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There has been a lot of mud-slinging over the referendum on the Alternative Vote. The “No” campaign have been particularly bad at avoiding sensible debate and resorting to fear-mongering and smears.

The polling shows they will likely win by a significant margin. They shouldn’t. And with apparently 20%+ of people still undecided, I’d like to share some thoughts that might tip the balance in some people’s heads: please share this with anybody who is still undecided.

Here are 10 very good reasons you should vote “Yes” in the AV referendum tomorrow:

1. First Past The Post (FPTP) doesn’t work in a system with more than two parties

You might only like one of the two leading parties, but you can’t deny that we live in a society where more than two parties matter. If you live in Scotland or Wales, multi-party politics is a reality even more so.

FPTP was designed when there were only two political groups in Parliament: the Tories and the Whigs. Since the birth of Labour, the reformation of the Liberals and the rise of nationalist parties and groups like the Green Party, we live in a nation where there are multiple political voices.

You might not agree with them, but you agree under a democracy that they have a right to be heard, right? So why would you persist with a system that denies them that voice?

Right now, an MP can have support of less than 20% of the people in their constituency, and be sent to Parliament on behalf of all 100%. AV eliminates that from being possible, and forces more engaged politics.

2. AV actually weakens extremist parties

There are three parties wholly against the Alternative Vote: the Conservatives, the BNP and the Communist party.

The Tories don’t like it for a variety of reasons along with some Labour MPs (see below), but the BNP and the Communist parties don’t like it because it reduces their chances of getting a seat. How? It comes down to second preference votes.

People who are inclined to vote for extremist views typically will place them first. People who put other parties first are unlikely to offer a second preference to an extremist party. That means on the whole, parties like the BNP are likely to be eliminated quite early on.

To win, a candidate must convince at least 50% of the people who vote to give them at least a second or third preference vote. The BNP and the Communists are unlikely to achieve that whilst their views and the electorate’s are so out of kilter.

Under FPTP it’s possible to win a seat with just 20% of eligible voters agreeing with you, or around 30% of voters who actually vote - a much more achievable target for extremist parties to get.

3. AV forces consensus and a new mode of political debate

You might have noticed politicians from opposite sides don’t seem to like each other very much. Most people can’t stand watching Prime Minister’s Questions for all its Punch & Judy mechanics. FPTP requires confrontation and feeds off fear-mongering.

AV forces politicians into a very different mode. They have to talk about what they’re for, rather than what they’re against (as tactical voting disappears, see below), and they need to seek out ways to find compromise and agreement rather than just shout the other side down.

You might have strong feelings against the coalition government, but you can’t deny that the disagreements seem to have been dealt with more philosophical debate than previous disputes between the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats. It’s not that either side has sold out completely, but rather it’s because that’s what coalitions need to work. AV turns that progressive debate into the daily routine of politics.

4. AV doesn’t cost a penny more. The only penalty is a slightly longer election night special on the BBC

There have been some preposterous claims made about the cost of AV. One leaflet suggested it would cost us £250m, and another campaign suggested that maybe the money would be better spent on hospitals.

We could argue that democracy shouldn’t have a price put on it - particularly one so low given the size of our GDP - however that’s not the point.

AV won’t cost us anything more. The referendum will cost virtually nothing as it coincides with many local elections anyway. There are no “counting machines” that need to be bought, and the cost of explaining AV to the electorate has basically already been met by the (privately-funded) “Yes” campaign and various other groups. If you don’t currently understand how AV works, you can learn it yourself in under two minutes by reading the article on Wikipedia about it.

5. FPTP supports incompetent and lazy MPs - it provides a “job for life”, undeservedly

There are a lot of very bad MPs in Parliament. You’ve probably never heard their names, but they’ve been there for a long time, and know that they have a job for life. They are in “safe seats” where it would take a political Tsunami of epic proportions to remove them.

If you analyse which Labour members support the FPTP system over AV, you will realise they are generally unpopular figures who have held safe seats whilst resorting to “we hate the other side” politics, which would likely flounder under AV: John Prescott, Margaret Beckett, et al.

The Tory back-benches are filled with a similar breed of politician. They resent the voter, on the whole.

These MPs do not represent their constituency in Parliament. They represent their party in the constituency. With perhaps no more than 35% of the vote (and often with low turnouts, just a 10-15% approval from their constituency as a whole), they know they can do pretty much what they want. For example, on average MPs in safe seats claim more in expenses than MPs in marginals, and cost the taxpayer more.

One beauty of AV is that it pretty much eliminates the concept of a safe seat. There will be some left where there is overwhelming support for a candidate, but MPs will be more inclined to fight for the continued support of their entire constituency, and therefore act more in accordance with their wishes.

6. Under AV you can - if you wish - select just one candidate (and it’s actually easier)

At the moment under FPTP you type an X in a box. Under AV, if you only want to support one candidate and have no second preference, simply write ‘I’ instead. It’s one less line. It could be argued that under AV you’ll halve your time spent actually physically voting.

