I was looking for an easier way to do my library lookup today. On Twitter, milsyobtaf suggested a Firefox bookmarklet, and after playing around with it I decided to just write a quick script for Ubiquity to do the lookup (Ubiquity is a very cool text-based add-on to firefox).  In case anyone else is interested, here’s how you do it:

1. Install Ubiquity if you don’t already have it.
2. Open Ubiquity (not sure what the default command is, I have mine set to Alt + Space) and type help.
3. Click “Your Commands” at the top
4. Copy/paste this code in there:
   CmdUtils.CreateCommand({
name: "library search",
takes: {"query": noun_arb_text},
execute: function(directObject) {
var url = "https://libcat.tamu.edu/cgi-bin/Pwebrecon.cgi?&HIST=1&DB=local&SL=none&Search_Arg={QUERY}&Search_Code=GKEY^*&CNT=50"
var query = directObject.text;
var urlString = url.replace("{QUERY}", query);
Utils.openUrlInBrowser(urlString);
}
})
5. Go to your local library’s website, find the catalog search, do a search for something, and then copy the url of the results page. Paste the url above where it says var url = " ... "
6. In the url, change whatever you searched for to {QUERY}. For example, if I searched for Vonnegut, the above url would have in it ...Search_Arg=Vonnegut&... . This is the part that will get replaced when you do a search.

That’s it! Now open Ubiquity (Alt + Space on my computer), start typing “library”, once you see your library search option press space then type your search, hit Enter and it should do a library search for you.

Another way to search Ubiquity is to select text, then open ubiquity and start typing “library.” It will use your selected text as the search query. So, on this page highlight Kurt Vonnegut, then open Ubiquity, type library, and press Enter.

—

If you have a book recommendation, please leave them as a comment or email me.

Here’s some excerpts and thoughts:

Causation v. Effectuation

• Causal logic is based on the premise: “To the extent we can predict the future, we can control it.”
• Effectual logic is based on the premise: “To the extent we can control the future, we do not need to predict it.”
• Causal problems are problems of decision; effectual problems are problems of design. Causal logic helps us choose; effectual logic helps us construct. Causal strategies are useful when the future is predictable, goals are clear, and the environment is independent of our actions; effectual strategies are useful when the future is unpredictable, goals are unclear, and the environment is driven by human action.
• Causal question: What should I do to achieve this effect?
• Effectual question: What can I do with these means?
• Surprises are usually relegated to error terms in formal models. Effectual logic sees them as source of opportunities for value creation.
• Contractual claims are causal claims on the predictable future; equity provides effectual claims on the unpredictable future.
• The paths to entrepreneurial success expand in the future rather than converge (one-to-many, in contrast to causation’s many-to-one approach towards ‘the goal’)

On the Entrepreneur

• Expert entrepreneurs distrust market research; distrust attempt at predicting the future
• “In commercializing new technologies, entrepreneurs often find that formal market research and expert forecasts, however sophisticated in methods and impeccable in their analyses, fail to predict where the markets will turn out to be or what new markets will come into existence.” Christensen (1997) and Mintzberg (1994)
• Expert entrepreneurs start with three categories of means: their identity, their knowledge base, and their social network.
• Theme of converting initial customers to partners
• Entrepreneurs perceive the world around them as human-made
• “Serial entrepreneurship is a temporal portfolio” – diversified over time rather than concurrently like a traditional investment portfolio

Decision Making

• Pragmatism does not assert a singular truth and declare all else false; rather, it compares truths and tests for differences. If no difference in the consequences of the two truths, they are the same pragmatically.
• What does this truth tell us that we don’t already know?
• Risk involves known distribution of options (1 in 5 chance of winning). Uncertainty involves unknown distribution of options
• “Rational choice involves two guesses, a guess about uncertain future consequences, and a guess about uncertain future preferences.” March (1978) in RAND Journal of Economics
• Human rationality is bounded by cognitive limitations such as physiological constraints on computational capacity, and psychological limitations like biases & fallacies

Principles of Entrepreneurial Expertise:

• Bird-in-hand principle: create something with existing means rather than discovering new ways to achieve goals (“What do I have?” vs “What do I need?”)
• Affordable loss principle: Committing what you’re willing to lose rather than investing based on expected returns
• Crazy quilt principle: Negotiate with all stakeholders willing to commit to a project without worrying about the opportunity costs. The venture (or “quilt”) evolves over time based on interactions of all stakeholders (investors, customers, employees, suppliers…).
• Lemonade principle: Leverage surprises rather than avoiding them
• Pilot in the plane principle: Rely on human agency as prime driver of opportunity rather than technical/economic trends. (Comes from SpaceShipOne putting a pilot in charge of the spaceship instead of a computer. The pilot can think on his feet, while a computer would need every possible contingency pre-programmed.)

I’m not sure where I found this book, but it was most likely a blog post or tweet by Ben Casnocha or Paul Kedrosky. Whoever suggested it, thanks.

