April 30, 2005

SWFP: Secure Web Feed Protocol A protocol to ensure a secure channel to web feeds     Note: This post have been posted before the final release of the article. It talks about the first version of the protocol. The version available here is the last one, not the first.     The last weekend an idea passed through my mind: "It seems that more companies are using content syndication technologies to broadcast their news or information to their employees". Then I started to write a protocol to take this fact in count. It's called: SWFP, Secure Web Feed Protocol.   "SWF is a protocol to ensure the secure broadcasting of web feeds' content over a local network or the Internet. The protocol ensures the encryption of the feeds and the distribution of their encryption symmetric keys."   It was supposed to be the draft of an idea, something to post here. Finally it revealed to be an article of 12 pages. I worked on it this week and came with this first draft:       View: SWFP: Secure Web Feed Protocol [PDF file]   If you have any question about this paper, don't hesitate to contact me. If you find flaws in the protocol or modifications to suggest send them to me, they'll be warmly welcome. I also invite you to leave your comments about this paper here, on this post.   I hope you'll enjoy the reader.   Technorati Tags: [RSS] [Atom] [feed] [security] [protocol] [authentication] [encryption] [certificate] [intruder] 11:18:04 AM        [comment []]    [trackback []]

April 27, 2005

Combat's Rhythm     Rhythm seems to be everywhere in the nature and human creations. It's adulated, observed, imitated and searched. Being in the rhythm is a state where many would like to be. Rhythm is gracious, beautiful. Rhythm is present in music, chant, and poetry; also in dance, swimming and running. Things that have rhythm seem beautiful, elegant and effective.   At this point my brain stopped.   It was true, but not for everything. The art of combat is everything but rhythm. The art of combat is the art of being arrhythmic. It's the art of breaking the rhythm of your enemy. The only rhythm a fighter should have is one in constant mutation, broken, chaotic. To have the edge in a combat you have to be unpredictable, arrhythmic. You should be a mimicker: constantly evolving.     Technorati Tags: [combat] [rhythm] [grace] 5:00:39 PM        [comment []]    [trackback []]

April 25, 2005

New blog section: My Bookshelf The best way to know a person is by looking at what he is reading.           This weekend I added a new section to my blog: My Bookshelf. This is a place where I put the paper books I have in my bookshelf. I added the appreciation of the book I had when I read it.     The main purpose of this section is to share with my blog readers the books I read. It's a way to start discussions about them. It's a way to let you know which book I loved and enjoyed.   Personally I like to check at what other peoples read. Why? Because I think that the best way to know a person is by looking at what he is reading. Then, by doing this I'm opening myself to my readers.   Another purpose is to share one of my passions with you: paper books and reading. It's the way I use to develop my passions: by reading other passionate authors. I like books and I love to talk about them, evangelize them.   Feel free to ask me questions about these books. I read all of them and I'll enjoy telling you what you want to know.   If you know books that you think I could love... please leave me an email! I'm always searching for new gems.   Eventually I'll add short texts in each section that will tell you why I bought all these books. I'll tell you how I came to buy them, read them and enjoy them. Why do I love science-fiction books? Why do I have combative and self-awareness books? Why do I have Kafka or Orwell books beside Kill Or Get Killed? I'll try to answer to all these questions.   For now I only put my English books (mostly bought over the last year). Eventually I'll also add all my French books (about 200).   I hope you'll enjoy discovering this section. Feel free to tell me what you think about it. Technorati Tags: [books] [bookshelf] [reading] [passion] 11:24:06 AM        [comment []]    [trackback []]

