hello, typepad

scary

scary
Originally uploaded by Erika Hall.

Office Flair

Angry Squid (no copy)

Angry Squid (no copy)
Originally uploaded by Mike Monteiro.

Available now!

"Fridays"

37 signals wrote up a new service from the Pragmatic Programmers called Fridays. An anonymous commenter exclaimed "$7.50 for a 10 page PDF file?!?!" and someone else complains that at this rate the average CS book would cost 75 dollars. I couldn't disagree more - this is exactly the kind of content that busy technology workers (like me) are thirsting for.

Don't think of it as a "chapter," think of it as "solution." For instance, would you pay 7.50 for a slightly longer version of Joel Sposky's "The Absolute Minimum Every Software Developer Absolutely, Positively Must Know About Unicode and Character Sets," or even something like Ed Summers' "Delicious JSON" tutorial? I would.

My time is my most valuable asset, and if I have a choice between googling around and patching together disparate tutorials for two hours to figure something out, or just paying 7.50 for a well written brief tutorial with examples, I'm all for the latter. I'm curious to see how different these turn out than the O'Reilly Hacks series, which strike me as the the same kind of idea. It also reminds me of the most underrated of all the O'Reilly titles - "Computer Science and Perl Programming", which was a compendium of the best of The Perl Journal.

The question to me is not how successful the Pragmatic Programmer's Friday series will be, rather it's how soon they'll roll out a subscription service, and a print edition, and a Threadless-like model in which programmers will propose topics, and the people will decide which are the most relevant and timely.

Angry Squid

Angry Squid
Originally uploaded by Mike Monteiro.

RIYL: Squid, animal rights, The Life Aquatic, hipster basketball, the Great Unknown, all that's good with the world.

Tribeca

Kottke OS?

Happy birthday to my friends Jason and Google. It's a good day for internet institutions.

Ricky Gervais on Extras

Ricky Gervais on HBO.com:.

HBO: Have you ever been an extra?

Ricky: I haven't, no. I wrote myself a part and went straight to the top. I recommend that to anyone.

iPod nano case from clear packing tape

iPod nano case from clear packing tape.
Originally uploaded by yatta.

Kenyatta went nano, but none of the existing cases fit his needs.

Gatorade Responds

In follow up to my earlier post about nutrition, Susan let me know that protein in a sports drink could be helpful but that carbs were what you needed. What she also told me (correct me if I'm wrong, S!) is that during a race, even a long race, water is more than enough.

Henry at True Hoop finally got response from Gatorade, and it's pretty interesting. The summary paragraph is below, but I recommend reading the whole thing.

I invite your thoughts, and would add one of my own: As much as Dr. Murray seems to be pooh-poohing the existing claims of his competitors with protein drinks, he is at the same time very much leaving the door open to joining that market niche. That last comment makes me think it might be sooner rather than later, and his PR strategy of downplaying the quality of the science leads me to predict Gatorade will first release or promote some new study showing in some new way that protein in sports drinks is, in fact, beneficial to athletes.

Zoe's Radio Show

Zoe's Radio Show is back for the fall season. It's very good.

Advocates for Rasiej

Charlie is inspiring me in all sorts of directions this morning. Knowing that I worked on the campaign for Andrew Rasiej, he sent me this short note:

On 9/15/05, Charlie.Schick wrote:
> By trying you changed the game.

> Right?

> http://www.hyperorg.com/blogger/mtarchive/004459.html

Disclaimer: I pulled a check from the Rasiej campaign for building the WeFixNYC potholes moblogging site using Chris Heathcote's flickrcity code and the flickr API as a base. All credits were scrubbed out of the final version by the campaign, and it went on to be mentioned on CNN and the New York Times.

I did donate $200 to Andrew, which is $200 more than I've ever donated to any politician, but in the end I voted for Norman Siegel, not Andrew Rasiej. When I got into the voting booth, it struck me that the needs of New Yorkers were more basic than wifi - some of our most basic civil liberties are under attack and I thought Siegel, a lifelong Civil Liberties lawyer, would stand up for us the tallest.

This is not to say that the Rasiej campaign didn't do awesome work. I think of all the candidates this time around, mayoral candidates Anthony Wiener and Gifford Miller included, Andrew will have the biggest impact on the future of politics - from within and without the system.

But to return to Charlie's earlier earlier question, my answer is still no. I'm reminded of jwz's famous goodbye to the Netscape/Mozilla project:

Open source does work, but it is most definitely not a panacea. If there's a cautionary tale here, it is that you can't take a dying project, sprinkle it with the magic pixie dust of "open source," and have everything magically work out. Software is hard. The issues aren't that simple.

Same for Politics and the Internet.

"The Passion Room"

Here's one Kenyatta and his friends at unmediated and rocketboom haven't thought of yet - in Naples, videobloggers are creating "passion movies" using a soundstage/chromakey set up inside a giant purple rabbit.

shooting and editing is done in real time inside the huge inflatable rabbit and visitors are invited to participate to the passion-themed performance

How I want SMS to work

Charlie's post Gmail on the move? Almost. inspired me to comment how I think messaging on the phone should work. I left this as a comment, and "too late," I realized it should be a post.

This isn't starry eyed "the crazy future of SMS," rather it's a few enhancements that I think could be made to SMS and Lifeblog soon on the Nokia phones that are shipping right now.

