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Here’s a pretty cogent argument in favor of change and release management. Forty minutes of Google downtime = untold millions in lost revenue for the rest of the Internet. And what’s with an Internet-wide blacklist supporting a wildcard like “/”?
Month: January 2009
Grab bag: Mac at 25
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Yikes. Glad that FlickrExport, which is excellent, is still being supported.
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Part of the Boston Public Library’s photo set on Flickr, not part of the Commons but published under a CC 2.0 Attribution license. Nice!
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Seven minutes of awesome, with a surprise ending that had me snorting water.
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Ideas on bringing the Globe back to profitability.
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In retrospect everything in Steve Jobs’s 2003 interview with Rolling Stone looks visionary. It’s easy to be visionary when you work like hell to make the visions come true.
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The SE/30 was my first Mac. I still miss that machine.
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Smart way to create a smart album quickly and get started.
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If DDR isn’t challenging enough for you, try it while getting hit in the face with a flamethrower.
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Yikes. No Berkshire Opera next summer is seriously scary.
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Using an Apple TV and Boxee to stream all TV over the Internet, without a cable box. I just downloaded Boxee on my home laptop and will try it out there; one day when I have a dedicated media computer this article is my next stop.
Grab bag for January 29, 2009
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About time. I haven’t checked recently but the last time I looked, the “all or nothing” upgrade price for my library was almost $400.
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Am I being filtered? How to find out.
Hitting the boards again: Verdi, Simon Boccanegra
I’ve been a little busy lately with work and have let my link-posting take over the site. This week I finally got a break to do something a little different again. I’m singing in the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s production of Verdi’s Simon Boccanegra, with James Levine directing and José Van Dam in the title role, with Marcello Giordani and James Morris in key supporting roles.
The last Tanglewood Festival Chorus production I sang in (aside from Holiday Pops) was the Brahms Requiem, and the last opera was Berlioz’s Les Troyens. Needless to say, the Verdi is a different animal from them both–an opera both political and personal, on a much smaller scale than Les Troyens but with its own share of intense moments.
It’s been…interesting preparing this opera with the head cold I have right now. I hope I have a voice by the time the first performance is done tonight.
Grab bag for January 28
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I’ve never read much Updike, and I barely know anything about the Red Sox even after living here on and off for the better part of the decade, but this nearly moved me to tears. Rest in peace, Mr. Updike.
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Technical tips for optimizing CSS sprites.
Grab bag: Photos and proofs
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Sequence of portraits of 43.
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Wow. I think the Gigapan people just sold about a bajillion units of their camera + software. Amazing photo.
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Or, why traditional Christian apologetics drive thinking people nuts. I’m Christian, btw, but this sort of stuff gives us a bad name.
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Don’t let the door hit you on the way out, Bill. But it’s interesting that it’s painted as more of an issue that he denigrated the NYT on Jon Stewart than he had problems with facts and with conflicts of interest.
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Geoff Edgers’ profile of Shepard Fairey walks right past the irony of this critiquer of consumption doing ads for movies. But otherwise the piece is on target.
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Lifehacker points to JP’s TV moment showing how to make your own OTA digital TV antenna.
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So, so far, on average we’re up 1% over 2000 in our 401K balances? Greaat.
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Oy. I think Microsoft used to have a marketing department.
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Imaginative description of the “soft skills” (hardest skills to acquire) needed for product management. My favorite is the opening description, in which Cummings postulates that a brush with tragedy is needed to make a product manager great.
Don’t reprogram road signs
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You should never ever reprogram road signs. It’s a real public safety issue. Especially the poor security of the set-up.
Grab bag: Carnegie Hall bound
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Nice non-traditional way to deal with a closet.
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Looks like the TFC will do Mendelssohn’s Elijah later in the season — should be fun. It’s always a pleasure to perform in Carnegie Hall and especially with Christine Brewer.
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Where has the Raven Society been in celebrating the 200th anniversary of Poe’s birth? You’d kind of think they’d want to drive the celebration, since, you know, they’re dedicated to celebrating Poe’s memory.
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TPM picks up on the whacko coming out of the Fox Network on the first day of the Obama administration.
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Reuse of curtain rods for an art project display technique.
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The oath of office slaughtered by the pedantry of grammatical correctness, according to this theory.
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Viral video for the new Watchmen movie.
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Interesting comments from Biden, Mitchell, HRC, and Obama.
Grab bag: Downsizing in Redmond … and Gitmo
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Two new PM focused blogs start out focused on win-loss.
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Jumping off point for a lot of interesting reminiscences.
