Woke up the other morning to find our landline + DSL dead. Connections look fine, but no dial tone. Began my safari through the SBC phone menu tree (via cell) to log a trouble ticket – a thoroughly unpleasant adventure which ultimately consumed 40 minutes spread over six attempts, using a combination of push-button input and voice recognition.
250,000 Rubber Balls
Yes, it’s a Sony commercial, but nevermind that. Who would have thought that throwing a quarter million superballs down a San Francisco street could have such a gorgeous, calming effect?
Longer, higher-resolution version at Salon, and a very high resolution at the source.
Processing to Zero
No connection to 43 Things (other than the two sites time-sharing a prime number): 43 Folders (oh yeah, about the name) features heaps of genuinely useful articles and tips on time and stress management. That’s not a topic I generally consider an interest, but I’ve been on an approach to zero-message inbox nirvana for several months now, and it’s just amazing what a difference it makes in overall stress levels. Leaving work with nothing in the inbox makes you feel in control, less overwhelmed. Like you own the job, rather than the other way around.
Like Kirk’s “solution†to the Kobayashi Maru Scenario, there’s an easy but non-obvious way to win at this Catch-22: you cheat. You don’t answer them all. Not even most of them. You rewrite the rules. You adapt at a higher level. You have to, or else the Klingons will overwhelm you with their superior fire power and brute force — and then your email would remain unanswered for eternity. Think how sad that would be.
Other useful stuff: Building a better to-do list, learning how to write email messages that respect the recipient’s workflow, running dashes for quick productivity bursts.
Music: Joan Armatrading :: Down to Zero
Microsoft Feels Your Pain
Well, at least we know we’re not alone. Extracted from CSS files living on microsoft.com web servers:
/* fix for the IE 1px-off margin error */
* html .StupidIEMarginHack
{
margin-right: 1px;
}
* html .StupidIEWidthHack
{
width: 100%;
}
But as we heard from several sources at SXSW, IE7 (due out soon) will improve CSS compatibility by leaps and bounds. Question then is, what happens to all of the legions of IE-specific CSS hacks in place out there? Will the fix break existing sites badly, or will MS provide some kind of mechanism to detect and ignore the mine-field of a million workarounds?
Thanks mneptok
Music: Billy Bragg & Wilco :: The Unwelcome Guest
Cost of War, Revised
Back in December ’04, I embedded a JavaScript counter tallying the cost of war in Iraq, which continues to tick away at a rate of around $2,000/second. The topic came up with friends the other night, triggering another look into the topic. nationalpriorities.org provides a very well annotated and sourced database comparing the cost of war in Iraq to the costs of other national expenses. The trade-offs below are based on a projected total cost of $315.8 billion for the war in Iraq, which would be equivalent to:
71,717,012 People Receiving Health Care or
5,472,330 Elementary School Teachers or
41,823,351 Head Start Places for Children or
185,783,623 Children Receiving Health Care or
2,843,180 Affordable Housing Units or
37,159 New Elementary Schools or
61,230,780 Scholarships for University Students or
5,441,915 Music and Arts Teachers or
7,114,877 Public Safety Officers or
558,642,585 Homes with Renewable Electricity or
4,946,324 Port Container Inspectors
Unfortunately, the database sessions at the site time out, making the reports tough to link to. For a current report, click Tradeoffs, then select United States | Cost of War | All.
Thanks baald
Music: Pete Townshend :: Parvardigar
Attention or Eyeballs
Trying to come to some understanding of all this recent discussion about attention vs. intention vs. old-school eyeballs. Cluetrain, 1999: “We are not seats or eyeballs or end users or consumers. We are human beings and our reach exceeds your grasp. Deal with it.” Doc Searles’ wife: “Sales is real. Marketing is bullshit.” Nick Bradbury: “Right now we’re witnessing the growth of services who provide aggregated attention data, and statistics suggested by this data will increasingly impact those of us – journalists and techies alike – who hope to survive in the online world.” Mary Hodder, excerpted from notes on her decision to join the board of Attention Trust:
What’s the difference between the static web and the live web? Participation.