OK, I’m clearly making a small joke here, but there is nothing complicated about AV if you don’t want to think about multiple candidates, just vote for the one individual you want to see elected.

But don’t you want the option of being able to specify a second candidate if your first preference doesn’t win, just in case? Isn’t the elimination of tactical voting worth it? That brings us onto…

7. Tactical voting pretty much disappears under AV

This morning I got a “the Tories can’t win here” leaflet from the Lib Dems through my door. We’ve all seen them. Basically, if you don’t want Labour to win in this ward, there is no point in voting Conservative because of how the vote is counted.

Under AV at general elections, this would make no sense. Tory voters, instead of being told their votes are futile, would be reached out to by both parties seeking to build bridges with that community who live locally.

You would no longer need to go to the polls and vote for a party you disagree with, just to keep another party out. Campaigners would instead want to listen to views across the political spectrum in the hope of getting a second preference vote from people within those groups.

It completely changes the way we think about politics and political campaigning. For the better, and permanently.

There is a more complicated explanation of how tactical voting pretty much becomes impossible under AV in a section of the Wikipedia article.

8. We all start to count again

You might have heard the phrase “Mondeo Man”, “Windsor Woman” or the like at previous elections. These are demographic groups targeted by campaigners whose vote determines the election.

You see, at the last election, it’s thought that only 1.6% of votes actually changed the outcome. Because of the way FPTP favours jobs for life, safe seats and promotes tactical voting and negative politics, experts realised that the “swing” that would win the election would come from less than 1 voter in 50.

They identified who these people were based on where they lived. They analysed their lifestyles based on demographic information and labelled them. Experts then ran focus groups composed of this tiny demographic, and party policy and manifesto promises were crafted around what was responded to by that group.

All of those billboards, manifestos, news reports and editorials. They weren’t meant for 98.4% of the electorate - they were crafted to shape the opinion of just 1.6% of the electorate.

Does that seem a reasonable way to run a democracy to you? Under AV, we all start to count again.

9. It’s not a rubbish version of PR, and we don’t want PR anyway!

Some people have argued we should hold out for Proportional Representation because that means the number of MPs representing each party is in exact proportion to the number of votes cast for that party nationally.

We don’t want that.

Note, I said the MPs would be representing each party. They would no longer represent a constituency, and would be positioned on a list based on their loyalty to the party elders and the small Westminster clique that runs politics today.

We want and need a system that means an MP is tied to a constituency. We want and need a system that makes the MP want to represent the constituency within Parliament, rather than the other way around.

PR doesn’t do that. FPTP doesn’t do that. AV does.

10. If we vote “No”, we keep the status quo for at least a generation. 

The reality is, if we collectively vote “No” to the Alternative Vote, that’s it, we don’t get any more reform for a while - probably at least a generation. The concession prize might be a reform of the House of Lords, in order to try and keep the coalition together (it’s a very weak second prize for the Lib Dems), but I suspect if we voted “Yes”, then Lords reform would be here within no more than one more Parliament anyway - it’d be popular with voters.

We all agree that the current system is broken, but if we vote “no” we’re saying “that’s OK”. We are committing our children and possibly several generations more to the broken politics we’re so disenchanted with ourselves.

So, there we have it. 10 reasons. If you need any more, feel free to email me and I’ll try and answer your questions and answer any lingering doubts before polls open tomorrow.

As I write this, outside the sun is burning lazily down on a quiet, sleepy and green corner of Manchester as the day draws to a close. Fine weather, often makes me think about an alternate career I considered about a decade ago. I thought I’d share the story.

In 2002, the dot.com crash was in full effect. The internet era looked like it might be over for a while. As a software developer specialising in internet technologies, I was in a little bit of trouble. Whilst contracts appeared occasionally, I realised I was looking at 6-7 months of unemployment.

Not having any savings, and as yet mentally unprepared for the path of entrepreneurship I have now followed for half a decade, I was a little stumped as to how to actually pay my food bills, etc. I applied for barwork, but there was none forthcoming. I looked at minimum wage jobs, perhaps as a cleaner, but was “over qualified”. One CTO of an ISP I interviewed with thought I was too bright for the role he had in his firm, and that I would quickly become bored.

One contract I acquired however, led to an interesting discovery. I was hired by a small startup in Eccles to help “fix” a betting platform. It was a clone of Betfair.com, which was still relatively young at the time. I was hired for three reasons:

1. I knew how to fix the problem - their Bulgarian programmer was an idiot who didn’t understand what he was doing
2. I knew quite a bit about horse racing and gambling, and therefore had “domain expertise”
3. I was cheap

Since the age I’ve been legally allowed to gamble, I’ve been interested in it as a maths problem. Books on technical analysis in FOREX trading - one of which I’ve been reading recently - fascinate me. I had developed quite an eye for reading form, had become a better than “good” poker player, and enjoyed “the game” and all that came with it. I still have an impressive collection of books on sports betting and horse racing. Gambling, quite simply, is something I have always found a little bit fun.

