Scripting News: Technology and evolution, day 2.#

Brent Simmons: Mark All as Read.#

FWIW, my RSS software never had unread counts. My newspaper didn't have them. I never read more than a handful of articles in any issue. If I took a vacation, I just recycled the papers that came while I was away. News is meant to slip through your fingers. That's why I always preferred the river-of-news approach. I never thought of RSS as a mail-like application.#

Today's background image is downtown San Francisco at sunset. #

Scripting News: Technology and Evolution.#

I moved this to Scripting News. #

A reminder that I have to merge the two feeds. That will happen sometime soon. Feed readers that can't handle title-less items will do weird things with my feed. C'est la vie! #

Today's background image -- clouds over Seattle. #

I bet Facebook's drones will have excellent cameras. #

Ford's Takedown Of The Cadillac 'Poolside' Ad Is Perfect.#

WSJ: Three Mozilla Board Members Resign over Choice of New CEO.#

I like to hear all sides of an issue argued with respect. I can learn from people I disagree with, and sometimes even change my mind.#

It's been years since I turned on a TV set in a hotel room. It would be nice if there was an easy way to channel my iPad video to the TV.#

When you watch NBA games on an iPad with League Pass they play the same insipid ads over and over. #

The Amex ad asks us to hear Paul Pierce to tell a story how a semi-pro bowler came to his house (presumably) where he has a private bowling alley. He bowled a 230, and apparently this upset Pierce, because (as he reminds us, again and again) he never invited him back again. Great. I wonder why I ever needed to know this. But I've seen this commercial at least 100 times. Always when I'm on the road, because I watch Knicks games on MSG at home. #

Audio of Paul Pierce's commercial. Enjoy!#

Paul Pierce -- do you know this is what you're saying to the most ardent NBA fans?#

#

1. Twitter's product is news.#

2. View the current Twitter as the editorial system. .#

3. Don't remove power-user features, for crying out loud -- add more!#

Glorify the expert user features Twitter has that Facebook can never add because it has to appeal to grandma and grandpa. (Hint: That's called a positioning statement. It's also ageist so a better way of saying it is needed.)#

4. Create an entry-level system that just delivers the hot stuff.#

Call it TweetLand, or EZ Tweeter. #

5. Use the checkbox news structure.#

If you like it you could thank me, or better, pay me. #

6. Add video. Become the new TV.#

7. Have a revenue model for news orgs and independents.#

8. And create an irrevocably open API. #

I watched the movie Nebraska.#

It wasn't what I thought it would be. The acting -- so superb. Gorgeously filmed in black and white. It starts with a caricature of old age, but then fills in the details that most of us younger people overlook. Behind the cranky facade is a generous man, who always was willing to share what he had with his friends. Who wants some life in the life he has left. Who suffers the tolerance of those around him. And who is lucky to have a son who wants to know him.#

The doddering Bruce Dern who we knew as a young actor in westerns and scifi movies, reminds me of my father in his final years. They both had dreams, neither accomplished them, but they moved the marker a little further along its path. #

Remarkably parallel to another Oscar-nominated movie, Philomena, about an old woman's searching road trip. Very different stories, with different outcomes, but remarkably similar setups, and both were acting and story-telling masterpieces. #

In Seattle today. Rainy and gray. Typical spring weather. Went for a walk yesterday, the same walk I took regularly when I lived here in 2004. This was during the bootstrap of podcasting. Every day I'd take a podcast with me on the walk. Daily Source Code, Dawn & Drew, a few others (my memory is so bad these days, sorry for omissions). They were good days, full of promise. The memories remind that I want to do more of that kind of work.#

I heard from a bunch of people yesterday who said they didn't like the new Cosmos series. I might know what they mean. The writing is not first-rate, and it has continuity problems. But it has the right spirit. When he teaches about evolution, and it's a great story -- my visceral instinct is "That's what I want to do!" And he tells the story of great people who had the creative impulse, and made a valuable contribution. Again -- that's what I want to do! I think we're born with a feeling about evolution, that that itself must be part of evolving. It might be something that makes humans unique. #

Another reason it's an important program is that there isn't much on the airwaves that appeals to the intellect. If for no other reason the show deserves our support, as people who think, and who value thinking. #

Travel day -- NY to Seattle.#

I just watched the first three episodes of the new Cosmos series, with Neil DeGrasse Tyson, and it's very good. He's not Carl Sagan, but that's okay -- the show is updated, with really great visuals, and tells stories in a highly accessible way, yet gives you a feel for how different the universe is from the way it seems living our normal head-down lives here on Planet Earth. Tyson has the same passion that Sagan had. It's important to spread the news, encourage everyone to watch the show. #

I loved the story about how Isaac Newton invented modern mathematics, and how he was hassled by the trolls of the day, but science won out in the end and we got differential and integral calculus and we understood how suns, planets, comets and galaxies influence each other with gravity. #

Marco Arment says you should run your own servers, or at least give it a try, and Brent Simmons says "not for me, now."#

I recently had to make that decision. My first move was to set up a Linux server, install Node on it, and it worked fine. But then I talked with an old friend, Eric Kidd, who has been doing this for years, and he urged me to try Heroku. I did, and no regrets -- the servers work so well and scale so easily that I eventually turned off the Linux server I already had deployed. I just wasn't using it.#

I'm not saying anyone is right or wrong here, but for me, now -- this is the right choice. #

Scripting News: Different-size bits of content. podcast#

Watergate taught us to watch out for the non-denial denial. #

In 2011 I prototyped a river with a What's Happening box at the top.#

Utah to welcome marijuana for limited medical use.#

Om: Billion Dollar Dart Throwing.#

Brendan Eich: Inclusiveness at Mozilla.#

"Popcorn Time isn't an achievable dream; it's a cruel joke about a future we won't realize any time soon."#

