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February 28, 2002
Christ I've never been busier
Christ I've never been busier than I have this week and next month looks to be even worse. I just started the biggest freelance gig of my life, hopefully I'll get to say something about it soon as one part should launch next week. I have to speak at three different places in March, we just gave 30 days notice to our landlord and are moving at the end of the month (moving about 30 miles south of SF, to a big quiet house), I'm working a few older and possible upcoming freelance gigs with clients all over the country, and I've still got book chapters to write and edit. Not being the type of guy that does very many meetings, I have three tomorrow and had to turn two down, rescheduling for next week.
I guess I'll sleep it off when I'm dead.
Posted by 11:06 AM | TrackBack
February 27, 2002
Do you ever notice how
Do you ever notice how even the most mundane of trips to the store can be interesting if you do it in the presence of interesting people? Other times, you could be going somewhere, and something unexpected happens and that is the most interesting part.
I think a drive is officially a "road trip" when the participants admit the journey is the most interesting part, thereby resigning themselves, their departure city, and their destination city from having to be interesting.
Posted by 12:39 PM | TrackBack
Sign of the impending apocalypse
Sign of the impending apocalypse #2368: William Shatner has some sort of daily journal thing going on now, complete with comments.
Posted by 02:13 AM | TrackBack
February 26, 2002
With all this talk about
With all this talk about weblogs vs. journalism, I wonder if I should take my last essay, which started as weblog post, which started from a single offsite link, bulk it up with interview quotes from various bands and online music services, give it a heavy edit, then shop it to Salon, Wired News, SPIN, and/or Rolling Stone, just to prove it's possible to bridge the gap between weblogs and journalism.
A larger part of me wonders if the weblogs vs. journalism debate has any importance. If the journalism-with-a-capital-J crowd is calling it a fad, perhaps they are scared at the prospects of admitting there is something useful in weblogs, and it's a smoke shield. Maybe it's just time to stop using the word journalism around weblogs, regardless of any similarities one might find among the two as neither all weblogs can be called journalism nor can all news articles be called journalism. I know deep down, there is something interesting among some weblogs, some of the time and it's worth highlighting and discussing, but I fear the already polarized weblogs vs journalism arguments will continue to be mired in semantics and strictly either/or prospects, and I wonder if energy is better spent working on other things.
Posted by 12:11 PM | TrackBack
February 23, 2002
Since early January, I've been
Since early January, I've been writing for several hours a night working on a couple books. Today I'm a lean, mean writing machine (in bad need of an editor, I know), and as a result, I wrote a bit more about mp3s, starting with what I wrote earlier.
I really hope to see a band take the plunge someday soon, get wildly successful, sell music to a public wanting to pay for it, and bring down the RIAA.
Posted by 06:32 AM | TrackBack
On a weblist, I responded
On a weblist, I responded to the question:
What books have been most influential about the way you see the web now and in the future?with the following list of my favorite web-related titles.
Posted by 01:36 AM | TrackBack
February 19, 2002
I moved this mp3 stuff
I moved this mp3 stuff over here.
Posted by 04:42 AM | TrackBack
Logorrhea n.: Excessive use
Logorrhea n.: Excessive use of words.
Just a couple characters and you have bloggorhea. Coincidence?
Posted by 03:11 AM | TrackBack
February 17, 2002
Not my proudest MetaFilter moment
Not my proudest MetaFilter moment to date, but my most enjoyable.
Posted by 05:20 AM | TrackBack
While talking with Mike the
While talking with Mike the other day, he came up with a great idea: this summer when both movies are available on DVD, rent Glitter and Crossroads, crank up the video projector and drink every time you see a belly button. Although drinking fuzzy navels would probably be most appropriate, I fear a death-by-alcohol-poisoning after three hours of britney and mariah.
Posted by 01:41 AM | TrackBack
February 15, 2002
Kay's mom sent us a
Kay's mom sent us a Valentine's Day card, which was nice. While the thought was nice, I was a bit concerned with the copy on the card. It was a flowery, frilly card with that script font you see on wedding invitations, and it read on the front precisely as follows:
Do you see the problem? Why does the word "son" have quotation marks around it? Does it not mean I'm part of the family? Is there a special section of a Hallmark store devoted to parents that might not be completely sure they accept someone into the family? Kay says to take the quotes out insinuates that perhaps a mother's offspring have married each other. I'm sure there are heated debates down at Hallmark HQ over this, but as a recipient of their fine cards, I can't get over how a couple punctuation marks change a message entirely. To wit:
I like sauerkraut.
