heatxsink.com

I finally got to the Santa Monica Apple Store to find that the line was all the way out to Wilshire Blvd. I waited about 3.5 hours, and got my phone. I got this strange cult feeling while entering the store to cheering Apple Store employee's. That would be the first time I have ever felt that creepy cult feeling with Apple. My first 24 hours with this device has been great. Everyone is right about the keyboard, it will take awhile to pickup. I think I can type faster, but this could be an illusion. This form of an input device isn't ubiquitous so it takes some time for us humans to adapt.

The best "use case" I have ever encountered with a piece of technology that might not be is not re-create-able in a lab is... You are drunk at a bar, and you're trying to get a phone number, you hand your phone over to allow the hottie a person to input their contact information. Because this new revolutionary phone is a little advanced said hottie person can't accurately input their information on the software based touch key predictive keyboard. You can notice some frustration with the hottie person, while trying to stay standing and attempting to input something as simple as their name!

Apple Store @ Beverly Center. The asshole security guards are telling people they can't take any pictures. Luckily I snapped one of the line before they caught me. I could not line up in front of the store because the line was cut off, and redirected outside onto the sidewalk on Beverly Drive! I hate mall security guards, so I'm going to take my chances at the Santa Monica Apple Store. I'll be twittering from there!

A couple of fellow "myspacers" and myself decided to check out the Apple Store on 3rd Street Promenade in Santa Monica. I'm surprised there was about 30-40 people camping out! I have witnessed this kind of consumer behavior for the iPod Nano, the release of Mac OS 10.3 (Panther) and 10.4 (Tiger) in the Bay Area. These are So. Cal. people camped out for this device! Absolutely amazing.

Wall Street Journal article here. New York Times article here. Awesome ('sexy time') explosion graphics here.

Another year is in the bag! I'm amazed, that I've made it this far. I have already surpassed my own expectations on life. All I ever wanted was to make what I call a "ding in the universe." With a fair amount of certainty, I think I have. To everyone out there, here's a warning you will encounter a fair amount of "duche-baggery" along the way. The main question that has been pestering me is, "So, now what?" I have a few ideas on what is next, but I am a firm believer that life isn't designed to be planned. Life is merely a ride, of course you can pause the ride, but you can't get off till it's time to leave this physical state of being. I don't want to get anymore philosophical than I already have. The last two years have been a crazy part of the ride. I guess what I'm trying to convey is "gratefulness." I'm very thankful for where I'm at, who I have met, and the people who are and continue to be my friends. I can only imagine that everything encompassing life, gets better with time.

I have been pondering way too much. For some reason my passport is calling me. I just gotta figure out where to go, preferably somewhere with no internet!

I've been working on a new design of this website. While in the act of this insidious task I've found that the web based template editing for Movable Type (MT) is less than adequate (I'm being extremely nice here). I thought I'd dig around and take a look under the hood at the Perl modules that run MT. It's probably the best documented piece of Perl I have ever seen. Every module is nicely commented complete with a "perldoc" section. Huge thanks to Ben Trott and Six Apart engineers on actually producing some extensible, well documented software! The whole idea behind MT is web based content management system (CMS), so I can see how they would not see enough value in deploying a command line interface. So to meet this deficiency I have written my own, I've started a Google Code Project at: http://code.google.com/p/mt-cli-scripts/. The only caveat is that these scripts in their current state need to run out of your MT installation directory. You will also need to edit each script to set the value of $MT_PATH with the path to your MT installation directory. In a future iteration I will make the scripts read an environment variable. In true open source fashion I'll accept patches.

Check out this article that is one of many to be buzzing on the social networking scene.

A News Corp source said that Rupert Murdoch, the company's chairman and chief executive, remained committed to the internet, although he has conceded in an aside in a recent interview with The Wall Street Journal that the privately owned Facebook was gaining ground. Asked whether newspaper readers were drifting off to MySpace, Mr Murdoch joked: "I wish they were. They're all going to Facebook at the moment."

Wow, Uncle Rupert would say this! Mashable post, about the Yahoo, MySpace buzz, it links to the Times article linked above. Techcrunch article on the buzz. Valleywag posting on the buzz. My take on all of this is, I think this is all buzz. I think Murdoch is manipulating the media, and warming them up for something more to come.

Check out this techno/electronic music artist's site here. Pretty good music, looks like the music that was used for the Magnetosphere visualization videos.

Great Google Tech Talk entitled "How To Design A Good API and Why it Matters".

Check out this Guy Kawasaki presentation entitled, "The Art of Innovation".To build a great product it should follow DICEE.

• Deep: Lots of functionality
• Intelligent: Somebody was thinking when they made the product or the service.
• Complete: Support infrastructure, the totality of the experience.
• Elegant: To use the product you do not have to read the manual.
• Emotive: The product generates strong emotions.Some other great qutoables....

Don't worry, be crappy. Ship it, don't test it. Churn, baby, churn.

I'm probably going to hell! I couldn't resist. This iconic statute of "baby jesus", is coated in a very reflective metallic finish. Didn't "God" get mad about idols, especially reflective metallic finished (gold) ones? Oh well, at least I got a picture.

Great post by Michael Bierut, entitled "Everything I Know About Design I Learned from The Sopranos."

Found this great visualization plugin for iTunes. Get it here.

I think the intro on the barbarian group webpage for magnetosphere says it all....

Here is this thing that does stuff in iTunes. There is magnetism, there is gravity, but on top of all of that, there is awesomeness. Watch as all the dots and ribbons go bouncy bouncy when you play music and trigger this mo-fo of a visualizer.

Reuse is something that is far easier to say than to do. Doing it requires both good design and very good documentation. Even when we see good design, which is still infrequently, we won't see the components reused without good documentation.

D.L. Parnas, Software Aging. Proceeding of the 16th International Conference on Software Engineering, 1994

To love an idea is to love it a little more than one should.

Jean Rostand

I'm sure everyone that's a huge "techie" is buzzing about the new iPhone commercials! My major annoyance is that I had to install the latest version of Quicktime to view them on the Apple website (here's the link). It's completely worth it, I'm seriously in love with this device. I'm worried about the quality of Cingular/at&t's EDGE network. I have a Blackberry right now, the device rocks, but EDGE blows. Perhaps in the next few days Cingular/at&t will ramp up the quality for the iPhone?

If we are to be a really great people, we must strive in good faith to play a great part in the world. We cannot avoid meeting great issues. All that we can determine for ourselves is whether we shall meet them well or ill.

Theodore Roosevelt

There used to be a saying at Apple, isn't it funny, a ship that leaks from the top.

Steve Jobs