Worries Abound as Citi Bike Nears One-Year Mark.#

Good Writing and Editing Is Part of Great Design.#

Joe Moreno: Twitter's Single Point of Failure.#

Today's image is Harold Lloyd's famous Safety Last clock picture.#

NYT: "The rapidly escalating cost of doing business is driving out bookstores, threatening the city’s sense of self as the center of the literary universe, the home of the publishing industry and a place that lures and nurtures authors and avid readers."#

Why? #

Mike Arrington says he's pretty sure Google read an email to discover who his source was on a leak from within Google. #

Google denies it, but the denial is weak. "While our terms of service might legally permit such access, we have never done this and it’s hard for me to imagine circumstances where we would investigate a leak in that way."#

So what have we learned?#

1. Their terms of service allow them to read your email.#

2. This specific lawyer lacks imagination.#

3. What is it they have never done? If they didn't do exactly what Arrington alleges, he's not lying.#

Now consider how little regard Google had for its own employees in this classic exchange between then-Google CEO Eric Schmidt, and Apple CEO, Steve Jobs. If they have such disdain for their own employees, how much regard do you think they have for users? My guess is, if they want to read your email, they're reading your email, and that's that. Every time you write something in GMail, pretend that Larry and Sergey are discussing it with their lawyers at their next staff meeting.#

Someday Google is going to realize this kind of disdain hurts them financially. Their product is trust. They're throwing it away, almost deliberately, as if to make a point, it seems.#

They'd do well to study the Johnson & Johnson example for how they managed a crisis with Tylenol. In that case, of course -- J&J had nothing to do with the underlying problem. But they embraced it, fully adopted the user's point of view, and kept their product alive. #

1. It's really cool technology.#

2. If it works, it will be a space that humans occupy, like hard drives on Macs and PCs, and Facebook profiles on cell phones. This purchase is not specifically related to the product we think of as Facebook today. Today's Facebook is like search is to Google, or MS-DOS was to Microsoft. Facebook is so big, its ambition has to be big to match it.#

3. Zuck wants to bring the Internet to the next billion people -- why? Because everyone in the first billion is already a user of his network. My guess is that the next group will neither be easy to convert or as lucrative. If they want growth it'll have to come from elsewhere.#

4. Oculus is Google Glass that's fun and works. And not as creepy. #

5. Oculus is the X-box of the future. #

6. It's 3D that really works. #

7. It's the movie theater of the future.#

8. Zuck is of the generation that grew up with game consoles. He wants to be the first user of Oculus the same way people of my generation would have wanted to be the first user of Marantz. (Look it up.)#

9. If you can't buy the coolest game platform for $2 billion, what's the point of having all that money. #

Scripting News: Unpopular truths.#

Today's background image is the default Mac OS wallpaper.#

Facebook to acquire Oculus Rift virtual reality manufacturer for ~$2B.#

I use Fargo to keep what Johnson calls a spark file. It's how I manage all the ideas I want to work on.#

I do prefer to open doors for myself, whether it relates to self-esteem, I'm not sure#

In the past if I wanted to link to an image, I'd put the link in the HTML. Click the link, see the image, hit the Back button. Now I can put the image in a popup dialog, click OK to dismiss it. Same interaction, this way is a little faster and less disruptive to your flow. Less jarring. I hope. Examples follow...#

I tried using this great New Yorker cartoon as a Scripting News background image, but it clashed too much.#

A picture named never.gif#

Later, by coincidence, I listened to a Fresh Air interview with Bob Mankoff, who did that cartoon, who has a book out. He's the New Yorker cartoon editor. #

First Look says Omidyar to stay out of newsroom.#

Swiss Watchmakers Skeptical of Digital Revolution.#

Video: The final images from every Best Picture winner. #

Google Announces Price Drops For Its Cloud Computing Services.#

Million Dollar Homepage still exists, but 22% of it has rotted. #

Harvard: Closing the gender gap in computer science.#

Gay Firefox developers boycott Mozilla to protest CEO hire.#

Sometimes platforms are defined first around users -- Mac, Android, iOS come to mind. And sometimes platforms are defined first by developers. Examples include Unix, the web, JavaScript. #

But eventually every successful platform ends up viewed both ways. If there are apps written in JavaScript, it is relevant to users. I make apps for users -- and they have to know they're using a new platform because it works differently from any other platform.#

JavaScript is a very cool developer platform. That's why I'm interested in it, but I wouldn't be making software for it if it also wasn't an excellent user platform too, potentially. #

I'll be at EmpireJS, May 5-6, NYC. #

If you look in the Links menu at the top of each page, you'll see a new item there, Open comments window. #

Choose the command if you want to comment. A familiar Disqus comments interface appears.#

That's about it. You have to remember where to look, but this seems like a good thing, keeping the hit-and-run type comments to a minimum. #

Yes, I know it looks a little funky. If you have suggestions, please post a comment. #

Fargo blog: Fargo 1.52.#

Scripting News: Best way to parse XML in Node.js?#

Today's background image is King Kong in Manhattan.#

Fargo blog: Overriding font choices.#

Is Scripting News a Fargo site? Yes.#

To be clear, again -- I never would advocate discrimination in hiring. Anyone who says I would, or did, is wrong. #

Has a reporter asked Larry Page how climate change factors into his plans for Google? If so, what did he say?#

Jay Rosen on the launch of Nate Silver’s FiveThirtyEight.com for ESPN.#

NYT: Beneath Cities, a Decaying Tangle of Gas Pipes.#

I did a Google image search for the term screen shot on scripting.com to see what it would find.#

