There’s a fair amount of consensus among the online sources I read that Apple is at least neglecting, if not outright abandoning the pro marketplace, and more specifically the world of television professionals. Today brought an Ars article entitled Why the video pros are moving away from Apple. I read reports of large production houses [...]

I’m sitting on the futon couch in Sammy’s dad’s living room, and her dad is paging through this morning’s NY Times, which shows up at 4 am in the mailbox across the road, along with the Wall Street Journal, which Sammy’s brother Gordy is reading. Their postures are remarkably similar in the way that direct [...]

Ten years ago today the original iPod was introduced. (Ours is on a shelf next to a Brownie camera in our dining room.) Sixty years ago last Thursday the CBS ‘eyemark’ logo created by William Golden and taken and ran with by legendary CBS design guy Lou Dorfsman was introduced. (Dorfsman’s book about his CBS [...]

I’m not sure whether I’m squinting because it’s late, or whether my allergies are kicking up or because I’m squinting with skepticism at the idea of writing in this dusty old journal. Probably it’s all of the above. My sister visited over the weekend, and it was great to see her. When last we saw [...]

Sammy and I enjoyed talking to you at Segesta the other day. Remarkable that you remembered having seen us before at Selinunte, specifically, you remembered Sammy from her somewhat distinctive hat. We were once again struck by the language skills of so many we encounter in Europe. We have trouble crafting a sentence in English [...]

Sammy tells me that we are looking out from this lovely balcony at the Tyrrhenian Sea. I can tell you it is a calm vastness of water, a blue that would be at home painted on the walls of our Virginia Highland home, and it extends to a soft, defocused horizon. Our home here for [...]

I’m going to sleep after watching dawn rise over Cairo through live internet feeds from Al-Jazeera, MSNBC, and CNN. (As it turns midnight on the U.S. east coast.) Tanks. Tear gas. Molotov cocktails. Protest. Fear. Rumor. Machinations behind the scenes. Incredulity. Very nervous about what today will bring to the good people of Egypt. Kinda [...]

At my sister’s behest, I’ve been scanning a large collection of old images from our family. And at this rate, I should have them done sometime in 2017, so, hey, that’s progress. Came across a badly crinkled old black and white contact sheet from my stay in the fall of 1974 in New York’s East [...]

Yeah, I thought this was a great example of using design as a political statement: As reported in Salon, this cover, designed apparently by Dan Savage and Aaron Huffman, reminds us of the power of symbols and the impact of the gun on politics—and personal freedom—on American history. I’m aghast at the machinations of the [...]

This, I think, means ‘go ahead and read your iPhone in the shower.’ (From The Noun Project.) Hello there from our frozen city, which is suffering through what in most places would count as a minor snow event, but here, we’re attempting to attach apocalyptic terms, but for some reason, they’re just not uh…sticking. I [...]

A quiet saturday afternoon in the new year, and I’m sitting here savoring the back-room sunlight watching the winds pick up as we contemplate the threat of another city-paralyzing snow + freezing rain + ice event here in a part of the country that seems highly unprepared for even the mildest of winter weather calamities. [...]

I’m sitting here watching sunlight drift into Sammy’s family’s Green Cottage in between moments of solar hide and seek in the abundant clouds over Big Manistique Lake. We’re listening to a scratchy FM radio signal and we have internet-via-iPhone, which means that the MacBook and iPad sit here sullenly with light grey wifi logos, craving [...]

See that Lee Filter pack with the rubber band? Very important.

Hi, just checking in from the other side of the screen. I keep composing well-thought-out essay-length things in my head, but then my day job (is that what it is?) distracts me from actually flowing them into this site. As many of you know, I’ve been working pretty much nonstop on a complete graphics package [...]

Things have been, well, pretty close to the ‘normal’ baseline here at casa positively atlanta georgia through the month of April. I looked up and noticed that I hadn’t added to this fine collection of journal entries since the getting an iPad and enjoying it in the backyard post. So what’s been happening? Okay, in [...]

I decided to start the morning out in the back yard with a cup of coffee and that device that I’ve been, well, anticipating seems like such an insufficiency…shall we say salivating over? Really, really wanting to get my hands on? That’s more in the ballpark. As a specialized device, as opposed to a “replacement” [...]

On an evening where the embargo on talking about the iPad was lifted (and a great spewing sound was heard throughout the series of tubes), we have thus been inundated with reviews and screenshots and semi-childish squealing, I find myself waiting with quiet anticipation. They’re selling this thing on Saturday, perhaps you’ve heard?

To celebrate a Sunday that showed some signs of pulling out of the greyness that this winter has been, I went out early-ish and picked up a dozen bagels and, almost as an afterthought, a six dollar copy of The New York Times, which some of you may not know is an actual newspaper, published [...]

The Apple folks have announced the day-it-shall-be-buyable of the iPad, and, for the wi-fi only versions, it’s April 3rd, a mere 8 days before my birthday (in case you need any last minute gift ideas). I continue to be intrigued by the paradigm-shifting possibilities of the device, especially for those out there who, truth be [...]

Photo by Duncan Rawlinson, one of many cool ones at his ‘Last Minute Blog’. After speeches, anthems aplenty, and flags raised, lowered, and passed along, Neil Young sang “Long May You Run”, the Olympic torch was extinguished, and with it, any air of sobriety left in Vancouver’s BC Centre. What followed was folly: William Shatner, [...]

Friday, February 19th is the 20th birthday of Photoshop. Yes, the software that liberated me from paint systems that cost six figures is two decades old, and in that staggeringly long time (when you measure in ones and zeroes) has grown from a simple way to make and alter bitmapped images to a complex, multilayered, [...]

Run for your lives! Well, on second thought, don’t. We had four inches (expert meteorologists…top men, I tell you..told us) of frozen precipitation, which, I think in the greater country-wide scheme of things, means we got off very lucky indeed. We were able to get up to my dad’s 84th birthday yesterday through the snowy [...]

Back from a weekend hanging with archaeologists and looking at things archaeological down on the Georgia coast. On Sunday morning, we took a ferry over to Sapelo Island, one of Georgia’s barrier islands that has (they tell me), been intensely occupied over the centuries, from native peoples who built shell ring mounds (one 100 meters [...]

Hey, I’ve been around for a while. I’ve seen Johnny Carson’s last show. Heck, I’ve seen Dick Cavett’s last show. I saw one or two of Tom Snyder’s last shows. (And I’m talking when they aired, when they were broadcast to an still fairly monolithic american tv viewing public.) Conan O’Brien’s last Tonight Show, last [...]

I think one of the reasons I like Flickr, the photo sharing site put together by Stewart Butterfield and Caterina Fake way back in 2004 (and sold, ca-ching, to Yahoo about a year later) is that not only do I get to upload and share my photos with the greater, uh, planet, but I do [...]

Seems like it’s often in the cold of January when folks are busy resolutioning and starting with clean slates that I pull a couple of old CD backups off the shelf and ask myself “okay, how screwed am I now?” Because things change. Operating systems change. Applications grow and evolve and the newest version of, [...]

While I was busy playing around making cool graphics for the nascent WTBS/WTCG, I often overheard the suits in the hallways on West Peachtree Street talking per-sub rates…the money cable companies were willing to pay per subscriber, per month, to cablecast the SuperStation (ask for it by name!) These were negotiated, of course, and back [...]

So you take your fancy iPhone app, like this one, and point it at the screen here, and darned if it doesn’t read this fancy QR Code (ah, so that’s what these square-ish barcodes are called) and ka-whamo, it reads the URL I’ve encoded into this collection of blotches, and darned if it doesn’t read…well, [...]

I had a quick day-trip to New York last Friday for a business meeting and it was sunny (but jeez-o-petes cold by Southern standards). I bought a one-day unlimited-ride MetroCard at LaGuardia and let my trusty iPhone (with some judicious power management) lead me through buses and subways to some photographable sites. It was the [...]

Yesterday, Sammy and I drove through the mist and fog up Highland and Lenox Roads to the low area where Peachtree Creek and a rail line cross through the twisty residential stretch that is our common way to get to the splendors(?) of Buckhead. This time, though, we pulled into a driveway just this side [...]

Today was a special day for Sammy and me. And it was a special day back on December 9, 1989, when we gathered some people very important to our lives together here and made some promises to each other and then went off to lead a shared life, with the usual array of stumbles, surprises, [...]

Okay, just a quick rant. I’ve been following, at a great distance, mostly via Twitter, this conference here that appears to follow on the heels of this conference here that seem to be part of an onrushing tide of conference-y efforts to “reinvent” public radio (among other media) so that, it’s…I dunno, the word “compelling” [...]

A bit of a twitter out there today and yesterday about ‘unfriend’ being cited as uh, wait, let me check: “The New Oxford American Dictionary 2009 Word of the Year.” Ah, the coveted OxWordie! Or, something like that (it may be connected with People’s 100 Most Beautiful Words of 2009, or I may be getting [...]

I was sitting across from Sammy just moments ago, and she lit up with a golden glow. No, this isn’t any mysterious superpower. It’s just the morning sun, finally cresting the ridge of the hill across from us. Well, I say ‘just’, but we’re in a place where the quality of light…how it casts a [...]

Rain finally came to Atlanta mid-September, on a day when I focused on trying to make any visible progress I could in the big stack of Things Left Undone. This included plowing through a bunch of bankers’ boxes to discover, with some delight, that I could throw away some 60% of what I found without [...]

It’s late Sunday night and Mad Men is on (but we’re recording it,) and my adverbs aren’t doing as well as they should, but I’m bothered by the number of things I’ve seen, composed words to share with you in my head, and then never managed to get them committed to this fine, surely permanent [...]

Frank Reynolds and Jules Bergman and Frank McGee and David Brinkley, and, oh yeah, Walter Cronkite were my guides and edge-of-seat companions 40 years ago as Wapakoneta Boy and Buzz Lightyear (on the backs of hundreds of NASA people) fulfilled Kennedy’s challenge. Even in the age before remote controls I punched (or dialed) around, grabbing [...]

We drove north just before the 4th via a route that would take us past an archaeological site on the Ohio River near where Indiana meets Illinois, and that would get us up directly through Chicago to suburban Milwaukee to celebrate the graduation of the older brother of the godson, who will go off to [...]

Wow. It’s settled into the classic Atlanta summertime of yore, where we get serious heat and humidity by midday, and if you want to be productive out of doors, it’s best to get up early and get back inside before, oh, 8 or 9 am. So that’s what we’ve been doing, mostly at Sammy’s wise [...]

I really like photography…I enjoy my own blurry efforts, I’m more delighted by Sammy’s visions of the natural and un-natural world, and sometimes, when I’m trying to get some creative traction, it’s easy to stumble near-mindlessly through endless seas of online JPEGs, most quite beautiful, some just tiny doorways into a life I’m not getting [...]

I guess Sammy’s right…

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Adobe Systems Incorporated (Nasdaq:ADBE) today announced the Adobe® Creative Suite® CSOLPC® product family, a breakthrough release of the industry-leading design and development software optimized for the One Laptop Per Child XO machine, running a version of the Linux-based operating system with the distinctive Sugar GUI. The release will, for the first time, [...]

I would have thought this was the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary edition—this timeless, tidy collection of rules of the writing road seem to have lived among us since the dawn of time. But, no, it’s just about the same age as my brother (me, I’m the same age as Helvetica.) Yes, the seminal work [...]

Even on weekends, I’m sorry to report that I spend a lot of time sitting in front of the computer, and generally what I’m doing could be classified as “work.” But what is that exactly? Sure, the stuff I do for income is unmistakably work, but what about the time spent learning new, complex workflows [...]

Sammy says it takes a week for her to get readjusted to Daylight Savings Time and it’s been about a week, and this morning, a cool, quiet one in Atlanta, feels about right. I feel adjusted…I hope you do too. Hi from here, where this weblog journal thingie of mine has been lying somewhat fallow [...]

