“My guiding principle in this project has been thrift. Without a publisher to capitalize the book, I’m doing my darndest to spend money only when it makes me money. Lucky for me, today’s world is one where that constraint is well accommodated. Obviously, the print-on-demand paperbacks don’t cost anything — the book doesn’t exist until …
Author Archives: Garrick van Buren
Yahoo’s a Memory Hole
“Two graduate students, intrigued by a growing wealth of material on the Internet, built a huge fucking lobster trap, absorbed as much of human history and creativity as they could, and destroyed all of it.” – Jason Scott, Archive Team
The Rumors of Quicksilver’s Death are Melodramatic
“It was a good run. So long, old friend.” – Merlin Mann “It’s just that given the choice between helping to keep something you love alive, and very publicly declaring it dead, I’m not sure why you’d choose the latter.” – Rob McBroom It seems a tad melodramatic to declare a functioning piece of open …
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Stinkin’ Flair
List of Foursquare Badges FrontierVille Badges: Learn how to earn every stinkin’ badge right here List of Kongregate Badges Introduction to Merit Badges What are HuffPost Badges
Lifeline
Scott Grannis’ Calafia Beach Pundit has become daily reading for me [1] – primarily because I’m a sucker for the charts he shares. Take a minute to look at this one. (no worries, I’ll still be here when you get back). Good stuff. It’s rare to see a single chart summarize our own confidence over …
Fermenting: “Out Like a Lion” Ginger Maibock
20-some inches of snow fell on Saturday. I don’t know exactly how much – because the temperature promptly dropped below 10°F and – I decided to stay indoors. And brew up some beer for spring. “Out Like a Lion” Ginger Maibock Recipe 10 lbs Pilsen Light Liquid Malt Extra 2 lbs CaraMunich II 2 oz …
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Peerless
“Why can’t you be as trustworthy on the Web as you are walking into any store off the street? The reason is that you have no status on the Web itself beyond the minima implied by the term ‘user.’ Whatever status you experience is what’s granted by site owners. You are the client. Your position …
What if your email client was as useful at a glance as Facebook?
The New York Times’ New URL Structure
The Hyperlink Grows Up: The Times Releases New Linking Features Here’s how it works. In the story above, the base URL is: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/01/world/americas/01colombia.html If you wanted to link to a specific paragraph, you’d simply add a “#” and the number of the paragraph, e.g.: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/01/world/americas/01colombia.html#p2 You can even go a step deeper and skip to …
Full of Sound and Fury
“Academic politics is the most vicious and bitter form of politics, because the stakes are so low.” – Wallace Stanley Sayre “This is a metaphor indicating that you need not argue about every little feature just because you know enough to do so. Some people have commented that the amount of noise generated by a …