* So, you’re digging through your start menu trying to find that application you want to launch to get your work done, but you forget where it is. On a Mac, you’d be using “QuickSilver”:http://quicksilver.blacktree.com, but what about on a PC? Enter “Launchy”:http://www.launchy.net/. Hit Ctrl + Space, type the name of your app, and — boom — it launches. Sweet. (“via Lifehacker”:http://www.lifehacker.com/software/keyword-launcher/download-of-the-day-launchy-172527.php)
* “NetNewsWire 2.1 Released”:http://ranchero.com/netnewswire/changenotes/netnewswire2.1.php. Syncing with NewsGator, performance enhancements and bugfixes: the best news reader for the Mac just got better.
* “Jode is psyched”:http://existential-stillborn.net/?p=3 about the “Moleskine Bible”:http://www.esv.org/blog/2006/04/journaling.bible.coming (“so is Alissa”:http://www.alissaclark.com/?p=309) and links over to a “web 2.0 eBible”:http://ebible.com/ application set to launch whenever. They’ve even “got a Typo-powered blog”:http://blog.ebible.com/, but aren’t really saying _what_ it will be. Hm.
* “Google Trends”:http://google.com/trends?q=newark&ctab=0&geo=all&date=all is out and provides very basic tracking on search terms. At first, I thought this was huge (online marketers _drool_ over statistics like this), but then I saw that they’re not providing any numbers — just graphing trends. (“via LifeHacker”:http://www.lifehacker.com/software/google/google-morning-google-trends-173038.php)
* “Alissa notes”:http://www.alissaclark.com/?p=319 that the Da Vinci Code movie just sucks. I lean towards the church on the issues of Dan Brown’s stirring up the Gnostic gospels debate (our pastor “just podcasted about this”:http://www.villagechurchnyc.com/worship/sermons/2006/05/the-life-of-jesus-christ-from-afar/ if you want to hear some defense of that argument), so I can’t say I’m sorry. But you know when Tom Hanks starts making fun of the marketing machine behind the movie, like he did on NPR’s “Wait, Wait — Don’t Tell Me”:http://www.npr.org/templates/rundowns/rundown.php?prgId=35&prgDate=05-13-2006&view=storyview, that it’s just another massively hyped Hollywood snore.
* “Slashdot reports”:http://rss.slashdot.org/Slashdot/slashdot?m=5413 that the sequel to my favorite game ever, ever, ever will be available on the Nintendo Wii, and it “looks totally awesome”:http://media.revolution.ign.com/media/748/748545/imgs_1.html. 
* Apple’s got “a new MacBook out”:http://www.apple.com/macbook/macbook.html which I totally want (can you believe I only got my 12″ PowerBook G4 a year ago?), and a new store on Fifth Avenue which “looks incredible”:http://www.macworld.com/news/2006/05/18/pictures/index.php. Anyone want to go to the store this weekend?
* Speaking of the PowerBook, I love “this photo of us”:http://www.flickr.com/photos/82312386@N00/52530035/ that Tom took of us at the Poleys.
* ??Sam Anderson?? for ??Slate??: “By the Power of Grayskull!”:http://www.slate.com/id/2141626/ Hilarious reflections on a show I used to love while growing up.
* “JGNash”:http://jgnash.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/Road_Map is an interesting cash management and budgeting application with a miserable name. It stores its data in an open XML format and, since it runs on Java, is cross-platform. I’ve been using Microsoft Money since 1999 (!) and have, at times, wrestled with being hopelessly dependant on yet another Microsoft application — Money is the only app that I haven’t replaced since moving to a Mac. Switching to a new application would require a huge effort, and very little actual benefit to our household finances, so we’re not making the jump. But, if you’re starting from scratch…
* Speaking of finances, Sarah and I loved the little “filter your selection”:http://www201.americanexpress.com/apply/Fmacfservlet?csi=0/22000/b/2/1258083950/13720005790/20/n&from=0 user interface provided by American Express to figure out which card is best for you.