A year ago February I was getting over the silly-ass trauma of losing the Starbucks right down Highland Avenue from us. I went out in the fog this morning to discover that the sign was going up on a shiny new one which has been built for our upscale caffeinated pleasure down in what we [...]

Sometimes it’s nice to know when you’re done… And…what you should do next. Okay, where’s that envelope? And sometimes, when you think you’re doing just fine, it’s nice to know when a piece of software thinks you haven’t quite measured up… Why would I want to discard change? Change is good. Change is what I’m [...]

Some Sunday mornings I’m a bit nostalgic. So I give you: the Millennium Falcon landing in WTBS’s West Peachtree studio, circa 1980. Careful study of this frame tells you: 1) I was allowed to play with expensive TV equipment in the middle of the night. 2) I had a large model of the Millennium Falcon…in [...]

Hm. Okay. I’m thinking you shouldn’t be in the icon design business when your drawing of a video camera has to have the words “video camera” on the side in order to even remotely resemble what any human might call a video camera. And I don’t even want to know what it’s plugged in to. [...]

I’m going to have to figure out a way to pull back from politics and settle back into my usual vast panoply of micro-obsessions with geeky minutiae, and I will, soon, I promise, but for now consider this paragraph of wisdom: Obama has continually been asked to defend something that ought to be at democracy’s [...]

No, it’s not a real headline, but it cracks me up in a way that I really can’t explain. There are more here. I think this gets close to the kind of fake headlines and odd stuff we’d stick to the walls of my college newspaper’s office and laugh at over the sound of Warren [...]

And just like that, we’re past Halloween, through the tissue-paper barrier between October and November, and headed down the chute toward the first Tuesday in November…historically, Election Day. But for maybe as many as 35% of eligible voters, they’ve been there, and, in many cases, stood in line quite a while before having done that…voted, [...]

A couple of brief farewells to start this week before the election. Famed CBS Designer (his life forever intertwined with the Eye network) Lou Dorfsman died last week, the creator of, no, not the iconic CBS eye logo itself, but so much else that defined the once Columbia Broadcasting System as a serious force in [...]

From Twitter on this sunday fall afternoon, the sounds of change, 140 characters at a time: Just got a call from my Mom in Denver. She is seeing Barack Obama speak today! 100,000 gather in Denver for Barack Obama rally. My sons called it “life-changing.” Everything is bigger out west. Over 100,000 at obama’s rally [...]

Hey there, we made it home last week, and that feels good. The dumpster is out of our driveway. 99.5% of our house reconstruction is done, and we’ve returned from a journey north to see family and friends, to put The Green Cottage to sleep for the winter, to enjoy the leaves changes through bright [...]

A fellow Postie—that is, of course, someone who worked at the Ohio University Post in Athens in the olden days—made a cogent observation about the Republican ticket: “Think of all the newscasts that feature the avuncular old pro who’s been at the station for years, teamed with the youthful, attractive female anchor,” said P.J. Bednarski. [...]

I’m all for the power of metaphor, but it seems like the folks who write plain old everyday news copy have learned somewhere to “enhance” their work by casting every news event in the terms of a battle, a struggle, a clash, a fight. Barack Obama “takes it to” John McCain, “pummeling” him in his [...]

Someone I know who listens to way too much Rush Limbaugh forwarded me a collection of jokes the other day that was topped with some sort of godawful cartoon that tried yet again to play on the Obama/bin Laden muslim crap thing that I would have thought anyone with half a brain would have tossed [...]

I’ve gotta stop reading the newspaper..er..the web as a way to spin down after working late into the night. I look up and it’s 2:30. I think about blogging about what I’ve read, and it’s 3. Now, it’s 4. I had another one of those moments, here, in mid-night, where I had to shake my [...]

Sometimes, latenight when I should be actually working, I divert myself with one of the web’s oldest aggregation sites. Slashdot is a festival of “news for nerds, stuff that matters,” and at least some of it emerges from a small town near Ann Arbor Michigan, so Sammy would tell you it can’t be all bad. [...]

Well, I’m glad that I didn’t drink the particular flavor of Kool-Aid that is the online cloud of services that used to be overpriced when they were called ‘.mac’, and seem still overpriced (and we have serverspace already, thanks) as MobileMe. I’e consumed vast uncounted gallons of the many other brands of Apple Kool-Aid, anyway. [...]

Jane Espenson is a writer and producer on some of my favorite television work of the recent years. She’s done her Fireflys and her Battlestar Galacticas and even her Buffys. And she blogged a bit yesterday about something that, as a caring consumer (and sometimes producer) of the English language, absolutely annoys the heck out [...]

Sometimes, I just look at an ancient piece of TV I did with 25-year-old technology, and I say to myself, wow, if I could redo all of that in crisp, clean high-res vectors now… Brap-brap-brap! Kiribati! Islamabad! Nashville! Decatur! The earth! The universe! The news channel. Oh by the way, the original kinda survives on [...]

Growing up in a sixties Ohio white bread environment doesn’t do a lot to provide you with an understanding of what food is good for you (after all, they test-marketed Pringles where I lived) and, well, besides, good information on nutrition seems to have evolved at about the same rate as the commercial food industry [...]

From time to time I get asked to beta-test new versions of software, and of course there’s just the common experience of taking a new online service out for a spin. That’s when I’ll discover something, not necessarily something you’d label a “bug,” not really a “feature,” but a way the thing works that just [...]

Okay, so, yeah, we’ve been busy, what with dealing with insurance people and contractors and so on, but on a muggy Atlanta July Sunday morning, I find myself tilting toward optimism. We have a roofline again. We have a ceiling (well, we have a subfloor) over our dining room again. We have had entertaining framers [...]

So I went to high school in Ohio with this nice Polish-Italian gal, Michele, who married this guy Dave Daubenmire, who has, in the name of radically fundamental “christian family values”, dragged his family through one embarrassing abomination after another. There was Coach Dave’s (he was once allowed to coach football at a small Ohio [...]

Oh, please, read the truth about Barack Obama and pass it on to everyone you know. I especially like that it’s in Courier, the typeface of psuedo-truth.

Just seems like they come in waves sometimes. Since June, the obituaries have been piling up: Tim Russert, age 58, political insider turned journalist. Prototypical blue-collar Irish Catholic boy made good. Stan Winston, age 62, four-time Academy Award winning master of real-world (as opposed to CGI) visual effects and creatures. Alton Kelley, age 67, graphic [...]

When a big old oak tree hits your house, it gets your attention. It also focuses your attention on a completely different set of aspects of your life. As you may have heard, we have been thus refocused. The towering oak between our western neighbors and our driveway fell Sunday night in our direction, and [...]

It was particularly wonderful for James, Rebecca, and Brigid to get me the DVD of Helvetica for my birthday. It sat here unwatched, however, “awaiting just the right moment,” until last night, when Sammy and I had a razor-sharp viewing on our fine HDTV screen…even the standard-def DVD looked outstanding. It was so worth the [...]

Up there on my bookshelf, along with my pointlessly-displayed local television awards, collections of caps, and mardi gras beads (a gift from a news director in New Orleans) is something I really treasure…my ABC World News Now coffee, tea, or soup mug, which, I should explain, was not so much earned from the program (they [...]

We started (well, for me, started) the day yesterday with a 20 minute or so power failure, which appeared to affect at least our whole block. Gee, I guess so: Squirrel Knocks Out Power in Midtown ATLANTA — About 7,000 residents were left without power in Midtown Atlanta Thursday morning due to the workings of [...]

The Boston Public Library is putting scanned images from several of their collections up on Flickr (as did the Library of Congress before them), and the first few I happen across bring back fond memories of my Vermont past. And, apropos of the Barre High School there, did I mention that my father’s name is [...]

…but what if the question goes on and on and on? Hm. It’s the same caution icon as is on my shoes.

Just finished reading a borrowed copy of Barbara Ehrenreich’s nearly decade-old book Nickel and Dimed, about the realities of the American working poor, including a section where she worked as a $7 an hour Walmart employee in Minneapolis…and was hard-pressed to find affordable rental housing that microscopic a wage could support. So it was in [...]

Back home in Positively Atlanta, having missed by mere hours a downtown tornado that not only caused all kinds of urban mess at the city’s core, but messed up some in-recent-years-reborn neighborhoods just south of here. I’m sad for the folks with trees on their houses, in part because it seems like just the other [...]

Lee Gomes in today’s Wall Street Journal has a plausible explanation for why I can be so happy for so long wading through the endless streams of new information that the internet provides. What is it about a Web site that might make it literally irresistible? Clues are offered by research conducted by Irving Biederman, [...]

This afternoon, Steve Jobs and his very best friends Phil Schiller and Scott Forstall announced an SDK (a Software Development Kit) for the iPhone. Come and get the beta, they said, at developer.apple.com/iphone. (Click on that link if it’s still Thursday and you want to see “Failed to open page…because the server unexpectedly dropped the [...]

The weather is miserable enough in Ohio that the CNN reporter is holed up inside (C’mon! We want to see skylines behind you! That’s the function of reporters on the scene!) and in Texas, the Democrats have apparently grafted the head of a caucus on the body of a primary, and that just scares me. [...]

Whoa, I can feel the server churning, rumbling the floorboards, serving up pages at a frenetic page under my feet. Well, wait, it’s actually in California somewhere, not here, and it’s not an old-fashioned newspaper printing press belching soy-based ink, but the effects are much the same when people read, react, and change happens. Quickly. [...]

[Previously! On Positively Atlanta Georgia! Part one of my visit to the C&J conference is right here.] Saturday dawned cold and overcast in Atlanta, and I decided to bring our OLPC XO to the second day of the Computation & Journalism conference, just to test out the wifi reception and to see how annoyed I’d [...]

I hold a real fascination with what’s happening to the craft/profession of journalism because, well, I come from a time when journalism functioned, and I appear to be living in a time where the first rough draft of its epitaph is being crafted online. Premature? Most probably. Persistent, those rumors of its demise? You bet. [...]

Sometimes, a movement can be defined by a typeface. But sometimes, good typography just allows the truth to speak in a clear, unflavored voice. I know the first time I saw a ‘Change we can believe in’ banner behind Barack Obama, I was pleased and inspired by his team’s smart choice of Gotham, a typeface [...]

So, we (and by we I mean Sammy) were punching around trying to find actual content on the television last night, after perhaps having had our fill of Anthony Bourdain and before Wolf Blitzer’s magic Wall of Counting Down (not to be confused with Keith Olbermann’s Countdown) was willing to call Wisconsin for Obama, and, [...]

Piedmont Park, according to Tele-Atlas. Piedmont Park, according to NAVTEQ. Well, the more you depend on technology, the more you can be tripped up by the errors in data that technology can seamlessly present to you as “fact.” You may not know that Google uses more than one set of map data for its various [...]

Let us now take just a small moment and praise the product now known as Adobe After Effects, which started life as a rudimentary—yet breakthrough!—product at the Company of Science and Art. Three (or is it more?) guys named Dave created this program, which launched into the world in January of 1993…that’d be fifteen years [...]

I’m starting to take it personally that local news and 24 hour cable news—which I certainly had a small part in and made a living from—adding moving colors, shapes, and typography over the years—is not only unwatchable, but is verging on the toxic. A news consultant (who I went to school with, if memory serves), [...]

I knew things were going to be interesting when I was picking up some Cold Dairy Product for our Super Tuesday night dessert at the grocery store we generally avoid. A thirtysomething African-American woman and a thirtysomething pasty white woman were chatting in the aisles. Said the former: “I just don’t think he’s ready yet. [...]

Well, yes of course I read all the stuff about Howard Schultz returning to take control of the wayward Starbucks and in a Jobsian way, bring them back to their roots…I just kinda figured that the one closest to our house was safe. Damn! This now means the closest ones are 0.9 miles (Little Five), [...]

In the midst of the brouhahah online (relatively muted, actually) about Microsoft acquiring Yahoo, Sven S. Porst, a German blogger with an interest in Mac OS X and good design, took a quick look at his server logs. It seems that the entities who suck down the most of his bandwidth spidering his site (all [...]