I "like" sauerkraut.
See the difference? I'm probably reading too much into it though. It was a nice gesture and a nice card, and I don't think Kay's mom purposely picked it based on any weird implied message.
Posted by 04:09 AM | TrackBack
While cruising through craigslist today,
While cruising through craigslist today, I happened upon this odd post about a designer/programmer needed for contract work on a golfing site. Note that with your application, you should answer four questions. Question one is odd, but probably pertinent, as I suppose it's still a heated point whether oversize clubs should be allowed in professional play. I don't know why you'd hire or not hire someone based on their response to that one, but I guess it has something to do with the job.
Questions two through four are way, way out there. Is this even legal? If you loved the canadian skating pair, think the US should bomb the world and that marriage is a sacred institution, do you get the job? What if you thought the russians did better, the US should work on peace, and that gay marriage is a-ok? I don't even see the point, since the job allows for telecommuting. It's not like you have to share the office space with someone who's views don't jibe with yours, so what's the point? Does that make someone a better programmer or designer? Does any of that affect the actual work done by an employee?
Posted by 03:30 AM | TrackBack
Joel wrote a great article
Joel wrote a great article on understanding the differences between developers and higher-ups (or customoers/clients). Buried in his comments on the article I added this anecdote:
A related lesson, learned from several client meetings:
I didn't use "Lorem Ipsum" latin filler text in mockups or prototypes shown to customers until a few meetings went like this:
Me: So, here's what the proposed home page will look like, and you just simply click on the discussion ar...
Client: What's that paragraph say about healthcare funding getting slashed?
Me: What? Oh, that. I just copy and pasted the first story on Yahoo News' medical news page, I thought it'd fit as filler text since this was a medical site. Now about the functionality of the featur...
Client: Well, can we change that? I mean, I don't want to look at bad news when visitors see the site.
Me: I just put that in for this photoshop mockup, it won't ever be seen by anyone. Now about the new proposed sub-sectio...
Client: Ok, but if you could change all the mockups, that'd be great, I don't want to show these around the office with that bad news on there.
I've used Lorem Ipsum as filler text from then on.
Posted by 01:52 AM | TrackBack
February 13, 2002
It's a bummer the coverage
It's a bummer the coverage of the olympics continue to be controlled fairly tightly by the media. Like pb mentioned, it'd be really great if athletes had ways of sharing their experiences in real time on the web.
So far, I can only find two people tangentially related to the olympics, and running weblogs chronicling their day. Crabwalk is done by a journalist covering the event, and b-may is Bryan May's musings on working security at a ice rink. I met Bryan last year at Web2001, where he kept all us speakers happy and everything running smoothly at the conference. He's a funny guy in person and I always wondered if he'd start writing on the web. His site is absolutely hilarious, and captures his infectious sense of humor well.
Posted by 11:29 AM | TrackBack
It's frustrating to see the
It's frustrating to see the funniest comedians on television forced to sit in limbo while their movie that has been done for almost a year sits in the can, and their DVD collection sits awaiting the movie release, which may never happen. Given the mainstream success of things like Tenacious D, I'm surprised Newline and HBO aren't jumping to release and promote Bob Odenkirk and David Cross' work.
Posted by 06:05 AM | TrackBack
February 12, 2002
I love my new briefcase.
I love my new briefcase. Not only is it padded, keeping bumps and shocks away from my laptop, it even keeps hot things hot and cold things cold.
Posted by 12:32 PM | TrackBack
February 11, 2002
15,440 words later and
15,440 words later and I've finished the first complete draft on my chapter. I heard positive feedback on my earlier drafts so I'm hoping the rewriting won't be too time-consuming. I've also been running about 3 times a week, and am up to about three miles in about 30 minutes. I've got to start a new book project tomorrow (I'll talk more about it later), but so far I would deem my writing/running program to be a success.
