brett's logjam

• Try Listing Problems Instead of Next Actions
  An interesting take on the Ctrl-Shift-V trap I may have gotten myself into.
  (tags: organization)
• AlterNet: The Professional Suicide of a Recording Musician
  “Or to put it slightly differently, they used to provide you with the tools you needed to hear recorded music. Now they charge you for permission to use tools you already have, that they did not provide, that in fact you paid someone else for. “
  (tags: copyright music industry)

Tuesday morning I watched the sun rise over the Atlantic as a submarine steamed into the harbor of Newport News, flanked by escort boats. I stopped in Dallas, had breakfast with my parents, and went to work in Los Angeles.

Yesterday I left LA at lunchtime, got grounded by thunderstorms in Dallas, got close to Norfolk at 2:30 AM, found Norfolk closed, diverted to Raleigh-Durham, landed at 3:30, slept two hours on the floor, and now am watching the crews try to restore power to the part of the terminal where our plane sits. (My bag is checked, or renting a car to Norfolk would be done.). I don’t think we’re going to make our 8:30 departure.

Now we get to the funny part.

On the way out, I sent seven emails and read one book and one proposal.

Since leaving Burbank airport, I’ve sent 45 emails, written one proposal, made 8 calls (not including the ones to Merrystar), and scheduled 5 meetings. And now, written one blog post. I also learned how to check the weather radar on both my phone and blackberry.

Oh, wait. There was supposed to be a funny part. Nevermind.

There are times that I honestly do see the utility of Twitter. Having a simple interface to send updates about status from a phone is infiinitely easier than trying to post to Movable Type via Blackberry or cell phone. The MT mobile interface sucks. What am I talking about? There is no mobile interface. If you don’t have javascript installed on the phone, posting no worky.

But that’s neither here nor there, is it?

Partial power is restored to the terminal, so I’m on the laptop again. Broke down and paid my fee to the wifi extortionists to get online. Foolishness. Free wifi may not be a god-given right, but it is certainly something that makes me think fondly of a facility. It’s like the rocking chairs in Charlotte: something that makes your stay nicer. Even if you take it for granted and don’t remember it, you won’t be irritated by it.

Now we’re delayed until 9:45. Shouldn’t have checked that bag; otherwise I’d be home by now. I only checked it because of the toiletries.

Can I pull it off the plane?

No. Plane’s not at the gate. Plane’s not at the TERMINAL? What?

I probably shouldn’t tell the Army squad who were on the flight that their weapons lockers were off somewhere else, should I?

How long of a drive is it, anyway?

Huh. 3 hours, 45 minutes.

How long to home?

3 hours, 30 minutes. I bet I can shorten that by taking the Scotland Ferry.

Have to go pick up my car later, though. That’s another 2 hours.

Damnit.

Shouldn’t have checked that bag. If I’d left at 6:00 when I woke up from my nap, I’d be home by now.

What are we up to, 10:00 am now? I’m afraid to ask.

Power’s back on in the terminal. That’s something, I guess.

And just to think: I get to drive another hour once I land to get home.

Glad I took a vacation day today. Yeppers.

Totally exhausted now. Still waiting for the funny part.

• “Year Zero” project = “the way a viral campaign should be run” - (37signals)
  Did you know the firm behind Year Zero was also behind the Zune? It’s the product, people.
  (tags: marketing)
• Eric’s Archived Thoughts: Reset Reloaded
  Probably the final version of the reset.css template.
  (tags: css reset)
• jwz - Federal Building
  “This is my new favorite building. It’s some kind of crazy Akira technology that dropped from orbit last year.”
  (tags: well-designed buildings architecture)
• The New York Times > Science > Slide Show > Noctilucent Clouds
  High, wispy clouds are moving south. Via kottke.
  (tags: clouds warming)
• jwz - “only when chased”

• Fix your mom’s computer for mother’s day - Joel on Software
  “To make it easy, this Sunday we’re making Fog Creek Copilot absolutely free. No strings attached. Just go to https://www.copilot.com on Sunday, get a free pass, and we’ll email your mom a link she can click on to download the helper application. It’s
  (tags: tools)

• Edge: A BOZO OF A BABOON
  Really interesting bio: “When baboons hunt together they’d love to get as much meat as possible, but they’re not very good at it. The baboon is a much more successful hunter when he hunts by himself than when he hunts in a group because they screw up eve
  (tags: evolutionary biology biography bio b)
• Coding Horror: XP Automatic Update Nagging
  How to turn off that nagging naggy screen. Presto!
  (tags: windows xp autoupdate security)

• Block the ‘Delete goes back’ action in Firefox
  I *hate* it when it does that.
  (tags: firefox about:config tweaks)
• jwz - Bruce Campbell for the win
  BC FTW!
  (tags: brucecampbell FTW)

It’s been a long couple of weeks, with a lot of changes around these parts.