I write this from the right seat of our car as we head down US 23 towards central Ohio, Columbus, the city of my birth. Had a great time last night with Nancy, Alan, and Kate in GPW, and my mission to Canada later in the morning went as well as any sojourn to Canada [...]

I’m starting to get a lot more Google search results that are, well, a lot like this one—attempts to appear relevant, only we know they’re just faux-sites laden with bottom-feeding ads. I’ve been showing some older folks (yes! Older than me! Hard to believe!) lately how to use their computers, which these days has to [...]

It’s the day of the Iowa caucuses, and as a designer who has been there (“on the scene! Live! With boots on the ground!”) to design two television stations over the years (I’ve been annoying Sammy with “that’s my eight! that’s my three! Those are my county outlines!” as we see an Iowa newscast or [...]

“Well, you just know it’s gotta be a better year than 2007.” That’s the compiled fervent wish of the websites of people I either for-real know and therefore visit or think I know and therefore visit. If wishes were a renewable energy source, we’d be all set, because I can feel the collective semiconscious out [...]

Wow, here I was thinking about early alternative video last week or so and now, a few of the surviving pioneers of early handheld television…the heroes of helical, the visionaries of vidicon tubes, have gone and put the preeminent journal of that technology in that time, Radical Software, up on the web in a near-flawless [...]

I’ve written about (without laying hands on) Amazon’s Kindle and of course I’ve been exploring with our new OLPC (One Laptop Per Child) XO, poking and prodding it through external connections, reconfiguring it so that it chats with the outside world correctly, calling up page after web page (“hmm, that looks quite readable and fine.”), [...]

Hand me the universal translator, Mr. Spock. Google launched almost-instantaneous translations in your chat client today, and the Mandarin one is already clogged up. But hey, my Spanish is improving!

There are buses that go from downtown Oaxaca out to Xoxocatlán, which is, I guess you’d say, a suburb of the capital city of Oaxaca state, perched on the south side of the huge hill the archaeological site Monte Alban sits on. It’s pronounced “hoho-caht-LAN”…and folks know the bus is going there because a simple [...]

…back in 1983, I would have been just nerdy enough to buy one. And sit, broke, in my apartment, creating documents no one would ever read on the first no-kidding GUI-based computer (I exclude the Xerox Alto here), not to be confused with its successor, the Mac, which really, really changed everything. And made me [...]

Sometimes I think I have Seasonal Nostalgic Disorder. I correlate it fairly closely with my attempts to clean our house…to remove the layers of clutter that come from the deadly combination of being alive for a good long time plus being fans of the printed word. The plus side of that is you come across [...]

Ah, the holiday shopping season. Amazing deals everywhere you look…but it helps if you put your brain on ‘pause.’ (from Consumerist.)

Okay, let me first explain the joke…when my brother and I were working latenights at an Atlanta TV station on design stuff, along about three am they’d rerun episodes of The Fugitive, and over several cycles, we became very familiar with Barry Morse’s oft-spoken line of dialog, bellowed in desperation as David Janssen excaped him [...]

Ah, wait a moment and someone will cobble together the gem of an experience that had occurred to you and take it and run with it up there on the internet. For some reason, on a cold grey Michigan morning a few years back, the breakfast spread at my in-laws just cracked me up: “Move [...]

As you may have heard, television writers are on strike. This means, among other things, that we’re deprived of topical political writing. It also means we’re deprived of witty Daily Show-like coverage of the strike itself. But wait, not so fast: What I get from this video: the writers deserve what they’re asking for (of [...]

Over the weekend, dozens, nay, tens of thousands of Macs worldwide were upgraded to Mac OS X Leopard, the latest version of an operating system that has been refined in five major releases since its introduction early in this century. Have I, yet? Well, actually, I first installed (a beta of) Leopard back in June [...]

The real Steve Jobs said today “Let me just say it.” Okay, go ahead, Steve, say it. We want native third party applications on the iPhone, and we plan to have an SDK in developers’ hands in February. We are excited about creating a vibrant third party developer community around the iPhone and enabling hundreds [...]

Hello from Seattle, where the skyline looks like an ad for ABC’s Thursday night lineup. How dare they co-opt the space needle! Hey, I love it when I see signs out there in the real world that use those fine punctuation marks, the quotations, to create a sense of emphasis (in lieu of a bolder [...]

It’s hard to believe that this is for real…yet it is.

You know, I’ve really enjoyed the tiny pocket-sized chunk’o’ user interface magic that I’ve been toting around the past couple of weeks…as much because I can connect to it and its UNIX-y file system via standard tools like ssh, grab screenshots thanks to enterprising third-party developers, and install programs that can do, well, darn near [...]

I still remember the smell of oily, non-soy-based ink and huge rolls of newsprint down by the loading docks at The Columbus Dispatch. When I first got to see the presses roll, with semi-cylindrical plates poured as liquid metal into forms cast from linotype-set chases, well, that was magic. It felt like the news was [...]

Does this gentleman (at left) look familiar? How about if I said he was a “gentleman’s gentleman”? Well, I might be confusing the point, because he’s in fact one of Britain’s acting treasures…holding his latest tech treasure. Turns out Mr. Fry is a long, long, long-time Mac user, and a first-time iCaller. He has seemingly [...]

We got a new camera when we were up in Michigan…and then, of course we got another “new camera” when we bought the iPhone. I’ve been shooting some pictures, with varied results, and hope to keep adding to this small collection. It’s kinda ‘ehh’ now, but, well, we’ll see. The phone’s most intriguing and redeeming [...]

Tonight, WPBA aired three parts of the American Masters series completely out of order. Baffled viewers saw part two of Edward R. Murrow, part 1 of Murrow, and then one on Walter Cronkite, which was supposed to air first. Maybe it was just baffled viewer, singular. Maybe I was the only one watching. I called [...]

After a morning (or the latter part of it) outside on the ladder, I came inside and poured Starbucks coffee carefully into the McDonalds cup I picked up the other day in Newberry. What kind of retro brand chic is this? Fancy coffee in an unfancy cup (because the Starbucks venti cups—I brought two up [...]

We were having a nice glass of wine with Sammy’s cousin Susan and her husband, and Susan added another data point to a disturbing trend: almost everyone we know with 12 inch Powerbooks have had them fail, and the diagnosis, by experts or amateurs, is that it’s dead for good. The power supply to the [...]

One of the side dramas (for us) since coming up north to the fine Upper Peninsula of Michigan is that a big chunk of the north end of the county we’re in—Luce County—is, uh, on fire. We’re on the south end, so that’s somewhat reassuring, but the consequence has been much like in Atlanta earlier [...]

…you can’t make new cars. One reason I’m glad we got our Prius when we did: Quake Forces Toyota to Halt Production TOKYO (AP) — Japanese automakers, including Toyota Motor Corp., called production halts Wednesday at factories in Japan because of quake damage at a major parts supplier. The temporary closure of auto parts maker [...]

Me, I always loved how the town of Derby Line, Vermont thrived in a happy world where “our neighbor to the north” is indeed treated as the best, most open, most intertwined of neighbors. A bunch of people are building an ambitious library of the world’s books online, more or less how you’ve always expected [...]

This is one of those weeks where I’ve started to post about eight times, about burbling demi-thoughts ranging from the technological to the political to the societal. Unlike others who can effortlessly sit down and summon the blog muses (a distinctly less powerful and magical set of inspirers than, you know, book or movie muses), [...]

If it doesn’t moderate the weather or advance criminal indictments against Dick Cheney, what possible use could it be? –from ‘Redneck’ on the Textdrive user forum. Well, exactly. Maybe it’s because it’s so hot. Maybe it’s because we’re having to deal with insurance junk on our old car and add-on games with our new one. [...]

I’m so heartened to hear Kevyn back on the air this morning, talking about her experiences of the past month, about the change in her life that now adds “breast cancer survivor” to her lengthy collection of accomplishments. “There are going to be days when this [her radio program] will be the high point of [...]

Well, I can see I have some work to do to capture the eyeballs of all those people walking around looking for design firms near 30306. Pinch me when all the hoopla is over.

Greetings from a quite non-humid, beautiful, sunny San Francisco, quite a contrast from the heat-plus-humidity of (positively) Atlanta. I’ve said I wanted to do this once and so I have: I’m at the Apple WWDC, that would be the Worldwide Developers Conference, and here I am, arguably not a developer. However, this kinda works because [...]

Well, by now you’ve probably heard the general shudder of revulsion heard round the world over the London 2012 Olympic Logo. It has been called…well, everything you can imagine, except “nice”. I don’t really want to add to the chorus, except to generically slap my forehead in despair. It brings to mind the transition from [...]

Hi, we’re back home after a long weekend trip to Ohio and Michigan, an exercise in quality time with my father and Sammy’s parents. Once again, I’ve checked the archives, and my post about our trip this time last year used the same wording: quality time. This either means my life is becoming way more [...]

photo by Steve Pyke for Time Magazine I was vacuuming my office this afternoon and looking around in dispair at the piles of undone stuff and accumulated ideas and general mess and thought no one, no one could have a more cluttered, Mac- and video-filled workspace. I bow to you, Al Gore. Be sure to [...]

I wrote an entry with ‘Hed to come’ a year ago, much to my surprise. Today, we cover totally different territory, but quite chuckle-worthy, whether you’ve written headlines for a living or not: Skywalkers in Korea cross Han solo By BO-MI LIM, Associated Press Writer Thu May 3, 3:34 PM ET SEOUL, South Korea – [...]

There are days I’m glad I didn’t waste a lot of time at some fancy college (forget that, it’s too much to read) that an audio book of complete world knowledge is all I will ever need. Problem is, it’s a risk listening to comprehensive collected compendia of hobo names delivered in a near-monotone while [...]

I swear, I grabbed these two images more or less at random, and I was stunned how well they fit together. There’s a website, Deaniacs for Edwards, that asserts that Edwards is the guy “who seems to best capture the spirit and values that activated so many ordinary Americans four years ago to support Howard [...]

Okay, one of these is an airline and one of these is a plumbing supply company. Do their logos give you an overwhelming sense of either flying or, uh, drinking? And if Delta Air Lines’ new logo is pictured upright here, why is it falling over on the tail of their new planes? Actually, they [...]

So Monday night, we were sitting down for dinner with our guests from Oregon who wander the US in their fine camper-plus-trailer type thing, and I get a call from Sue. Turns out Bob Page and John Cocuzzi are playing together, tonight around the corner at Blind Willie’s, and all real videographers are otherwise occupied, [...]

On a day when Sammy’s dad turned ninety (!), I finally succumbed to one of those fine internet deals and went out and picked up a fine new Samsung 26 inch high def LCD for our house. It is just the right size for how we watch movies’n’television’n’stuff. (I mentioned this to Nick on the [...]

Do you design websites or other online things? Well, then, this banner’s for you: The A List Apart people (from whom I’ve consumed lots of tasty kool-aid regarding web standards and so on) are trying to do some meaningful research, and I’m honored that they tossed another pasty white guy’s opinion into the mix. With [...]

It is both embarrassing and comforting to be able to tell you that the highlight of this day for me was being able to walk with Sammy “down the hill,” westward towards Monroe Drive, a Oaxacan market bag dangling from my wrist. We strolled to our brand-new-yes-finally-open Trader Joe’s, the intown one, the midtown one, [...]

Sammy and I were walking in the neighborhood a couple of days ago and we were talking about my birthday (I’ve started writing this in the waning minute of my very extra special 50th annual celebration of my natal day, but by the time I hit the ‘Send to weblog’ button in MarsEdit, it’ll be [...]

A quick late-evening email from Nancy says: You share a birthday with…Helvetica! Famous typeface reaches 50 (from The Times Online) And just like that, the meaning of the last fifty—yes, on April 11th, it will indeed be fifty—years of my life snaps into razor-clear focus. All those years of a love-hate relationship with a typeface [...]

