General Remarks

With the roll out and branding of Guru42 being done in my spare time, it has been a slow process, as I don't have a lot of spare time, and nothing is ever as easy as it looks. 

It is just a matter of finding a few hours here and there to add the content. The Guru42 Universe is not a single site, but several. I have posted a few teaser blog entries to tell of things in the works. The basic set up of the sites is completed. Of course I'll always be tweaking the look and feel of the styles.  I have a lot of content queued up and ready, with more being added to each site every day.

I was going to wait just a bit longer, when the sites were a bit more developed, to start advertising the Guru42 brand  but, I jumped on the Twitter bandwagon last weekend.  Since I have set up a Twitter account, as you can see the link to it along the right side, I thought it was time to start a Facebook site for the  Guru42 Universe.

Check out the link to the Guru42 Facebook page on the right column as well.  Help me to "brand" Guru42! (That's the Guru42 brand, not band. Although the Guru42 band is not a bad idea???) 

Please take a moment to become a fan of Guru42 on Facebook! It's quick, it's painless, it's free!

Did a small bit of cleaning up and updating of SmartTechnology.info.  Cleaning, as far as a few cosmetic style sheet issues, yes, I am never happy with the look and feel, did some minor tweaks.  Updating, as far as adding a few Drupal modules for cleaner URL's and better meta tags.

Also adapted my Ignite Dover presentation from last week to fit on a web format.  A lot of the material for the "Great Power and Responsibility" presentation is from a work shop I did many years ago titled, "Beyond Great Ideas and Good Intentions."  As I say in my material on SmartTechnology, the lessons in my presentation are much older than modern technology, but success in new wave and Web 2.0 technology is the ability to incorporate old school philosophies with modern technology,

Check out the unabridged version of Great Power and Responsibility, from which my #ignitedover presentation was based now at: http://smarttechnology.info/great

I created a twitter account this weekend.  I had created one when they first started, and it quickly became more trouble than it was worth, so I deleted it.  I decided to take a wait and see approach before coming back to Twitter.

Some have asked, why take a wait and see approach to Twitter?  Why so cynical?

I was a member of numerous SIG's (Special Interest Groups) at commercial online services like CompuServe in the 1980's, I have been a member of numerous online communities over the years. Having been a member of numerous online communities over the years, with each new one that arises, I am just a bit less quick to jump on the bandwagon.

In 2007, an online acquaintance introduced me to Zaadz.com, as something more than just a typical social networking site, but a social networking site of like minded individuals with a purpose. It sounded interesting. I created my profile, added my content, personal likes and dislikes, started a few conversations, and went along for the ride.

In the introduction to Zaadz.com they promoted themselves as "Think MySpace for people who want to make a difference in the world."  In an internet post in 2006 by the creator of Zaadz stated, "Whereas most social networking sites seem to devolve into a Jerry Springer show, we want to create something that has integrity to its stated purpose. "

In a blog of Brian Johnson the creator of Zaadz he states, "I'm a philosopher who's passionate about understanding and living the universal truths while inspiring and empowering people to live at their highest potential."  News headlines are still to be found online from back in 2006 and 2007 touting Zaadz as a promising community of conscious capitalists wanting to “change the world.”

Zaadz.com was to be the social network for being conscious about your surroundings, learning and growing, and trying to change the World.  Wow, what could be more noble that that!

You create a profile using basic social networking tools, list your goals, your ideas, the books you are reading, want to read or have read, your favorite quotes, as well as your heroes and teachers. Sounds pretty familiar?

Not long after I joined Zaadz, in 2007, Gaiam, a "lifestyle company" that creates media content, acquired Zaadz.com for a greater community presence. Zaadz then was renamed Gaia.com.  So much for all that saving the world, guess creator Brian Johnson took the money and ran?

When Zaadz.com changed to Gaia.com, it seemed to lose some of the purpose and conscious that it started with.

In the Spring of 2010, Gaia.com was deemed unprofitable and it was shut down.  The site that originally touted wanting to “change the world.” was shut down "due to current economic conditions." Wow!

So if even changing the world has been postponed "due to current economic conditions"  I am just a bit cautious to jump on every social networking bandwagon on the first pass.  If that make me cynical, so be it.

Back in high school, there was the gang from the corner store, that was about six to eight guys.  There was the cruising gang, that was probably about 4 other guys.  And there was the gang from the other corner, that was maybe another  six to eight guys.

What does that total up to?  Maybe twenty?  If you wanted to know what the guys were going to do tonight, you went to the corner, and waited to see who showed up.

No e-mail. No cell phone. No Facebook. No twitter. You went to the corner, and waited to see who showed up. Pretty simple eh?

So now with social networking I can have Facebook friends, Twitter followers and Linkedin connections,  When I first start out, it's pretty embarrassing isn't it, if you just have a few friends?

According to British anthropologist Robin Dunbar, there is a theoretical cognitive limit to the number of people with whom one can maintain stable social relationships.  This magical number is know as Dunbar's number, and is commonly cited as 150.  I feel much better now that I know that all these folks with thousands of friends are just fooling themselves. This is a pretty cool topic, and I will be studying it in more detail.

