I note that that ETech 2006 and SXSW Interative follow on from each other next year. I can probably find the airfare, but I wonder if there’s any way I can scam passes…
This entry was originally published at my workblog.
Category: Uncategorized
Beaten to it
But I supposed I can feel slightly relieved. I’ve mentioned The Programming Project That Will Not Die a couple of times, I think, but I’ve just found a site that does almost exactly what TPPTWND was planned to do. It’s Upcoming.org.
I still think that TPPTWND I’ve still got the project to complete, but I’m going to scale it back like a bastard now, and focus in some of the other interesting bits about the site, rather than building it as a huge social app for now.
This entry was originally published at my workblog.
Personal productivity
I’m slowly trying to teach myself to be organised and productive. To those of you who have seen the state of my room, and are now laughing like drains, I can only say a) I said slowly, b) that’s mostly personal detritus, and c) it’s on my to-do list, it’d just not a very high priority.
However, I’ve just turned up 43 Folders, which might be useful.
Following on from this: Workhappy merits looking at later, as does the blog Technology and the Social, I’ve been meaning to link kottke.org up for a bit, despite the fact that you’re all reading it already, and I should spend a bit of time with Lifehacker, and or a purely personal basis I want to take time to read DIY photography on the cheap.
But first, I should probably tidy my room.
This entry was originally published at my workblog.
Social Stuff
The Social Software weblog – what it says on the tin.
Annoyingly, one of the first things I discover is planzo.com, a social calendaring tool. Granted, what I’m planning is a bit more than just that, but y’know, bollocks, nonentheless.
This entry was originally published at my workblog.
Baaa!
LJ Interests meme results
- blues:
I should probably be more specific: delta blues. Dirty, scratchy vinyl sounds behind a miserable bastard with a guitar and a spare rythmn. Music made more as much out of myth as notes. No show, no flash, but something honest and human. Dark bars and cold booze on hot nights. - early punk:
I feel the need to qualify that so that people don’t think I like Blink 182, or something horrifying. Musically, a lot of it is fucking awful anyway, but I’m a sucker for a DIY ethic, unless it is in some way connected to shelves. - futurism:
I think anyone without a certain amount of interest in this is missing the point. We’re going to be living there tomorrow, so we ought to be fucking well trying to guess what it’s going to be like, if only so we have a better chance to get it right. - high weirdness:
Well, come on, if you’re going to enjoy weirdness, it might as well be the really fucked up shit. - lafitte’s:
Lafitte’s Blacksmith Shop is the best bar in New Orleans, and on that basis, a serious contender for being the best bar in the world. If it has survived the hurricane, I will be both shocked and delighted, but I really don’t expect that it has. - new orleans:
The only American city I’ve been to that I can say I really enjoyed just for itself, despite the place doing it’s level best to kill me with heat at the time. I can only imagine how much I’d have liked it if I’d gone at a sensible time of year, and I can only hope that they rebuild it exactly as it was. - photography:
As I keep telling everyone, I have no interest in this whatsoever. - queen & country:
Greg Rucka’s fucking brilliant series of comics and novels about life working at the sharp end of MI6. Forget the Bond movies. This is a series about damaged headcases, and the way the job chews them up and spits them out. - stories:
They’re what make us human. If you cannot tell me a story, I have no wish to know you. - this too shall pass:
I have this tattooed on me, because I think it’s a sufficiently important sentiment to merit making sure I can’t forget it.
Quick Link Roundup
PHP streams – a few things I didn’t know about working with files in PHP.
5 mistakes band/label websites make – I think we’re slowly educating people away from them, but still, a handy reference for when I’m dealing with particularly stupid artists/managers.
Google blog search may balkanise the web. I don’t think it will, but it’s two topics I want to come back to at some point – balkanisation/taste-tribes and the value of blog-searching.
Web 2.0, from Abstracted Dynamics. A lengthy and well thought out piece on what this Web 2.0 business that everyone’s talking about actually is.
This entry was originally published at my workblog.
Communication and Conviction
I’ve been thinking a lot about soap boxes, and getting one’s message across, and basically how people can tell others the things they care about and generally get heard. And then I read Desolation Jones #3, and it got me to thinking. This essay is very much only a start, but I wanted to just set down where my head is at with regard to what I do all day right now, in the hope of building on it. It’s a bit scattershot, but it’s there to clarify a few things for me. Next time, I’ll try and get stuck into techniques for on-line discourse, or something…
This entry was originally published at my workblog.
Offshore Life
Ben Hammersley writes in the Guardianabout the idea of personal offshoring. On the one hand, this fills me with dread – it’s taking the skillset that I have developed over the years, and making it available for much, much cheaper that I can afford to be.
On the other hand, I could really, really use some design work doing on the cheap. Of course, I want it to be fully XHTML/CSS and standards-compliant and all that jazz, and I’m not confident that a third-world designer will be (or indeed, that they’ll be modern looking designs – all the ones I’ve seen on template sites look about three years out of date, to me.
Don’t suppose anyone reading this is a design professional with XHTML/CSS skills willing to work for the price of a few pints per site?
This entry was originally published at my workblog.
Digitalia.
Further to yesterday’s question, and the comments: You can now get an LJ feed of my workblog at als_workblog (I’m feeling original tonight…), and I’m going to start enabling commenting on selected entries. The basic linkbloggery that makes up about 50% of the thing is not for commenting on, but if I think there’s something worthing thinking a bit more about, then I’ll leave comments on.
Tools and Design
So I stumbled across Garrett Dimmon’s point making prank the other day, and it’s got me thinking about the way I present myself on the web.
The two sites I’ve put on-line most recently are this one, and my photography portfolio, and for both, I’ve just grabbed an out-of-the-box tool, and stuck with minor modifications to the default template. I do intend to make them into something fully custom at some point, but it’s not high on my priority list.
Given that I’m a professional web developer one might suggest that this doesn’t present the best image of my technical skills.
Or, of course, one might say that I see no need to spend weeks re-inventing the wheel, and that I know I’m not a professional designer, so if I can get something that looks good for now, that’s enough. Surely, if there’s an art to what I do, it’s in knowing how to communicate well for the minimum time investment. Just a thought…
This entry was originally published at my workblog.