Years ago, I heard a story of an American barred from crossing into Canada because the Canadian customs agent interpreted the American’s intentions not as recreation, but as work. The American didn’t see it that way, nor did he have employment papers, and he reversed course. “Q: Is there going to be legislation or IRB …
Author Archives: Garrick van Buren
Writing out the Problem
8pen is another attempt at bringing touch-typing to mobile devices If you listened real close – in the video – you hear the narrator mention ‘handwriting’. That’s both why 8pens approach is pointed in the right direction and why this version of it misses the mark. Selecting individual characters is terribly tedious. Seriously, these things …
Quirk Persists
A couple of quotes from Tim Quirk’s 10 year old interview the The Onion’s AVClub that came to mind earlier this week. I was mis-remembering them, posting them here so that happens less. “We were always trying to put out slick rock records. Even the crappily recorded stuff on Green Eggs And Crack was our …
eBook Clubbing – Not eBook Borrowing
The promise of ebooks is their inexpensiveness. Their portability. Their ability to make perfect copies of themselves so, you and your friends can read and enjoy the same text simultaneously. If ebook retailers wanted to develop a technology based on the social aspect of books – they’d make it easy to share the text I’m …
Mac App Store is a Proper OS X Package Manager?
My Ubuntu machine and my Nokia N900 both have something of an ‘app store’ in them. If we call an app store – an application that connects to platform-specific software repositories to easily install software, notify me of updates, etc. Though, in the Un*x world, these things are called package managers or application managers. The …
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Terms of Services Kinda Like Open Licenses – But Evil
The Combined Arms Research Library has a good post on the upside of the latest version of Twitter’s terms of service (“Twitter can do WHAT with your photos?“) . The language is very similar to the MIT/X11 License in that the copyright holder is licensing their work to others and the licensees can do as …
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Fermenting: Abbey Cyser
Abbey Cyser Recipe 4 Gallons of Apple Cider from Hy’s Cider Mill purchased from Whole Foods in St. Paul 2.5 pounds of honey from Pine Tree Apple Orchard 1 package of WYeast Trappist High Gravity 3787 According to the package, the yeast like it between 70-75°F. To accommodate it, I combined the cider and honey …
Progressive
“We are deeply in a situation in which the few are supporting the many: the bottom 50% of income earners paid only 2.7% of total income taxes in 2008, and 52 million taxpayers paid no income taxes at all” – Scott Grannis
Trade Perspectives
“Total U.S. trade with the rest of the world (sales of U.S. products to consumers and firms in other countries PLUS purchases of foreign production by American consumers and businesses) reached a 22-month high of $354.1 billion in August, the highest level since October 2008, and 44% above the April 2009 cyclical low of $246 …
I HAZ FAIL! – Oct 20, 2010 @ 7pm
Next Wednesday – Oct 20th @ 7pm – I’ll be giving a talk on failure to the Lean Startup Circle group. If you’re interested in how I define success and failure for the projects I so frequently talk about here join me. I’ll be discussing these projects; their opportunity, challenges, brief success, and their ultimate …