Month: July 2007

Tuesday, 3 July 2007

The Better Beatles

by Garrick van Buren 1 Comment on The Better Beatles

Over the weekend, we picked up a little stuffed IKEA octopus (technically a pentapus) for C. On the drive back, I remembered of working the strawberry fields listening to the Beatles on a cassette Walkman over and over and over again (an irony I only now see). Discovering and rediscovering each album.

As I tried to recall the lyrics to Octopus’s Garden, Jen and I started talking about the best Beatles ablum. I agree with Mr. Slusher, it’s not St. Pepper.

While St. Pepper was also one of my first CDs, I think any album on either side of the Beatles discography has aged better. Off the top of my head, better albums are;

  1. Revolver (Good Day Sunshine, Got to Get You into My Life)
  2. Abbey Road (Here Comes the Sun, She Came in Through the Bathroom Window)
  3. White Album (Happiness is a Warm Gun, Dear Prudence)

In St. Pepper’s defense – it’s a concept album and if memory serves, everyone in the band has a different name in the liner notes. So, it could be argued that it’s not even a proper Beatles album. 😉

Elsewhere Aug 05, 2008

“Revolver is by far the Beatles strongest and most impressive album.” – Emily Wilson

Sunday, 1 July 2007

Twittergrams: Guarding the Rhino

by Garrick van Buren Comments Off on Twittergrams: Guarding the Rhino


(photo CNN)

In Swahili the tick bird is named ‘askari wa kifaru,’ meaning ‘the rhino’s guard.’ The bird eats ticks it finds on the rhino and noisily warns of danger. Although the birds also eat blood from sores on the rhino’s skin and thus obstruct healing, they are still tolerated.

Take a look at what you need to pass to post a Twittergram; Twitter name, Twitter pass. Everything else, non-Twitter-specific and posting to your Twitter account is optional.

Imagine for a moment; Jaikugrams, Basecampgrams, Flickrgrams, Plazesgrams, Linkedingrams, and AnyServiceWithAnAPI-gram. The same exact Twittergram functionality riding atop each respective service 1.

Little birds flitting from rhino to rhino.

Ququoo.com has the same core functionality as another, much larger project I’m working on. Plus, I don’t need to write a login/pass registration system. In fact, that’s the rule w/ Ququoo development. It can’t have anything specific to Ququoo in it 2. Jen reminded me today of that. Her reminder has helped focus my Twittergram work – and dust off something this larger project needs desperately.

1. Number 3 if you’re following along.
2. Eric, maybe that’s the rule w/ Twitter as well 😉

5 July 07 Update: Yes, I think Twittergrams can be any kind of file and be larger than 200k. Maybe not with Dave’s service. But once you and programmatically decode a tinyurl you’ve got the idea.

8 July 07 Update: Feels like this accomplishes the same goal as OpenID…from a different angle. Where new sites ride atop older more established sites’ accounts – this solves 2 problems for new sites; needing to develop an account creation system and getting people to use the service. Scaling means supporting one more pre-existing account system.