An example of how confident I was: A few years before the events below unfolded, my mother was very concerned about my “gambling problem”. I did not have a gambling problem, beyond the fact I gambled, and this alone was enough to scare her. Sat in a small cafe in the town I grew up in, she decided to try and prove a point. She handed me £10 of her own money - money she could scarecely afford to fritter away at the time - and told me to go and bet on a horse with it there and then. If it lost, I would agree to repay her the £10 and to stop gambling. I didn’t quite understand her logic, but I agreed. I walked to the bookmakers around the corner, backed £5 each way a 4/1 chance in a jumps race, and then sat and watched as it won by 3 lengths. I returned to the cafe with my mother’s winnings, and she became silent as I handed her the cash.

So when I turned up at a rather dingy office in Eccles and discovered Betfair, I was transfixed. The major appeal to me was simple:

It allowed you to take the position of a bookmaker.

Bookmakers say that the moment somebody has to make a choice about which competitor will win a challenge, they are at a disadvantge. That means the bookmakers put themselves in a position where they don’t have to make a choice, they just balance the odds with the bets coming in.

The bookmakers generally don’t care who wins - they will “lay a book” at odds that mean whoever wins, they make a guaranteed profit. Some of them - especially on big prize handicaps - will often “lay to a common liability” which means they might lose some money if a favourite wins, but make a much larger profit if an outsider wins. A few don’t bother risk managing and just hope it all balances out. There are some truly horrifying scare stories about the last group.

The advantage they have however - encompassed in a mathematical measure of odds we call “the over-round” is that they are pretty much guaranteed to make money in the long run.

I opened a Betfair account, deposited £20, and laid a book on a race. I made 27p. It might not sound significant, but the important thing is, because of how I had done this, my risk was effectively zero by the time the race started. It was a “free” 27p that had magically been produced out of thin air.

I dived into the subject, buying whatever I could about bookmaking. I spent a lot of time - and frankly money - understanding the different conditions different laying approaches were best in. Like most geeks, once I choose to learn a subject, I go deep - I try and completely understand the whole domain. This was no different. I read up on the history of bookmaking, the backgrounds to important bookmakers, the maths, the probabilities, the strategies, and spoke to whoever I could about it that understood “the game”.

With my work done at the company, I now had an abundance of free time to put some of this learning to effect.

I was able to lay - and sometimes back using a method called “Dutching” on “under-round” books - over that summer out of Internet cafes (I had no connection to the Internet at home at the time), and cover my living expenses. I ate and drank well, I had a comfortable apartment in Manchester city centre, and was learning about being a bookmaker on a razor thin margin of 102% over-round.

About this time, I thought about becoming a professional bookmaker. The lifestyle of being on-course appealed to me almost as much as the 130% over-round (i.e the roughly 30% profit on capital staked pretty much guaranteed to a bookmaker), and I started to enquire about how to make it happen. I would need £100,000-£150,000 to get started at the courses I wanted to get started at which meant it would have to be a long-term plan. I contemplated assisting established names in the meantime, but without a driving license or a car, I was going to have a problem there as well.

And then the dream was interrupted, and all hell broke lose. 

When you’re trading all day on Betfair, you’re moving money around in order to make just a little tiny bit more money. You are not improving the planet, or people’s lives. It’s boring, and frankly, it’s selfish. Your ego takes a hit, even when you’re winning.

I didn’t have the equipment available to automate the process (despite being a software developer), so for me it was about just grinding it out, hour after hour, day after day. I would get up at 10am, buy and read a copy of the Racing Post, head to an Internet cafe for midday, and lay books on around 20 races until at least 5pm, and during the Summer as late as evening racing allowed. Sometimes I even laid books on US races in the evening, or started earlier and managed to catch races in timezones some hours to the East of us.

It was soul-destroying and boring work. I lost discipline. I stopped managing my risks, and suddenly started to gamble a little to make things more “interesting”. I rode out a lucky streak for a few weeks.

And then I took some losses. I don’t like losing. Nobody does. The original plan said losses were impossible, but I was now being reckless. It was more exciting. But stupid. But the losses hurt.

I started to chase the losses. Any experienced gambler will tell you that this is the beginning of madness.

When you lose, walk away, and accept it. It’s as a good a lesson for life as it is for gambling: don’t take it personally. Right then though, the “red mist” gamblers talk about descended, and it stuck with me for days.

The numbers accumulated as loss after loss built up. Three days later, as an unemployed - perhaps unemployable - software developer, I had lost just over £5,200. Given my goal was to make just £3 per race, this was a rather large sum.

I stopped, stood back, and took a deep breath. I went and decorated a friend’s bathroom for some spare cash to live on and to get away from the screen for a day or two.

I thankfully got a job, and recouped my losses in a more traditional manner, and until the mist that had enveloped me had left, stayed away from Betfair.

