My Notebook features over 500 posts across over twenty years, covering everything from movies to ethics to personal stories to random links. Browse recent Notebook entries below, or use the category buttons or search to go deeper. The “Clip File” category contains my favorite writing.
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37Signals’ ‘Getting Real’ sets a bad precedent for self-publishing
Wildly popular software firm 37Signals is earning much press– predictably, some of the nicest is their own ;)- for the success of their latest book, Getting Real. If you haven’t heard, Real is a book on project management, software development, and business tips for the Web 2.0 era. To their credit, the self-publishing model has…
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‘Pay-per-Gate’ picking up steam
The ‘Pay-per-Gate‘ saga, which I’ve written about twice before, has now crossed over into the local media here in Maine. Today, both the Knox County VillageSoup Times and the Portland Press Herald ran variations on the story.
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Trend watching: homemade how-to videos
Prediction: homemade how-to videos, such as the ones featured on Turtlesoup.tv and at Ctrl+Alt+Chicken, will rise up in a big way in the second half of 2006.
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Self-examination for Rails
Back in November of 2005, in a comment on his blog, I challenged Ruby on Rails creator David Heinemeier Hansson to write up a post on the “10 Flaws, Problems, or Issues with Ruby on Rails.” Hansson replied to my comment, stating “That’s a good idea. When 1.0 is out I’ll assemble a list of…
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Maine blogger threatened with lawsuit for ‘Pay-per-Gate’ story
Every blogger out there should understand that when one of us is threatened with a lawsuit, we’re all threatened. That’s not a cutesy cliche- it’s a serious point to keep in mind whenever we begin to forget that there are many members of the old guard- institutions such as government agencies and media outlets- with…
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Book review: ‘An Army of Davids’ is already marching
“A return to some sort of balance, in which the world looks a bit more like the eighteenth century than the twentieth, is likely to be a good thing.” So says Glenn Reynolds, perhaps better known as InstaPundit, in the conclusion of his new book, An Army of Davids (view it on Amazon.com). While that…
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Robert E. Hayden’s ‘Those Winter Sundays’
The Poetry Foundation has a beautiful, feature-rich website that includes a nifty tool called their Poetry Tool, which lets you browse their extensive collection of hosted poems based on a variety of criteria such as first line, subject matter, author, etc. I was recently browsing the Poetry Tool and found this beautiful poem by Robert…
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Don’t visit Adholes unless you like to be spammed
Just got another email from Adholes, the worthless advertising news site. You may remember my post from three weeks ago, where I complained that Adholes continued to send me email messages after I had attempted to unsubscribe twice. Well I’ve now tried to unsubscribe three times and they are continuing to send me messages. Again,…
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Back to Neptune
Veronica Mars is new tonight for the first time in weeks, I’m burned out on the Internet, and exhausted on top of that. So tonight, I’m going offline to spend time relaxing with my two favorite women. Thankfully, one of them is real.
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Meet Big Bird again, for the first time
Hey, parents: Have you watched countless hours of Sesame Street and/or Muppet movies with your child? If you’re anything like me, your mind begins to wander a bit as you’re enjoying the 23rd consecutive viewing of the one where Zoe’s tutu flies up in the tree. Because I’m curious about how things work, my mind…