March 2007 Archives

First off, I am truly sorry to hear that Kathy Sierra has stopped blogging due to creepy, threatening trolls. Kathy, please do not silence your vital voice due to un-evolved sub-homo erectus scum (no offense to our ancestors).

My first response upon hearing the news via Twitter and then reading Kathy's post on my mobile whilst driving to Las Vegas yesterday was to start singing old punk songs about self-defense and community unity. My second thought was "Let me at 'em with my steel toed panda shoes on..." My third thought was, "Hmmm... Self-Defense...Gun or karate?" Violence does not stop violence.

Here is my final response after a day of deliberation: Kathy, please keep blogging. The trolls win when you are silenced.

In March of 1998, Daniel Glass of Royal Crown Revue called me and asked, nee pleaded, that I take over the RCR mailing list. It was big and brawling. Old school punks plus hardcore swing dancers plus a bunch of tech geeks make for an interesting but at times explosive mailing list. I naively took it on and renamed the list "The Barflies Mailing List" after the RCR song. Up to 500 emails a day on subjects ranging from music to dancing to living to computers to bicycling to .... devolved into many of awful emails a day of 1 punk troll versus 1 swing-dancing-engineering troll plus their various factions warring.

In the first week of February of 2000, I took the list down and fled to Key West Florida and Nashville (Wahoo... BR549!) for a week. Upon my return, over 650 people hated me and not our 2 trolls.

In the 20/20 hindsight of 7 years, I can see that I should have trusted the community to fight for themselves and not let the trolls take over. Or maybe I should have IP banned the two trolls and let the community deal with the aftermath. What I know now is that I should have not taken the whole mailing list down.

Please, Kathy, report the event to the police (check), IP addresses and all. Ask the community of bloggers to help you (check). Wait for the community to rally and get the job done. Keep blogging about creating passionate users, as passionate users become passionate communities. Passionate communities make for an internet worth fighting for.

@ Persian with Lauren and Dave.

Black Phoebe the Prius is currently in the service bay at Toyota of Huntington Beach getting her 10,000 mile service.

The best part is that I am blogging to you all from some lovely patio furniture out near the new cars as the dealership has wifi for waiting customers. Yes, they take about half an hour longer than Jiffy Lube but they have wifi. Smart.

Photo by cowpiesurprise

Me and Rob being very silly. Rob has the best beard ever.

@ Mongolian BBQ on San Jacinto and 2nd.

Breakfast - Overrun 5 mins before 10am closing by hordes of the Music folk looking a bit zombie-fied. Hung out with Ben and Dave. Around noon, Alex, Adeline, and Christina showed up, I printed the Austinist party list out for them and we all (LA + BP + Patrick Haney) went over the Iron Works for BBQ. Chris from Turbonegro joined us and Alex had a quiet fanboy moment. Good lunch, got my fill of beef. First bbq of the week. The Brits and PH departed to go to the airport and I sat talking with the LA crew.

Christina and Adeline together are a scream. Much like Ben and Dave should have their own tv show, Adeline and Christina should have one, too. It might be more amusing if we put them all in a house together... ;o)

Off we went to the convention center to get wristbands for Adeline and Christina. Chris went off to band related duties. After the wristband pick up, A, A, C and I went over to Moonshine for the Honeypot Radio and Heidi's Night of Beauty party. We got there just in time to see Piney Gir play with Goldrush. Excellent! Fun western swing-ish country meets indie rock, good stuff. Not at all like the Graham Parsons indie-country rock stuff that is so popular right now. Piney Gir is from Kansas but lives in London. Must buy some CDs. Brit friends - please go see her and her Roadshow.

Heidi gave me a fabulous jeweled cherry toe ring that I turned into a mobile accessory for Peek-a-Pooh. Lookin' good.

Another Brit band, The Height, played next. Good but I was not excited about them as I was with Piney Gir and Goldrush. Off I went back to the hotel to drink water and work on my computer. Here I am 4 hours later still tiptapping away. Now off to dinner.

I was walking down 1st St. (Cesar Chavez) to go to lunch with the Brit Pack jnrs and Alex, Adeline, and Christina, when someone in a car started yelling at me... Julia Johnson Britt!

Julia and I have been friends since I was 16 and she was 17. We went to punk and other rock shows together, we did the great summer of 1988 tour of London, France, Germany, Ireland, and London again as traveling partners. And now she is living in Texas. Wahoo!

What a great moment of serendipity.

SXSW - Day 5 - Wed. March 14, 2007 - The Post-Interactive or the Vacation Part of the Adventure

Breakfast with all the Hampton Inn Brit Packers and East Coasters before folks depart. Hung out talking with various and sundry folk from 9 am to past 1 pm. Got to spend a good amount of time talking with Aaron.

Had lunch at the Rio Grande (again, delightfully) with Aaron G., Craig C., Derek F.,Christopher S., Dave T., Steve M. and Ben W. Good laughter.

Then those who did not have to fly out in the afternoon went back to the Hampton to sit on the 2nd floor and work with our computers. The Brit Pack jnrs and Andy Budd went off to Halcyon in the late afternoon and I took a short nap before going over to the SXSW Music Awards.

