Category: General

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2 Months of The FI Guys

The FI Guys
The FI Guys

I’ve been writing on another blog about finance and money tips for 2 months now. What a great two months it has been. Here’s what I’ve been writing on so far:

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My American English to British English Spreadsheet

So even though Americans and British folks speak English (this happens in different parts of the USA, too), there are clearly a number of words spoken that lead to a number of misunderstandings thanks to the different influences and what not. You can learn a bit about that from this video on vegetable names from Anglophenia:

In an effort to help myself and my friends translate the other side of the pond, I decided to put together this admittedly less than comprehensive spreadsheet:

Feel free to suggest additions in the comments.

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The New Journalism after Enron

I ran into this article about how journalism’s high point was Watergate but how in this new data driven age, journalism needs to be better prepared to handle information glut and expose the next Enron:

The press earned its stripes covering a scandal about which information was scarce. The press lost its stripes covering a scandal about which information was plentiful.

The plenitude of information, not its scarcity, defines the world we live in now. And journalism must change to accommodate that fact.

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How Schools Kill Creativity by Ken Robinson

If you think of it, the whole system of public education around the world is a protracted process of university entrance. And the consequence is that many highly talented, brilliant, creative people think they’re not, because the thing they were good at at school wasn’t valued, or was actually stigmatized. And I think we can’t afford to go on that way. – Sir Ken Robinson

This video is one of the first to make me rethink the education system I was raised with.

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Site Changes for 2010

My site in 2010
My site

With the long 4th of July Weekend, I thought it was time for my yearly site refresh.  After upgrading to WordPress 3.0 (which has a number of advanced features like Custom Post Types and Multiple Sites installations), I decided to make two major cosmetic changes to the site.

  1. I decided to change the site’s theme to Thirty Ten, a three-column version of the new WordPress default theme, Twenty Ten.  Like all of the times I change themes, the old theme is still pretty good, but I just felt the need to experiment with a new design.  I especially like that asides have been given their own style and that it’s easy to place my own header images (which I hope to do in the coming weeks).
  2. Since I recently joined up with an online advertising company, I wanted to understand more about the business.  So I reactivated my Google Adsense account, and decided to place ads on my site and feed.  I had resisted putting ads on my site since I first started it (which when I think about it seems odd, since I was making less money then I do now), but it felt right to try this out.   We’ll see how this experiment goes.

So check feel free to check out my new web site at allen.alew.org.