Category Archives: uncategorized

This whole Atom/Echo/Pie thing is getting annoying. I don’t honestly know if a final, usable spec is going to materialize out of this. I’m starting to feel like the whole thing is an attempt to marginalize Dave Winer, who admittedly can be very abrasive, but whose contributions in this area should not be overlooked.

Diego weighs in: I know that many have said that Atom sacrificed backward compatibility for the sake of more flexibility in the future, but looking at the current spec I can’t see clearly where is this additional flexibility obtained. I’d like to see an example of a feature that can be done with Atom but not with RSS 2.0. This would go a long way to make me (and I’m sure, others) understand more clearly why we should revise our position.

This nails it for me. Show me what Atom will do for me. Don’t wax poetic, or political. Just tell me what benefit I can provide for my users by supporting Atom.

The Atom camp started as a genial group of people wanting to improve things. But it has turned ugly. Some of its defenders at the moment are resorting to anonymous comments that say that a) RSS is dead and b) you’re either on the Atom bandwagon or you will be left behind in your little poor RSS world. Regardless of the truth of those statements, I find it worrying that constructive criticism or a clear-minded defense of a belief in a certain direction has given way to (anonymous) aggression. Instead of supporting inclusion for people like me, anyone who doesn’t agree is attacked.

This development is, indeed, unsettling. And disappointing. Revisiting some more of Robert Scoble’s essay from yesterday:

Hey, since we’re gonna have to do two formats, why shouldn’t Microsoft invent a third? Yes, that’s a loaded question. Answer carefully. Like I said, all the stakeholders will read your responses.

A loaded question, to be sure, but a fair one. What’s to stop Microsoft from writing their own syndication format and their own API? Why shouldn’t they, at this point?

And finally, Don lays out his solution and sums it up thusly: The best part of this solution is that everyone will feel like they got screwed. Nicely put, Don. Am I still a Knight of the Order of Selfish Pigs?

PS: Wiki sucks.

During our Tech Council meeting this afternoon, I had to leave to answer a “higher calling” for a moment. (Tech Council is a group of faculty and staff members who get together to (ostensibly) steer the direction of technology in our school district. On paper, anyway.) The closest facility was the one in the high school administrative offices. This is used only by adults. When I walked in, I noticed a hand-written sign hanging on the wall that I’d not noticed before: DO NOT PUT PAPER TOWELS IN THE TOILET.

This concerned me on two levels. First, who doesn’t know that? I mean, really? Besides, there’s a trash can right there, so why would you need to? But second, and perhaps more important, you know they wouldn’t put that sign up if someone hadn’t done it. So this leaves me wondering which administrator or administrative assistant brought about the need for the sign.

When I arrived home, I shared this information with Jen and Gracie. After dinner, Jen excused herself to use the facilities, and Gracie shouted, “Mom! No paper towels in the toilet, or we’ll put a sign up!” I burst out laughing. Gracie looked at me and said, “Dad, I’m just kidding.”

Then we candled Jen’s ears. Ear candling is a process I’ve learned of only recently. In fact, as recently as about a week and a half ago, when I came home from work and Jen told me that she had candled her ear with her Mom’s help. Now, I must admit that what I pictured was not what ear candling is really like. I pictured a real candle, with wax and a wick and everything, and I honestly wondered how that would help open up one’s ears. But I was wrong.

An ear candle (we used Wally’s) is like a beeswax tortilla rolled up tight. You stick one end in your ear and light the other end on fire. Sound dangerous? Not to worry! The instructions say to wrap a wet towel around your head first. Fire safety at its best, folks. And these things really flame up, too. Gracie was panic stricken through the entire candling process, and she’s even seen it before. We did two candles in each of Jen’s ears. Apparently, the warm smoke is “guided” into your ear where it softens, um, crud and stuff. Jen’s ears have been blocked lately. Although, according to the instructions, some people do it just for fun or something.

The things we do for love. Jen offered one or two of the ear candles to me, but I declined. My ears are quite fine without being set on fire, thanks. Jen’s always willing to try things like that, but there’s no problem I have that can’t be fixed with Ibuprofen, some allergy medicine, and/or a nap. We had a similar conversation years ago when her family tried to convince me to go to the chiropractor. I told them I wasn’t willing to pay someone to crack my back when I have friends who will do it for free. They persisted, and I told them that unless the chiropractor’s adjustments could make me taller, make me thinner, or bring back some of my hair, I wasn’t interested.

Oh, speaking of ear candling, I need to go put the batteries back in the smoke detector.