* ??NPR??: “Beyond Frou Frou”:http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5200569. Imogen Heap, who is my new favorite self-produced, plays-everything artist (in the vein of Trent Reznor and Billy Corgan) was featured on WXPN’s World Cafe. I first heard of Imogen on Steven Garrity’s “Acts of Volition Radio (Session 24)”:http://actsofvolition.com/archives/2006/april/actsofvolition, which ends with one of the most beautiful songs I’ve ever heard. Check her out, then “buy her music on iTunes”:http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewAlbum?id=83486513&s=143441.
* “Our photos on Flickr”:http://flickr.com/photos/kennsarah/. It took me a LONG time to grok Flickr, which speaks poorly of my ability to commune with the force. Truth be told, I had initially thought I could find photo-hosting software that I could publish here and style myself to produce “wonderful, stunning photo albums”:http://dbowman.com/photos/london05/. Shortly after that, though, I realized that not all of us could be Doug Bowman and “outsourced our site design”:http://kennsarah.net/2005/12/22/facelift/. Only then was I willing to use a photo-sharing service like Flickr — and, man, did I see what I was missing. Very, very cool app. If you’ve got a Mac, check out “Flickr Export”:http://connectedflow.com/flickrexport/ to upload your photos from iPhoto with ease. If you’re the PC-type, check out this article how to “upload your photos from Picasa”:http://www.lifehacker.com/software/digital-photos/upload-images-to-flickr-with-picasa-and-gmail-039095.php.
* “Graeme Hinde on Myspace”:http://www.myspace.com/graemehinde. About two weeks ago I get an email from Myspace telling me I’ve got a new friend request. Thinking it was just spam, I was very pleased to find out that it was, in fact, one of my oldest friends from growing up. He’s landed in an apartment in Brooklyn, so we hooked up for breakfast in the Village. As we caught up on life and mutual acquaintences, it was good to find out that, in many ways, he’s the same Graeme and that I’m the same Ken.
* ??Heather Armstrong??: “Superior cleaning power”:http://www.dooce.com/archives/nubbin/05_19_2006.html. I, too, am in this market demographic.
* ??Mark Pilgrim??: “Digital cameras, again”:http://diveintomark.org/archives/2006/05/19/digital-cameras-again. Mark’s looking to upgrade his camera. I’ve also got a budget item that I’m trying to get through the Walker Household Budget Committee for a “new digital camera”:http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/canonsd450/. Our Sony Cybershot has served us well over the past four years that we’ve been married, but, with plans to visit Europe this fall, I’d like something way more portable, with way more battery life, and way more capacity.
Category Archives: On the Radar
Newark in a Nutshell
A few readers of Our Story have maybe been perplexed my interest in the city of Newark over the past few weeks, and might think our local politics aren’t really interesting to anyone outside our physical borders. I think, though, that if you take a look at what’s happening here, that you might find yourself fascinated by the tale of a city about to experience a resurgence similar to Baltimore and New York. Newark is an underdog that, for decades, has languished in flagging attempts to recover from damage done by the 1967 riots. For the past forty years, the city has been trying to rebuild, heal the wounds of poverty and racism, and recover from its reputation as politically corrupt and a hotbed for crime.
Newark has been “turning a corner” since as far back as 1990 — bringing in new development, arts, and culture — but its growth over the past decade has come in fits and starts as the city continues to struggle with crime and poverty. For many, a change in administration has come to mean a new era for the development of the city.
In 1995, Stanford-educated Rhodes scholar Cory Booker saw the potential of this city, and a place where he could make a difference with his life. He moved into one of the most run-down neighborhoods to identify with the people living there and find out how best he can help turn it around. His social concern developed into a political interest, and, four years ago, he ran for mayor and narrowly lost in a brutal campaign against five-term incumbent Mayor Sharpe James.
But, after staying under the radar and continuing to develop grass-roots support in the city, Booker ran again in the 2006 mayoral race. This time, his 10-year commitment to the poor of this city, his idealism, and his new approach to governing seems to have struck a chord with Newarkers looking for the next phase in the city’s history. Last night, Booker won the mayoral election in a 72% landslide.
