Damian Brady’s Blog

Steve Pavlina has written a post called 10 Reasons You Should Never Get a Job. Apart from being slightly abrasive in parts (which I have to believe is intentional), it’s a really good read and makes you question the wisdom of what you do for 8 or so hours of each weekday.

I’ve heard most of these arguments before - mainly while studying at QUT’s Brisbane Graduate School of Business (BSGB). I distinctly remember listening to a lecture from the current Executive in Residence Anne McKevitt (fairly famous in the UK) where she raised many of these points herself.

The main idea is a simple one: why work for someone else, trading time for money, when you can earn passive income 24/7 by providing a service that runs itself? The advent of the Internet has made this a much more feasible prospect. If you can set up a web-based service that generates income without needing much maintenance, then you’re on your way. It’s been done countless times (think eBay, Amazon, del.icio.us, etc.), so you can’t say it’s not possible.

I remember reading about a teenager who set up a website called The Million Dollar Homepage. Really simple idea. The site consists of a single image, 1000×1000 pixels in size. You can put whatever you want in this image (within reason obviously), with links, and it’ll cost you $1 per pixel. It’s win-win: Businesses can advertise very cheaply, and this guy gets a million dollars. It was sold out when I looked a minute ago.

Of course, to make this passive-income thing work, you need an idea and sufficient commitment to see it through. Every time I hear about this kind of thing I think, “Yeah, awesome! I’m going to do that!”. And every time, it fades into obscurity. I’ve still got some ideas, don’t get me wrong, but I’ve never been excited enough to see them through. One day…

And no, I’m not telling you what my ideas are :).

Damo

A few things I found thanks to Simon…

Coding Horror: Separating Programming Sheep from Programming Goats: Talks about an article about some research done into why some people just can’t write code. I remember when I was doing IT at uni, there were people who would not have been able to write a strip of code to save their lives. It seems that you either get it or you don’t. My subconscious is telling me, “I knew that”…

Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One’s Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments: This research basically gives legitimacy to the idea that stupid people think they’re smart, and smart people lack confidence. I love this article. My subconscious is now banging on the side of my head and asking why I never listen to it.

The Baby Name Wizard: NameVoyager: This is really interesting. Basically it just shows you the change in popularity of baby names. It’s a nice flash interface, and you can see some definite trends in names. Interesting ones to search for are Prince, Hillary, and Brandon. See if you can pick the reasons for the shape of those graphs…

Damo

I was browsing Slashdot, and found a reference to a free service called Qunu.  It seems to be a search engine that links people with problems with people who are passionate about sharing their knowledge.  You search for a topic, and Qunu gives you a list of people who can help and who are online at the time.  It then lets you chat to them using standard IM protocols. Obviously it’s based on the premise that hardcore nerds are very altruistic and generous with their time.

I hope this works.  It’s a great idea, and the friendliness aspect leads to all the warm and fuzzys you’d expect.  I’m (of course) a little skeptical having browsed through a number of public forums in my time.  The expression “n00b” and the reaction to them springs to mind…  I suppose, realistically, that the people who make the RTFM comments aren’t going to sign up for this, so I’m almost certainly being too harsh.  By the way, if you don’t know what I was just talking about, then good.  I was nerding it up a bit.

Wow, this has all been a ramble.  Let me summarise.  I like the idea.  I think it could work.  It’ll definitely be good for the average semi-computer-literate Joe who needs help with something computer related.  It’s only new (still in alpha), but have a look and put friends onto it.  I’d love to see this take off.

Damo

Basically it’s because of Uni Games. The Uni Games for the northern region (NUGs) was held last week and I’ve spent most of my time as the QUT volleyball manager organising and obviously attending.

The QUT teams did as well as they possibly could. Our two mens teams played each other for gold, and the women beat UQ to win their comp. It’s a shame there weren’t more quality teams there, but that’s what happens when you strip money from the unions by introducing VSU…

I can’t be bothered getting all political about that, but needless to say, I’m not happy about the fact that NUGs is now gone because of VSU.

Anyway, I’m back to work now, and I’m sure my liver is appreciative of the break.

Damo “Visa” Brady