Today's background image is Nixon.#
I love Oliver Stone's movies. He doesn't jerk you around trying to guess what he thinks. That's why I like his movie Nixon, even though it's very dark and depressing. It gives us a behind the scenes imaginary look at who Nixon was. Anthony Hopkins is great. So much so that at the end of the movie, when they switch over to a picture of the real Nixon, you go whoa WTF he really became Nixon. That's great acting and great film-making. It's all about suspension of disbelief.#
I don't spend a lot of time trying to figure out what makes other people tick. I have no insight into it, nor incentive. #
A new version of Happy Friends is coming that stores your outline and prefs on a server, instead of locally. Expect all my software snacks to get revised this way, because I now have storage as part of the functionality of my Twitter server software. I can store public and private stuff. And for now I'm willing to foot the bill for storage myself. Just to see what happens. At some point though, if it's successful, I will have to figure out how to get the cash to flow. #
I have started so many threads in my software, I have to do some sorting out and figuring how they fit together. #
One common theme is that there are lots of tools for creating bits of text that are bigger than a tweet yet smaller than a blog post. Consider the paragraph about Oliver Stone's movie, above. That's a very common size idea. A few sentences recalling a movie. Something to link into other instances where the movie is mentioned. Also consider it as part of my list of movies that I think are notable.#
Don't forget Little Pork Chop and tweetstorms.#
And that's another common thread -- lists! They're huge right now, with the online pub world making all kinds of interesting listicles that fit into the flow at Facebook. #
To me, lists and outlines are the same thing. Outliners are fantastic list editors. #
And there are images. I can put images behind days on Scripting News, as with the picture of Nixon today, and Lincoln yesterday, and I forget what I had the day before that, but it was part of a thread. And what about Little Cards! Oy, they only flow to Twitter and Facebook, clearly they have to flow to RSS too, and they're not showing up on the Scripting News home page, yet they totally should be.#
I have a lot of things to figure out.#
I was saying to a friend the other day who works at a large company you've definitely heard of that the online landscape is basically smoking ruins. There's a city under there, one with a subway system and helicopters, bike trails, convention centers, schools -- every structure humans create. But it's as if a war had just been fought and nothing is working.#
Somehow all three of these threads come together into something fantastic -- short rants, lists and pictures. #