I used Gmail's pop option on my 6630* and it worked very well. It only downloaded new messages, it was always fast, and I never had trouble sending. However, I am still not sure I *want* email on my phone(s). I'd rather have better text messaging integrated with Lifeblog.

• SMS syncs w/ Outlook/Mail.app via Lifeblog
• iChat like view of many quick SMS back and forth (Treo has this, no?)
• Sort by sender!
• Flag messages (Lifeblog has this now, kind of, if you mark a message as a favorite)
• Let me classify my SMS by what it really is. Right now in my inbox I have all of these kinds of messages:
• address/phone numbers I send to myself as a note
• 46645/GOOGL requests (again, usually an address)
• chats / conversations
• web service results (nagios and dodgeball)

One thing Lifeblog handles very well (close to perfectly) - any note, movie, image or sound can be a blog post, and the verification message has a clear purpose and is easy to forward on as a message (Okay, I'll get starry eyed for a second - imagine a mobile Forwardtrack.) All of this assumes people will start using lifeblog as their primary messaging app, and that lifeblog will be getting mac support and remain backwards compatible, which I know is a tall order.

* Before it bit the dust! See some final pictures: Meg and morning glories, Meg and I running (waddling?) in the this weekend's 4 miler and Adriana and I's front "yard" container garden. I'll miss that phone.

Embarassed by the Archives

It's tidy Sunday! I'm cleaning out my lists and piles, physical and virtual.

I'm often so embarassed for my past self. If you could eavesrop in my head you'd hear a chorus of: I said what? What the heck was I thinking? Did I actually write that down? (Am I the only who beats myself up over awkward conversations and old memories?) And as neurotic as I may be about the past, I'm equally nostalgic for it. Weird!

Also, why do I have four (digital) copies of Michael Jackson's Unbreakable? I mean, everyone needs one. But four?

Morning at the soy luck club

John working on our web app

Food i am too hung over to eat

Cory Arcangel's Geto, Beach Boys mash up.

Cory's Web LOG: 6 feet deep v. Surf's Up.

Yeah, yeah, also I know mash-ups were cool like 5 years ago, and already had a Vh1 show like 3 years ago, so I added some constraints. I wanted 2 see if I could go for the trifecta of mash-ups. Meaning, the two bands had to have a common name, the video has to be interesting even with no prior knowlege of the 2 bands, I could't cut the videos or the music to make them fit together, they had to be played next to each other

Cory doesn't mention anything about publishing a mashup of "Surf's Up!" and "6 Feet Deep" one week after Katrina. Hey Cory - is that a coincidence? (It can't be, right?)

The video and audio are both available on Cory's occasionally working web site. When Cory's web site is down, I direct my attention to kick out the internet jams.

In other news, I put my delicious links in the sidebar, even though I'm not crazy about them or the implementation. Expect changes soon (tm).

update - Cory writes:

Its actually "little surfer girl" not "surfs up" and i made it a year ago for a premiere at the MOMA (i have added this note).

i never imagined people would think about Katrina this morning when i posted it.

In my mind, all Beach Boys songs are named "Surfs up!" Sorry about that. (and thanks for writing Cory)

FUJI Blimp/Bomb

FUJI Blimp/Bomb
Originally uploaded by david.

Update:

Janelle moblogged the blimp as well and figured out it was on security detail. What a letdown - I was hoping yahoo or google was going to give us hi-res maps of Bay Ridge and Sunset Park.

What is Ebay's Phone Number?

Good question! It's 1-800-322-9266. (For a friend)

Index of /0/items/George_Bush_Doesnt_Like_Black_People

Let a million Kanye West remixes bloom.

Thanks, Mike.

SOS

All proceeds from Mule Design's latest t-shirt go to Hurrican victims.

My Hair is a Star

My Hair is a Star
Originally uploaded by DUKES.

Well, not my hair, but DUKES' hair. I found this picture while browsing Entourage tags (this is the only good one). The Internet doesn't make 15 minutes of fame any longer, it's just making them deeper. On the internet those 15 minutes are measured in fractal time - constantly being remeasured, rexamined and rediscovered.

Happy Birthday, Jessamyn

boggle
Originally uploaded by david.

On Optimism

The Doc Searls:.

This event will change the country as much as 9/11 did, and perhaps even more so. After Katrina, we will again begin investing in real homeland security, real infrastructure, real caring for the civilizing natures of vital cities and family farms, of small towns and real communities, and government bodies that care more about their people than the high-dollar sources of election funding.

I love the optimism, but I have to admit I almost spit out my tea. Not with this administration.

Scripting News and New Orleans

The best coverage of the hurricane I've read is over at Scripting News. It's nice when Dave is a bulldog about something other than XML.

Pink Houses

pink houses
Originally uploaded by dustin3000.

I'd like to live in a house like this someday.

Bush: 'Our Long National Nightmare Of Peace And Prosperity Is Finally Over'

Bush: 'Our Long National Nightmare Of Peace And Prosperity Is Finally Over.'

"We as a people must stand united, banding together to tear this nation in two," Bush said. "Much work lies ahead of us: The gap between the rich and the poor may be wide, be there's much more widening left to do. We must squander our nation's hard-won budget surplus on tax breaks for the wealthiest 15 percent. And, on the foreign front, we must find an enemy and defeat it."

"The insanity is over," Bush said. "After a long, dark night of peace and stability, the sun is finally rising again over America. We look forward to a bright new dawn not seen since the glory days of my dad."

January 17, 2001.