Brother and Sister

Thanksgiving 2008, originally uploaded by Gramma Kit.

Copyright holders must be "fastidious"

It's not worth a copyright if you're not fastidious about it.

clipped from factoryjoe.com vex major movie studies and other fastidious copyright owners

tweet creates virtual tidal wave in minds

Another reason Jason Kottke should be in Obama's cabinet.

Good then, good now

Tim Bray on Clouds

These aren't the clouds you see in the sky, they're the ones heating up server racks. Can you smell it?

clipped from www.tbray.org A Historical Analogy · To me, the cloud-computing landscape feels like the Web search landscape in 1996. Back then, Everybody who’d thought about it had clued in that this was going to be really interesting and useful. There had been a few offerings, much better than nothing but not really hitting a sweet spot. [Disclosure: One of them was me.] Then Altavista launched and it was clearly better than anything else. Meanwhile, Larry and Sergey were at Stanford thinking about transitive functions over the graph of Web hyperlinks. ¶ Amazon Web Services smells like Altavista to me; a huge step in a good direction. But there are some very good Big Ideas waiting out there to launch, probably incubating right now in a garage or grad school.

boys with bikes 1988

boys with bikes 1988, originally uploaded by Jrome.

Art Video

Thanks Peter

Thanks Peter. Thanks Obama.

clipped from www.patrickmoberg.com

V-O-T-E

learning about language

Online chat is likely an ever increasing source of the evidence of the evolution of the English language, more than blogs, newspapers, etc.

clipped from www.visualthesaurus.com OH: I looked in online chat rooms quite a bit, something that in my normal day-to-day life I never do. I looked at hundreds of blogs and hundreds of websites. Blogs in particular were incredibly useful, especially blogs written by teenagers and college students. I found the language just wonderfully inventive and interesting. In some cases, I came across words and structures that I didn't quite understand, and so I would then Google them in isolation and find other instances of them. Occasionally I'd ask some of my younger friends what these things meant until I felt like I'd nailed the meanings.

importance of song lyrics to learning language

american songs, american culture, american language. Probably in that order, or maybe with the first two switched. that's just my assumption at least.

clipped from www.visualthesaurus.com VT: When you were teaching English in Morocco, did you find that there was a lot of interest in American English, and especially the language associated with American pop culture? OH: Yes. I found that the students were always really keen to learn English through the medium of music, and so if I found a good lyric that illustrated some good structures that they were working on, then I would teach it. And usually I could find recordings of the song in Morocco. In fact, one of my most successful teaching experiences of that kind was teaching a Dolly Parton song, "Coat of Many Colors," which the students loved. They would not let me stop playing it. I didn't have the recording with me, but I did find it in Morocco and was able to take it to the classroom.

See more funny videos at Funny or Die

This is cool.

I like it when websites offer services that really help and don't get in the way. My wife is using the site to see if it helps her in whatever way this site can help a woman. I like the design...

clipped from mon.thly.info

Caribou Barbie in a can

It's not disrespectful to people who pumped money into the campaign who want Palin to dress sassy and treat the spotlight well. It is, after all, a beauty/pageant/popularity contest. Spending $150k on clothes isn't sooooooo outrageous. Right?

No, wait. Indigestion is doing my blogging! I shouldn't blog after woofing down a lunch of soup that came in a can for $1.35. (Wow, that's expensive cheap soup!)

clipped from latimesblogs.latimes.com Palin’s spokewoman is saying this is much ado about nothing, that we should be talking about more important issues. But can you imagine the outcry if it were revealed that Hilary Clinton’s rainbow of pantsuits was paid for by campaign contributions? Or if college kids’ $50 checks to the Biden/Obama campaign were putting those men in $5,000 custom suits? (Obama’s suits are by Hart Schaffner Marx out of Chicago, and cost in the $1,500 range.) In Palin’s defense, being a woman in the public eye has its own kind of pressures. And it’s unlikely she has been stepping off the campaign trail to join the ladies who lunch for shopping sprees at Neimans. Instead, she is probably working with a wardrobe stylist, who brings her things to try on and choose from. But the issue of clothing and hair expenses has always been a land mine for politicians (John Edwards' $400 haircuts), and someone should have been sensitive to that. Caribou Barbie indeed.

Woot is a hoot. (And their newsletters are fun too.)

I'll probably get shot for posting this, but just got the Woot.com "newsletter" here reporduced in all its gory:

WOOT, INC. INTERNAL EMAIL
STAFF EYES ONLY

Attention Woot employees -

We are now entering the final phase of preparations for the Woot-Off planned for midnight tonight. This is when we depart from our usual deal-a-day model and sell one product after another, offering a new deal as soon as the previous one sells out. For some reason, Woot members like jrome continue to have high expectations for this event. We must make every effort to ensure that they feel disappointed and betrayed.