??New York Times?? reporter ??Damien Cave?? has summarized this story in an article entitled, “Cory Anthony Booker: On a Path That Could Have No Limits”:http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/10/nyregion/10man.html?_r=1&oref=slogin. Booker’s success could mean a real change for the city of Newark: safer streets, better education, and real growth for this city of 280,000 just five miles from Manhattan.
The “Everything Newark”:http://blog.newarker.info blog will continue to follow the story of the historic changes on which the city is about to embark. So, stick around — things are just about to get interesting. 
Weekend Update: Newark Election, M:I:III, Top of the Rock, and Wearing Thai Food
Election Day in Newark is tomorrow. Cory Booker “will doubtless win the mayorship”:http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/08/nyregion/08newark.html?_r=1&oref=slogin, a prize he has sought for at least five years, but the big question is whether he will be able to install enough of his team in the city council to be able to stabilize crime, resolve the looming fiscal crisis, and continue the city revitalization that has ever-so-slowly been coming to hopeful Newarkers. More coverage on the “Everything Newark”:http://blog.newarker.info blog.
Friday night was crash night: Sarah and I dragged ourselves out of NYC and into a movie theater in Elizabeth to see Mission: Impossible 3. It was everything we had hoped: fun, fast-paced, and mentally undemanding. “Highly recommended”:http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/mission_impossible_3/.
Saturday was gorgeous, though I spent most of it in a laundromat. Afterward was the much anticipated “unusual date”:http://kennsarah.net/2006/04/11/brag-moment/ at “Top of the Rock”:http://www.topoftherocknyc.com/ODTStatic/site.htm. I had briefly considered something at NJPAC this month, but didn’t want to repeat another performance venue. It was fun, with some “breathtaking views”:http://flickr.com/photos/tags/topoftherock/interesting/ of New York City and New Jersey. If you go, though, skip the “Rock Center Cafe”:http://www.rapatina.com/rockCenterCafe/ — the food, service and view were all underwhelming.
Sunday at the Village Church, where ??Sam Andreades?? showed off his apologetics chops (link forthcoming). Got Thai food with Darin and his son while Sarah and Krissy drove out to yet-another-baby-shower in the suburbs. “Owen celebrated our rare guys-only get together”:http://www.peznet.net/mig/index.php?currDir=./Owen_Sept_to_Dec_05&pageType=image&image=6.jpg by covering himself and everything within a three-foot radius of him in sticky white rice. Worked a bit on tweaking the sermon downloads page (“example”:http://www.villagechurchnyc.com/worship/sermons/2006/01/the-redefinition-of-simon-peter/) for the Village Church to make it more user-friendly and include links for bulletins.
On the Radar: Web Calendars, Lip-Syncing and Love (oh, my)
* “Boil the ocean”:http://www.google.com/search?num=100&hl=en&lr=&safe=off&q=%22boil+the+ocean%22&btnG=Search, an egregious consulting term used to limit the scope of a project: “we’re not looking to boil the ocean with this.” Fast Company took “a shrewd look”:http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/88/debunk.html at the phrase, and Bob Congdon digs up its “earliest use”:http://www.bobcongdon.net/blog/2004/06/boil-ocean.html.
* “Moleskine Bible”:http://www.esv.org/blog/2006/04/journaling.bible.coming (“via Tim”:http://www.challies.com/sideblog/archives/001828.php). Very forward-thinking book design on the part of the Standard Bible Society. Bibles used to be beautifully constructed books that were admired, but rarely touched. That’s beginning to change as people want to — literally — interweave the story of their lives with the Scripture.
* YouTube: “Two Chinese Boys”:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gbdpTCJgnwc (“via Slate”:http://www.slate.com/id/2140697/). Be sucked into the vortex of incomparable splendor that is YouTube.
