Shiny Things
Below is a list of technologies, tools, services, fields, companies, ideas or goals that I'm generally interested in, excited about, believe in or promote, and therefore would be more likely to be interested in working with a particular project or company the more that any of these things are involved. My working or private/personal experience with each varies anywhere from "not at all, just sounds neat from a distance" to "do/use it daily, shipped successful projects involving" and I'm not bothering to make a distinction here because it is irrelevant for purposes of this page. They are listed in alphabetical order, not by importance. This is my list of Shiny Things.
37Signals, Basecamp (fan esp of DHH and Jason Fried; though not a fan of Rails or Ruby)
action, more; talk less; bias to
adhocracy (like the opposite of bureaucracy, is awesome)
AI (artificial intelligence)
Amazon
Android
androids
anti-anti-intellectualism
anti-aristocracy
anti-cruelty
anti-greed
anti-ignorance
anti-jingoism
anti-mega-corporations
anti-noise (except white static which can be relaxing & lulling; not talking just about sound but about info & communication)
anti-patents (at least in software where they are mostly laughably bogus and in overall effect a force of anti-innovation, anti-entrepreneurial, pro-lawyer, pro-paperwork, anti-productive)
anti-plutocracy
anti-pollution
anti-propaganda
anti-racism
anti-superstition
anti-theocracy
anti-Wall Street (funny: if you look at all my anti's it suggests I should therefore be anti-Republican)
API's
Apple
Arduino
ARM chip architecture
Armadillo Aerospace
Asimov, Isaac
ASL (Advanced Squad Leader)
asynchronous
atheism
Axis & Allies - board game series
automation
AWS/EC2
Balsamiq
BeagleBoard
bits
Bitcoin
BitTorrent
Bjork
blank slates (metaphorically, as in blank slate thinking, starting with a clean slate, empty page, zero assumptions, no rules, no legacy requirements)
Blender
Bradbury, Ray
Buddhism, especially Zen and Tibetan
Bush, Kate
business
C - my 3rd favorite programming language, used to be my main, now somewhat rusty
CalTech
Campbell, Joseph - the mythologist
Carmack, John (Id Software, Commander Keen, Doom, Quake, Armadillo Aerospace)
caves & caverns
charity
certification via online content, web apps, games, simulations, mobile devices, smart phones, tablets
chessboard-based analysis - don't listen to your opponents words necessarily because they can be lies, false or misleading; instead study the board state and what is actually physically possible now or in several move sequence permutations from now, that is more useful and trustable; good when evaluating politicians or anyone trying to convince you of something
Choose Your Own Adventure books or games with similar structure (like my online interactive story Overmind 3000)
circuits
Civil War, The American
Civilization, Sid Meier's - computer game series
classical music
clean tech
CLI's
Clojure - admire from afar, done Hello World, not heavily into it yet but may change; exciting hybrid of Lisp-meets-Java with elegant designed-from-ground-up-to-support concurrency and parallelism features
cloud computing
collaboration
comedy
comic books & graphic novels
commuting innovation or elimination
Confucianism
Congress simplification, limiting, throttling, increasing transparency, tighter correlation with will of the people, reduced theatre/drama/rhetoric, reduced corruption
connections
Copenhagen Suborbitals
CNC on desktop, in home
crash-only software design (learn more)
curation: more signal, less noise; trusted sources & lists
curses, ncurses (the software)
D - exciting elegant next gen replacement for C by Walter Bright; done Hello World, admire from afar, may do more
democracy (with twists and caveats; ideally weighted & meritocratic)
Democracy Journal magazine
Democracy Now! show
Diplomacy (board game, a mixture of chess-like rules combined with amateur diplomacy)
distributed computing
do things people want, tell them about it - a simple hack to maximize career success
DropBox
duct tape - conceptually and as a tool, but believe me I don't sit around all day staring at it in wonder
Dune
economics
education
education, higher: decreasing cost, increasing speed, increasing access
efficiency
electric vehicles
electronics
ElementTree - prefer it over most other Python XML parsers
empathy rather than sympathy
Empire (computer games by Baldwin and Bright)
engineering
entrepreneurship
environment
Esperanto - the spirit behind it, if not the reality/practicalness of it
evacuated tube transport technology (there are lots of little niggling complexities with it, but the core idea is brilliant and the net value proposition for society and the economy is huge)
event-driven programming
exercise
facts
fairness, but not necessarily equality (no two people, ideas, animals, objects or arguments are identical or of equal capability or merit, this is a fantasy in most cases; only fundamental building blocks or mathematical qualities, like atoms or numbers, can be equal/identical)
fake it til you make it
Federation and Empire - strategy war game in a classic Star Trek universe
Feynman, Richard
fitness
flat organizational hierarchies; less middle-level roles/titles and less policies/rules/bureaucracy the better
Foreign Affairs magazine
Foundation - the Asimov book series
free software
freedom
FSM's
future/now: think about the future, take action now
games
GIMP
git
GitHub
global/local: think global, act local
GMT Games
Golden Rule, The - ("Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." - a good simple ethical system, though incomplete and with exceptions)
Google
Gorilla Glass (literally shiny!)
