Chasing My Own Tale
Jul 16 Sun (01 PM)
<http://www.gladwell.com/2000_05_29_a_interview.htm>
Very interesting article that was originally published in the New Yorker.
Some of the info here is very will be very effective… if our company ever lifts it’s hiring freeze.
Jul 13 Thu (08 AM)
Today, Dave Winer of Userland <http://www.scripting.com/> took a little swing at Apple:
As far as I’m concerned Apple goes it alone, blazing their own trail, picky about the developers they work with. [Irish Times reporter] Karlin is right, I am obsessed with this free speech First Amendment thing, I’ve been part of a system where saying what you think was considered bad manners. Never again.
Apple, as an incorporated entity has Free Speech rights as well, but the back side of Free Speech is Free Silence. Unless a topic has serious health or human rights concerns, anyone has the right to *not* say anything. If Apple doesn’t want to talk to someone that they feel will call them on it, that’s their perogative. I think it shows weakness on Apple’s part, but to say that your own Free Speech trumps someone else’s Free Silence is a one-sided view.
Jul 10 Mon (09 AM)
<http://www.drudgereport.com/mnd.htm>
Oh gawd. This is crazy. A Media company being bought by a Communications company… I can see that. But a Media company buying a computer manufacturer, and an addition movie studio? This Disney + Apple rumour has been floating around since Jobs came back to Apple years ago.
It’s just crazy talk, and I can’t believe that I’m adding to the hoopla.
Jul 10 Mon (01 PM)
Self Props: I used this phrase on a recent post of the Standards list. I worked on it for 10 minutes, so I wanted to share it here: “Just because XML requires quoted attributes doesn’t mean that we’ve found some electro-utopia.” Geeky humor to be sure.
Shower Thoughts: I want an aquarium, but in the shape of Rodin’s sculpture “The Thinker” that would be about the size of a 21″ monitor. Maybe I’m being to particular, but that seems like a good open space shape for an aquarium. If you’ve got leads on funky shaped aquariums, let me know.
Sucrets really numb your entire mouth. The Black Cherry Maximum Strengths are wicked powerful.
I keep hearing recommendations for Peter Gabriel’s Passion album. I want to pick it up this week.
Amy and I finally started actually *living* at the new apartment: The Stereo is now hooked up. Yesterday’s rotation: Gus Gus, The Dirty Three, Roy Orbison, John Cale and Brian Eno.
Just two short weeks after I finished the first draft, my article ‘A Design Method’ has been published by A List Apart <http://www.alistapart.com> which is the Jeffery Zeldman-headed web designers magazine.
I’m quite pleased with the article itself, and I’m hoping to follow it up with ‘A Presentation Method’ which will the cover the steps after Design.
I’m guessing that a lot more people than usual will be checking out my site. I went ahead and framed my current site which is located on a temporary server, from my final site which will soon change from Netscape Enterprise to Apache, with all it’s additional XSSI functionality. <http://www.smartnetworks.net/~rosso/xssi/> which I use extensively throughout this site.
For those of you interested, I have further articles in the WebDev section of this site, and I try to write one per month. You can use the Input field at the bottom of this page to send me feedback about my article via my pager. I won’t respond unless you include your e-mail address. Enjoy.
<http://webreview.com/pub/2000/06/30/feature/index01.html>
This is a good article, and in a similar vein to what will be published in A List Apart, but one thing really stuck me as ‘whoa!’
I really object to Mr. Forkan’s lumping splash screens of and left hand navigation systems together as some design fashion.
Though the former may be a passing fad, the latter is a fashion in the same sense that a car having it’s gas pedal on the left and the brake pedal in the middle. Sure, the car designer can change it, but they better have a damn good reason for it.
Greatest picture from MacHack: <http://www.tidbits.com/resources/537/esr-think-different.jpg>
In case any of you don’t recognize the photo, it’s Eric S Raymond, one of the leaders of the Open Source movement, in front of an iBook that was gifted to him by the attendees at MacHack.
Boy that sure was quite a week. The stress of moving to a new apartment, my presentation at PSU’s Macromedia Daze conference, and heading off to Montana to visit relatives from all side of my family really wiped me out. I’m glad I’ve got the 4th of July off from work. I think I would have made into work, but it’s taken me 2 hours just to begin catching up on my mail and web reading at home. I’m sure I’ve got twice as much facing me at work.
But it sure is nice to be home again, even if it’s a long way from being put back together. That’s my big project for the next week or so, then I can focus on collecting, scanning and organizing all the new found genealogy information that my Dad has loaned me. I’m going to be working up 4 ‘books’, one for each of my pairs of great-grandparents: Olson, Coleman, Vasboe, Gessners. It’ll be a lot of work, but I’ve got a great start.
Jun 29 Thu (10 AM)
We’re finally into the new place, with the phone working, finally. Anyone who has tried to call in the last couple of days has heard that our number wa disconnected. Wonderful. I just hope they try to get a hold of us in other ways.
For now, everythings a mess there’s tons of boxes, chest of drawers all over the place, and lots of books to put into shelves.
Simone took right to the place.
Not really. As a matter of fact, it took her nearly 24 hours to crawl out from under the couch that she darted underneath as soon as she saw it. I was really worried about her at first, but she seems to have gotten a bit more brave.
Zola on the other hand has been loving the new place, exploring every nook and cranny.
I’m off to finish my presentation: <http://www.pdc.pdx.edu/mmedia/macrodaze/> I’ll be posting notes and such later.
Jun 28 Wed (10 AM)
Anyone trying to call us for the past couple days has gotten the ‘This number has beed diconnected…’ message from US West. I’m pushing on the Customer Service people there to get it fixed asap. Between my presentation at PSU tomorrow, Amy’s two freelance projects, getting ready to leave for Montana on Friday, this week has been nothing short of difficult.
Jun 24 Sat (01 PM)
Everyone’s been raving about Scott McCloud’s new column about comics. I’ve read a couple of his books, and I really enjoy the column. For those of you who haven’t here’s the first three columns he’s written, though most of the web has only seen the first one: <http://www.thecomicreader.com/icst/>
I’m sure that directory listing will be denied some time, but it’s handy.