* ??Fortune Magazine??: “The Great Escape”:http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2006/03/20/8371767/. Forty million American employees toil in soulless cubicles. How did they get there — and can business ever break out of the box?
Probably not.
* ??Crain’s Chicago Business??: “The new face of technology”:http://chicagobusiness.com/cgi-bin/mag/article.pl?article_id=25714&bt=37Signals&arc=n&searchType=all (“via Jason”:http://37signals.com/svn/archives2/crains_chicago_business_cover_story.php). Start-up! Start-up! Start-up!
* ??Kathy Sierra??: “The myth of keeping up”:http://headrush.typepad.com/creating_passionate_users/2006/04/the_myth_of_kee.html. You can’t keep up. There is no way. And trying to keep up will probably just make you dumber.You can never be current on everything you think you should be.
Good to know I’m in good company.
* ??Michael Idov?? for ??Slate??: “Bitter Brew”:http://www.slate.com/id/2132576/. You know that charming little cafe on New York’s Lower East Side that just closed after a mere six months in business — where coffee was served on silver trays with a glass of water and a little chocolate cookie? The one that, as you calmly and correctly observed, was doomed from its inception because it was too precious and too offbeat? The one you still kind of fell for, the way one falls for a tubercular maiden? Yeah, that one was mine.
Pragmatic advice for anyone who handles money. Worth listening to…twice.
* ??Sam Andreades??: “The Redefinition of Simon Peter”:www.villagechurchnyc.com/worship/sermons/2006/01/the-redefinition-of-simon-peter/. Are you really free from how others look at you? I don’t just mean saying ‘I don’t care what other people think of me’–there are plenty of people in New York saying that. … Are you really free of carrying the responsibility of your reputation with others?
* Apple: “Get a Mac”:http://www.apple.com/getamac/ads/?ilife_medium (“via Dan”:http://hivelogic.com/links/133). Quietly brilliant new “switcher” ads by Apple. Is it me, or does PC look a little like Mr. Gates?
* ??John Gruber??: “Good Journalism”:http://daringfireball.net/2006/05/good_journalism. One can only hope that Apple will one day handle security issues as well as Microsoft does now.
Wow, you can _taste_ the bitterness in this article.
* ??Evan Ratliff??: “Now for a Quick Lesson in International Relations”:http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/30/fashion/sundaystyles/30love.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all&oref=slogin (“via Angela”:http://hereisangela.blogspot.com/2006/04/modern-love.html). Feeling suddenly like a shy 10-year-old in the playground, I pretended not to understand. But he walked off, and there was nothing to do but follow. I was already uneasy in Dhaka, unable to blend in or communicate, and now self-consciousness was joined by a simultaneous thrill and fear that I was walking into some vortex of cultural misunderstanding.
* ??Angela Wu??: “Religious map of America”:http://hereisangela.blogspot.com/2006/05/religious-map-of-america.html. Like, if you grew up going to church all your life and everybody else you knew did, too, you might fervently believe lots of things…
(bonus: “cows”:http://hereisangela.blogspot.com/2006/05/beating-dead-cow.html)
* The Village Church just might be getting “a new calendar”:http://www.villagechurchnyc.com/events/ based on the open-source “WebCalendar”:http://www.k5n.us/webcalendar.php?topic=About. WebCalendar has been okay to work with, but not trivial to integrate with the site — due in part because it’s “ugly as a dog”:http://www.k5n.us/webcal-screenshots/wcss-month.png out of the box. Still, it will export an iCal feed, so if you’ve got 30 Boxes or Google Calendar, you can “subscribe”:http://www.villagechurchnyc.com/events/publish.php?user=public.
* ??Fast Company??: ” Varnished History”:http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/94/pr.html. The documentary itself won’t be featured in any film classes — but in the tawdry realm of corporate propaganda, there has been worse.
* ??InterVarsity??: “Ministry Exchange Overview”:http://www.intervarsity.org/mx/item/3674/. IV constructs a massive content management system to share ministry materials, providng features as web-2.0 savvy as tagging and RSS feeds. Well done–this is worth watching for a while.
