Pius's Blog - Home

I'm so focused right now.

2007-12-11T19:41:00Z

That is all.

We Didn't Start the Fire (Web 2.0 remix)

2007-12-05T15:56:00Z

Full House Uncensored

2007-11-29T19:14:00Z

<font>Full House Uncensored</font>

<font>OMG, I'll never watch Full House and think innocent thoughts again.</font>

02138 Magazine piece on Mark Zuckerberg and the ConnectU dispute

2007-11-29T16:04:00Z

A few days ago I read an interesting article in 02138 Magazine about Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his dispute with competitor ConnectU. It was a very interesting article for many reasons, not the least of which being the fairly in-depth profile of Zuckerberg. (Who knew Zuckerberg had an Asian fetish?)

Another interesting aspect of the article was the many court documents it referenced including transcripts of Zuckerberg’s online diary in which he discussed how he hacked the Harvard undergrad dorms’ facebooks to create Facebook predecessor FaceMash.

A fun read all around.

New Media Douchebags

2007-11-21T17:13:00Z

[via Mashable]

Scott McClellan Comes Clean (sort of)

2007-11-21T14:31:00Z

Many of you may remember Scott McClellan, the former White House spokesperson who served during the Abramoff scandal, the Valerie Plame scandal, and the beginning of the Iraq War. In his new book, “What Happened,” he claims that George Bush, Dick Cheney, Andrew Card, Karl Rove, and Scooter Libby were involved in knowingly passing along false information to him, which he then told the American press corps day after day.

Below is a decidedly creepy “greatest hits” video of Scott McClellan’s tenure.

Searching Hacker News From Firefox

2007-11-20T22:03:00Z

These days, I end up reading Hacker News quite a bit, but have always been annoyed by the lack of a search feature. I whipped up an OpenSearch plugin real quick that searches both http://news.ycombinator.com and http://paulgraham.com. To install it in Firefox (YMMV on other browsers), go to the search plugin’s profile page on Mozdev and click the link that says “Hacker News Search.” Easy!

Why I Elected Not To Go To Law School

2007-11-19T19:47:00Z

Up until my senior year of college, the plan had always been for me to go to law school. To the surprise of many, I changed my mind.

Plus or minus a few (very important) reasons, the following essay I came across yesterday eloquently explains the same logic I applied when I decided not to go to law school.

Why You Shouldn’t Go To Law School

The 'Bringing Down The House' Movie is Going to be Badass.

2007-11-19T18:04:00Z

Remember the book about the true story of a team of MIT students who made over a million dollars counting cards in Vegas? Here’s the trailer for the movie they made from it, called “21.” It’s going to be sick, especially with Kevin Spacey and Laurence Fishburne playing the team “coach” and a casino security czar, respectively.

Rudy Giuliani's Big Cat Minstrel Show

2007-11-18T15:18:00Z

More of Rudy Giuliani being a douchebag.

American Hacker: Frank Lucas Waxes Poetic on the Dangers of Outside Investment

2007-11-14T17:42:00Z

I saw American Gangster a couple weeks ago on opening night. It’s an instant classic crime film on par with Goodfellas and The Godfather, in my opinion. For all his faults, Frank Lucas (the real drug kingpin so charismatically depicted by Denzel Washington) was a very skilled entrepreneur, bootstrapping a (heroin) business methodically and quietly in the midst of fierce competition (other street level dealers in addition to the Mafia) until he’d cornered the market to the tune of $1 million a day in revenue.

If they can dissociate the business from the product, entrepreneurs will find that there are many useful business lessons to be learned here about everything from supply chain management to the importance of branding. At one point, Lucas lectures his brothers and cousins on various aspects of the business while grooming them to run point-of-sale operations. Here he speaks to the problem of outside investors and the importance of retaining sufficient equity in one’s venture:

<q>The man I worked for had one of the biggest companies in New York City. He didn’t own his own company. He thought he owned it, but he just managed it. White man owned it, so they owned him. Nobody owns me though!</q>

Substitute “white man” for “venture capitalists” and what have we got?

<q>The man I worked for had one of the biggest companies in New York City. He didn’t own his own company. He thought he owned it, but he just managed it. VC’s owned it, so they owned him. Nobody owns me though!</q>

I couldn’t have said it better myself.

MIT Sues Frank Gehry For Negligence

2007-11-08T22:48:00Z

I’m a big fan of the Stata Center but then again, I graduated before I had a chance to truly “live” in it. I’ve heard from a few professors and grad students I still keep in touch with that it’s been plagued with problems, but I didn’t know it was this bad.

Rudy Giuliani's Latest Hijinks

2007-11-08T21:24:00Z

The strange and often despicable Rudy Giuliani has pulled the wool over the eyes of many otherwise rational people I know since 9/11. Hopefully, his latest stunt will finally convince people how distasteful supporting him is. A few days ago, Rudy gleefully appeared with and accepted the support of noted anti-American, anti-Semitic, racist, sexist, homophobic sociopath, charlatan, hypocrite, and all around bigot Pat Robertson, essentially co-signing Pat Robertson’s well-known xenophobia. What does this mean? At best, Rudy is pandering to the scary right-wingers who align themselves with Robertson and is only pretending to agree with their prejudiced views. Suppose this best-case scenario is true. Are you willing to support someone who’s willing to pretend such a thing?

Have A Couple of "Important" Things Going On

2007-11-08T15:43:00Z

I work on my startup nearly constantly. I’ve found over the past week that adding NaNoWriMo into the mix has been a healthy way to re-diversify my interests and maximize the odds of making overall progress towards personal fulfillment. When I’m procrastinating on coding, I work on my novel. And vice versa.

From personal experience, this only works for small numbers of activities. If you’ve got a ridiculous number of “important” activities on your plate, the procrastination temptation is more likely to lead you to do something of trivial importance.

The War of Art

2007-11-08T14:31:00Z

“The War of Art” is an amazing book for any entrepreneur or artist. Go skim it online and then buy the dead tree version for your library.