government/political/voting/law improvement
GPG
GPS
Graham, Paul (Y Combinator, Hacker News, ViaWeb, On Lisp)
graph paper
graphene
GraphViz
green tech
GURPS (the idea and many of their books, if not everything about the execution; for example it's almost impossible for indie authors to create GURPS-compatible adventures and advertise them as such, due to SJG's overly controlling rules)
Hacker News - though sadly it's getting worse as more/worse people join it
health
Heinlein, Robert
Henson, Jim
HexBug
history
Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, The
Hobbit, The
honesty
horizontally scalable architecture
HTTP-based API's
Hyperarchy
hypnosis
idealism
Illuminati (SJ game) and Illuminatus! (books by Robert Anton Shea and Robert Wilson)
immutable state in shared memory
Inc. magazine
incremental development & progress
Infocom
innovation
insurance, real vs supposed; example: having a gun or shovel or flashlight is real insurance (you buy it, you definitely have a certain benefit/capability/option/tool when the need arises) whereas being forced to pay for car/health/life insurance is a kind of supposed insurance (you definitely pay something out, you may or may not get something back in return, and a profit-maximizing provider may try to minimize how much they give back, if anything at all, via complicated fine print riddled with exceptional cases and legal/accounting shenanigans)
invention
investment (almost all kinds except the Wall Street kinds)
iOS, iPhone, iPad - as user more than as developer; am both; end-UX is bliss, dev UX is painful/verbose/bureaucratic compared to how it could be (Android is better in this area in many ways)
iPad
IPv6
IRC
iRobot (Roomba, PackBot, etc.)
iterating
Java - my 2nd favorite programming language/tech for getting things done, used to be my main; perfect for enterprise development, horrible for startup/agile; Clojure/Scala/Jython can lessen its negs
jazz
Jobs, Steve
jQuery
JSON
kata
Khan Academy
Kickstarter.com
King, Stephen
Kiva Systems
Lamport, Leslie - his CS papers
learning via games
learning via projects and hands-on activities
learning via role-playing
learning via simulations, passive or interactive
legalization of more/all non-harmful activities (and consistency; for example either legalize marijuana, OR, illegalize alcohol and cigarettes)
LEGO
lenses
life extension, immortality
life hacks
Linode
Linux, UNIX, QNX, FreeBSD
LLVM
location-based services (LBS)
logic
Lojban - the spirit behind it, if not the reality/practicalness of it
Long Now Foundation, The
Lord of the Rings, The
Lovecraft, H.P.
luck as preparation meets opportunity
Mac, OS X
mad scientists
MAKE magazine
Makerbot
markets
Mars the planet, Mars Direct, The Case for Mars, Zubrin, Bradbury's Martian Chronicles
martial arts
Marvel Comics
mathematics
meditation
memcached
meritocracy
message passing interfaces
metric system, aka SI
military: reduced power/influence of the so-called defense industry over US and all other national governments, especially of large corporations or multi-nationals
military: reduced US foreign military presence and adventurism
military: reduced US military spending
military: cheaper cleaner safer more precise weapons (less dmg to non-coms and environment)
Millenial Project, The - book by Marshall T. Savage
Mindstorms
Minecraft
MIT
Moleskine
money
MongoDB
Monocle magazine
Monty Python's Flying Circus
multi-platform apps
Muppets, The
music
Musk, Elon
micro-finance
mythology
natural/organic foods
NetHack, Rogue-likes
Nginx
Node.js
open source software
OpenCV
OpenGL
opportunities everywhere, just have to know how to look
opportunities proportional to how much you do that people want, multipled by how much people learn of it
ownership
Paranoia (RPG, not state of mind)
philanthropy
physics
planning as useful; plans not restricting or taken too seriously
Poe, Edgar Allen
ports - computer, naval, air
pragmatism
preferential voting, aka ranked voting, Condorcet, instant run-off, etc.
