About time. And product. And being more deliberate.
Cory Doctorow’s With a Little Help is the closest model I’ve seen to my vision for the future of publishing.
“It was a good run. So long, old friend.” – Merlin Mann
It seems a tad melodramatic to declare a functioning piece of open source software dead. Especially when the most likely alternative is neither free nor open.
One of the core premises of open source software is not being tied to the whims of a vendor. Quicksilver faithfully serves me everyday. Sure, I’d like Quicksilver to be a more active project – I have direct control over that. Just as you do, just as Merlin does, just as Rob McBroom does (Thanks Rob.). Declaring Quicksilver dead is like declaring Wikipedia worthless because of a typo.
Merlin, by the way, could you check the mp3 URLs for the 43Folders Podcast – specifically, Honor Thy Energy? I was looking to give it a re-listen earlier this week, and came up with a 404. :/
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 time, let alone over my lifetime.
Yes, it was the Gay Nineties.
Yes, we did fall off a cliff in 2007 – wasn’t the first time, just the biggest.
Some of you may know you were when John Lennon was shot. Or JFK. Or when we landed on the moon.
From new babies to client projects to wondering just what the hell is happening I know where I was along each bump down that cliff. Spooky.
You?
1. Other daily reading includes:
There’s a pragmatic optimism across these 4 sites that I find both challenging and refreshing. Plus – they’re not afraid to go deep.
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.
Original Gravity: 1074
Potential alcohol content ~10%.
The blow-off tube is a lesson I learned from my previous encounter with Wyeast’s 1007 German Ale – it seems to be much more excitable than the Belgians yeasts I more frequently use.
I’m planning to lager it in the basement until spring – or the snow melts, which ever comes first.
Update 23 Dec 2010:
I moved the beer to the secondary this morning. It smelled fantastic with a comfortable ginger nose. It’s quite cloudy, so if it doesn’t clear out by next week – I’ll rack it again before hiding in a cool corner of the basement until March.
Oh – and estimated ABV is currently at 7.3%.
Update 27 Dec 2010:
Lagering has begun.
Update 20 Mar 2011:
I bottled it today and poured the dregs of the bottling bucket into a Duval glass. There’s a big ginger nose, a light (perhaps too light) malty body, and a gingery aftertaste lingering on the tongue. And like a good Maibock should- the alcohol completely crept up on me.
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.htmlIf 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#p2You can even go a step deeper and skip to a particular sentence, e.g.:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/01/world/americas/01colombia.html#p2s2And here’s where it really gets cool, though. If you want to highlight that section, you simply switch the p to an h. I generated the highlighted text below with the following link:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/01/world/americas/01colombia.html#h2s2To simplify things, if you hit your shift key twice on a Times story, small icons appear next to every paragraph. Click on one of them and it’ll place the paragraph linked URL up in the address bar of your browser.
