and I, for one, welcome our cartilaginous caryatids.
But I do think that Chris might be failing to exclude a middle, here.
Mrs. Text and the little Texties went to the Peabody Essex Museum (which is, of course, not in Peabody or Essex, but in Salem) 
and saw, among other things, a fabulous and inspiring exhibit on origami. The little guy - six - was particularly captivated, and kept folding for at least two hours after they got home.
As seen here, he produced pretty credible renditions of sailboats, and ducks, a skunk, and a frog that actually hops when you push it right.
The sailboats bothere
d him, though, because they wouldn’t stand up on their own, so he popped back into the playroom to remedy the situation. You see here this six-year-old’s ingenious LEGO origami stand, which I think is particularly interesting for the economy with which it solves the problem.
“Most taxidermists long for an opportunity to explain their art.”
In the dream, someone said it was a quote from Henry Miller. I’ve never read Henry Miller.
Google has nothing on the quote, except evidence that it’s true.
Anyone?
“Most taxidermists long for an opportunity to explain their art.”
In the dream, someone said it was a quote from Henry Miller. I’ve never read Henry Miller.
Google has nothing on the quote, except evidence that it’s true.
Anyone?
I’ve been using Safari a lot the last couple of months. on Mac that would be a sign of uniformity, on Windows it’s a sign that I Think Different. Safari’s Javascript performance is an order of magnitude - or two - faster than IE’s or Firefox’s, so the Ajax-heavy web apps I use a lot - GMail and Reader - perform way better.
Now I just noticed these Developer Tools baked into Safari:
and this one:
Anyone who thinks that driving while talking on a hands-free phone is totally safe has never watch a conference floor full of borg-ed up security dorks walking around banging randomly into each other while talking.
I’ve started using Twitter, making a conscious effort to figure out why so many smart people think it’s so awesome. It turns out that a conference is a great place for finding that out. I’ve been using Twitter to take notes - books to buy later, things to Google.
I just live-twittered Malcolm Gladwell’s keynote, which was a fabulous, entertaining precis of Blink, tuned gracefully for a business audience. The stream is here. Take a look!
SK
The NSA has a booth here. It’s a gray cube with entrances on two sides, each of which has a happy, smiling booth guy handing out badges.
“Can’t go inside without badge!” sez one.
“What’s inside?” sez I.
“Take a badge, go inside and see!” sez he.
I take a badge and go inside. There’s a kiosk in the middle with some posters on it, and rotating red lights on top like it’s the world’s slowest gray fire engine. One side of the booth has interesting historical stuff, a little bio of Alan Turing, and an actual working Enigma machine. They have some free booklets with mathematical analyses of the Enigma cipher.
The other side of the booth has some computers for people to do stuff with and some more posters on the wall. It’s just so different from the other booths. Too much blank space, too many smiling people and none of them trying to sell you anything. There’s no way to tell why they’re here, and there’s certainly nothing in the booth worth issuing badges for.
I go out the other side, vaguely unnerved, and just as I’m ready to hand back my badge a woman comes up to the badge guy on this side of the cube.
“No, no, no,” laughs he, pushing the badge back at her, “it’s yours! Free! A souvenir!” I check my NSA booth badge again, in case I’m missing something.
It’s just a badge.
The woman tries to give it back again, but the guy won’t let her, still smiling and very friendly. The woman finally gives up and tosses it into her bag. I walk out and dump my badge into the nearest trash can.
You see, I’m a security guy. I’m thinking, they’re putting RFID chips in the badges and tracking everyone’s movements through the show, seeing what things people are looking at, thinking about buying. That kiosk in the middle of the booth could have hidden any amount of hardware. The whole scene was just that creepy. Pod people from the NSA, planting RFID chips on people buying crypto software and hardware.
By the time I got out of the building, I realized that I was being either too paranoid or not paranoid enough. I mean, it’s the NSA. They don’t need to get me to take an NSA booth badge to track me - they could have put them into the Enigma booklet I took! Or dusted me with them as I walked through!
There just aren’t many good explanations for putting a creepy opaque booth in the middle of several thousand security people. Well, maybe NSA people just get uncomfortable out in the open, maybe they need the walls to cut down the sight lines.
Maybe they are tracking us all for nefarious purposes. Or for marketing.
You know what I think? I think they revel in their creepiness, enjoy unsettling the proles.
Says David Heinemeier Hansson, who has enough e’s and i’s in his middle name for almost any purpose. He’s also one of the world’s most top software developers and the creator of the Ruby on Rails web development framework.
I’ve been writing a little bit of PHP again today. That platform has really received an unfair reputation. For the small things I’ve been used it for lately, it’s absolutely perfect.
Yes, that’s true - a lot of people have really ripped PHP for years.
Like the guy who gave this presentation I attended, and that Simon Willison apparently also attended and at which he took excellent notes.
DHH spent 5 years with PHP hearing that it was impossible to make beautiful things in PHP - tried very hard to do so. Then realised it’s not about if things are possible; it’s if they are encouraged. Realisation: PHP is the devil!
That guy DHH really tore PHP a new orifice, didn’t he. I remember this slide he had with just those words on it:
PHP is the devil.
Hmmm. Those initials, “DHH”, are so familiar - what famous developer has those initials?
I can’t believe I can’t remember who DHH is. I mean, he’s really, really famous.
Not everyone can have a sterling phone voice, not everyone can easily organize a series of thoughts into a brief, but cogent message. Many people grow nervous when they find a recording inside of a live person at the other end of the phone.
However, everyone can learn the following simple process for leaving a voicemail message that is easy for the recipient to return.
1. Clearly and slowly, say "Hi, my name is <name>, I can be reached at <phone number>."
2. State a simple, cogent statement of the issue requiring resolution. [The professional approach]
OR
2. Long, rambling discourse recapitulating a variety of irrelevancies, misstating conclusions reached in prior meetings, occasionally losing track entirely and not talking for a second or two. [A less-desirable alternative, but still viable]
3. Clearly and slowly, say "And again, this is <name> calling, and my number is <phone number>. One more time, <phone number>." [The professional approach]
OR
3. Rapidly, while turning your head away from the phone, say "OK, you can reach me on my cell at <area code> buh ruh duh vuhvuh duh," and hang up. [Again, viable, but definitely your second choice.
Many people who leave voicemail, particularly building contractors, don’t seem to realize that the whole point of leaving the message is to get the person to call you back. The contact info is the soul, the heart, the vital essence of the message, and the rest is dross. The beauty of this approach is that when you’re starting the message, you’re not nervous about how long you’ve been talking, so you can concentrate on saying your name and phone number clearly and slowly.
Then, even if you completely fuck up the rest of your message, the person you’re calling will be able to find out what your fucking question was, and give you your fucking answer.
Damn it.
