Streetcar rails at 23rd and Burnside

It’s been fun to watch the construction. They close down a few blocks at a time and excavate the street. In the process old streetcar rails have been been dug up.

In one place, the old tracks peeked out from underneath the end of the uncut street.

End of the line

There are stacks of railroad ties that have been unearthed, in surprisingly good condition after being underground for years.

Pile of old railroad ties

This all feels like a recent-history urban archeological site: “Portland at the turn of the twentieth century.” I wonder if any of this stuff is worthy of preserving for historical reasons.

I am tempted to swipe a cobble stone for a door stop.

A new website?

You shouldn’t have.

I’m putting the finishing touches on a new WordPress theme. It’s still a little rough in places, comments need formatting, lists need sweetening, various twiddles need to be twaddled. But it’s mostly there, so why not take it for a test run?

This theme is fully ‘widgetized’ (to use the WordPress nomenclature) which means it’s a lot easier to customize. I’m also working on a few fun little tricks like shortcodes (like for the image above) to allow for a little more aesthetic control of the published web content (while not borking the internal tools)

I have a couple of goals with this design: Use nice typography and keep it minimal. I realize the primary way people interact with a website nowadays is to follow a link from somewhere to the specific article. That link might be in an RSS feed reader, a search result, a twitter posting, or whatever. Very few people are going to websites directly to browse for content.

This has two implications: Reading is your user’s first priority. Searching is probably second, and actual clicking around on the site is a distant third (maybe fourth if you have some funny pictures of cats).

With this in mind I decided to keep the navigation minimal, and present the content front and center. Archives are off on their own page now (it’s widgetized, I could bring them back whenever), ancillary links are down at the bottom for when a reader gets done reading.

Technical Notes

Right now this theme should work in modern browsers including Internet Explorer 7 and 8. Internet Explorer 6 is probably making a mess of this site. I’m not sure if I care or not.

You may have noticed that this type ain’t Arial. I’m using new-ish font embedding techniques which should be rendering everything in a lovely Bodoni-esque typeface for you, unless you’re using an ancient version of Safari or Firefox. I am using Font Squirrel to create font kits. They host many open source or non-licensed fonts and provide a tool to roll your own font kits.

The rest of the theme is straight-forward HTML and CSS with a minor bit of tweaking to some default WordPress functions.

One tablespoon of raspberry syrup (preferably made the night before for your wife’s dessert), 2 ounces lime juice, 2 ounces of vodka, over ice, fill with soda water and stir. Sip while in sunshine

I was traveling over the weekend and got a much needed dose of Nigella Lawson on Food Network.

This dish (cribbed shamelessly) is pan-seared sirloin steak with white beans sauteed in olive oil with arugala, paprika, garlic, and lemon (with a Vesper cocktail).

Gently fry this egg, sunny side up, in butter, in your grandfather’s cast iron skillet.

Sprinkle a small pinch of kosher salt on top.

While the egg is frying, toast a piece of soft potato bread. When the toast is ready, lay it on a plate and top with a single slice of provolone cheese.

Place the newly fried on top.

Break the yolk with your folk, allowing it to run down onto the plate to be absorbed by the toast.

Cut a large slice, making sure to get some cheese, yolk, bread, and egg together. Shove this into your mouth in one bite. Follow with a sip of hot, strong coffee.

In my old job I was “working in IT”. In my new job, I’m working on software. The difference is astounding. I have vague memories of this difference from my days as a struggling yet clueless freelancer. Working on software and working in IT are two entirely different things no matter what the job description says.

In my old job I got to play with Java, .Net, legacy garbage, and a smattering of other things.

In my new job I’m working in PHP in the infamous LAMP stack – I’m far happier.

I have recently come to terms with the fact that I prefer a Gibson cocktail to the standard Martini/

I hate Twitter, but I’m learning to appreciate it’s potential.

This blog is awesome

Support your local ironic t-shirt producer

At some point in the conversation, after my friend had described a vexing problem, I said:

The problem is, you want it to be some way it’s not.

We both laughed because this was obvious, trite, and exactly true.

I think this idea applies equally well to the seemingly never ending dust-up regarding the fact that Apple will only sell iPhone apps through their store, on their terms, and have had the audacity to (oh noes) reject some apps from being sold in their store.