April 21, 2005

How I use my Moleskine pocket diary A lightweight version of my Analog Blog concept as classification system for my personal pocket journal       What I like with the Moleskine pocket daily diary is his size and his number of pages (much more than the Moleskine pocket ruled notebook). He is just perfect to slip it into your coat's pockets; and have enough pages to be useful as a personal journal. When I bought it some months ago I first thought that I would use it as a pocket diary. I quickly realized that it would not be a good idea and that it will be much more useful as a pocket personal journal. Then I started to use it as an idea repository organized as a lightweight version of my analog blog concept that I developed some months ago.       Why do I opt for a lightweight version of my system to use with my Moleskine pocket diary?   Because the pocket diary is too small to efficiently implement the whole concept. I don't want to write my life in it; only ideas that come up in my mind and quotes that I found during my journeys. Given this, a lightweight version of the concept is all designated to fulfill my needs.     Why to use this classification system to organize my pocket personal journal? Because I want to rapidly and effectively organize my ideas. I could put my thoughts without any classification system. I could put my quotes here and there. I could put book excerpts at random. The problem with this is that if I search for something, I don't want to check every of the 300 pages before finding it. But I don't want to put as many time to organize my journal that it take to write it. It's why I adopted a lightweight version of the analog blog system.           The lightweight version has only 3 sections:   1.      The content pages. 2.      The categories pages (build as the index of the journal). 3.      The external references pages.         This is what looks like a typical page of my pocket personal journal. It's literally a repository of my ideas, my thoughts, quotes and book excerpts. There are only 5 features that I implemented in these content pages:             1.      The page number. 2.      A possible reference to an internal ( ->[x;y] ) resource. 3.      A possible reference to an external ( [x;y]-> ) resource (see the section bellow for more information about this feature). 4.      A date (in this case I used the date of the original Moleskine pocket diary; but you can explicitly write it near your entries). 5.      Possibly Meta Data words at the top corner of your pages.          The categories page(s) is essential. The idea and his functioning is the same as in the analog blog system. You can see it as a dynamic index. You can create your categories when you start your personal journal; you can also create them when you need it. When you'll put a new entry in you journal that have the same semantic meaning as a category, then you'll only have to add his page number at the end of the category's line.   These categories pages will be in the first pages of your journal. Remember, this is a sort of index or table of content. When you'll need to find something, or check what you already thought about something, chec'k this section to quickly find what you want. It has the same utility as the Synopsis of Categories of the Roget's International Thesaurus. You can easily use it as a source of inspiration; a place where ideas emerge.   [Category's name] ·        This is the name of a category. Use words with clear and rich semantic meaning to name your categories.                         [x - y - z] ·        This is the pages of your journal where you can find entries with the same semantic meaning.     I put the external references pages at the beginning of my journal (some pages after my categories pages). You can also put it at the end pages without any problems. This is the place where you'll put the external resources references referred by your journal's entries. In my case, it's usually a reference to a book where I wrote an excerpt of it in my journal. It could also be an internet URL, an address, a phone number, etc. The purpose of this section is to put references to resources that you don't want to rewrite every time you refer to them in your journal.   [x : y] ·        This is the reference's identifier. X is the number, the ID, of the external resource's reference. Y is the page where the external reference is viewable. Then if you check the page content excerpt above you’ll see: [3;6]-> . When I read this in one of my content pages, I know that if I'm checking at the page 6 of my journal, I'll find the external reference #3 that refer to a resource (in this case it's a book called "Page after Page" that refers this journal's entry).           I used this lightweight version of the analog blog system since some months and I'm really satisfied by it. It's simple (much more than the original version) and effective (I use it often to find ideas to write about on this blog).   The whole aim of this is system to save time while using my journal as a personal source of knowledge. The axiom is that if I can't find the information I want; it's that I don't have the information. The personal journal concept is a way to backup and/or create the knowledge, the information; and this classification system is the way to find this knowledge, this information. The union of the two concepts is the foundation of my axiom.     Technorati Tags: [moleskine] [journal] [diary] [organization] [notebook] [notetaking] 10:10:43 PM        [comment []]    [trackback []]

April 20, 2005

See things differently to redirect your brain in other dimensions     Your brain works with stimulus. If you don't stimulate it, he will wait until something append. If you always stimulate it in the same way, then, he'll, most of the time, always answer in the same way.   Given this, the trick is to stimulate it with as many sort of stimulus as you can think of. It will force your brain to compute on the same idea, differently.   Take this example: you are working on a piece of writing. What will stimulate your creativity to write it is the environment around you: the place where you are writing, the pencil you are using, the paper you are writing on. It's not only the environment around you that will stimulate it, but also your pass experiences, you knowledge, etc. Everything will act on the final result of your writing.   Remember, we try to work differently to stimulate the answer given by our brains to a specific problem. We need to stimulate it in different ways, to try to force it to enter in other dimensions.   In the current example, you can change many things in your working environment to stimulate your brain differently. Change the place where you are writing: go to a coffee shop instead of your bedroom. Use paper of different colors: it will play on your moods. Write with your sheet in landscape and not portrait.   It's important to stimulate your brain to find answer to questions. It's how it works: by stimulation. Most of the great scientists of our history understood it: Eisenstein, Gödel, Diffie and Hellman, etc.   The idea is to see things differently, with another angle, to redirect our minds in other dimensions. Technorati Tags: [brain] [mind] [stimulus] [different] 12:38:27 PM        [comment []]    [trackback []]

