Recently in Musings Category

From the New York Times Some Parents Oppose Obama School Speech:

…telling children they should not hear out the president of the United States, even if their parents dislike his policies, sends the wrong message — that one should not listen to someone with whom you disagree.

It’s rather sad and remarkable what an intolerant and absolute society we still are as a whole. In the past decade it seems worse, but then again I wasn’t alive during the civil rights moment or the days of the civil war to compare. It seems to be forgotten that this country was founded on and has succeeded based on compromise and debate, not blind absolutism.

I’ve really missed blogging here and I keep thinking about starting again. There is a lot I’ve been through and a lot that I observe daily that I’ve went to share even if no one is listening. Maybe this will finally motivate me.

We’ll it’s been a hectic and stressful time lately that I haven’t posted here in a while, but I thought its worth noting that I’m back living in NYC. Brooklyn, actually. Park Slope to be exact.

I’m still working on getting unpacked and used to me new surroundings, but if you want to meet up drop me a line. I’ll be here through July and then — who knows!

In other news, The Gothamist is reporting that Darren Star and company (of Sex and the City fame) are developing a show that will revolve around Park Slope and all the “Stroller Moms” that inhabit the here streets.

Great — there goes the neighborhood.

CNet in the UK has listed Microsoft Windows Vista amongst the 10 worst technology products of all time.

I know I’m biased for having jumped ship years ago to OS X and Unix land, but ouch! Even Microsoft Bob didn’t make their list.

It seems to someone needed to sit the folks at Microsoft a long while ago and play that scene in (the original) Star Wars where Grand Moff Tarkin tells Princess Leia that no one will dare oppose the rule of the emperor and she defiantly replies “The more you tighten your grip, Tarkin, the more star systems will slip through your fingers.”

This is what happens when marketing and bean counters design a product rather then doing right by your customers.

Granted Apple isn’t always a sterling example either, but they do a lot better then Microsoft has.

BTW: What is a “Grand Moff” anyway?

Artur Bergman reports on his tour of Virgin America's new planes as it enters the US domestic market. Air travel is become so miserable and degrading that something has to change. Hopefully this is the shot in the arm the airline business needs.

SCENE: Tim Appnel walking the halls of ETech 2006 when Rich Gibson leaps into his view from off the floor.

Rich: Hey! Is Ben answering your email? Did you hear why Hammersley's isn't here? He's is getting a 3 foot tattoo down his side?

Tim: Really?!? I've heard from him a bit because of the big project he has going on. He got one down his back right before OSCON.

Rich: I know!

Tim: Three foot though?!? What is it this time?

Rich: I don't know, but that's what I'm hearing. I'll let you know if I hear anything else.

Tim and Rich part company.

SCENE: In another part of the hotel in another hall Tim spots the lovely Paula Le Dieu approaching.

Tim: Paula my dear! I have a question to ask you.

Paula: Wait. Wait. I know. Yes he did. It's a 3 foot long dragon down his side. He just got the outline today. It gets filled in 2 weeks from now. He also said it hurt like hell.

Tim smiles and shakes his head slowly trying to process what he just heard. Finally....

Tim: What a wild man!

It was true. Our favorite english gentleman was on his way to becoming a living canvas. Yesterday those two weeks were up.

I now present to you Ben's finished three foot dragon tattoo. More on Flickr here.

Oddly enough the Netflix DVD I had just watched was the night before was Enter The Dragon.

How could I pass up a t-shirt featuring Anil Dash? Best part is its purple. (Anil is a HUGE Price fan. Get it?)

Some time ago I set a goal for myself to write a book. Looking over Amazon UK at Ben's upcoming book I noticed my name listed on the site. Given my aspirations it made me smile and wince at the same time. I've been involved in two[1] book efforts now, put a lot of work in only to have them cancelled. Both times I've been told its been for unfavorable market conditions and not my writing. At least that is their story and they're sticking to it. I was compensated for my efforts so it wasn't a complete personal loss, but I really wasn't in it for the money to begin with. (Never go into writing a book for the money.)

I did get to write a manual which is I suppose that's pretty close, but not exactly what I had in mind. (It would have been nice to have finished it.)

If at first you don't succeed, try, try again.

[1] Technically it's three if I count the Blog Hacks book that I was contributing a great deal to.

My wife convinced me to take this Jung Personality test here. The results say I'm a ISTJ (Introverted Sensing Thinking Judging) or "Trustee". Decisiveness in practical affairs. Guardian of time-honored institutions. Dependable. 11.6% of the total population is a Trustee.

Interesting. Seems fairly accurate though I've never thought of myself as being a guardian of time honored instutions. I suppose it depends on what they mean by institutions.

Kristen's results she is a ESFJ (Extroverted Sensing Feeling Judging). That seems about right.

It's a high time I put my new years resolutions out there. Its become a tradition of mine that is better late then never I suppose. This year I tried to be a bit more thoughtful and perhaps realistic by setting goals that I could measure. I al took some advice I read and brought on an "advisor".

Looking back at 2005 it was another down year overall. My ego still hasn't made its way back home and worse it seems my self-esteem ran away with it. I'm getting used to them being gone though!

House renovations and trying to build a business from it have weighed heavy throughout. The death of my grandfather and the disasters in New Orleans region and Pakistan were all major bummers.

It wasn't all bad though. We welcomed our second child Teagan Cecelia in April. I'm enjoying fatherhood a lot more this second time around. My youngest brother Kevin got married taking any Appnel boys off the market for a good 15 years. I also got to a number of conference this year and got to meet a lot of interesting and intelligent people I'd mostly known online. I was honored to be one of the tools to attend the year's O'Reilly Foo Camp. I also got to do some interesting work as interest in MT consulting clear grew through the year.

Looking back at last year's list though it was more misses then hits. I'm not sure if I'm setting my goals to high or need to set them so they are more easily measured. (I'm going for the later this year.)

A quick review of last year's list:

Take care of my health.

This one I did pretty well with. I got back to see a whole flotilla of medical professionals for different things. In many cases I had just stopped going for years. Where I failed is in exercising for both stress relief and doing something about my weight. Towards the end of the summer and early fall I got into running for a while. While I hate running in general it helped. With the cold weather and the holidays I've fell back off the wagon.

Balance coding and writing. (again)

Still having troubles with this one. I cranked out a lot of code last year. I also rewrote the Movable Type manual and partook in another cancelled book effort. That said I ended the year severely burned out when it came to writing anything of substance. It's still lingering.

Seek Stability.

Still having troubles here also. This is more of a career issue then anything. Having my own consultancy in a nascent market is like riding a roller coaster. Having pinned my success on a startup struggling to get it together themselves -- well I wonder if I've just been plain stupid.

Relax. Be Human.

Did better here though more work is needed. Other then during the MT documentation work I did much better then the past year. Better work/life balance and a lot less working passed exhaustion.

Involvement.

Failed miserably here. The non-profit I was (trying to be) involved in essentially pushed me out. They're doing well though, but it was a major disappoint on the year. Trying to be human (see above), I just dropped that whole idea of involvement.

On to the new year!

So my advisor (wife) thinks this will be an up year. I hope her optimism rubs off and proves to be true. So I came up with a few realistic goals that would be a challenge. This year I tried to make them all measurable rather then the broad open-ended ones of years past.

Read some non-tech books.

This one keep appearing on my list and I keep failing. This year I'm going to list some specific ones. I want to read David Allen's Getting Things Done, Barry Sears' A Week In The Zone (from what I can tell an "abridged" version of The Zone) and at least two of Ian Fleming's Bond books that my dad lent me from his high school paperback collection. If I read these during the year I would have made a huge improvement over past years. The issue is finding time in my regular schedule -- without a commute and little business travel I've found that finding time to be the most difficult part.

Get in Shape.

