Steven’s Notebook

In my own defense, I can point out that I have also written heartwarming books where people return from the dead. Usually to eat the living, it’s true, but surely that is a quibble — a miracle is a miracle.”

– Stephen King, in his article ‘A History of Violence’

I really need to post more, if for no other reason than to get those pictures of snow off the front page [grin]

Here are some pictures I’ve taken over the past few months…

This past week, I read Practices of an Agile Developer, not because I’m currently employed as a developer, nor because my employer uses them, but because I believe the guidelines are good ones to be practiced no matter what the profession. Check out some readers’ notes, then invest some time in the book yourself, especially if you are in the software development arena.

How to get a Swiss army knife onto an airplane at the world’s busiest airport (Atlanta): put it in your carry-on bag next to a full-sized tube of toothpaste where the friendly TSA security checkpoint workers can fail to see it with their X-ray scanners. 

How to get a sharp-tipped ”club-sized object” with a onto an airplane at Baltimore-Washington International airport: distract the friendly TSA security checkpoint workers and their  their X-ray scanners with a Swiss army knife and a deadly full-sized tube of toothpaste. 

I sure am glad we’re not counting on these friendly folks to keep us safe or anything. 

As a follow-up to my previous post, Is Your Text Broken, see also John Gruber’s article today on Tynt, the Copy/Paste Jerks:

All they’re really doing is annoying their readers. Their websites are theirs, but our clipboards are ours. Tynt is intrusive, obnoxious, and disrespectful. I can’t believe some websites need to be told this.

Another example of intentionally broken websites. It’s sad, really.

Steven B. Johnson, on digital text applications:

When your digital news feed doesn’t contain links, when it cannot be linked to, when it can’t be indexed, when you can’t copy a paragraph and paste it into another application: when this happens your news feed is not flawed or backwards looking or frustrating. It is broken.