April 18, 2005

Blogs as the traveler's tales repository Tell the tails of you journeys, it's what people want to know, it's the way they learn     I restarted to read. What I'm reading? Another book on India: Traveler's Tales India. For them who don't know, in some months, I'm going to this all-in-one country. Some says that India stand for "I'll Never Do It Again"; I'll be able to judge it when I'll return.   While reading the book I stopped at this quote and thought about it two seconds:   "This kind of preparation is best archived through traveler's tales, for we get our inner landmarks more from anecdote than information. Nothing can replace listening to the experience of others, to the war stories that come out after few drinks, to the memories that linger and beguile. For millennia it's been this way: at watering holes and wayside inns, the experienced traveler tells those nearby what lies ahead on the ever-mysterious road. Stories stroke the imagination, inspire, frighten, and teach. In stories we see more clearly the urges that bring us to wander, whether it's hunger for change, adventure, self-knowledge, love, curiosity, sorrow, or even something as prosaic as a job assignment or two weeks off."   I see in it a definition, an aim of blogs. This is a place, where people around the world, tell their daily tales in their neighborhoods. This is what they want to write about and this is what people want to read.   As it's said, we need to read stories that stroke the imagination, inspire, frighten and teach. We need to learn from the experience of others, in their daily lives. We want to read true stories. We don't want fiction. We want writings that reach us as human being.   After all Paul Fussel wrote it in Abroad: British Literacy Traveling Between the Wars:               "We are all tourists now, and there is no escapes." Technorati Tags: [travel] [blogs] [india] 11:43:56 PM        [comment []]    [trackback []]

April 16, 2005

Reading as the creative power of my writings     I found that my readings are a great inspiration source for my writings. Last week I have been sick for many days. I hadn't the head to read. The only think I did was watching TV. Then I got lag in my works and hadn't much time to read books of blog feeds. It's why I lacked to write on my blog; it's why it will be this for another couple of days.   But I found something in this process. My readings are really important in my writing process. It's where I seem to get a great part of my inspiration. I wanted to write something yesterday but I wasn't able to focus on anything. I wandered why and I found that I practically always wrote things that come up in my mind when I was reading. It was a revelation and a thing to have in mind: I need to read to write.   I'm a somewhat big reader. I read a book a week, sometimes 2 when I have a reading rage. I read anything. When I read, I think about what I'm reading, but sometimes my eyes read but my mind is somewhere else, musing on something trigged by the reading, in relation or not with it. It's for this exact reason why reading is at the center of my writings: because it has the power to trigger different ideas in my mind. Technorati Tags: [writing] [reading] [ideas] [inspiration] 12:09:00 PM        [comment []]    [trackback []]

April 11, 2005

Writings: the memory of humanity   The memory of humanity has been possible by the creation of writing. Without this revolution, only a weakening or amnesic one would have existed. It took us an instrument to enable us to transmit, generations after generations, the knowledge acquired by every human being. The transmission of his knowledge and his culture is the definition of a collective memory. This collective memory is the tool that helps us to evolve as humans being. Without it our development would had been sporadic and deficient. This foundation that writing is for our collective memory had participated to an exponential evolution of the humanity as we know it.   These writings are for our collective memory what neurons are to our human ones. Humans will read writing archives. Then they will converse with their peers about their content. New ideas will emerge from these sources. The act of conversation and socialization will help the development of these new ideas. Eventually these ideas will be written by their individual authors and published. This specific act will enrich the collective memory. This is how it will change, grow, evolve and adapt.   I see writings as a meta-memory: the memory of collectivity. But they are part of a whole system of memories. This system start with the DNA: the primal memory of the Nature. Then we have brain's neurons: the primal memory of many living creatures. Eventually we created something called writings: the primal memory of our societies.   Writings are part of a global memory system. It's based upon them. What his fantastic is that this memory system is the foundation of other systems that help us to archives our collective memory. One of the most recent, and probably the bigger system, that is based upon writing is the Internet. This system has the potential to revolutionize the concept of the collective memory.   Writing is the thing that makes us what we are now: humans being of the 21 century. Technorati Tags: [writing] [memory] [dna] [neurons] [internet] 10:35:40 AM        [comment []]    [trackback []]

