1. I promise that next week I'll back off of the Serenity stuff.

2. Because it's not next week yet, and I can't see the movie until Sunday, I'm going to be listening to the podcast I found this morning. Put this URL into your podcatcher (I suggest iPodder or iTunes) http://signal.serenityfirefly.com/podcast.xml or go to http://signal.serenityfirefly.com to download the mp3's individually or to use my mp3 scraper.

3. Unless you were participating in the point earning as part of the guerilla marketing, there's not much merchandise available. So, this stuff might be interesting.

Serenity Shirts, Serenity Mugs, and other Serenity Swag. Includes the great 21 Things I Learned Watching Firefly shirt.
More Serenity and Firefly Shirts and swag. Includes the unique Serenity shipping label.
Even *more* Serenity swag.
Blue Sun swag in case you swing that way.
You've got to love a company that doesn't shut fan merchandising down
Action Figures and comic books

Technorati Tags : serenity, firefly, podcast, joss+whedon, memorabilia

I'd heard it before, but saw it mentioned on Edward Tufte's site under a question about formatting resume's and wanted to capture and share this quote.

Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to remove.
– Antoine de Saint-Exupery

This is something that's bothered me for years. It seems to be at its strongest among your stereotypical pedantic sci-fi geek and politics, but exists pretty much everywhere. That somehow an opinion I held yesterday, a week ago, a month ago or a decade ago is something set in stone.

However, the most intelligent and well-rounded people I've ever known are also the most open minded and willing to change their ideas and opinions in the face of more information. When we're talking about our ideals: that we should not prejudge a situation, that we should consider all the facts, etc. we all seem to idealize the concept of changing your mind. Yet, when someone actually *does* change their mind, we make them out to by hypocrites. We practically tar and feather them for it.

I wish I knew why. Do you?

Eric.Weblog() had ad posting a few days ago aboutSmall Ideas. These are the things that are interesting, but not worthy of full product development, or writing a full-blown post/article/book on. In large part, the content of this site *is* the body of my small ideas. Lots of this stuff is smaller than I would have bothered to share just a few months ago. However, I'm starting to see how big ideas can be built from these smaller building blocks.

However, I think that just plain getting that there are different levels of ideas and different levels of companies would have avoided much of the dotcom boom. To me, it's not that all of the dotcom companies had "bad" ideas. Many of them were actually good ideas. However, there's a world of difference between a good idea that targets a market with a potential for $1 million a year and one that can make $20 million a year. Unfortunately, if you take on debt and obligation (like taking huge sums of venture capital) aiming for the $20 million market with a $1 million idea, you'll be a failure. If, instead, you developed your $1 million idea with $500,000 of investment and $400,000 in annual costs going forward, your company will be a success and you will retire a millionaire within a few years.

The difference between them is that the exact same good idea can result in either embarassing failure or retiring wealthy. It all comes down to recognizing the actual potential of an idea and scaling the execution accordingly. As we enter what some are calling Tech Boom 2.0, it's worth thinking about. If an application/service could be built with 3 people and 3 months of full-time work, taking on $20 million in capital is a HUGE mistake.

Financial reporting from the likes of the Wall Street Journal has led lots of people to think in terms of "#2 is failure". If #2 in an industry is netting 500 million per year and is a failure, I'll be the first in line to fail. I know what I need for financial security and it can be obtained by getting a very, very tiny slice of a VERY big pie. All that I want is to build a modest company and build a secure future for my family. If you're chasing after the venture capital dollars, ask yourself what exactly you're after?

Hi, my name is J and I am a Joss Whedon fan. I watched Buffy in syndication straight through and Angel thereafter. I watched Firefly DVD's in one sitting and loved every minute. His stuff is smart, funny, sarcastic and intriguing. Best of all, it doesn't take itself seriously. To me, Charmed failed where Buffy succeeded because Buffy "got" the absurdity and worked with it. Sci-fi, fantasy, and genre material in general pretty much deals in cliche. To handle it either you fail or you break out of it with true innovation and execution (Blade Runner), acknowledge the cliche and make it part of the humor (Buffy and the rest of Joss' work). It's the difference between playing the scene with the rebel cop being asked to turn in his badge for working the case in his own way:A. Straight as though we haven't seen this scene 10,000 times. (Failure)B. Have the boss and the rest of the squad turn theirs in too because it's really system-wide injustice. (Unique take)C. Turn it into an "in" joke with the audience by acknowledging it. "Here's my gun, but you still have my badge from the last time". (Working with it).At any rate, if you hate it and want to tell me so, that's cool. Just remember that I do have a degree in English literature and writing before you attempt to beat Joss over the head with your copy of "The Old Man and the Sea" and remember that in the world of text, video and audio there's filet mignon, and there's crappy fast food burgers, but there are also fantastic burgers and New York Strip's in between. And, anyone criticizing it had better have a ticket stub in their pocket before starting in.If, like me, you're eagerly anticipating the movie, here's some stuff to keep you busy until Friday:

The Official Serenity Site
The Browncoat Community
More Serenity news
Serenity Wiki
Fansite
Wallpapers
The Chinese creole phrasebook
Spend a fortune on your own gorram browncoat
Serenity movie poster that will inevitably be going in my theater.

Technorati Tags : serenity, joss+whedon, firefly