Since I've be doing better seeing medical professionals I'll get more specific here. This year was pretty dismissal when it came to exercise. What I'm learning is that access and organization are keys factors to getting in regular workouts. You don't need a gym membership besides the drive (oh how I miss my in building gym of my city apartment!) wastes too much time. I got a pretty nice free-weights set and bench for my birthday. Big loser that I am I haven't used it because the space is all cluttered up from the current major renovation. Organization has a lot to do with work life balance and making lists -- hence GTD on my reading list. So loose 25 pounds and work out at least twice a week.

Get Hired.

I'm going to put this one on my list and see how the new year plays out. This is an the evolution of last year's "stability" goal that is more measurable. What I've learn from last year is the most difficult and turbulent parts of my life are directly tied to my work situation. While working for myself has its advantages, dealing with the stress, uncertainty and workload of running my own business has taken a lot out of me. Working for someone else would solve this, but doing what is an unanswered question we'll be looking at.

Writing More.

I'm going to put this one on again. It just would be good for me. 1 major business post a month and 4 to my personal weblog.

Coming Clean.

This is a personal one. Like getting hired, I'm not sure if I will do anything about this one either, but I want to put it out there to see what I do about it.

So here is to the new year!

The local hometown paper doesn't keep an archive as far as I can tell. I'm posting my grandfather's obiturary here so we have something to link to.

Walter P. Appnel, hall-of-fame bowler

Walter P. Appnel, a member of the Reading Bowling Association Hall of Fame, died Aug. 31 in St. Joseph Medical Center, where he had been a patient three days.

Appnel, 79, Maidencreek Township, formerly of Reading, was predeceased by his wife, Edna M. (Wielandt) Appnel, on Jan. 22, 1998.

He was inducted into the hall of fame in 1977.

Appnel bowled perfect games in 1956, 1959 and 1997.

In November 1959, he was honored by the Berks County Chamber of Commerce during a sports banquet for rolling 12 strikes in a single game.

Born in Avoca, Luzerne County, he was a son of the late Joseph and Louise (Krakowski) Appnel.

Appnel was employed for 20 years as a paper cutter by the Standard Offset Printing Co., Reading, retiring in 1997.

He was a Navy veteran of World War II.

Appnel was a member of St. Joseph Roman Catholic Church, Reading.

He was a past president of the Reading Bowling Association. He was pin bouy for the association’s 700 Club.

Appnel had 50 years of attendance at the American Bowling Congress’ national tournament.

Surviving are a daughter, Jan L. (Appnel) Scott, with whom he last resided; and a son, Michael J., Maidencreek Township.

Other survivors include a half brother, Patrick J. Appnel, Las Vegas; and a half sister, Alice M. (Appnel) Rosell, Brooklyn, N.Y.

There are also six grandchildren and five great-grandchildren.

A Mass of Christian Burial will be celebrated Saturday at 10 a.m. in St. Joseph’s Church. Entombment will be in Gethsemane Cemetery Mausoleum, Laureldale. Bean Funeral Homes Inc., Reading, is in charge of arrangements.

It's been a sad day around the Appnel household. My grandfather, Walter Appnel, passed away this morning. He was a hero of mine and the toughest SOB I've ever known. Just shy of his 80th birthday, my mother-in-law commented that he was young. In a sense he was, but to have known the story of his life, or at least the parts he told us about, you realize he lived several of our lifetimes.

His father left him and his mother broke and destitute during the depression when he was only 2 year old. 10 years later his father returned for him because he had reached working age. My grandfather told him to go to hell that he never wanted to see him again. (And he didn't.) He lied about his age to join the navy and fight in World War II. It was a better opportunity then what he had going on as a junior high drop out. He worked on a crew firing one of the main guns of a battleship. Firing them over Normandy on D-Day and later over the Pacific as kamikazes rained down from the sky. His mother died while he was in the service. He never got to say goodbye. He almost died himself painting the side of a battleship when his plank broke. He hit the dock below and was knocked out cold before rolling into the sea. Another sailor saved him by diving from the deck into the water and fishing him out. He lost all of his teeth then.

Some time after the war and now back home, he contracted Polio and became quite sick. His second brush with death. A girl he met at the bowling alley came to see him every day in the hospital. He told us, What else could I do, but marry her?

He had two children who gave him 6 grandchildren and 5 great grandchildren (and still counting).

Two year ago we almost lost him. He flat-lined and the doctors brought him back. He spent weeks in the hospital and despite the odds he pulled back from death again. (He finally quit smoking after 60 years.) Yesterday when I heard his chances looked very grim a small part of me thought he might actually cheat death again.

He loved to bowl. It was his life. All of friends, fun and good times revolved around it. He wasn't too bad at it either having rolled a number of 300 (perfect score) games over the years including one just a few years ago.

He loved to play cards. He was a marvelous blitz player that taught me everything I know about that game.

He loved drinking his 7-and-7's and talking to his children and counseling them.

He worked his fingers to the bone. He taught himself to be a carpenter, plumber and electrician to work remodeling homes as his second full-time job that he held most of his working years. He was the seed of the Appnel family hard work ethic.

He also liked to tell it like it is – strains of which still remain through the generations of the Appnel family. He spoke with no filters and with colorful language. He was the king of the dirty joke one liner.

He was a dedicated family man. Just being together is what matters, he would tell me. Appropriately enough that is just what the family did the day before he was suddenly admitted to the hospital and passed away.

We love you Pop Pop and will miss you.

via A Full Belly

J.S. Bach's Coffee Cantata.  "Father, don't be so severe! If I can't drink my bowl of coffee three times daily, then in my torment I will shrivel up like a piece of roast goat."

I couldn't have said it better myself.

Ad critic contributor David Keifaber lays into Ben Stiller.

About a quarter of the way through [Dodgeball], it hit me: He was playing the same self-absorbed fitness nut he played in Heavy Weights, with a bit of his dumbass Zoolander character thrown in, and was basically wearing his Anchorman costume. Stiller’s comedic delivery has gone unchanged for years now. From now on, ads for Ben Stiller movies should simply describe his character as a composite of everything he’s ever done. That way, fewer people go home disappointed, and his hard-core fans will be relieved that he isn’t trying anything crazy, like developing as an actor.

Ouch! And that is from an ad critic. I wouldn't be so harsh. I kind of think of him as the Woody Allen of our generation.

Speaking of Ben Stiller, Make magazine points to a DIY guide to creating Zoolander's impossibly small cellphone. Nice!

There is a new Appnel girl and this time she's ours. Teagan Cecelia Appnel was born 3:46 PM EST. 7 pounds 14 ounces. 20 inches.

Mom and baby doing well. Parents and big sister ecstatic.

Word to the wise. If you ever screw up and really need someone to mail you something critical like, lets say the power cord to your Powerbook that you forget to pack for the technology conference you are attending on the other side of the country, never ever EVER trust the US Postal Service to get it to you overnight. Government bureaucracy makes for bad customer service and poor customer satisfaction.

…as Ottmar Liebert points out here, there’s something very Zen about the idea of ceding control of one’s musical selections to a machine. “Zen Buddhism teaches that there is no self, just a mental construct that makes us believe that there is a separate and isolated me,” he writes. “Often we use music to enforce our mood. When we are sad, we look for sad music. When we are lovesick, a song about heartbreak sounds like it is about us! When we are happy, we look for upbeat music. ... I think the iPod Shuffle is cool, because it is great to observe our reaction to random emotion.” – via AdFreak.

We're getting blasted back into the ice age here. I won't be making it out to Seattle to attend the Blog Business Summit that my consultancy is sponsoring. My flight was cancelled as was about everything else.

Mike Doughty writes that he is depressed that he is missing the blizzard in Manhattan while playing some shows out west in San Francisco and Utah. He says, I adore a blizzard, especially in Manhattan, where the whole city shuts down and becomes eerie and pristine.

Yes, I agree and miss them not living in that fine metropolis. It is a very surreal experience to see a city that is always bustling and in motion get painted white and go silent like it does during a blizzard. A bit of snow doesn't cut it though. NYC is always running at its limits – the sidewalks, the streets, the trains etc – so when it snows a bit its like an added crowds of tourist that slows you down and annoys. No you need a blizzard. When one of those hit all is lost and you stay home if you can. That is unless you have an apprecaition for the city at its most pristine.