* ??Ken Walker??: “The Debate Over Newark, Part II”:http://blog.newarker.info/2006/05/04/the-debate-over-newark-part-ii/. Have you heard? We’re getting a new mayor in Newark after 20 years of the same administration. The candidates recently debated — here’s how it went.
Weekend Update: Jen’s Recital, Lunch with TVC’s Übercüte Couple
Drove 1 hour and 20 minutes to the Mazda dealer to pick up a sideview mirror, which was broken and later glued back on to the car. Vehicle abuse is one of the charms of our town. I need to find a new parts dealer.
Went to an excellent Master’s Degree recital by “Jenny Jobb”:http://www.myspace.com/jennyjobb at Juliard. It rocked–and I was even more impressed because flute is not my favorite instrument. Jen’s music was ecclectic and fascinating. Thanks for the invite.
Church on Sunday began with Darin & Sam’s Marriage and Dating class. Sam taught on the “asymmetry” of roles in marriage relationships. Judy Fujimura helpfully pointed out that both men and women both have to make the decision to lay their lives down for each other, even if the actual implementation looks different.
Speaking of the d-word, we were highly honored to spend lunch with the most “übercüte couple”:http://www.alissaclark.com/?p=287 at the Village Church. We talked shop about Newark (which is _so_ “up-and-coming”:http://kennsarah.net/2005/10/15/newark-unveiled-as-a-force-in-the-art-world/), the m-word, visiting Europe, “new apartments”:http://www.alissaclark.com/?p=300, and “widgets”:http://kennsarah.net/2006/04/28/on-the-radar/. Then we consumed the best “cream puffs we’ve ever had”:http://www.google.com/url?sa=U&start=2&q=http://www.muginohousa.com/creampuffs.html&e=9797.
Finished the weekend watching “Sullivan’s Travels”:http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/redirect?tag=ourstory-20%26link_code=xm2%26camp=2025%26creative=165953%26path=http://www.amazon.com/gp/redirect.html%253fASIN=B00005JH9C%2526tag=ourstory-20%2526lcode=xm2%2526cID=2025%2526ccmID=165953%2526location=/o/ASIN/B00005JH9C%25253FSubscriptionId=0EMV44A9A5YT1RVDGZ82. Very good, though we’re not sure why we put it on the Netflix queue in the first place.
On the Radar: All Those Pretty Widgets Edition
* ??Heather Armstrong??: “How to medicate with legal substances”:http://www.dooce.com/archives/daily/04_21_2006.html. Two, we spread a layer of peanut butter on top because we ran out of spreadable cocaine.
* YouTube: “Apple Music Event 2001-The First Ever iPod Introduction”:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kN0SVBCJqLs. Steve Jobs introduces his little digital wonder to the world.
* ??Steve Pavlina??: “How to Get Up Right Away When Your Alarm Goes Off”:http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2006/04/how-to-get-up-right-away-when-your-alarm-goes-off/ (“via”:http://www.lifehacker.com/software/sleep/how-to-get-up-when-you-really-want-to-169533.php). I’d love to try this out, but I have a feeling that simply _going to sleep at a decent hour_ might be just as effective.
* “Widgets”:http://automattic.com/code/widgets/, “widgets”:http://widgets.wordpress.com/, “widgets”:http://wordpress.org/development/2006/03/widgets-plugin/, “widgets”:http://wordpress.com/blog/2006/02/25/wordpress-widgets/, “widgets”:http://photomatt.net/2006/03/29/wordpress-widgets/ — the WordPress world is in love with them, and for good reason. Widgets make customizing WordPress even more accessible for mere mortals. A nice side benefit: they also make upgrading your theme much more painless. With the “ExecPHP”:http://widgets.wordpress.com/2006/04/10/execphp/ and default text widgets, you can make sidebar mods (such as advertising, etc.) without worrying about them getting overwritten after a theme upgrade. Great work.