April 9, 2005

The way I think about issues, problems, opportunities and strategies.       "When do you do your best thinking?  Come on.  I mean really put thought into an issue, problem, opportunity, strategy, product line, competitor that you or your business is facing?"   I like this question asked by Todd.   Everybody have their own answer to this question. The one I'll present is the one I'm normally using. It's a method that I tested and developed over time to cope with the way my mind work.   Okay, I face a problem, an issue, an opportunity, what do I do?   First, I learn about it. I try to understand it as well as I can with the resources I have. I try to learn the true nature of the thing. Without this knowledge, I couldn't be able to do anything.   Sometimes, I'll find the solution only by doing this. In this case, I'll be really happy and will spend my saved time to drink to it. The problem is that resolving an issue only by doing this is rare.   If I don't come up with a solution after hard work and explorations, I stop to think about it. I start to work on another non-related thing; I do something manual: doing sport, going outside, etc.   I have two goals by doing this.   The first one is to free my mind.   The second one is to stimulate it with new external stimulus. I do this in hope to create new connections in my brain; to see, unconsciously, the thing with another point of view.   If I'm lucky, within a day, a week or a month a hint will show up in my mind: a track to follow to resolve my given problem. My unconsciousness has then talked.   Its how I generally work: I feed my unconsciousness with the given problem then I let him think about it, waiting for a hint.   What I learned while developing this method? Patience and confidence. I needed to develop a confidence in my preliminary works and searching. I had to have the confidence that I done the good things to come up with a solution. Unfortunately, I didn't find it but I knew I was on the good way. So I used my thinking method to try to come up with a solution. Then I needed to develop my patience to wait to see the results. Without any of these two things, the method would be useless.       Technorati Tags: [Mind] [think] [problem] [issue] [strategy] [unconsciousness] 6:47:14 PM        [comment []]    [trackback []]

April 7, 2005

In search of something What was I searching for?     It was raining outside. I was looking at the depressiveness of the day. The snow was vanishing with the rain. The teacher was talking about Heraclites, Socrates and Plato. A philosophy class--the perfect place where to muse.   What would I do in the future? What he look like? What do I have to do to try to enhance it? All choices were of importance at that time. I was emerging from my childhood to enter in my adulthood. Since that time, all choices I take has a repercussion on my future.   I was musing on these questions about my future. I was not in the mood to continue my studies for another 4 or 5 years. I had a flash: I wanted to stop them right now to see another part of the world. It's exactly what I done. I got a summer job and gone to Europe the next autumn. I wanted to see the old continent.   I saw it. I have been to all main capitals of Europe. I was expecting something exceptional. I saw exceptional buildings, houses, parks and museums. Yeah they were exceptional, but they were only buildings, houses, parks and museums.   I was searching for something that I wasn't able to explain what it was. It was not spiritual. It was a vague idea; something that I wasn't able to focus on. I was wandering everywhere. I wasn't taking attention to buildings anymore; it was not what I was searching for.   I was trying to understand what I was doing there; what sent me there. I had lost interest in buildings and architecture but I found interest in people. I talked to them, I mused with them. We talked about their countries and families. I tried to understand them for what they were. I found friends.   I found people. It's what I always found in my trips. It's the focal point of all of them. Now, what motivates me to go to a specific place is the curiosity I have to understand the people that live in this place. I want to know their culture; I want to understand it; I want to muse about it. To reach this goal, I need to talk to these people. I need to live with them. Buildings don't talk; people do.   It's why I done 12000km of bus. Because the focal point of my trip was in it: talking to people that came from around the world. It was my mobile house; a place where I invited people to talk; a place where I slept.   Do I found what I was searching for? No. Peoples aren't the thing I was searching for? I don't know. Will I found it? I hope so. The only thing that I suspect is that I was searching for something at 5000km of my home when this thing could be just there. Technorati Tags: [people] [trip] [Europe] [life] [culture] 10:26:24 AM        [comment []]    [trackback []]