I think the Dalai Lama is a very cool guy!  He's very smart, and his wisdom is priceless, and I would really love to chat with him in real time.  But as one of his 696,315 followers on Facebook, I doubt I will ever get the chance.

Spent last weekend doing some additions and tweaks to the layouts. The themes of the websites are about where I want them, for now.

I am at the point where I need to get some content into the sites so you can see how they flow, individually as sites, and how they feed into each other as far as the RSS feeds. Gathered up ideas all week long in notepad, and refined them over the weekend.

Computerguru (http://computerguru.net/) is actually the parent site of my technology family of sites, but I had some material at the top of my mind I wanted to get to the SmartTechnology site, so I started refining that one first.

It is not quite ready for prime time, but there is enough there you can see where I am going with it ..
SmartTechnology (http://smarttechnology.info/)   Check out the section on Managing Your Network. (That section should be titled "All the things I wish I could get management to understand")

"With great power comes great responsibility" is a line linked to the Spiderman movies, an is the ultimate lesson that Spiderman teaches us.

I have often used the line "With great power comes great responsibility" is discussing technology. Technology in general, and the internet in particular has created many changes in the world.

I am taking a break from Facebook to evaluate its effects on our lives. While recently there was a movement, Quit Facebook Day which took place on May 31, 2010, my decision was months in the making, and had nothing to do with the recent online event,

Having used various online services since the late 1980's, I see the recent wave of concerns about Facebook just another event in a long evolution of technology into our lives.

What gives me concern to pause is the fact that Facebook dominates the social networking scene in the United States, and how much Facebook likes this.

"With great power comes great responsibility" will be a major theme on my SmartTechnology.info website. 

After several weeks of tweaking themes and testing modules, in recent days I have slowly been expanding the sites in the Universe of Guru42 using Drupal.

I was somewhat out of web building for a few years. While I dabbled a bit with keeping a blog and a Drupal web site up and running, it is only within the last few months that I have jumped back full throttle. It amazes me how much has changed in that time period.  Technology is one profession where you can not spend too much time standing on the sideline, as things will pass you by.

Technology is also a profession where you can not be all things to all people, and any attempt to be the world's best generalist is purely insane. In my days of teaching web building skills, I discussed and compared various technologies, but made it clear that my personal focus was on LAMP technologies. (Linux-Apache-MySQL-PHP).  Even within the LAMP family, there are many solutions for the same problem.  
In the case of content management systems, I spent as much time as I could to make educated comparisons between the many solutions available.  Because of the investment of time and personal resources needed to become proficient in a technology, as some point in time you make a decision to narrow your focus, and immerse yourself in it.

So here I am, dripping with Drupal. 

One of the areas I hope to develop at the Philosophyguru web site is a discussion of movies and to a lesser extent literature.  Sad commentary I guess, that I am more likely to watch a movie, than read a book, but that is the reality of my world.

Besides watching a few classic movies over the past few weeks, I have been gathering up and sorting years worth of notes, and I am ready to start rolling out some content.

Initially I will cover the main areas of my interests that seem most appropriate for the Philosophyguru web site, Film-Noir and Science Fiction.  Not meant to be a comprehensive guide to either genre, but in the true spirit of the Philosophyguru web site, to draw attention to the topics, and provoke some thought. As Walt Disney is quoted as saying, "I'd rather entertain and hope that people learn, than teach and hope that people are entertained."

A great classic never goes out of style!

Guru 42 is Web 2.0... Is that a question, or a statement?

As I update the "Worlds of Questy" and it evolves into the "Universe of Guru 42" I think of the evolution of the web itself.

My original "Worlds of Questy" web sites were flat HTML pages, updated, and added, one page at a time. Pages were created using an HTML editor, which could have been a sophisticated application, or in some cases something as simple as notepad. Once the pages were created or edited, they were uploaded to the remote site.

As the roll out of the "Universe of Guru 42" continues, I am mapping out how a blog, such as this one, when updated, can selectively add content to other sites using the technology of RSS. Really Simple Syndication technology is relatively new, compared to HTML, and allows me to add content to multiple sites, simply by creating content at one site, and allowing the content to "feed" to other sites. Other technologies, such as content management systems and blogs, allow me to quickly capture an idea as I am now, and "publishing" to the web quickly and easily.

Web 2.0 does not represent a specific standard, but rather represents how content is created and delivered. O'Reilly Media hosted the first Web 2.0 conference in 2004, and defined Web 2.0 as where software applications are built upon the Web as opposed to upon the desktop. So in that regard, the description of my evolution in the previous paragraph, is an illustration of this new wave.


But, is Web 2.0 truly a new wave, or simply the natural evolution of how the web was meant to work in the first place?

In an interview with Tim Berners-Lee, originator of the World Wide Web, he stated, "...I think Web 2.0 is, of course, a piece of jargon, nobody even knows what it means. If Web 2.0 for you is blogs and wikis, then that is people to people. But that was what the Web was supposed to be all along."

