Universal Rule

Book Reviews

Friday, August 7, 2009

Goodbye to Universal Rule - closing shop -- Comment()
As the Radio Userland software is at the end of its life, I'm closing down this blog and will not move it elsewhere. Some parts of it (book reviews etc.) may appear elsewhere at some point, but no promises. The blog will disappear from the net at the end of 2009, perhaps even earlier.

Tuesday, July 7, 2009

Climate change - need for action -- Comment()
Read Climate Futures and start acting NOW.

Security can be interesting? -- Comment()
Just a note: a free PDF download of a chapter of the book "Beautiful Security" is available - the chapter title is Tomorrows Security Cogs and Levers and the writer is Mark Curphey. Excellent writing, excellent book.

Monday, July 6, 2009

Pondering Enterprise Architecture -- Comment()
I have been reading some material on Enterprise Architecture, for example the documents A Practical Guide to Federal Enterprise Architecture and Agile Enterprise Architecture. Not a new thing by any means, but now becoming a must in the public IT sector in Finland, thanks to national EA initiatives. If things work out well, we might even get interoperable IT solutions on the national level, opening up the markets and access to information.

Saturday, June 6, 2009

Long time no see -- Comment()
Heavens, how long since the last update. I have been busy with other things, for example for writing columns on IT, especially the "dark" (or at least gray) side. Here are four recent ones, all in Finnish:

These all discuss the drawbacks of using IT: loss of concentration, multiprocessing, losing touch with reality.

Monday, March 9, 2009

A digital camera provides a lot of value -- Comment()
I have now taken well over 32,000 photographs with the Panasonic LX3 which I bought last September. The price per image is at about 0.01 euro - one cent per image. That is quite cheap, much cheaper that I thought possible. And the camera works still without major problems, so there may be another 32,000 photographs to be taken with the camera.

Changing to another topic - fellow photography blogger Paul Lester posted a deeply personal and insightful piece about Shadows, about how keeping a personal journal helps to run a "mental health program". I posted a comment at Paul's blog, here are some further thoughts on the topic.

I used to keep a journal, written by hand, but that habit disappeared when I started to use the computer for writing. At some point I was no longer drafting texts first by hand and only then typing them. Something was lost in the change, a feeling a spontaneity. Writing by hand with a fountain pen felt as if there wouldn't have been anything between the thought and the text.

I think writing on a computer is not the same, it is much more impersonal. (Isn't there even a religious sect which says that there is a devil inside each computer?)

I retrospect I feel that there was a lot of benefit in that kind of introspection. A little bit of journal-type writing each day helped to keep things in perspective. But somehow I can't find the stamina to keep on doing it any more. However, if the (metaphorical) demons keep on pressing too much, I may have to pick up the pen once more.

Sunday, February 1, 2009

On writing and photography -- Comment()
I haven't been updating this blog lately, only once a month or so. But meanwhile I have written 596 postings at Light Scrape, my photography blog.

Some of the postings over there touch on the same topics I used to write here at Universal Rule, but mostly it is about photography - and the images do a lot of the talking, not so much the writing. And I have been active in writing comments of fellow photography bloggers' sites, on a variety of topics.

Also, I have cutting down on some other writing. For example, I'm no longer a regular columnist at the MikroPC magazine, although I may occasionally write net columns there (on photography perhaps).

I had quite a long term as a columnist, regularly since the year 2000, and the first column was published in the magazine in 1998. But lately this hasn't been so rewarding as it used to be. Perhaps information technology is working too well nowadays, so that I don't have any reason to complain. And my interest have been shifting also, I'm no longer so eager to try out new IT products and services. But if you are interested in what I'm up to, by all means visit Light Scrape.

Monday, January 5, 2009

Photography is the thing -- Comment()
I haven't been blogging much here at Universal Rule for some time, but those who are interested in what I'm currently doing, please check out the Light Scrape blog, which is about photography. I'm nowadays mostly using the Panasonic LX3 for taking photos, over 23,000 photos taken so far with the camera. There has been much less time for other topics since I got a major interest in photography, but that can of course change at some point. But currently it seems that photography poses an interesting long-term project, defined in my own terms. So, other topics such as DRM, Macs, and such will have to wait.