Emo Cow

google image search of the moment: emo cow

To

Regarding passion.

There is not any “grand, magnificent, all-encompassing design” and there never was or will be.

What looks grand and designed in hindsight is the just like seeing design in the free market. There is no watchmaker. Just billions of choices, good or bad.

So fuck the driving forces, and make a passionate choice now.

To Insure Proper Service

Gmail IMAP + Mail.app is nice. Note that you may select the gmail Drafts, then go to Mailbox → Use This Mailbox For → Drafts, and so for each gmail message. You may also archive a piece of mail in the inbox by dragging it to All Mail. You may move another piece to to same place with Command + Option + T.

Oh how time slips away

I’ve been a user of Harvest for a number of months now. I’ve gotten a few people on it, and enjoy it thoroughly. I’ve tried Tick, but a time tracker without a timer is (grasping for metaphor) worthless (clear language is better than colorful ambiguity, right?).

However, I’ve just given SlimTimer a try and am unsure of harvest’s future. Basecamp integration is awesome, yes. But do I have to have project constraints on my users? Estimates? No.

Of course, I could convince my employer to adopt harvest. Their time tracker is a horrible mess, but build with the same goal in mind. Estimates, employees constrained to a finite set of projects, spiffy API.

I will ponder this problem for perhaps the next month, since I just payed the harvest bill. We’ll see.

Fat client leacher

Would it surprise you that I use fat clients for most internet stuff? That’s right, most of the apps I use are for cocoa or win-forms. The blogs I read, the mail I send, the music I listen to is rarely housed in safari, internet explorer, or firefox.

That’s because I don’t have internet at home. I’m a computer programmer, director or leading member of a handful of local computer groups, occasional podcaster, blogger, and really bad web designer. I have been working on replacing the traditional operating system with a web operating system since 2004. Ironic, no?

But while I’ll pay to get a current of electricity and water, or some walls with a roof, I’m not going to pay to talk and listen to you. If my parents didn’t value talking to me so much, I wouldn’t have a phone. I don’t have cable, satellite, and barely listen to radio. These things are synchronous, so for them to get my attention it has to be on their terms. Same goes for instant messaging.

Synchronous info can be great. There’s nothing like being able to talk to a loved one when you can’t be with them. There’s nothing like live video when you want to watch a game, see breaking news, enjoy your favorite show as soon as it airs. But I don’t need to hear about bills, see your latest fishing photos, read the latest company memo right now. And the best way to take synchronous info and hold it for asynchronous access is a fat client, bar none.

Most people are amazed at how tivo changed the way they watch tv. But you can do the same with almost everything. Do try.

Propertied Intellectual?

Steamboat Willie opens a gap in the New York Times. Or rather, Disney’s copyright lobby prevents access to New York Times archives.

Doesn’t it make sense to allow use if no copyright holder can be found? Trademark holders have to defend their property, why should copyright holders be any different?

Live ID Isn’t Auth[nz]

Dare Obasanjo wrote about how It isn’t OpenID vs. Windows Live ID

If this SDK is providing authorization to access resources, wouldn’t that make it an authentication and authorization SDK?

People are confused because it’s called web authentication. That is what OpenID does. It’s not necessarily a SSO provider, as vidoop shows.

Solving all the world’s problems, one woman at a time.


He-who-must-not-be-named

See here: Fix the Leopard Folders (FTLF or FTFLF) Or rather, He-who-must-not-be-named likes them.

Behold that bester of swords

See here: Glamour to the eyes of pen geeks c/o Gruber