Archive for March, 2007

One joy in life for me is reading Daring Fireball; John Gruber is a sharp critic and is possessed of a keen wit about all things tech. No Apple product announcement experience is complete without a trip over to Gruber’s site to see what he has to say.

Being a keen listener, my fiance surprised me with a DF membership this past Christmas, which for $29 gets you access to a variety of members only RSS feeds and a coveted DF t-shirt. Well the t-shirts must be very coveted indeed, because in all these months I’ve not seen mine. I sent a cheerful email to Gruber (to an address he admittedly doesn’t check very often) wondering aloud about its whereabouts. But still no explanation or t-shirt; I’d have been happy with either.

Someone asked Gruber at SXSW what kind of person he might hire into his small development company. His answer?

“Someone to send out t-shirts.”

You can’t be mad at that.

When George Bush declared, in response to negative feedback about the then-nascent war on terror, “you’re with us, or you’re against us,” he undoubtedly had no idea he was following in the footsteps of King Leonidas of Sparta. But as Frank Miller and the screen writers of ‘300′ would have us believe, that’s exactly what he was doing.

‘300′ is a fictionalized account of the Battle of Thermopylae in 480 BC, wherein Sparta (not alone mind you, but as part of a “coalition of the willing”) fought a statistically superior Persian conscript army to the death in defense of a narrow passage to Greece. In particular the film is concerned with the valor of King Leonidas and has merry band, who held the pass for three entire days before they were ultimately obliterated. The resistance, though very costly to the outnumbered Greeks, ultimately set Xerxes I up for a defeat at Plataea some years later.

This is one of the classic stories of human valor in the face of almost certain death; of the ability of a few to overcome the tyranny of the many. This story has nothing to do with homeland security, WMD’s, secret torture camps or no-fly lists; but in the darkened theatre as I watched these rippling Spartans slash their way through row upon row of hapless, Scimitar wielding Islamist extremists I was unable to avoid the parallel. Such connections are easy to draw, in a world where commercials for the Marines air in between segments of American Idol.

In one scene Leonidas’ manages to mock not only the feckless intellectuals who wish to prevent his launch of a preemptive military campaign against Persia, but also the girly Arcadians and their lack of a professional military or warrior class. One is reminded of the equally maligned French who, upon announcing they would not be attending the war Bush was throwing, were met with cries of “cheese eating surrender monkey” from ‘Mericans stuffing down plates full of ‘Freedom Fries.’

In Miller’s vision the Spartan is a fascist super man riddled with arrows, gritting his teeth to gut a few more magic carpet merchants before scaling Mount Olympus one last time. Before battle, cries of “ooh ah” fill the air, and utterances of love for the folks back home are not advised–lest you be compared to those namby pambies in the senate, with their logic and fondness for young boys.

It’s all quite a spectacle. Though the battle scenes are exhilarating and match the dynamism of the comic book quite well, it feels like watching a combination of Marine recruitment film, excerpts from Triumph of the Will, and something you’d see at a Texas Republican party fundraiser. So while I like a little violence, sexism and hyperstylized heroism just as much as the next guy I think I’ll stick to getting it from Fox News like everyone else and save the movies for escapism, not further programming from the state.

Had a request for this one, so I’ll leave it up here for posterity. This could be thought of as a Thai version of bouillabaisse with fewer kinds of shellfish. You’ll need…

2 Lobster tails, uncooked, cleaned and split length-wise
2 Tbsp butter
4 tbsp garlic, minced fine
2 shallots, minced fine
1/2 Cup of black beans, drained
Dried red pepper flakes
Salt and pepper

*Optional:
1/2 Cup white wine, chicken stock, veggie stock
Saffron threads
Basil and cilantro for garnish

Heat the butter in a large skillet until translucent and melted, but not brown. At small bubble stage sautee garlic and shallots. Add lobster meat side down. *You may find adding some liquid at this stage is a good idea, but not much; enough to coat the bottom of the pan is fine. After about three minutes of cook time add the black beans, some of the basil* and dried red pepper flakes.

Watch to make sure the lobster doesn’t get tough. It happens fast.

Serve with a spring mix salad and couscous or rice. While eating, exclaim loudly, “have you tasted this shit!” and enjoy.

A huge part of American culture is the divide between the “cool” and the “uncool”: the “jock” and the “nerd”. SXSW proves that the two spheres of the Venn Diagram we use to talk about these disparate groups intersects quite often, and the sliver in between could easily be labeled “web 2.0 developer”.

I have to say Austin seems like a great town. I’ve been well-fed and well-beered since we arrived, with tons of interesting things to do and see all within an eight block radius. The locals seem friendly, the weather is great and the shower in my hotel blasts hot water for as long as I want it. The culture in the hallways is why we’re here though, and it’s here in droves. The chatter in the entranceways and halls is all next-gen tech and programming languages, occasionally interrupted by someone stepping away to Twitter their whereabouts to the big screens. Crumpler and Timbuk2 bags abound, and indie rock plays before, after and in between the panels. Throngs of fans descend on speakers after each panel for advice, photos and book singings.

In other words, the nerds are running the high school.

Part of me is quite happy here, the part that used to stay up late writing HTML and watching Conan O’Brien, the part that loves Yo La Tengo. But part of me feels outclassed and outgunned, having my head filled with fantastic ideas and notions that my company could never get used to or find a use for. In that way it makes me push harder to build my own app, finally launch it and feel as though I have something to contribute here rather than passively consuming. Until then, a conference like this only serves to confirm my suspicions: that I’m on the right track, that agility is key, that in-house sales forces are a detriment to selling a good app.

Something that did give me hope was yesterday’s panel on design entitled “Learning Interaction Design From Las Vegas” with Dan Saffer from Adaptive Path. Saffer began his panel by quoting Bergson — “Disorder is only an order that we cannot see.” — and proceeded to site examples where the designers of the Las Vegas strip experience showed their innate understanding of UX. Among their triumphs are multi-use design, careful adherence to use cases and user personas, and tiered functionality. They’ve cornered the market on making silk purses out of the twin sow ears of wanton consumption and unbridled avarice. Sort of like making vertical sites with loads of add positions.

I can do this after all. Maybe.

I arrived in Austin this Friday to attend the SXSW Interactive Conference. I’ll be blogging some of my experiences here, if only to have something to do at the end of a long day other than stare at the Colorado River out of my hotel window, drink tequila or sleep.