Year: 2003
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Another step forward
First redesign of News.com since January 2001. Bigger project than intended, although less included in this initial release than expected/hoped for. Always the same story, probably. Anyway, big step. And now I can come home at normal hours again!
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Pie rats, indeed
Like Scott Rosenberg, my son is a big fan of Richard Scarry and his pie rats. I’m sure my daughter will be, too.
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Conference will be a break…
Normally, speaking on a panel would be the highlight of the work day. It probably will be, but it’s been a busy, busy, busy week… so today I’m just looking forward to learning from the discussion and taking a short break from this work project. Helps that Moscone West is just a 10-minute walk from…
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Seybold
On Thursday, I’m part of a panel discussing “The Effects of Blogs on Publishing“. I’m looking forward to joining Scott Rosenberg of Salon and Matt May, of the W3C, among other things. My bio mentions this blog… which is probably not why Lauren Wood (an actual nuclear physicist at one point, though clearly not practicing)…
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Mental transaction costs
Mental transaction costs Shirky extends his argument against micropayments with “Fame vs Fortune: Micropayments and Free Content“. A quote: This strategy doesn’t work, because the act of buying anything, even if the price is very small, creates what Nick Szabo calls mental transaction costs, the energy required to decide whether something is worth buying or…
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Slugfest
Jennifer Capriati and Justine Henin-Hardenne just played a dynamite match, wth every point of their US Open semifinal a battle. Henin-Hardenne wins, 4-6, 7-5, 7-6 (7-4). Wow.
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BOOK: The Far Side of…
Patrick O’Brian’s The Far Side of the World enjoys a great title. The author knows it, and various characters use the phrase several times. Where is the ‘far side of the world’ — it’s the South Pacific, off the coast of Chile, where Surprise, Aubrey’s ship, is sent to protect British whaling ships from an…
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BOOK: Treason’s Harbour
I’m glad to see that W.W. Norton did not Americanize the spelling of Treason’s Harbour, the ninth in the Aubrey-Maturin series by Patrick O’Brian. Stuck ashore in Malta during a ship refit, Aubrey awkwardly makes a pass at a fellow officer’s wife (and fails), but accidentally befriends her massive dog, which leads the island to…
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BOOK: Salt: A World History
I started Salt: A World History a while ago, even before I started and finished a few of the other books this summer. I finally finished this non-fiction scan of the centuries through a prism of salt while flying to New York a couple of weeks ago. It’s a fun idea for a history, and…
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Diggers
So the kid has his first day at preschool, and I come home and ask him about how it went, and he’s thrilled to tell me that they have diggers. Diggers… aka, excavators, bulldozers, graders, etc. I don’t remember being that excited about (a) school or (b) heavy equipment. But I’m glad he wants to…