Betfair now has an API - a means for a software developer to automate trading strategies. I’ve put off coding anything against it for years for a few reasons. Principally, the environment is now very different as a trading arena to what it was (the liquidity makes the markets zero-sum games, in essence, and that means profitability is harder to come by), and frankly I have other more interesting things to spend my time working on that are likely to make me more money, sooner. I still ponder it though - an automated solution can be developed calmly and unemotionally. It should work quite well.

That said, on evenings like this, when the weather is fine, and a great Derby will be with us at 4pm tomorrow, I think back to those dreams of becoming a bookmaker. Being in the ring at Epsom tomorrow - or even better, on the rails - would not be a terrible way to make a living. Providing you manage your risk properly, of course…

… but then I remember, as with most things, my Mum was probably right.

bookoasis:

The World In A Bookshop by infra-leve.

My living room is starting to look like this actually…

The moment Steve Jobs’ and Apple’s work first came into my life was back in 2002. That first brush, I hated it. 

In time, I came to see him for the genius and pioneer that he was, and the work that Apple did - and does - as amongst the most extraordinary in the World today.

First some context:

In 2002, I was at the European BSD conference and Jordan Hubbard, founder of FreeBSD and then newly-employed release engineer at Apple, had secured for the “terminal room” a sponsorship from Apple which meant the room was full of the 2002 iMacs. The 2002 iMac was a little “alien” in that each machine was a dome with a flexible protruding screen. Installed on them was OS X, an operating system I had beta tested before its first release on an ancient iBook, and I had very mixed feelings about.

It was pretty. But was it really a Unix? The other developers of BSD Unix in the room needed very little convincing. The command line was Unix, but the desktop and applications on there were beautiful. It was what they dreamed a Unix should be. Many of them left that conference committed to buying Apple equipment and moving to OS X within the year.

I resented this “attack” on the community, but could see where they were coming from. It was - and remains - a key part of Apple’s renaissance: build great tools for developers and alpha-geeks, and in turn the developers will build an ecosystem that users crave. Instill in the developers an aesthetic and teach them a way to do the things they struggle with (human interface guidelines, for example), and they will reward you with loyalty.

In short: empower your customers, and they’ll empower you.

No technology firm had done this as successfully before as Apple were doing between 2002 and 2004.

By 2004, I had just about had it with the drain away from the community Apple had “caused”. On one mailing list I wrote a very angry email in response to somebody else’s request for configuration advice on their latest Apple laptop:

http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-chat/2004-October/002684.html

“Yes, of course. My advice is that you sell your over-priced fashion-victim toy with it’s Fisher Price Unix installed, and use the money instead to buy yourself a top of the range Thinkpad. It will outperform it, run FreeBSD, not look out of fashion next season, has been built by a company that is truly committed to the open source movement and whose execs don’t patronise you by assuming you travel to work on a skateboard in cargo pants or worse, pander to your girlfriend’s idea of what a computer should be.”

Ashamed by my petulant anger, about six month later I decided to reconsider, step back and think about what they were doing in a wider scheme of the industry I was in. This was when I started to “get it”. It was when I could see what others lauded about Apple and its founders.

Within 14 months of writing that email I had acquired a 12” iBook. It was all I could afford at the time, and even then it was subsidised by the fact that I was working in a University faculty and so got a discount.

I immediately loved the fact I had a Unix machine with WiFi and Bluetooth that I didn’t need to spend a week configuring. I loved the software I could buy, and that all the open source tools I loved would work too. I loved the thought that had gone into developing that code underlying OS X. I loved the developer tools and Safari. I found myself thinking more and more about aesthetics and craftsmanship as part of what I do as a developer. Suddenly programming wasn’t just a dry science of mathematics and engineering: Steve’s ideas were getting to me through the product of his and Apple’s work.

Two things then happened like thunderbolts. 

First, I had found a copy of Steve’s commencement speech to Stanford in 2005.

Steve’s speech stuck with me. I had studied rhetoric, and was pleased by the simple construct he had used - a structure I would begin to notice he used in product announcements - but the content had hit me somewhere deep.

In it he talked about three things:

• Follow your intuition, because in hindsight the dots will join up. You can’t plan to be great, you just have to let the intuition guide you.
• Do what you love, and change things if you find yourself not enjoying life
• Death is inevitable. It’s coming. Deal with it as an agent of change, and don’t waste your life.

The second thing that happened around then, was that I discovered the Ruby programming language, a language that was designed to be beautiful and enjoyable for programmers to work with.

It astonished me.

I don’t think it would have done if by that point I had not started to “get” aestheticism in software, the Apple way. It’s no secret that the Ruby on Rails framework is developed almost entirely on Apple OS X machines. A Ruby conference is basically a hang-out of Apple fans. The two seem to go hand-in-hand together, just like how in 2002 it was Apple and the BSD guys.

Last night as I watched the speech again on YouTube (on my iPhone, natch), I realised I was connecting dots back, and in hindsight the impact this speech and this discovery had on me was immense.