Almost Famous is the best movie I’ve seen in a while. Yes, it’s a couple years old, but I don’t watch as many movies as I would like. I rented it to watch with Jen, and we loved it. It then became our Tech Theatre movie of the week.
First of all, some great lines.

Lester Bangs: What, are you like the star of your school?
William Miller: They hate me.
Lester Bangs: You’ll meet them all again on their long journey to the middle.

Elaine Miller: Keep the small bills on the outside and call me if anyone gets drunk.
William Miller: I will call you if anyone anywhere gets drunk.

Lester Bangs: Oh man, you made friends with ’em. See, friendship is the booze they feed you. They want you to get drunk on feeling like you belong.
William Miller: Well, it was fun.
Lester Bangs: Because they make you feel cool, and hey, I met you. You are not cool.

Anita Miller: Listen to Tommy with a candle burning, and you’ll see your entire future.

Russell Hammond: I am a golden god!

Russell Hammond: I never said I was a golden god… or did I?

Anyway, onto the movie. Great movie. From what I understand, it’s semi-autobiographical for writer/director/producer Cameron Crowe: It was a lot more embarrassing and scary than I anticipated. I guess I could have turned back at a couple of points, but I didn’t. It’s a little different if somebody says about Jerry Maguire, “Oh, I’m not really into sports. I didn’t care for it.” That’s different than, “I’m not really into your life. It bored me.”

Most movies having anything to do with bands appeal to me, for obvious reasons. I liked seeing the personal side of Stillwater. Even though they were a fictional band, they were probably pretty typical in many ways. Being in a band is a lot like being in a marriage. When it’s good, it’s really good, and when it’s not good, it’s terrible. Emotions run high. Things get awkward. But that’s what it’s all about.

Patrick Fugit did a great job as William Miller. I loved the fake adult voice he used on the phone with Rolling Stone. Jason Lee was in his element as the brash, loud, and arrogant Jeff Bebe. And Jimmy Fallon was so good I didn’t recognize the first time I watched the movie.

And of course, the “Tiny Dancer” scene, which made the movie.

Now I have to see about getting my hands on the director’s cut, which is significantly longer.

The Opus Interview: Anyway, I was the only one in that strip with the integrity to talk directly to the audience, even when everybody was screaming at me “Don’t look at the camera!” Besides, my nose looks smaller when it’s not in profile. Ah, Opus. It’s good to have you back. I feel like I’ve reconnected with the long-lost brother I never had.

Anomalies Unlimited: Jackson wore a surgical mask when entering and leaving the courthouse (gee..wonder why?). His former publicist says he routinely wears the mask “to protect his throat from pollution and germs”. Like that reason in itself is a perfectly normal one. You see anyone else walking around with surgical masks on? Perhaps it’s to hide the dead, rotting tip of his putty nose. Just to throw out an idea here. What I think we have here is the New Howard Hughes. No comment.

Michael Jackson Age Progression: If Michael Jackson did not have all his surgery over the years, this is how he might look at the age of 45. Again, no comment.

Sex Is Good: You’re right. It was a hoax. And a mighty successful one. The website that posted the original article received more than 667,000 hits on a single day soon after the story broke.

Fellowship of the Nitpickers: Yeah, we started with the pus and then we got just a bit revolted by it. So we eased back on the pus. We didn’t think Elijah looked very good with pus. Speaking of LOTR, if any of my loyal and faithful friends want to take up a collection to buy me the extended edition of The Two Towers since I can’t go to the marathon, I wouldn’t argue with you. Well, I mean, I’d fake argue, but I wouldn’t mean it.

Citizen’s Self-Arrest Form: A proposition has been announced recently to help reduce the deficit and to “Take A Bite Out Of Crime.” If you witness a crime, it is your civic duty to report the crime to the police. When a crime is committed, you have the right to make a “Citizen’s Arrest”. Thus, if YOU commit a crime, it would be extremely helpful for you to perform a Citizen’s Self-Arrest. Fill out the form, to complete your Citizen’s Self-Arrest. This could catch on. I mean, there are some really stupid criminals out there. Who knows how far this could go?

The Product Placement Bible: Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies; thou anointest my head with Brylcream; my Super Big Gulp runneth over. This has got to be evil on like nine different levels.