All workers should be physically and mentally straining to make this Woot-Off a success, like every muscle in a wolf's body strains to capture and devour its prey. We expect total compliance with the following objectives:

* Make sure the stables are thoroughly cleaned and the horses properly groomed and shod. As you know, Commander Rutledge prefers to lead us on horseback during Woot-Offs. Charge!
* Customer Service department: all vacation requests for this week and next are approved. If you have not filed a vacation request, take one anyway.
* The little green pills in the kitchen are there to keep you alert and working. Take as many as you need. Officially, Woot does not believe in the concept of "overdose".
* Take at least one of our servers offline, just for laughs.
* Go to the landfill and dig up some more Sansa media players. If you see any Digipro Graphics Tablets (and you will), grab those, too.
* Place crap bags in company latrines so those orders can be "filled". To this end, the company will provide free lunch today from El Feo, the filthiest burrito joint in Dallas. Do your worst, guys.
* Neutralize all negative thinking among our members. We simply cannot tolerate any more posts like "do not want" or "Woot-Off killer". If electronic means like word filters and IP bans do not work, we must reactivate the rapid-response teams to physically eliminate all threats to our reputation.
* Last time, spot checks revealed that approximately 25% of products shipped are broken, incomplete, or excessively dirty. This is unacceptable. For this Woot-Off, defective shipments must make up at least 40%.
* Remind SmartPost that there's no need to hurry on these orders. Prompt delivery makes our customers spoiled and argumentative. Let them learn humility and gratitude while they wait.


Above all, we must strive to make this Woot-Off even more tedious, disappointing, and lucrative than the last one. The employee who achieves the most toward this end will be rewarded with one brown Zune. Second place: two brown Zunes.

Forward into battle! Remember: to give one's life for Woot is glorious!

Larry Stalin
eCommerce eKommissar
Woot, Inc.

THIS EMAIL WILL SELF-DESTRUCT IN 90 SECONDS

To Un-subscribe from future Woot Newsletters, click HERE ... or go to the Your Account page and uncheck the newsletter box.

makin' coffee

You should read Signal Vs. Noise everyday too.

America Is F*cked.......(Graphically at least) from Jess Gibson on Vimeo.

The words in music

I don't know much about rights surrounding song lyrics, but 27 million unique users is pretty hot. The site is pretty much a disaster design-wise, so it seems to me this is just another fat cat licensing content and workin' it on a site that requires almost no work. I guess I'm expecting passion. I feel passionate about the music I love. But with these lyric sites, where's the passion? Is it too much to ask that the site look nice and have better search? Possibly.

clipped from www.marketwatch.com With more than 27 million unique users per month, up from 14 million in December 2007, MetroLyrics went from the number three lyrics site to number one in just six months and has more traffic than many of the well-known sites in the music industry, according to comScore Media Metrix. Now among the fastest growing sites on the Internet, MetroLyrics has a daily traffic rank among the top 500 sites and also boasts the number nine Internet property in the Entertainment-Music Category based on total U.S. unique visitors [comScore Media Metrix, All Locations, August 2008].

Neighborhood Oktoberfest

Neighborhood Oktoberfest, originally uploaded by Jrome.

Neighbors came together. I got a keg, some brauts and people showed up. This was a fun fall festive feast.

kitchen appliance

kitchen, originally uploaded by Jrome.

End of Summer

pencam, originally uploaded by Jrome.

This is the look of a contented summer boy. It was a fabulous summer in 2008. We look forward to the fall, as we grow up and learn to do wonderous things. Just you watch.

The Race of Race

From Letters to the Editors @ Fort Worth Star-Telegram
How Racism Works

What if John McCain were a former president of the Harvard Law Review?

What if Barack Obama finished fifth from the bottom of his graduating class?

What if McCain were still married to the first woman he said "I do" to?

What if Obama were the candidate who left his first wife after she no longer measured up to his standards?

What if Michelle Obama were a wife who not only became addicted to pain killers, but acquired them illegally through her charitable organization?

What if Cindy McCain graduated from Harvard?

What if Obama were a member of the "Keating 5"?

What if McCain was a charismatic, eloquent speaker?

If these questions reflected reality, do you really believe the election numbers would be as close as they are?

This is what racism does. It covers up, rationalizes and minimizes positive qualities in one candidate and emphasizes negative qualities in another when there is a color difference.

