a little ludwig goes a long way http://www.theludwigs.com/ john ludwig :: john AT ignitionpartners.com :: john AT fanblogs.com en-us 2005-08-28T14:37:03-08:00 Feed Moved http://www.theludwigs.com/ Feed moved -- pls check out www.theludwigs.com/index.xml

]]> Blog john 2005-08-31T14:37:03-08:00 One week til kickoff... http://www.theludwigs.com/archives/001938.html Check out fanblogs for the best college football coverage including the fanblogs poll. I am an occasional contributor to the site.

]]> Buckeyes john 2005-08-28T14:37:03-08:00 Random observations on the road from Seattle to Phoenix http://www.theludwigs.com/archives/001937.html
  • What is up with the speed limits in Oregon? Vast stretches of empty country in the eastern part of the state, and speed limits set at 65. No other state in the west is stuck back at this level.
  • I didn't expect the bars in Salt Lake City to be so rockin' on a Saturday night. They are wilder than Seattle bars.
  • Littering is illegal, but trucks are allowed to leave huge horking pieces of blown tires all over the highway?
  • The security at the parking garage at the Bellagio in LV was tighter than the security for driving over Hoover Dam.
  • Prescott is a very nice town. Has to be my favorite spot in Arizona so far. The granite dells are beautiful.
  • Phoenix on the other hand -- LA, only hotter and without the ocean.
    • ]]>     john 2005-08-27T20:37:46-08:00     Random Halloween links http://www.theludwigs.com/archives/001936.html
  • Mathmos air lights -- the lab flask will be nice in a scary laboratory scene
  • Using really old PCs as prop controllers
  • Names I saw somewhere for tombstones -- Eva Destruction, Helena Handbasket
  • makezine's halloween controller
    • ]]>     Halloween john 2005-08-19T22:52:54-08:00     Seattle Sombrero -- essential rain gear http://www.theludwigs.com/archives/001935.html A bit of rain today which made my hike a little damp. My one essential piece of raingear is the Seattle Sombrero -- I picked up at REI. This hat is great for Northwest weather -- a wide-enough brim to keep the drizzly rain out here off of almost my entire trunk. Won't go out without it.

    ]]>     Outdoors john 2005-08-17T21:12:48-08:00     Gearing up for football http://www.theludwigs.com/archives/001934.html Can't wait for the season to start.

    To put a little damper on my enthusiasm tho -- The buckeyes are already #3 -- in football revenue. The Sports Economist points out that expenditures don't seem to correlate strongly with success though. But they don't negatively correlate with success either.

    Either way, about 85 kids are generating $46M in revenue for the school, which is getting used up to support other sports, build nice facilities, and pay some big salaries to adults. I still have a problem with the morality of this, more of the money should flow to the benefit of the players on the team. Some small suggestions -- give the players 8 years of free tuition so that they can realistically get an education and play football. Or underwrite the tuition for the children of former players. Fund a modest disability insurance program for the players.

    Anyway, kickoff is 17 days away...

