this should be it, though also the 1st and 5th (Undiscovered Country) are great (but less so) in different ways
Wright, Frank Lloyd
XKCD
Y Combinator
Ython - one of my two names for an imaginary prog lang taking the best of Python and Lisp (see also Lispython)
Z - Chris Done's Lisp-like prog lang using indents instead of parens
Zeroconf
ZeroMQ
ZIF sockets
Zinn, Howard
zombies (makes for great movies and apocalyptic survival stories; plus I made a zombie game Dead By Zombie)
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