Coupled with the discovery of Ruby, what happened next was perhaps inevitable, but still surprised me.

I went and started my own business.

I had always wanted to, but right there and then, something clicked, and I got rid of all the fear and doubt and realised that when I looked back on my life I wanted to be able to say that for a while at least I had been an “entrepreneur”.

I made the decision that I would not work on projects in that business I did not enjoy. I would only work on things that brought me joy: that is to say, I would only write code in Ruby. A brave choice in early 2006 when Rails had yet to reach v1.0 and Ruby was still considered a “toy” language by many.

I had no money, no client roster, and survived the first six months coding away on that tiny, slow little 12” iBook for friends who had piece work for me. I had never been happier.

I ate noodles and beans on toast, drank donated Guinness and chose to love my work. Working from home I would love waking late on a Monday morning, but I could never lie-in: I always wanted to just get started.

I spent the next few years helping other businesses, talking about development as a craft, not just a science.

I went into schools and told kids that learning how to write beautiful software was the most powerful skill you could cheaply acquire in this generation. Like me, they could come up with an idea and with a laptop and internet connection share it with the World in a weekend.

In the years since, I have helped dozens of start-ups, spoken to thousands of teenage children (and hopefully inspired a few to give programming with an artistic flair a go), and changed my life substantially.

I am not the same man I was in 2005. The depression and anxiety I had suffered prior to then have more or less gone. I have a brilliant relationship with an amazing girl who I consider to be my best friend, and I do work that makes me excited almost every day.

The decisions I made in those few months in 2005 and early 2006, looking back, are what made me who I am today.

I had to call time on my main business in 2010 partly because I was finding myself looking in the mirror and not looking forward to the day ahead any more - just like Steve had said, I decided I needed to change something. As sales had dried up I realised I was doing something I no longer enjoyed.

I then turned down one job offer for another on a quarter of the salary because it felt right, it felt like more interesting work and ultimately I knew it might lead to an exciting adventure I had dreamed about.

Today I work on an amazing product with brilliant people and finding myself learning new things every day.

Looking back I realise I have developed a new sense of intense curiosity. I will wander in my work, inquisitively poking whole areas I know little about. I read more, listen more and learn more. I teach where I can, I play, and I explore.

I realise that my time on this little rock is limited, and I try and make sure every day I do something that makes me smile.

In hindsight then, Steve’s words and work have had a substantial impact on who I am today professionally. Because that impact made my work more joyful, pleasant and fulfilling, in turn, his words and work have made my life better than it would have been without his impact.

“This was a very typical time. I was single. All you needed was a cup of tea, a light, and your stereo, you know, and that’s what I had.”

It’s all the more impressive because according to “the rules” society is meant to work by, he should have been another liberal arts wash-up. As I said on Facebook earlier:

“I don’t think the economically right-wing anywhere - US, UK, Eurozone, China, anywhere - would be able to deal with the idea that the largest company on the planet was founded by a Buddhist counter-culturalist of complex family origins who made decisions based on intuition, aestheticism, love and curiosity.

Yet, it makes perfect sense to me.”

I never met him, never got close to knowing him the way that his friends and family did, or even his colleagues, but in my own way I learned to love him. His impact will be with me for the rest of my life, and late last night as the news broke here in the UK, despite it being on the cards for a while, the news came as a shock and I had to hold back the tears.

His critics’ words (and there are many!), sound very much like my own before I “got it”. Right now - today - though, it is petulant, angry, juvenile scribbling, and unworthy of any mature grown-up, given it is less than 24 hours since his dying.

Some call him a fascist, others a megalomaniac. In essence all he was trying to do was produce the best - and most human-friendly - technological products humanity was capable of producing right now. He did so within the rules shareholders gave him along with their money, because after being fired once, he didn’t want to mess up and be fired again. As ever, he exceeded their expectations and produced a company larger than any other on earth in terms of market capitalisation.

When you have a vision, as long as nobody gets hurt along the way, there’s no harm in following it ruthlessly. That’s what he did.

Some point to the fact that he didn’t donate much to charity in his life time, but I’m quietly confident that is because he didn’t want the ego stroking whilst he was still alive, and in coming years and months his wealth will quietly reach parts of the World that need it. He felt that shareholders’ money was their, and he shouldn’t give it away. He felt the best way he could help the World was by empowering as many people as possible. There’s no real shame in that. And in that, he was immensely successful.

He was also a subversive, and this is a point that his critics miss - or point to - the most. Biologically he was a half-Syrian Muslim, which when acknowledged in the last decade caused the conservative right in the US a huge problem: was the leader of the hottest thing on Wall Street one of them? They needn’t have worried - he’d discovered Buddhism many years ago. Adoptively he grew up to be a counter-culture Bay Area “hippie” and counter-culture type that worried some in the establishment even more.