Kelvin LaFond, Fort Worth

Don't forget: What if Barack Obama had an unwed, pregnant teenage daughter......

Periodic Table of Awesoments

FLW

One of the best things about Twitter, is mining it. I noticed Jason Fried of 37Signals started twittering on his own, so checking it out, I found this:

http://twitter.com/jasonfried/statuses/931007374

No Bad Days

Woke up Saturday with no plan. Went to coffee to do some journaling. Saw a bunch of the neighborhood goofballs.

The sky and weather were so cool and interesting that I decided to go for a long ride. I've been thinking about doing Eureka Canyon forever, so I packed up and headed out. It was gorgeous as I remembered. There was a short scare when I misinterpreted my bike map and thought I had an additional 9 miles to climb after already climing 9 miles, but I was confused. Best day ever when I came to the intersection at Highland and realized I was done. Cruised down Old San Jose, super fun, and then 43 miles and 3,000ft of climing later I was home.

Checked my messages and VickiChicki and Hotdog were rallying for lunch. So I grabbed a shower and headed out on the cruisers to get down to the Harbor for lunch.

Our ride home:



And then Vicki and Hotdog came in to watch Flight of Conchords until Nicole came over to finish the job. :)

Packed a lot in my Saturday.

1960s La Pavoni Professional

LaPavoni, originally uploaded by Jrome.

We now have a vintage 1960s La Pavoni Professional in our kitchen. Complete with a manual toggle switch for steam, labelled "minimo - massimo" in a cool 60s script font. The story as Nicole recalled after paying The Lady $20 at a yard sale in poshposh Noho, is that a friend brought it back from Italy (new), used it for years, then gave up coffee. Hence the machine came to The Lady. The Lady used it for a while on and off. It needs to be cleaned but otherwise the seals are fresh, the boiler heats strongly, in less than 10 minutes, and the aesthetics are fantastic. No cheesey parts anywhere on the thing!

Even if my pulls can't really benefit from yankin' a Fellini (http://www.home-barista.com/forums/fellini-does-espresso-t1106.html), I'm still charmed. I woke up this morning at 3am, with stress filling my mind and my son's screams filling my ears. I never got more than an hour sleep after that. I was carrying him around the house by 7:30. So when Nicole called and said "I'm staring at a La Pavoni manual machine, looks chrome and industrial, she wants twenty bucks for it, you want it?" I said, "Of course!"

After soccer at 9 (Maddy had one of the most gorgeous assists I've ever seen and her joyful dance is something I should really write about) I didn't get a chance to peek at the machine until 11:30. By then my curiosity was peaked.

I pulled maybe 8 shots total before we headed out the door bound for CT. First one was crap. I didn't let the boiler heat up enough. The rest, each and every one, were nuanced and delightful. Nicole could taste it. I could taste it. The smell could taste it. We did a little dance with each sip. Full whitey crema top. With shitty Starbucks French Roast no less! (Got a huge 3 pound bag for $15 at Costco for emergencies, and well, we're into $$ pinching now and dipping into the giant Harbucks baggy.) Ground the sheit to my usual X-1 fav espresso grind with the Capresso burr grinder. Steamer wand hardy and true. Lovely foam with Mapline 1%.

I'll experiment with other grinds and certainly other beans, including our standard Trader Joe's Shade Grown Organic. I'm placing an order with Blue Bottle tonight, $$ pinching be damned. Dennis in SF, who, works up on Pollard Pl above Cafe Trieste raved about Blue Bottle beans. I'm thinking the Hayes Valley Espresso, cause I like my morning love dark, black and strong. What do you think? I can venture into medium roast light bodied Italienne land in the coming weeks...which I have a feeling purist snobbery will be championing...but for now, I'm sticking with my instincts.


Here's the HVE from http://www.bluebottlecoffee.net/

faith and happiness

Happy (17Sept2008), originally uploaded by Jrome.

Dictionary sites

When IAC bought Dictionary.com, it was clear in my mind (at least) that the dictionary website experience was going to change, probably for the better. If you look for reference and dictionary sites in the top 100 on Alexa (don't read too much into Alexa, but the list is helpful) you'll find Wikipedia, Dictionary.com, Answers.com, About.com.

Does the web need another dictionary site? Mr. Bebo seems to think so....

clipped from www.wordia.com Wordia. Search, define, share. Coming soon...

Beam's Pin-Bottle unopened

Photo 9, originally uploaded by Jrome.