The Music Awards started at 8pm and went along fine for a half hour until I got a call from Lauren, went out to the Creekside patio to call her back and she gave me an update on her mom's condition (still in ICU, another round of surgeries planned, blood donation, etc.). I cried. I tried to go back into the Awards but was unable to really appreciate the bands, so I left at 9:30pm. Squeek, thank you for the ticket, I am sorry I was unable to stay the whole night.

I was in the mood to have a bit of food, as I missed dinner, and to sit quietly with friends. I met up with Andy Budd, PPK, and the BP jnrs at Buffalo Billiards. Alex Hernandez and Adeline Wylie joined us. I ate and chatted with PPK, Alex and Adline while Andy, Dave, Steve, and Ben played foosball. Around 11pm plus, Alex and Adeline went to go see The Smoking Popes and the rest of us retired back to our respective rooms.

The waffle is still frozen on the inside.

SXSW - Day 4 - Tues. March 13, 2007

10am - Web Typography Sucks

Richard Rutter - Clearleft.com
Mark Boulton - Markboultondesign.com

Vertical Rhythm -
Richard

Typographic Layout
Grid system
Rational Ratio - Rule of 3rds, 2:3, divides block into 6 sub-blocks of 1em
Because the grid is defined by the type size, there is a relationship between all the elements

Typeface and Fonts
The thorny issue of the web
Richard recommends that you first call your preferred typeface, even if a small percentage of folks will see it, and then use the font that come on any mac or pc.
Richard - new fonts shipped with Vista. Calibri, cambria, candara, constantia, corbel.
Mark - these are world class typefaces, start using them, extend the font stack.
Richard - 'They all begin with "C", which is just silly.'

Mark Boulton and Richard Rutter

SXSW - Day 3 - Mon. March 12, 2007

I woke up fairly early rested. Called Lauren. Breakfast. Off to convention center for panels.

10am - Ajax Kung Fu Meets Accessibility Feng Shui
Jeremy Keith
Derek Featherstone

AJAX Kung Fu - Jeremy Keith

Accessibility -
1) Making sites accessible for people and a device, ie screenreader
2) Device agnostic - universality - site that can adapt to the needs of the people using the site

Progressive Enhancement -
1) Begin with Content
2) Structure - semantic (HTML)
3) Presentation - add look (CSS)
4) Behavior (Javascript and AJAX)

The problem is that a lot of applications are built with AJAX first and you can't get to the content without AJAX. This does not work to well.

At the Great British Booze Up!

SXSW - Day 2 - Sun. March 11, 2007

Woke up vaguely on time a bit discombobulated due to time change last night. Got ready to get over to the 10am panels.

10am - Every Breath You Take: Identity, Attention, Presence and Reputation

Christian Crumlish - Yahoo!
Kaliya Hamlin - Identity Woman
Mary Hodder - Dabble
George Kelly - allaboutgeorge
Ted Nadeau - Dot Line

I came in half way and tea did not engage brain until end. Mostly a discussion of privacy and reputation. I need to ready more of Mary Hodder's work.

"I don't wear my bathrobe to work and I don't wear my work clothes to bed" - Mary Hodder, on reputation, "Think of having multiple identities, it is more like who we are in real life. We present slices of ourselves as they are appropriate."

Here are my notes for SXSW - Day 1 - Sat. March 10, 2007. Some of it is quotes and some is paraphrase. I may or may not find time to add more of my thoughts (ha ha ha!).

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SXSW - Day 1 - Sat. March 10, 2007

9am - Breakfast with the gang at the hotel. Bought one of Cindy's "Geeks <3 *" shirts. Norm made me laugh and laugh some more.

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(Jen says : transcribing whilst comatose waiting for caffeine to kick in makes for...)

10 am - Emerging Technology and Trends
Moderator:Wired Mag (Laura Moorhead)
Frog/NYU: (Robert Fabricant)
Blum: 2nd from left (Andrew Blum)
Middle Guy (Eliot Van Buskirk)
Raffel the Yahoo guy (Jeff Bonforte)
Pete the Engagdet boy (Peter Rojas)

Engagdet boy - talked on technological determinism or social determinism (he didn't use those words)
Frog/NYU prof - Technologies don't really propagate until there is a social need.

Sat. 3/10/07 - Derek Featherstone and Tantek Çelik at the Frog Party

Sat. 03.10.07 - Austin Convention Center, SXSW 2007.

Sat. 3.10.07 - Steve Champeon and Andy Clarke sitting out on the smokers balcony at SXSW.

Sat. 3.10.07 - Jason Toney and Tiffany Brown at lunch.

Sat. 03.10.07 - at SXSW.

Sat. 03.10.07 - Noah Glass and Jay Allen out on the balcony at SXSW.

Fri. 03.09.07 - Dinner at Moonshine with 21 of my favorite Brit Pack, Euro, and East Coast friends. Happy days.

Taking photos of cranes.

On my way to SXSW 2007!

Almost ready for SXSW.

So, the fellow in front of me with all of the flags and the overly patriotic wording on his truck, also had a speaker playing the "Star Spangled Banner" for anyone who drove by. The best part is that Shell gas truck was driving by at the same time.

America, Apple Pie, Mom, Red/White/Blue, and Gasoline!

All photos taken at the Getty by Jenifer Hanen with her Nokia N80.