Oh sugar, you won’t melt — trust me.

My Mom Lives in a Small Town:

Oh sugar, you won’t melt — trust me. I lived in Seattle for 24 years where rain is a way of life.

Side note: I bet you my Mom was thinking of the classic Asimov short story Rain, Rain, Go Away when she wrote “sugar, you won’t melt.” (I know that story’s in her library because that’s where I read it.)

And: the scene with the Public Works people reminds me of Jubal Harshaw in Stranger in a Strange Land when the government dudes land on his flower beds. “Get that God damned heap off my rose bushes!”

[Brent (or his Mom) hits it out of the park with Asimov *&* Heinlein. As a kid (I read Stranger when I was 12) I wanted to be like Jubal. I got some of it right.]

Source: inessential.com

The noise of stuff

The noise of stuff — What I Learned Today — Medium:

You might be holding on to that book you bought a year ago that you swear you’ll read or those killer pair of shoes that you’ll bring out for just the right occasion.

But the reality is, you probably made a mistake in buying those things and it literally hurts your brain to come to terms with that fact.

Researchers at Yale recently identified that two areas in your brain associated with pain, the anterior cingulate cortex and insula, light up in response to letting go of items you own

[A work in progress to be sure, on so many levels.]

On why nothing is simple about syncing

Vesper Sync Diary #1 – Syncing Tags:

If a note has tags like this…

tags: paris, packing, travel

…then it would be changed to look like this:

tags: packing, travel

The actual tag could remain in the database — it’s just that no notes would refer to it. In the case of tags, that’s the equivalent of deleting it.

And if you started using that tag again in the future, it would, correctly, appear just for new notes. It wouldn’t get resurrected for old notes, since those notes were changed to not refer to that tag.

Note

I’m still thinking about tags. I could change my mind (particularly if I think of a better way, or if someone tells me about a better way).

Much of the rest of syncing is conceptually nailed down. (Much of it was nailed down before I wrote the first line of Vesper code last February.) But things can change as theory meets code.

[What is simple to understand is that sync is never simple.]

Source: inessential.com

Sowing a Change in Kitchens

Sowing a Change in Kitchens:

The soil-tilling food experts happen to be every bit as expressive, and iconoclastic, as their knife-wielding counterparts in the kitchen. These days, many in the culinary world tend to view produce in a black-and-white way: You have either your delightfully lumpy, bumpy farmers’ market treasures, or your scarily uniform corporate Frankenfood. As Mr. Barber said, it’s “heirlooms over here, Monsanto maniacs over there.”

But Monday’s convocation, overseen by the Basque Culinary Center, suggested a third way: Independent breeders are ready to help make our breads and salads richer with deep flavor, bold color and plenty of nutrients. They just need someone to ask them.

What they do may also be seen as an old-school alternative to the spread of genetically modified plants, which have not been shown to be harmful but still frighten and concern many people.

“We’re making crosses within the same species, and we’re doing it the way it’s been done for 300 years,” said Dr. Stephen Jones, a wheat breeder from Washington State whose accessibly folksy lecture had the room transfixed. “There’s no forcing here. We put these plants together and we let them mate.”

[Since this ultimately will be driven by business and not love, it cares me a bit. But I’m curious to see where it goes.]

Beacons

The NewAer ProxPlatform: iBeacons are BlueTooth LE or BT Smart and 4.0:

Many reporters have described iBeacons as an indoor GPS solution, which it clearly isn’t if you read the API.  Instead of thinking of iBeacons as a localization system, think of it as a proximity system, and design your applications appropriately to create an event or trigger when you enter or leave the range of one.

[There’s a lot of spin in the above post or it’s poorly written. Thinking about beacons around my home, maybe it could simplify some of the interactions with things. Make my phone beep when walk into the kitchen? Notifications when I walk past stores? Meh or worse. Reminders when I enter my office? Car? Hmmm. Maybe. Creating an easier experience so that a business or doctor can collect information that I specify so that I don’t have to fill out a paper form? I’ll take that. And as we get better at sharing information using a beacon as a trigger for data sharing seems reasonable. I’m curious to see if Apple has plans for this in their own stores any time soon.]

Beware the tinfoil hats of September

Beware the tinfoil hats of September:

Yes, let’s. Everything the NSA collects goes over networks. They’re a signal intelligence organization. They analyze signals—which is to say, communications. Phone calls. Email messages. IM messages. Bank transactions. There’s a lot of things that constitute signals. But you know one thing that doesn’t?

What?

YOUR FINGERPRINT.

Wake up, sheeple!

Good talk.

[I’d recommend bewaring the tinfoil hats of October as well.]

Source: Coyote Tracks

802.11u and Hotspot 2.0

Apple’s iOS 7 GETS HOT! – The Ruckus Room:

But you probably haven’t seen ANY coverage of what will likely prove to be the most significant new Wi-Fi feature in iOS 7, namely its support for 802.11u and Hotspot 2.0.

While not all of the 200 million Apple devices said to be updated to iOS 7 will support Hotspot 2.0 (older iPhones, iPads and iPods currently do not), it’s certainly some obese number north of 50 or 60 million new Hotspot 2.0-capable mobile devices that have quickly appeared almost overnight. Wow.

[Interesting.]

64 bits. It’s Nothing. You Don’t Need It. And We’ll Have It In 6 Months

64 bits. It’s Nothing. You Don’t Need It. And We’ll Have It In 6 Months:

What these processors lacked in raw power was more than made up for by they way they were integrated into Apple’s notion of a purposeful, usable mobile device: Enhanced UI responsiveness, reduced power consumption, obeisance to the unique requirements of media and communications.

The expectation was that Apple would either fail, or produce a “competent” (meaning not particularly interesting) iteration of previous A4-5-6 designs. No one expected that the processor would actually work, with all in-house apps running in 64-bit mode from day one.

[Heh.]

Source: Monday Note

What if surfing was your job?

What if surfing was your job?:

Your drudgery is another person’s delight. It’s only a job if you treat it that way. The privilege to do our work, to be in control of the promises we make and the things we build, is something worth cherishing.

[I long ago recognized this when I went to play weddings and the other musicians were doing everything but paying attention to the music. Mostly the woman frankly. Anyway… I’ve often thought throughout the years as I worked on various things whether what I was doing was something I could do every day, for years, or whether I enjoyed it because it was a change from what was currently doing. It was and is a key question.]

Source: Seth’s Blog

The Batch

The Batch:

I won’t bore you or your readers with the technical details on how I built the Batch. What interests me more is the design process. I find detailed accounts of nailing boards together tedious. When you build by eye like me and every other garden variety savage, you measure with your heart, lengths of string and arm spans. Sort of like a bird that has access to power tools. Plans would be useless. CAD even worse. I’ve learned that. Get my drift?

home for the winter

Home for the winter. The Batch sends a plume of smoke over the shed, thorugh the chestnut tree and down the valley.

Your creative process may vary but mine works like this. Doodle on receipts. Write your friends a letter. Send ‘em a sketch of your notion. Drink some whiskey. Smoke your pipe. At least that’s what I do. Napping is good for inspiration. Smart phones aren’t. First thing you should do when tackling a project like this is stomp on your iPhone. All they do is connect you to ideas that have already been built. So you end up cloning what’s been done before. Maybe that doesn’t bother you. It does me.

[I hope I can get to a place like this.]

Source: Tiny House Blog