Indeed. What is the internet? Most simply, it is information shared between two computers. Emails are the internet. Facebook is the internet. This post is the internet. And quite probably your telephone and television at home are the internet.

“Well, sure, but that window that opens when I clicked that blue underlined text in my email, that’s not the internet.” Yes, yes it is. “Okay, but that picture gallery of my uncle’s vacation to Machu Picchu can’t be the internet.” And yet it is.

If it has anything to do with you viewing on your computer files, photos, video, or information of any kind that aren’t actually on your computer, that’s the internet.

“Well, then, my television at home isn’t the internet.” Wrong. Unless you use rabbit ears or have an antenna on your roof. That digital signal is a series of ones and zeros coming from a computer at the cable company, and your television (or more specifically, your cable box) is another computer that figures out how to make those ones and zeros into Two and a Half Men. “Oh, is that what it’s for?” Yes, that’s what it’s for.

Your internet browser, on the other hand, is not the internet. The little blue e is not the internet. The curled up fox and the compass are not the internet. They are internet browsers, specially-produced software for navigating the World Wide Web, which is a [very large and growing exponentially] group of inter-linked documents.

I think that’s all I have in me to say about the internet. I will leave you with a funny, and quite false, discussion of the internet: This, Jen, is the internet.

Seth Godin, again! Apparently, Seth Godin got the Web wrong in 1993. Not a surprise. I don’t think too many people could have envisioned a world of Facebook, Wikipedia, Amazon, or Google back in 1993.

What I love about his post is the notion of getting better about announcing being wrong and learning from it.

Politicians, of course, are terrible at this. They are never wrong, apparently, and when they are, spin instead of admitting it. Which not only hurts their trustworthiness, it prevents them from learning anything.

It’s so true and it drives me crazy! “My [heartfelt, racist] comments, or [deliberate, ill-timed, and inappropriate] actions, were misinterpreted ….” Why not just admit you screwed up and hope people forgive and forget?

On How-To Geek a few days ago, I read an article about the Dvorak keyboard that reminded me of why I was learning touch-typing. I had hoped to learn to type quickly and without looking at the keyboard. I had also thought that once I had the fundamentals worked out, I might find a more appropriate keyboard to use.

I had learned that the Dvorak keyboard layout was better suited to modern typing, now that we’ve moved away from mechanical typewriters. I was interested to try to use it and see for myself whether it was any easier or faster.

Now that I think about it, though, I’m not the only one who uses any of my computers, so it may be more of an irritant to others, if I change the keyboard layout. Also, I would need to relabel the keys, so even if I could switch the computer keyboard settings quickly, changing the key labels would not be so easy.

So, while I still think that the Dvorak keyboard layout would be interesting and valuable to learn, I won’t be doing it any time soon.

I read Seth Godin’s blog fairly regularly and even bought one of his most recent books, Poke the Box (an excellent book, by the way). He had a post a few days ago called Trading in Your Pain. It’s about the perception that whatever pain you feel in your current job, there’s a way past it.

“If I just get a little bigger, a little more famous, a little richer—then the pain will go away.”

He also suggests that are two ways out: leave and find something else, or stay and suffer and be unrewarded. Given these choices, he suggests taking the third option.

But what is the third option? This is something that took me several tries to figure out. For a while, I would follow the second option, then a while later, I would be forced into the first option. And in choosing the first option, I would move across the country. These were expensive, time-consuming choices.

Over the last few years, I’ve chosen to learn everything I can about the job I’m doing, suggest and implement improvements, and generally improve myself. I have been rewarded in my efforts, having recently moved into a job that gives me more autonomy to suggest and implement real changes and generally to be the expert.

The third option is to work through it. That may mean suffering for a while and probably means leaving and finding something else, but only in order to learn what you need to know and then get a chance to do it.

This is another post in my correction and clarification series. This case, in particular, drives me crazy, because not only is it wrong, it sounds wrong.

