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April 24, 2005

April 24 2005

Sideways Moneymaker

While reading The Sideways Effect (Wine Spectator, April 2005), I was suprised to see that, in addition to increased business at places like Sanford Winery and Hitching Post II, room 234 at the Days Inn — the dingy motel room that Miles and Jack stayed in — is now consistently booked.

Hold on.

A room at the Days Inn is backlogged? I think this zealotry has gone just a little too far — nay, way too far, so far that salvation is no longer an option for these people. Maddox hit it dead on with his latest post.

So in celebration of this inanity (and good ol’ free marketeering), I present you with the best Sideways money-making scheme yet: The Sideways Suburban Adventure Package.

3 editorials

April 20, 2005

April 20 2005

Adobe Flash CS2

In Jason’s roundup of the Adobe-Macromedia acquisition, he alludes to Tim Bray’s comment that Adobe may drop Flash, and proffers Ajax as an alternative for web developers — a bit of jumping the gun, if you ask me.

Last fall, Kevin Lynch, the Chief Architect of Macromedia, asked to meet with me regarding my work on the Gmail API, under the guise of hinting at potential employment opportunities in the Experience Design group *. Essentially, he and his associate, an ex-Microsoft guy they poached from the ASP.NET group, wanted to know how the Gmail Ajax system worked, and how it worked so quickly. We also covered their new Flex platform, their take on the Lazlo project (supportive, but would ultimately rather see all efforts focused on Flex), and uses of the XML socketing support that was introduced in Flash 5.

Most of the conversation is relevant to Jason’s roundup, so here are my notes:

Flash may not be as much a lame duck as Tim made it out to be. It was obvious that Macromedia was well aware of the flat revenue generated by Flash, and was introducing Flex as a means to bring in fresh business through the professional services arena.
Macromedia was definitely concerned about the arrival of high-profile Ajax applications as a major equalizer to the XML-socketing support offered by Flash. Since most web applications do not require the “always-on” capabilities of sockets, Ajax quickly became a viable (and free) alternative to providing asynchronous client-side callbacks. Kevin specifically wanted to explore the possibility of hooking into the Ajax system with Flash, via Flex.
Ajax, in its currently form, falls very short of being an adequate replacement for Flash. Font support, image sampling, vector graphics (try animating a simple line using CSS) — the list of exclusive Flash features goes on and on, such that Flash will remain the platform of choice for design-heavy interfaces until other technologies like SVG make their way into the mainstream.

* I think I got played by Macromedia here. During the meeting, Kevin offered to “hook me up” if I found any of the job openings to be interesting. He sent over an email with a couple jobs links, to which I replied with interest to one of them. No response. I sent 2 more emails over the next few weeks, but never heard from him again. Seems like they were just digging for some free information.

Update: Kevin emailed me in response to this post:

…am concerned that you think I may not have been forthright with you — I was very open with you and connected you with openings that I thought might be a match, but apparently they weren’t. I’m sorry if the team didn’t reply to you, they should have done that.

3 editorials

April 5, 2005

April 5 2005

Google Recognition

I have finally reached a higer state of being, as defined by Google: my name has been accepted as a legitimate search term and is no longer considered a spelling mistake. Previously, when searching for johnvey, one would be presented with the following:

Did you mean: johnny

Well, not anymore! Totally sweet.

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Here's a clip from the This American Life TV show about a hot dog joint in Chicago called The Wieners Circle. On weekend nights after the bars close, the staff and drunken patrons yell verbal abuse at one another like prison inmates or Jerry Springer's guests.

This, this free-for-all has doubled their business, Larry and Barry figure. They end up seeing a side of people that, honestly, changes how you feel about everybody. You really wish you never saw it.

There are several other Wieners Circle videos on YouTube, including one where a customer orders a chocolate shake, throws down $40, and one of the workers begins to take her shirt off. (via delicious ghost)
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According to a boat name database, here are the top 15 boat names:

Orion
Zephyr
Stargazer
Free Spirit
TBD
Cheers
Mariah
Solitude
Sandpiper
Calypso
Banana Wind
MoonDance
PATRIOT
Mental Floss
valhalla

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The internet is an excellent machine for revealing ignorance. Until a few hours ago, I didn't know that the Romani people (also commonly referred to as Gypsies) are a distinct ethnic group that originated in India about a millennia ago. I had always assumed that being a Gypsy was more of a religious or cultural thing.
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The second in an unplanned series of posts about the pitfalls of an elite education: John Summers on teaching the banal and privileged at Harvard.

