I’m not sure how I missed this, but there’s a Pragmatic Programmer’s podcast interview with Jeremy Sydik, author of Designing Accessible Websites.

Hell yeah, I’m going… last year’s RailsConf was just too damn fun.

I haven’t, and probably won’t, play(ed) Assassin’s Creed, but I love this review of it:

Adobe has been busy making cool new tools, and one of their upcoming tools, Thermo, looks like it’s going to be absolutely amazing.*

Part One:

Part Two:

Part Three:

*Granted, like all new tools which generate code, it’s bound to generate some smelly code… but wow, the fact that they’re working in this direction is awesome.

Adobe sure seems to do a lot right. Quite unlike a certain fruity company which is rapidly losing my affection at a rate much faster than Microsoft ever could, Adobe underpromises and overdelivers. There have been numerous moments recently when I’ve seen a demo of some upcoming Aodbe technology that just wows me… and they deliver.

Since the firmware upgrade for my iPhone has now put me on a phone call with Apple Technical Support (a nice guy who doesn’t seem empowered to actually accomplish or know anything… I’ve been on hold for at least 1/2 of the call) for the past 45 minutes, I’m bound to be writing a lengthy screed about how amazingly suckass Apple is to deal with. Yeah, YET ANOTHER ONE.

Do yourself a big favor… DO NOT BUY APPLE PRODUCTS. From an engineering perspective, they’re awesome. From an end-user experience, you’re fucked up the ass with a 2×4 the minute you have a problem with them unless you’re willing to pay a company to fix a defective product you bought from them.

Wait, I was going to rant about that later…

Adobe is appropriately named… they provide foundational building materials that you can use to build great things. Apple isn’t appropriately named, though. They’re right to name themselves after a fruit, but they’ve got the wrong one. They should call themselves Lemon, since that’s what they sell.

There’s no way to fool-proof the world. You cannot out-engineer crazy.
- Jon Stewart

Full quote in context (from The Revealer):

So you don’t think her [Ann Coulter] brand of extremism represents the future of politics?

What you generally get from politicians is “Vote for me or we shall all perish!” In a puff of smoke, or rising waters. You know, nineteen guys with box cutters brought down the Twin Towers. Are we supposed to go to war until there’s not nineteen guys that want to do damage to us? One day, two assholes throw pumpkins off an overpass. And now when you drive down the highway and go past an overpass, you see those giant ten- foot chain-link fences. Two vandals out of millions of people can fuck up your way of life in ways you can’t even imagine. There’s no way to fool-proof the world. You cannot out-engineer crazy.

Gever Tulley is an advocate of child endangerment… exactly the kind my parents sheltered me from, and from which I would have significantly benefited. There should be more people like this guy.

The video here tells the full story.

(h/t Stragglyr Chris)

aka “Another Stupid Web 2.0 Meta Video”

(h/t Stragglyr Chris)

This bit of brilliance was written by Sean Morey:

(h/t to Carl from Simply Left Behind)

“There’s no such thing as a sexy carrot. Let’s leave the vegetables alone.”

- Cat

My friend Jom sent me this great blog post on the Music Business and Technology. It’s very interesting to read the opinion of someone who’s been involved in the industry for quite some time.

I seem to have the “why isn’t there more good music… (why are there are only ‘handful’ of pop stars that make money/get promoted)” conversation or some variant several times a week. There’s an amazing amount of amazingly great music in the world… it’s just a matter of knowing what artists to look for.

Some people have awesome ideas and execute on them… for example:

Animator vs. Animation

Go stickman, go! Them thar be some mad Flash skillz, yo!

I’ve got one of those snappy 1/2-hour long Featured Artist spots at Open Mic tonight. It’s at Red Rock Coffee Company (201 Castro) in the ever-lovely Mountain View, CA. Open Mic runs from 7-10, and my spot is at 9pm. If you haven’t got anything better to do then head on down!

Really interesting technology:

According to this ad, I’m a City Folk, ’cause I just don’t get it.

This is classic Todd Snider awesomeness:

I aspire to be this entertaining.

This is the best example I’ve seen of using CSS for good. Some smart person turned the standard myspace account page into this glorious piece of work. No, I’m not kidding… I think that’s awesome

I’m at RailsConf2007, and while it “officially” starts tomorrow, I’ve already had a good ’nuff time that it’s been worth the effort to get here… nevermind that there are three more days of Geekfestness and that I’ll be seeing four of my favorite human beings early next week.

Lou Springer posted some pictures on his blog of the Flex on Rails “Birds of a Feather” “session,” and I’m in one of ‘em with my hand in my groin. Perhaps that summarizes how awesome Peter Armstrong’s presentation was… though it was entirely too short (the presentation, that is…).

I couldn’t agree more with Lou’s comment:

The one-hour BOF presentation went through the Flex and Rails story at a blinding clip. It’s too bad there wasn’t a full session on the subject at the conference.

About six months ago, when I finally checked out Flex, I stumbled across Peter’s book and tried to oder it on Lulu. I had some problems with Lulu’s login process (some sort of session management problem which made me nervous about giving them my credit card info.) so I wrote to him to ask if he’d be willing to sell me a copy directly. After politely responding to a couple of my cranky e-mails, he sent me a copy of the book and suggested that I make a donation to Child’s Play if I wanted to compensate him (he’s an above-board kinda guy and didn’t want to skirt paying taxes on it). I was really, really impressed at the time and after meeting him, I’m even more impressed.

Flex + Rails is some powerful Kool-Aid and Peter’s book “Flexible Rails” is beyond worth the $20 he undercharges for it. Hopefully Peter will get more attention/space/time at the next conference. Take a look at the pictures Lou took… the room we were in was sitting room only. There’s definitely a lot of interest in Flex + Rails integration, and I’m sure it’ll do nothing but grow. I think Peter is a good face/brain to represent this segment of the Railsiverse, and hopefully he’ll gain the attention he deserves in the Rails and Flex communities.

Like Lou, I got a t-shirt which doesn’t quite fit, but I’ll give it to a cute girl and take pictures of her wearin’ it. That’s better marketing (and easier on the eyes, I’m sure) than me wearin’ it, hands down.

I’ve been surprised to run across a number of Ruby on Rails folks who I recognize from the Bay Area. It kinda figures that they’d be here… but it’s just cool to be far from home and see familiar faces. I’m impressed with how cool and genuinely nice so many folks in the Rails community are. I feel like I’m making some new friends that I’ll have for a long time. I certainly hope that’s the case.

I should probably do some name dropping and link-lovin’, but the bed I’m sitting near looks awfully comfortable right now. Besides, a number of the folks I’m meeting will likely end up in my list o’ friends over there in the sidebar… and there are several days of Geek Joy remaining.

I’m a fan of this site. It’s awesome.

Like good music, it makes me want to stop the mundane stuff I’m doing and focus on creativeness.