One of the first images was a Windows screen shot from the late-90s UserLand CMS.#

We were really proud to have successfully gotten off the Mac web platform, which had been completely rebooted by Apple overnight around Unix, shortly after Jobs returned. By getting onto Windows, we got onto a platform that we felt was more stable and had a better future. (Didn't turn out exactly as we thought, but none of these kinds of navigations ever do.)#

Today's Fargo users will see a lot of familiar features in this screen shot.#

I go for continuity. If I labor over an idea until I find the right answer, that pretty much settles it, and I move onward. And it has a nice side-effect that old users can become new users more easily.#

Note to self: Screen shots make lousy blog background images. #

#

Thanks to Chuck for the link.#

Good morning sports fans!#

Let's try something fun!!#

Spring Blizzard Threatens to Swipe Eastern New England.#

Pando: Visitor logs show full extent of Pierre and Pamela Omidyar’s cozy White House ties.#

Today's background is a Google map of Fargo, ND.#

The Guardian and NY Times both have stories that make Secret sound insidious. Their sources find it threatening. You'd think reporters would welcome an environment where people can exchange information without fear of retribution by exactly the people who say they don't like it. #

Screen shot of today's Scripting News.#

Fortune 500 companies receive $63 billion in subsidies.#

One of the reasons to learn how to program, imho, is to see first-hand how outrageously fast the Internet is beneath all the michegas.#

A Packet’s Tale. How Does the Internet Work?#

A product like Secret should go public right now.#

Offer stock, at a good price, to people who are active users of the site.#

Use algorithms to find the behavior you want to enhance. Give users equity. Not fake equity, not feel-good equity -- the same stock you give key engineers.#

Because you need us, and we know it. I'm doing a lot to help you get off the ground, and I've been down this road many times, and we know how this goes. If you're successful the users get your gratitude and if you fail, we lose our data (not that that means a whole lot in this case).#

How about another outcome. We get rich because we bet on you early-on and won.#

I don't know why but I've always loved maps. As a kid I would stare at them for hours. Practice drawing them. I liked the idea of maps, and that they represented places I could think about and maybe visit one day. Maybe the visiting wasn't even the big deal. I wanted to know about them.#

So for me, being able to put a map behind a day's worth of blogging is as interesting as putting an image. A way to focus attention on a place, a logical view of that place, without the reality of trees, cars, people, waterways, buildings, armies, etc. Just graphs in a graphic view.#

What's cool about this is that it's not a hack. The fact that it's a map is just an attribute on the outline heading for the day. I can also specify the latitude and longitude, what style map it is and the level of zooming. #

Here's a screen shot of the attributes dialog for the map behind today's posts. The center is in the heart of Fargo, North Dakota. What does it mean? Not much other than it's a really cool place to name a product after. #

The feature is not yet released. I just started work on it this morning.#

Goal#

If things go according to plan, I should be able to put a Google map behind a day's posts on this blog. #

There's something beautifully nerdy behind this seemingly simple feature. A connection between two worlds that weren't before connected. #

(And one of them is not Google Maps, but that's pretty amazing as well.)#

Plan#

First part is to have the attributes from the day node in the outline be transferred to the <div> representing the day in the rendered HTML. #

Not going to include the mundane atts that every headline has: created, name, text.#

Will include all others, like:#

flMapBackground -- if present and true, the background of the day's rendering is a map.#

We look for the following optional atts, which all have defaults:#

#mapLatitude "40.774295"#

#mapLongitude "-73.970833"#

#mapType "roadmap"#

#mapZoom "14"#

These are the same defaults as used by the medium template#

Scripting News: Users make standards.#

Scripting News: The second guy makes the standard.#

Scripting News: They love horse shit.#

Today's background image is Bliss. #

Atlantic: Not Even Silicon Valley Escapes History.#

The Fountain of Youth is a spring that supposedly restores the youth of anyone who drinks or bathes in its waters#

My favorite podcast these days is Planet Money from NPR.#

All of a sudden the price of Knicks tickets is way up! #

A picture named sorrySmall.jpg#

This is how you win. Stay respectful at all times. No sarcasm. Give your opponent all the respect they don't give you. People notice this, although you don't think they do.#

Force your adversary to take yes for an answer. You find out quickly who's wed to conflict and disagreement when one side surrenders.#

Another example. I was watching the gubernatorial debate betw Schwarzenegger and whoever his opponent was. At the end of the debate the candidates could ask each other questions. So the first guy goes and asks a "question" that's actually an attack. "Why are you such a jerk?" Arnold says a bunch of nonsense that he's been saying the whole night. Good-natured nonsense. Then it's his turn to ask. "What's the most interesting thing you've learned on the campaign?" A total softball question. The guy just fell over. He had been prepared for anything but that. It totally worked. He had no idea what to say.#

A picture of a slice of cheese cake.#

I wrote this in a tweet: "I think you have to deliberately temper your ambition to keep it at a human scale. Otherwise there's no integrity. You are just human."#

I thought deserved an explanation and to be saved outside of Twitter.#

My idea of integrity is this: If there's a difference between what you seem to be and what you are, then you have an integrity issue. For example, a boat with a hole in its bottom has an integrity issue if it's in water, because pretty soon it's not going to be a boat. One of the key things about boats are that they float. However if it's a beached boat, it can have a hole in its bottom and still be a boat. I'm sure you understand why. #

So having too much money is a problem because to manage a lot of money you need to be more than a human at some point because it gets complicated as anyone with a lot of money can tell you. You have to hire all kinds of people to help you, the more you have. #

There's the problem. You can't be a person and have above a certain amount of money because you have to become more than one person and you just can't do that. It's not something we can do. #