• I have a new phone, the Samsung SYNC SGH-A707, which is… well, it’s okay. I don’t hate it, which is saying something. It has odd limits on things that the RAZR didn’t (like which files can be used as ringtones), but the 3G is nice enough. The outer display broke in DFW during my mad dash through DFW, which would suck were I not planning on getting an iPhone sometime next month. (Oh, my precioussssss…)

• I took a new job within my current company. It’s good, but it keeps me very busy, and that’s all I’ll say about that here.

• I’m getting burned out on the whole photo sharing site thing. I like the free hosting, but not conditions around it. So less activity there than before, and not likely to be a lot in the public sections.

• Still, I take pictures when I can.

If anything, the next few weeks promise to be even crazier. And I suspect that’s a good thing.

A white dandelion, moments before getting hit with a stick.

I’ve updated my contact page with a few new services, including twitter, jaiku, and a new Google Talk address.

At some point, the madness will end, right?

• Color Oracle
  View your screen like you were color blind. (NOW I get why my dad likes sculpture.)
  (tags: colorblind HCI macosx Tool)
• Terminal Tip: 6 easy ways to capture your screen
  Overview of the screencapture utility.
  (tags: screenshot)
• 19 Applications to Make Jaiku Rock!
  A collection of apps for jaiku, including some mobile clients.
  (tags: twitter jaiku im)

• Lake Powell dam’s future is at stake
  Tax district proposal might be necessary to get the funds. (10+ inches of rain in a day broke the dam near my house.)
  (tags: williamsburg jamescitycounty)
• Freedom to Tinker » Blog Archive » AACS Updated, Broken Again
  The 90-day partner cycle is the system’s greatest weakness.
  (tags: aacs drm dmca)
• Volkswagen GTI W12-650
  Me likey. I may not like the new Jettas, but the GTIs are doin’ okay.
  (tags: cars VW)

Off one of the side streets near William and Mary.

I suspect the sign is trying to fit in with the in-crowd, but may be trying too hard.

Merrystar looks up at the drifting cottonwood seeds in Colonial Williamsburg.

This weekend’s film crew was after the Colonial Williamsburg Fife and Drum Corps Alumni:

Did you know that the Corps has over 700 performances a year? Holy moly.

This was also my first time watching the CW Productions crew at work.

It wasn’t very hot yesterday, so the multiple takes they went through to get the right shots probably weren’t an issue.

It’s hot enough today, though, that I can imagine folks want to get it done right the first time.

• Salon.com Life | The marriage industrial complex
  Bridezilla revisited.
  (tags: weddings)
• The technology of OLPC’s hundred dollar laptop - (37signals)
  Good overview of what’s inside.
  (tags: laptops technology)
• Zooomr Mark III: New Features, Better Look
  Out soon. Good job, guys!
  (tags: zooomr photos)
• It’s Official: Ballmer has lost it
  From MSFTextrememakeover, a reason for spending $6 billion on a company.
  (tags: microsoft things-that-make-no-prima-face-sense)

Via kottke. Also.

• Wire & Twine : Momergency Kit
  All it needs is a Leatherman.
  (tags: baby children parenting)
• Amazon.com: “Tame that Garage Today”
  Can you put an entire listmania list on your wishlist?
  (tags: garage cleaning)

In case there were any doubts, Virginia can be very, very green.

I have made some changes to the top-level page to show the most recent posts and tweets, as well as simplifying the links (again).

Yes: I’m giving Twitter another try to see if I can figure out why it’s become so damn popular. It doesn’t make much sense to me when I’m at home, but the more I’m out and about I start to seewhy folks like it. I’m also trying to understand the appeal of many other mobile doodads, but this one seems like the best place to start.

Frankly, I don’t get the appeal of a lot of the mobile services out there; I look at them and ask, “why do I need this in my life?” without ever getting a satisfactory answer. Perhaps I haven’t found the right situation to let their utility shine through.

(Or, maybe, they’re simply not useful. That remains a real possibility.)

• Belkin : my best FM stations
  Find the best FM stations for your iPod transmitter. Good idea, but have to check the execution.
  (tags: audio radio reference)

• Better living through self deception (kottke.org)
  Interesting collection of research on self-image, memory and forgetting.
  (tags: learning psychology)

I wish I had talked more tonight.