April 6, 2005

Blogs that gives humanity to mega-corporation such as Microsoft   Writing is an act of humanity. Behind every writings, there is a human being.   The work of George Orwell tainted our imaginary. His work, 1984, let us with the impression that bureaucracy is a big inhuman monster that is alive by the force of things. In the whole story, we see the castle --the image of bureaucracy-- as a thing in itself; not an aggregation of small ones. We can't imagine that humans are working and building it: it's unbelievable.   This image, the Big Brother, follow us since. We can't see mega-corporations as human: they are all inhuman monsters. We can't believe that behind every business, there are humans being. Humans being that created them with their time and passions. Humans being that are working to make them alive.   This image is probably the result of 100 years of industrialization and his pompous formal language.   Mega-corporations need to change the situation. A good way, I think, is the one took by Microsoft. Since some years, they let their employees blog. They wrote about their passions, their families. They explain you on which Microsoft project they are working on. They explain you how these technologies work. Is there a better person than the developer of a technology to explain it to you? They write about them, about their work and their vision of things. It only can give humanity to the corporation he belong to.   These writings give humanity to Microsoft. We can have a direct contact with the wizards behind each developed softwares or services. We can talk with them. We can comment their ideas. We can know in which mood he is. We now know that mega-corporations are build by and for humans.   Behind every human creation, there are a human being with passions, fascinations, family and a history.   Business like Microsoft could just benefit from this. Technorati Tags: [blogs] [business] [writing] [Microsoft] [human] 12:45:44 PM        [comment []]    [trackback []]

April 5, 2005

Mind maps to handle the non-linearity of the brain     Our memory is associative. You'll remember complete scenes when you will ear a sound, see an image or smell an odor. Our brain doesn't work linearly. It does multi-tasking, link ideas, thoughts and sensations one between the other.   Why don't we try to take these characteristics into account when we are taking notes, doing brainstorming or just trying to clarify our thoughts? This is exactly what Mind Maps try to handle: the non linearity of our brain's processing.   What are mind maps? There is a Mind Map I done to write this article:         It's easy to write a text based on these keywords and the links they have one between the other. There is my presentation of what are a Min Maps, how it works and their benefits compared to traditional linear note taking.               Mind Maps are based on the fact that the brain doesn't process things linearly and that our memory is mainly associative. They take these characteristics into account to help us to structure a subject. By this method, it will be easier to remember what the subject was about with a simple look at the Mind Map.   This is a new note taking method. It will present, consolidate or summaries information on a selected subject. The system will relate each idea between them. These links will show you the relation, semantic or symbolism, between your ideas. This note taking method will help you to clarify your thoughts, in your brain storming and will show you new facts. It's much easier to incorporate new ideas to these schemas than in a linear text.   How these mind maps are created? It's firstly the result of your personal style. It's recommended to personalize your Mind Maps because it reflects your thinking. They are composed of colors, images, keywords and lines. To express the non-linearity of the method, you should put the main subject of the Mind Map in the center of your page. To know how to build these Mind Maps, I suggest you to visit these web sites: here, here and there.   What are the benefits of using Mind Maps? It helps you in your creativity process. It will help you to see things with another point of view. Why is this working? Because it take into account the non-linearity of your brain. It takes into account that your memory is associative by only using keywords, images and colors. The whole process will made your notes much easier to review and remember.                 Why I talked about Mind Maps? I know this method since a while but I was reading this article and I found the idea to handle the non linearity of the brain and memory with such a system really interesting and I wanted to write about this idea. Technorati Tags: [mindmap] [brain] [notebook] [writing] [idea] [creativity] 3:15:37 PM        [comment []]    [trackback []]

April 4, 2005

Shatter the circle that encircle your life      Some months ago I saw the presentation of "Les 7 Sommets" by Jason Rodi. This is the story of Jason and his father climbing the topmost mountain of each continent.  It was unreal. He was commenting his film during the presentation. He said many things... to many things. He was talking about his project and the benefits of it; he was talking about his new vision of the world and how it came in his life:               "Imagine a circle.             See it as if the life is imprisoned in it. All attainable things are inside the circle: having wife, going to university, having one or two children, having a good job, having friends, etc. Outside the circle, you have all other things: going to the moon, having 20 children, climb the Everest. When you success to accomplish something outside the circle, he shatter, and the limits vanish... everything became attainable."     Jason Rodi reached the Everest.               Technorati Tags: [life] [Everest] [mountain] [climbing] 11:03:29 AM        [comment []]    [trackback []]