My television design business used to be tied to the cycles of Federal Express and the costs of blank D2, Betacam, and Digital Betacam tape. Those days are largely…yet not completely…gone. If you had told me that my current project, a state-of-the-art traffic, weather, and community events channel for a really large phone company that [...]

Geez, I would hate to be a librarian or a provider of web services/storage these days. You want to enable, empower others. Your government may call upon you to let them look at your folks’ private property at any time, and part of the law says—may say—hell, it’s hard to say these days—that you, the [...]

One of the joys of Mac OS X is that there’s this hugely powerful UNIX-based operating system lurking beneath the fancy GUI. Came across this timely tidbit (here) today: Want to see on which days your computer is planning to switch to daylight savings time and back in 2007? Put this in your terminal window: [...]

I had a chance tonight to watch part three of Lowell Bergman’s Frontline ‘News War’ opus titled What’s Happening to the News, and like the Linda Ellerbee documentary of a couple of years back, it chronicled the ongoing demise of American Journalism in the hands of publicly-held companies, whose managers in spasms of simplemindedness, throw [...]

Boy, I love bumpers. Strictly speaking, those are the graphics or animation elements that are the “padding” between a program and the commercials. They “bump” up against the breaks and..well, you get it. The old Late Night with David Letterman on NBC had a great set of them, reflecting humor and a sense of post-midnight [...]

One of my favorite scenes—almost a throwaway moment—in the movie Broadcast News comes when two composers are demo-ing their news theme for the news execs…it comes together in a symphonic flurry of cresendoes and synthesized orchestration, and at nearly its climax, the music geeks say together: “Big finish!” Dun da dun! (Yes, that’s a link [...]

After a quiet evening of converting my business site (well, some of it) to a fiesta of MySQL and PHP, it’s somehow a warm treat for me to discover that one of the many collections of pixels I’ve cast to the wind have connected with some guy I will never know personally, but we have [...]

Steve Jobs blogs even less frequently than I do. (I’m not counting the fake Steve Jobs here.) But this afternoon, Apple’s CEO has something to say about music and DRM, and that’s significant. Why would the big four music companies agree to let Apple and others distribute their music without using DRM systems to protect [...]

We’ve just completed (well, mostly completed) a move of our entire ragtag fleet of websites…this one, my business, Sam’s, James’s, Leslie’s, Bill’s, the works. Maybe it’s a tribute to the quality of the hosting company we picked, maybe it’s a tribute to my willingness to stay up late and try to puzzle out the mysteries [...]

Those of you know know Sammy and me know that we are the last of our generation to be without a cell phone. I’ve long bemoaned the idiocy of the user interfaces (I hate to glorify them by even using that term) and the entire user experience seemed like one big compromise. And don’t even [...]

I’m not much for resolutions or other yearend foomfah, but I do believe in staring one’s year looking optimistically at the road ahead. It’s also a nice antidote when there have been some tough bumps to get over. There are a raft of positive notes raised in answer to the question “What are you optimistic [...]

I was so fortunate to make friends at Ohio University who I’ve laughed with and learned from my entire life. Now I have to refer to one of them, Steve Korte, in the past tense. I worked with Steve at WOUB, the public TV and radio station at OU that gave us practical experience in [...]

I am looking at a photo or two of a Cargill plant at dawn in Sidney, Ohio, perched atop my iPhoto smart album labeled ‘Last 90 days.’ So that means, with the relentless clarity that only computer-based metadata can provide, that it’s been 90 days since Sammy and I first headed up I-75 to “help [...]

This is why newspapers used to publish multiple editions. This is what “breaking news” actually is. This is, well, a relief. [Update: Ha!! A Mac OS X joke about the Defense Secretary's departure.]

Yeah, it’s still a fairly red state down here, but I’m proud of Ohio and I feel better just generally rolling through the heartland—maybe the message folks are sending will make it to the halls of power. Always the optimist!

Ah yes, we “can’t put it together—it is together.” “We are as gods and might as well get good at it.” One of my earliest influences and inspirations in publishing, writing, design, and living is being honored at a Stanford University Library symposium. From Counterculture to Cyberculture: The Legacy of the Whole Earth Catalog is [...]

Most Mac developers I know tend to talk very little about politics, so when a well-articulated precis of the situation shows up in a blog where where one more usually sees discourse on the idiocies of those who write and sell software, I’m taking it as one more sign that the level of national discontent [...]

How is Cocoa—the Mac programming language—like the Citroen C4? Well, it’s not. Forget I mentioned it. Hello from Chicago, more specifically, C4, a Mac developer’s conference that is trying its best to inherit the legacy of MacHack and a number of other legendary gatherings of programmers and programmer-like types that I haven’t attended, either. But [...]

Hello from Michigan, where Sammy’s dad continues to mend in the hospital after open heart surgery that is daunting even when you aren’t almost 90 years of age. Experiencing this process from the edge (I’ve only visited the hospital once or twice; Sam has done the heavy lifting of parent-in-hospital care) I’m struck by how [...]

The internet(s) are abuzz this morning with a flurry of accumulated outrage related to the Senate debate on what’s being called “the torture bill”—the bill to authorize Military Commissions in such a way that gives the President emperor-like power to define what is torture and establish procedures that circumvent the centuries-old right of the accused [...]

It’s probably just as well that I never saw WXIA’s first night of broadcasting local news in high definition, but by happy coincidence with yesterday’s post, WSB, Atlanta’s ABC affiliate “went high def”, and I got a chance to watch the shakeout on their 11 pm broadcast. First of all, they appear to have picked [...]

Cory Doctorow may be right when he says that ultimately HDTV will be bad for consumers—and Hollywood—if DRM content (or the people who pay the creators for that content) are allowed to dictate how and under what circumstances it’s played…but right now, the free, over-the-air broadcasts of high definition television, as brought into our homes [...]

I mean, seriously? I love Photoshop. It’s a (one-sided) love affair that has lasted 16 years. I think Lightroom is amazing and has buckets of potential. I think whatever marketing person made the decision to rename Lightroom needs to take a long walk on the beach and reconsider. And then re-study what it means to [...]

There is a point where the heat and humidity of summer can no longer retain its grasp on our neighborhood, and the oppressive Augustness (which has often stretched into September) relinquishes its hold. Cool, fresh air blows through Atlanta while the sun seems to recalibrate itself to a more attractive angle so we may better [...]

Well, as in days almost vanished in the mists of time, we gathered around the TV set, our little family of two, and watched the next iteration of what Big Network Television thinks is a roundup of the day’s news. We saw Couric standing, Couric sitting behind a big desk that knew the day’s stock [...]

Monday morning, Labor Day, and our top story this morning—breaking news, in the modern misdefinition of the term, which doesn’t apparently mean “important” but it means “something we weren’t able to run into the ground yesterday”—is the death-by-stingray of “Crocodile Hunter” Steve Irwin. Coverage of his death saturated the morning programs, and so I figured [...]

Sammy’s reserved copy of The Omnivore’s Dilemma has finally dropped in to the library, so I’m picking up where I left off this summer up north, with how the ‘wet mill’ processing of corn is basically like a huge industrial digestive system. Kinda makes we wonder why we don’t get the soylent green plants up [...]

‘Chronicles’ author Ray Bradbury dies—ajc.com, August 22, around 10 pm. When I saw this headline in the AJC’s ‘news buzz’, I started to gather my thoughts and reflect on the passing of one of my favorite writers. Then I clicked on the link, and decided instead to reflect on the low level of quality control [...]

OK, we’re flying, we’ve made it through security…hey, take a look out the window, that’s kinda cool…get a picture! Or maybe, as Josh Simons blogs, not so fast: On my recent trip back from India on British Airways, I was inspired [...] to snap some landscape photos at 35000 feet. I think we were over [...]

Finished something I’d been stuck on for several days and sent it fwooshing (me, awash with satisfaction) off in the email, and then padded into the kitchen for a coffee refill. Came back in, looked at what I sent one more time to make sure I didn’t misspell anything too embarrassing, and then fired up [...]

I kinda snuck up on my passions about ‘the right type’ after becoming aware (at an extremely early age) that my father’s typewriter was different than anyone else’s (father’s?) typewriter. An old Royal, it typed in italic big and small caps–only. And my mom and dad were all right with that—when I said “hey, why [...]

It’s the quiet part of Sunday night, and I’ve just returned from the curb, past the smells of shorn front-yard-grass and cats trying to mark part of our driveway as their own. The green trash doohickie and its smaller black recycling cousin are on the curb, awaiting Monday morning action. If the TV were turned [...]

Ah, now it’s gone full cycle: the blogs are writing about how the mainstream media is writing about how the bloggers have had a second large investigatory victory in exposing the Reuters freelancer Adnan Hajj’s retouched photography from the Lebanese-Israeli conflict. “That smoke curl just didn’t look right! Clearly the clone tool has been employed!” [...]

Oh, it’s never a good sign when you rub your eyes, press F10, and behold a stacked-up-over-Hartsfield fiesta of just your web browser’s windows reflecting how much you’re holding ‘in the buffer’—waiting to be dealt with, processed, bookmarked, thought about, acted upon, tracked, blogged upon, shipped, and/or understood. At just after midnight, what, 33 windows? [...]

Okay, maybe I spoke too soon. Here we are in the heart of the midwest, the center of hospitality, warmth, and apple pie…uh, right? We found an unprotected wireless and took advantage of the link to the wonders of the internet. A gentleman came by politely greeted us, we openly discussed whart we were doing [...]

Hello from the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, which is where Sammy and her parents return like, well, I don’t know, like waterfowl of some sort, every year. Because it’s July, that means that there was an entire June in there, brimming with events unblogged, after my Memorial Day trip to Ohio with my father and [...]

Ah, a breath of fresh air after driving through the state of my birth and the states immediately north and south thereof. Sam and I had a nice walk this morning through our neighborhood and down to the park, and we passed dozens of vehicles creatively registering their discontent with the current administration—and even one [...]

I’ve been told that posting from a Panera Bread is What Folks Do These Days, and sure enough, here I am, sitting in a Panera in Dublin, Ohio, watching a fierce downpour outside. It’s a rainstorm not unlike the one I drove through yesterday, heading down I-71 from Cleveland with my father, after accompanying him [...]

I bought a 20MB (megabyte!) drive on October 23, 1985 for $1,942.50. That may well have represented the peak of my desperation to shell out for “the right tool for the right job”—my humble Mac Plus was starved for storage, I was filling up floppies as if they were going out of style, which, I [...]

On the morning after the death of longtime Timesman Abe Rosenthal—USA Today—the anti-Times, the newspaper-in-a-TV-box, the ‘McPaper’ parodied and mocked routinely by real journalists, broke news about a wanton usurping of our civil rights in the name of post-9-11 security. NSA has massive database of Americans’ phone calls The National Security Agency has been secretly [...]

Well, according to the New York Times (quoting an American Apparel PR person), it’s a Polish expression that roughly means “On the brink of kitsch and absolute beauty.” Which, on a rainy rainy Atlanta Sunday morning, is about right. It’s certainly better than any number of Banacek old Polish sayings, and contains a lot more [...]

From Engadget comes word of two incidents in the last two weeks where British drivers have trusted their GPS driving instructions over their own eyes, and have attempted to pilot their vehicles across river bridges that exist in the database but not in real life. Doesn’t work well, as you might expect. Sammy and I [...]

Hello in the waning minutes of May first. Happy Mayday, happy Reboot day (caution, annoying music), it seems as well. Apparently there’s some sort of generalized agreement among, well, some web designers to have their act together enough to redesign their site each and every May first, while displaying as much tasty goodness and usefulness [...]

Okay, I typed it in, and here’s what came up, without links because I just don’t want to encourage this behavior: Daal-icious!, Apple-icious, The Market’s Gone Google-icious, Riddle-Icious Books, Scandal-icious Apparel, Jewlicious » Herzl-icious, Dill-icious Cheese Spread, Sequel-icious, People-icious, ya.flickr.icious, Bubbly-icious, Scrumdilly-icious, dexy-licious, Fiddle-icious, Pound iddly iddly icious, Bubble-icious. No, wait, that’s just the first [...]