This is like complaining that your free ice cream doesn’t have sprinkles — I simply don’t understand the brouhaha.

I think, though, it might come down to this: When Apple announced the iPhone, we were told that it was running OS X and that it connected to the internet via WiFi. Technical folks understood that this implied that the iPhone–despite having a dirty, dirty, cellular radio–was basically a really tiny UNIX machine and a really tiny (though not especially powerful) Macintosh computer. Cool!

Immediately great hordes of nerds imagined a Narnia-esque world where anyone could write an iPhone app and a winged, talking, lion would ferry him across a great river of nymphs so he might sell his app to his queen.

However, Apple decided to make money. So, they created a controlled product and “ecosystem” (I hate that word when applied to “product accessories”). This means that all things iPhone (3rd party or not) work reasonably well together and give off the fresh baked aroma of quality that Apple is known for.

When the fantasy did not become a reality there was great wailing and gnashing of teeth. Simply, people were upset because things were not the way they wanted them to be.

It is technically feasible to sell the iPhone as a general purpose mobile/cellular/computing platform. That this technical feasibility exists, and that Apple does not choose to pursue it, drives some folks to conniptions.

In response many people yelled “Monopoly!”. I can only assume they are upset because they didn’t get to play the car piece (I always choose the hat) because they clearly don’t understand what that word actually means.

There are many examples of product sales being tied to other products. For example, I cannot buy Sony PSP games for my Nintendo DS. I cannot buy Wii Store titles on Xbox Live. I cannot get genuine Toyota parts for my Honda, etc. Each of these programs require some sort of membership, fees, and certification if you want to participate.

One might argue that “well these things are nothing like an iPhone” so here’s another example. Prior to the release of the iPhone, Apple began selling games for the original iPod. These games were made by 3rd parties, and sold exclusively through iTunes through a non-publicized, apparently private, developer program. Where’s the gnashing of teeth? I want to see some teeth-gnashing!

What? Nobody cares? Why is that? It’s because the typical iPhone customer opens the App Store and says “Super Monkey Ball! Sweet!” and feels warm and tingly as she get out her credit card. The relative “openness” of a platform is not very important to customers. Customers care about a lot of things like quality, price versus value, prestige, neat-o-factor, and so on. Openness is not a marketable issue.

I suspect, as the iPhone platform matures–remember, it’s not a year and half old yet–and Apple wishes to continue expanding their market share, they may be willing to explore more “openness”. They may allow applications developed in other environments like Java. They may allow browser plugins like Flash. They may allow competing browsers like Firefox or Opera. But only if they need to, and only if it makes market sense to do so.

Until that time, all 7 or 8 neckbeards who want to distribute apps willy nilly for the iPhone, who don’t want to use the App Store, and who are too chicken to jailbreak it will just have wait or buy an Android compatible phone (you know, use that free market thing that exists outside of a monopoly).

As a final note, the (ever) Daring Fireball linked to this website, which seeks to document ‘dead’ (woe!) apps that Apple has rejected from their App store: http://boredzo.org/killed-iphone-apps/

When I last counted there were 11 applications listed. This list is padded by one. If you read through, you’ll see that “Box Office” was taken down and renamed due to a copyright conflict, and is currently available as “Now Playing“. Hardly a dead, rejected application.

I could make a good case for rejecting all of the other apps myself. Even if there is no good case, Apple announced publicly that they reserve the right to reject applications for whatever reason. Sorry, you’ll just have to sell that fart joke app for the Blackberry.

The above site links to a blog which lists a number of games which have been rejected from the app store. My cursory run-through indicates that all of these games were rejected because of copyright issues as well.

I doubt these two web sites are exhaustive in any way. I’m sure there are more tales of woe to be told. Apple reported some 3000 apps in the App Store as of September. These two sites list less than 30 apps. We’re talking about less than 1%. I can live with those numbers.

(Newtonica? Sweet!)

This is a poster of a yard sale sign. Is it advertising the yard sale, or the sign? Hmmm.

Tall Bar Is Tall.

On a recent trip to the beach (playing ambassador to English tourists) I discovered my hair matches the landscape.

Speaking of the beach, hot dogs are in fact, delicious.

Local pig, with lipstick.

Speaking of pigs, we caught the Veep Debate at the Lucky Lab.