Risk vs. Danger : Red Kite Prayer

Risk vs. Danger : Red Kite Prayer: I’ve made mistakes before and crashed. I’ll make mistakes again. The last thing in the world I’d want my error to do is cause people to avoid exciting roads. I can’t speak for Robert or his family, but the example of his life suggests that he would endorse getting on with the business of living by putting ourselves out there and we achieve that electric thrill no one will ever get from the TV.
The greatest service we can do our fellow riders is to remember them accurately, to ride with the care that will keep us out there, to remain clear on the difference between danger and risk, and to keep that sense of adventure alive.

[And another take. I agree with this as well.]

Death. « Speedbloggen

Death. « Speedbloggen: You may think it’s ok to die riding because its doing something you love. I call bullshit. Dying having overcooked a turn is a real shit way to die. We’ve all over cooked a turn in our lives… its not worth dying over and knowing how to save it is a basic skill. Yes it takes luck. Yes people die every day in any number of stupid ways, and people die on their bikes.

Work on your descending. Don’t get suckered into anything above your level. Don’t be afraid to melt a rim or pull off and think about the next set of turns. And really think about those big group rides. If the nature of the ride is that being off the front or the top ten folks is the only good place to be… tap out. It’s not worth it. I love Rapha products. I’ve come to love them. I love the branding and the adverts… but you know it isn’t real. Don’t show up for that ride thinking what you see on the website is real. Riding isn’t a sentimental act. It’s not romantic until you’re off the bike and the photos are processed and printed. Ride present, ride smart, think critically and make your own luck.

I saw a picture of the guy… he looks like he was a lovely fellow. His bars were too high, too many spacers. I’m willing to bet his stem was too short. How you sit on a bike matters. How your bike fits matters. How much weight you have and where your center of gravity is going down a hill matters. It’s life and death.

Thanks for indulging my rant. I’ll probably take this down later.

[I feel this is worth repeating because it is too easy to get caught up in other things. My closest riding buddies know this. Others who I ride this more occasionally seem to get lost in their own fantasies. “Ride present, ride smart, think critically and make your own luck.” ]

When “minimal viable product” doesn’t work

When "minimal viable product" doesn't work: Inherent in the process of minimal viable product, then, is a trusting, large permission base that will eagerly listen to you, try your new work and let you know what they think. And you don’t have the option of building that audience once the product is ready–that’s too late.

[Yeah. I’ve screwed this up more than once. It’s often hard to know when you’ve got a strong core.]
Source: Seth’s Blog

WSJ: Google considers offering paid TV services to internet customers | The Verge

WSJ: Google considers offering paid TV services to internet customers | The Verge: Google has apparently discussed with media executives the idea of expanding its YouTube channel lineup to license a full suite of cable channels for paying customers, turning YouTube into a virtual cable service, or sorts. At this point, nothing would surprise us when it comes to Google’s try-everything-once approach to product development.

[Google needs to work on its customer service infrastructure before I would trust them with more services.]

Turning Hardware Into Software

Turning Hardware Into Software: We used to have the iPod app, which is now simply called “Music”. The previous app icon was a picture of an iPod, because that was the simplest way to explain what was going on with a single image. What was hardware is now software. With iOS 5, the gap has presumably been bridged, and the anachronistic iconography went away. On the other hand, I’d venture to guess that the Phone.app hardware handset icon isn’t going away for a while; the iPod was never an emergency device, and phones have been around a little longer than digital music players. I might not even know where to find a handset telephone in 2011, but the image as an icon is completely unambiguous.

Texture-rich, literal UI isn’t merely an affectation, and it isn’t there to comfort us, exactly; the purpose is to connect. For those of us who have been playing with technology since we were small children, a list of books—or any other kind of data—is second nature. For the generations of people who aren’t so technologically immersed, a wooden bookshelf adds context and warmth to what is otherwise perceived as a cold machine. Apple’s strength is connecting technology to human beings, and skeuomorphic design acts as a bridge between what we already understand and what must now be learned.

With the iPhone, we started communicating with technology via touch in a meaningful way for the first time. Apple added more touch gestures in Lion, and it’s probably a safe guess that the trend will continue. Semi-realism and texture invite touch. They invite interaction. Laugh at the leather and torn paper, but it’s a hell of a lot more inviting to touch than a cold hunk of metal and glass.

[This might be a permadiscussion. I don’t mind per app branding, but the fiddly little pieces of parker hanging off of things that detest in real life, I can now detest without being to correct them in my digital life. harumph.]
Source: Better Elevation

The tech industry is update-happy

The tech industry is update-happy: In contrast, if I leave a car parked in front of my house, and go away for a while, when I come back, the radio still works. So does the heater, and the engine. I’ve had batteries go bad while cars sat idle. Once I froze an engine block in a Wisconsin winter. But none of this was done to the car, deliberately, by companies in the car industry. Generally when my car breaks it’s because I did something to it. (There are exceptions of course.)