As part of a flurry of library-book-reading after my finishing Arthur Gelb’s massive “City Room” memoir (a Christmas gift from a couple of years ago), I checked out the huge collection of New York Times front page reproductions called “Page One”—significant front pages from 1900 through 2000. I think they were inspired by The Onion’s [...]

With little other comment, the New York Times quotes our decider-in-chief: “I’m the decider, and I decide what’s best,” Mr. Bush said in the Rose Garden. “And what’s best is for Don Rumsfeld to remain as the secretary of defense.” Does he even have a vague idea of his job description? Does he even have [...]

At three past midnight early this morning, our kitchen was filled with revelers singing ‘Happy Birthday,’ and we did not pay royalties to the songwriters. And I was the sing-ee, which was quite a delight…perhaps a bit more because, well, the chorus included dear friends, friends of friends, and, well, miscellaneous NCTA National Show attendees. [...]

After a week where, thanks to me sticking my nose where arguably it shouldn’t have been, I have had the delight and pleasure of reading a big ol’ pile of thoughtful, intelligent and clever comments from dear friends and strangers alike…I guess that’s how this web-dude-thing is supposed to work. Special thanks to the nn.c [...]

I came across some guy‘s blog entry and, well, I stepped in it when I attempted to correct his grammar. Yeah, it’s one of my pet peeves—saying something is going “slow” rather than “slowly.” So, in short, he really (really!) took offense. He wrote: I don’t expect someone who works in television to understand aesthetics [...]

This is effectively the other shoe, the impact of the iTunes ‘Music’ Store as a vehicle for distributing what once was simply broadcast content. Disney(ABC), known for being, well, cheap in their dealings with creatives, has taken what may well be an available loophole in determining compensation to writers for downloaded episodes (versus those bits [...]

I casually mentioned in my last entry that Apple had begun selling episodes of The Daily Show (and The Colbert Report) on the iTunes Store (I tend to drop the ‘Music’ from its name these days) using a ‘multipass’ idea that is like (actual, magazine) subscriptions…you get the current episode and 15 more for $9.99. [...]

Okay, please allow me to clean off my browser with a few Wednesday linkoids before we go off to walk, dine, and see my old TBS buddy Richard Croker speak about his new book. * * * * * First of all, this image is delightful, compelling, odd. And like so many things in this [...]

I’m trying to think of exactly what convolution of categories and the politics of the movie business that would have earned an Academy Award, or two, or three for Good Night and Good Luck, George Clooney’s ‘little’ movie about the CBS journalist and the struggle for free speech in the McCarthy era. You’d think in [...]

You don’t have to do everything that’s out there. Seriously. You don’t have to sign up for every social network or inhale all online pop culture, all the time. Sometimes you can just bounce from one thing-about-the-thing to another, and emerge bruised but slightly enriched.There, I used ‘seriously’ in one of several ways that People [...]

Friends of mine who don’t live within 100 miles of our fair perimeter sometimes have trouble getting their head around what our city’s all about. Hey, it’s easy…just have a glance at these headlines from today’s ajc.com website. Man charged with leaving child at Waffle House Police accused a DeKalb man of leaving his 5-year-old [...]

Michael Bierut in DesignObserver: It was September, 1981, when design critic Ralph Caplan first unveiled the phrase. He was speaking at a Design Management Institute conference in Martha’s Vineyard. His talk was titled “Once You Know Where Management Is Coming From, Where Do You Suggest They Go?” “I want finally to address in some detail,” [...]

Apparently when you put Atlanta’s MARTA rapid rail map through the anagram-o-matic (actually, this guy did the work), hilarity ensues! Also see here. I think ‘Shaby’ is a bit of a stretch, though. Don’t really care that much about the City Too Busy To Have An Opening Day? There are also these maps of other [...]

I woke to headlines this morning from the AJC (and the WSJ, and elsewhere): Turner Quits Time Warner Board Time Warner Inc. announced that CNN founder Ted Turner has decided not to stand for re-election to its board.Mr. Turner joined the board after his Turner Broadcasting was acquired by Time Warner in the mid ’90s. [...]

We went on this terrific trip to Africa in 1999, and, long ago that it was, Sammy shot some three dozen rolls of 35mm slides, which until recently have been languishing in boxes, largely unedited, but nicely sorted and labeled. And although we had a slide scanner, its cranky SCSI connection made it a less [...]

The first couple of days of the 2006 Winter Olympics, we watched scenes of Torino come in to our standard-definition analog-cable-connected Sony in dismay. Instead of pristine HDTV pictures smoothly downsampled for our old-fashioned TV pleasure, Atlanta affiliate WXIA seemed to be providing some of the worst digital images I’ve seen in some time…overenhanced, “sharp” [...]

I went to college, first in Vermont and then in the southeast Ohio appalachians, and maybe then arguably for a third time in my first real job, at WTCG, Channel 17 Atlanta. Yes, the SuperStation, ask for it by name! There, in the late 70s, in a beat-up old studio on West Peachtree Street, I [...]

It’s a dark and rainy monday morning in the ATL, but our living room has a bit of warmth and a rich spruce-y smell that comes from, well, that tree in the corner, there. Yes, we still have our tree up. And your point is? I guess it’s almost become a tradition of its own…we [...]

Okay, let me explain the joke right off. In the oldest days of computerdom, the dots on the screen were either on or off—there was no in between. It was a very black-on-white or white-on-black world. And one of the earliest computers that let you work with graphics—albeit in this very binary way—was the original [...]

You don’t need to know what API stands for in order to appreciate the power of some of these new Web 2.0 thingies. For my part, I’m just trying to make sure that this site has some basic functionality/usefulness. To that end I’ve added a WordPress plugin that enables this fine photo page here. It [...]

Well, I can see I’ve dropped back into a late-night pattern, at least for now, and here’s one more post just as I start to fade away after a long evening after the evening with Sammy. I loaded up the bread machine for a nice warm mornings’ loaf, I finished cleaning the kitchen, I made [...]

It’s two am, here on the east coast, here on a winter’s night in Atlanta, and I’m awake and at the computer, which, of late, is unfamiliar to me…I’ve been making some effort to align what’s left of my circadian rhythms with Sammy’s. But we’re making a bit of a transition here, bringing blogs and [...]

I’d just like to commemorate that 16 years ago today it was a cold north Georgia Saturday, with snow falling intermittently… and a lot of special people in our lives traveled from the midwest, from California, from Seattle, from North Carolina to hold hands and watch Sammy and I exchange some important promises in our [...]

According to this article which quotes this Scientific-Atlanta survey, apparently half of all High Definition Television (HDTV) owners don’t actually use the HD capabilities of their set, and nearly a quarter think they are watching high definition video when they actually haven’t set it up correctly. This reminds me of the research I heard about [...]

CNN, in what seems to be an approach straight out of the old parse-the-tea-leaves-at-the-Kremlin days, announced the departure of Aaron Brown by not announcing it…they issued a release describing Anderson Cooper’s new schedule and Wolf Blitzer’s new schedule and if you put all of that through the parse-o-matic and divide the number of anchor chairs [...]

Okay, this just in, the do-no-evil pioneers of Google Maps has been joined in cartographic battle by the feisty newcomer Yahoo Maps! Behold! (if you will), the javascript spittle flying in all directions! Behold the similar errors on both sites (since they use Navteq and Teleatlas for the data)…like Atlanta’s Interstate 285 perimeter referred to [...]

iPod generations Originally uploaded by iLounge. From iLounge’s Flickr page, a look at iPod generations. Mine’s on the far left. Right now, my lovely 20GB iPod does a great job of playing sounds and music, although it likes to be left plugged in as long as possible because its battery’s charge tends to dribble away. [...]

Sammy and I took a look at the new iPods up at Lenox last week, and they’re cute, cool, all of that…although at this point not quite cool and cute enough to compel me to reach walletward. If our venerable first-generation iPod suddenly died, I would buy with gusto, but until then, I’m treating our [...]

I remember sitting in my high school newspaper office in 1973, learning about exactly how serious obstruction of justice is. Misdeeds are bad, lying about them under oath is worse. It’s that simple. Now, another generation has a chance to read and learn. I look at today’s indictment of the Vice-President’s chief of staff as [...]

I guess since people have been leaking pictures of the other “iTunes Everywhere” initiative products, from Windows Mobile to PSPs to even a specially enhanced Apple Newton, I can share with you a unit we’ve been beta-testing for an unnamed Cupertino-based computer company for a couple of months now. Based on a 1989 Frigidaire side-by-side [...]

There’s a window open to a world largely alien to me on my desktop—it’s a Colloquy window hooked up to an IRC channel, and this one (at this moment) is populated by chatting people hard at work on a fundamental part of the Mac OS X experience you may take for granted. In fact, if [...]

I think we’ve come a long way from the days of the special TV Guide fall preview issue and everyone settling down more-or-less simultaneously to sample the wonders of the new TV season…at least as offered to us by the networks..uh, I mean ABC, NBC, CBS, and FOX. And yeah, that WB thing, and UP..uh..see [...]

My aunt, uncle, and cousins live on the part of the coast of North Carolina that is now being pounded by Ophelia, and although we haven’t heard from them since landfall, we chatted before and my aunt said that they made the kind of preparations that you’ve got to make when you live on the [...]

It seems increasingly the fashion to talk about modern technology-based firms in extreme terms. Google is “good.” Microsoft is “evil.” The founders of Google swear to do no evil. Steve Jobs is the antichrist…or is he our saviour? Maybe it’s just because we’ve entered a time where the higher-ups at these huge, otherwise undefinable firms [...]

The sad reality of New Orleans is turning into a story of how governments make decisions now…and it’s not the way that the United States used to do business. But governments—state, local, national—knew a lot of what to expect. Check out the study done at LSU—two years into a five-year study using New Orleans as [...]

It’s Monday evening, and Hurricane Katrina has plowed through New Orleans, leaving lots of broken stuff in its wake. At dinner time, it’s in northern Mississippi—and it’s still at hurricane strength. Now, we get the leavings—thunderstorms, tornadoes perhaps, and more. because of the news buildup on this storm, and because I’ve never accumulated any really [...]

My sister is going on Jeopardy a second time…wish her luck! * * * * * The San Francisco Chronicle’s Peter Hartlaub talks about how today’s effects-laden are leaving audiences with more of a feeling of numbness than wonder. In it, he quotes a legend of another era: “I’ve always felt that the miraculous image [...]

Peter Jennings died late Sunday evening, and I’ve never heard the word “curiosity” mentioned so many times by so many different people in an attempt to capture a person’s essence. Stripped of all its outputs, journalism starts with curiosity. And without an outlet for that digested curiosity, you have no journalism. I went to school [...]

We’ve went up north, you know, in late June and early July, and although I haven’t blogged..er, written much about the experience, we do have a few photos. Also tucked away on the Flickr site are some older images from the summer of 2000. All of this is preparatory to some more site reorganization, because [...]

Greetings, my friends. We are all interested in the future…for that is where you and I are going to spend the rest of our lives! Plan 9 from Outer Space, a classic…perhaps the classic in bad cinema can be yours for a somewhat lengthy download right now. Is this a great internet or what? We [...]

When Sammy and I honeymooned in London, I discovered that my initials—JCB—formed the name of a big yellow truck and digger and tool company. Kind of like Caterpillar is in the states. Which is kinda cool. (Those three letters are also familiar in Japan and Asia and, heck, some of the US West Coast as [...]

There’s no way to get back into writing but to write. Of course. There’s no way to get back into walking but to walk. There’s no way to get into writing Objective-C programs but to…ah, you get it. Hello from Atlanta, where summer heat has settled in, but mercifully, the humidity has abated a bit [...]

After determining with a certain amount of satisfaction that I can listen to just about any broadcast radio in the world that I want to listen to, from the BBC to the CBC to every NPR station I care about from WGBH to WUNC to KCRW to WOUB and even my old (formerly) 10 watt [...]

