It’s a play on this famous quote from Sun-tzu:

• Journey Inside My Mind Blog: Happy Presidents Day – February 17, 2003

Happy President’s Day! If you have the day off, enjoy it while the rest of the working world wishes they were you.

• Twitter / oshoalltweet

If you’re not on Twitter, you can still read that website every day. I’m so excited to see what turns up in my Twitter list!

Michele Shea is right. Creating something is a little like being God. You get to make something that did not exist before you put your hands to it. Whether it’s writing a story that has never been told before or creating an alternative to what is provided me, being creative has a sort of power to it that can’t be replicated anyway else.

Of course, that’s only if it works. For every finished creation, I have tons of aborted attempts that are boring, awkward or just plain ugly.

If you have been feeling down lately, try creating something new. It doesn’t matter what it is. Give yourself an hour or two every day to just make something… anything new. It’s like free Prozac, I promise.

For some creativity ideas, check out these websites:

• Craftzine.com blog

• DIY Crafts – Scrapbooking, Knitting, Sewing & Jewelry Making Craft Projects and Videos : DIY Network

• MAKE: Blog

• QuotesBlog

Collated by Daniel Johnson, Jr., it appears to be a unique collections of quotations. He doesn’t have a searchable database, but he does update fairly regularly. It’s obvious that Daniel has done his own work and achieved an enjoyable and different website to enjoy quotations.

If you are using Twitter, you can make QuotesBlog your friend:

• Twitter / quotesblog

You will receive quotations in your Twitter feed. Mike has been working on that for The Quotations Page, but QuotesBlog beat us to the punch. We think that’s awesome. The more interesting quotations that are out there, the better!

There has been a firestorm within the blogging communities about free speech, death threats and responsibility. It all started with this entry from Kathy Sierra on the Creating Passionate Users weblog:

• Creating Passionate Users: Death threats against bloggers are NOT “protected speech” (why I cancelled my ETech presentations)

Kathy tried to explain why she had to cancel her ETech presentations:

For the last four weeks, I’ve been getting death threat comments on this blog. But that’s not what pushed me over the edge. What finally did it was some disturbing threats of violence and sex posted on two other blogs… blogs authored and/or owned by a group that includes prominent bloggers. People you’ve probably heard of. People like respected Cluetrain Manifesto co-author Chris Locke (aka Rageboy).

Chris Locke responded with this entry:

• RageBoy – all noise – all the time

He explained his side and his YOYOW philosophy:

With Mean Kids gone, I thought I’d have another go at it. After all, we were mostly having fun posting totally surreal stuff about nothing particularly relevant to anything or anyone. But again, there were a couple posts — the ones Kathy mentions in her post — that were over the top. I didn’t think for a minute that they were “threatening” — and again, they were not my doing — but when I saw mail from her objecting to them, I nuked the entire site rather than censor any individual.

I was a conference host on the Well 15 years ago where the core ethos was acronymized to YOYOW — You Own Your Own Words. This has remained a guiding principle for me ever since. I will not take responsibility for what someone else said, nor will I censor what another individual wrote. However, it was clear that Sierra was upset, so it seemed the best course to make the whole site go away.

In the end, they release a joint statement here:

• Kathy Sierra – Chris Locke – Coordinated Statements

Kathy: That said, Chris and I are in complete agreement that it would be tragic if this incident were used as a weapon by those who would limit free and open exchange.

Chris: Misogyny is real — and vile. Violence against women is wrong. It must not be tolerated. This issue should be explored and discussed, not swept under the rug, not rationalized away. At the same time, we need to look closely and carefully at the implications for free speech. The First Amendment allows and protects language that many find noxious.

It seems that this is an issue of freedom of speech and website responsibility. Is Chris Locke responsible for what an anonymous poster put on his website? God help us if he is. It is very difficult to monitor every comment and forum posting that is put up. Keeping up with spam alone takes so much of my time that I can’t imagine trying to censor every post. Is Chris responsible for putting up a website with the intention to “poke fun” at other people in the first place? Man, that’s a slippery slope to step on as well.

True be told, death threats are common on the Internet. After Kathy Sierra’s statement was released, many high profile bloggers came forward admitting that they have received similar threats. Additionally, this is not a new occurrence. Laura LeMay, another prominent female tech writer, posted a common admission here:

• lauralemay :: blog :: kathy sierra, or, imminent death of the net predicted

Do I get stalked and harassed and picked on on the internet? Do I get death threats? Sure. I started getting them the week I first posted to Usenet twenty years ago, and I’ve been getting them ever since. It was worse during the usenet era, and WAY worse when I was selling a lot of books. Its pretty quiet these days now that I’m mostly anonymous and I write a mostly personal journal blog. No one cares about cat posts; there are bigger targets. But it still happens.

In the end, the words of Carl Schurz ring true and both Kathy and Chris agree that legislation is not the answer. Here are a few more quotations about the subject to get you thinking:

I’m sure this quotation was meant to mean, touch your customer emotionally, but my first instinct was the physical interpretation. It’s true. If you physically touch people, they respond positively as long as it is a minor touch, not some personal-space intruding touch.

Either way, you have to reach your customer. Don’t just tell them that you exist. Tell them how you’ll help them exist.

For more customer oriented talk, see Kathy Sierra’s website:

Creating Passionate Users

• 10 Questions with Jon Winokur: How to Heighten Your Sense of the Absurd

Read it for Winokur’s thoughts on arrogance, humor, quotations, Republicans, and the French, and a sampling of his favorite quotes. He even mentions our site and calls it “one of the better ones,” which I found flattering—Jon’s books are one of the things that inspired me to create this site in the first place. Granted, it’s in the middle of a paragraph about his preference for using anything but quotation websites as sources, but we’ll take whatever compliment we can get from a curmudgeon.

Just a quick note to tell you all about The Gadgets Page. If you like my writing and you are interested in the new gadgets that come out every day, then you might like our website:

• The Gadgets Page – Gadget news and reviews for the real world

I do reviews of every toy I come in contact with. If you have a gadgets addiction and you like the writing that we do here, then you will probably love The Gadgets Page. Check it out.

Back in 2004, I wrote an entry on my personal blog about this quotation:

• Pick Me! » The Happiness Butterfly

It has been a very popular entry because I challenged my readers to post in the comments if they ever have a butterfly alight on them. The comments are worth a read because some of them have been truly inspiring. One in particular was inspiring and she had the lovely picture to prove it:

• Pick Me! » Butterflies DO Land On People

Since then, I HAVE had butterflies alight upon me. Here is a picture that Mike took when it happened: