Category Archives: Come on!

“Tomorrow will be like today, only more so”

While I waited for my car at the mechanics’, I sat with a family who also waited.  Their conversation has stayed with me for the rest of the day, and I find it sad even now to type it out: Child, pointing to the Catholic Church down the street: “Mom, that looks like a castle!” Mother: “I’ve [...]
Also posted in Idea Factory | Comments closed

We make stuff

I had dinner last week with a few friends, and one of the things we discussed was cognitive surplus.  I commented on the recent explosion of tweets and blog posts about the iPad, and how it will usher in the end of tinkering as we know and love it.  It’s a sentiment I share, but [...]
Also posted in Digital Swag, Home School, Mozilla Education, Teaching Open Source, family | Comments closed

One for the road

Every year at about this time, our girls start telling us that it’s time to go clean-up the garbage along the road in front of our property.  It’s a fairly long stretch of busy road, and being out in the middle of nowhere, drivers tend to be on their worst behaviour.  We’ve found all manner [...]
Also posted in family | Comments closed

On the need for an ethical online existence

I thought that the NYT’s “multimedia” accompaniment to their article about the death of Georgian Luger, Nodar Kumaritashvili, was in bad taste.  The Huffington Post proves you can always go lower if you stretch: The dead slider’s father said he hasn’t seen the video of the fatal crash, adding, “I don’t want to see it [...]
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The Web vs. Canada

the most annoying thing about Canada: “Sorry, this product is not available in your country” –David Ascher I’m not going to let myself get all mad here by thinking or writing more about this issue.  Let’s just say I couldn’t agree with David more, and it drives me crazy.  I will, however, share a perfect moment [...]
Also posted in Digital Swag | Comments closed

Why I’m not a CEO

“God bless Tiger. This week, we got a huge uplift,” Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz said Tuesday in New York. She explained that the Tiger Woods sex scandal is more profitable online than Michael Jackson’s death because it’s easier to sell ads that appear alongside juicy content than funeral stories. [link] Stay classy, Yahoo.
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Unboxing the 2410: apples, cables, welding, seed, and books

I bought a new monitor.  Last Christmas my wonderful wife gave me a present: she hand-made an Apple monitor and wrapped it with a note that said, “I don’t know which one you want, but let’s get you something nice.”  That cardboard cutout was as close as I’m ever going to get to an Apple [...]
Also posted in Digital Swag, family | Comments closed

“For all the details, please visit our website”

I’ve written before about my frustration with big media using the web as a supplemental mechanism for reusing content first delivered in a traditional format.  When the web is viewed as a table of contents or handout to your main presentation, you miss the entire point of what the web is all about.  Today I’m [...]
Also posted in Digital Swag, Food, family | Comments closed

Inane babble, because the world is inane and insane

so over lunch, an older guy in a big black car comes along, parks in front of my house, gets out his lawn chair and lunch cooler, and has a leisurely lunch under my tree. (ctyler on irc) Don’t be fooled by people who tell you that social media like Twitter is pointless dribble, inane [...]
Also posted in Digital Swag | Comments closed

search?q=book

I made a mistake tonight.  Chris was telling me about a new command-line bugzilla client called boog.  I threw it into Google and by mistake, perhaps out of habit, wrote ‘book’ instead of ‘boog.’  And what came back was surprising. Guess who owns the #1 Google result for ‘book.’  I asked some friends to guess and [...]
Also posted in Mozilla, Reading | Comments closed