April 2, 2005

The writing style: be yourself Easier to say than to do   Be you; be true; be emotional; tell what you really think; reveal who you are; don't hide...   How easy it was to read these words...   How hard it is to follow these instructions...   Writers that follow this path make the best writings, no doubts. Readers love to read how and what the writers think. Readers like to know the moods and emotions a writer's experiencing. Readers like to know that writers are like them, humans with forces and weaknesses.   How to become such a writer? Personally, it's a lot work. It's not easy to write and talk as freely as this. It's no natural to me to talk as deeply as I wish. I have a strong censor. A voice that talk to me each time I'm about to say or write something. I think it's a sort of fear; a fear of being discovered: truly discovered.   This censor seems to be in every human being. Da Vinci had his and tried to work around it to create all his incredible innovations.   I try to tame it. I try, slowly, to get rid of this fear, to open myself to my relatives. I try personifying my writings... I try to be myself.   The process is slow and hard. I never expected that it would be as hard as it is. In reality, I never expected to write and talk, truly, about me.   How I work on this fear? Step by step.   By example, I sent an email of my article about Internet in High Schools to my friend teacher (the protagonist of the article). She seemed to be really happy to read it. We talked about it and I tell her that I was not sure if I should send it to her. She asked, puzzled, why? My answer: I don’t know. It was not really true, it was my censor that tried to stop me; my fear.   Which fear? She is probably asking. --I don’t know.   But I done it and it helped me in my process.   I try and I'm trying hard. What help me to continue? I see benefits. I learn on myself in the process.       What make me to talk about this today? Two things: my talk with my friend about my high schools article and my current rage of reading about writing.   I'm currently reading On Writing Well. The book goes in search of two of the most important qualities of a good writing: humanity and warmth.   "Ultimately the product that any writer has to sell is not the subject being written about, but who he or she is. I often find myself reading with interest about a topic I never thought would interest me—some scientific quest, perhaps. What holds me is the enthusiasm of the writer for his field. How was he drawn in it? What emotional baggage did he bring along? How did it change his life? It’s not necessary to want to spend a year alone at Walden Pond to become involved with a writer who did.   This is the personal transaction that’s at the heart of good nonfiction writing."     He is right. It's what people like to read. The best blog posts are them where I can ear the voice of the writer.                 "           "Who am I to say what I think?" they ask. "Or what I feel?"                         "Who are you not to say what you think?" I tell them.                         "There's only one you. Nobody else thinks or feels in exactly the same way."                         "But nobody cares about my opinions," they say. "It would make me feel conspicuous." "They'll care if you tell them something interesting," I say, "and tell them in words that come naturally".   "               "Still, we have become a society fearful of revealing who we are."   I can easily visualize myself in this conversation with William Zinsser. Is it a rational or irrational fear? I wish I would be able to answer to this question soon.   In the same trend, I would like to finish this post with two quotes of a book I'm reading in parallel with On Writing Well: Mes Démons by Edgar Morin; one of the most influence French sociologist. This book is his short autobiography and a repository of ideas that haunt him since ages.               "[..] voulais-je avant tout affirmer une fidélité à moi-même et à mes idées. "   "En 1958, au terme d'Autocritique, je me posais la question : Ai-je été sincère?, et je comprenais que la réponse à cette question était indécidable : La sincérité n’est pas une pure flamme qui jaillit de l'esprit; la volonté d'être sincère, quand il s'agit d’être sincère sur soi, se perd toujours dans les labyrinthes et les doubles fonds intérieurs... La sincérité ne peut être pure qu’à un moment particulier de combustion entre les gaz qui la nourissent et la fumée qui s’en dégage.               Aujourd'hui, avant de commencer, je me demande : "Serai-je véridique? " [...] "       Technorati Tags: [writing] [writer] [fear] [yourself] 12:52:27 PM        [comment []]    [trackback []]