This is darn funny because it’s so true-ish. And this is some of the planet-destroying equipment I used to use (except that that photo at the bottom looks like no Grass Valley switcher I’ve ever seen.) This is just a wonderful implementation of online mapping (but if you use Safari, you’ll miss out. As much [...]

I’m both chagrined and pleased to say that I stood in line early Saturday morning with Bill Ambrose outside the Apple Store Lenox and chatted with people who were similarly excited to get their hands on the new Mac Mini. (iPod Shuffle enthusiasts had to wait–the store didn’t have any in stock.) And in the [...]

The hoopla of Tuesday’s Macworld announcements has come and gone, and now we’re left with that interesting interregnum where we wait for the products to be actually available in our malls or in our living rooms (Apple’s saying January 22nd, Bill Ambrose has checked the Atlanta Apple Store and he says more like the actual [...]

Most of you know that the Apple Macintosh has been an important part of the tools I use since 1984, and my admiration for the machines Apple makes extends back to the Apple ][ days. And since the Second Coming of Steve Jobs, the annual announcements in January from Jobs-san, onstage, clad in blue jeans [...]

Back in the late sixties, the US Army Corps of Engineers spent a bundle moving the Hocking River out from the center of Athens Ohio, the home of Ohio University. They assured the town, with characteristic bravado, that its flooding problems were over. Over, I tell you! Well, apparently it didn’t work. According to data [...]

Calendar flips, and I had the experience this year of being at a New Year’s gathering where, to be frank, I really didn’t know these folks all that well and they really didn’t come from the same world that I inhabit…and so I found it all the more profound that as the seconds ticked off [...]

Well, we bought the tree this morning, because we heard it would start raining in the afternoon, and so it has. Yes, we’re late tree-buyers, but we make up for it by leaving it up through most of January, as if we’re just sorta in another time zone. Seems as if there are a bunch [...]

Shelley Palmer, a NY based composer and technology maven who does a blog on the latter for NATAS (the Emmy people) is not having a good time with the High Definition DVR set-top box provided by Time Warner in New York, the SA8000HD: What is your personal tolerance for losing your recorded material? In the [...]

Rainy rainy day here in the ATL, an election day (one runoff race), a day where Sam and I (accompanied by brother James) walked to our library (our polling place) in a light rain and returned in a really, really substantial downpour. The last third of our walk was what I think Sammy would call [...]

We pulled out of Milwaukee this morning headed for Sammy’s parents’ cottage in the Upper Peninsula, the second part of this, our third major car trip this autumn. Sammy’s doing the math as we head out of Escanaba, comfortable that we’ll arrive in time to be of some help to her parents. “Ooh, what’s that?” [...]

Michael Smith (Leslie and Christopher’s friend) checks in from the battleground that is also my home town: I got up this morning at 5:30 a.m. to make sure I made it to my polling location by the time they opened at 6:30 a.m. I arrived at the Sherwood Middle School at 6:15 a.m. and the [...]

On an overcast but warm Tuesday morning, we strolled from the house toward the library, noticing more folks than usual on the streets—families with strollers, iPodded and cellphoned twentysomethings, and a sizeable crowd from the soup kitchen/homeless ministry around the corner on Ponce. It’s election day, of course. We vote at our local library, and [...]

Well, it’s down to the final days and Sammy and I seem to turn away from political coverage in general…it’s all a bit much. So let’s vote already, and see where it goes. I do wonder why, sometimes…simply…why. So does Dan Wood, software developer and ponderer.

Hello from St. Louis, where Sammy is conferring with muchos archaeologists at a downtown Marriott, literally across the street from Busch Stadium, the home of tonight’s final NLCS playoff game. The big ol’ arch is a block away. Me, I’m checking in to our Holiday Inn Express a mile away, where I find two traveling [...]

ATLANTA, Georgia (AP) — Fears of a terrorist attack are not sufficient reason for authorities to search people at a protest, a federal appeals court has ruled, saying September 11, 2001, “cannot be the day liberty perished.” A three-judge panel of the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled unanimously Friday that protesters may not be [...]

When we go way out in the country…either up to the North Georgia mountains or way, way north to Upper Michigan, the shore of Lake Superior, one part of civilization that tends to intrude on the pristine wilderness are these white streaks across the sky, the distant signs of people being carried in aluminum tubes [...]

Well, I’m excited…my sister is now “in the pool” to appear on Jeopardy, a year after my brother’s appearance. She’s written a great sum-up of her Culver City experience (Californians get to go to the mother ship to take the test). [and an update: they called her the next day, so she'll be heading up [...]

Home again, we are. Familiar environs, the comforts of knowing exactly where to reach for a certain fork or a certain glass…knowing how hard to swing the back door so it snaps shut. The back yard has a fine coating of leaves and twigs, a lot of the debris from the storm we didn’t sit [...]

It’s a quarter till midnight…wait, it’s a quarter till one…wait..it’s…I’m just confused about what time it is, which must mean one of several things…I’m exhausted in the wake of the Edwards-Cheney debate…I’m loaded down with fine Mexican food, and, oh yeah, I’m in Fort Wayne! Yep, Sam and I are on the “return” portion of [...]

It’s a crystal-clear fall Tueday so we head over to Sault Saint Marie, and we encounter small handmade expressions of a polarized nation: a handmade ‘Native Americans support Kerry Edwards’ sign…a stack of round hay bales, one on top of two on top of three, the ends painted red white and blue and labeled “one [...]

It’s a bright sunny late morning, and Sammy is around the corner at the laundromat folding clothes after checking her email here on a bench in front of the local newspaper office. Newberry Michigan is a very small, somewhat economically…challenged? And yet, here I am, squinting at the Powerbook screen, watching the 4WD trucks and [...]

ShopTalk today led off with a quote (provided without comment) from deep in broadcast journalism’s past…one that I thought appropriate to pass on during a week of police versus demostrators in the streets of New York while in Washington, civil liberties seem all the more on the wane. “We will not walk in fear, one [...]

On the first night of the Republican Convention, an orchestrated fiesta of we love the troops more than those other guys, I read (out here, in the vast blackness of the Internet) that the Justice Department is again—again!—abusing their authority and prerogatives. The whole story is here at The Memory Hole, but I commend to [...]

My brother called earlier this afternoon to ask if I was watching the protests on the streets of NYC on C-Span. “Punching in and out of it,” I said. It occurred to me that everyone I had talked to who watched the Democratic Convention on television—seriously—watched most of the coverage on C-SPAN, blissfully spared commercials [...]

You heard about there being new rules about overtime…rules that the labor secretary hailed as being great news for employees? Rule 6: Employees whose job requires imagination, invention, originality, or artistic or creative endeavors are not eligible for overtime. Oh, that’s just great. Encourage people to avoid creativity. And let employers take advantage of creative [...]

Will Smith might want to take note. Some guy (in an earlier day I think I’d say “some wag,” but we’re all wags now) named Shane posted this in a comment to an entry in Engadget…ladies and gentlemen, Issac Hayesimov’s Three Laws of Robotics: A robot must risk his neck for his brother man, and [...]

Okay, I really thought about going to Siggraph this year…it would have been the first time in more than a decade for me, but no, I figured I had important stuff to do here at home. So I am pleased when I read excellent reporting from the conference, and even more pleased when I can [...]

“Blog, Interrupted”, April Witt’s Washington Post story on Jessica Cutler, the blog-and-tell intern. Somehow, this piece (which is just outstanding, I think) manages to address in one tidy package a lot of what I’ve been thinking about modern sexuality, the internet, slacker attitudes, feminist ideals filtered through a trashy pop culture, lessons on importance of [...]

That’s one of those expressions (I saw it most recently in a Rolling Stone movie review) that really snaps into focus the level of my disconnect with our pop-culture filled world. It’s like Wired magazine’s “Wired/Tired/Expired”, in that what we’re supposed to be doing/reading/consuming/thinking about these days is that of the moment. It used to [...]

I went to my brother’s favorite aggregated site this morning–Metafilter–and lo and behold: …it wasn’t having a good Sunday morning. And I may be imagining it, but a lot more of the heavily-hit sites, from Slashdot to Google, have been having their no funcionar kind of moments lately. And when they don’t show up, I [...]

Does this seem right to you? My sister sent this along, from the American Library Association via BuzzFlash: Last week, the American Library Association learned that the Department of Justice asked the Government Printing Office Superintendent of Documents to instruct depository libraries to destroy five publications the Department has deemed not “appropriate for external use.” [...]

This was a black friday for folks who worked at the Time Warner 24 hour newschannels in Houston and San Antonio. Employees walked in today to find they were all out of a job, and the channel was signing off immediately. Immediately! As the designer of the logos for both of those channels, and as [...]

Ted Turner, my old boss, has written about how goverment and business collaborate to create fewer media voices. It’s the story of the news business over the last twenty years, and it’s somehow reassuring to hear it expressed out of the mouth of the guy who built up something worth absorbing (as Time Warner did) [...]

Here’s a fine, fine use of the internet, a scholarly examination of what happens when businesses move on and are replaced by other businesses and…well, just check it out. I found it while looking around a great site that compares historic photos of Atlanta with the current reality. Thanks to brother James for that pointer.

Hey, it’s for sale on Ebay, so it must be a real product! ARE YOU TIRED OF THE ANNOYING NEWS TICKER BAR AT THE BOTTOM OF YOUR TV SCREEN? Block�it with the TVShield.� TVShield is space-age specially formulated film which quickly adheres to any TV set and can be removed at any time without damage [...]

…on a hot and humid Friday. Amazing, taken together, what’s important to me these days… * * * * * Cory Doctorow went to the heart of the beast today and gave an inspired speech on why Digital Rights management (DRM) is a Bad Thing. * * * * * Although we do an amazing [...]

I’d say about $4.95 per month. Yep. if HBO would let me download their own originated programs (like Six Feet Under, The Sopranos) at HDTV resolution/aspect (or a reasonable subsampling thereof) on demand, without any whacked out file protection like “the movie will only play for a week” or “let us put all this proprietary [...]

Andrei Herasimchuk, who annoys me to this day as the guy who added some things to the Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator user interfaces that just don’t make any damn sense (especially when trying to stretch a metaphor between two very different programs) nevertheless has some very cogent things to say about Why Web Standards [...]

Maybe ‘leakage’ too, although the gutters seem to be handling most of the downpour. Around midnight last night, even with the air conditioning on (modestly) upstairs, it was about 90 degrees last night, and stifling in our bedroom. Then the rains came down, and came down, and came down. Things were much cooler after that. [...]

This is just plain sensible, which is why it’s kinda amazing that it comes from Texas: soon, pull into a rest area anywhere in the state, have free wireless access. They’re correct to point out this is a huge boon to safety.

What happens if you post a freely-accessible, out-of-copyright work on the internet and then send phony copyright infingement notices to the ISPs who host the site? Oh, how about trampled-upon civil rights? The concept of ‘NTD’, or Notice and Take Down procedures are supposed to be a manifestation of the Internet’s self-censorship. Well, ‘self’ ain’t [...]

I’m glad, proud, and content that I voted for Al Gore in 2000…even more so when I read these remarks by the former vice-president. Thanks, Leslie, for pointing these out.

We live in a world these days where most newscasts contain images that cause many to avert their eyes–acts of graphic violence carried out on human beings by other human beings. I go to the video store, to the grocery, out to lunch with friends, and an inevitable subject is: how messed up things are. [...]

There’s a fine Timeline of CGI available at an OSU site, part of Wayne Carlson’s teaching materials. he’s the Chair of the Department of Industrial, Interior and Visual Communication Design at Ohio State, and a one-time VP of Cranston-Csuri, the groundbreaking computer graphics and imaging firm based in my home town. One of the pioneering [...]

