Our standard April Fool party 

Watch out for the lunacy tomorrow as April Fools is celebrated on blogs and other websites far and wide. I imagine it's already started since it must be April 1 in New Zealand or Australia by now.

Here on Scripting News we celebrate something else... Our birthday! You see it was on April 1, 1997 that a blog-like website first appeared at www.scripting.com. Last year it was our 10th birthday, which implies that tomorrow is the 11th.

To celebrate, I've cobbled together a humble page that calculates the age of Scripting News with 10 digits of precision.

http://age.scripting.com/

So at midnight tonight, it should flip over. If you like such things you may stay up to see it flip.

Hey it's a geeky site. What else would you suggest?

So enjoy the other sites, and keep coming back through the years, Murphy-willing of course, as we all grow old together.

I love Battlestar Galactica 

Working my way through Season 3, in prep for Season 4, which starts this week.

Mixing tech industry politics with U.S. politics 

Something I didn't know, but now that I do, it makes sense.

One of the reasons I'm not so popular in the tech industry is that I'm an enthusiastic supporter of Barack Obama, and I look forward to the day, coming soon, when the Republicans leave the White House and we can get on with fixing the problems they created, and then getting on track solving some long-term problems that we've been ignoring.

Now of course, I understand that there are Clinton supporters in the tech industry, and there are even Republicans who like Bush, and to them my enthusiastic support sometimes goes a little too far. I understand, totally. If for example, I were following a Bush supporter, like Tony Perkins, on Twitter, I would have unfollowed him long ago. I don't need that level of annoyance. He and I are never going to agree on politics, not even how to discuss politics, so I would just tune him out. Knowing Tony, I don't think he'd hold it against me, as I wouldn't hold it against any Republican tech person who unfollowed me.

What I can't support are personal attacks and name-calling just because we disagree. General attacks are okay with me. In other words if you think all Obama supporters are idiots, go ahead and say it (I'll probably unfollow, but BFD). But if you say I'm a jerk just because I support someone you don't, then I have a problem with that (esp if you don't make it clear that's why you're saying it). You're getting confused between personal issues and political ones, and I think you're going to even lose the support of people who agree with you politically, and imho you should.

After all is said and done, when we elect the next President, we're still going to be Americans (with apologies to readers who aren't). That's been the problem in the last few elections, we forgot, after the election was over, to find the common ground that we agree on. And as a result the Constitution is in trouble, and our economy is a mess (even Bush agrees), and our reputation overseas isn't good and it's getting worse. I think this is because we forgot to bind our wounds after the election, and our elected leadership didn't lead.

So this is what I learned. I think some people hide their political differences behind personal attacks. This is what none of us should support. We should be able to have a discussion and keep our self-respect and dignity. That US politics gets masked as tech industry politics is very confusing and should not be tolerated.

BTW, as a constructive step toward fixing this problem, I think all tech industry bloggers should let us know their politics. If you're American, which of the Presidential candidates do you support. I wouldn't have thought this was necessary just 48 hours ago, but now I'm sure it is.

Where did you have your great idea? 

Wired has a fascinating photo-essay with narratives from famous innovators explaining where they were when they had their biggest idea.

For example, Reed Hastings got the idea for Netflix in a movie rental place in La Honda, CA (a fairly remote place between Palo Alto and the Pacific Ocean).

Now that we have digital cameras and know people from far away through our blogs, Twitter and Flickr, it seems we could tell stories like this about the places we live and more mundane but still important events in our lives. They could become quick collaborative documents like the Wired photo-essay.

Examples:

1. A photo-essay of opening days at all major league ballparks in the US.

2. Church services in every major city on a given weekend (different religions have services on Friday, Saturday and Sunday).

3. Following a candidate for the Senate or House as they campaign for one day. (The major news outlets don't cover local races very well anymore.)

Projects like this are important warmups and proofs-of-concept for amateur newsgathering, and perhaps new politics. It's not just for Democrats or Republicans, maybe this is how we bootstrap new parties, or maybe it's just for fun. Who knows. Learning doesn't have to stop when you leave school. I like stories, esp short ones, along with pictures of places and people that are different or strangely familiar. This is part of what I meant in yesterday's post. Let's reset the dial back to the beginning, start small, and stay small. Now we have some new tools that we didn't have last time amateur public writing started up (or whatever it's called).

There is no A-list, just people with ideas.

The difference is people doing it for fun, versus people doing it to either get rich or earn a living. Yes, there really is a difference in approach.

PS: In case this turns out to be a great idea, I had it in my kitchen.