Month: July 2007

The inbox is full of interesting links. If I post them some of them here, maybe I don’t have to stay up looking at all of them.

Since I enjoyed Knocked Up so much, I read the New Yorker review after the fact.

I don’t read Valleywag unless someone points me to a specific story. Wondering if I should apply the same policy to Uncov? But Uncov looks funnier.

The Full text of an Andrew Keen – David Weinberger debate is available free on WSJ.com, and a good read. I’ve met David once, and read much of his writing, although not yet his new book. Delaminate the bastards is also sitting in the inbox.

I’ll never read Anti-Grain Geometry – Texts Rasterization Exposures that carefully, but I admire people who can dive into and explain details at this microscopic level. Something is right in a world where people care about making the world easier to see (on screen).

Article about Tour de France equipment that doesn’t match the named sponsors… so much for discretion. Thanks, Ken.

Enough for now.

This weekend, I read Happy Blogiversary, the Wall Street Journal’s review of 10 years of blogging. I found it first online, pointed to by Scott Karp because Dick Costolo cited Publishing 2.0 as one of his favorites.

Skimming it over the weekend, via satellite broadband, the video vignettes embedded in the piece wouldn’t play…the player told me I was a second-class citizen (not enough bandwidth). Oh well. Couldn’t watch Dennis Yang of TechDirt, either, until this morning on DSL. Even then, I had to wait for the entire video to stream in before it would play more than the 3 second WSJ intro. (Brightcove, you learned a lot from YouTube in usability terms… finish the job?)

Last night, I caught up with the print edition. Dick’s contribution was accompanied by a photograph there, too (not just online, which sometimes happens).

I have to ask… you made the Journal, but you got a photograph? Where’s the dot portrait?

Seriously, being thrown into the mix with Tom Wolfe, Christopher Cox, Newt Gingrich (!?), and Mia Farrow as a cultural commentator… not bad. But the dot portrait awaits.

From those to whom much is given, much is expected.

Bill Gates quotes his mother’s expression in his 2007 Commencement Address at Harvard.

It’s not a new sentiment, but it never hurts to be reminded. Makes me consider my goals in a broader context.

Thanks, Anil — we’ve barely met, but I appreciate the sparks you share.

The wife called attention to the NPR story “Study: Men Talk Just as Much as Women.” Hmmm… we’re not quite the mean here. 😉

The fireworks here in San Francisco are just about wrapped up. I’m not watching them, but I can hear them all the same as I sit relaxing on the couch after a beautiful day up in Healdsburg. The kids loved time in the pool…and so did I. Hope your holiday was great.

Anne McCaffrey brought her son Todd into the Pern novels a few years ago. As with many other childhood favorites, I have not kept up, but when I found Dragon’s Fire on the library shelf, I was game. I finished this tale several days ago, and you just can’t go back again (sometimes). I know I’m not the only one who’s enjoyed the Pern tales, but I suppose the longer you go on, the harder it is to meet the standard.

Damn, Carl Hiaasen is funny. Nature Girl is his latest, and the one I finished a couple of weeks ago. It is popcorn reading, but Hiaasen is out to entertain — and comes through, which is hard to do consistently.

Alan Dean Foster is prolific. Long ago, I read several of the Flinx novels, so it was easy to grab Trouble Magnet off the library shelf a few weeks ago. Another quick, easy read… and not terrible. But I’ve clearly skipped some stories along the way and I felt the gap a bit. It’s also been too long since I read the earlier novels, and I can’t imagine going back and re-reading them all now. Oh well. If you’ve kept up with Philip Lynx, enjoy.

Note: Big, thorough website, but miserable frameset means you can’t link to anything easily. Mistake.

Apparently John Sandford can write a book without “Prey” in the name. I read Dead Watch a few weeks ago, and until finding the link earlier in this sentence, I couldn’t remember what it was about. That’s a commentary on my attention to this type of book and a condemnation of the book itself. I’d stick with the “Prey” series, even if I can’t remember which title goes with which book.