Daytime Running Lights
The future is here, it's just not evenly distributed yet.
Here’s video of Amy and my wedding in 2006.
We didn’t watch the video until almost our second anniversary, because we didn’t want to mix up our memories of the event with these electronic ones. On watching it, I realized for the first time how hilariously funny some of our friend and officiant Marian’s remarks were.
My first tech public speaking event, at PDX.rb tonight.
Talked about dropping App Drop – here are the slides (pdf ).
In the Fritz Lang masterpiece M there’s some bitchin’ infographics.
They usually show up when the facist leadership are prosecuting the horrible murderer, as examples of the state’s omnicience.
Here’s an awesome map sequence:
I hope to post some more of the amazing infographics from this movie. Until next time,
Grabb.it has revved up another notch.
Version 1.0 began in 2005 as a hobby project to learn Rails. Early 2007, we started from scratch on Grabb.it 2.0, released last May. Meet rev 3.
We’re shifting the focus to mp3 blogs – they’ve be around a while, but the new UI puts them out front. So if you love music and blogging, we’ll be doing a little of both around there, and you’re welcome to join us.
Here’s some old-time music I grabbed from the Berea Music Archive ages ago:
Wandered across this site today. SpinJay accepts user requests for playlists, and asks other users to fill in song information. The site then uses the SeeqPod API to generate XSPF.
http://spinjay.com/playlist.php?id=180
It seems like XSPF and the ideas it brings with it are beginning to become part of the fabric of the web. Even a year ago I’d have been surprised to see a new user playlisting site using open standards, and now, lo and behold, XSPF/API sites are springing up left and right.
Announcement ya’ll I just dropped the Grabb.it API Documentation and examples on a brand new Google group. I’m inviting you to come mix up our data, and providing some Javascript kit as well.
Click here for the Grabb.it Playlist API Documentation.
There are code examples and more REST theory on the way.
Embeded below is a simple Flash Player playing New Music from Grandpa Chris, a Grabb.it XSPF playlist:
(consider me surprised if that comes through your reader)
“This is bizarre. No other programming environment threatens to pull the rug out from under the programmer the way the web does. If you are writing applications in Java, you do not have to be prepared for having Java turned off. But because of the browser’s long and tragic history of security screwups, JavaScript does get turned off.” – Unobtrusive Javascript, from Douglas Crockford
I disagree. The separation of the Data (the html document) from the Behavior (in the js) is just good practice. It also preserves a fundamental tenet of the (semantic) web: to reward the lowest common denominator. In the long run, text rules over all else. So may your documents be independent, and your Javascript unobtrusive.
I for one, enjoy the challenges of writing browser code in the face of adversity.
Search YouTube for videos without video. Songza.com nice DHTML.
wild. it worked.
Ok so there’s this thing happening, and we’re all in it. And we can kinda grok what it means. The distributed-information-freedom thing. But then Cyberspace everts, and we’re totally wtfed.
And we’re not at all sure where we’re going. Remember web time? The ECMASkirmish makes me think it’s back. When the web gets unstable, time speeds up a little. At least, web time. Because in change there are new opportunities.
Maybe this is the singularity speaking, but I don’t know anyone who can even say what the world will be like in 5 yrs. Will we all route our messages via services? Will we even survive?
Assertion: The amount and diversity of predictions you could make today, without being laughed out of the room, is far greater than at any other time ever so far in our history as a species.
Example Predictions:
Oops! I set out to write a list of preposterous predictions, but kept cracking myself up with things that are like, already a given in today’s world.
I’ve heard a lot lately from the professional vanguard that it’s getting harder to see over the edge. Maybe what makes it so hard to imagine out-of-left-field scenarios, is that everything you come up with is already taken. By reality.
You’re gonna need to get out there, to come up with something that’s not already plausible. Just coming up with a scenario that counts as science-fiction is hard. Because all the actual stuff is so weird, its harder to be original.
Please comment with a prediction… lets say 2014… and you’ve gotta come up with something that makes me say, “No way!”. Someone out there’s gotta have it.
Maybe that curve of weirdness looks like your server logs… and as time goes by even the things that really could happen just get more and more inconceivable. I wonder if people have always felt this way?
Perhaps the problem of the singularity isn’t that we’re not smart enough, its that we’re not imaginative enough.
ps. my prediction is kinda sad: We kill ourselves off before we’re self-sufficient on Mars. But what does that have to do with the network?
Apologies for mentioning the iPhone thing. I’m getting sick of all the discussion too. Just one counter-point I need to make.
Certain negative comments I’ve seen on posts like the NY Times Bits blog disturb me deeply. The gist of the bad comments are “quit crying, baby, you took the risk and voided you’re warranty”. On them I call bullshit.
But the question is: where do people get the idea that one shouldn’t hack your own computer? My conjecture is that if you consider the iPhone as a fancy phone then it’s way cooler than anything LG is selling. But seeing it as a computer that happens to make calls and fit in your pocket, I’m offended and dismayed by Apple’s stance.
There is a reason Free Software advocates mean “free as in freedom” and to anyone who has been exposed to those ideas, any device which is essentially a computer, but which is actively hostile to its users, is deeply troubling. Computing (communications) and freedom go hand-in-hand, as we’ve seen time and again.
The enemies of freedom are scared by the widespread adoption of general purpose computing (it threatens their business model) and are trying as hard as they can to lock the doors. Should the new iPhone prove unhackable, it will show tyrants (and freedom fighters) that freedom and computing do not necessarily go hand in hand.
If Apple keeps this up much longer, they’ll go on my list of companies to put out of business. Freedom to compute as you wish is rapidly becoming as fundamental as freedom of speech, thought, and assembly. An enemy of freedom is an enemy of mine.
I’m getting into sticking sidebar widgets in my posts. Its fun to watch them fall off the bottom. This one is supposed to be my shared feed items from Google Reader. I doubt you can see it in your feed reader.
If you’re in a feed reader and want to subscribe to the things I star, then you can probably do it by clicking through to this post and then clicking on the widget to get to the feed.
Or you can just click directly to my shared items – might be easier.
not bad at all. via Jonathon Coulton
It looks like they are giving out podcast feeds with those 30 second previews in em. The format is AAC, so google reader’s flash player doesn’t do so well. We should start seeing iTunes 30 second previews all over the web before long.
Astute readers may have noticed the increasing coverage of Grabb.it related topics in my various feeds. We’ve been putting the spit ‘n polish on for release. Hodel 3000, etc.
Basically all the things we have to do to iterate quickly and surely once we deploy. If you want to follow Grabb.it more closely, we’ve started a tumblr:
I’m running my blog again, just like before, but with more power! So if you were accustomed to looking at the old Daytime Running Lights, now you’ll get accustomed to looking at the new.
If you’ve got the time and inclination, head over to the index page and check out the variety of feeds available. Some of you might rather subscribe to Livin’ or maybe even Music. There is a new party in town called Vinyl where I’m blogging my parents’ huge record collection, one Jerry Jeff Walker or freaky chilled-out flute player at a time.