    ]]>     Buckeyes john 2005-08-16T06:35:16-08:00     Software roundup 8/16 http://www.theludwigs.com/archives/001933.html
  • Yahoo Widgets (the software formerly known as konfabulator) is nice, what Active Desktop should have been. We were just too early, ahead of the hardware and ahead of the software. And I was too big a fan of Active Desktop, I learned lots of painful lessons from this experience -- just because you want something to be great, doesn't mean it is great; listen to your team, the truth is there.
  • Fanblogs pointed me to a great widget -- team schedules. Nice. Can't wait for September.
  • Who needs powerpoint when S5 is around.
  • Phil recommends NVU for site authoring
  • Monad continues to impress -- bulk image rotating and scaling
  • Rich summarizes some good photo tools
  • Walt reviewed evernote while i was out. Sounds cool but...i use 5 machines regularly...I want it server-based...basically I want my blog to work this way.
  • Technorati mobile -- nice effort. For me tho technorati has not yet become an essential tool, for my searches it doesn't provide materially better results than existing search engines.
    • ]]>     PC Software john 2005-08-16T06:14:59-08:00     August vacation reading http://www.theludwigs.com/archives/001932.html
  • What's My Name, Fool? is a great collection of writings on sports by Dave Zirin. Zirin writes about the dirty underside of sports -- the exploitation of poor uneducated young athletes; racism, sexism, and homophobia; the exploitation of sports by media and by politicians; the grotesque amounts of public monies spent on professional sports. Great great stuff. The histories of Ali, Jackie Robinson, Curt Flood, and others who fought for reform and for justice are illuminating. A very worthy read.
  • Cheaper by the Dozen -- What a wonderful book. The father is an amazing character, the stories are fabulous. A very bittersweet ending, but that serves to make the story more human and authentic. Don't know how I missed this growing up.
  • The Ginger Man by J P Donleavy -- Horrid. Couldn't finish. Brutish character, I learned nothing from him. The Nicholas Baker of 40 years ago -- horrid little story that doesn't need to be told.
  • Gravity's Rainbow -- A lot of interesting references and construction. But ultimately I didn't care about anything happening in the book and put it down after 100 pages. If you want a farcical wartime book, read Catch-22.
  • Keeping Watch and Folly by Laurie R King. Wow, great pageturners. Great mysteries, great twists (especially keeping watch), really great characters who you care about. I like these much better than her period mysteries.
    • ]]>     Books john 2005-08-15T15:58:32-08:00     Hiking on Lopez Island http://www.theludwigs.com/archives/001931.html Just back from Lopez, great time. Some tips on hiking up there:

    Stop by the chamber of commerce office in the village. Get their list of hikes and current directions -- it is quite accurate. Many hikes on the island are on DNR land, accessible only by easement over private property -- it can be a little tricky. The Chamber of Commerce directions are great.

    The best hikes in my view:

    • Shark reef. Short. But nice coastline and sealions. Very busy.
    • Otis Perkins Park. Go at low tide. A long expanse of beach. Probably safe to ignore private property signs.
    • Chadwick hill. Definitely need those instructions, accessing the trail head is tricky. No one goes here -- Trail is rough, rough. But more vertical than most the trails on the island
    • Iceberg point. Again you need those instructions, tricky to find the trail. Not strenuous but a gorgeous piece of property, sealions, great views, some vertical gain. Lots of sun. This is the best on the island.
    ]]>     Northwest john 2005-08-14T14:53:19-08:00     Mt Si http://www.theludwigs.com/archives/001930.html Went up Mt Si this week -- first time ever. 4 miles one way, I think about 3200' vertical gain. Gorgeous day and gorgeous spot. I think I still like Rattlesnake ledge better but this was beautiful.

    Along the way, discovered my hiking boots weren't all they could be. Upgraded to some asolos.

    ]]>     Outdoors john 2005-07-30T17:06:37-08:00     Software roundup 7/28 http://www.theludwigs.com/archives/001929.html
  • Phil finds a dhtml spell checker. Cool.
  • Steve finds cool software to turn pocket pcs into aux displays. I have a spare one sitting around, I should do something with. Maybe i could turn it into a little live photo displayer on my desk.
  • I'm a sucker for outliners so I will try this at some point. Man I wish I could use on the bberry as well.
  • In case your windows machine is too stable -- running windows with no services and registry edits for windows xp. Don't call me if you screw around with these.
  • Bluephoneelite seems way cool. At various times in my career I've been involved with teams trying to manage your online presence -- BluePhoneElite seems like the right way to do it -- my phone is always with me, and I can use a nearby PC to augment my messaging and call experience as appropriate.
  • Sketchup. For the architect-wannabe inside me. My first real career ambition (when I was 14) was to be an architect and I am a sucker for the tools.
  • Udell on federated tagging. Interesting.
  • The reason I haven't actually installed any of the above -- Battlefield 2
    • ]]>     john 2005-07-28T14:03:54-08:00     Online education http://www.theludwigs.com/archives/001928.html Article about online colleges -- you can get real phds from places like walden and capella and nova. Early days yet but I am betting these programs grow in popularity and quality -- the traditional college system just doesn't work that well for someone in their 30s or 40s who wants to learn new skills or refresh their education. Personally I thought about going back and getting a PhD after I left Microsoft, but the structure of a traditional program is designed for young people with lots of free time and no other responsibilities. Just doesn't fit my life that well.