Maybe this is too subtle. But I think it explains the unhappy part of getting rich, and very few rich people are happy. I think a lot more poor people are. Because they are living at a human scale. #

Microsoft: "We undertook a limited review of this third party's Microsoft operated accounts." (Translated: We read his mail.)#

When a tech company refers to you as a "third party" you know you're in trouble.#

Mike Arrington: About That Time Google Spied On My Gmail.#

Scripting News: Civilization is made of interop. #

Fargo 1.51 released.#

Today's background image is Mona Lisa by Leonardo da Vinci. #

Race against time: Climate change and the Olympic Winter Games.#

Slate: New winter storm may be headed East. #

Guardian: US tech giants knew of NSA data collection, agency's top lawyer insists.#

Turkish graffiti spreads the IP addresses of Google's DNS servers.#

Apple After Jobs: Pretty Much the Same as Ever.#

Fast Company: How Much Will A Pack Of Joints Cost?#

Barbara Boxer at water symposium: 'Water wars have got to end'.#

Patching surveillance cameras in public space with appropriate copyright terms.#

Mt. Gox Says It Found 200,000 Bitcoins in 'Forgotten' Wallet.#

WSJ: Citi Bike, Needing Millions of Dollars, Looks for Help.#

#

Create an open source development environment where there is no info about a person's gender, age, race, etc.#

It would also be good for free speech, because you wouldn't be able to get someone fired for expressing an opinion you don't like -- because you wouldn't know where the person worked!#

Disconnect work from the other parts of identity.#

Scripting News: The "noteblog" format.#

2002: The trick is to have art in your life and make some of it pay. And that in itself is an art. #

I have six Windows servers. I thought most of them were XP. Turns out none of them are. What a relief. #

Wired: Larry Page Lays Out His Plan for Your Future.#

Added a new feature to Fargo noteblogs. Now, when you come in through a permalink, the text of the linked-to item is highlighted, so it's easy to spot. #

FiveThirtyEight: Fear Not, Readers, We Have RSS Feeds.#

NY Post: Knicks short on time, but focused on possibility.#

Ron Chester: Big Changes With Fargo.#

Today's background is nothing. Whitespace.#

Farhad: Discovering Two Screens Aren’t Better Than One.#

Jesse Jackson Confronts Silicon Valley.#

Yahoo loves 25 people who hail the web at 25.#

Locations where The Royal Tenenbaums was shot in NYC.#

PDF of Ted Nelson's Computer Lib/Dream Machines.#

When I first read Ted Nelson in the 70s, his books gave me ideas I've used when I dream about software, ever since. #

Unlike other hippie tech visionaries, Ted's writing was accessible, he explained his ideas very well! #

And the value of the ideas endure. Although I'm sure Ted would disagree, vehemently, the tools and services we're using today were imagined by him, very long ago.#

Moral of the story: Things don't always come out the way you think they will, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't dream. #

Ted's work is incredible, still to this day.#

When we were kids, adults loved us. Hugs and kisses all day. #

When we grew up, you all became scared of us. It's a big thing to try to understand when you're still just a kid inside.#

The kids we once were are still very much alive. They're looking for all the things kids feel the world owes us. And not finding enough of it.#

I'm trying to think but nothing happens!#

Fargo blog: Testing Fargo 1.51.#

Scripting News: How I did the bookmarklet.#

Scripting News: How to ask for help with software.#

Kevin O'Keefe: Law blogs ignore the history of blogging at their peril. #

NBA commissioner says ads on jerseys are ‘inevitable’#

The 100 Most-Wanted Speakers at Tech Conferences.#

National Geographic Plans to Show Crimea as Part of Russia on Maps.#

Ars: Two-factor authentication directory.#

Harry McCracken: I’m a Google Voice Addict, and I’m Frightened About Its Future.#

Today's background image. Snowy Bethesda Fountain.#

Matt Terenzio suggests reminding the user that the name of the linkblog outline has to end with .opml. I thought I could do even better, making it work even if you forgot to include the .opml.#

I implemented the feature, and it works. While watching the Knicks beating the Pacers! #

if (!string.endsWith (fname, ".opml", true)) { #

fname += ".opml";#

}#

A picture named bug.gif#

#

#

Scripting News: Internet justice.#

Scripting News: Every programmer should have an open source project.#

Scripting News: What would an open Secret look like?#

Fargo blog: Updated outline template.#

Animated visualization of all the flights over Europe in a single day.#

1998: Yo Quiero Scripting News?#

LA Times: Google Glass attack victim accused of recording neighbors.#

AnonyWatch: Tracking Nameless Quotations in The Times.#

Guardian: If libraries can't make it here in New York, can they make it anywhere?#

Wired: A Startlingly Simple Theory About the Missing Malaysia Airlines Jet.#

The Knicks are live-streaming today's press conference. #

Today's background image is the 1973 NY Knicks. #

This group proposes to make a historical social network of people in Wikipedia. I really like the idea. Find out which historical figures were contemporaries, and knew each other#

Very creative.#

Melo?#

Isolation player. Carmelo is in the future plans. He still has another level he can go to. #

Contract#

5-year contract. He has a prenuptual agreement. #

Is Dolan ceding authority?#

Yes willingly and gratefully.#

I hate prevarication#

Heheh. I'll leave the not-speaking up to Steve (Mills).#

How long will it take?#

One step at a time. We're going to push the team into the playoffs this year, and make decisions going forward from there.#

Dolan, Jackson and Mills#

A picture named djm.gif#

Red Holzman#

NY is not the easiest place to live. (And-how.)#

There is no I in team#

Players need to feel supported.#

Triangle offense. He believes in system basketball.#

He says the things Walt Frazier says all the time.#

He's going to hire a new coach in the summer (he doesn't say that but it's obvious).#