It's funny how once you start concentrating on writing, it becomes easier fairly quickly. It's almost like writing is a muscle that just needs some flexing once in a while, and as soon as you build it up a bit, it's easy to produce some fairly substantial things.
Posted by 02:54 AM | TrackBack
February 10, 2002
I've been a big fan
I've been a big fan of Philip Greenspun's work for as long as I can remember. When he first started Arsdigita, it sounded like the greatest place to work, and I'm sad to see it close up and get sold to Redhat.
I remember the combination of Greenspun's grandstanding and all the VC money resulted in some fairly crazy, newsworthy things during the boom, but the pages are all gone from the arsdigita site. I did some digging and found that you can still see their ample employee benefits page (with the cautionary "if we run out of money" bit at the end) in the google cache and their once famous recruiting incentive program, thanks to the web archive.
Posted by 11:17 AM | TrackBack
Man, that was fast. Anyone
Man, that was fast. Anyone searching Critical IP at google sees me above the company. And my post is #7 and rising at Daypop.
I did it as a quick experiment in meme creation and propigation, to see if it would actually work, and how long it would take. Now that I see it's pretty much a full success in about 48 hours, it's also worth noting how frighteningly powerful it is. I'm sure using Google's new temporal listings, I'll fall out of #1 in a few days, but it boggles the mind that anyone with a well-indexed weblog (google loves constantly updated pages) can supplant even the company's companytitle.com site.
So be careful out there, this angry mob justice is some pretty powerful stuff.
Posted by 10:46 AM | TrackBack
February 09, 2002
Conversation over lunch: "That guy
Conversation over lunch:
"That guy that does the cinnamon challenges has one up about saltine crackers."
"What's so crazy about that? I can eat a ton of those"
"I think the most anyone did in a minute was eight."
"Eight?! Is that all? I know I can do ten in a minute. A minute's a long time. I'll bet you five bucks I can do it."
"You're on."
And another tale of monkey-see, monkey-do (or jackass see, jackass do, as the case may be). I didn't get my ten eaten, but I did get six down in a minute. I was surprised, I thought it'd be easier than it was, especially since every dentist I've had has told me about my superhuman saliva glands. I thought it'd be a walk in the park, anyone can sit down and eat a box, right?
Once you start eating a bunch of saltines, you're not only parched, but you've instantly got a ball of paste in your mouth that takes lots of chewing to injest. Every cracker that follows the first is more difficult to eat and takes longer. Your mouth also gets rather torn up, like eating a bowl of captain crunch. After trying hard and failing, I think it would take quite a bit of practice to pull off 8-10 in a minute. And always go with multiple crackers at once, the one-at-a-time people didn't get very far.
Some photos from the Mule Design space, including our own saltine stunt.
Posted by 03:02 AM | TrackBack
The real beauty of Tivo
The real beauty of Tivo is that it allows you to fast-forward through pointless fluff in Olympic broadcasts. So far, it seems in the average hour of sports-related coverage, there are only about 20 minutes of actual athletic event content. The rest is commercials, introductions, and violin-filled backstories of every american athlete's struggles against adversity. Since Tivo collected and used usage data on last week's superbowl to realize that people replayed Britney's breasts more than interceptions or fumbles, perhaps the folks at Tivo could share the fast-forwarding patterns of people watching the recorded Olympics, and in turn, improve NBC's exhausting melodramatic coverage.
I've also noticed much of the same required behavior on Comedy Central shows. An episode of Battlebots contains 4 or 5 matches that are 3 minutes in length, but each episode runs an hour. Not so with a Tivo handy.
Posted by 02:22 AM | TrackBack
February 08, 2002
Note to domain owners: Critical
Note to domain owners: Critical IP may be calling you soon (or may have already called you) to pitch you network security, IT, and VPN consulting. Even though my domains are clearly marked "Personal" to indicate they are not businesses (do a whois lookup on metafilter.com if you don't believe me, I think it's clear), the gang at Critical IP feel the whois database is a virtual goldmine worth cold-calling and bothering you at home (when I asked them if they got my number from the whois database, they admited that yes, that was how they obtained it).
