creativity

ok so I'm sitting here chill'n at the moment, listening to some smooth jack johnson tunes - and reading all about creativity. Some great articles I've come across so far on "exercising the mind" which i feel that could be applied to any line of work:

• stre-e-tch your imagination
• 10 ways to boost creativity
• your imagination, the ultimate success tool

google javascripting

taken from http://frassle.net/Directory/index?note=561051

----

I've been doing some more reading about what's going on behind the scenes in google's cutting edge javascript applications.They are essentially running javascript based thick clients in the user’s browser, and doing all server side communication through xml http calls. Some services they are currently offering, driven mainly on the client side:
http://www.google.com/webhp?complete=1&hl=en
http://gmail.google.com
http://maps.google.com/maps
Some analysis of the technology behind these services:
http://serversideguy.blogspot.com/2004/12/google-suggest-dissected.html
http://johnvey.com/features/gmailapi/
http://jibbering.com/2002/4/httprequest.html
And, for the truly brave, the javascript source code from google suggest, devoid of line breaks and comprehendable variable names:
http://www.google.com/ac.js
and a decompressed, refactored version (reverse engineered outside of google — thanks Shimon for the pointer)
http://www.fastbugtrack.com/misc/google/ac.js
This technology is now being used to power cpan search, and they have released their backend implementation of the api.

innovation

i saw this book in the bookshop today.... The Medici Effect by Frans Johansson. I think I want it... very interesting stuff about encouraging innovation through a mixing of already experienced technologies / available resources. it sounds a bit cliche that "necessity is the mother of invention" - but this takes it further. will report back if I get around to buying it.

knowledge

i just found out about a society today called mensa... which is a group of people who socialize together who are extremely intelligent. To qualify to be in this society - you have score in the top 2% of the population who take an IQ test.

I am very intrigued - and it has prompted me to think about the topic of knowledge. I think i'd like to read more books on knowledge and how to nuture it.... it weird how you become acutely aware of something all of a sudden that's always been there.

books i'd like to read:
Knowledge and Decisions by thomas Sowell

functionality

not sure whether i like this blog yet..... i think i want more options, like categories and stuff. An old mate of mine has some nice features in his - http://www.geeklane.com/blog

security summit

went to the microsoft security summit in darling harbour today.... came out not felling that impressed. previous years have been much more informative - this year it was one big sales pitch. bugger