The tech industry is update-happy. The rationale that somehow breakage is not only acceptable, but good — is nonsense.

[Nothing to add. When companies realize that the goal is not to build a company based on fulfilling every dream of every user this might, *might*, get better.]
Source: Scripting News

Why the Keurig K-Cup is the beginning of the end for great coffee « Muddy Dog Roasting Co.

Why the Keurig K-Cup is the beginning of the end for great coffee « Muddy Dog Roasting Co.: Do you think that vision is crazy?  Let’s see.  How easy is it to buy a Walla Walla onion?  Never heard of it?  I’m not surprised.  I grew up with them, but they’re already a thing of the past.  Hundreds of vegetable varieties have already gone extinct, solely due to our desire to homogenize, to have crops that ship well, regardless of how they taste.  Only 5% of US apple varieties that existed just 200 years ago still exist today.   Ninety percent of vegetable varieties have gone extinct over the last 100 years in the UK. The crimson flowered broad bean, the Champion of England Pea, the Bath Cos Lettuce, and the Rowsham Park Hero Onion are just a few examples of vegetables that are lost forever.  Hundreds of heirloom vegetable varieties are on the brink of extinction.  And there are all kinds of other foods that are falling victim to this same phenomenon. Try to buy a really great charcuterie today – Boar’s Head is as close as you’ll get in most places.  A beautiful creme fraiche?   How about Yoplait?  Great cheeses?  We got your Kraft, RIGHT HERE.  Don’t believe me? Go check out Slow Food’s Ark of Taste.  Oh, what’s that, you would like to have a nice meal at a cute bistro?  Sorry, all that’s available now are chain stores like Panera, TGI Friday’s or Appleby’s.  But you can probably score some Jack Daniels chicken wings, or some other ill-advised mess.  I can sum it all up in one word: Monsanto.

[And while Jim of Muddy Dog Roasting Company explains from his perspective. I think this particular paragraph worries me more (I’m not a coffee drinker) in that it is part of a larger problem, which expressed perfectly above. And in case it isn’t obvious the lost biodiversity is not just a loss of taste and experience. That’s bad enough. But it has become entirely clear that eating different foods is healthy for you, and having variations of each food makes that easier (you eat a tomato, but it’s a different tomato). The varying balances of the “ingredients” of a fruit or vegetable is a fundamental goodness. And the craft of growing and preparing food, where the results are not consistent at the “Monsanto” level and don’t try to be is also a fundamental goodness. It’s the same thing that is appealing about anything hand made. Sure, a dreadnaught style guitar has certain fundamental qualities. But each one is different. Hand build a bicycle and each one will have some personality even if you use the same measurements and tube set. That variation is good for us. And we need to be extremely careful that we don’t lose it in a chase to the bottom in the name of efficiency and money.]
Source: Marco Arment

The computers near you are gateways to the clouds.

Scaling Down the Mac Pro:

Marco Arment:

It’s impossible to significantly change the Mac Pro without
removing most of its need to exist.

But I think it’s clear, especially looking at Thunderbolt’s
development recently, that Apple is in the middle of a transition
away from needing the Mac Pro.

Jon Gruber: “I concur.”

[I want you to look at the bit below and put that together with the one above.]

Mark O’Connor Swapped His MacBook for an iPad and Linode:

Fascinating, really. What enables him to work solely from an iPad is that he does all his work in Vim. So it’s the fact that he’s a code-writing Unix nerd that allows him to use the seemingly least-Unix-nerd-friendly computer ever as his sole work machine.

[And while this won’t work for everything, it will become common for the computer near you (whatever the form factor) to seamlessly reach out to computing resources in the cloud when you wish. Big photo file needs editing? No problem—the original image is already in the cloud. Now run your image editor of choice on a whomping multi core rocket ship of a virtual machine with a a bunch of RAM. The file is saved back to the cloud (versions anyone?) and you release the resources until the next time you need them. Pay as you go? Sure. Why not. Need some resources all day every day? Pick a monthly plan. The computers near you are a gateway to the clouds.

There are fewer cases where we need all those compute cycles and storage local to us. And while there are some, and there will be always be some, for most of us, this will not be necessary any longer. Even the small computers available today like phones, pads, and small notebooks are very powerful machines. The stumbling block is the serious lack of infrastructure that ensures access to the cloud at all times. (It’s getting better, but it ain’t where it needs to be). Screen space is an issue, having just spent the better part of 5 days with real work to do and nothing but a phone to do it (nope, nothing rose to the level of running out and spending money on an iPad or a MiFi or the like, but another few days might have done it.) I was almost at the point where I was going to get a AppleTV to stream the screen of my phone to a large TV screen, and reattach the wireless keyboard, but I wanted to embrace this limitation knowing I’d go back to my normal routine as soon as connectivity was restored. It is amazing how well things worked overall (network speed was the number one issue). Generally it’s not more computing power that I need, but a faster connection and larger screen (in that order).]