We're going to have an open relationship and a good one. (To reporters.)#

Supporting Woodson for remainder of this season.#

This is the best place to play basketball.#

Phil Jackson#

A picture named jackson.gif#

Jackson is moving to NY#

Steve Mills is staying? Doesn't seem too likely. #

Phil will be responsible for all basketball questions.#

Who is Irving Azar?#

Mutual friend that invited Jackson and Dolan to a party.#

They met at Azar's house.#

Not sure if this is correct spelling.#

James Dolan#

A picture named dolan.gif#

13-time NBA champion, twice with Knicks#

Walt Frazier and Dick Barnett are called out.#

Spike Lee and Dave DeB's son.#

Connecting back with Red Holzman.#

Talk about history...#

Checking in with Willis Reed.#

How can they not be crying! #

It's great listening to Walt Frazier talk about it.#

Maybe he'll be able to interact with the players.#

What a time to be a Knicks fan, since the 60s. #

#

Thanks to Rex for the link! #

Scripting News: Roy Wildstein.#

Scripting News: Title-less items in my feed.#

Scripting News: A celebratory podcast!#

Today's background image is subtle. #

Andy DeSoto: Using outliners to enable open science documentation. #

Brent Simmons: "RSS is the domain of indie developers." #

L.A. Times Journalist Explains How a Bot Wrote His Earthquake Story for Him.#

NYT: Tech's Favorite Cartoonist Enters Mainstream Publishing.#

The new FiveThirtyEight has a feed.#

Someone just asked me on the street if I am Steven Spielberg.#

NYT: Man Named by Newsweek Issues Denial on Bitcoin Claim.#

Sri Lankan hangman resigns in shock at sight of gallows.#

"I love Phil Jackson," Shumpert said. I'm so glad to hear Jackson is a fan of Shumpert's and vice versa. I am too! He's got the winning mania. He just needs his friends to believe in him, because he's still pretty young. #

You know how guitarists have licks?#

Well programmers have them too. #

Here's one..#

When you click the permalink next to an item with subs.#

When we show you the item.#

It's expanded.#

So logical, how could it work any other way?#

Exactly! #

PS: Thanks to Dan MacTough for his help with a gritty programming problem related to this feature. #

The good news is that now that there is no dominant feed reader, many of the popular products read the title-less feeds just fine.#

Here's how Chrome deals with title-less items.#

And here's how River3 deals with title-less items.#

Mike Rodriquez reports that NewsBlur supports title-less items.#

Feedly handles them a lot like Chrome. #

Fever seems to handle title-less feeds! #

That's the miracle of a competitive market. Once a big company comes to dominate, esp in a market they don't love, stagnation strangles it.#

When Google pulled out, contrary to what the RSS bashers say, the lights started coming back on, almost immediately.#

After the transition, I have a lot more space for linkage.#

I want to help people who are doing good things for the open web.#

So if you're making or using tools in innovative ways, and don't depend on Facebook or Twitter or the like to spread the word, or are working on other ways, or even just thinking about them -- write a blog post and send me a link.#

I want to help good ideas get attention! #

Scripting News: New Scripting News. A place to note problems.#

A Fargo user who likes the new stuff. "He must have read my mind."#

Today's picture: The Beatles crossing Abbey Road. #

Here's the RSS feed for the noteblog.#

Here's the OPML source for this site. Fargo users, choose Open by URL in the File menu to have a look. #

Yahoo to Release New Flickr App.#

Phil’s Jackson’s first move in New York?#

You hear this these days -- that mobile is so compelling, so pervasive, that we'll stop using desktops and laptops. I don't think so. And I've always been among the first to get and use the newest and most expensive devices. I'm not anything remotely like a Luddite.#

But you can swing too far in your enthusiasm. Saying there's no use for desktop computers is just wrong. I drive a 4-door sedan. At one time I had a Mazda Miata. I've also had a pickup truck, and a huge van. And a bunch of shitty little cars that served as basic transport. There are semi trucks on the highway. And the kind of truck used to move mining equipment and missiles. And tanks and buses. There isn't one single form factor for cars, why should there be one form factor for computers?#

I have yet to see a tablet that's as easy to type on as a desktop. That can have so much material on screen at once. I am a professional computer user. Sure most people don't need all the hardware tools I have. But I'm damn glad I have them.#

I worry about this trend. I see it as the equivalent of saying we can only have receivers and not transmitters. I am a publisher and I need my tools.#

Welcome to the new Scripting News!#

Here's a screen shot of how it looks on opening night.#

BTW, I like to switch things over on Saturday nights. That way if there are any problems, I can fix them while no one is watching. And Sunday morning, over coffee, I can start making lists of things that are broken! #

This is really two sites in one. The previous essays site is still here. Only its index pages are not part of the new site. Example. Those pages, and the home page, are from the new noteblog site, using a new template, and a new editorial process that includes a bookmarklet that shoots links into the Fargo outline. That this even works is due to a hack that Rube Goldberg would have loved. #

Snapshot of the Scripting News home page for October 15, 2000.#

Snapshot of the Scripting News home page for March 15, 2014.#

Scripting News: Indieweb and RSS.#

IndieWeb: feed page.#

I'll tell you about them tomorrow.#

For now, the main Scripting News feed stays as it was. #

A picture named god.gif#

NBA Rumors: Rockets Eye Sign-And-Trade For Knicks Carmelo Anthony? Jeremy Lin Back To New York?#

Wow, that would be some kind of blockbuster deal. #

The author speculates that the Knicks are bringing on Phil Jackson to help persuade Melo to stay, but my guess is that it's the other way around. Bringing Jackson on is a way to give the fans hope for the future, a future without Melo.#

