jastram.de Blog

Help record free music

micky@alum.mit.edu (Michael Jastram) — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 21:40:03 -0400

Musopen is an amazing website for music lovers. the site offers not only public domain music recordings, but also sheet music.They have a pretty exciting project going on: They are rainsing money right now to hire an orchestra. The recorded music will be released in the public domain. I donated some, and I hope you will too.

Where the money goes you pay for music

micky@alum.mit.edu (Michael Jastram) — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 21:50:26 -0400

This image is scary. To be honest, it is not clear where the numbers come from, so take it with a grain of salt.

This was reblogged multiple times, check out this explanation.

How to make a living online - Gerald Roush

micky@alum.mit.edu (Michael Jastram) — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 18:39:56 -0400

Another example on how you can make a decent living online: Gerald Roush had 5000 newsletter subscribers which each paying $130 annually. Impressive. Reminds me of Chris Guillebeau. There is an infinite number of niches like that.

Validating a buisiness plan - Sramana Mitra meets Seth Godin

micky@alum.mit.edu (Michael Jastram) — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 18:35:48 -0400

One of the key tasks for starting a business is validating the idea - a task that is, unfortunately, often neglected. Therefore, Validation is a key ingredient of Sramana Mitra's EJ Methodology. Sramana even provides support for validation in the form of a list of "Clarify your story" questions. I was still struggling on how to engage potential customers in validation.

I found support in this Seth Godin post regarding business plans. It didn't look like much, but when I tried to restate my ideas in terms of Truths and Assertions, I realized that the Assertions were a great starting point for validation.

Xing deletes my profile

micky@alum.mit.edu (Michael Jastram) — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 15:30:36 -0400

I have always been suspicious towards social networks. Still, I have a profile on most networks. It usually points people towards a place that I control myself (my web presence and my email).

Yesterday, I got a notification by Xing that they deactivated my account. After some probing, they finally tell me why (because I have two accounts there). Fine, delete the older one. Except... that they delete the wrong one. Answer from Xing: "Sorry, can't be undone!"

Whatever. Just another warning to everybody to be careful on how deeply you are willing to invest into a platform that you don't control.

This is not the first unpleasant encounter I had with Xing, I will probably keep the (barely connected) profile there, until they decide to delete that one too.

Paradigm Shift in Education?

micky@alum.mit.edu (Michael Jastram) — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 22:52:23 -0400

Very interesting post on the positioning of universities in the marketplace by Seth Godin.It's interesting how just 50 years ago, universities were serving a passionate elite that was interested in learning, while today it is a production line for crunching out obedient white-collar workers.

The One Million Dollar Paranormal Challenge

micky@alum.mit.edu (Michael Jastram) — Sat, 03 Apr 2010 14:54:35 -0400

Not exactly new (the Challenge has been running since 1964), but still interesting: The James Randi Educational Foundation challenges people with paranormal capabilities to present them in laboratory conditions. So far, never claimed the money. Next time somebody claims to get a headache from cell phone radiation, recommend that person to apply.

Guess how much Software there is in a Car

micky@alum.mit.edu (Michael Jastram) — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 21:42:33 -0500

Did you know that a third of the cost of a plane goes towards the fuselage, a third towards the engines, and a third towards software? It's getting there for cars, too. Here is a great article that is full of interesting trivia.

The 1M/1M Program - 10 Million new Jobs, $1 Trillion in GDP

micky@alum.mit.edu (Michael Jastram) — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 09:53:08 -0500

Sramana Mitra certainly things big when she resolved to help one Million entrepreneurs to reach annual revenues of at least one Million US Dollars.

"I have come to conclude that the most vulnerable phase in an
entrepreneur's life is the pre-$1 million revenue stage. This is where
numerous ventures fail. Once the $1 million revenue milestone is
crossed, it's easier for entrepreneurs to find additional customers,
manage working capital and access funding, whether it is credit or
equity."

Way to go, Sramana! This is a great answer to the financial crisis of today. If we want our wealth to be sustainable, we have to create it.