I hear or read often about someone who administrates a system or process. I fully understand the reason why people might use the term, and I know they’ll find it in the dictionary. But it’s not correct.

An administrator must administrate, no? No. And administrator administers, or is responsible for administration. I think people prefer something shorter than the latter, but don’t like the sound of the former. A nurse or a doctor administers treatment for a patient, but a systems analyst doesn’t administer the database.

So the systems analyst must administrate the database. Wrong. The systems analyst is responsible for database administration, or simply is responsible for the database, or even manages the database.

I realize the temptation to use similar words to describe ideas (administrator, administration, administrate), but other, simpler words exist that do as good a job.

This comes from a Facebook game:

1. Discover the #1 single in your country of origin in the week you were born.
2. Find it on YouTube.
3. Post it on your Facebook page without shame.

I thought I’d post here, too. For fun.

One New Year’s resolution for me. Not a huge list of things that are going to make my life infinitely better, nor make me a phenomenally better person. But kind of a huge list nonetheless.

My New Year’s resolution is to use a To Do list. And a calendar, I suppose. Keep track of the things that I want to do and set up a schedule to get it all done. Not done today or tomorrow, but eventually. And I fully expect that even as things get crossed off the list more things will be added, but all in all things will get done.

I’m going to try to use Evernote more to keep track of things. I’m going to try to use Remember the Milk more to remind me of the things I’ve decided to do. I’m going to try to use Dropbox more to keep my files synchronized and accessible. I’m going to try to use Google Docs more for quick, accessible documents, and my Google Calendar more to make sure I know what’s going on and when.

I think that should cover it, but I may find some other tools to help me along the way.

I just finished reading the first part of Dragonriders of Pern, Dragonflight. I’d forgotten what I had purchased from Amazon for my Kindle was in fact all of the first trilogy of the books, so I was actually a little surprised that I came to a significant section ending. The Dragonriders of Pern is a trilogy and Dragonflight is the first book. There may be some spoilers in this post, I’ll warn you now.

The original settlers of Pern are Earth people who arrive by spaceship. They use up all of the resources of the ships to build their settlements and so they don’t have technology. They start from scratch and we’re introduced to what seems to be somewhat medieval sort of civilization. In fact, over the course of a few thousand years, the civilization has lost the ability to do a large number of things because the knowledge wasn’t needed or the tools weren’t available and so the knowledge disappeared.

There are some interesting lessons about oral history and the risks of forgetting the lessons of the past. As well, as the risks of information silos, and having only a few specialists who know the secrets.

As I was writing my Muppets post, I used the word illicit and realized that it means something very different from what I intended, elicit. I quickly corrected the word, but not before writing it and potentially looking the fool.

For your own reference:

illicit (il·lic·it [ih-lis-it]) adjective
1. not legally permitted or authorized; unlicensed; unlawful.
2. disapproved of or not permitted for moral or ethical reasons.

elicit (e·lic·it [ih-lis-it]) verb (used with object)
to draw or bring out or forth; educe; evoke: to elicit the truth; to elicit a response with a question.

I think I may try to come up with some short lesson like this once a week. Not exactly a word-of-the-day or -week, but more of a correction or clarification of the week.

As you might imagine from the title, I went to see The Muppets last night. What a terrific movie. It was funny and nostalgic and had great celebrity cameos, as expected from a Muppet movie.

The story was perfect. The Muppets are all but forgotten entertainers, their theatre falling down, and the cast members all off on their own; some successful, others not so much. But with a young muppet hero who has adored the Muppets all his life, whose enthusiasm brings them back together.

My sister said it’s the first time in a long time that a movie has made her snort with laughter. And if not Fozzie’s fart shoes, Dave Grohl’s Animool impersonator, Jack Black’s unwilling and unwitting celebrity host, or Alan Arkin’s disaffected tour guide, there was definitely something to elicit a snort.

If you haven’t already, go see it, and take the kids. 9 out 10!