DVD Demystified: Okay, so here’s the story. There’s this new technology that’s really new, and, if you’re as techno-savvy as I am, maybe you’ve heard about it. It’s called DVD which stands for Digital TV Disk, and it’s as good as being in the theater! Really! It looks just like one of those silver music CD disks, except it has moving pictures on it. How do they fit all those moving pictures on that tiny disk? Well, I’ll tell ya, it’s digital. (Thats the Digital part of DVD.) And by digital, I don’t mean numbers that count up and down when you turn the knob to change the channel, no sir. By digital, I mean not analog. Check out the rest of Big Earl’s site while you’re at it.

Robert Scoble on Atom: What’s better about it? Sell me on it. So far I have not yet been sold on why Atom is better (other than it’s controlled by a different group of people who control RSS). Yeah!

… to one and all! Be thankful and loud about it.

Unless, of course, you’re a turkey. In which case, you’re probably better off just keeping your beak shut.

I am, as the title of this post suggests, majorly bummed.

“Why?” you may ask.

I will not be attending the Lord of the Rings marathon in Harrisburg on December 16 as I had originally planned. I had already purchased my ticket and taken half a personal day at work in preparation. But, alas, it wasn’t meant to be.

My daughter’s preschool’s Christmas program is that night. And Tolkien simply can’t compete with Gracie.

Nevertheless, I remain bummed. I really wanted to see all three movies in their entirety, back to back. But hope remains. Black Friday of 2004, the day after Thanksgiving, there will be a viewing of all three Lord of the Rings movies, back to back, each the Special Extended Edition. I figure if we start at noon, we can wrap it up by midnight.

Jen, who suggested I go to the movie and skip the Christmas program if that’s what I really wanted to do, was sweet. I called her to let her know that I was coming home from the theater, where I had just had my purchase refunded, and she said that she would go with me to see Return of the King the weekend after the marathon. Considering that she A) dislikes going to the movies, B) dislikes movies in general, and C) loathed Fellowship of the Ring (although she grudgingly admitted that The Two Towers was enjoyable), this is a nice gesture from her.

I wonder if Gracie’s Christmas program will have any Orcs in it…

Frequency is the program of the day at Jumbo.

Frequency 1.5 has been released. More information can be found here. Months of effort went into this release, and even though I haven’t hardly advertised anything yet (seeing as it’s Sunday evening), I’ve already received a purchase notice. Cool!

The obvious question will be, “Why version 1.5? Shouldn’t it be 1.2?”

The answer is quite simple: I believe there’s enough new and improved stuff in here to warrant a point-5 version number. I went from supporting one weblog system to supporting six weblog systems – no small feat. This involved not only beefing up my routines for the Blogger API, but adding new routines for the metaWeblog API (which is very nice, by the way). I went from being able to edit only cached posts (those posts you’ve done since you last launched the app) to retrieving a much longer list of recent posts (twenty posts, I think). HTML previewing is improved, and I think it’s faster, too. I added support for titles and categories in metaWeblog systems, and even found a way to fake it for Blogger API systems (since the Blogger folks won’t let us have access to the real titles in the API).

And then there’s the price increase. Frequency was $6, now it’s $9. I’ll honor the $6 price until December 12, when it officially goes up to $9. And of course, already registered users get a free upgrade. But I think I’ve crammed more than three bucks worth of new stuff in there.

Now that fun part (the coding) is over, I get to start the part I truly dislike. The marketing. I am a horrible marketer. I try very hard to be a humble person, and there’s something so anti-humility about marketing your own stuff. “Hey, look at me!” But to honest, and this sounds far from humble, I think I’ve written one of the best, cleanest, easiest to use weblog clients around. I really believe that.

But since I hate marketing, would you mind helping me spread the word? Thanks.

I can’t tell you how much I love this kid. She makes me laugh, she makes me smile, she makes me crazy, she makes me angry. I wouldn’t trade her for the world.

She’s my little princess. This was her Halloween costume this year. She wanted to be a princess. In fact, up until recently, if you asked her what she wanted to be when she grew up, the answer was always: “A princess and an artist.” Now, she wants to be a veterinarian.

She’s already a little teenager. This is Gracie talking to Nana one evening. She reminds of us of her Aunt Ali.

A few weeks ago, Jen and I found her in her bedroom, singing along with her Barbie boombox to Chris Tomlin’s “The Famous One” and playing her homemade drum.

Gracie rocks. This kid knows how to approach the mic. Either it’s in the blood, or she’s spent way too much time watching me up front. I don’t know which, but bear in mind that while Jen was pregnant with her, we were playing and practing at least weekly in Anonymous Joe. She earned this guitar by not waking us up in the middle of the night (or, more accurately, not waking Jen up) for 25 nights. Small price to pay. She jammed for about a half hour last night.