Who am I to argue with Tim Berners-Lee, listed by Time magazine as one of the 100 greatest minds of this century? I am not going to get hung up on the buzz words, or as Berners-Lee described it, the jargon.

I find his remarks pretty funny, as all too often folks get hung up on jargon, rather than simply focusing on the road ahead.
As for me, I'll just keep moving, taking another step forward, one day at a time.

If only I had a dollar for every time I had a point to illustrate the phrase "Nothing is ever as easy as it looks" I would be quite wealthy.

Last Sunday night I commented that if all goes well, the new sites should start to take shape over the next few days. Well, I've made quite a bit of progress over the weekend, and if all goes well, the new sites should start to take shape over the next few days.

Part of the time spent in the start up phase of the Guru42 roll out, is not only creating the themes, and gathering up the notes from old versions of the sites, but mapping out how these sites will be part of a larger family of sites, and how they will "feed" each other.

It is not that there have been any issues or problems, the tasks at hand have been completed at an even pace. Beside finally completing two theme sets for the new series of sites, I have also spent a lot of time documenting the modules, and their installation and configuartion. A lot of the "nuts and bolts" information will be posted on the ComputerGuru website, for use in future installations, as well as a tool for anyone wishing to learn from my labors. My notes, as well as this blog to use as a reference, will illustrate not only what tasks are involved, but also how much is involved in web building.

The blog was quiet this weekend, not for the lack of topics to discuss, but because I was busy working on a lot of behind the scenes prep work to launch the technology sites of the the Guru42 family of sites.

A prototype site was built to test the modules that will be used, as well as the template and style sheets that will be used on the tech sites. A few graphics were created, I fully admit that I am no graphic artist, but a few graphics were needed to give the sites some identity.

I sifted and sorted through ten plus years of notes. I have material from old versions of these sites, as well as notes made over the years on topics to cover. The good news about using a content management system, is once you have all the ingredients in place, adding more content is fairly quick and easy.

The three technology sites of the the Guru42 family will be, Learning Technology (computerguru.net), Using Technology as a business tool (smarttechnology.info) and Technology History (Geekhistory.com). Stay tuned, if all goes well, the new sites should start to take shape over the next few days.

Guess I am just crazy, working on editing Style Sheets while watching hockey, talk about multi-tasking!

I have spent the last few weekends, between dozens of other personal and professional issues, mapping out the plan, and gathering up the pieces, to roll out my next generation of web sites, in the New World of Guru 42.

There are a few "Geek Speak" entries that I would like to cover in greater detail, but this blog is not the place.

As I pieced back together the old Worlds of Questy web sites, it is easy to see the many changes in Web Building since I last updated Questy's Links and Lessons for learning. It's been about four years since I seriously updated the content. In technology terms, that's a couple of generations of changes!

There are also many tips and tools I have picked up over the years that I would like to share with the online world. I have been jotting a few of these down here on the blog, but there are many more that I can share to a more tech oriented crowd.

There is enough critical mass of content and need to start rebuilding Computerguru.net as a Drupal site, and without any surprises this week, it should be soon!

Last weekend I spent a fair amount of time on converting some old vinyl records to mp3 files. While it was long and tedious, at the end of the weekend I had a handful of new songs to listen to in the car.

This weekend I spent a fair amount of time on trying to set up some prototype sites in Drupal. and at the end of the weekend, I have a headache, and a bunch of unanswered questions.

I have often said that the more I learn, the more I realize how little I know. After spending the weekend immersed in Drupal issues, I really feel in need of some technology detox.

My musical explorations lately..

How does a snow storm tie into political philosophy?

After much thought with what to do with the "World's of Questy" websites, as I move forward with the new Guru42 family of sites, I made the decision to bring back the original sites of Questy.com and Questy.net. In the coming days I will map out some of the spin offs of The Worlds of Questy, but the original family structure will return to the way it was originally set up.

In April of 1997, I started a web site called the Tao and Zen of Questy, which became Questy.net. I figured the Tao of Questy could be the philosophical side of me. The original 10 or so pages were a collection of poems and songs I had written, with some photos of my kids used to illustrate them.

The Zen of Questy was the business side of me. So a folder "zen" was created to hold the business section. As I began teaching technology as well during this time period, a learn folder was created as well where I began to store the outlines for technology lessons.

In 1998, I registered Questy.com to house the business and technology folders separately from my philosophical side. Originally called the Zen of Questy, the Business portal at http://questy.com/zen/ contains articles and commentaries on Capitalism and Communicating to assist people in using technology as a business tool. Many of the articles here are from work and research I had done for various freelance writing projects and business workshops. The Webmaster's Portal at http://questy.com/learn/ contain tutorials for learning web building, general technology and the Internet.

Questy.com and Questy.net are now merged together in one site, with the addresses mirrored so that many of the old links should still work. Other than the new front door to the site, everything else is still the original content. I still need to go through the pages as there are probably a few pages that need the broken links fixed, but I do not plan to update these pages anymore, rather just keep them as they stand for now, as my personal museum.