Sweet jebus, Orwell is blogging links
Nothing new under the sun, not even link roundups of the days top stories.
How Much Would You Pay for a Robust, Reliable Yahoo Pipes?
I’ve been a fan of Yahoo Pipes since it was first released to the public. I first used it to combine a number of feeds1 from sites I contributed to so that my home page was constantly updated with recent work and personal updates. It allowed me to include only my just my posts from sites with multiple authors and to strip the boilerplate and ads tacked on to items. I’ve since used it to prune feeds from sites based on certain criteria or key words to reduce the noise in my feed reader and to experiment with ideas for mashing up or repurposing data from other services.
If you’re still reading, then you probably also know that Yahoo, the company, hasn’t exactly been operating smoothly of late. Many of my friends who once worked there have either quit or gotten pink slips, leading me to joke in an aside to an item about rumors of further layoffs that I would have confirmed the news with my contacts at the company, but I don’t have any left. I understand that new CEO Carol Bartz has her work cut out for her, but her stated mandate to slash parts of the business that aren’t turning a profit scares me.
Why? Because Pipes is free, and while I imagine it isn’t terribly expensive to operate, any costs it generates are strictly revenue-negative. Regardless, though I can’t say for certain there have been significant outages, neither would I assure anyone that it’s speedy or reliable2. Nor can I think of any significant new features added, or any further development at all, since it’s been released. So my question is: If you use Pipes, what would you pay to keep it going, assure some degree of dependability, and even fund continued development?
I’m Back, Just in Time for International Workers Day
Hilarious advertising, via my old comrade Nicholas Carlson. I can’t count how many times the vagaries of Soviet toilet paper (or lack there of) have been cited as an example of why anything besides unfettered free markets are doomed to fail.
Anyway, have been quiet of late thanks to the collapse of said unfettered free markets indirectly leaving me hustling for work. Speaking of which, I’ve updated my home page and my about page to reflect some new publications and sites I can be found at.
And I promise even more soon, even though blogging is apparently killing the very business of writing I try to make a living in. Good times all around.
Long time coming, yes, but still a long way to go
If Barack Obama is really a progressive candidate and not just the new face of the business interests that truly rule Washington, then together with the Democrats that now reign as a party there are some clear goals I’d like to see worked toward:
You’d better have 300,000 absentees up your sleeve, Los Angeles
California Proposition 8 Results by County 2008 via LA Times
The City is Poorer Without PJ Corkery
It’s been a month since journalist and author PJ Corkery died of non-Hodgkins lymphoma, but somehow I just found out today. He was incredibly kind and generous to me when I was an upstart punk of a blogger trying to make a name for SFist — responding to my emails, mentioning our work in his San Francisco Examiner column, inviting me to a dine and dish at the legendary Washington Square Bar & Grill, showing up to the site’s anniversary party (where I was a little too star-struck to interrupt a conversation between him and Matt Gonzalez to say hello). Even after I left SFist and he left the Examiner, we stayed in touch, though most of it was me begging for a look at Basic Brown. My naive persistence paid off when he gifted me a graciously inscribed copy which I shall cherish. His erudite, precise and witty words of wisdom inspired me to press on as a writer, for which I thank him publicly and profusely. We are all the richer for his meritorious literary contributions.
I’ll miss you, Peej. Deeply.
Assorted reviews from the North Cascades
Yes, all I did in the mountains was a minimal share of chores and maximized my time reading trash, cooking heavily and sleeping lightly. To all whom I made an oath of work ethic, I apologize. Meanwhile, I’ll try to share what I learned in terms of wonderfully lazy reading and deliciously cheap crime novels.
Orwell in Marrakech
George Orwell’s “blog,” the Orwell Diaries, is absolutely fascinating, even 70 years after the fact. I assume it’s because while it was written as a private diary, it was always presumed that it would eventually become public in one way or another. Either as anecdotes in an article, impressions and scenes for a novel or eventually post-humously. For all I know, he probably shared it with close associates or offered it to whomever asked to read it.
Unlike our own very public writing online, Orwell doesn’t indulge in privacy in his notes. There are no “overheards,” or gossip, or events and places aren’t treated as profound simply because they are personal. Today, I would treat a diary as somewhere to put what I couldn’t otherwise publish. This reads more like a reporter’s notebook — if that reporter was an amateur botanist, birder and socialist.
Point is, you’ll get days like this, when he offers fine details about the press, economics and living conditions while touring the streets of Marrakech in 1938. Ripe with detail and a certain self-awareness of being from the privileged class but unwilling to be of it. And then you’ll get an entry like this:
Distinctly cooler at night. Last night used blanket all night. Red hibiscus in flower.
Kind of sublime, really, especially as you realize just how long it will actually take for three years of such daily notes to unfurl, encompassing the early history of World War II. Makes for wonderful, and surprising, reading amidst much echo and blather in my RSS feeds.
A book you are allowed to buy
I had the good fortune to spend some time with my old friend Hank Willis Thomas last weekend, and basically begged him for a free copy of his new monograph. As much as I’d like to give Hank millions of dollars to create great art, I can barely afford his coffee-table book. That said, I’ll have a copy by hook or by crook soon enough. Meanwhile, if you buy it, he can make his capitalist publishers happy, and there’s no shame in that.
Yes, I’m promoting a book that I’m not even mentioned or pictured in. I’m banking on the fact that I’m captured as a cute, young boy deep in Hank’s archives and will turn up when some equally deluded and enthusiastic young kid researches the collection some day, fulfilling my vain hope of being interred as even a fringe member of Manhattan’s downtown art scene.
I’ll be at Chelsea’s Rush Arts Gallery on Friday, September 19th from 6pm to 8pm to see a show co-curated by Hank and his cousin Kalia Brooks featuring art from fellow friend Bayete Ross-Smith — which completes a former roommate trifecta. Check out the show if you’re in town, buy Hank’s book if you aren’t, and save some money for the good work on the way.
Proof that I can, in fact, catch fish
My inability to bring any fish home over the years of holidays spent at the family cabin in Silverton, Washington has led some to doubt of my claims to having caught any fish at all. My first day out this weekend, I hooked two trout — one spit out the hook and the other snapped my line while I was trying to land him. My mother has been the biggest skeptic, so when I landed a keeper yesterday morning I ran straight home in order to make her a believer and get photographic evidence of the 12″, 12-ounce rainbow trout I pulled from the south fork of the Stilliguamish.
Of course, my mom immediately started complaining that she wanted to have fresh trout for dinner like her father, and my grandpa, Benny used to provide (I figured that one fish was at least enough for a trout-and-eggs breakfast). So I went out later in the day and caught three more — two barely legal rainbows and a fat, sassy brook trout which put up quite a fight and must have weighed at least a pound.
I was a little nervous that I’d mangle them when I cleaned and gutted the beauties, but they came out alright. A little salt, pepper and olive oil and the two biggest fish hit the grill (I left my mom the two smaller ones on ice in the cooler).
I must say, with a fresh salad and rice pilaf, it was a simple but delicious meal — fresh trout are damn tasty. Though with the license, lures and all they ended up costing $15 a pound. But hey, I got to demonstrate unequivocally my position at the top of the food chain and my ability to provide for my family, as it were.
For those who care about such things, I caught all four on a lightweight spincasting rig, using 1/16 oz. Rooster Tail lures — one in pink and green and the other brown (206RT and 206BR). Which felt a little like cheating, since I usually cast flies, but at least I wasn’t using bait. So to give the fish a fighting chance, I’ll go back to single, barbless hooks this weekend. Still, it was nice to put the doubt to rest once and for all.