More information:
Effectuation: How Entrepreneurs Think

Jason Fried @ Big Omaha 2009 from Big Omaha on Vimeo. Many of his thoughts on starting a business are aligned with the idea of Effectuation. “We don’t have a plan.” “We don’t set sales targets. They’re numbers you pick out of the air and make you do things you don’t want to do”

• When we think of the great innovations, our minds typically jump to the inventor hero who redefined or created new industries with his revolutionary idea. However, history shows that most of these were the result of combining existing inventions and ideas in interesting ways, with many people involved in the process.
• Innovation is the result of synthesizing, or bridging, ideas from different domains. E.g., Henry Ford created the assembly line after observing sewing machines, meatpacking, and Campbell soup factories.
• Increase the potential for innovation by expanding the network that links people, ideas, and objects in ways that form effective and lasting communities and technologies.
• “Discovery is seeing what everyone else has seen but thinking what nobody else has thought” – Albert Szent-Gyorgyi, who discovered Vitamin C
• Valuable and novel information comes from weak ties; strong ties pass information quickly but it’s usually low value because the constant interactions lead to the same knowledge base (get out of the echo chamber).
• “A researcher builds the future 10 years from now; a technology broker [ or innovator] redistributes the future that is already here.”
• On collective effort: “Nobody is really sure who is the inventor because the inventions emerge in the interactions of the group.”

While reading the book, I saw many of these ideas reflected in coworking spaces like The Creative Space, and events like BIL. We need to ensure these spaces we are constructing connect new people working on different problems in different industries to keep ideas flowing between networks. Cody and I have become more involved in the Bio/Life Sciences arena recently, and have found ways to apply our existing knowledge in new and interesting ways.

Some other great books I’ve read recently:

• Enough – This book can best be summed up by the anecdote from whence it gets its title: “At a party given by a billionaire on Shelter Island, Kurt Vonnegut informs his pal, Joseph Heller, that their host, a hedge fund manager, had made more money in a single day than Heller had earned from his wildly popular novel Catch-22 over its whole history. Heller responds, ‘Yes, but I have something he will never have… enough.’ ” It talks about how businesses need to refocus to serve customers, create value and focus on the long term, not short-term speculation. It’s directed towards the finance industry (which needs the most refocusing), but the novel is applicable to all businesses. (This was also the first book I read on my iPhone with the Kindle application. Worked great!)
• Scratch Beginnings – A real-life story of the American Dream. The author shows up to a town with $25, finds the local homeless shelter, and works his way up to a furnished apartment. Beyond the motivational story, it’s a great example of how your attitude and work ethic do more to shape your future than what you start with.
• Clueless in Academe – Describes how our current educational system makes the scholarly, learned life seem more unreachable by adding unnecessary barriers of language and structure. We leave it up to the students to ‘crack the code’ in higher education, and only a few do (hint: it’s all based on arguments; understanding how to properly take apart an assertion and create an argument will help you excel in any graduate or PhD program).
• Still Life with Woodpecker – Beautiful mental floss. Tom Robbins’ creative use of the English language will entertain you almost as much as the story itself.
• The Reasons I Won’t Be Coming – I haven’t finished this yet, but the short stories I have read have been great. The character development and internal dialogue remind me a bit of David Foster Wallace, without his length and ridiculously detailed tangents (see Growing Sentences with David Foster Wallace if you haven’t read any of his novels).

What’s up next in my reading list? My current “to-read” pile includes a bunch of old Vonnegut’s (Wampeters, Foma & Granfalloons, Bagombo Snuff Box, and more (I’m trying to read all of his works)), some business books (Animal Spirits, The Age of Unreason…), and some fun ones (The Ethical Slut and Emergence: Contemporary Readings in Philosophy and Science).

It had a great premise: there was a “timequake” and we had to relive the past 10 years. Everything you did last time, you had to do this time (no free will). You know exactly what’s going to happen but have to say and do it all over.

People got used to being on autopilot, and disaster struck when the timequake ended and free will returned. People just sat in their cars as they crashed into walls, not knowing they were in control. Everyone had to be “woken up” from their daze and start living.

I’m always amazed at how many people are living their lives as a timequake. They have the exact same weekly schedule, never seeking randomness or new experiences. If a timequake hit, they wouldn’t know because they are already on autopilot.

2008 was a great year for me because of randomness. My friend Todd Huffman inspired me to be more open to randomness, and so much good has come from it. When I’m traveling, I post to twitter “I’m in [some city], anyone want to meet up?” – and I’ve met so many interesting people this way. I’ve also increased my traveling; any time I’m not in school (and sometimes when I should be) I’m usually flying or driving somewhere.

I encourage everyone to give randomness a try. If you’re invited to some event or gathering, don’t find a reason not to go; find a way to fit it in your schedule. You never know what great things will happen.

(By the way, the above photo was from a Robot fight put on by Cody Marx Bailey to launch Youth Inspired Robots. These are the kind of random events I’m always looking for.)

This book is clearly pandering to those who already feel the way the author does – that society (ie, the rich) isn’t taking care of the working- to middle-class well enough. It is just the same argument over and over, extended through many examples and statistics.

It’s actually a bit depressing and cynical. The author will use an example, like a successful artist that has sold out art shows, movies made from her scripts, and great reviews in the New York Times. But even with all this success, this artist can barely survive and has a huge amount of credit card debt. If she can’t survive even with all this success, how could you make it?

After you read the first chapter, you will know all you can learn from this book