His critics point to the consumerist message of Apple, without realising its founding principle was to go against the grain and to help people push further than the establishment wanted them to. The fact that he was able to make a living - a good living - as reward for that vision should not be seen as a fault or flaw.

Those unfamiliar with this background with questions to ask might want to start here. It might change your mind about him.

He wasn’t perfect. Nobody is. But regardless, he was an inspiration to millions who right now are working at building the next generation of technology. He showed us what we were capable of when we tried, and his death some 20-30 years “before his time” shows what a great leveller pancreatic cancer can be. So, if you are a critic: please shut the hell up and let us deal with paying tribute to him in our own way. You’ll reap the benefits as we march forward, inspired by his vision, into giving you the technology you deserve to make the World a better place.

I genuinely believe those who hate him haven’t given him - specifically what lay beneath his vision - a chance, in the same way I hadn’t.

The moment I did though and started to use the tools he and his company produced the way they were designed, my life got better and my attitude to what I wanted to do with my life improved.

I can’t think of another businessman I could say that about. I can’t think of another businessman anybody will be able to say that about when they die.

As I watched that commencement speech another time, the words were as fresh and as poignant as ever. His final few words seem particularly appropriate to me today, and so I will leave you with them. You may love him, you may hate him, but you can’t disagree that his vision was sharp, and worth sharing.

My thoughts and condolences today are of course with his family, his friends and colleagues, and all who were impacted by Steve from a distance the way I was. Steve was an amazing man, who inspired so many and has changed the World for the better, forever.

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.

Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960’s, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.

Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: “Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.” It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.

Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

Thank you all very much.

Philosophers ask questions.

Artists interpret questions.

Theologians ignore questions.

Scientists and engineers answer questions.

Geeks do some or all the above.

Everybody else is just a spectator.

Dream about what you would wish for. It might come true.

In South Kensington they take their fashion so seriously, that if you find yourself on the District/Circle line platform wearing something untrendy, TfL have got you covered. 

Gap are a bit mainstream though. Surely a jumper from somewhere more boutique would have been more fitting?

Virtual Bush, much like the real G.W. only with you at the controls instead of Dick Cheney.

नेपालमा ईन्टरनेटबाट खरिद बिक्री (Online Shopping)

नेपाल लक्ष्यीत अनलाईन बिजनेस गरी रहेका केही वेबसाईटमा गएर भुक्तानी गरे पछी पर्व अवसर
अनुसारका सामग्री वेबसाईट वालाले सम्बन्धीत कहाँ पुर्याई दिन्छन । अब भनिरहन
पर्दैन बिदेशमा बसेका छोराछोरीले माततिर्थ
औशीको दिन आमालाई सरप्राईज दिन चाहे भने मात्र पनि मनग्गे बिकल्प छन।

ढोकैमा उपहार आईपुग्न सक्छ । दशैमा घरपरिवार लाई एउटा मज्जाको कालो घोर्ले खसी किन्दीन परोस वा बाबुको मुख हेर्ने दिन
एउटा मज्जाको आईफोन दिन मन लागोस । मनमात्र गर्नु पर्छ, सात समुन्द्र
पारी बसी बसी त्यहाँको अनलाईन ट्रान्जेक्सन गर्न मिल्ने डेविट वा क्रेडिट कार्डको साहायताले घर
परिवारको लागी सामान किनि दिन सकिन्छ।

मुन्चा डट कम, ठमेल डट कम, आदी बिदेश बाट भुक्तानी गरेर नेपालमा सामान सप्लाई गर्ने वेब साईट हुन।

अमेरिका, युरोप बसेर नेपालमा उपहार पठाउन
सकिने भए पछी यदी कसैले पोखरा बसेर धरानमा केही सामान पठाउछु नि त भनि हाल्यो भने अहिलेलाई त्यो अलि सम्भव छैन वा धेरै झन्झट छ भन्नु पर्ने हुन्छ किन भने
मुख्य कुरा यस्ता अनलाईन पोर्टलहरु काठमाण्डौ केन्द्रीत बजारमा ब्यस्त छन।

धेरैमा काठमाण्डौमै पनि अतिरिक्त शुल्क तिरे पछी मात्र सामान ढुवानी हुन्छ। दुई सय देखी दश हजार रुपयाँ मा बैकं खाता खोलेर
पाईने एटिएम कार्डले ईन्टरनेटमा भुक्तानी गर्न मिल्दैन। अझ भनौ हामी सँग भएका एटीएम कार्डले पायक परेको स्थानमा रहेको मेसिन बाट पैसा निकाल्ने बाहेक केही गर्न सक्दैनन।

प्रचलनमा रहेका अनलाईन ई-कर्मस साईटहरुमा भुक्तानी गर्नको लागी डलर बाट ट्रान्जेक्सन गर्न मिल्ने कार्ड चाहीन्छ। जुन सर्वसाधरण नेपालीको लागी आकाशको फल झै
हो। डलर ट्रान्जेक्सन गर्न मिल्ने कार्ड पाउन आफ्नो आय स्रोत पनि डलर मै देखाउनु पर्छ त्यो पनि नेपाल राष्ट्र बैकको सम्पुर्ण
प्रक्रिया पुरा गरे।

