Matt talks today about the unreasonable Web. I’d take what he says there a step further and express the concern that the unreasonable web people may have ruined several viable business opportunities for everyone who follows them. It’s going to be hard to get funding for ideas like another Kozmo with all of these failures and the bad press that has followed them. Having said that, my experience has been that VC firms as a group aren’t particularly brilliant at distinguishing between a real business opportunity that meets a market need and is staffed with talented people and folks who haven’t got a clue with some lame business plan with no focus.
I also read about half of Cryptography Decrypted. This book is a great, mostly non-technical, introduction to basic encryption, the history of encryption, and the current state of encryption. I’ve been interested in digging deeper into this subject since I read the Cryptonomicon.
I did a bit of reading yesterday, a nice combination of computers, fiction, and fun. I read Lone Wolf and Cub Vol. 1, which is the first of twelve graphic novels about a ronin. If you like Japanese history, particularly samurai stories, this graphic novel is great. Really authentic story lines, and well done illustration.
This box is a Blue and White G3 running Mac OS X, Apache, and MySQL at my house. I’m interested in hearing how speedy it is for people. It’s a beautiful day here, and I’m going outside to play right now.
One thing I find myself wishing, now that I have this home box to play with and work from, is that either Frontier or Radio Userland were available for Mac OS X so I could have them up and running on that box with the fixed IP.
I finally got the static ip for my apartment today, so I’ve spent a lot of time at the old keyboard setting up one of my machines as a Mac OS X based Web server. I’ve got a ways to go before that whole thing is done. I’ll let you know how it turns out. I was going to post about how much I liked the version of Opera that was released for the Mac, but then I discovered that Blogger doesn’t really work when using it.
I’m sitting in perhaps the most boring, pointless meeting of my professional life. It’s really great. It’s a good thing there is a hub in this room, so I’m catching up on my surfing. Happy that Blogger has returned this afternoon, and I ordered a static IP for my apartment.
I’m not feeling that great today. Maybe it’s the ridiculous pollen ccount here in Atlanta. Everything in sight is covered with a thin film of green pine pollen. Of course this isn’t the pollen that is bothering me, which you can’t see at all. Needless to say, I believe that an early exit from my place of employment might be necessary.
What is Personal Software Process (PSP)? Seems like a solution to some problems that Web development shops run into on a regular basis. One problem with self trained coders, in my experience, is that they often times do not understand good methodology.,
I switched the layout to one that resizes itself this morning. If it breaks for you, please email me and let me know.(Thanks Nathan)
Chapter Three of Zeldman’s book has been posted by Webreference: Taking Your Talent to the Web
The gradientors link on threecolor is sure to provide those of you with the bandwidth to deal with a good deal of amusement. Cool stuff.
Moving some stuff around and finally updating the template and links today.
For my non-metafilter reading friends, (you should read metafilter) Toast
MIT to make nearly all course materials available free on the World Wide Web This is a huge step forward for the free sharing of educational information on the Web. Kudos to MIT for being so forward thinking.
DutchWater seems like they might solve the problem currently making it difficult for rural areas to get broadband.
So I’m all caught up in Mac OS X.
So I took Friday off from work thinking that I would get in a weekend of redesigning and fixing this site. While I did have a relaxing weekend, I had no net access all weekend, which crippled my desire to do any work at all on the site. Instead, I spent a lot of time reading Cryptonomicon, which is a suberb book, and an equal amount of time in the park on my skates. The weather in Atlanta has been Springish, and I have been happy.
It shipped.(finally)
My Brother’s team wins. He scored two goals.
Here’s a kungfumaster site that is actually about kung fu
Okay, I’m back, and doing better than I should be. I loved my grandfather very much, he had a much bigger hand in who I turned out to be than even people who have known me for a long time might suspect. When I was really small, and my brother and I lived with he and my grandmother, I can remember getting out of bed at 5:30 am and sneaking to where I could watch him leave for work with his thermos and lunchbox. He was a great person, and though I think I’ve turned out to be a very different sort of person myself, I aspire to be the type of quality man that he was. If you’ve met me, you have met him, or at least a little part of him that lives on through me. Wherever you are now Gramps, just know that I am minding my own business.
After my personal absence, I had a business trip and then a busy week of work. This week, I'm traveling again. I'm wishing that I was going to SXSW, but I need a real vacation with beach, sun, and relaxation. I'm hoping this will occur in late March.
Well, there’s not much I can say right now except that updates will cease for the next few days. A close family member died last night, and I have much to attend to both inside and out. I want to write more, and probably will, once the dust has settled.
Heromachine – The Online Character Generator! Go there!! (via eatonweb)
Like some other people, I’ve ordered one of these. Please discard any memory of my earlier post about becoming a full time Windows user.
This is a test wireless post from my iPaq.