I'm in New England now were people don't see to enjoy a blizzard as much. I suppose landlords and building maintenance are apprecaited when it comes time to shovel the sidewalks and garage driveway. Still I'm enjoying the sight and coping with the shoveling.

My younger brother Kevin gives me this career advice:

You're screwed. If you get in a bind and they call a meeting make sure
the room has a skylight. That way you can use the 'ole Batman smoke bomb
and spear gun escape. no one could ever hold poor work against someone who
escapes a pressure situation in that fashion.

I now know why he was recently promoted at work.

It's that time of year again. While last year's attempt at public humiliation didn't have much of an effect on my motivation – this year my ego ran away from home and is still missing – I'm still compelled to think about the new year and (re)set some goals. They don't seem like pre-planned disappointments like some, perhaps its because I'm a mental masochist, however I do think there is some value in occasionally setting goals even if not all of them are achieved. Besides, as one mentor once told me, if you are achieving all of your goals you aren't setting them high enough. Fair enough. Let's take a look at last year's.

• Balance coding and writing.

Funny how the pendulum has swung from when I started this weblog. If writing means publishing then I failed miserably. I spent the better part of the summer researching and writing a book that got indefinitely postponed quite suddenly. Still I didn't make nearly as many weblog posts as I would have liked. I'm hoping some of this has to do with needing to shift styles and making a clear separation between the personal and the career related postings.

• Release more of my code.

Made some headway here, but too much of it is going out rather hastily or taking too long. Still I put out a number of modules into CPAN I am quite pleased with overall.

• Keep working on getting in shape. Let's add flexibility to reducing body fat.

Regressed in a big way. (ugh.) Since we closed on our new house I haven't been to the gym once. I'm at my heaviest ever and while many comment they can't tell, I can really feel it and it makes me sad, very very sad.

• Read more books – particularly non-technical ones. (again)

Well at least I won't have to rack my brains writing new resolutions. I even gave up reading non-technical magazines. If it wasn't code or how to code I probably didn't read it.

• Catch-up and get more organized.

In a sense I made some headway looking at the things I had last year at this time BUT with the quantity and speed that new work rolled over the past year I have even more to catch-up on and organize as before. (Did that just make sense?)

• Don't work so much.

HA!HA!HA!HA!HA! It seems that is all I ever do except sleep occasionally. If it wasn't coding it was home renovations.

• Figure out what I want to do when I grow up. (again)

Well I some idea of this, mostly in the area of what I don't want to be. Now its figuring out how to make a decent living at it.

By all accounts this year was a pretty dismal one in general with a great deal of upheaval (we had 4 different mailing addresses in 2004) and multiple simultaneous mostly domestic crisis to work through. It wasn't all bad news and misery though.

We relocated and bought our first house – a diamond in the rough of a classic 60's split-level. I found out I will be a dad again this April. I've became an uncle three times and a godfather of one as a bonus. Our first baby started kindergarten. The home team of our newly adopted turf won the world series – finally. The non-profit organization my wife helped found really picked up steam even though we were derelict in our duties. Perhaps most importantly, no deaths in the family (just one close call) and we all generally have our health.

Enough of the past though. I could just repeat all of last year's essentially, but I think a different go at it is needed.

• Take care of my health.

In addition to getting my fat arse back to the gym and eating better, I have a flotilla of medical professionals I've been putting off seeing. This is getting too important to blow off again because I'm not getting any younger.

• Balance coding and writing. (again)

This hasn't happened in the last two years, but I have some optimism because my first booked projects of the new year is a large all-writing assignment. I still have too many coding projects, but perhaps this will get me in the mood.

I think retooling how I communicate my thoughts and knowledge. When I started this weblog, it had more of a professional slant. Over time I wanted to write about personal and fun topics. I suspect this contributed to my near weblog paralysis these days – a lack of focus and purpose in what I was doing. I've been meaning to get my business site in order for some time and despite a lack of time and a yearning to relax, it is becoming very important on both a personal and professional level.

Technical writing isn't too far removed from what I do already. Writing for fun again would be nice. I've been threated to bring back the music and arts 'zine I used to run as a weblog and a digital music guide that never quite took off thanks to Napster/RIAA tussles and the bursting dot com bubble. How I miss those days. (sigh.)

• Seek Stability.

The past year was one of great change for us. The past 4 years before that were pretty rough also. I've come to realize that stability is a valuable commodity that I need to find and hopefully some normalacy will follow. It also should help me…

• Relax. Be Human.

All this work has made me dull and put a lot of strain on me and my personal relationships. I've been MIA to too many people for too long and have a lot of making up to do with friends, family and colleagues.

• Involvement.

I'm a board member of a non-profit organization called Friends of the Birth Center. For personal reasons I can't explain in this space, this organization and its cause means a great deal to me. I need to step it up a notch here.

Happy New Year all!

Mac OS X DevCon 2004. The scene from the Westin in Santa Clara with the last out of Game 4.

Last night I heard from my younger brother that they are parents (again) of a healthy baby girl. yippee! This means they've moved up on us 2 to 1, and given the girls a similar lead. We plan to even the score this April.

Adam Kalsey pegs the life of a consultant quite well with this post:

Consulting is an interesting lifestyle. In a normal job, you get a paycheck each week. You show up for your job pretty much the same amount of time each week, month after month, year after year. Without putting in a whole lot of thought or effort, you can figure out approximately how much money you’ll bring in next November. You can do that because odds are it will be the same as you brought home in August.

The life of an independent consultant is different. You’ll go through weeks without work, calling contacts, digging through mailing lists, hunting down leads. Those weeks-long dry spells are offset by absolutely crazy, put your entire life on hold, work yourself to the bone periods where you have more work than you can handle. You can go from no current projects to five in the course of a week. You’ll bid on jobs without success seemingly for months and then suddenly every proposal you send out comes back signed.

Other independent consultants I’ve spoken to have agreed that the more work you have, the more you’ll get. Just as it seems that the moment you put on a wedding ring, every woman you meet wants to flirt, the same goes for consulting. As soon as you’re booked, everyone you’ve ever met has an urgent project.

All of this makes it hard to focus on things.

Amen. I couldn't have explained it better myself.

I spent the better part of the last couple of days hanging doors. It may sound simple, but in all actually its a lot trickier.

We walk through doors everyday without a second though, so the experience reminds me of how much we take for granted. These things are tricky and time consuming to get right. Frame is level. Frame is square. Hinges too high or too low. Notch too deep or not deep enough. Loosen screws there. Tighten screws here. Its really quite a science.

Just in case you were wondering. (sigh.)

Didn't break down and buy a seersucker suit and bow tie for the occasion as threatened last year. As always I enjoyed some of the horse names. Here are some that were on the program the two days we were there:

• Angelina J - Me likey Angelina J too even though she was married Billy Bob
• Nosupeforyou - Someone watches too much Seinfeld.
• Quayle - Sired by Deputy Commander and Oblivious. NAMING GENIUS!
• Lusty Latin, Motel Affair & Shoot the Wad - Proving racing is not for kids
• Boom Bah Yay
• Darn That Girl
• Coconut Popsicle
• One Tough Dude - Ran againsts Charming Jim and Charismatic Rob to proove nice guys don't finish first.
• Run for Mom
• She'sbubba'sdelite
• Rosie's Big Boy
• The Chelsea Comet - A longshot we bet on it because of my wife's business. Our big winner of the trip.
• Brassy Kitten
• Rumba Numba
• Mombo Loco
• Dont Knock America - Supporters of Dubya?
• Maximus C - Funny if you know our friend Craig Matthews.
• Classy E.T.
• Source - Because I'm a nerd.
• Calypso Band

Living in the Paulus Hook area of Jersey City was quite nice especially if you like a bit of space, (somewhat of) a neighborhood feel and the occasional bit of quiet. In leaving it, I thought I'd impart some info to others who may take my place. (Luxury apartments are cropping up like trees now.) Here is a list of the places we'd frequent and will miss. In no particular order.

