A Whole Lotta Nothing

Four simple strings, one per

Four simple strings, one per finger. Tiny size. Just a few simple chords and you can play almost anything. I've always had a fascination with ukuleles. It's probably due to watching friends pick up the guitar. They wouldn't just buy an instrument, play with it for a while, and stop. It would always be a lifestyle change. They didn't merely pick up the guitar, they became guitarists. They'd talk about the hours upon hours they devoted year after year of playing. All the talk of blisters on fingers. Arguments about proper fingerwork.

So the uke has fascinated me because it seems simple enough to pick up without requiring much more than fifty bucks on an instrument and a book or two. Eventually, I knew I'd find a uke blog that would allow me to wallow in my uke love. BoingBoing's ukulele site is great, you'll find cool ukes you'll want, great mp3.com uke artists, and uke-related news.

I'll be at Web2001 next

I'll be at Web2001 next week, gabbing about community, and at Fray Day 5 in San Francisco the Saturday afterwards. Should be a fun week.

I wish Olympus had an

I wish Olympus had an essay contest and giveway for their E10 cameras, like TiVo did last year.

Orbitz is significantly better designed

Orbitz is significantly better designed and easier to use than any other online travel site I've used. The information design is superb (look up a flight to get a nice grid of price vs. # of stops, with airline brands along the top). If Jakob's hypothesis is correct, they should eventually blow travelocity and the others out of the water, due to their great usability. Time will tell.

Finally, a well-thought out application

Finally, a well-thought out application that employs the ever-popular business hammock. For the first time in my life, I wish I had a cubicle. [via boingboing]

The Star Tribune's website

The Star Tribune's website redesign is nice to look at, but I haven't seen that much tiny 10px text outside of k10k. Can anyone over the age of 40 use that navbar?

[screenshot of what I see in IE6 running on win2k]

UPDATE: The problem is IE6 only (and yes, I checked my font settings, everything was at the default), I noticed it looked fine in 5.5 at home. I exchanged email last night with someone on the StarTribune staff, and they're rewriting the stylesheet and stylesheet sniffer to fix it.

New Jakob Nielsen book

New Jakob Nielsen book coming out that sounds like it should have been titled "Jakob talks trash about 50 web sites."

For my friends that still

For my friends that still ask, here's a good way to use bitzi, and if you haven't heard the song that is the subject of the reply, download it here. The explanation of "Napster Bombs" on their culture jamming page is a pretty good description of what, how, and why they did did it.

Shots from the second leg

Shots from the second leg of our trip, a visit to Cairns to see the Great Barrier Reef.

Two years! Where does

Two years! Where does the time go?

Thank god I had this

Thank god I had this x10 ad popunder on me today. I ordered a camera right away, because I can't tell you how many times my home has been attacked by shapely stock photo models in tight clothing. They're ferocious I tell you.

Finally, I can feel safe and secure again.

Shots from our first

Shots from our first few days in Sydney. Still to come, shots from Cairns and the countryside outside of Adelaide. Oh, and a big wrap-up essay of some sort.

We're back! A few things:

We're back! A few things:

- Man, I mention something earlier this month, and now they're doing something about it. I'd say I'm some sort of oracle they turn to for new ideas, but I'm sure it was in development for many months and it was dumb luck on my part for predicting it. There's no doubt that Google will be the king of all search tools for some time to come. Of course, you could have heard me saying the same thing about Altavista in 1997.

- Everyone writes too much. It'll take me weeks to catch up on the past two weeks of posts everyone has written while I've been away, then I'll have to catch up some more.

- I somehow learned to publish from beyond the grave. While I snorkeled the great barrier reef, an article I wrote ran in the new Digital Web issue, and while I sat in a Honolulu airport for an emergency landing and 4 hour diversion, I got a mention in this morning's NYT, in an article that cites a weblog as the primary source, interestingly enough.

I know, I'm being less modest than usual. Sue me.

