Anil Dash: Six Apart buys a fax machine
I’ve been thinking about Konfabulator this weekend a bit. It uses the Spidermonkey Javascript runtime from the Mozilla project as it’s core. I think it’s worth noting that we are seeing more and more fruits of open source code on the Mac OS X platform all the time now. Open Source seems to be enabling innovation, and writing something like Konfabulator from scratch would proabably have been a much more daunting task without the ability to embed the Javascript runtime. I seem to be seeing people note on a regular basis that Mac OS X is the best platform for innovation by independent developers now, and open source code is one big reason for that.
Google Buys Pyra. Woah.
Sorry about the lack of updates this week. The port that my admin tool is running on is blocked at my new office, and I haven’t had time to reconfigure things so that I can get to it. Lots going on offiline, I really feel like I’ve gotten myself off to a fresh start this year thus far, although I still need to work a bit more on those pesky resolutions.
I walked in on the tail end of this conversation last night while out at a charity kickoff for Kate’s Club. It’s an organization that I think I’m going to get involved in in some capacity. Moral of the story is that most people do not like to be told they look like elves.
Today is my last day.
Mark Richards, who I work with, just selected a plain bagel for his breakfast.
I’m having an interesting week so far, not free of stress by any means. Over the weekend, I played paintball for the third time in as many months. It’s an addictive adrenaline rush, and has left me wondering why it hasn’t taken off more than it has. I followed that up with a softball practice on Monday for the team I joined for this spring, “Team Bad Guy.” So I’ve been a bit sore the last couple of days, these sports use different muscles than my normal gym workouts. Aside from that, lots of house maintenance tasks this week, and a lot of worrying about finishing tasks properly at my current position before moving on to the new one on Monday.
Ok, so maybe this Darrin guy isn’t quite as bad as I am making him out to be. In other news, I took a new contracting assignment today relaunching a site for a major sports media organization. Exciting stuff, new technology, and a great team from the looks of things. I wish I could tell you more, but you know the drill. This is making it increasingly difficult to concentrate on the stored procedures and cfml code that I am currently working on. Next week is going to be a very long week.
There is this guy I work with named Darrin, I really don’t care for him.
I’ve been under the weather the last couple of days, missed a day and half of work with some sort of stomach/flu bug. I did get to do a lot of reading yesterday, and I read Jennifer Government from cover to cover in addition to finishing up a couple of other books that I have been working on. I enjoyed Jennifer Government’s tone and story, and I liked the commentary on one possible future that the book made. I’d recommend it to people who enjoy dark cyberpunk type material.
Without a doubt, this was my favorite commercial during last night’s big game. I enjoyed the game, even if it wasn’t as close as everyone thought it was going to be. I think that the Buc’s defense established themselves as one of the greatest defenses of all time last night, although they should have already had that distinction after the last four years. I also think that it was clear that Grudin outcoached his former assistant, and that the deal that brought him to Tampa was a worthwhile one.
I’ve been sort of busy this week, with various things going on. I do have some posting type material for later when I do have time. I’ve lost five pounds so far on my renewed workout plan, have successfully manipulated my sleep schedule to an early to bed early to rise one, and have finished several books, so I’m more on track than I was at the end of 2002. Lots of room for improvement, still.
So, if the next generation of TiVo is going to support Rendezvous, could it be possible that this is the first step in some sort of handheld video playback device (read iPod) from Apple that integrates with TiVo? Just a thought.
Politically, I’m most definitely an independent. Invariably, this leads to healthy disagreements with people from both sides of the political spectrum. Generally, I tend to be more socially liberal, and more fiscally conservative. From Republicans, especially the tow the party line sort that I tend to be exposed to these days, I tend to get a liberal label, and they seem to use this label in a very mean spirited manner, although I think I’m much closer to centrist Republicans than I am to most Democrats. I tend to differ from Democrats in terms of practical matters, at least in my viewpoint. I find some of their stands to be just silly. I’ve been studying up a little on possible candidates in 2004 from the Democrats, especially since Dori and Tom have been covering it once in a while. This has led me to believe that the person who has announced for 2004 that is the most similar to my viewpoints thus far is Howard Dean. This leads to somewhat of a problem for me, he really doesn’t have the fund raising or organizational support that is necessary to win a nomination. I find this especially troubling because I was the first person to be critical of people throwing their support behind non-practical candidate Ralph Nader in 2000. I wish that Bush’s policies resembled those under which he campaigned in 2000, but they don’t and they seem to be going further right as time goes on. We need campaign finance reform in a big way so that people like Howard Dean have a practical chance of winning.
In the NFL playoffs, things went much the way I expected them to yesterday. I realize now that it would be more fair of me to make predictions public before I make such claims. So we have the two teams with pirate symbols playing the big game next weekend. I haven’t fully thought through the matchup yet, but I am willing to bet that this game will not be a blowout in either direction. After seeing the games yesterday, I have to give the coaching edge to Tampa Bay, their gameplan against Philadelphia was perfect, and their players executed on it. The Raider’s offense hasn’t seen a defense in the same league as the one they will be facing next weekend. So I guess I am leaning towards Tampa Bay at this point.
Well, I’m on the cusp of a decision about new hardware for this coming year. I have decided that there are three ways to go, but haven’t/can’t make up my mind about things. Right now I have a first generation TiBook which came with a 500Mhz processor, an underpowered graphics card, a 30Gb hard drive, and 512 Mb of RAM. I also have a Sony Vaio laptop which has a 650Mhz P3, a 20Gb hard drive, 512 Mb of RAM, and an underpowered graphics card. I can’t afford to replace both of these machines this year, and the TiBook is slightly older than the Vaio, so I’m leaning that way. The Area 51, however, looks real nice and the benchmarks on it are sick. On the other hand, a 17 inch screen seems like a good thing to have. So it’s either replace one of these two machines, or make some incremental upgrades to one or both of them. There aren’t any processor upgrades or video chipset upgrades available for the TiBook or the Vaio though. So I could add more RAM, and upgrade the hard drive, but I’m stuck with the internals. Decisions, Decisions.
Color Sidekick this summer. (In Europe at least.)
Not much time this morning to update. I threw some stuff up on Kungfumaster though. You will have to be happy with that for the time being. I have to say, while I am at it, that changing my sleep schedule two weeks ago, although at times painful, has been a great decision. I feel like doing more.
I got my first Moleskine about eight months ago. Since then, I have become addicted to these amazing little notebooks. Imagine my suprise upon discovering today’s Metafilter Thread about them. I now have about four or five of the small ones that I keep in my computer bag and use throughout the day.
As depressing as the Supreme Court decision on the Eldred case is, for some reason all I can think about is how much we need campaign finance reform. We need to find a way to divorce big money interests from politicians. Otherwise, the good of the public will always be subverted by the need to get elected or re-elected.