About time. And product. And being more deliberate.
Last autumn, inspired by a conversation with Jamie Thinglestad, I took a couple lunch hours and hacked together a tool that dramatically improves my web browsing experience.
Since then, I hadn’t used it much. Nor have I revisited it to polish it up. Jamie and I have shared it with a small handful of people – maybe you.
This morning, in frustration, I turned it back on. For the rest of the day – it felt like the sun had finally come out after a harsh, bitter winter.
I’ve been investigating useful uses for QR codes and while I’ve got a couple…they still feel rather flimsy. Like the QR Code is being used as a cute novelty – rather than a way to enhance communication.
QR Codes are inherently temporary (as in, tomorrow a better encoding technology will exist and today’s readers aren’t future proof). People can’t read QR Codes. Only machines can. Text has a much longer lifespan. It’s more portable and more usable. In most cases the QR Code is linking to a URL or a short snippet of text anyway, so…..
Why can’t smartphones just read the text?
Rather than pointing your mobile device’s camera at a fugly barcode – what if you pointed it at a written out URL. The camera recognized it and asked you want you wanted to do w/ it (visit, send, save, copy).
Mobile OCR projects exist:
To this day – the Palm Treo, for all it’s flaws, was my favorite phone. The team that designed the phone UI – had experience actually making phone calls. Every phone I’ve had since – including my current one – I’m less confident of that.
Instead, I have a pocket-size computer that always promises to improve my every moment – with all sorts of ‘productivity tools’. When what it really wants to do is distract me from being productive. And compel me with how needy it is. Smart phone? – No. Needy phone? yes.
So, I’m always on the look out for bold devices eschewing complexity.
My favorite part:
Unlocked & €70.
Brilliance in what’s missing.
I had a really fun lunch today at the Bewiched Deli (I highly recommend the roast beef w/ horseradish sandwich).
As we were sharing some of the projects ideas we’re working on he stops the conversation suddenly and commands:
“Stay away from advertising. If I have to beat it into you – I will. Stay. Away. From. Advertising.”
I’ve been itching to make a cider. Yet, since it’s off season, I don’t feel like going too crazy. So, I thought I’d make a nice simple recipe. If successful, this should be ready around Thanksgiving. If really successful, it’ll be gone by then.
Update 15 June 2011
The Orval bugs are still going strong. A fresh layer of krausen has been ebbing and flowing twice a day for the past week. If/When it stalls out, I’ll bottle.
Update 09 July 2011
Bottled today. FG: 1.004
A little funkiness on the nose, smooth full body. Real easy to drink – even before the carbonation.
Elsewhere:
The Mad Fermentationist’s Sour Cider
Turns out, I’m addicted to Hopville’s Beer Calculus in much the same way others are addicted to Angry Birds. And the game play (get a group of ingredients to match a beer style) I find just as engaging.
The first of many recipes I’ve been working on is this Amber Rye in dedicated to my grandfather.
This was also my first attempt at a DeathBrewer-style partial mash. It’s just the bridge I was looking for into all grain brewing. The process was straightforward and much more ‘Relax, don’t worry, have a homebrew‘ than many of the other partial mash processes I’d been reading up on (even in step 2 DeathBrewer reminds us to be comfortable).
The fermentation was strong by morning, and now – 24 hrs later is going full bore. I’m thankful this batch is in a 7 gallon brew bucket – rather than a 5 gallon carboy.
Here’s the Aloysius Amber Rye on Hopville
Update 9 July 2011:
F.G: 1.020
Medium brown in color.
Pre-carbonation: Tasting notes – Sharp black pepper & caramally-sweetness right away. Finishes clean.
For the past 8 years, I’ve run my own company. A digital product consulting company. Across those 8 years, I’ve launched 3 products of my own that I’m very proud of – while doing interesting client work, that I’m also very proud of.
I’ve also become a father of 3.
As I write this, my third child is nearly a year old. Experience has told me – a newborn in the house is demanding enough – there’s no reason to purposefully add more. Whether that be the demands of launching a startup or anything else. It just makes everything that much more difficult and everyone that much more unhappy. I want more happiness – not less.
Thankfully – I’m able to work in a way that I’m most productive. On projects I’m interested in and still be there when the 5 yr old finds his first toad in the backyard.
This is why I live in Minnesota.
Upshot: Strictly necessary cookies don’t require explicit user consent.
Which means, the EU e-Privacy Directive simply reduces the overall number of cookies dropped by websites. Unless there are suddenly teams of EU Auditors inspecting the business logic at every company around the world – it’s hard to imagine less tracking, less remarketing, less of what this was directive trying to minimize, going on.
It’s easy to imagine the tracking problem increasing and the remarketing efforts increasing and code the captures the data getting further buried into the business logic. All while, a smaller number of analytics companies with their ‘strictly necessary’ cookies grow even larger and are able to better profile/target individuals.
A couple weeks back, I had this idea for a new web app. Like so many of these ideas – I wrote it down. Just to get it out of my head.
This afternoon, I get an email from my sister describing the need for a web app not unlike the one I wrote down earlier.
So, I took a few minutes after dinner and started looking for available domain/code names for the project. Nothing that I’d be proud of. Nothing that would really resonate with me as I built it. Nothing that would continually remind me of the attitude and purpose of the site.
Then, the moment I walked away from the search, I remembered…
I already have the perfect domain. And I just renewed it.
This new project is both a perfect fit for the domain name and easier to prototype.
Smiles.
For a couple years now, I’ve felt Timothy Leary’s 60’s mantra ‘Turn On, Tune In, Drop Out‘ has gained new relevance.
The first two sections of the triplet seemed quite obvious. We can even re-use Leary’s explanation of them. The third section was more elusive. While Leary preferred to describe it as a commitment on self-reliance – ‘Drop Out’ – implies a complete disengagement.
It wasn’t until clicking through Jeremy Abbett‘s Driven to Distraction deck that I got it.
In this age of ever-more-granular control of our incoming & outgoing communications – wholly and complete disengagement is too primitive a solution. It’s much more beneficial to ruthlessly opt out.
Opt out is setting your Facebook privacy to minimize Facebook’s ability to sell you.
Opt out is the unsubscribe link at the bottom of the email campaigns you receive.
Opt out is your spam filter.