सरकारी निती प्रविधीलाई आत्मसात गर्ने भन्दा पनि निति निर्माणतहमा रहेका ब्यक्तीहरुको अज्ञानतालाई कानुन बनाउने खालको छ।

त्यसैले सरकारी तहबाट नेपालमा अनलाईन बिजनेस को क्षेत्रमा केही भै हाल्ला भन्न सकिने अवश्था छैन तर नेपालका निजी बैकहरुले नेपालमै ईन्टरनेट कारोबार गर्ने सोच राखेर
काम गरी रहेका सस्था सँग मिलेर यसमा केही फड्को मार्न खोजेका छन ।

भाटभटेनि डिपार्टमेन्ट स्टोर, हरिलो डट कम, ई-सेवा आदी यसको उदारण हो ।

काठमाण्डौको प्रख्यात डिपार्टमेन्ट स्टोर भाटभटेको अनलाईन पोर्टलमा जानु भयो भने त्यस डिपार्टमेन्ट पाईने कतिपय सामान
अनलाईन किन्न सकिन्छ त्यो पनि नेपलकै बैकको अनलाईन खाता प्रयोग गरेर।

भाटभटेनिकै कुरा गर्दा सामान रोजी सकेपछी कुमारी बैकको अनलाईन बैङ्किग खाता प्रयोग गर्नु भयो भने भुक्तानी गर्न
सकिन्छ । कुमारी बैकमा खाता छैन भने पनि तपाईलाई ई-सेवा ले
त्यही बराबरको सुबिधा प्रदान गर्छ ।

लक्ष्मी बैक, बैक अफ एसिया, किष्ट बैक, एनएमबी बैक , सानिमा बैक आदीमा भएको बैक खातामा ईन्टरनेट बैङ्कीग को सुबिधा लिनु भएको छ भने घरमै बसी बसी ई-
सेवामा पैसा ट्रान्सफर गर्न सकिन्छ । ई – सेवामा पैसा ट्रान्सफर गरी सके पछी तपाईले भाटभटेनी मात्र हैन अरु केही साईटहरुमा पनि बस्तु वा सेवा खरिद
गर्न सक्नु हुन्छ।

ई- सेवा मा मात्र पैसा जम्मा गर्न सक्नु भयो भने बुद्द एयरले उडान गर्ने स्थानको लागी बुद्द एयरको टिकट
किन्न ट्राभल एजेन्टको मा पुग्नु पर्दैन । घरमै बसी बसी बसी मोबाईलको रिचार्ज कार्ड खरिद गर्ने देखी हवाई जहाजको टिकट खरिद गर्न सकिन्छ ।

सेवाग्राहीलाई सुबिधा दिने भन्दा पनि दुख
दिने खालको सरकारी नितीलाई सरलीकरण
गरेर ब्यपार
गर्नको लागि केही उत्साही युवाहरुले
नयाँ नयाँ प्रयोग पनि गरेका छन । हरिलो डट
कम यसको उदारण हो । यस साईटको साहायताले तपाईले नेपालमै बसेर
अमेजन डट कम, ईबे देखी वालमार्ट भन्ने बिश्व
प्रसिद्द अनलाईन पोर्टलमा भएका सामान
खरिद गर्न सकिन्छ । यसको लागि ईन्टरनेट
मार्फत सामानको बिक्री गर्ने
अमेरिककाको कुनै पनि वेबसाईटमा गएर
आफुलाई मन परेको सामान रोज्नु पर्छ र
त्यो सामान देखीन
वेबसाईटको ठेगाना हरिलो डट
कमको वेबसाईट मा गएर नेपाल सम्म आई
पुग्दा सो समानको मुल्य कति पर्ने
हो त्यसको कोटेशन माग्न सकिन्छ । यस
पछी तपाईले नेपाल (काठमाण्डौ)
आईपुग्दा लाग्ने मुल्य पठाउछ । हरिलो उपलब्ध
गराएको मुल्य चित्त बुझेमा नेपालकै ईन्टरनेट
ब्याङ्किगहरुको प्रयोग गरी भुक्तानी गर्न
सकिन्छ । मुल्य कै कुरा गर्नु हुन्छ भने
उदरणको लागी उनान्नसय डलर पर्ने अमेजन डट
कमले बिक्री गर्ने किन्डल टच हरिलोले लगभग
बार्ह हजारको हाराहारिमा नेपाल ल्याई
दिन्छ । अमेरिकी डलरको बिनिमय
दरको कुरा गर्ने हो भने नेपाल आई पुग्दा लगभग
चार हजार नेपाली रुपँया बढी परेको देखीन्छ
। तर अमेरिका बाट नेपाल आई पुग्दा लाग्ने
कुरीयर खर्च, नेपाल सरकारले तोकेको भन्सार, मुल्य अभिबृदी कर जोड्दा मुल्य अनुचित मानी हाल्न पर्दैन ।