Here's to hoping anyone searching for Critical IP at google sees this and hires a more capable firm that doesn't rely on abusing an information directory to find new business. And if you're unfortunate enough to get a message from the phone number (703) 691-2480 x270, it's not worth returning the call.
If you feel like sharing this message with anyone else, just copy this HTML and post on your site:
<a href="http://a.wholelottanothing.org/archived.blah/2/01/2002/#795">Critical IP</a> sucks.
Which results in:
Critical IP sucks.
Posted by 10:00 AM | TrackBack
February 06, 2002
Last year, I somehow stumbled
Last year, I somehow stumbled upon Chris' site, looking for cutting edge, simple CSS design. Eventually, I clicked around and saw he was in a band, and I downloaded a couple songs and was impressed.
I've been meaning to buy their CD for months now, and early this week I finally did. I popped TV highway to the stars in and was amazed to hear an indie pop disc that was fantastic from start to finish. They've got a good range, some things sound like japanese synth pop, others college rock, some emo stuff that borderlines on ballads. Their variety reminds me a lot of Sloan's stuff, and their straight ahead indie rock sounds a lot like Athens, GA bands like Kincaid.
What's impressive to me is they're really the archetype of musicians using the web. They've got a weblog to talk about the band's latest news, a message board to talk to fans directly, they write reviews of stuff they like, they have full mp3 versions of many of their songs, they run a do-it-yourself record company, pressing and distributing themselves and handling payment via paypal. It's hard to imagine a band using the web in more or better ways, and I bet their dirt cheap $10 CDs make them more money than if they were on a major label selling $15 discs.
I'm finally going to see them perform next month, no matter what it takes. They've got a big gig coming up at Noisepop (SF music fest), opening for Guided By Voices (a longtime favorite), but it appears to be sold out. Even if I have to grab a bandana and a pack of Mentos™, I'm figuring out a way to get into that show.
Posted by 08:30 AM | TrackBack
I saw a talk last
I saw a talk last night by Jared Spool, and if you have the chance to see him speak, by all means do it (he was hilarious). It was pretty good, presenting some of his user testing data that followed people using e-commerce sites. My only problem with the talk was his presentation of results as scientific fact, oftentimes with conclusions like "42% of users couldn't purchase something when they tried to." Sure, it's possible to show two significant digits based on the data you collected, but is it really reliable? I know the act of usability testing isn't one of pure experimental design and absolute findings, getting a sense of what works and what doesn't in general is enough to improve a site, but presenting to an academic group at an academic university made me expect more.
That's not to say there aren't real, science-with-a-capital-S usability studes being done. This one from Kansas for instance, blows everything I've ever read Jakob write (as his work is most often based on his own speculation and back of the envelope calculations). The Kansas study provides real data, real results, and gives everyone practical findings that anyone can apply to future projects. [thanks to the Veen for the Kansas link]
Posted by 03:06 AM | TrackBack
February 05, 2002
Though comments about someone's favorable
Though comments about someone's favorable personality usually aren't compliments at all, I was happy to hear Shift thinks I've got a great personality.
Posted by 12:14 PM | TrackBack
February 03, 2002
That Stewart is such a
That Stewart is such a romantic.
Lately I've been seeing amazing things like this on a fairly regular basis. Maybe it's the stop-and-smell-the-roses pace my life has shifted into, or the realization from my dad's stroke that life is a really a cold, random string of events, and if you're not enjoying peace and harmony now, it'll soon be gone and replaced by unpredictable unpleasantness. If you just take a look around, there are beautiful things, beautiful places, and beautiful people in everyday life. I've got to keep reminding myself to take my pocket-sized camera with me everywhere, regardless of how I might appear as a socially maladjusted photo geek (are there any other kind of photo geeks?).
Posted by 01:27 AM | TrackBack
February 02, 2002
Over the past few days,
Over the past few days, I've gotten a ton of new requests for ads on MetaFilter, and I was searching everywhere, trying to figure out where they were coming from. Many of the new ads were a bit odd and not your everyday weblog-related fare, so it was obvious they weren't coming from the community itself (as they had in the past). Tonight I finally figured it out, by searching Daypop and finding this article. I don't use Daypop all that much, but I gotta say, it's shaping up to be a damn fine search engine.