This painting, by Kate Groham, my brother's girlfriend, and obviously a talented artist, is part of an exhibition named Heart of New Haven. It depicts her and my brother Paul. I love the expression on Paul's face. Nice work.

Playwright Arthur Miller dead at 89. “The Crucible” and “Death of a Salesman” were both works that left a lasting impression on me.

Macromedia has a ColdFusion Feature Comparison Matrix that compares features for each version of CF from 5 to the newly released 7. It’s not as handy as a tag/function listing across all the versions would be, but it does show how the platform has progressed over the last few years. By the way, I wouldn’t try and print it, it’s flashpaper, and the memory usage of printing from Flashpaper is likely to crash your machine, or at the very least saturate your network interface for a good ten seconds.

SportsML 1.5 was just released into the wild. I believe that this spec is progressing nicely, but will the major scoring vendors come out and play? I know, from my experience, that people are mostly cooking their own formats for sports scoring xml. I, myself, have authored at least two so far, and have worked with about five others.

Bruce Schneier on Authentication and Expiration when purchasing things online. “The e-commerce site wants me to live in their database forever. They want to market to me, and entice me to come back. They want to sell my information.”

There are a few different methods for managing this. One is to pick a couple of sites, and buy everything from them. This, of course, can end up being a costlier route, as it precludes comparison shopping. Personally, this is one of the reasons I prefer using PayPal for online purchases because it abstracts my sensitive data from the vendor. I can buy things from a hundred vendors using Paypal, and there is still only one copy of my credit card number stored.

ColdSpring is a ColdFusion version of the Spring Framework.

Cell, Cell, Cell, Cell, Cell, Cell, Cell, Cell, Cell, Cell, Cell, Cell. I could keep going.

Luminous Landscape: Looking at RAW From a Different Perspective. If you own a digital camera that supports RAW format, and don’t know much about RAW, this is a really good resource for you. I have been trying to work out a workflow for RAW shooting that works for me, but I still shoot JPEG a lot of the time because it’s just easier.

Pretty good interview with Neal Stephenson, my favorite author, over at reasononline.

I created a Flickr Meetup Group for people in Atlanta. It’s open to anyone, and I’m hoping to take our little online community offline.

Like Matt says, Google maps puts the smack down on virtually every other mapping app out there. Mapquest? Served. Yahoo Maps? Served. I hope they plan on delivering this as a service to partners, because I would jump on that opportunity in a second, assuming the economics work.

Google just keeps coming with the hits, and there seems to be no end in sight. Too bad Blogger sucks, I sometimes can't believe that it's from the same company. It's withered on the vine seemingly forever, while others have innovated and innovated and innovated. In fact, some of the features they added in the last year don't even work properly. I'm guessing that it needs a new product manager, someone with a clue. (I have been using Blogger to update this site since 1999.)

Stopdesign: Secure wireless email on Mac OS X. I’m constantly amazed at people’s lack of awareness of the fact that their online communications are insecure.

Todd’s SlideShowPro will be available 2/14. I’ve gotten to see this project at various stages, and I have to say that it’s a best of breed application on a variety of fronts. Set up a reminder in your calendaring program now. He’s put a lot of work into making this thing a polished finished product.

What’s the next action. I need this kind of content very badly. I wish it wasn’t so Windows heavy though.

Simon Willison: Google Maps and XSL

PrettyPrinter.de, an online pretty printer for PHP, Java, C , C, Perl, JavaScript, CSS A very useful tool for viewing various source code. (via)

ChangeThis: “ChangeThis is creating a new kind of media. A form of media that uses existing tools (like PDFs, blogs and the web) to challenge the way ideas are created and spread. "

It’s official as of this afternoon’s booking of hotel rooms that there will be a bump.net presence at the 2005 Coachella Valley Music Festival. Of course, tickets go on sale tomorrow, so there is that one smallish detail to be covered. Last year, it was a great experience, and, based on this year’s lineup, I have great expectations for this year’s version. I’m especially looking forward to seeing Weezer, Wilco, Boom Bip, and Jamie Cullum because I have never seen them live before. Notable standouts from last year returning include indie darling Bright Eyes, and Sage Francis, who was my second favorite performance to the innovative and inventive set from Dangermouse. Of course, I am also a longtime fan of Nine Inch Nails, and have seen them several times, including the first Lollapalooza.

I'm not in the habit of asking for things on this site, for a variety of reasons, but at this time I do have a request. If anyone works for a publication and wants a qualified photographer onsite at Coachella, I would be a very cheap, available, option. I have my own professional quality equipment, am already attending, and would love the opportunity to work the show with credentials so that I can get my DSLR into the show. If you are such a person, or know someone who could give me the hookup in return for some high quality shots of various acts, I would be forever in your debt. In fact, I will up the ante beyond that. If you make the connection that gets me credentials, I will buy you an iPod Shuffle 512. This offer is limited to one person, and is on a first come first served basis. Thanks. ( I would be pleased to offer some sample photography, if necessary.) If all else fails, I will just bring along my small Canon SD camera like last year.

A Treasury of Macrame Owls

A great antenna post about the crappy meta-data support in iPhoto. I couldn’t agree more, that’s what originally drove me to Portfolio.