* ??Seth Godin??: “Ode: How to tell a great story”:http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2006/04/ode_how_to_tell.html. Great stories are subtle. Surprisingly, the fewer details a marketer spells out, the more powerful the story becomes. Talented marketers understand that allowing people to draw their own conclusions is far more effective than announcing the punch line.
* ??Ken Walker??: “He Smells Like the Future”:http://blog.newarker.info/2006/04/26/he-smellslike-the-future/. On watching the Newark debut of Marshall Curry’s “Street Fight” (two years after the movie’s release) and Q&A with the director at Rutgers-Newark.
* ??LifeHacker??: “Download of the Day 2: Google SketchUp”:http://www.lifehacker.com/software/downloads/download-of-the-day-2-google-sketchup-170027.php. What the…?! Where did this program come from? I played with this a bit–it’s definitely complex, but interesting. Why would Google want us to play around with 3D modelling?
* ??Ben Goodger??: “Firefox 2: Safer, Faster, Better”:http://www.bengoodger.com/software/mb/2.0/firefox2-vision.html. It won’t have the much-coveted (and advertised) “Places”:http://wiki.mozilla.org/Places functionality, but Ben tells you why Firefox will _still_ be cool in 2.0. Can’t wait ’til “August”:http://wiki.mozilla.org/Firefox2/Schedule!
* ??Steve Smith??: “Staying Small in a Big Place: Part 1″:http://orderedlist.com/articles/staying-small-in-a-big-place-part-1/. Kind of like “Getting the Basics Right”:http://relevantmagazine.com/life_article.php?id=7104 for teams. Good read.
* “Uno”:http://gui.interacto.net/ is an attempt to cut down on the GUI dissonance you might experience while using a Mac — all of the windows are made to look the same (rather than the ongoing conflict between “brushed metal”:http://daringfireball.net/2005/09/anthropomorphized and the “other guy”:http://daringfireball.net/2006/01/brushed_metal). There’s even a matching “Firefox theme”:http://takebacktheweb.org/, which makes FF look a lot less ugly in OS X.
One nice example of using widgets to hack your WP templates: I just set up a widget to carry some CSS code embedded in a “style” tag in my sidebar. I know, it’s right smack in the middle of my HTML which is “totally illegitimate”:http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/present/styles.html#edef-STYLE. But, hey, if the pros can occassionally “thumb their noses at the validator”:http://www.stopdesign.com/log/2004/02/05/bebad.html, why can’t I? (Okay, okay: Doug was thumbing his nose at a _bug_ in the validator…but, still).
On the Radar: Up Late Waiting for iDVD to Encode
* ??Alissa Clark??: “Weekends and Things”:http://www.alissaclark.com/?p=261. And this, my dears, is why God made coffee for his beloved. It’s a common grace thing, like the rain.
* “Ask a Ninja”:http://askaninja.com/. Don’t ask me why, but I think this is hilarious (“iTunes podcast”:http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=115933673&s=143441).
* “ScrewTape on the Da Vinci Code”:http://churchofthemasses.blogspot.com/2006/04/screwtape-on-dvc.html. If anyone’s going to revive ScrewTape, I’m glad it’s Eric Metexas. Ask your average fellow in the street the slightest detail of a daft sitcom of forty years ago and he will move heaven and earth to to supply you with the answer, and then will likely prate on with other similarly inane details — as if knowing who lived at 1313 Mockingbird Lane was his very passport to the Elysian Fields.
* ??Russell Posegate??: “Graduate Recital”:http://russell.posegate.org/podcasts/recital-060327/. My brother-in-law is a rockstar. See him listed in “iTunes”:http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=148258780&s=143441 among the other rockstars.
* ??Rands in Repose??: “1.0″:http://www.randsinrepose.com/archives/2006/04/20/10.html. Who wants to do a startup?
* ??Jamie Zawinski??: “The Netscape Dorm”:http://www.jwz.org/gruntle/nscpdorm.html. It is two days later and I am still at the office. I did not go and chase coots. There is too much work to do. I want to die.