Gapminder

micky@alum.mit.edu (Michael Jastram) — Sun, 20 Dec 2009 19:07:21 -0500

Hans Rosling is a Statistics-Geek (who has some amazing talks on TED). Now his Statistics-Tool Gapminder is online - load it up with your own data!

What is the opposite of competition?

micky@alum.mit.edu (Michael Jastram) — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 09:04:58 -0500

For Europeans the answer is "solidarity", for Americans it is "monopoly" (from the Economist: Charlemagne - Single Market Bargianing):

"A FEW times a year, Charlemagne has the luck to teach students at a European management school in Paris. It is an enlightening experience (for your columnist, at least). One popular question has been why some European Union policies are so contentious in places like France, notably the commitment to an internal market based on “free and undistorted competition”. After a while, the penny dropped. If you play word association, it turns out that for many in a Parisian classroom, the polar opposite of “competition” is “solidarity”: ie, the useful rigour imposed by competition is overshadowed by the pain caused as society divides into winners and losers. For Anglo-Saxon liberals, the instinctive opposite of “competition” is “monopoly”: ie, the pain of competition is justified by a quest for fairness, even before getting to arguments about efficiency and companies’ long-term fitness."

Running Rodin 1.1 with Ubuntu 9.10

micky@alum.mit.edu (Michael Jastram) — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 23:30:52 -0500

I had a few issues getting Rodin 1.1 to work properly after Updating Ubuntu to 9.10. The main issue is the HTML-Viewer that Eclipse uses. It wraps Firefox/xulrunner in an SWT-Control. Unfortunately, Firefox 3.5 (xulrunner 1.9.1) is incompatible with Eclipse 3.4, on which Rodin is based.

To work around this problem, you need to install xulrunner 1.9.0. I installed it locally at ~/opt/xulrunner-1.9.0.15

Next, you need to edit your rodin.ini (in the Rodin installation directory) and add the following line:

-Dorg.eclipse.swt.browser.XULRunnerPath=~/opt/xulrunner-1.9.0.15

That's it! This also works for running Eclipse 3.4 (in that case, you have to edit eclipse.ini).

Good luck!

Everything's Amazing, Nobody's Happy

micky@alum.mit.edu (Michael Jastram) — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 13:52:53 -0400

Great video that puts today's achievements and our expectations into perspective:

Building a GWT app that is an Eclipse Plug-In

micky@alum.mit.edu (Michael Jastram) — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 11:28:03 -0400

For my own reference:

Create a new GWT-Project
Give it a standard Plug-In name (e.g. de.jastram.gwtexample)
Give the Project the Plug-In Nature (Right-click on Project > Configure > Convert to Plug-in Projects...)
Add Dependency to de.jastram.jettyrunner
Add Extension de.jastram.jettyrunner.warrunner
Add a war-element
That's it - don't forget to compile.

Die Piraten als dritter Koalitionspartner?

micky@alum.mit.edu (Michael Jastram) — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 18:37:40 -0400

Ich war ganz schön erstaunt, als ich die Mitgliederentwicklung der Piratenpartei bei Wikipedia entdeckte - Seit Mai geht es steil nach oben. Dabei stellt sich die Frage, ob die Piraten es über die 5%-Hürde schaffen werden. Ich halte das für unwahrscheinlich, aber nicht unmöglich. In manchen (allerdings nicht statistisch aussagekräftigen) Umfragen haben die Piraten bis zu 30% - allerdings verschwinden sie bei der ARD-Umfragen unter "Sonstige".

Die Implikation des überschreiten der 5%-Hürde wäre enorm: Mit den jetzigen Spielern gibt es wenige harmonische Koalitionen. Die große Koalition ist nicht harmonisch, rot-grün sehr unwahrscheinlich, und selbst schwarz-gelb hat nur mäßige Chancen. Aber was wäre, wenn die Piraten es schaffen würden. Da nach eigenen Aussagen "Die Ziele der Piratenpartei eng begrenzt" sind, wäre durchaus eine harmonische Dreierkoalition denkbar. Es würde auf jeden Fall ganz neue Möglichkeiten eröffnen.