    ]]>     Education john 2005-07-28T13:51:54-08:00     Unitus microfinance http://www.theludwigs.com/archives/001927.html Latest newsletter from Unitus -- a charity that we support -- seems like a highly leveraged way to help.

    ]]>     Values john 2005-07-28T13:48:52-08:00     Reads this week http://www.theludwigs.com/archives/001926.html
  • Crossworld by marc romano is a dive into the world of crosswords -- the people in the "industry", their motivations, marc's own motivations. I am a compulsive crossworder and I got something out of this book -- a little bit of background on leading characters. But marc spends too much time discussing and rationalizing his own interest in crosswords, and not enough diving into the stories, behaviours, and anecdotes of others in the industry. It reads as if he did a modest amount of research, had enough material for a long essay, and then bloated it up with a lot of navel gazing. So some value in the book but not a homerun.
  • One shot by Lee Child is a classic airport book rack thriller. A lone wolf ex-military investigator uncovers and breaks up a massive criminal conspiracy thanks to his unbelievable physical skills and powers of detection. He is three steps ahead of everyone else in the story and just seems to be toying with them. This is not a unique plot, half the thrillers on the airport book stands could be summed up the same way. This story has very nice pacing, an interesting situation, and is better than most. It'd make a great movie script.
  • California girl by T. Jefferson Parker is a great mystery. Deep characters with deeply intertwined lives. A stark contrast with the prior book -- California Girl is a memorable story with memorable characters that altogether makes a great book, but way too complex to ever be a movie. One Shot is an adequately entertaining book but would be a killer summer movie.
    • ]]>     Books john 2005-07-27T21:11:40-08:00     Software Roundup 07/22 http://www.theludwigs.com/archives/001925.html
  • Installed Newsgator Outlook edition 2.5. Seems faster and less resource consumptive.
  • As Mike says, Autoruns is a great tool, essential for monitoring what's on your system, amazing it is free. Mike also points to XTM, a replacement for windows task manager, might be useful.
  • Getoutfoxed -- one feature of this I love is the ability to enumerate and rate your running processes, and share this info with the community. A great way to do grass roots virus/spyware identification, not unlike the ideas behind Cloudmark
  • Fog Creek Copilot. Seems like a good feature to have as part of a future version of NetworkMagic
  • Rick Eames gave me this great tip on how to automount network drives on my mac -- amazingly arcane.
  • Google toolbar for Firefox, finally.
  • Tipmonkies, lots of good software tidbits. Subscribed.
  • How to chkdsk your ipod -- great tip
  • MSH (nee Monad) continues to intrique me -- Monad and RSS, Monad and Yubnub. Ihaven't had time to really play around with this as much as I should
  • Oh and speaking of yubnub, Phil adds yubnub support to berry411. Brilliant.
  • Looking forward to MT 3.2. Also might try some tagging plugins when I upgrade -- MT tags plugin, MT and technorati
    • ]]>     PC Software john 2005-07-22T10:07:01-08:00     Rattlesnake Ledge http://www.theludwigs.com/archives/001924.html Made it up on one of our favorite hikes today, Rattlesnake Ledge. Gorgeous day and gorgeous spot. 2 miles and 1200 feet up. A lot of maintenance on the trail since last time I went, it was in great shape.

    ]]>     Outdoors john 2005-07-20T20:02:45-08:00