Simplicity (again)

Protocols are easy when they make sense.

--Sean Rees

That's right. And simplicity helps too.

Let that be your last battlefield

It dawns on me now that Neil and Luke might be locked in an eternal battle to release the DVR5100.

Trends in HCI

Something interesting on the ScobleShow: Trends in human/computer interaction from Stanford.

Softgrid

This what I want for my MacBookPro. A Softgrid kind of thingy (found via Slashdot) sounds like just the ticket. It will be awesome when the day arises.

Does this iPod make my butt look big?

Some nice pictures and good comments on 37 Signals about Apple's latest designs.

This kind of design evolution has the beneficial side effect of building obsolescence into the product line. No hipster 20 something wants to be caught dead using that totally uncool, so-last-year, all-white iPod. Time to buy an iPhone to match my new iMac, etc.. Style is important to their primary demographic, and Apple does a great job of moving it forward along with their sales.

Where's the Mac?

Well, Don MacAskill, the reason you need that MacPro overkill is so you can run Parallels for the PC applications to which the world is still addicted. For me it's Outlook (I have to run it to schedule conference rooms and to turn my out-of-office reply on/off (or is that available in Entourage? I'll have to check)) and some of our company's own Windows Only(tm) applications. Oh, and Microsoft Project. And sometimes excel stuff that I can't do on Excel on the Mac. And some other business thingies..

Will the real Fake Steve Jobs please stand up..

Well, the fun is over, Fake Steve Jobs has been outed. I don't think the blog can be quite the same again. It was exactly the right person at exactly the right time doing exactly the right thing. It was fun while it lasted. The SF Chronicle has a good article.

Hani comes out of semi retirement to throw rocks at Atlassian

I'm glad I still have an excuse to stay subscribed to the BileBlog. Hani has lost some of his venom over the past few years, but it is still fun to watch him throw rocks at something like Atlassian's acquisition of Cenqua. We use products from both company's, so I saw the deal as a good thing.

The map says there's a road here..

The boys and I went up to explore another loop I've been eyeballing on the map for a while. We visited the Chicago Stump, then followed the Hoist Ridge trail, and came back along the Chicago Stump Road (along Verplank Ridge).

Hoist Ridge is one of the more interesting trails I've seen. There is a wide variety of terrain, some slow going in places, and many magnificent vistas. There are a lot of side roads that don't look like they've been traveled in a season or more--which makes for some interesting travel (the map did say there was a road there). There were also some discrepancies between the map and reality that led to some confusion as to exactly where we were in a couple of places. In the end, the GPS won.

The boys enjoyed looking for bugs, breaking sticks, and finding interesting rocks.

We stopped by the Cat Haven on the way back down and went for another hot but interesting walk. We've been there before. But they did have a few new things to see including their new Cheetah, and a new enclosure for the Bengal Tigers.