• Ibby's Falafel. 303 GROVE STREET. 201-432-2400. Awesome, addictive and inexpensive. Rivals the best places in the city.
• Marco and Pepe. 289 GROVE ST, 201.860.9688. Excellent wine and cocktails, great atmosphere (and music) and good food.
• The River Schoool. 251 WARREN STREET. 201-369-7003. Not a restaurant, deli or bar. Its our daughter's daycare/pre-school which we would recommend to any parent living in the area.
• Iron Monkey. 97 GREENE ST. 201-435-5756. More great food and wine. Established long before the areas revival.
• Gotham Deli. 123 MONTGOMERY STREET. 201-433-4720. Nice folks whose store saved us numerous times from trip to the IQ vortex known as Shop-Rite.
• La Rustique. 84 ½ MORRIS STREET. 201-860-4010. Brick oven pizza. Yum. The only place to get pizza as far as I'm concerned. Rivals NYC's famous Lombardi's pizza.
• Liberty Wine and Deli. 200 WASHINGTON STREET. 201.200.0020. A huge and growing selection of wines and other libations.
• Kitchen Cafe. 60 SUSSEX STREET. 201-332-1010. Great sunday brunchs to be had.
• Oddfellow's Rest. 111 MONTGOMERY STREET. 201-433-6999. Cajun food. If you fancy Catfish, I suggest Tim's Frenchy Catfish and not for the name.
• Komegashi. 103 MONTGOMERY STREET. 201-433-4567. Excellent Japanese Cuisine and Sushi Bar. Really fast.

Now I'm getting nostalgic. Here are a few other places in Hoboken and Manhattan that we're also going to miss.

• Antique Bakery. 122 WILLOW STREET. 201.714.9323. Hoboken. Italian brick oven bread that is to die for. The bread is a meal in and of itself. When I was a poor bachelor I'd get a stick to dip in to pasta sauce.
• Maxwell's. 1039 WASHINGTON STREET 201-653-1703. Hoboken. Glad that this one came back from the dead. Great bands in an intimate setting. Food is ok. I probably saw 100 shows there. The regulars can be a bit pretensious, unfriendly and protective though.
• Il Corallo Trattoria. 176 PRINCE STREET. (Between Sullivan and Thompson Sts.) 212-941-7119. NYC Soho. Huge selection of not-your-run-of-the-mill pasta dishes. Very inexpensive. The perfect place for I don't feel like cooking tonight again. When I worked in the area we eat there 1 or 2 times a week. My regular dish was Rigatoni Pugliese.
• Marion's Continental. 354 BOWERY (Between Great Jones and 4th Sts.) 212-475-7621. NYC East Village. Eclectic menu and an even more eclectic atmosphere and clientele. Cocktails bar before cocktails were hip again.
• Angel Share. 8 STUYVESTANT STREET (Between Second and Third avenues) 212.777.5415. NYC East Village. Excellent cocktails. Watch the bartenders mix cocktails. It's like an art form. (I'm sensing a theme here!) The bar is really tucked away – up the steps and through another restaurant and through a door that looks like its part of the wall.
• Grange Hall. 50 COMMERCE STREET (At Barrow St.) NYC West Village. Hearty gourmet American harvest foods. Classic coktail bar. Make reservations.
• Two Boots. Cajun pizza. Several location throughout the city including Grand Central. Highly recommend the Mr. Pink and Mel Cooley slices.
• Kelley and Ping 127 Greene Street. (Between Houston and Prince Sts.) 212-228-1212. NYC Soho. Eclectic asian eatery in a hip soho space. Scallion pancakes rule.
• A Salt and Battery. 112 GREENWICH AVENUE. 212.691.2713. NYC West Village. Authentic Fish and Chips run by Brits. A bit pricey, but flying to London is more expensive.
• Chumley's. 86 BEDFORD STREET. 212-675-4449. NYC West Village. The last operating speakeasy in Manhattan. Often overrun by people its an interesting bar to sit and look around. Go on an off night though. Completely unmarked so go luck finding it. Look for the beat-up brown door with an 86 on it.
• Grand Central Station. NYC Midtown. I love just standing in this landmark.
• Campbell Apartment. 15 VANDERBILT AVENUE. 212-953-0409. NYC Midtown. Elegant hip cocktail bar hidden away in Grand Central. A nice place to hang after missing a train.

Enjoy.

Last weekend was a bitter sweet moment for me and the family – we relocated our home to southeastern Connecticut. It's a bit sad because I'm putting aside a desire I had for some time as a youngster growing up in a once peaceful city in the middle of farm fields on the edge of the Amish country that I rarely left and hardly explored beyond. I wanted to be in the thick of things and what better place to start then NYC? It was great for many years, but the reality was that it was time to move on, at least for now. While I loved the city and where I lived, my family and I were not able to really take advantage of its benefits and were suffering through its down sides.

A lot has contributed to our situation. Becoming new parents and not being close very close to our families made life challenging. Then the fun really began. Working through the dot bomb as colleague after colleague lost their jobs and the emperor (our company CEO) threaten and snarled, but nothing else. Seeing the WTC in flames and finally collapse from our window. Finally losing my job in the 5th round of mass layoffs because we build web sites, not technology. A dismal job market and numerous your-our-man interviews go cold. Having our neighbor and good friends left for California. My wife suddenly losing her job. Watching way too many do-it-yourself shows like Trading Spaces, Changing Rooms, Divine Design and Designers Challenge was giving us homeowner envy.

So last year, with jobless benefits drying up and reading about Jason and Meg's adventures after moving to Manhattan, it all became clear and rather depressing that big city life was not working out. Yes we lived by the city, but we never got out to bars, restaurants, museums or shows with friends or just as a couple. After some discussion and consideration, we decided to relocate where my wife grew up and life moves a bit slower and with a lot less expense and trouble.

The bitter part are the trade offs and things we left behind. My biggest regret being that we had to pick which family to be near and in the end we moved another 2+ hours away from my parents and family. We'll also miss seeing our City friends as often and the daily contact we had with others whom we may never see again.

The sweet part is the prospect of things getting better for us and to that I look forward. So to my city life, I bid you a fond farewell.

First it was his and hers Powerbooks. (Kind of. That's another story.) Now its weblogs. My wife Kristen got her own weblog now. There goes the neighborhood.

She is not a techie, but a women's health care nurse practioner that opened her own practice recently. Expect very different content then what I write. (We are no Ben and Mena.) I write software and talk to myself a lot.) Kristen believes in a more low intervention, natural and holistic way of providing care then what it typically. Often we'll be listening to news radio, or watching the new new and she'll exclaim what crap! (I hear that while she is surfing around also.) My reply for months now has been you should have a weblog so you can write that. Finally hubby came through and set one up on TypePad.

We used TypePad because she was already comfortable witht that system after using it to communciate to patients and activists during the forced closure of Elizabeth Seton Birth Center were she used to work.

It turned out well particularly for my meager design skill. It was also fun to collaborate on its design. (I miss that so.) I tried using the visual template builder which is really great, but in the end I had to convet the templates I built to change 2 parameters in the stylesheet. (argh!) The banner has padding added that the template builder does not let you remove. It also doesn't let you control the page margins that the content frame is butt up against the top of the page. It also does support any type of footer on the pages. Right now we are coping without one, but it would have been nice. I have no doubt that its just a matter of time till these get addressed given SixApart's track record.

So please check out my wife's spiffy new weblog and give her some love (and traffic). It's quite good and she's taking to it like a fish to water. Not that I'm biased or anything.

It's the middle of the month and I still haven't made any posts. ARGH! Like last year I thought I'd make my first post my resolutions for the new year. Nothing like a bit of public shame to get you motivated. First lets see how I did on last year's.