1964 bottle of Schenley O.F.C. Canadian Whiskey "Aged 8 years"
Old Grand-Dad without the gov't warning label (when did that start?)
And a bottle of Beam in a Pin-Bottle, complete with IRS sticker and the vintage hang tag explaining how to open use the "exclusive patented pouring feature"

If you're interested in these let me know by commenting

morning

morning, originally uploaded by Jrome.

big americano

First Day of Kindergarten

First Day of Kindergarten, originally uploaded by Jrome.

life moves quickly but isn't it grand?

How I spent my Saturday afternoon

IMG_5336.JPG, originally uploaded by Jrome.

this was my fourth d2r2. funtimes....

Balance from the past for our unbalanced time

Content on the Web...all over the Web is better than one spot

knol becomes another youtube? Maybe.

clipped from www.nytimes.com Mr. Rosenblatt, who was the chief executive of Intermix Media, the parent of MySpace when it was sold to the News Corporation, said that if Knol became a popular Web destination, he would consider posting content from Demand Media’s sites on it. The company, like many others in the media business, posts many of its videos on YouTube. “We have an enormous amount of traffic on YouTube,” Mr. Rosenblatt said. “It hasn’t cannibalized ExpertVillage.”

Rainbow Twizzlers

Rainbow Twizzlers, originally uploaded by compscigrad.

Oxford bus driver spies the spy camera

Oxford, originally uploaded by Jrome.

Oxford, Jigsaw, High Street

Oxford, Jigsaw, High Street, originally uploaded by Jrome.

I recently bought a jigsaw, but I didn't get it on sale.

Twitter is part of the Future

I love Twitter. Always have. I was confused the summer of 2006 when I first saw it, but after a week of pondering it, I knew it would end up important.

We're just beginning to see the services that will live on and off of twitter and the tweets that flow through their servers. I think we're just scratching the surface right now.

clipped from www.usatoday.com

July 2008

July 2008, originally uploaded by Jrome.

Sometimes this is all I want out of life. I have fond memories of that shoulder!

asparagus

asparagus, originally uploaded by shock.value.

we had asparagus this weekend. this was a topic of discussion.

The problem with Dwell

merlin.jpg, originally uploaded by Jrome.

I thought of this first Merlin. Did you use magic to steal this thought from my head?

Drill Down

Talking Social Network Interop @ GSP East from Brian Oberkirch on Vimeo.

This is a very timely chat. Given Nick Carr's nostalgic view of information processing in humans in The Atlantic article (longer form is better) and the new methodology erupting (let's just say "it has fully erupted") on the web, the task at hand is to shovel content to individuals not just "users" and help these individuals meet their personal goals for processing and ingesting information, We need web services to judge between "I'm just browsing" vs. "I'm here at B&N to sit in the cafe for four hours and read a whole book." Web services that create such an environment, which I'll call the Drill Down for lack of a better term in my taxonomy, will win over individuals.

PS Check out Scott Karp's blog too for further information.

FactoryJoe fixin' the web, one feature at a time

FactoryJoemicroformatmicronote, originally uploaded by Jrome.

On Twitter

So much information flows through and past my eyes on twitter these days, it'd be a shame not to mention that I can link to Britannica from my blog and you, my gentle reader can read the whole article I link to.

Today, I saw Britannica twittered that Sir Paul's b-day is today. So there you have it: Sir Paul McCartney

enjoy!

Spreadsheet Comparison

Spreadsheet Comparison, originally uploaded by Ross Mayfield.

This is actually pretty cool for all you spreadsheet lovers. Not super cool. Just normal cool.

I trust I would like SocialCalc on the SocialText wiki, if it weren't for the jotspot wiki we're saddled with at the moment.

Weezer's awesome internet mashup video

My god, it's all here. This may indeed be the best music video ever.

(Credit to Alex Hillman for pointing me to this!

clipped from www.youtube.com

The Android will show us the way

Interesting that out of all the apps that SAI could have picked, it chose one that translates text messages. Odd that SAI didn't realize that Google's own gTalk already does this with machine translation. But more telling perhaps that people realize this is a key technology of the future. I want to talk to China or Iraq or Iran. People are interesting, just like me, no matter where they come from, and that's going to make this world better and smaller.

clipped from www.alleyinsider.com Android Apps Losers That Don't Suck (GOOG) We’ve picked out some of our favorites from the winners of Google’s Android app contest. But less than 3% of all applications made the cut, which means there were plenty of worthy entries that Google passed over. Here are three from the loser pile that caught our eye. BabelFish: Text a friend in your language and automatically translate it to his. Why it didn’t win: We suspect that this app just didn’t work that well, because most Web translation services don't. The judges may have also had an issue with the fact that Yahoo (via Alta Vista) already owns a Web translation service that uses the same name.