In the first meeting of my first seminar of my first year, Kushner's son Jared entered my classroom and promptly took the seat across from mine, sharing the room, so to speak. I was drawing an annual salary of $15,500 (£7,700) and borrowing the remainder for survival in Cambridge, in order that he might be given the best possible education. Jared later purchased The New York Observer for $10 million, part of which he made buying and selling real estate while also attending my seminar. As publisher, one of his first moves was to reduce pay for the Observer's stable of book reviewers. I had been writing reviews for the Observer in an effort to pay my debts.

From earlier in the week: The Disadvantages of an Elite Education. Also relevant here is the growing discussion of gigantic college endowments and how best to use them.
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Too Weird for The Wire, a story of a number of Baltimore drug dealers and their unusual "flesh-and-blood" defense in federal court. It's a tactic used by white supremacists and other US isolationists groups in tax evasion cases and the like.

"I am not a defendant," Mitchell declared. "I do not have attorneys." The court "lacks territorial jurisdiction over me," he argued, to the amazement of his lawyers. To support these contentions, he cited decades-old acts of Congress involving the abandonment of the gold standard and the creation of the Federal Reserve. Judge Davis, a Baltimore-born African American in his late fifties, tried to interrupt. "I object," Mitchell repeated robotically. Shelly Martin and Shelton Harris followed Mitchell to the microphone, giving the same speech verbatim. Their attorneys tried to intervene, but when Harris's lawyer leaned over to speak to him, Harris shoved him away.

David Simon, I believe you've got enough here for a sixth season of The Wire. Hop to.
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Constructing new LEED-certified green buildings is all well and good, but if they're further from your workers' homes and you have to tear down perfectly good old buildings to do so, the hoped-for energy savings are wasted.

Embodied energy. Another term unlovely to the ear, it's one with which preservationists need to get comfortable. In two words, it neatly encapsulates a persuasive rationale for sustaining old buildings rather than building from scratch. When people talk about energy use and buildings, they invariably mean operating energy: how much energy a building -- whether new or old -- will use from today forward for heating, cooling, and illumination. Starting at this point of analysis -- the present -- new will often trump old. But the analysis takes into account neither the energy that's already bound up in preexisting buildings nor the energy used to construct a new green building instead of reusing an old one. "Old buildings are a fossil fuel repository," as Jackson put it, "places where we've saved energy."

If embodied energy is taken into consideration, a new building that's replaced an older building will take up to 65 years to start saving energy...and those buildings aren't really designed to last that long.
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If physical theories were women.

Quantum mechanics is the girl you meet at the poetry reading. Everyone thinks she's really interesting and people you don't know are obsessed about her. You go out. It turns out that she's pretty complicated and has some issues. Later, after you've broken up, you wonder if her aura of mystery is actually just confusion.

Would like to see the list for men as well. (via snarkmarket)
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A map of the world as reported by the New York Times. Countries are color coded by the amount of times they are mentioned in the Times, per capita. Greenland, Iraq, New Zealand, Iceland, and Panama are disproportionally represented.
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Seed Magazine has posted Noah Kalina's photos of science labs at night. The Salk Institute is represented of course.
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Fonts personified at a font conference.

Pencil, telephone, hourglass, diamonds, candle, candle, flag. Mouse, scissors, ball, mailbox, mailbox, mailbox!

That's Wingdings talking.
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A collection of photos of things from around the world that cost $5.

To explore the relative value of five dollars we are collecting examples from around the world by asking people to submit photos of objects or services that cost the equivalent of $5.

(via clusterflock)
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2001–2005 A brief exploration through the marvelous mind of Johnvey Hwang. All content released under a Creative Commons License unless otherwise noted.

PURVEYOR OF FINE WORDS