- I've gotten more hate mail in the last two weeks than I've gotten in my entire life. One bunch, for MetaFilter going down, which means if I ever take the site completely offline, I'll probably be deluged with death threats. The other hate mail was from someone that liked a certain Arizona hiking area that I chronicled online over four years ago. Apparently the place is overrun with tourists and it's all my fault because I'm an asshole for sharing the knowledge of where it is located, how to get there, what fun it is, and how much it all costs. I hope the guy that emailed me is sending screeds to every southwest backpacking guidebook author as well, for not keeping his favorite place on earth a secret.

I'm also wondering why people are so damn pissed off at everything. Ideas?

- The trip was fun, lots of photos and words coming soon but if I could give you just a few bits of advice, here they are: long flights suck and no human should ever be stuck in four cubic feet of space for 17 hours straight. Springing for the upgrades to business or first class is probably worth every penny. Customs isn't nearly as bad as we heard. Australia is a great place to spend a vacation and surprisingly cheap. That driving on the left thing will never feel right, no matter how hard you try. Keep your passport in your bags, not your wallet or backpack or purse. Jet lag is surprisingly easy to avoid. Wear shorts when flying, regardless of weather or local custom at either your departure or destination city. A tin can with 300 people in it heats up quick, and you can use a blanket if you're ever cold. Splurge on your accommodations, you'll be better rested and ready for the day's activities. Always head off the beaten path where possible, experiencing the world as a local is completely different than the experience a tourist is often limited to.

I've been away for a

I've been away for a few days now, seeing amazing sites in fantastic places, and while I haven't missed the internet at all, a few minutes ago, I was reminded of what a great thing is truly is.

I'm sitting on a beach outside of Cairns right now, mere steps from the sand, using a kiosk at the fish 'n chips shop. A few days ago, I met up with Neale, a person I would have never met without this worldwide network. I stopped into a internet cafe in Sydney yesterday and exchanged real-time messages with someone watching our apartment and pets, and my whole trip here was planned via a series of websites and email exchanges with residents of Oz. So while it's good to get away, it's great to know it is there, ready to beam messages and connect people and places for virtually no cost.

(update: a quick email check when I wrote this contained a travelocity message stating one of our connecting flights was cancelled, which a quick call to Qantas fixed. Thank jebus for email!)

Off to Australia, back in

Off to Australia, back in two weeks.

Whoa, an article on blogging

Whoa, an article on blogging was in Entertainment Weekly. I just found this by accident, I'm surprised there wasn't a big deal made about it.

Fun with Kazaa: do a

Fun with Kazaa: do a search for audio, with title words containing the word "cover." Download anything that looks remotely interesting, a good rule of thumb is to maximize the juxtaposition (punk bands doing 80's covers, classical version of heavy metal classics, country bands covering gangsta rap).

After finding quite a bit worthy enjoying, I was struck by something claiming to be Greenday doing Wonderwall. It sounded more like two teen non-native speakers of english with an acoustic guitar, singing off key and out of time. Here's the track and here's the Bitzi record for that song.

There's something infinitely more interesting about imperfect renditions of songs you're familiar with. I'm reminded of Brian Eno's Portsmouth Sinfonia project, a symphony comprised of people with little-to-no musical training, playing the classics. There's something great about this wonderwall cover that I can't put my finger on, but I'd rather hear this version over the Oasis one.

From this photo: "Armstrong also

From this photo:

"Armstrong also gave President Bush a Trek 5200 bike simular [sic] to the one he rode to victory in France"

...to which the President remarked "Anyone want to help me melt this baby down and get it in my Expedition's gas tank?"

Search engines have to do

Search engines have to do a lot, and they're never expected to keep current, but I'm kind of surprised that industry-leader Google is pretty bad at finding timely information.

Search for "sircam virus information" yields zero results.

Search for "sircam virus" gets only one hit, which isn't relevant, but there's a google-sponsored ad for a virus cleaner and a recent news story, so google knows something about the topic I'm searching for.

Perhaps there's some sort of stop-gap measure they can implement for frequent, timely zero searches?

I'm trying to judge which

I'm trying to judge which one of the two discoveries I made today is better:

The upcoming Goonies DVD release, complete with a making-of extra and director's commentary track or New Found Glory's cover of "The Goonies 'R' Good Enough"