Articles

I put this Title in my drafts folder on June 12th. Its been sitting there taunting me ever since. Then on Wednesday I attended a session at OSCON titled “Programmer Insecurity & The Genius Myth”. Ben Collins-Sussman and Brian Fitzpatrick talked to us about how our fear of looking like an idiot or not being taken seriously, or hubris, prevents us from admitting failure. The following are my thoughts on this topic, which have recently been influenced and enhanced by Ben and Brian. ...

As the flame of this debacle grows dim, I find myself still bothered by the misrepresentation and poor fact checking done by fellow bloggers and reporters. Case in point… A lot of people are trying to link this unfortunate episode to DRM. While I oppose DRM, and think that Amazon has squandered what little possible benefit DRM offers the consumer, this is quite clearly not at DRM issue. Digital Rights Management is concerned with access control, and specifically with limiting the ability of the consumer to copy and transmit copyrighted materials. Most people dislike DRM (possibly without know much about it) and therefore bloggers and the media have co-opted the term in hopes of raising our hackles. I post this short afterthought in hopes of settling your DRM hackles back down, at least on this count.

This week Amazon pulled a surprisingly ironic move. It removed an unauthorized version of George Orwell’s 1984 and Animal farm from all connected Kindles. Its important to note that these books were uploaded to the Kindle Store by a company that did not own the rights. Regardless, the move angered and frighted Kindle many users. There are countless newspaper articles, blog posts and tweets on the irony, legality and fairness of this move, so I won’t say more about that here. What I will do is provide a solution to this problem. I’m not using (or supporting) Windows anymore, so this solution will only work for you if have a Mac or Linux box. ...

Thanks to the fantastic Global Translator Plugin, my site is now available in 42 languages. You can have the site translated to your language by appending your country code to the domain, or clicking one of the flags above. For example /es will give you the homepage in Spanish. The first time a page is translated it takes a while to build, so Global Translator gives you the google translation page while you wait. A Dutch speaking friend verified that that translation looked okay, if you are fluent in one of the 42 languages, I would love some feedback on translation quality (and mistakes).

I’m a crunchy, touchy feelie, hippie parent. As such its often hard to come up with just the right words to tell your kid that biting her mom and laughing about it makes you wildly, furiously, and deeply unhappy. As a hippie, touchy feelie, AP, parent you are not, for example supposed to say “Do that again and you’re out of the family.” Nor is it encouraged to shout “Are you insane?” It’s just not the thing. Conversely the suggested mantras “Biting is not okay” and “We don’t bite sweetie,” just don’t really satisfy the deep, furious, wild feelings that are floating around the house at such moments. ...

I love my Kindle. I knew that I would, because I borrowed my friends for a few weeks and read a book on it. I was worried about the lack of a “Kindle Public Library” and the whole loaning and selling Kindle books thing until I rediscovered Project Gutenberg, and Feedbooks. To be honest, while I knew about Project Gutenberg before, I didn’t really have a use for it until I had a dedicated reader. I mean, who wants to read a book at your computer. Even on a laptop its no fun. But with a svelte, light, non-backlit reader in my hands, the out-of-copyright and CC world are my oyster. ...

Tonight, for the first time ever, I put both kids to sleep without help. Ruby went down first. I read her One Morning in Maine, and held her for a few minutes. Initially she wanted me to go away right after I was done reading, but I gave a disappointed sound and she consented to letting me hold her for “one minute”. I swear she counted seconds, because she kicked me out before I fell asleep (which generally happens around minute 4). ...

Years ago Victoria and I heard about a long standing Bay Area soup night. The premise is that the host makes a big pot of soup and invites anyone to come eat. Some people bring other food, others just eat. Since there is no controlling who came there are endless possibilities for social and intellectual cross-pollination . This idea settled deep into my consciousness and made a home. I’ve been carrying it with me for years, and talking about it from time to time. ...

I started out the day, as I do most every Sunday, with the Coffee Social. Since the kids are finally over the chicken-pox we had a great turnout, and I got to spend most of the morning lounging around with coffee, chocolate crossiants, and friends. Early naps provided a little needed excuse to read more of my latest addiction . Somewhere around 4 we packed up our things and headed over to Hidden Villa for the Banana Slug String Band’s Annual Father’s Day concert. I don’t know why I love this event so much. Maybe its sitting on the most lucious green organic lawn in the world, embraced by mountains all around. Maybe its the huge jar of margaritas Vick brought. Perhaps its the happy kids (myself included) running around without a care in the world. Whatever it is, I really look forward to this event. Every year I meet a couple of other dads that seem genuinely happy to be fathers. ...

I often have trouble coming up with good color palettes for my themes, icons, and applications. I think I have a good enough sense for what looks good together and for finding tones and hues that match the mood of said app, theme, or icon, but it always takes me hours to identify the colors on the color wheel or spectrum. Last night, quite by accident, I found a solution to this conundrum that may make my life quite a bit easier. ...

I haven’t actually read this book, but I found the title intriguing. The title suggests that if you aren’t paying attention to your customers needs, then you may find yourself putting whipped cream and a cherry on a meatball. When I read the title, I had two strong and immediate impressions. First, “yuck.” I said it out loud. Ruby, of course, asked what I was talking about. I told her the title, and asked if she would like a meatball sundae. “No way,” she replied " I would want a meatball plain and cherries and whipped cream plain too." ...

Hey there cherished reader, I bet you’re wondering where the photos went. How do I know, because you’ve both called me and asked, that’s how. Well here’s the scoop. I’ve migrated my blog over to wordpress. This is going to have lots of benefits for all of us, not the least of which is that my blog and photos will be much more tightly coupled now. What this means for you is that you’ll have to create a new login. Go on up to the navigation bar and click on login. Then register. You can even sign up to get e-mail notifications when new blog posts go up, how cool is that? ...

I was talking with one of my fellow Akidoists last week about how much trouble he has had raising money for the Aids Ride. We speculated that, with the downturn in economy people are giving less. I started to wonder about this (aloud of course), and kept thinking about it afterward. As Chris Guillebeau points out many times on his website, if you are reading this, you are likely very rich. You are in fact, likely to find yourself in the top 1-10% of the worlds richest people. Regardless of how you feel about economic equity it is more likely than not that you’ll agree that we at the peak of the wealth pyramid are standing atop a wide base. That base supports us in ways that I can scarcely comprehend, but in many ways it needs our support as well. ...

Once upon a time a bunny was hiding in a bush. It was sunny then started to rain. Butterflies came. A pig came. The pig was pink. She needed something to eat, but she couldn’t find anything so she kept looking. She smelled something good. It was a carrot. The bunny tried to find a carrot too but she found the pig’s carrot. The pig wanted the carrot and they couldn’t work it out so the bunny kept walking and found another carrot. It wasn’t anyone’s so she ate it all up.