Even Sunday is a work day at Vagueware HQ more often than not. Instead of trying to impart some lengthy wisdom/nonsense though, each Sunday I plan to do a quick round of the blogs and mailing lists and find things that should make the evening before Monday morning a bit more interesting. If you don’t get to this before Monday morning, well, it’s better than work - go make another coffee, and tell the boss you’re catching up on e-mail.

Vlogging the VRML of Web 2.0 - I’m becoming increasingly enamoured with Dead 2.0 even though I don’t agree with their central premise that this is a bubble like the last one. However, I agree that video blogs need to mature to the point of competing with normal TV for people to be prepared to give up their time to them. I can scan read 100 blogs and pick out what I need to be aware of, what I want to come back to later, what I can ignore, all in about 30 minutes a day - I can’t do that with video. I still have a TV in the corner of the room (I owe a business partner £50 for losing a bet by not getting rid of it actually) but I only ever really watch The Daily Show, Newsnight and the odd thing on FilmFour. I don’t think I can add several hours of video to my daily digest of media, even if it does involve attractive women leaning forward in an oh-too-unsubtle-pose - I’m too busy formenting digital revolution.

Creative Commons making life on-board a warship more tolerable - great story, because it confirms what I’ve always suspected: expose somebody to culture and they’ll ignore the fact reading isn’t meant to be ‘cool’ and gulp it down. Stories like this just help me confirm that if I can help boost the economy around CC/PD content I’ll not only build a successful business, I’ll be helping people express themselves, connect, and do amazing things. I’m still looking for legal help, by the way. Story via the wonderful people at The Open Rights Group

MythTV beats MCE in Review - One of the very first business ideas I had was to build a device that could sit under a TV, connected to a high-speed Internet connection and download video to a hard disk to watch at the user’s pleasure, therby meaning you had every TV programme, film, radio show, ever, all accessed for little cost in your home. Thing is, I had that idea and a design when I was 14 (that was 1992 when the commercial Internet was months old in the UK) and no money. These convergence boxes are heading down that route, and I’m still thinking about how to plug MythTV into a distribution network to offer something better than the commercial nonsense we’re about to get shoved down our throats. In the meantime if you want a great DVR, I know where you can get the best cards in town at the best prices for the job if you want to build your own. However if you contact the man behind the facade - in exchange for portraits of the Queen signed by Mervyn King, naturally - he may even build you your dream home-media device. He knows his stuff.

RailsConf Europe sold out - in truth, I would have loved to have made this. Rails is my worklife right now, and in months to come I hope to actually contribute to the core code itself via several means. The price however, was just way too high. At £475 on the early-bird for registration, it was just too rich pickings for me. Never mind - maybe I’ll think about what I can present at next year’s and try and get in for free…. ;-) Hope the guys have a blast in London, and I’ll be checking the blogs to see what goes on.

The Ultimate Blog Post - this will be all over the ‘blogosphere’ in a matter of hours and if you’re new to the whole blogging scene, it’s terribly in-joke-ish. But funny all the same.

A-Z of making money from a blog - whilst we’re talking about blogging, here’s the real reason people are loving the blog thing. TechCrunch reportedly makes $60,000 a month in ad revenue and they’re not the only ones - Steve Pavlina has for some time been making ‘five figures a month’ from his blog. Of course it helps if you settle on a topic people are interested in, there is a a high CPC on your ads and you can actually write but I expect this to blossom into a bubble - or maybe even a real sustainable business model - proper in 2007. I’ve run over a dozen blogs in the last 5 years, and I reckon total revenue from AdSense was less than $20, but don’t listen to me. Be inspired, learn how to express yourself and get going.

Why Joel’s Business isn’t like yours - it’s easy when you start a software company - trust me - that the way to go is to follow in the path of other successful software companies. Fog Creek, 37signals, whoever. Not the way to do it - you have to find your own voice, your own way of doing it. My way? Don’t hire for as long as possible; don’t hire employees, ask peers to come and have fun with you; cashflow is king; the nicest office is bed; customers matter more than you. Maybe I’m wrong, but it feels right for me right now, so until I’m proven wrong….

Top 10 ways anyone can guarantee an angry workplace - I swear I’ve worked at places that hired people who considered those 10 steps their personal raison d’etre. I fouled a few of them myself in the past.

Shuffling cards one-handed - little known fact about me #9273: I used to be able to do some really, really cool (and dodgy) things with a deck of cards. I sometimes practised for days, weeks, months and read up on books written by old card sharks. This is a simple cut that can get you started, but there’s an easier way to do this my Dad showed me when I was little that shoves the bottom half up straight under the top half using the index finger running alongside the underneath of the top half of the deck. Also, if you want to do this seriously, look at exercises piano players do to stretch their tendons, and consider being kinder to your hands by moving to a Dvorak keyboard. Yes, I know I take this stuff way too seriously. Via lifehacker