More and shorter weblog posts.

Failed miserably. How about no weblog posts?

Overhaul the layout of my weblog. (Finally.)

Got through most of that towards the end of the year. Still more to go.

More code first, write later.

I think I took this one too far. All I've been doing is coding.

Switch.

Did it and have no idea how I got any work done before switching to the Mac. Its been awesome – though I'm on my second Powerbook. The first one is still out for repair because of a heat issue.

Continue getting into shape. Loose some body fat not weight.

Did well here. If it weren't for the end of the year I would have done great. I've been told I look thinner though I'm at my heaviest since high school. (Not a bad thing when you consider I played basketball and worked out a few hours everyday year round.)

Read more books – particularly non-technical ones.

HA! Right. Next.

Relax more.

Good thing I didn't say not work so much. Definitely made strides throughout 2003 to be more relaxed.

Figure out what I want to do when I grow up.

Still working on that.

So on to this year:

1. Balanace coding and writing.
2. Release more of my code.
3. Keep working on getting in shape. Let's add flexibility to reducing body fat.
4. Read more books – particularly non-techincal ones. (again)
5. Catch-up and get more organized.
6. Don't work so much.
7. Figure out what I want to do when I grow up. (again)

Can't believe its been 2 months since my last post. Its doesn't seem that long and at the same time it feels like forever.

The news of my demise is premature. In all actuality I've been busy, too busy, handling some prior commitments and a lot of unexpected happenings. Before I pickup my regular habits again I thought a recap of what I've been up to is in order.

Since August my wife and others have been dealing with the abrupt closure of Elizabeth Seton Birth Center and ensuing turmoil that followed. They've also fought valiantly to raise awareness of skyrocketing insurance costs and the effect it is having on limiting women's health choice. I've been happy to help however I could. From this has come two new ventures of which I am directly involved.

The group that rallied around the cause has become the Friends of the Birth Center and are organizing themselves as a non-profit organization to bring a new free standing birth center back to Manhattan. I signed on as a board member and CIO. (I also like to refer to myself as the board token male and Mr. Kristen Stehle.) More to come on that as we research our options and get organized in addition to file all the necessary paper work. I've also registered friendsofthebirthcenter.org. Look for that TypePad weblog to sprout in the coming weeks.

The other venture is that my wife has launched her own private health practice named Chelsea Well Woman Care. Kristen was Elizabeth Seton Woman's Health Nurse Practitioner and had many patients that was looking for the same personalized care. You can see her website for more. (Excuse the design by yours truly.) While starting her own practice was always in her plans, doing it so soon and with little preparation was not. That's made for all types of fun. (BTW: NEVER register a domain with one registrar if you may need to move it within the next 60 days.)

So the most obvious new development is that I got a proper domain for my weblog setup — timaoutloud.org is mine. I had every intention of doing so, but not under the circumstance that I did.

Right after Thanksgiving I got a note from the hoster that I and two of my clients were using would be closing its doors at the end of the month. (Today.) Given an overloaded work schedule, this made life interesting as I found new hosting for three different MT installations with different requirements and budgets. The kicker came yesterday when I got a rude (excuse the pun for those in the know) awakening to find that they shutdown their servers a day early. I had just gotten my second client off their server and was waiting for the change in MX records. They lost some mail server for a short time. My weblog here went dead as did my email. Some finishing touches and some abrupt DNS changes and by the end of the day I'm back. I think I got everything and did a lot of house cleanng – fixing the templates and style sheets, reorganizing the filesystem and cleaning out a lot of cruft that had built up over the years. Still have some to go and some improvements planned once I get a bit of time.

While I was at it another client was informed by Rackspace that the version of RedHat Linux his server was running was no longer supported. They asked for it to be migrated immediately. I thereby declared the month of December Server Emergency Month. System Administration skills are remarkably improved after the month I had.

I also (finally) got around to releasing new and vastly improved versions of TikiText (Text::Tiki) and XML::RSS::Parser into CPAN. I have a lot of code I've been meaning to document and release for some time. I have even more drawn up to be developed. The fact that I'm writing about this and not releasing code is a source of great personal frustration. (I smell a News Years resolution.)

We now have his and hers Powerbooks in the house. We are preparing to move to Niantic, Connecticut in a month. (A subject of another post). I completed some C++ course work and getting a refresher on Java and strategic business that n August seemed like a good idea. It probably wasn't. Somewhere I fit in being a daddy and spending some time with my family over the holidays.

To cap off the year my Powerbook last night started to vibrate and hum. It then shut down and wouldn't boot up. (Further proof that I am cursed.) I had some backups, but with the things being the way they have I didn't have recent enough backups. I took it to the Apple Soho Store Genius Bar and it booted. We tried for 5 hours to get a backup to work to no avail so my baby is in the shop for the new year. Quite an interesting experience sitting there. That will be tomorrow's entry I suppose.

Right now I have to ring in the year. Happy new year all!

UPDATE: We stayed home alone being the old worn out people that we are. Its a bit unnerving view out our apartment – half a dozen hovering helicopters with spotlights scanning the area, flashing lights of patrol boats in the Hudson and loud booms of fireworks across the river and the marina. We also thought we heard a peculiar roar of a jet that we couldn't see.

…at least the Yankees didn't win it all. It spared me from suffering through the victory parade that draws the most obnoxious (fair weather) fans in professional sports and listening to all of the talk of the Yankees as the team of destiny and other crap. How tiresome. Face it you buy championships by out spending every team with money every other team doesn't have.

The only day in New York which bring out more obnoxious people is St Patrick's Day with its plastered-in-the-afternoon crowd of green Coors Light swilling frat boys and girls stumbling around in green plastic bowlers.

I am not so naive to believe the days of star players starting with a team and staying with them their whole career will ever come back, but I think that its boring to watch a sport that can be so heavily influenced off the field through financial might then on it. Its absurd to think otherwise.

I've been in sort of a funk these past few weeks. Not exactly sure why I've been like this for so long, but I have been. Perhaps its the anvil of incrementing my age, not having written much lately, working so damn hard and still having so much I need/want to do and not getting out enough is piling up in my head.

Yesterday, I hit rock bottom when something became completely clear to me.

My name is Tim and I… am addicted to caffeine.

The night before I hurriedly picked up a pound of Starbucks because we had run out at the homestead. The next morning my wife made said coffee. All morning and most of the afternoon, the two of us struggled to function, passing out at our keyboards, taking a few unintentional naps and wondering if we were dying. Final it all became clear. Hey Tim, do you know this stuff you bought was decaf?

We promptly ran out and bought to pounds of the strongest roasts Starbucks had to offer with two Venti coffees as emergency IVs. We're feeling much better this morning, but I'm still buried in work and sure that I've made some real bone headed mistakes. Perhaps getting more of these projects completed and off my desk may make me feel better. sigh. Back to work, soon, but not just yet.

The Yankees. How incredibly boring and tiresome.

Like many in the NYC area we lost power (twice) yesterday afternoon and into the evening. We're still trying to clean up from the unexpected kink it put into life. (Living in a large apartment complex we lost water also. We had what looked like watered down iced tea coming out of the tap this morning.) Being in NJ we had power back just after midnight and all seems to have returned to normal. Can't say the same for Manhattan quite yet, but the recovery seems to be on its way.

I have to say looking out my window and across the river to Manhattan last night was the second most surreal thing I've seen from here – the outline of skyscrapers shrouded in darkness against the evening sky. No lights of the Empire State Building, or the illuminated oblesik of 30 Rockefeller Center with its orange neon GE atop it or the orb-like glow of Times Square's lights. Just the occasional fluorsent lights of ferry boat cabins like on the Hudson and a few lights from building with emergency generators – most of which are downtown around the former site of the World trade Center towers.

I would have taken a picture, but there would be nothing to see – exactly what made it so surreal for me.

