Archive for April, 2005

Some nights, my two older kids – Gabrielle, 8, and Ethan, 4 – beg me to make up and tell them a story. I used to quite often spontaneously make up and tell a new story, but I haven’t done it for a long time. Tonight I did, and this is the tale that...
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Music industry? Movie industry? Are you listening? Adapt or die.
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Schemasoft, the Vancouver data translation company that Apple just acquired, cancelled a multi-million dollar deal with Microsoft just the day after the acquisition closed. I spent the evening at Vancouver Enterprise Forum and talked to someone close to the company. Apparently, although Apple has been Schemasoft’s biggest client for some time now, Microsoft was...
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Aidan turned two today. He had a “Bob the Builder” birthday, which he says as “Bob a Do-Do.” Very cute. Two years of joy, two years of laughter, two years of love … all times three for all our kids. It’s hard to believe. Wow – what a blessing. Undeserved, but not unappreciated.
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This is the first (and maybe the last) in a series that I am planning to write on that most horrible, boring, awful, and necessary (but black) art: project management. (Actually, here’s the second sin.) First Cardinal Sin Starting before you are ready. This pathetic platitude is amazingly often ignored by smart people who...
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Ten years ago I was an English major in university, thinking about a career in journalism. Then I realized that at any given time, there are more people in school to become journalists than there are jobs as journalists. So much for the journalism thing. But I might have given it up for entirely...
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Sick. As. A. Dog. No more sushi. Ever. And that’s the last I have to say on that subject.
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Never underestimate the power of the internet to surprise you. Or, rather, never underestimate the amazing, odd, weird, and wonderful things people actually invest time and energy and money into. I just noticed Blogshares, the “Fantasy Blog Share Market.” Apparently, my blog is currently trading at around $3300 US, and trending upwards. Unfortunately, I...
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Should usernames be case sensitive or insensitive? I just got bitten by this question on a site recently. The usernames were case sensitive; users were trying to log in; they kept getting rejected by the system; and support people who tried with the users’ own information were getting in just fine. I haven’t found...
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Wow. While not quite on the level of a four-leaf clover, a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, or a dodo bird, I did find something extemely unusual today: an Apple employee blogger. I found this rare species Macintoshus bloggoria while researching this post about Safari. And this guy actually says...
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Mike in our office here just found this case of WYSIWYG editing in Safari. VERY cool! Unfortunately, everything works just slightly differently than in IE or Firefox … the triggering mechanism for the B, I, and U (and other) buttons is a little different. But it’s a step in...
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If you haven’t seen Threadless yet, you’re missing something. This is an incredibly cool company – the motto is “nude no more” – that has outsourced product development to …. you. Unbelievable, and incredible (which are two words that, when you think about it, actually mean the same thing). You want to design a...
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I recently re-read all the 7 books that comprise the chronicles of Narnia. And my daughter Gabrielle is just finishing up The Last Battle, the last of the series. It’s her second time reading the series – she read it through at the age of 6 for the first time (she’s 8 now) –...
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OK, I’m at a complete and utter loss. Has the advertising industry totally and completely lost any remants of any vestige of creativity? Apparently it has – at least the portion of it that works at or for CNN.com. What’s wrong with the picture below? (It’s a screen capture from CNN.com, taken April 12,...
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Technorati is the self-proclaimed finger on the pulse of the rapidly-growing blogosphere. Anyone who’s anyone knows Technorati, in spite of the proliferation of me-to sites and services all over the place (to a greater or lesser extent these include: Daypop, Popdex, Feedster, Blogwise). And the info Technorati provides (or could be mined for) is...
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