privacy, publicity, anonymity, secrecy, transparency - each extreme is ideal for certain situations
problems and solutions; almost all so-called problems have solutions, and we choose not to apply them; some solutions can solve multiple distinct problems
profit
prototyping
programming
progress
provide things people want - one simple key to success
Python - my favorite language for Getting Things Done
QR Codes
queues
RabbitMQ
Raspberry Pi (if the price/features lives up to the early promises)
reciprocity
Reddit
Redis
refactoring
relativism
remote/untethered work, telecommuting, telepresence
RepRap
RFID
robotics
Rogue-like games (Rogue, Hack, NetHack, Angband, Moria, Dead By Zombie)
ROWE (results-only work environments)
rules, especially simple ones, especially a small number, especially in games; not so much in life or by govt
SaaS
Sagan, Carl
saxophones - I once played it
science
science fiction
sea monsters
SEDA (Staged Event-Driven Architecture)
selective input & environment filtering - on an everyday human level, the practice of trying to ignore or eliminate personal exposure to sources of idiocy, ignorance, lies, propaganda, hate, fear or unhealthy criticism or pedantry
self-sovereignty
sensors
shortcuts
SICP (Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs) - probably the best single foundational book on programming/CS; this is your desert island book; even has a free PDF version!
signs
signals
simulations
SketchUp
Skype
social safety nets -- but NOT socialism
solar power
space colonization, whether perm groundside colonies on foreign bodies or inside free structures
space exploration, esp robotic and small/cheap/fast/scalable
space industry, esp private
space tourism, esp private
SpaceX
spaceships
SparkFun
spectra
sqlite
Stackless Python
Stanford
Star Trek -- at its best
Star Wars -- at its best
stateless protocols for server processes
Stephenson, Neil
Steve Jackson Games
STM (software transactional memory)
Strategy & Tactics magazine
submarines
subprocess - the Python module; does seem to be better than most/all the previous similar standard modules
survivalist - thinking/planning, but not being paranoid/obsessive/ignorant/apocalyptic
sustainability - whether involving energy, pollution, financial, social/political, health
syntax diagrams, railroad
tablets
Taoism
Tarantino, Quentin
Tarsnap
task queues and workers
tax simplification, unification, flattening & automation
technocracy
Tesla Motors
text
They Might Be Giants (TMBG)
ThinkGeek
Third World (and developing world) improvement: anything that brings them up, ideally without bringing us down, and ideally for a profit
Tolkien, J.R.R.
Tor
Tornado
Torvalds, Linus
toys
Traveller (RPG universe, if not the game rules)
TrueCrypt
truth
Twilio
Twisted
Twitter
Ubuntu
USB
vi, vim
video
video calls, FaceTime
walls - increase quiet, privacy, defense
web apps
web.py
weird science
Wells, H.G.
wargames, strategy games, turn-based, real-time, board games
Watchmen, The
water
win-win situations or deals
Wiz-War (board game)
words vs reality - love former but latter is better; sometimes they don't match
workplace & employment innovation
World at War magazine
world consolidation on metric system (US is notorious holdout)
world consolidation on English (slowly happening, let's get it to 100%)
world consolidation on single currency (delicate; lots of stuff needed to make it viable)
world consolidation into single nation (lots of catches and potential downsides, but huge potential upside including massively decreased military spending, reduced wars and reduced government propaganda; long incremental process to achieve this, if ever possible)
World War II
Wozniak, Steve (The Woz)
XKCD
Y Combinator
ZeroMQ
zombies (makes for great movies and apocalyptic survival stories; plus I made a zombie game Dead By Zombie)
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