Getting back into the swing of things from some time off with the family. Like every year, we were at Saratoga for opening day of the thoroughbred horse racing. A tradition in my wife's family that not only predates us, but its predates my mother-in-law. We a bit of time hanging out in Lake George before returning to the track that Friday.

I'm not much of a gambler, but I've come to cherish our yearly trip to Saratoga. For those of you not familiar with Saratoga its one of the oldest horse racing tracks in the states having been established in 1864. (That means its older then Churchill Downs home of the Kentucky Derby.) The track has maintained much of its charm and elegances and the atmosphere is as enjoyable as the races themselves. Its like going to the ballpark (during playoffs) except with a lot more style and class.

Of course the movie Seabiscuit was being promoted heavily. (It was partially filmed at the track afterall.) Trailers for the movie were run a few times a day between races and the second race on opening day was sponsored by the movie.

Besides the unique fashion statements usually only found in magazines – gents in bow ties, white bucks, and seersucker suits and ladies donning large sun hats and colorful summer dresses – I always enjoy seeing the names given to the horses. While there is a thoroughbred horse naming guidelines and a commission to enforce them, they are more interesting, witty and, in a sense, entertaining then your average animal name of Fluffy, Rex, Butch or even Scooby.

Here are some of the horses that were on the program the two days we went to the track:

• Rosie Is A Leader (…of last place)
• Tap the Admiral
• Captain Fantastic (…wasn't)
• Save The Profit
• Conman Cunningham
• Chute The Breeze
• Catlike Move
• Tap Dancing Kid
• First Again (The horse has only come in first once. Finished dead last that day.)
• Jo Jo's Time (Jo Jo must be late a lot because this horse finished dead last.)
• Apple Krisp (Had to bet on that one. Showed with a good finish.)
• Jet Set Jazz (Too bad the horse's previous results weren't nearly as good its name.)
• Evening Attire (A winner. After all, every girl's crazy about a sharp dressed man.)
• Bikini Wiggle
• I'am a Red Sox Fan (Vied for the lead throughout then fell apart at the end. Kind of like the baseball team. ;)
• Withorwithoutyou (U2 fan?)
• Hermione's Magic (Harry Potter fan?)

Looking forward to next year already. I'm going to have to break down and buy a seersucker suit and maybe even a bow tie for the occasion.

In case you where wondering I haven't vanished, but I have been taking some time off from here. I'm also horrendously behind in my answering my email.

A few weeks ago I was feeling rather dull and uninspired about writing. When I looked back at the archives for the past month or so it was confirmed. I'm much more interesting then that. (Really I am.) So I need to make some changes and shake things up. What better way to hit the reset button then to purge my system with some time away?

I'm heading off for a few days of vacation with my family tomorrow. When I get back I hope to wrap up the big project I've been wrestling (another reason for not writing as much) and start with a fresh outlook here.

Returning from the O'Reilly ETech Conference, I was made painfully aware what an incredibly lack of innovation or change has occured in air travel in the past few decades – if anything I would say it has regressed.

Please excuse the ranting tone, but its some thoughts I have to put out there in hopes future generations will read it and realize how crazy we are.

When I say painfully I mean it. Flying a redeye I just want to relax and sleep a bit. For a short while I did, but then the cold aching from a lack circulation started pulsing through my legs and back. With little room I had to keep shifting in my seat into akward positions which have left my back spasming for two days now. To think I used to do this 2-3 weeks a month for a few years. It took months of chiropractic work to get be back to tolerable levels. My only saving grace then was that I got bumed up to first class often because I had amassed so many miles.

So it isn't the added security that bothers me. It may be the one of the only places where any real progress has occured in the past couple of decades. As long as you get there a bit earlier and have down a system for emptying your pockets, its really not that bad.

I'm referring to the deplorable cattle-like conditions one is subjected to endure from the boarding till deplaning. What makes matters worse is that I'm 6'5" – a height that is clearlly outside the bounds of their cabin design. Unless its a short shuttle flight, each time I board a plane I know Its probably going to be a painful and frustrating experience. I still do it because I like to see other places and meet people. It is necessary in the space in which I work – traveling to see clients and traveling to attend conferences like ETech. Being completely uncomfortable and annoyed with these conditions, I sit in my humna pretzel position astounded that there isn't a better way to do this.

• It starts with boarding. Calling passengers 10-15 isle at a time breeds chaos and not enforcing that rule makes it worse. I once (sadly only once) saw a gate agent chastize a passenger and send him to the back of the line because he was attempting to board before his isle was called. I almost hugged her. I always thought lining people up like an amusement parks lines up a roller coaster would get us on the plane faster. Its already a zoo as passenger coming charging from all directions to the ticket collection agent to scrap for the overhead luggage space once in the main cabin.
• Overhead luggage loading. Once upon a time you could carry almost anything on the plane to try and stuff inthe overhead compartment. The new air security measures has seemingly force the hand of airlines to better enforce that. Still its a mess – loading it in wrong, loading it in so the compartment can't close, smashing other passengfers luggage, dropping it on other passengers heads (like me), smacking another in the head because they have no regard or patience for fellow passengers (like me) or simply not being tall enough/strong enough to get it up there. Wouldn't it be so much better if there was a carry-on luggage loading procedure? Airline personnel who know what they are doing take your bags on ahead of you and load it perhaps leaving a ticket with your bags location (which should be right by you anyway) on it.
• Exit rows – the holy grail of the cattle-class seats. Its like a reality TV show come to life. People will do anything for the handful of exit row seats with tolerable leg space. Friday evening as I was waiting for my redeye flight to board I overheard a man arguing that he lost his exit row seat. Sir you are traveling with children who are not permitted to sit in an exit row, she explained. (He wasn't missing much though because most exit seats on a 737 and some around them do not recline.) I wish they where more strict about who they sit in that row. Perhaps precertify passengers based on some basic criteria or training to handle an emergency exit door. I'd do it. I would trust me more then some of these clowns (and clownettes) I see in those seats. There are times I take a look at those seats and say if we have an emergency we're just dead. Like when I see a 5'3" woman older then my mother sitting in that seat. Call me bias, but I don't have a lot of confidence that in an emergency someone like that will be able to handle removing an escape hatch that weighs half their own weight.
• Using smaller planes and selling out flights. Maybe its because I fly Continental a lot leaving close to Newark airport (LaGuardia is tough to reach and JFK is worse), but I remember when a cross country trip drew one of larger aircraft where passengers had some room to move about. In recent years I've noticed soldout, overstuffed flights with wait lists have become the norm even in these tough economic times. I'm sure there are some airline bean counters out there that could show me a chart that smaller airplanes is more cost effective and efficent. Well I'm glad for them because I now loath flying and airlines. I'd rather have less choices and more space any day. I've never found the flight options very convienent anyway. I was quoted $1200 for my flight over a month before ETech. Is $1200 not enough? Thankfully I still had some frequent flyer miles left.
• As if using more smaller planes wasn't bad enough, it seems to me that the airlines have (generally speaking) moved the seats a few inches closer to fit a couple of extra rows for the same reasons. (Than you sir. May I have another?) I don't have hard numbers, but I can feel it. Those inches make a big difference for me.
• Isle or Window? This goes to the previous two points. I often contemplate which is really better for someone like me. I always opt for the isle so I have a little bit of room to work with to restore circulation to me legs with. Getting smacked a few times by other passengers luggage and the beverage cart each flight makes me wonder if I'm making the right choice. The middle is just inhuman if you are over 6'2" or 240 pounds. Sitting next to one of these poor souls is worse. First you feel bad for them then you just get plain annoyed because they're annoyed and take it out on you for having an isle seat.
• You don't need to eat. As if we have plenty of personal space, more and more flights do not serve meals or only a snack even if its a 5 or 6 hour flight. Now you have to buy overpriced airport food and bring it on board. Hurrah for service!
• As for checked luggage airlines should adopt a system like FedEx's shipping bins so luggage could get unloaded faster and could theoretically be picked up right at the gate.

