So I forgot that this was the last issue of the newspaper and, rather than writing a column I had intended to for quite some time following up on things the Technique called Tech students, administrators, etc. out on over the year, I wrote something about how I wanted to be spiteful and annoy people by replying to a Facebook message via Twitter. C'est la vie.
I do think it is an interesting point, however: What are we revealing about our attitudes in the choices we make to communicate information? Being on the other side of the world from many of the people I would regularly communicate with has been fertile ground for contemplating this...
April 20th, 2008
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If I had titled my own column with utter disregard for our newspaper's headline style, I would have called it something along the lines of "Relegating logic and sensibility." As I note in the column itself, this sort of thinking is uncharacteristic for me. But the best time to make stupid decisions, to try outlandish things and fail, is now. And it's time I started doing a little bit of that.
April 9th, 2008
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The Olympic Torch relay kicked off in Almaty on its way to
lots of countries before it arrives back in Beijing to kick off the 2008 Summer Olympic Games. The relay slogan is "Light the passion. Share the dream."
April 3rd, 2008
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Yet another column from the
Technique. There is a lot I like about business culture here in Kazakhstan; certainly I like my current job vastly more than I liked my old one. However, a ton of that has to do with the company I work for and the type of people I work with. It seems like it would not be at all impossible to capture a similar feeling elsewhere, including in the U.S.
April 2nd, 2008
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About a year ago I made an effort to read a book about the operations of the mind and the relationship between the human brain and the concept of mind. I wasn't able to force myself to finish the book, however, because the questions the book sought to answer struck me as patently ridiculous. One of the many reasons that I am not a philosopher is that I find debates over things like the mind-body problem ultimately unimportant, and most explorations of them self-indulgent and baseless.
I greatly prefer a more practical approach to thinking about the mind: I don't really want to contemplate how it works as long as it does. But there is one (in my opinion) common-sensical concept that I do use extensively: that of 'mental bandwidth,' generally in the context that I don't have enough of it available for something.
Essentially, I find that the amount of things I can keep in my mind or consider has a finite limit, and so the things I contemplate on a regular basis are limited to the few things that I prioritize as the most important. The limit obviously decreases significantly when I am overloaded with work or other things (as I often am back home) -- things like getting my assigned tasks at work accomplished, or finishing projects for school. But the mental bandwidth does not strictly vary with my free time, as some things might use up a lot of mental bandwidth while using up trivial amounts of physical time.
Since I've been here in Almaty I've discovered that without the stresses of daily life in Atlanta, I suddenly feel like I have significantly more of this bandwidth available. This leaves me free to contemplate the things that previously were too low on the priority list, like changing bad habits, or indeed relationships.
Relationships, in fact, are perhaps the best example of this mental bandwidth concept, as they require a lot of bandwidth to be viable. Whenever I even considered relationships back in Atlanta my general feeling was one of stress, guilt and frustration brought on by the fact that I knew I wasn't able to put enough of myself into anything. Here, I've unexpectedly found myself with what I might consider a much... healthier range of emotions towards the idea. Ironic, considering getting into a relationship during a six-month stint in Kazakhstan probably makes very little sense. But hey -- que sera, sera.
April 1st, 2008
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I haven't exactly been an active participant in the Atlanta startup scene in the past, having missed out on the Startup Weekend and, oh, pretty much all the other events that happen in Atlanta of that sort. But one of the big reasons I missed out on those events is that I didn't have a good way to get that information, not having built the personal connections needed to be "in the loop."
So with that in mind, I contacted Lance Weatherby last week to see if there was a mailing list for startups, investors and other interested parties, somewhat like the Seattle Tech Startups list. He told me that he was unaware of one, and I said "Oh. Okay. Well, why not start one?"
So, I took a little bit of time and my convenient access to Georgia Tech's reliable mailing list server and got a list set up. Then I put the information about it on a wiki. All the details about subscribing, sending mail, etc. can be found there.
Running it using Georgia Tech's mail server is going to be more reliable and ensures that the list can operate successfully without my direct oversight or participation, while still being open to the entire Atlanta technology community. And it will make it easily accessible to students like me, who are interested in learning more about the community but don't quite know where to start. But most importantly, I hope it will become a resource for entrepreneurs in Atlanta to share useful knowledge, opinions and information so that Atlanta can be more friendly and welcoming to startups than it has been in the past.
Thanks again to Lance for his swift correspondence and encouragement to get this set up.
March 25th, 2008
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