…maybe that’s what Bill Moyers and David Brancaccio have to offer to end a week and a troubling month on the PBS Series Now. First, a story on the real politics, bribery, and arm-twisting behind passing Bush’s Medicare bill. Then, an eye-opening account of the Pro-Choice, Pro-Women March in Washington last weekend that makes the [...]

…in tribute to broadcaster Bob Edwards, who finishes up “24 years and 6 months” of hosting the popular NPR program this morning. I know this with some precision because he mentions it several times in just that way—a small sign, perhaps, of the frustration he feels at not being able to cross the 25-year finish [...]

Okay, I admit, I found this quite funny. Perhaps you will too. Perhaps especially of you’ve ever had border tape stuck to your eyebrows in the act of x-actoing a piece of recalcitrant newspaper copy.

As I type, Condoleezza Rice is testifying before the 9/11 commission–and she’s trying to talk over and obfuscate answers under questioning from the quite capable Richard Ben-Veniste. She’s obviously used to answering things her own meandering way. * * * * * It’s a rainy day, and I really ought to be hacking away at [...]

Good morning…oh, wait, it’s afternoon already on the east coast. Darn! Well, here’s a soupçon of linkage for your weekend. Oh, no, please, don’t thank me. How Offshore Outsourcing Failed Us (a PDF download)This is from an October 2003 magazine article, but I’m only coming across it now. It’s of note, I think, if only [...]

Just got in from the back yard, where the healthy first bloom of spring is also the not-so-welcome first bloom of kudzu in the back yard, and this year I’ve re-developed the gumption to exert a chemical hand over this scourge of the south–at least as far as its domain extends into our property. I [...]

I’m surprised Bush hasn’t directed the Supreme Court to outlaw this practice yet: homophily:individuals with like interests associate with one another. I found this tidbit in a PDF Sammy sent me (she’s doing research for her writing, of course)–this very academic paper called Information Flow in Social Groups (PDF download), which, as she says, looks [...]

i’m going through one of those periods where I think I’ve started and accomplished 85% of many, many tasks…but it seems harder to take just one of those up to one hundered percent. I’ve: Loaded tons of video onto my machine and have been editing content Composed 85% of a fine piece of music with [...]

One of those quick price/value comparisons that makes me happy that I’ve moved up to a G5, but started with a lowly 128. > Macintosh 128 Power Macintosh G5 8 MHz 68000 2 GHz PowerPC 970 (two) 128KB RAM 512MB RAM 400KB floppy 700MB/4.3GB optical No hard disk 160GB hard disk 9-inch black and white [...]

“On Foray Into the South, Kerry Gets a Spirited Welcome,” says the NYT this morning, and I suspect we were a little tiny part of that hoorah. Our niece seemed a little dubious about the nearly nonstop parade of standing ovations, but hey, that’s what a political rally is about. Me (and I suspect Sammy) [...]

Hey, Sammy and I did the appropriate web research, sat down and thought about our needs, calculated, visited the photo store, and, yesterday, made a sensible and yet quite thrilling purchase that takes our shared interest in photography to the next level. Please, have a look at the first 12 hours or so with the [...]

from The Associated Press… Morse code is entering the 21st century — or at least the late 20th. The 160-year-old communication system now has a new character to denote the “@” symbol used in e-mail addresses. In December, the International Telecommunications Union, which oversees the entire frequency spectrum, from amateur radio to satellites, voted to [...]

I’ve had one of those moments where I zoom back—from my own body and space—and have a good look in me in my environs. Feet up, warmed by the fans of my turned-around-G5, fancy new pianoesque keyboard to my left, cup of Starbucks to my right (brewed fresh this morning on my back porch), Sennheiser [...]

Sometimes I think there’s too darn much stuff out there available at the click of a mouse. There’s a site that tells you how much clear sky we’re getting here today and in the near future, there’s one that tells you who else is writing blogs near me, and there’s a site where the creators [...]

I’ve done my share of logo designs, and I’ve seen more than a few go off to the great logo graveyard in the sky. Well, turns out there actually is such a place, and it’s right here. Actually, I’m amazed when one of my logos (largely for television stations) survives past the point where its [...]

I was jumping from blog to blog this morning….in search of an obscure tidbit related to Cocoa, and came upon this on some Swedish guy’s blog: The Joint of Oscar When I drive to work, I use a road called The joint of Oscar and I remember one year ago, the road was clogged every [...]

Hi on a sunny but cool Atlanta Sunday afternoon, and I find myself grumping in disgruntlement looking at my site in comparison to writers (okay, bloggers) who really know what they’re doing. Despite installing a system that makes tossing entries into the big stack of history a breeze, I end up not sitting down to [...]

Well, if I’m to believe this, we are. And I type this while sipping near-freezing coffee, quite caffeinated, and so cold because it was actually sitting outside overnight on the back porch. According to the thermometer out there, it got down to 31°F last night. Frosty! Well, kinda. I took a look at The Weather [...]

No, really. It’s Sunday morning (as Charles Osgood intones in the other room), and I’m having trouble seeing the back end of our back yard out my office window. It’s a fine fog we’re in. No, indeed, I’m not complaining. There’s something nice about fog and autumnal colors…they fade away elegantly, stepped down into greyscale, [...]

It always catches me napping, but hey presto, it’s November! Seems as if it was just last night we were sitting on the steps of James and Rebecca’s lovely Avondale Estates home, watching a steady stream of kids make their way past the foamcore tombstones lit by colored lights and…hey wait, it was last night! [...]

Sammy came in and asked, “how’s your new computer working?” I motioned toward the screen and pressed F9. “Good God,” she said, as the screen became a gallery of dozens of tiny windows. My new G5 showed up at 7 pm on Friday. Switching over was a snap. No, it didn’t come with Panther installed, [...]

No, I’m not talking about any product to come out of Microsoft, I’m talking about the convergence of hardware and software that will, UPS and FedEx willing, transform my workspace in the next 24 hours. And yet, in some ways, it won’t transform things at all. There is a new Mac G5 (yes, dual processors, [...]

It’s just too darn hard to stay inside on a day like today, so I’m out here in the back yard amidst the half-raked leaves, listing to the wind through the trees and the quiet, distant sounds of our Virginia-Highland neighborhood. It occured to me that folks stumbling on a site called Positively Atlanta Georgia [...]

We got a organic-y whole turkey from Whole Foods this morning on the theory that its roasting would warm up the house–probably a good idea since we awoke to a Sunday in Atlanta that was chilly, to say the least. It’s autumn! It’s cool! And we’re back on the east coast. Got in last night [...]

Well, it’s been a short visit, but the rains parted and the sun came out and the Oregon Coast is nothing if not attractive, especially late in the year when the tourists have gone and it’s not too cold and rainy. We’re here, not far south of the 45th parallel, in Depoe Bay, Oregon. Well, [...]

Hello from Seattle, where it’s been (surprise!) blustery and rainy, although today the sun has come out in well-defined, discrete, miserly chunks. This portion of our western trip has been a fine family visit so far, with lots of time and attention spent with our very vocal 2.5 year old nephew. This sunday morning we’ve [...]

We’ve finally leveled off at 35,000 feet and it’s been a bit choppy so far–that’s the bad news, but the good news is we’re going to arrive into Los Angeles 15 or 20 minutes early–late afternoon, Pacific time, the day before Sammy’s birthday. Yes, we’re traveling again. After a summer that started with Sammy working [...]

This ‘lago’ person brings up a couple of funny points, fresh, as it were, from todays headlines. It’s amazing what I’ll do to save a buck or two when I ‘m willing to have a $3000 G5 (well, almost) and that iPod thingie (functioning at this moment as a CPR device for my ailing G4). [...]

It’s a brisk fall afternoon in Atlanta town, at a time when I’m doing logistics for our next trip–out west to see family and friends. Those of you following along at home may well be saying “hey, wait, they were out west last weekend,” and yes, that’s true, but that was of course for the [...]

When we first talked about going down to Mexico I thought that the timing would work out well on all kinds of levels. There’s nothing really much to recommend Atlanta in mid-July–and since we don’t live 100 yards from a pool like my brother and his family in Tudor-fancy Avondale Estates, we might as well [...]

A million uses and counting! • No one can be told about PosAtlGa…it must be experienced for itself. • Made of 100% pure green tea extract! • Approved for pet dander and smoke! • Can pinpoint a storm right down to your neighborhood street!

Okay, in no particular order. First of all, as one of those geeky people behind the scenes, I’m charmed and pleased that Keanu Reeves has given 50 million pounds (82-ish million dollars) to…no, not charity exactly, but to the effects crew of The Matrix Reloaded! Yes, that’s something like 1.5 million apiece…from an actor who, [...]

Kind of like a blog without the b and the log! • Not powered by moveable anything! • Valid in all fifty states, the dominion of Canada, and all the ships at sea! • Presented in beautifully simplistic CSS layout for a faster, table-free experience! • Fact-checked by a stream of tiny black ants!

Spring has come and summer, if I were to be honest, has already made more than one cameo appearance. It’s the end of April, the big birthday month, containing not only my birthday, but friends Tom and Steve and Susan and Sammy’s dad and more than one child of some of those selfsame friends. Happiest [...]

The last entry on this site was January 18…2001, so if you’re reading this page right now, you have either stumbled here by accident or you have a strange masochistic streak that causes you to check in to see a site that hasn’t changed for, well, just exactly twelve months. What has changed in twelve [...]

Welcome back to an ancient, battered website, long-neglected, oft-patched, a collection of web-published stuff that dates back to the very dawn of the web (way, way back to 1995!), and is, thanks to some compulsive web-noodling over the weekend, slowly converting over to what folks who do this for a living say is the only [...]

Well, I know where I was on June 1, 1980…sitting in the comfortable blast of the air conditioning in the remote truck off to the side of a still-under-construction 1050 Techwood Drive.My job: graphics guy–I ran a Vidifont IV character generator, capable of a stunning 8 different colors and two different typefaces. What we were [...]

Boy, I step away from here for a few months to get some work done, and…everything’s changed. Hello on an early Monday morning, not far from Memorial Day, a day of no real significance to me based on family traditions, although the other day over a beer at George’s around the corner, my father mentioned [...]

It’s a warmer morning in Atlanta and I’ve just finished firing off a Media Rare to the nice folks at Atlanta Press—only to notice about a zillion typos that warrant me sending 3 correcting emails. Yow.I used to be able to hit most of these keys on my first try. I don’t think the reason [...]

I watched the sun set over the Portuguese coast and the sun rise on the South Island of New Zealand. I watched Peter Jennings change outfits and now here we are. Happy new year. Let’s keep it at that. I received e-mail from friends far away, little electron-drawn portraits of their life thus far. A [...]

The cosmic confluence of jetstreams, dewpoints, and topography did its trick again, and left our fair city with a fine coating of ice over trees, cars, and power lines this last weekend. And when Georgia’s wimpy trees get some ice, they tend to come crashing down, yanking power, phone, and cable lines in their wake. [...]

If you can read this, you’re too close • Bringing Novosoy Isoflavones to people nationwide. JCB, Supermarket to the World. • Blink and flash-free for a calmer viewing experience • Trying desparately to NOT use the word ‘compliant’ anywhere on the site • Take gap, give gap • Composed of 100% recycled electrons • Undedicated, antidetermined, undependable  

If you can read this, you’re too close • Bringing Novosoy Isoflavones to people nationwide. JCB, Supermarket to the World. • Blink and flash-free for a calmer viewing experience • Contains actual words…you may have to do some reading here. • Created on a Macintosh, but we’ll let you read it too • 

If you can read this, you’re too close • If you have a confession to make, don’t tell us about it • downloadable at the full force and fury of Internet speeds! • Nonlive, nonlocal, earlybreaking •The only website in metropolitan Atlanta without a full-time TV news helicopter • Created on a Macintosh, but we’ll let you read it too.

I’ll be back for my final thought in a moment • How much would you say that antique is worth? • Contains gerunds that may be too violent for pre-teenagers • Hang up and drive! • Member FDIC • The epic miniseries of the year! • Presented in lo-def! • Loosest slots on the strip!