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As a former developer on the DOD’s Standard Procurement System, I have to agree with the thrust of this article. Time to start going over the reporting data with a fine toothed comb.
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Why Macs in the White House shouldn’t be a big deal.
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Interesting that there’s so much pushback on this in the comments.
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Hope my former coworkers are ok.
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How to get your data out.
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On the connection between cheap Casio watches and incarceration in Gitmo.
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Julian Bond reflects on how Obama’s election shows changes in the American public.
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Reprint of an article about static analysis tools; reasonably balanced description of the pluses and minuses, and a few cool shoutouts about why Veracode is different.
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This bodes well.
Grab bag: Performance metrics
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Missed this back in 2006. Must give it a try soon.
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Hysterical, and more than a little snide, and good icons.
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Here’s that dashboard.
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Notes toward what an Obama performance dashboard might look like.
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An actual Obama performance dashboard.
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Nice to see David Iglesias getting work again.
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Because no US president is complete without his own action figure.
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More calls to action. We all need to write the next four years ourselves. The plain speech of the inaugural address is a good place to start.
Inaugural lows and highs
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Oh, that’s not a happy note.
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“Recall that earlier generations faced down fascism and communism not just with missiles and tanks, but with the sturdy alliances and enduring convictions. … They understood that our power alone cannot protect us, nor does it entitle us to do as we please. Instead, they knew that our power grows through its prudent use. Our security emanates from the justness of our cause; the force of our example; the tempering qualities of humility and restraint.”
Grab bag: Staying informed
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Saeed at On Product Management is asking for feedback about the problems that need to be addressed in technology product management. Go comment!
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“We may be lining up to eat at soup kitchens in 2009, but we’ll have the fastest news cycle ever to keep us informed.”
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Good snow day food.
A change is gonna come
I drove a historic route this morning on the way to work. Between Arlington Heights and Lexington runs part of Paul Revere’s route, where he famously rode through the countryside warning the people that the British were coming. I followed the route to Lexington Green, where stands a statue commemorating what happened next.
It’s not a statue of Paul Revere. It’s a statue of an unknown minuteman, standing at the entrance to the green where the citizens of Lexington stood up to the British regulars and helped to begin our fight for the liberty to decide our own fate.
Today we celebrate a historic moment, the election of our first black President. There’s so much he stands for–our ability to transcend past griefs, our turning our back on mediocrity and division and selecting someone who can lead us through our troubles. But the Lexington Green has a word to say about today as well:
It’s not just about the leader and the message, though without the right leader and the right message nothing will happen. It’s about what happens next, about individuals taking up the call and the charge and standing up to make a change. I haven’t felt much of that about our country in the last little bit, but I feel it today.
Grab bag: Liquidity traps and liquid landings
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That didn’t take long (https://www.jarretthousenorth.com/2008/11/04/links-for-2008-11-04/) Unfortunately it leaves Best Buy as a monopoly bricks & mortar electronics retailer. Is that like being the most successful buggy whip salesman?
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Details from a London Times editor about the technical process of landing a large passenger jet on water.
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Federated Search today = Sherlock in Mac OS 8.5. As I comment on the article, Microsoft is pulling out all the stops to keep the user in the Windows shell rather than the browser.
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A roundup of interesting links following the event that has made me swear off pointing to aviation safety links ever again.
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KHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAN! Oh and RIP Ricardo Montalban.
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The initial obituary for a luminous artist; a fuller version followed afterward. I remember being stunned when I toured the Brandywine Valley museum in high school.
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Good news: the rule of law stands. Bad news: what was Holder doing during the Clinton administration?
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That’s a scary shoe to drop.
Grab bag: Accountability
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The accountability moment for torture. If senior outgoing Bush administration officials embrace a coherent definition of torture, accept that it offers no useful intelligence and makes it more difficult to prosecute, and that it lowers American moral standing, then how can we help but pursue justice on those responsible?
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Or, how to be right and not get drowned at sea by Pythagorus.
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I’ll give this to Cheney and Bush: their determination to remain committed to demonstrably false information in the face of so much contrary evidence is impressive.
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Interesting tip on “removing” corking taint from wine. Works? Who knows?
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I actually have hope, after this goofup, that Geithner will use his experience to chase after tax code reform with a new level of motivation.
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“[MIT Professor Arnold] Barnett calculates that it’s more likely for a young child to be elected president in his or her lifetime than to die on a single jet flight in the USA or in similar industrial nations in Europe, Canada or Japan.” Nice to get some good news about airline safety for once.
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Where’s the creation in the “creative destruction” that venture companies are supposed to be funding?
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Really valuable insight into the necessary nightmares of the valuation of startup companies.