Thursday, February 27

Hopefully you're already reading everything over at the Labs. I always link the posts where John calls himself handsome.

(And I had decided to link it before I saw that he linked me in that post. I knew that color wheel would come in handy.)

YELLOW



You are very perceptive and smart. You are clear and to the point and have a great sense of humor. You are always learning and searching for understanding.




Find out your color at Stvlive.com!




via 13 Labs
Google will be placing TextAds on Blogger(/BlogSpot?). No surprise and not a problem. Just and update. (via Robot Wisdom)
My best brush with fame, ever, was when I met Mister Rogers. I was 19 years old. I was working at an urban ministry in Pittsburgh. We had a connection and went over to the studios where Mister Rogers was filmed. At first we didn't think we would get to meet him. We walked through the sets, though, which was fun. I have a good picture of me in the Neighborhood of Make Believe. As we were getting ready to leave, we found out we were going to get to meet Mister Rogers. We had some children with us and he brought out Daniel Striped-Tiger and King Friday. He was doing the voices and shaking our hands with the puppets. When he came to me with King Friday I shook the king's hand and said 'Your Majesty'. He said, in his King Friday voice, 'I see you know how to greet a king.' That was extremely cool. He signed photos of himself for us. The inscription on mine read 'To Sean, with thanks for your grace-filled visit, Fred Rogers.'

Rest in peace, Mister Rogers. Well done, good and faithful servant.

Tuesday, February 25

If you're a regular on the weblog circuit, you've probably seen Caring for Your Introvert. If not, like Christine (an introvert), you'll probably enjoy it.
Update to planet posting: both Matthew Baldwin of Defective Yeti and Derek Powazek wrote me back (I sent them the post in an email, it's not like they read my site). Matthew wrote about the LOTR game and Derek said he liked my 'planet posting' idea. It was very nice of them to write.
I came out Neutral in the How Evil Are You test. He asked us not to post the images, so I'll just point you to the site.
Cool prospect of IM-type communications from typical applications to wire up the dumb nodes to make one really smart network (via Robot Wisdom).

Sunday, February 23

I checked the news last night and I checked it this morning. Not much is different. It's sad when there's no new news.

(Including what is often the case on this weblog, aye?)

Friday, February 21

I disagree with Aaron when he says that Apple will get tired of releasing new, faster hardware. I wish they would, but they won't. It's a great way to make money, and people are willing to do it. Heck, it's probably Apple's best way to make money right now. Look at game consoles: it's all about selling the latest, greatest system, two years or less after you bought the last one. And people are willing to pay for it. Look at cars. Look at homes. It's not about what would make good sense. It's not about what would be efficient. It's about what the market will bear. And constant hardware upgrades is what the market will bear.

The rest of it could happen. I hope it does. But it won't be because of more flexible hardware, unless we get some Linux/open source/Napster-type revolution, something unforeseen, something made by the sweat of someone's brow and their love for what they're doing (MetaFilter, Blogger, heck, maybe Aaron can do it). But it won't be Apple. They're a public company. They've got to make money. And, for them, that means hardware sold to their established market and a few converts.

Thursday, February 20

Speaking of Matthew, you might remember he loves the LOTR Boardgame and so do I. Now he has a review for LOTR: The Confrontation which he also loves and it's for 2 people and faster and simpler. Time to buy it.
Remember, gentle reader, when I posted about the planetary chalkboard? (You probably don't because you didn't follow the link. It's about location-specific posting using GPS.)

Well, I was thinking, a really cool application of this would be personal storytelling, like much of the weblog community is already about. I read John 13 and Defective Yeti for the funny stories. Heck, I even like to keep up with what's going on with Kottke's life. It's not just great links and important stuff and community, though I like those things, too.

The idea Johnson suggested that was closest to this came in the penultimate paragraph in a quote by Andrea Moed: "When you can stand where others have stood and learn how it affected them, and then share your own impressions in return, public space becomes more deeply public than it was before." But that idea didn't really grab me.

But storytelling would. If I didn't know John or Matthew, and I came across a GPS posting about one of their encounters there, I'd become a devoted fan. It's like geographically distributed Fray or Ticketstubs.

Tuesday, February 18

Did you see that Google has purchased Pyra Labs (Blogger)? That's got to be a good thing, right? getting the good guys together.

For more info, check out the links at the end of Dan Gillmor's column. One of the links there is Dave Winer's Long Bet that 'In a Google search of five keywords or phrases representing the top five news stories of 2007, weblogs will rank higher than the New York Times' Web site.' It'll happen, and I look forward to it. Or, you know, Google it.

More: Cory Doctorow has extensive commentary. One feature I can imagine is a Google search where you can turn on/off: standard news sites, weblogs, other. Then allow me to personalize it: to do Google searches on specific websites that I like/trust. Let me rate sites to affect my personal searches. Let me find a way to sort out geocities sites (and blogspot sites, for that matter) that are worth something.
Cynical Liberal
How Republican Are You?

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(via Jaquandor on Collaboratory)

Sunday, February 16

My Daredevil Review

I loved it!

(It was much better than Cats. I'm going to see it again and again.)

Run, don't walk, to see Daredevil.

I liked it better than Spider-Man. I'm not sure why. It's a little darker, which I always like. The blindness stuff is really cool (do they have Daredevil novellas in braille for blind kids? I hope so.)

Ben Affleck did a really nice job. Jennifer Garner was great (but too skinny). (Incidentally, I knew Elektra was more complicated in the books, but not that complicated.) Michael Clarke Duncan was only ok. He was certainly big - which fits the role of Kingpin. Joe Pantoliano was good in his limited performance. The Stan Lee cameo was nice, but the Frank Miller cameo kicked.

I liked the Soundtrack surprisingly well, too. That puts me in total disagreement with the guy who wrote the review on IMDB.
I'm now in the unenviable position of planning to watch not one but two Richard Chamberlain mini-series. I wanted to see Shogun and I just finished The Bourne Identity.

Friday, February 14

Holey Mackerel! How could I have not connected Aimee Mann with 'Til Tuesday and 'Voices Carry' until now? I was reading about her in USA Today when I got informed. I liked the video (a hundred years ago).

Wednesday, February 12

I look at 37signals a fair bit. I like their design. I especially enjoy the times they redesign existing websites, like FedEx, or your local bank.

Their telematics one takes the cake, though.

What if you could call your car via cell phone or Web and start it heating up or cooling down? What if you could manage your music for your car from your desktop? What if you could do all sorts of cool stuff like that? What if it only cost 200$ extra on the front end and 10$/month? Sold.

Monday, February 10

Scott had a great color wheel post that would be oh so handy for me and him and Jaq if we ever did redesigns or anything like that. I'm reposting it here on the off chance that I want to find it again some day. It's especially handy to click on a color and they give you some related colors that aren't on the chart.

Sunday, February 9

Friday, February 7

I stumbled across the link to Johnny Marr's webpage. While I was there I learned (was reminded?) that he played guitar on Kirsty MacColl's 'Kite' - the best underrated, underlistened album ever(!) (that info is pretty deep into this page, if you really wnat to know).

Saturday, February 1


Which OS are You?
Which OS are You?


(via 13 Laboratories (which, by the way, now has comments and working permalinks. Be still my beating heart...)