I’ll be back for my final thought in a moment • How much would you say that antique is worth? • Contains gerunds that may be too violent for pre-teenagers • Hang up and drive! • Member FDIC • Incapable of breaking the 10,000 mark • Avec a certain je ne sais qois! • Not in SECAM!

Digitally enhanced with virtual jingle bells! / Contains no more than 3% nonfat milk solids! / Cable’s most popular web site! / Designed to be blink-free, with no annoying animated GIFs! / Umbrage you can count on!

Nonlive, unlocal, earlybreaking / We refuse to use a 16:9 aspect ratio / In color where a color monitor is available / We’re seen on cable on channel 223…wait, no, we aren’t. /Created using more computing power than was available on board Apollo 11 / Take gap, give gap / Member FDIC!

Nonlive, unlocal, earlybreaking / Presented in high-definition HTML / Filmed in Astro-vision! / The 10 watt FM station of the Internet /Created using more computing power than was available on board Apollo 11 / Take gap, give gap / Member FDIC!

The least frequently updated website of all the Burns children /Nonlive, unlocal, earlybreaking / More than just a concept, it’s a vague idea! / Presented overseas by Armed Forces radio..uh, maybe not / The 10 watt FM station of the Internet /Created using more computing power than was available on board Apollo 11 / Take gap, give gap / Member FDIC!

The least frequently updated website of all the Burns children / The only website that hasn’t seen Titanic yet! / More than just a concept, it’s a vague idea! / Presented overseas by Armed Forces radio..uh, maybe not / The 10 watt FM station of the Internet / A ramble in search of a catchy slogan / Take gap, give gap / Member FDIC!

The least frequently updated website of all the Burns children / A place to go when you want to be browsing the web, but you’ve run out of other places! / Take gap, give gap / Member FDIC!

A web page not guilty of planning any kind of bombing! / A fast-loading stream of ASCII characters, decorated gaily by HTML codes! / Low in fat, and it’s packed with very few essential amino acids! / Presented with limited commercial interruptions! / Overloaded with exclamation points! / Member FDIC!

Contains absolutely no news about corn-fed septuplets! / A fast-loading stream of ASCII characters, decorated gaily by HTML codes! / Low in fat, and is packed with very few essential amino acids! / Does not contain helium-inflated cartoon characters, known to cause injury to New York City parade-goers! / Completely safe to use, despite the hacking cough of the author! / Member FDIC!

So cool, the young kids dig it / Your mileage may vary / Poorly-formed concepts in mirror may be closer than they appear / Presented as it happens / A Dateline NBC Consumer Alert! / Este pagina no es en Español

Blink-free for a satisfying web experience / Your mileage may vary / Poorly-formed concepts in mirror may be closer than they appear / Colors saturated for your protection / In quadrophonic sound, where available (the 70s)

Past a certain point, it becomes hard to discern any point at all. Hello again after the longest darn time, where, faithful visitors to this spot will tell you, I haven’t changed the contents of this page since, well, May 21st. It’s way past that now. It’s fall. The page of ramblings about heat and [...]

It’s no longer sweeps week! / Member FDIC / Este tramo no es de alta velocidad / Your mileage may vary / Poorly-formed concepts in mirror may be closer than they appear / Colors saturated for your protection / Not a Broadcast Service of the Ohio University Telecommunications Center

It’s sweeps week! / Member FDIC / Este tramo no es de alta velocidad / Your mileage may vary / Poorly-formed concepts in mirror may be closer than they appear / Colors saturated for your protection / Not a Broadcast Service of the Ohio University Telecommunications Center

Home of the 55 cent breakfast / Member FDIC / Este tramo no es de alta velocidad / Your mileage may vary / Poorly-formed concepts in mirror may be closer than they appear / Colors saturated for your protection / Not ‘The Puppy Episode’ of PosAtlGa

Home of the 55 cent breakfast / Member FDIC / Este tramo no es de alta velocidad / Your mileage may vary / Poorly-formed concepts in mirror may be closer than they appear / in ‘push’ (where unavailable) / Colors saturated for your protection / From atop Mount Forty / not a rerun this week

Cable’s Most Popular Network / Member FDIC / Este tramo no es de alta velocidad / Your mileage may vary / Poorly-formed concepts in mirror may be closer than they appear / in ‘push’ (where unavailable) / Take gap, give gap / Colors saturated for your protection / Thickly settled (in the northeast)

Cable’s Most Popular Network / Member FDIC / Este tramo no es de alta velocidad / Your mileage may vary / Poorly-formed concepts in mirror may be closer than they appear / in ‘push’ (where unavailable) / Take gap, give gap / Colors saturated for your protection / Thickly settled (in the northeast)

Cable’s Most Popular Network / Member FDIC / Este tramo no es de alta velocidad / Your mileage may vary / Graphics in mirror may be closer than they appear / in stereo (where unavailable) / Take gap, give gap / Must See HTML / The color-coded maps and signs match the station colors

Cable’s Most Popular Network / Member FDIC / Uses three AAA batteries (not included) / Your mileage may vary / Graphics in mirror may be closer than they appear / in stereo (where unavailable) / Take gap, give gap / Must See HTML / The color-coded maps and signs match the station colors/ Una ciudad limpia es un ciudad sin basura!

They always say that 99.9 percent of car accidents happen within five miles of home. I spose that’s why we got through our 11,000 mile auto trip just fine, only to have some guy run into Sammy on her way out of the Wino Kroger on Ponce here in our fair city. (All the Kroger [...]

We were listening to NPR’s Talk of the Nation as we skirted along the northeast corner of Oklahoma today, through the Osage Indian Reservation and through town after town with Cherokee names that seemed very familiar to folks like us familiar with places in the North Georgia Mountains. On the other end of the Trail [...]

It’s a quiet Sunday morning here in the Helmer/Curtis/McMillan/Germfask/Newberry metroplex, way up above the 45th parallel, in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, where all the corn is good looking and all the people are, well, almost uncomfortably uniformly white. Yes, there is a town named Germfask up here. Sounds to me like some sort of [...]

Most folks I know are convinced I’ve become bored with HTML and I’ve decided to let this small puddle in the Internet ocean become fetid, brackish, neglected. Well, no, I just haven’t had much to talk about, and not enough time to conjure something up that resembles content. I’ll try to correct that today. Today [...]

I started Positively Atlanta Georgia a year ago April, I think (I notice that the archives of old ramblings actually starts with May 1st, 1995, but reads as if there were an installment or two before that. (Also notice that in the May 1st version I was all excited about my new video camera, which, [...]

Hello from New Orleans, the city of so many cliches that you can pretty much name your own. Yes, the food is good. Yes, we’re having fun. Sammy is also, for the most part, hard at work. We’re at the Society for American Archaeology annual meeting, and it’s me playing the spouse amidst these archaeologists, [...]

It’s still March as I write this, so it’s no April fool. We were robbed yesterday, Saturday. Broken in on. We went to have a nice dinner with my brother and his wife, and when we returned, around ten in the evening, sat down to watch a video for a while. I went into the [...]

The house is crawling with Smiths. Well, perhaps that’s not the nicest way to put it. They are, after all a rather agreeable bunch, well-mannered, well-educated. They clean up after themselves. They get into relatively few fistfights. They read the daily New York Times. They are, after all, Sammy‘s parents and brother. Her parents, Nick [...]

Time flies when you’re trying to get some work done. Hello from a city that doesn’t look all that ready to host the Olympic Games. I was thinking about this some as I returned from the airport the other day the back way (to avoid traffic), which means up tawdry Stewart Avenue, around Northside Drive [...]

I had one of those dreams last night–well, actually the last time I went to sleep, that was terrifying–mostly because it held together internally with a logic and clarity that sometimes escapes me in real life. I’ve had an adjustment week, what with Sammy off on her (finally!) last quarter of classes at the University [...]

It was the day before Christmas, and all through the home, people were wandering, though not one from Nome. My thanks to my sister for correcting the meter in that last phrase. Hello from a cold but thankfully snow-free Atlanta, where we are enjoying a Sunday before a holiday that, in some ways, has seemed [...]

Somebody mentioned to me that I should use this web page for more blatantly commercial pursuits, and, in truth, it’s this time of year when freelance bums like myself begin to worry whether there’ll be any work next year. But I’m kind of concerned about going completely commercial with this place. Positively Atlanta Georgia is, [...]

We wake up today after a blustery Saturday that started with rain and ended with a large sigh of relief citywide. Yes, Ted’s team, America’s Team, our team, the Atlanta Braves has won the World Series, as one sign said, ‘…finally.’ Saturday morning, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution covered–perhaps overcovered–Braves outfielder David Justice’s comments about the lackluster [...]

As I write this, up to 170,000 homes in Georgia, most of them in Atlanta, are still without power after Hurricane Opal–which was downgraded to a tropical storm only as it struck the west suburbs of our town–blew by Wednesday night. Yes, it is unusual for a hurricane to make it this far inland…Atlanta is [...]

I’m part of a generation who came of age during and immediately after the Watergate affair, and in fact, was one of the few people in my Grandview Heights, Ohio high school who actively criticized the government’s handling off the war in Vietnam, the treatment of civil rights and antiwar protesters on our nation’s college [...]

Hello from Atlanta, where things have finally begun to cool down enough to create at least the expectation that fall will be a delight. Sammy and I have been off on a quick trip designed to get the most out of the early signs of autumn. We flew to Boston on a cheap Delta flight [...]

It’s the day after my sister’s birthday, and Atlanta (and a good chunk of the rest of the country) has been in the grip of over-100 temperatures, with plenty of humidity, for what seems like days and days and days. If I were smarter, I wouldn’t be here, and last weekend, I made good on [...]

Hello from a city that is even more obsessed with being the site of the 1996 Centennial Olympics than it was before we left. We got back in town about a week ago, and now that there’s less than a year until those wacky games, we are surrounded by evidence of ‘progress’ towards the time [...]

Hello from the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, where all the wind gusts are strong, all the fourth-of-july hot dogs are good looking, and all the Internet connections are long distance. Well, maybe not all of them, but the ones I can get access to certainly seem to be, especially when viewed from this small corner [...]

It’s a cool night, and here, that’s an enormous relief after more than two weeks of unrelenting blastfurnace heat and humidity. Just past midnight in the eastern time zone, and I’m sitting back and relaxing after an event-filled weekend. Literally. Saturday and Sunday (and several days leading up to the weekend) were consumed by the [...]

A gracious good afternoon from here, although we all know it may be just about any time when you get this document downloaded from some mysterious server somewhere. It’s yet another component of how cruising through the World Wide Web reminds me of the old days of surfing through clear-channel radio stations–those 50,000 watt ‘blowtorches’ [...]

Hello from Atlanta, where we’ve had a series of wet, warm downpours that are indeed the mark of the month of May hereabouts. You can tell we’ve just had one because what appears to be a small tree is crammed up against the back tires of our pickup truck…that’s because our neighbors up the street [...]

Hello from Atlanta, or more specifically, Virginia-Highland, the small intown neighborhood I’ve called home for the last dozen years or so. It’s a pleasant enough place with small shops and restaurants around the corner from our house, a lot of pedestrians, and brick homes built anywhere from 1920 to postwar. Sidewalks, trees, it’s nice. And [...]

Hello, from the other end of a fairly slow through-pipe to the Internet, which can, occasionally, be a good thing. There are other things in life beyond web-surfing, and the balance betwen digital and ‘real’ life is one that few handle well. By now, a fairly large number of people have tuned in to this [...]

Man, oh man, people on the net are obsessed with counters, or, in other words, are obsessed with having some way of measuring who has seen their WWW page. Well, here at the CRL pages, as you may know, this isn’t a complete, full, and total implementation of all Web server features, so right now, [...]

We’ve come to the end of April, and just had a nice evening of folks over for pizza and cake that my brother’s wife and daughter baked. This is marginally a celebration of my birthday, which was on the 11th, as well as those of Tom Burton and J.C. Salyer, who were also here to [...]