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I’ve made it to the next book in my stack, Life of Pi, by Yann Martel. I’m slowly getting into this book, which was passed on to me by my wife. Turns out it’s not just highly recommended, but (I learn from the website) a Booker Prize winner. I’m glad I didn’t know that when I started the book. It’s refreshing to come into a book with few expectations or pre-concieved notions. It’s growing on me as I turn the pages, a good sign.

A run, a nap, and two games of chess (well, sort of) with Benjamin. And no work tomorrow. Not bad. Of course, little sleep coming tonight. Can’t have one without the other. I’m saving all sorts of interesting links for later perusal, but I don’t have time to spend in front of the computer to draw connections. Why waste your time with just posting links without comment? (There must be three or four of you out there. 😉

Start with visiting the farmers market at the Ferry Building to start the day. Visit CompUSA (which I hate) to see a Tablet PC in person with my father. Only one Tablet PC available, and so anti-theft-proofed that it was impossible to really demo. Oh well… but wandering around, we found the Logitech Io digital pen, which I’ve been curious about. I explained it to my father, and he was interested enough to buy it right away… it helps that it is 1/10th the price of the cheapest Tablet PC! Ride the 31 Balboa bus home, then move to a slow, careful reading of the sports pages while lying on the grass in the backyard in the pleasant sun (not too hot). Demo the Io (it works… more later). Then, just as Benjamin settles down for his nap, get a surprise call from friends of my parents to join them at the Giants-As game in one hour… in their luxury box, to boot. Needless to say, the nap was abbreviated, and we arrived in the third inning. Giants behind 5-0 at that point, but end up winning 8-7 in 10 innings, with one Barry Bonds home-run along the way. Come home to dinner with friends, and now get ready to collapse. I hope Paton is exhausted and sleeps a bit tonight. Somewhere along the way I need to find time to nap. Or run. Or both!?

New ideas, products, and services grow in the public consciousness very quickly now, but what I find more interesting is how quickly the backlash against the hype sets in. The most recent example is WiFi. For the last year or so, it’s been the greatest thing since sliced bread. Now, the backlash begins, with a Forrester report that got picked up in many places, like the BBC. Quite the overstated headline — “Wi-fi will be ‘next dot.com crash’“. What is meant is that the business of running hotspots will not be terribly profitable, and the many companies expanding to fill the seeming vacuum of opportunity there will all flail and crash. Maybe, but the real story is that the growth in usage is unimpeded, and impressive. As the BBC author notes:

In many ways, wi-fi is already successful, with more and more homes and offices cutting the cable clutter and using wireless routers to link up their computers and connect to the internet.

I’ve got it going at home, and it’s in place at the office, too. It’s just about the short-range mobility, not free-ranging bandwidth everywhere. Honestly, this is why Bluetooth should have been (and may be? well, don’t go there) ‘all that’ — because cables are miserable. Wireless mice demonstrate the same thing: digging around the back of your computer or other device is a pain in the a–. Even those devices which are friendly enough to have various plugs on the front of a device, within reach and sightlines, only ameliorate an annoying situation. How pleasant it is to situate everything just where you want it, not where cables dictate.

Anyway, I’ve strayed from my point. WiFi is here, and growing. Whether there is a business for anyone but the manufacturers of the hardware remains to be seen.

But at least that’s more straightforward than RSS, which is just a damn format but seems to be experiencing a related form of angst. Just let RSS keep growing organically, rather than renaming and rewiring it. Few care about the nuts and bolts of RSS, let alone the name — everyone just wants a more convenient, efficient way to consume information. RSS is almost the WD-40 of the online news & opinion space… it flows everywhere, and is often enough to do the job without resorting to more dramatic means. WD-40 doesn’t do every lubrication job, but very few people buy anything stronger.

I don’t know if my father, who’s supported my computer habit from an early age, will ever really use a computer. He’s just begun using email, with assistance. The hardest part (well, there are many hard parts) is the typing. Meaning, he doesn’t. Here’s someone who more eloquently describes the problem:

There’s one milestone in computing that I’m waiting for. I have no idea if Longhorn will reach this milestone, but no OS today comes even close. The milestone is: The day that I recommend that my parents buy a computer.

Found via
Scoble, who used to work at NEC on Tablet PCs, has a lot to say on why Tablet PCs are different, and really useful for a certain group of people, including

Anti-computer folks. I’ve seen a lot of people who aren’t computer users take right to the Tablet because it isn’t intimidating. A machine with 100+ keys on it is intimidating. A tablet is much nicer for many people to learn on.

Of course, when my father went to Office Depot to try and see one, he couldn’t. Hmmm… do I want to go to a computer store with my father? Would be a good test for me, and for him, too.

Run? (nope)
Nap? (nope)
Catch up on work? (a little)
Play with son? (some)
Watch days-old daughter so wife can have a life? (some)
Put photos of new baby online? (not yet)
Pay bills? (yes)
Blog? (a little 😉

This is (sort of) my time off from work. If time == the only true currency, as I’ve claimed, then I’m feeling pretty poor right now… and that’s while my parents are still in town to help out! Uh oh.

I’m excited about how RSS has changed my reading habits, but the growing fervor hasn’t yet convinced me there is a new business opportunity here. Maybe if you’re an independent software developer (think Ranchero.com or Bradsoft.com), and you can move faster than Microsoft’s Outlook team. But… really something large here? We’ll see.

I’m wondering whether I’m ready for my newsreader to be more than a reader? Seeing as I’m still using NetNewsWire Lite instead of the real thing, maybe not. Also, I like thinking/working in my email client, but I’m happy to think of email and RSS differently for now. They are different, of course, but lots of people are writing that the email interface will be the key to broader understanding/acceptance. That may be true, but if RSS is only another form of email, it’s not what everyone is so excited about. (Although email is nothing to be ashamed of, since it’s (still) bigger than the web in its impact.) Will standards matter? A big push is starting now, and I’m not sure why.

While at the hospital, I finally finished The Hours, by Michael Cunningham. More famous, I think, for being made into a movie than anything else, but that’s not fair to a Pulitzer Prize winner, I guess — even if Nicole Kidman, Meryl Streep, and Julianne Moore were the leads. I didn’t enjoy the book. It was smoothly written, with interesting pacing, but since it’s built around Virginia Woolf, and deliberately includes her as a character while writing Mrs. Dalloway (whose original title was The Hours), perhaps I should have read that first. Per the academic site just cited: “Michael Cunningham’s novel of that title [The Hours] is a modern adaptation of Mrs. Dalloway, a fascinating read especially for those who know the Woolf novel.” Anyway, glad to have put this one behind me.

We’re home with Paton now, and it’s time to start again. This time, we know how it works with a new baby, but a few things are different. Most of all, Benjamin is here, and we’re trying to weave him into the Paton picture, and vice versa. Also, Paton will probably be different, although these earliest days of infanthood have to be pretty much the same. We have some help again, fortunately, in the form of my parents. Extra hands and more. Phew. Also, this time I cannot stay home for weeks. I was between jobs when Benjamin arrived (deliberately). I like my job now, and the economy isn’t in a place where I would deliberately risk something new just now.

That said, we have a sunny day in San Francisco, Benjamin and Paton are napping at the same time, and I have the computer to myself for a few minutes. Not bad.

Paton Donahoe Roberts arrived this morning. She’s healthy, and so is her mother.