Who _still_ wants to do a startup? (“via Rands comments”:http://www.randsinrepose.com/mt/mt-comments.cgi?entry_id=408)
* ??The Onion??: “Beaver Overthinking Dam”:http://www.theonion.com/content/node/47469. Work-work-work. Gnaw-gnaw-gnaw. Build-build-build. Must hurry.
(“via 37signals”:http://37signals.com/svn/archives2/the_onion_beaver_overthinking_dam.php)
* ??Michael H. Goldhaber??: “Attention Shoppers!”:http://www.wired.com/wired/5.12/es_attention_pr.html Really, really compelling article about the future of the web, and of how we value things in the attention economy.
* ??Fortune Magazine??: “The boom is back”:http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2006/05/01/8375405/index.htm. Wow, I could have told you about these companies a year ago.
* ??Steve Jobs??: “Commencement Address at Stanford (iTunes)”:https://deimos.apple.com/WebObjects/ITCSBrowse.woa/wa/Browse/StanfordPublic-1770144-1770146–1770159–1770745_84019178?i=1741752008. I think I’ve linked to the transcript before, but John Gruber found the “audio version more inspiring”:http://daringfireball.net/2006/04/initiative. I agree, and the video version is even better.
* ??Mike Davidson??: “Hacking a More Tasteful Myspace”:http://www.mikeindustries.com/blog/archive/2006/04/hacking-myspace-layouts. Wow–Mike’s MySpace page actually isn’t horrifyingly ugly. Not sure I want to spend the time tweaking my own, though.
* ??Steven Garrity??: “Acts of Volition Radio: Session 24″:http://actsofvolition.com/archives/2006/april/actsofvolition. I’ve really been digging Steven’s “podcasts” (now that they’re called that). This latest one ends with one of the most amazing songs I’ve ever heard.
* ??Heather Armstrong??: “Even I can’t believe I’m allowed to have a dog”:http://www.dooce.com/archives/nubbin/04_05_2006.html. This is exactly why having a dog is so much fun.
* ??Mark Pilgrim??: “All the dogs I have known and loved”:http://diveintomark.org/archives/2006/04/14/dogs. Mark Pilgrim is writing a blog again. Also regarding dogs.
In other news, I’ve set up a “NewsGator”:http://newsgator.com account for Sarah and made it her home page so she can keep up on our friends’ blogs. It’s become a family ritual now, where she and I sit side-by-side, scrolling through the morass of bloggy goodness before going to sleep. Well, except for those nights when I’m burning DVDs until 2 AM, anyway.
Outside
In NYC today, making sure the project managers for our division are getting up to speed on the new “project management system from hell”:http://kennsarah.net/2006/04/05/pebfad/, (which shall remain nameless). It goes like this: I check my mail and find that I’ve received 30 new messages in the last hour since I was last at my desk. I pick the three most important — either because I can pass them off to someone else and let them work in parallel, or because it’s a critical thing that can’t wait for another hour — and forward the email, make a phone call, or do a desk visit. If I’m at my desk for more than 30 minutes, someone stops by to ask for help, and away I go. This goes on for the whole day.
Except for my 2 o’clock lunch. I ignore the one-line email (“Are you there?”) and slink out the office to the elevators. Thirty-one floors later, I’m through the lobby and standing at the lunch truck. A couple in their fifties are there, slinging hotdogs and hamburgers for a few bucks. They’re cheap, fast, and they’ve been there forever. He doesn’t say a word, and she’ll chat with you only as long as it takes to get you your burger– everyone calls her Mama.
A young man orders in front of me; he’s got his head on a swivel. Mama asks him whether he wants mustard and, looking the other direction, he replies, “My God, look at my _wife_.” I turn to look, expecting to see a woman waiting nearby, perhaps with a child. Instead, I only catch the glimpse of a woman in a skirt as she glides by — apparently he was speaking in the future tense. Mama summons him back to reality: “HEY, FOCUS. You want mustard?”
