http://www.tocthinkers.com/2007/09/toc-in-color.html

I have been reading a book called The Haystack Syndrome by Eliyahu Goldratt. It is mainly about how to design an information system, but it does provide a good summary of the ideas behind the Theory of Constraints (TOC).

He outlines how we use cost accounting to run our businesses, then goes on to use solid cause and effect logic to explain the pitfalls of using these methods. His analysis is very interesting.

Here is a breakdown on his rendition of the history of cost accounting:

Over the last while I've been doing some work on developing a good graphing module for Drupal. I am using the FusionCharts tools to do this. The module is still very much in development but is fully functional.

check it out:
http://drupal.org/project/fusioncharts

A few months ago I read the book "No Logo" by Naomi Klein (http://www.naomiklein.org/no-logo) which was recommended to me by a number of friends. The book was very insitefull. N. Klein is a very insightful cultural exogite and has a firm understanding on the role marketing and branding has on the human psychie. Before reading this book, I didn't have much time for advertising or branding - dismising it on the assumption that branding is merely a tool (amongst many) to sell stuff.

Having recently finished listening to the 2008 Reith lectures, I thought it timely to add a post referring to last years series (which resonated with me fairly strongly). http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/reith2007

In this lecture series Professor Jeffrey Sachs outlines a concept called the Anthropocene - the tipping point. He outlines in his talk the current state of the world (politically, environmentally, developmentally, and technologically) and the problems we are facing, and must deal with, if we want to prevent the world from imploding in on itself.

This documentary is kina scary, but as far as I can tell, is a historically sound interpretation of the worlds money systems.

The documentary is kinda long, so put aside a couple of hours before watching, but it is very enlightening.

Here is the work I have done on the Paymate module for Ubercart. Thanks to Ian Cousins who fixed a number of bugs and made a few improvements.

Current version 22 Feb 2009

Here a good intoduction to how TOC can be used
https://www.toc-goldratt.com/index_TV.php?cont=647&p=1&t=5&v=19

I finally had a chance to sit down and read the results from Copenhagen Consensus http://www.copenhagenconsensus.com which I blogged about earlier on in the week http://web2life.co.nz/content/copenhagen-consensus-2008-results-are-out

I am interested, particularly as a Food Technologist (by training), that 5 out of the top 10 best solutions are Food-technology related problems.

* Micronutrient supplements for children (vitamin and zinc)
* Micronutrient fortification (iron and salt iodization)
* Biofortification
* Malnutrition & Education

Here is a good series of videos about how to do data recovery. I particularly recommend the series "Defcon 14 - Hard Drive Recovery"

http://www.youtube.com/profile_videos?p=r&user=SuperFlyFlippingA