गाउले कम्प्युटर टिप्स : कम्प्युटर का software चाडो खोल्न को लागि shortcut key हरु

गाउले कम्प्युटर टिप्स : कम्प्युटर का software चाडो खोल्न को लागि shortcut key हरु

About a year ago, Sept 2014, during a violent Austin thunder storm, a rental property I personally own in SW Austin was struck by lightening and caught fire in the attic. As the thunderous flash of light, noise and immediate smoke jolted the tenant out of bed at 2:30AM, he quickly realized that he was standing in water. The home was flooding, and also on fire, simultaneously. Wow! Wake up!! His elderly mother was visiting and he was able to get her and his son out quickly as the house filled with smoke. Then he called 911. Then me. I showed up around 3:15AM, sloshed through about 18 inches of water at my driveway, as about 6 firetrucks were on the scene. It was an apocalyptic scene, like out of a movie. But everyone was ok, and the fire was contained to mostly the attic and three bedrooms. But the ... Read more

It’s the start of 2016 and already I’ve received a few inquiries from my investor clients wondering whether they should hold on to their rental property, or sell this year. It’s a conversation I have multiple times with multiple clients each year, and it’s a question Sylvia and I sometimes ask ourselves about our own rental property. Especially given the appreciation gains of the past 5 years in Austin. So this article will walk through some of the questions you might ask yourself when contemplating whether to sell your real estate asset, based on how I look at the question with my own rental properties. The first questions to ask yourself are: 1) Do you need the money? and 2) What will you do with the money? I normally don’t make it past those two questions, because the answers for me are are “no” and “I don’t know”. For most, ... Read more

Should you enroll in a Real Estate investment seminar in Austin or your home town? Be very careful if you do. Understand the risks and what you are paying.

Learn how to use Google Forms as a time tracking app for studies and analyze how much time you spend on each subject. You can also analyze the study pattern with charts inside Google Sheets.

The post How to Track your Study Time with Google Forms and Sheets appeared first on Digital Inspiration.

Schedule and send Google Spreadsheets on a recurring schedule. Email Google Sheets as PDF, CSV or Microsoft Excel formats on daily, weekly, monthly or yearly schedules.

The post How to Email Spreadsheets Automatically on a Recurring Schedule appeared first on Digital Inspiration.

Learn how to make photo slideshows for Instagram with Google Slides. You can showcase product demos, how-to guides and even use slideshows for visual storytelling.

The post Make Instagram Slideshows with Google Slides appeared first on Digital Inspiration.

Learn how to use a Google Sheet to track product prices on Amazon shopping websites and get email alerts when the prices go down or up.

The post How to Use Google Sheets as an Amazon Price Tracker appeared first on Digital Inspiration.

SlideShow displays a series of images along with links to related web pages.

You no longer need to be a widget hacker to make your own SlideShow! Control-click on SlideShow.wdgt (located in Library/Widgets) to find instructions for adding your own photos and captions. All I ask is you retain a link back to this page on the back side of the widget. Thanks!

Are you an artist or photographer wanting a custom widget like this one? Contact me about some kind of creative exchange!

New in Version 2.1.1:

- Clarified instructions for creating a custom SlideShow

Interested in building widgets? Check out my tutorial!

This tutorial contains the basics, but it also covers some "advanced" topics including:

- Accessing the command line (including PHP, shell scripts, and more)
- Saving and retreiving preferences
- Asynchronous HTTP requests (like those used in most RSS widgets)
- Tapping the power of Quartz drawing methods

Professional Quality: Parts Manual, Parts List, Parts Catalog With Exploded Diagrams. *Contains manufactures part numbers and diagrams for EVERY ...

In the bustling world of e-commerce, inclusivity is not just a trend but a necessity. As the digital landscape evolves, it's imperative to ensure that online stores are accessible to all users, including the elderly and those requiring disability aids. Let’s we'll delve into actionable tips to make your Shopify e-commerce store user-friendly for these […]

The post Crafting a User-Friendly Shopify Store for Elderly and Users with Disabilities appeared first on MonstersPost.

Question! -Why Haven't you heard from Me!Answer! -Nothing to Say! If the frequency of Bike Stuff coupons were graphed lately it would look like this: _______________ Straight Line. Except for Nashbar's generous consistent offer of 10% off Coupons I would have nothing to offer!Just for variety I've included REI, they have a fair amount of Bike Stuff and currently offer $20 off of $100 or more & $30 off of $150 or more. Also I'm going to start offering exclusive coupons through this EMAIL list and the RSS feed NOT available on the Website so stay tuned to this list for the most complete and current list of Discount Coupons for Bike Gear Available anywhere! That is, when we start getting some!Thanks,CarlDetails: http://www.bikewebsite.com/Otherbikesources.htm#Coupons

ISKCON's well-wishers can be found both within and outside of the institution.