I order, take my lunch from Mama, and drink in the warm, blue sky. I decide with gravity that the day is too beautiful to waste inside of an office, and, with equal gravity, that I shouldn’t be gone for more than ten minutes. I grab a bench in the little park outside the austere office building we call “388″. Men in expensive suits stream in and out of the revolving doors, passing by Tribeca mommies (nannies?) pushing their strollers. Little kids are playing hopscotch across the stonework in the park. Working men in uniforms tell colorful stories in even-more-colorful language nearby.
Another day of “eating nuclear waste” to keep the business running. Nice thing about being busy is that, at the end of the day, you feel like you’re taking names and kicking arse — plus, it fights off the layoff jitters. I’m glad my manager gave me the opportunity to be the “key guy” on this project. I’m even more glad, though, that tomorrow is a holiday. I miss sleep.
Ten minutes come and go quickly, but are well spent. I grab what’s left of my lunch and head back into the fray.
On the Radar: Busy Signal
Here’s why I haven’t been returning your phone calls or answering your emails.
* “The Village Church”:http://www.villagechurchnyc.com site went down last week as we were changing web hosts. Unfortunately, due to a miscommunication on my part, we lost our site and backups _before_ I had the chance to download them. LOVE it. Needless to say, we did some “damage control”:http://www.villagechurchnyc.com/news/2006/03/our-new-web-home/ and I lost a bit of sleep over the whole thing. Thanks to my fabulous team, we had it all fixed by the weekend.
* “Pandora”:http://pandora.com is Internet Radio that doesn’t suck. Put in your favorite artist and it will create a radio station of similar artists. Already discovered a “number of bands I like”:http://www.pandora.com/people/ken786, and I’ve only just been using it for a few days.
* Jeffrey is “tired of keeping up”:http://www.zeldman.com/2006/03/22/unmixed with the Web 2.0 Joneses. I feel that.
* Everybody and his mother is starting up a blog about the Newark 2006 Mayoral election–and for good reason: the face off between Mayor James and Cory Booker has already brought about some political drama, such as the “delivery of Mayor James’ petitions _on a bicycle_”:http://newark06.blogs.nytimes.com/?p=34 and the “eviction of Cory Booker from Brick Towers”:http://newark06.blogs.nytimes.com/?p=47. Awesome. Should Booker pick up the win, I think we’ll really see some revitalization to the city, and this blog phenomenon should really kick off an interest in Newark as an online presence.
* On a related note, the Everything Newark blog is now on the ??New York Times?? “Newark 2006″:http://newark06.blogs.nytimes.com/ blogroll.
* I’ve also been doing a bit of research on reporting through WordPress in order to get a handle on our traffic at The Village Church and Everything Newark. I found out that if you take “Google Analytics”:http://google.com/analytics + “Feedburner”:http://feedburner.com + “WordPress Reports”:http://tantannoodles.com/toolkit/wordpress-reports/, you can have a pretty sophisticated reporting solution for your web presence. Already got users subscribed to your news feed? Steve Smith’s “Feedburner Redirect”:http://orderedlist.com/articles/wordpress-feedburner-plugin/ will point them at the Feedburner feed instead with no impact on your users.
* Oh, and ??Angela Wu??’s “boring blogs”:http://hereisangela.blogspot.com/2006/03/just-being-boring.html are much cleverer than my boring blogs.
Blogging the Renaissance
Announcing “Newarker.info”:http://newarker.info, devoted to covering the life and times of Newark, NJ from the perspective of the people who live here.
Newarker.info is just a blog and wiki for now, but I’m curious to see if we can ride the wave of the “renaissance” underway in the city of Newark. There seems to be a huge opportunity right now to build an online community for the city as more people take an interest in living and working here. The closest attempts I’ve seen are simply forums (“Newark Speaks”:http://www.newarkspeaks.com/, “The Newarkian”:http://www.newarkian.com/), which lack some of the more interesting features of the web, like RSS feeds.
My time commitments to the project are slim, so if any fellow Newarkers are interested in participating in a group blog, I’d welcome the help.