Walt Gordon Jones

Wouldn’t it be nice to have an auto-complete that includes phonetically similar results? And what if the same code also handled misspellings in search forms, played nice with other ActiveRecord plugins, and could be configured to varying levels of strictness?

I’ve used this code over a few projects, and originally developed it based on a Ruby Soundex function provided by Alexander Ermolaev at snippets.dzone.com. The original algorithm requires a full-length match, so it is not suitable for auto-complete. I also thought it would be nice to support fuzzy full-text search, and arbitrary match lengths.

Adam Singer posted an excellent article on creativity and self-actualization. He includes some insightful advice from Abraham Maslow, the psychologist who coined the term Peak Experience and gave us the Hierarchy of Needs. Maslow wrote a lot about creativity, and Adam’s post got me thinking about how values fit into the picture.

The popularity of Creative Commons is increasing rapidly, however few people understand the implications when releasing their work under CC or when using CC creative works. Creative Commons is a potential minefield, (but then so is the whole Internet.) Web sites such as Flickr make it very easy both to publish and use published images under Creative Commons without understanding all the issues. Here I will outline some of the benefits that might make it worth the risks, as well as things you should know to keep yourself out of trouble.

The symmetric property of equality:
If A = B, then B = A.

What value does this have for you in your current career or personal life?
Many people do not realize there is a direct relationship between:

a) the skills, experience, and knowledge they possess internally, and
b) the quality of their network of associations externally.

And, they do not realize this relationship is symmetric. It goes both ways.

Why am I now using my middle name? The answer has a lot to do with personal branding, search engine optimization (SEO), my Google CV, and the fact that there are a lot of notable Walt Jones’s out there. In fact, one of them is also a photographer and even owns the domain name, waltjones.com.