I, for one, would love to see Jeremy Lin as the Knicks starting point guard. I don't care if the Knicks make the playoffs, I want to see great basketball in NYC. #

The last couple of weeks have been great, btw. No complaints! #

Chris Dixon: Full stack startups.#

Charlie Porter, an Adventurer Who Reshaped Climbing, Is Dead at 63.#

Slate: The 634 runways where Malaysia Airlines flight could have landed.#

Jeff Wise: Why I think the missing airliner could be in Central Asia.#

#

The Surprising Law of Upskirting.#

About compilers compling themselves. #

Kottke is 16 years old today. One of the great blogging champions. #

I wrote this on Quora, a while back: We expect too much of geeks.#

Joey deVilla: Toronto-to-Tampa Road Trip, Day 1.#

FP: For Illegal Migrants, Southeast Asia is the Means, not the End.#

RIAA Wants Google to End Piracy "Whack-A-Mole".#

Fast Company: Need A Little Serenity In The Workplace? Try These 7 Simple Steps.#

Ron Chester reviewed the archive from Sept 2001.#

I have the synchronization scripts written.#

The essays from the old scripting site are copied into the new one.#

The overall site structure comes from publicnotepad.#

Still need to write code that produces the essay list in reverse chronological order.#

This list will be displayed as an outline using the <%reader ()%> macro. It'll be nice to have a functional part of the website use Concord. #

I'm trying to think but nothing happens!#

Pando: Buzzfeed, Twitter, and how embedded tweets might have broken journalistic ethics.#

Nicolas Gallagher: Custom CSS preprocessing.#

New Yorker: 'True Detective' and the Art of the Television Finale.#

Google Drive offers 1TB for $10.#

U.S. Investigators Suspect Missing Malaysia Airlines Plane Flew On for Hours.#

NYT: Anger Can Set Off a Heart Attack.#

Scripting News: It's okay to ignore the commercial motive.#

Knicks fans ready for Phil Jackson to “come home.” #

Ted Cruz: Pro-Choicers Chant 'Hail, Satan' To Silence Opponents.#

This Is What Happens When You Put Dogs In A Photo Booth.#

The Eye icon has to work when you point at an idea. #

getFeedItems call for Fargo Publisher.#

Look into report on Autosave pref not being respected.#

Maybe it's time to start publishing on Scripting News in a stream?#

Stream looks good on iPad.#

Finish bookmarklet#

Can we bring the tab to the front?#

Hot-link text inside [brackets] with the url attribute.#

Preference to say which tab gets the links.#

Scripting News: Time waits for no one.#

Scripting News: Caught betw Twitter & Google Reader.#

Jeremy Lin demands more minutes.#

Neighbors stop a new Starbucks opening in Berkeley.#

LA Times: After 30 years on Louisiana death row, inmate exonerated of murder. #

Glad I asked why Elisa Camahort isn't posting on her blog. #

Carmelo Anthony: Knicks say Phil Jackson is “coming on board” #

NYT open source project called StreamTools.#

Wow Celtics tickets are cheap relative to NYC tickets.#

The cast of How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying celebrates the approaching completion of the new design of Scripting News. #

Stream looks good on iPad.#

getFeedItems call for Fargo Publisher.#

Look into report on Autosave pref not being respected.#

Done#

Bookmarklet experiment.#

Release bloghome and outline templates#

On GitHub.#

In the global directives outline.#

Outline template looks good on iPhone.#

Tabled#

Include OPML struct in RSS item?#

Heroku: 10 Habits of a Happy Node Hacker.#

Fast Company: The Infinite Lives Of BitTorrent. #

Pando: How the iPhone 5s just made a hypocrite.#

Radiolab: This is Your Brain On Love. #oxytocin #

Chrome can emulate mobile devices for debugging! Nice. #

A picture named banksy.gif#

To use streams, at the top level of your outline, add a #type "stream" directive.#

In the outline settings dialog for the outline, in the Overrides panel, set the type to idea. #

Now when you click the + icon in this outline, you will create a calendar structure of nodes of type idea. Each one of these items appears in your RSS feed because it has an isFeedItem attribute, which is put there when you hit the + icon.#

However these nodes are treated differently when we create the RSS guid for it. We don't generate a path to the node, we generate a path to the headline 2 levels in from the summit that contains it, a node that represents a day in the calendar. Then we add a #name value at the end of the URL to construct a guid which is both a permalink and unique. The guid is based on the created att on the headline, so unless you create two headlines in the same second, each will have a unique address. So be careful when creating these items not to create a bunch of them by wailing on the + icon. Do it more slowly. #

If you have it set so that new items are comments, that will be respected as before, so until you uncomment the node it won't appear in the feed. This option is set in the Insert tab in the global settings dialog. #

#

1. With an image is in the background, when viewed on the iPhone, the margins are wrong. Done.#

The problem it appears is that we have a fixed width of 100% on divTextInFrontOfImage.#

Solution: Take the 100% off, add it back in the startup script when the page is loaded, if there is no image.#

2. The guids for the items are wrong. Done.#

3. Need an icon for idea type. Done. #

4. Clean up pointer to RSS feed, don't use Dropbox's url. Done.#

5. Other templates need to be mobile-ized.#

6. If a permalink points inside something collapsed, expand it. Done.#

Today's going to be a lite day. I feel groggy and a bit hung over.#

And while I'm typing this, iTunes came to the front twice, for no good reason. It's updating my iPad to iOS 7.1. Why iTunes needed to come to the front? Some lazy programmer somewhere couldn't fix a bug, I guess.#

