In my mind, passive income is something that requires an initial act of time and energy.  After that time and energy is spent, income than be generated without much to any additional time or energy.

Good examples of passive income streams are:

1. Royalties from creative works
2. Savings account
3. Shrink-wrap Software products
4. A restaurant or retail owner who has grown to the point of hiring a trustworthy manager

Some not so terrific passive income streams:

1. Rental Properties – I hear these can take a lot of upkeep, management, and sometimes court dates.  If you had a trustworthy manager it may make it worth it, but your rental portfolio would have to be significant to justify it.

There are quite a few sites on the net extolling passive income, or residual income, but they all seem to be repeating themselves.

The key to generating passive income is simple: find something you can produce which will fit into the residual income arena, complete the task, repeat.

If you’re feeling particularly intelligent, you can even track how much money your work is generating in order to better target your efforts.  If all else fails, at least try to do something you enjoy while you put forth the effort.

Sources:

1. http://20smoney.com/2008/05/29/why-a-second-income-stream-should-be-your-top-priority/
2. http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2006/07/10-reasons-you-should-never-get-a-job/

RIP for the internal-combustion engine
They may contain computer chips, but the power source for today’s cars is little different than that which drove the first Model T 100 years ago. That we’re still harnessed to this antiquated technology is testament to Big Oil’s influence in Washington and success in squelching advances in fuel efficiency and alternative energy.
Given our achievement in getting a giant mainframe’s computing power into a handheld device in just a few decades, we should be able to do likewise with these dirty, little rolling power plants that served us well but are overdue for the scrap heap of history.

Mass-transit development

Anyone accustomed to taking mass transit to work knows the joy of a car-free commute. Yet there have been few major additions or improvements to our mass-transit systems in the last 30 years because cheap gas kept us in our cars.
Confronted with $8 gas, millions of Americans would board buses, trains, ferries and bicycles and minimize the pollution, congestion and anxiety spawned by rush-hour traffic jams. More convenient routes and scheduling would accomplish that.

Source: MarketWatch

When I began the installation process I needed to burn a Gutsy AMD64 bit 7.10 version CD, I popped it in and waited. After hitting the regular “install” option, the boot process went about half way through. At this point, the monitor lost the signal and the process locked. No amount of CTRL+ALT+DELETE or CTRL+F1-F10 could get a signal back.

What the hell happened?

I proceeded to install the OS through the graphically restricted option. Once the 64 bit system was installed I rebooted. From this point on, the only driver that would load the video card was “vesa” — that is it.

Fglrx, the ati binary driver dropped support for the 9500 and less series of Radeon cards some time ago.

It turns out the 64 bit ATI driver, literally “ati” in xorg, would not work. The driver causes the monitor to lose the signal no matter what options I attempted to pass in.

Thinking that this may just be a 64 bit problem, I installed the 32 bit version of Ubuntu. The CD booted up immediately and the install went off without a hitch. The “ati” driver was detected and the machine was running with 3D DRI libraries activated. This is exactly what I wanted, and I would have kept using, had it not been for the fact that the machine has 8 GB of RAM. Dought!

There is no reason to simply waste 4 GB of RAM, which is the max a 32 bit install will support. With this in mind, I decided to try my old OS of choice, Gentoo.

After painfully installing a stage3 build (and I say painfully because compiling things isn’t fun for me anymore), I managed to get an XServer running. The best I can get right now are the newest (masked) ATI Drivers (the open source variety), no DRI (3d) support. Xrandr 1.2 is running beautifully though! I am able to get the dual output from the card working well and dynamically adjust both monitors.

Currently Working:

• Dual Monitors output from both DVI and VGA port
• Xrandr 1.2 automatic resize, rotation, and alignment

Not working:

• Monitor rotation works, however the refresh is awful and unusable. The screen refreshes like someone is wiping it off with a squeegee. It’s like the “wipe” animation effect you often see used in Power Point.
• No 3D support. Not a huge deal for me, but I have the video card memory so it’s a bit of a waste

I have researched this quite extensively but still feel like I’m missing pieces. If anyone has any thoughts please post them.

I bought this helicopter as a Christmas gift for the family (and of course myself). The two year old loves watching it fly around the living room while shouting at it while I enjoy piloting it around his attempts at destruction. For $35 it’s expendable enough I don’t feel like I’m protecting a family heirloom.

Flying

The initial feel of the controls allows you to easily over handle it. The controls are much more subtle and responsive than I would have predicted. This takes a bit of getting used to but once you’re familiar it adds even more enjoyability.

The helicopter is flyable for about 5-6 minutes after it’s fully charged. This doesn’t sound like a lot of time, nor is it, but it is at least sufficient to get some real flying in. Of course if you’re crashing the helicopter ever 10 seconds it can be a bit frustrating.

Make sure to read the sparse directions, it has some good tips for initially configuring the helicopter to fly. This step is imperative if you don’t want the machine spinning in circles as you curse at it.

Durability

The frame is made out of Styrofoam. The blades are a hard plastic that have yet to break despite hitting walls, chairs, coaches, and tables. It has a medium quality feel to it. It’s not something you’re going to be able to pass down to your children in twenty years but you will get some quality hours of fun out of it.

The helicopter could not survive being stepped on, but it has survived just about everything else.

Pro’s

1. Relatively Cheap
2. Durable enough for everyday use
3. Remarkably fun to fly

Con’s

1. Flight time is on the low side
2. Directions are a bit spotty
3. Very affected by drafts

Where to get yours

I bought mine from a company (through Amazon) and it came without an issue. For more pictures take a look at this “in action” gallery.

Micro X Copter – XRotor Electric RC Mini Helicopter

My vacation is coming up at the end of August and I can’t wait. We’ll be heading to Westfield. I plan on taking a great many pictures and enjoying not being at work.

In other news I’ve been starting to use mind mapping software. Pretty exquisite stuff. What exactly is mind mapping?

A mind map is a diagram used to represent words, ideas, tasks or other items linked to and arranged radially around a central key word or idea. It is used to generate, visualize, structure and classify ideas, and as an aid in study, organization, problem solving, and decision making.

I would reccommend anyone interesting in a quick method of getting thoughts out of your mind and organized into a coherent structure give it a shot. I’m thinking of doing a review of the software in the upcoming weeks when I’ve used it long enough to speak intelligently.