I just find it astounding that so little technological change has been introduced into the industry. We have online ticket purchases and eTicket. (Wow.) The airplanes are generally the same except for the new security measure. Despite all of the business travel in this country most do not have power outlets for passengers with laptops – a significant number each flight even if their screen is pressed in their chest. Some planes have personal entertainment centers. I've always appreciated Virgin Atlantic for this. (I understand they've upgraded their system to include passenger trivia tournaments.) While I have not gotten a chance to fly them, I'm always cheering on JetBlue in hopes the other airlines get a clue. (Sadly JetBlue only leave from JFK currently and I've yet to have a chance to fly them.) Recently some airlines have started adding broadband to their flights. Long overdue, but based on some of the efforts I saw they are on track to screw this up.

Jon Udell once wrote about the Delta shuttle's passenger information system which is simple, effective, but smart. I've flown the shuttle numerous times and really apprecaite the system. Communicating what is going makes such a big difference it baffles me what is so hard.

Lastly I find it amazing that we are still using the same general airplane designs from decades ago. The Concorde was supposed to be the future of air travel yet soon they will all be retired soon and not be replaced because of their high costs. We can fly missiles fired hundreds of miles away into through a window, but we haven't been able to engineer a better commercial jetliner for decades?

Its moments like Friday evening's flight home that leaves me perplexed that no one is smart/courageous enough to figure out a better way and simply innovative. I don't think its any coincidence that airlines are doing so poorly. Maybe consumers are only willing to pay for cheap tickets because they feel they're getting a cheap service? If it made logistical sense I'd only Virgin Atlantic and JetBlue.

When will this absurdity end? What will it take for the airline industry to innovate? Does anyone else care?

What a glorious day today is. It’s been around 60 in the NYC metro area today. I'm not spring guy, or even summer for that matter, but there is always something rejuvenating about that first day when you feel the winter thaw ending.

So if any one is walking around the Jersey City waterfront today and wonder who blasting all the retro alterna-dweeb music (The Psychedelic Furs, The Cult, Erasure, The Mighty Lemon Drops, The Cure, Big Audio Dynamic, The Yaz, New Order, Sisters of Mercy) – that would be me.

Also on Boing Boing today, Xeni Jardin notes Aside from being a decent and compassionate human being, Fred Rogers was also a champion of fair use. From the website of the Home Recording Rights Coalition: (My emphasis.)

In [the Sony Betamax] ruling that home time-shift recording of television programming for private use was not copyright infringement, the Supreme Court relied on testimony from television producers who did not object to such home recording. One of the most prominent witnesses on this issue was Fred Rogers.

The Supreme Court wrote: Second is the testimony of Fred Rogers, president of the corporation that produces and owns the copyright on Mister Rogers' Neighborhood. The program is carried by more public television stations than any other program. Its audience numbers over 3,000,000 families a day. He testified that he had absolutely no objection to home taping for noncommercial use and expressed the opinion that it is a real service to families to be able to record children's programs and to show them at appropriate times.

(Excerpt from Mr. Rogers' trial testimony: ) Some public stations, as well as commercial stations, program the 'Neighborhood' at hours when some children cannot use it. . . . I have always felt that with the advent of all of this new technology that allows people to tape the 'Neighborhood' off-the-air, and I'm speaking for the 'Neighborhood' because that's what I produce, that they then become much more active in the programming of their family's television life. Very frankly, I am opposed to people being programmed by others. My whole approach in broadcasting has always been 'You are an important person just the way you are. You can make healthy decisions.' Maybe I'm going on too long, but I just feel that anything that allows a person to be more active in the control of his or her life, in a healthy way, is important.

I actually began to tear up when I saw his obituary yesterday in the New York Times, much like I did when I read Charles Schultz's. I guess having watched hundreds of his shows growing up and now once again with my daughter, it feels like the death of a family friend. I suppose in some ways it is. Reading his testimony on this matter I have a new appreciation for what a truly special guy he was.

Hilary Rosen is resigning her post as the head of RIAA and poster child for all things wrong with the music industry. I can just see the ad in the classifieds for this one:

WANTED: Motivated, dynamic individual to lead an extremely unpopular and unreasonable industry organization. Will be responsible for overseeing well-financed heavy-handed attempts to undermine innovation, changing market conditions, and the public domain. Must demonstrate a willingness to thanklessly protect the cushy egotistical existence of industry executives and absurd profit margins gained from bleeding of consumers and the suppression of artists and creativity. Must be able to make unwavering absurd statements, arguments and other forms of verbal cow dung with a straight face at all times. Experience in creatively distorting ("spinning") overwhelming contrary market data a must have. Previous experience working for Microsoft's marketing, public relations or legal teams a plus. Applicants with a conscience or shred of honor need not apply. The ability to operate without sleep at night is helpful, but not required. Applicants are requested to submit an essay not to exceed 1000 words on the topic of why consumers are clueless and ignorant bunch of pirates that are destroying free markets. Resumes can be submitted to poor.us@riaa.org. Please do not call. Due to the high volume of submissions expected, we will not be able to individually respond to each submission. Don’t contact us, we’ll contact you.

Pizza Hut's ad-agency hired Ween to write a hep jingle for its new "cheese-inside" pizza, but Pizza Hut rejected all the tunes they came up with. Ween, who describe the jingle as "one of the best tunes we wrote all last year," has posted it in MP3 to their site.

The tracks can be found here.

I never really liked Ween (bad personal run in), but this would have made a pretty good jingle. Too bad. Maybe it'll show up on their next release?

With the holiday season finally behind me and my inbox mostly cleared up (weblog and news reading is another matter), I thought I'd make my first entry of the new year my resolutions.

1. More and shorter weblog posts.
2. Overhaul the layout of my weblog. (Finally.)
3. More code first, write later.
4. Switch.
5. Continue getting into shape. Loose some body fat not weight.
6. Read more books -- particularly non-technical ones.
7. Relax more.
8. Figure out what I want to do when I grow up.

The holidays are an exceptionally hectic time for my family and me. This year is even more so because my youngest brother graduates tomorrow. (He was on the 4.5-year plan at college.) This means a lot of driving between Southeastern Connecticut and the Pennsylvania Amish country via NYC. With Thanksgiving coming so late and Christmas falling on a Wednesday there are no breaks to write as much as I'd like. I'm already struggling to keep up with my mailing list and weblog reading. I was rather depressed I couldn't have been more active in the recent "discovery" threads on the BloggerDev mailing list and Sam Ruby's weblog that went charging through this past weekend. (The end result was quite satisfactory personally.) Or for that matter, the development of the Trackback-enabled MLTFO (More Like This From Others) script after Ben Hammersley's LazyWeb request. (David Raynes subsequentally released a MT-Plugin wrapper to MLTFO.) Then there is just posting to the two new mailing lists I've started -- ucapi-discuss and mt-dev to get it going.

I suppose I'll be in some corner with a pile of print outs (laptops are so obvious and make things too easy) catching up. (sigh.)

Happy Holidays!

Poking around for "on this day in..." sites, I found ThisDayInMusic.com, which has a Number 1 on the day you were born feature. The chart-toppers are available for the years 1955-2001. It being a slow news day, I wondered what the history of Dec 3 chart-toppers has been. Since this web app is also a web service waiting to be asked to do something, I asked and it answered. [Jon Udell]

I love it. Even in celebrating his birthday, Jon finds a way to expound on the virtues of the Web as an application interface. (Happy belated birthday Jon!)

The Number 1 chart-topper when Jon was born was "Love Me Tender" by Elvis Presley. I found out mine is "Maggie May" by Rod Stewart. I prefer Elvis over Rod any day. If it had to be Rod, I would have preferred "Da Ya Think I'm Sexy?" I guess Maggie May isn't bad though. Oh well.

Mark Pilgrim has posted an amusing analysis of Dave Winer's comments on REST vs. SOAP. This reminds me that I have a few posts to make, but its Friday and I need a break. Stay tuned more to come.