Time for coffee! #

Scripting News: Conferences for thinkers. #

Scripting News: Opacity in CSS background images.#

Someone should do a study to test the theory that "letting news come to you" is an effective way of staying informed.#

Jeremy Zilar says the text should be narrower, it's easier to read. I thought and gave it a try and liked it. I made the width fixed at 700 pixels.#

Often enough when someone makes a request that I change the way something works I'll say no way, it's too much work, I like it the way it is. Then the next day I do it. Sleeping on it makes the idea seem more reasonable, it seems. #

This appears to be the live page for the Snowden talk at SXSW.#

I stopped watching True Detective after episode 4. It got really boring for me. Nothing was happening. I loved the first episodes, because they were so different from any TV I had seen. But either they got too violent for my liking, or I stopped being interested in the characters. A show has to strike a balance. I don't get off on gore and blood just for the shock value. Uck.#

When I start in the morning, I have a cup of coffee and I sit down and fix a few bugs, document a few things, tie off some loose-ends from my last programming session. Then I add a new headline at the top, entitled Morning coffee notes, press Cmd-] to demote, and marvel at how easy it was to put all the details of the beginning of a day neatly under a single headline. #

The generalizations are made by the young who have no idea what's ahead of them. The only way you stay sane is to think that it truly is unknowable. But as you get older you learn that there's so much we all do -- exactly the same as everyone else, it's really depressing, but there's no way to avoid it.#

Good morning everyone!#

Fixed problem with date at top of each day. Under some circumstances it would show Sunday when it really should show Monday. This is because I had a "-5" param on cmsFormatDate. Should have been "0".#

We now have background images working. If you put a backgroundImage att on the day headline, with its value as the URL of an image, it will show that image as the background for the day, with an opacity of 30 percent. Not sure this is the right value, also not sure how to let the user set the opacity. For example, the March 4 background image is a great Linsanity picture of Melo and Lin, the two Knicks who loved each other, with Coach D'Antoni in the background, scowling. #

Thanks to the excellent CSS Mentor Nicolas Gallagher for helping me figure this out.#

As I look at this page, I'm not exactly laughing out loud. More like a combination of snickering and cackling. #

Scripting News: Change coming in RSS feed. #head-up #

Braving the Deep, Deadly South on a Bicycle.#

The Amtrak reservations site has been down all day. #

Neil Young announces the launch of ponomusic. #

Nothing is as tasty as a Papaya Dog.#

Quartz: How Stolen Passports Were Used to Board Flight MH370. #

My current best motto: Welcome back my friends to the show that never ends.#

Update: I just reserved noteblog.io. #

Dan Gillmor: Learning about, and deploying IndieWeb tools. #

My noteblog now looks good on my iPhone. Happy. #

Screen shot of editing environment for this blog. #

Phil Jackson come on down! #

You're in a Starbuck's and buy a coffee for $2.37. You give the guy a $20 bill. He gives you back bills and change. Quickly, did he cheat you? You have to do the math in your head. Which method do you use? (This blogger believes you'll use Common Core whether you know it's called that or not, and he's right, you will.)#

Here's the deal on Newsweek. They didn't have enough info to report as fact that this guy is the Satoshi who invented BitCoin. So their piece was wrong. Had they said "We have a theory that this is the Satoshi who invented BitCoin, they'd have been on solid ground. #

#

Beautiful play! #

I haven't thought about what to call them. Mostly they are ideas that are too big to fit into a tweet, and that I want to be able to refer to in the future. #

I think of the whole thing as a "noteblog" and even reserved noteblog.org if the idea catches on and other people want to keep public notes in this fashion.#

To which I reply: It is. #

I switched off that format in 2006 because:#

1. Google Reader didn't like my feed with little snippets, they insisted that a blog post be a title/link and description. #

2. Twitter looked like the future, with their API and Internet-scale notification system.#

Now Google Reader is gone, and Twitter doesn't look like the future anymore. Most of my ideas don't fit into 140 chars, and although I tried writing two sentence blog posts, I was starting to post some of them on Facebook, which is not a good place for stuff that's meant to persist. The rest I would just lose. That's not cool!#

Now that Fargo 2 is maturing, I decided to try to solve the problem for real.#

For writing that's not full enough to be a blog post, but too full to fit into 140.#

I would call them medium posts, but someone else already thought of that. #

NYT: Can We Learn About Privacy From Porn Stars? #

Hey I used the new call-to-tumblr feature, they say it's from the 90s but I don't get it. I wanted this feature in the 90s, but we didn't have it. #

I just walked Chuck through the process for cloning scripting news website. It did not work. Got to make this completely airtight. #

He must talk with the public, unlike Dolan and the other execs.#

He should make the decision, on behalf of the Knicks and Melo, about what's to become of Melo. #

The correct decision is this: Melo moves on. #

There's no workable scenario where the Knicks are any better next year than they are this year, and that's no good for either party. #

Melo should go to Miami or Chicago, the Clippers or maybe even Boston. How about Golden State, what a combo that would be. A team with some hot young talent and a major elite point guard. Or even better an ego like Noah or LeBron. #

Melo is a great shooter, but he needs to be part of a team. A big part of a championship team. That will not be Knicks for quite a few years, and that's OK! #

Bring back exciting basketball to New York. For crying out loud keep Hardaway and Shumpert. We need some young promising dudes who are cheap to root for. Let's hold on to some of these guys. And keep Chandler and Stat too. What the fuck they are Knicks.#

Dolan doesn't have the gravitas to do it. And what's his name, the coach, he's got to be gone.#

The Knicks need some kind of shake-up. Having Phil Jackson come back in an executive role could be just the thing. #