• Boy Bags Wild Hog Bigger Than ‘Hogzilla’
  Hogzilla is being made into a horror movie. But the sequel may be even bigger: Meet Monster Pig. An 11-year-old Alabama boy used a pistol to kill a wild hog his father says weighed a staggering 1,051 pounds and measured 9-feet-4 from the tip of its snout
  (tags: hunting porcine monsters neil-gaiman-couldn’t-make-this-up)
• Hack Attack: Automatically upload a folder’s photos to Flickr - Lifehacker
  Set up a python script to run with cron.
  (tags: automated file upload)
• A-MAZE-ING / His reputation on the line, contractor finishes repair early, and I-580 opens
  25 days to rebuild a maze.
  (tags: construction)
• ikea hacker: compact computer desk organizer from mini chests
  Funny, I’d just started doing this this weekend. Odd how the internet works.
  (tags: ikea hacks desk office organization)
• City on lookout for water cheats
  Funny, they actually enforce water use here. Good news/bad news.
  (tags: goodnews/badnews williamsburg water conservation)
• Jamestown numbers take a tumble
  But despite all that, it was still a good weekend. Nothing like having 65k visitors to your neighborhood.
  (tags: jamestown2007 jamestown jamescitycounty)
• Language Log: Tolkien on walh
  How walh replaced Brett. No, really.
  (tags: Brett anglo-saxon old-english celtic languages tolkien)
• Zombies welcome at the Apple Store
  Some days, the jokes just write themselves.
  (tags: apple zombies things-that-make-me-get-chainsaws)

When Merrystar and I lived in Alexandria, we devoted most of the bottom floor of our townhouse to our library. We had more than 150 linear feet of shelving (mostly Billy from Ikea) but we never, ever had enough.

The bookroom started out as a disaster, which turned into a bookroom, which turned into a library. We enjoyed it as such for the month that the house was on the market and the few weeks that it took to close on the house. That was really it.

Then, there was a moving related purge, and our books were packed into 32 boxes and moved into our new garage. And there they sat.

Bit by bit, Merrystar and I have worked through half of those boxes, but there’s been a dozen or so sitting in the garage for the last five or six months. Sitting. Taunting me. Waiting for something to prompt me to move them.

Like, er, mouse poop. All over the recently-cleaned garage.

So after much cleaning with masks, the remaining dozen boxes were unpacked last night. And the inevitable bibliophilaic crisis ensued. As both Merrystar and I rested, we asked the exact same question:

Why do we need all these books?

There are dozens of books that I want to keep. But there are hundreds that I honestly can’t answer why I have kept them, other than… what, exactly? Sentimentality? Utility? To impress others? (And who would that be, specifically?)

I don’t know if this is a universal crisis that all book collectors go through. Maybe it is, and only the serious ones get through it.

As for us?

I took a half-trunk load of books to the local bookstore today. (Store credit for those they can use, the rest to charity.)

And we’re just getting started.

It’s not more memory, or a bigger hard drive, or a snazzy case, or laser-engraving.

It’s an icepack. Boy, do these laptops get hot!

• A bunch of presentations on scaling websites: twitter, Flickr, Bloglines, Vox and more.
  Scaling. Heh.
  (tags: optimize prime)
• Homework sucks: The case against homework
  From Boing Boing.
  (tags: parenting teaching theory)

• macosxhints.com - Suppress NeoOffice automatic update checking
  just create one itty bitty file.
  (tags: macosx openoffice)
• List of cognitive biases
  There should really be a checklist.
  (tags: psychology)
• Secrecy News: New CRS Documents
  Several very good reports from the congressional research service, including a historical overview of enemy combatant’s rights and the NRC’s building plans.
  (tags: CRS)
• Geotrax
  Neat.
  (tags: toys.)

• macosxhints.com - A Python script to back up DVDs to MP4 files
  Python wrapper around HandbrakeCLI.
  (tags: handbrake dvd python script)
• First Drive: 2008 Touareg V8
  Same underpinnings, for good or ill.
  (tags: VW touraeg)
• Why I love patents and copyrights
  Well said.
  (tags: copyright ip)
• d.light ! on Flickr - Photo Sharing!
  d.light designs aims to eradicate kerosene lamps.
  (tags: progress)
• Steve Jobs and Bill Gates: Historic discussion live from D 2007 - Engadget
  Surprisingly funny, and even touching.
  (tags: microsoft vs apple)
• Wikis in Plain English
  Understanding our sleek wiki masters.
  (tags: wikis)
• Official Google Reader Blog: Oh Sam I Am, can I read it on the tram?
  Google Reader + Google Gears = no network latency. Nice.
  (tags: google feeds)
• Don’t Look a Leopard in the Eye, and Other Security Advice
  “If you encounter an aggressive lion, stare him down. But not a leopard; avoid his gaze at all costs. In both cases, back away slowly; don’t run.”
  (tags: security)