What’s the difference between consumers and users/amateurs? Participation.
What’s the difference between attention and eyeballs? Participation.
So as we move from an eyeball-centric to an attention-centric web, and as companies realize the value of harnessing and harvesting individual attention streams, we (users/readers/consumers) stand to benefit. BUT it also becomes critical to retain control over our own databases of intention (attention?), lest they be used against us.
Music: Cardiacs :: The Leader of the Starry Skies
New Media Lecture Series
Gearing up for another big work week — once again we’re hosting a compressed version of our multimedia training program for mid-career journalists. Sandwiched between training sessions are a series of talks by journalists and thinkers, including John Battelle, Bob Cauthorn, Dan Gillmor, Craig Newmark, and others. The talks are open to the public and will be webcast live, with archived versions scheduled to go online the following week.
Magical Realism
Apparently I have a second wife, about which I knew nothing until the other night. Miles, describing his day over dinner:
This is mommy’s restaurant with the hot dogs and I was walking down the street with my gorilla on a leash so he doesn’t get away and an idea popped right into my head for the gorilla to eat upstairs and play with toys while I eat downstairs [we don’t have an upstairs] and eat food. No gorillas allowed in the pet store because there’s only people allowed. I saw a bee on the way and it was buzzing around honey and drinking nectar. Because you’re not allowed to get food on the toys. No, it wasn’t mommy’s restaurant, it was the Bay Bridge Restaurant [there is no such restaurant] a long long way away and I had to drive a car there, up a hill and down a hill and I put the gorilla in the front seat, and I have one daddy and two mommies, that’s three parents, and my other mommy’s name is Catherine Henry Frank.
The life of imagination of a three-year-old is so rich, and so many characters from his books and movies become part of our daily life, as if they actually exist (though the gorilla/restaurant story did not seem to be based on anything he’s read/consumed — totally improvised). I sometimes wonder if he distinguishes between reality and fiction at all. It’s a blessed state.
Music: Iron & Wine :: Teeth in the Grass
Xyle Scope
A tip from one of the panelists at SXSW, in the CSS Problem Solving session: “If you’re working with CSS and need a good analysis/debugging tool, it doesn’t get any better than Xyle Scope. Mac only, but if you don’t own a Mac, Xyle Scope is a good reason to get one.”
Many CSS designs hide browser discrepancies by allowing white space to overlap, etc. The thing about the current Birdhouse design is that the divs are packed very tightly together, allowing no room for that kind of masking. Tearing out serious hair recently trying to get this style working in all browsers (don’t get me started on MSIE and CSS), with no div overlaps and no fugly gaps. Xyle Scope didn’t magically solve the problem, but it did give me a window onto the primary culprit last night, which I couldn’t have gotten any other way.
Breaking the Spell
Fascinating conversation between Moira Gunn and philosopher Daniel Dennett at IT Conversations (podcast). Dennett is a renowned determinist, but isn’t talking along those line here. His book “Breaking the Spell” makes the point that religion has been — and is — one of the most important forces (for change, or its opposite) in the world. As such, it deserves to be studied objectively, from the outside, as thoroughly and as rigorously as the banking industry, as politics, as world demographics. “The spell” is what prevents that kind of study from taking place — the tacit belief that religion is somehow in a different category, and that it’s somehow disrespectful or taboo to study religion itself. Religions like to be studied from the inside — using their own scriptures or lore as a framework for study. But they tend to resist study from the outside – a spell that Dennett wants to break.
He also makes some fascinating observations about the biological/genetic triggers for religion, leading to some interesting speculation on its cultural origins. Another synopsis on Dennett at Salon.
Totally tangential: Not even The Archbishop of Canterbury believes that creationism should be taught in schools. SF Chronicle:
I think creationism is, in a sense, a kind of category mistake, as if the Bible were a theory like other theories,” the Most Rev. Rowan Williams told the Guardian newspaper. … My worry is that creationism can end up reducing the doctrine of creation rather than enhancing it.
England does not have an evangelical movement to parallel the one in the U.S.
Music: Ornette Coleman :: Harlem’s Manhattan