Thursday was what I refer to as a "bad hair day for coding." After completing a beta version of the mt-rssfeed plugin and its underlying liberal parser, I began testing myself and was in for a rude, time-consuming surprise.

I made the fateful decision to support XML::Parser::Lite as a fallback option to its bigger brother XML::Parser. Lurking in the MoveableType support boards I noted a significant number of users work with hosts that do not have XML::Parser and do not allow users to compile software (the module is a wrapper to Expat that uses C) or simply do not have the expertise to do it themselves. XML::Parser::Lite is an all Perl solution that uses a mega regular expression routine called REX. Lite does not support namespaces though, so I had to reverse engineer Expat's namespaces handling and put it into my liberal parser. While time consuming and in a sense reinventing of the wheel, it was interesting educational work that I thought was well worth the effort to make this code more useful to all MoveableType users. The rude surprise came Thursday when I began testing against Lite producing a "Segmentation Fault" -- Perl's version of a core dump or general protection fault. I spent all day Thursday trying to figure out why my code performed flawlessly with Expat and completely crashed with Lite. It ends up Lite uses some experimental regular expression code (the ?{ } construct) to call the event handlers you have registered. If you have any regular expressions in your handlers (as I did to support namespaces) it will crash Perl. This wasn't documented unless you examine the code. (Insert your favorite expletives here.) I spent Thursday evening and Friday weighing my options and reworking the code to accommodate this quirk. What's noteworthy is that the original REX code does not use this experimental construct. The question begs to be asked is there a better and safer way to implement such a parser? I think there is with some thought that I don't have just yet. I assume the module was coded this way for better performance, however convenience and simplicity are the reasons for using Lite (for me at least) that the use of these constructs seem to undermine. Furthermore it makes inserting namespace handling code in Lite, something I've considered after all the trouble I've gone through, difficult perhaps impossible. Another option to consider is XML::SAX::PurePerl.

Some much to do and so little time.

For MoveableType users waiting for the rewritten and substantially enhanced version of mt-rssfeed Wednesday is the day -- assuming I don't find another surprise.

One year ago today, my (now former) manager told me to shut down my weblog and remove all traces of it from my server. He tried to convince me that the Internet was too small to mix the professional and the personal.

One year ago today, I gave him my answer, and the rest is history.

Today, to celebrate this anniversary, I would like everyone to read my resumé, admire this full-screen picture of my cat, and link to this post.

There are four lights.

Its a little known fact to most of you that I used to run an indie music zine for over 7 years called Oculus Magazine. It started out in October 1991 as a free newsprint publication. In 1995 we started posted articles to the web. I loved it and learned a lot about publications, critical writing, and the Internet. (I also lost a lot of my own money, as did my partners in crime.) Alas, we eventually grew bored and burnt-out and Oculus cease operations. I was very uncool and took the site's content down.

Seeing an awesome publishing tool like MovableType pains me inside because we really could have used it back then. Most of my work on the Web site was spent manually coding and maintaining HTML with a lot of SSI tricks. (I wrote scripts to generate our own RSS feeds back in 1999 when Netscape for released it too.)

I miss those days and I've been thinking about putting restarting Oculus as a weblog. Today I woke up and decided to do a little bit of something about that.

One of the most popular articles we ever published was a "Jazz Primer for Rock People." Today I decided to pull that piece from my archive and put it back up -- nasty HTML 3.2 and all. I was still getting a couple hundred requests for it a month despite the content being down for a couple of years. I'll have to go back and clean up the markup and link it better.

We used to run a column penned by one Jim Glauner called "Cringe Factor: Music We Hate." Each issue I couldn't wait to read the draft Jim would hand in. I used to laugh so hard I'd cry reading his work.

I've been encouraging Jim for a bit to start publishing Cringe Factor as a weblog. I even setup one up and added all of the past columns he wrote for Oculus. Check it out here. My personal favorite was "Not Even Retarded Kids Will Like It."

Not many people know this, but I wrote a book a few years back called 1001 Ways To Improve Your Band Right Away. Rule 77 is "Burn all your Chicago records. However, like Dracula, Peter Cetera solo records must be rent with a wooden stake, or else they'll return to haunt you." Rule 915 says, "Fire your glockenspiel player," and Rule 136 says, "If Phil Collins is in your band, lose him like a sock in a dryer."

It only gets better from there.

Jim wrote one entry, but hasn't posted since. If you like what you read please send him a message and encourage him to write more.

Yesterday I joined the SETI 1000 data units completed club. Just doing my part in the search for extra terrestrial life.

Today is a rather blustery day in the NYC area. Trash and leaves are swirling and whipping through the air and down the streets. I can see the Hudson River from my home and it's choppy and full of whitecaps. It seems rather appropriate.

I took my daughter to the Liberty Science Center for something to do. (She has a real fondness for the place, especially the Great Toys from our Childhood display. Me too. Their simplistic genius is a wonderful reminder of better times.) It was a ghost town though. I think there was more staff around then spectators. One of the staff came up to us and emphatically thanked us for coming out today. It sullened my mood on a day when I wanted to be upbeat.

I consider myself extremely fortunate, living so close to Ground Zero, having lost little personally -- my commute, my view and a former co-worker I had not heard from in years. I'm rather worn out by the commemoration of 9/11. It’s not that I don't appreciate the magnitude of the event or the incredible loss. It's that I always remember. I just need to look out my window.

I remember and appreciate the life I still have and want to move on.

Here are a few links that I appreciated today:

• Dan Gillmor
• Amy Wohl
• Joel Spolsky
• Mark Pilgrim
• Kevin Werbach

I took the day off yesterday to see Fritz Lang's Metropolis. It was magnificent. This film was released in 1927 before sound in movies and yet in many ways holds up next to other sci-fi movie greats.

Its been re-released after being digitally restored with its original orchestral soundtrack and all its surviving footage. (One quarter is believed lost at this point.)

I saw it at the Ziegfeld Theatre in midtown Manhattan which only ads to the experience. The Ziefeld is one of a near dead breed of movie theatre where it is more about theatre then it is movie. Massive single screen, carved ceilings, crystal chandeliers, brass art deco sconces, and floor to ceiling velvet curtains that drawn as the lights dim. They just don't make them like that any more.

I highly recommend you get to one of the 6 big screens in the States if you can.

I always wish I could read Neuromancer for the first time again, because nothing before or since has given me the rush that it did. [Jon Udell]

How true!

Jon continues with another thoughtful and articulate essay. This one, entitled "Mr. Slippery," on the difficulties of identiity management.

This is a bit of old news worth noting.

Gene Kan, Gnutella inventor and a P2P evangelist, died at the age of 25 by his own hand. This is really tragic and a terrible waste in many ways. I've recently been expose to his writings on P2P and have been impressed and inspired.

Boing Boing's Cory Doctrow noted Kan's weblog This Place Sucks is "a wonderful and outrageous tour of Gene's dour wit, uncompromising cynicism and sharp eye for detail." Cory also points out this eulogistic letter by Joey deVilla.

A memorial fund is being set up in Kan's name at UC Berkeley. Donations can be sent to the following address: In memory of Gene Kan; Manager, Gift Stewardship; College of Engineering; University of California, Berkeley; 201 McLaughlin Hall; Berkeley, Calif., 94720-1722. Checks should be made out to "UC Regents" but clearly marked for the Gene Kan fund.

Incidentally CNet just published a characteristically thoughtful and well articulated piece entitled "Writing File Sharing's Final Chapter" that Kan wrote just days before his death.

The Bill Gates Mac switcher parody over at macboy is a must see for a good laugh -- unless you're a cranky pundit named John C Dvorak. Link courtesy of Chuck Toporek's weblog post at O'Reilly. Ironically the page is not coded properly for viewing with Mozilla.

I'm not alone in blogspace in my admiration of The Pixies. Mena "Movable Type" Trott writes about her memories of the band's Doolittle LP. I knew there was a deeper reason why I like Movable Type so much.