It's the little pooper's 1st birthday today. We've had him in the house for about 8 months, and it's hard to believe how much he's grown since his puppy days. He's more than doubled in weight (from 12 lbs to 25 lbs) but his favorite morning routine remains finding a patch of sun and sleeping in for an extra hour or two after breakfast.
]]>Daring Fireball on the New iPhone-Optimized Mobile Flickr Web Site
]]>
The Colossal Media / Banksy collaboration at the corner of Grand and Wooster is great. I love it, wanted to get a permanent record of a great New York image but just thought a straight up photo was too boring. This is my first attempt at a composite image, it works pretty well but I'll have to try using some of the other sets I shot. There's also a black and white version.
]]>
That's vaguely disconcerting...
]]>"...nor, to be honest, has Palin herself apparently learned the first thing about successfully finessing questions she is not ready to handle. (Hint: the approach is not the one she has tried to apply with Katie Couric, that of repeating verbatim the answer that did not do the job the first time around.)"
(Via Coudal on Twitter.)
]]>
Ouch. Less than 12 hours before the vultures got their ads up on Facebook targeting people in the Lehman network? I'm getting a number of ads like this today, presumably because my FB account has that network on its list. On the Internet there's no "respectful pause"... the harpies just descend instantly.
]]>It's been a sad weekend (and month) watching Lehman Brothers circle the drain and ultimately go under last night.
For those that don't know, I worked as an investment banker at Lehman Brothers for four years, leaving earlier this year. Generally, the employment agreement for most bankers includes not discussing the job outside of the work context (and, accordingly, not blogging about it) so I've never said too much about it online.
Lehman was a truly outstanding company to work for and a great group of people to work with. I was always proud to be associated with the bank and I am still proud to have worked there. There was truly a focus on doing the right thing, not just for the client or the bank but the right thing, period. When I was in business school, out of all the banks that came to talk, only Lehman's CEO Dick Fuld took any time in to address the issue of ethics in his speech.
Obviously, there was some very serious mismanagement resulting in today's bankruptcy filing. But I hope Lehman won't be put in the same category with companies like Enron or Worldcom that mailed because of malfeasance and deception. As far as I'm aware, and as far as any of the present reports indicate, Lehman was simply a company that played hard right up to the final whistle in the face of a broad macroeconomic downturn and broad credit crisis. One wonders who may be next now that Lehman, Bear and Merrill are gone.
]]>
I'm definitely liking the little transient prompts that Facebook is employing to educate people about their new interface. FB faces an interesting GUI problem in that they're a web site that has a user base ranging from first timers and very occasional users (both of whom see it as a "transient" application) and daily users for whom it's a "soverign" application that often stays open all day long. The prompts allow FB to make the new interface a little easier to learn, but once you acknowledge them, they don't show up any more.
This technique has been around in software applications for a long time, but you don't see it as often on web sites, perhaps because fewer sites ever make the transition to sovereign status, or because they do but are so simple it's unecessary (e.g. Twitter.)
]]>Both of these devices are almost zero maintenance and they're great as gifts or for your own home. It might seem odd to spend $50-200 on a device that gives you the same information you could get from the web, but this is something you're needing every day, and it's massively convenient, especially for folks who spend a lot of time outdoors walking the dog, etc. (I do think the price point on the 7-day is too high.) I need to get one for my parents -- they're not on the web as often, and it's a huge bonus from them to be able to just look on the fridge and instantly see the latest forecast.]]>
...that even on the Internet, your mom still calls you "tommy"... but does she really even have to have me in her address book that way too?
(Mom also doesn't believe in subject lines. The day I get a message from her that is a one-line subject with "n/t", I'll know it's time to prepare for the reckoning.)
]]>