A picture named equalTime.jpg#

Glad you could make it! #

This is a prototype of the next version of Scripting News.#

It's also going to be a built-in capability for Fargo.#

These items exist as part of my blog, but they will also exist as part of yours, if you want. #

I want to build a new kind of linking, where the content is included in the destination, as a supporting fact. #

The same way I included a picture of a NYC snowbank in the previous item.#

A picture of a slice of cheese cake.#

Posts: Newsweek's breakthrough, Fargo as v2.0 of the Metaweblog API.#

Yet another: My templates are open source.#

New domain: noteblog.org.#

Data from the NewsJunk project I did with Nicco Mele in 2008.#

Phil Jackson front-office position with Knicks?#

Screen shot of my 1999 browser-based editing system. This was for-real. Not just a mockup.#

A picture named cowboy.gifI like to start a new blog post when I start working on a new version of Fargo. As I make changes, I note them in the sub-outline. When the new version is released, I do a light edit, uncomment the post, and it's published. Nice workflow. Took years to get here. Actually decades. #

Trying to show a friend how to write a blog post. #

I said "Now click on the eye icon." He clicked. Nothing happened. Click again. Nothing. Click click click. Nothing. #

Turns out he was clicking on the icon that makes things italic. It of course is also the "eye" icon. #

I'm glad I worked on this so much.#

It's very sexy. I love the way it looks and feels.#

A picture of a slice of cheese cake.#

I can write as many of these.#

I will use these when what I have to say is more than two or three sentences.#

It's a mini-blog post. Not as big as something more formal. But longer than a tweet or a mini-mini-blog post.#

#

New post: Snowden, Banksy, Satoshi Nakamoto. #

NYT: Newsweek Says It Has Unmasked Bitcoin Founder, Stirring Ire.#

LA Times: Dorian Satoshi Nakamoto denies founding Bitcoin. #

Prototype for a divided page, for lack of a better name. #

Anyone with a scientific background can be part of a development team. I'm seeing that with Andy DeSoto, who is a memory researcher. And I remember what it was like working with Andre Radke who was, at the time, a physics student. Those skills are totally applicable to developing software. #

The trail followed by Newsweek led to a 64-year-old Japanese-American man whose name really is Satoshi Nakamoto.#

He's got two degrees in beebop, a PhD in swing, he's a master of rhythm, he's the rock and roll king.#

New post: Recalculating graphics.#

Tribute to Philip Seymour Hoffman. #

Hey Biz, great to hear from you! #

Knicks fans will protest at the Garden on March 19. It's definitely time for new ownership. #

Made a little fix in Fargo CMS. If #menuTitle is already defined, don't "initialize" it. Allows a site to say the menu's title is different from the name or title of the outline.#

Now I want to play around a little with what happens when there's text indented under an item.#

I want a little wedge next to the headline, and when you click it, it expands and collapses. #

A little outlining for people reading. This is a good thing. #

Facebook drones will be parked outside our bedroom windows in a year or two, piloted by friends and family. Frictionless. #

I think I now have the calendar rendering properly. Let's see. (Y!)#

We are making good progress here! #

I bet LeBron and Melo hook up and take over some mediocre team with draft picks.#

How Hollywood treats aging actresses.#

Divers Find 65-Foot Crack In Columbia River Dam. #

In 2006 this guy was the brains behind Microsoft, according to Fortune. #

Today's the day? Does this end up on the home page of scripting.com? If so, what does it look like??#

Blog post: Why blogging is an amateur thing.#

Quartz on Silicon Valley's war with Wall Street.#

Today Chrome completely changed the user interface of their debugger. I no longer know how it works. #

Interesting NY Daily News piece on Melo moving to Chicago.#

The Atlantic asks why people think the Oscar ceremony sucks. Because most of the awards don't mean anything to most viewers. We understand the following categories: Best picture, best actress, actor, supporting actor and actress. And that's it. So if the Oscars are going to be more fun, you need more awards for people who are on-screen or at least whose voice is in the movie. How about best voice in an animated movie? Best comedic performance for both genders. #

So Jared Leto is a transgender mammy. Makes sense. And in a few years we'll look back at Her that way too. How about casting a real operating system? Scarlett Johansson is human. At least cast an OS actor. #

David Denby observes that 2013 was a great year for movies, something that wasn't reflected in the Oscar ceremony.#

1. I don't have a 140 character limit.#

2. I can have as many links as I want in an item. #

3. I use HTML hyperlinks.#

4. I don't use a URL-shortener.#

I'm looking to revitalize a kind of blog post I used to write. One to three sentences, a few links, a conclusion or a question. Not on its own page. More than a tweet but less than a post. #

Here's a perfect mini-post. A quick comment on one of my posts, a quote, and a promise to write more later. #

The Knicks should thank Carmelo Anthony for all the fun, and wish him luck, and let him go. It can't work. There's no way the team can add more talent to balance out his talent in time to make a difference for him. His time is now. He should try to get on the Bulls or Heat, or maybe even the Rockets (I like that one). And the Knicks should sign a few promising mid-range free agents, using the cap space freed up by Melo's departure.#

The NYT has a public editor, and she's doing a great job. I think they'll eventually need to have a technological counterpart, to provide an outside/inside perspective on how the Times is using technology, since it's so central to what they do.#

This is going to work differently from Scripting News, yet when it's ready for public viewing, the contents of this outline will be displayed on the scripting.com home page.#

The first thing I'm aiming to do with this is to create a linkblog and note-taking environment like scripting.com was before 2006. Here's an example of a month of posts, for July 2006. #

© 1994-2014 Dave Winer.
Last update: Sat, Sep 20, 2014 at 5:42 PM.
Yeah well, that's just, you know, like, your opinion, man.