Technology Blog

I dogfood good and plenty, but only where stuff can be made to integrate with my world. My world, as it happens, tends to include asynchronous whirrs and chips — often supplied by Warp Records, of Autechre, Aphex Twin, Boards of Canada and Plaid fame.

One day they disappeared from the Yahoo! Music Unlimited catalogue - a rather abrupt reminder of all that’s entailed in a subscription music service. “A friend in the music business” said there was an issue of some sort. Meanwhile, despite owning more Warp tracks than is good for me, I had gotten hooked on sipping the newer releases from Boards of Canada and Autechre from YME, access to which was provided through my unlimited subscription. But man, once they pulled Warp, it was a little dismal for us connoisseurs of IDM, ambient, and electro.

Now they’re back. Yay!

So it’s time for me to support both Warp and YME and make my first purchase - Campfire Headphase from Boards of Canada, though the review from Y! Music is a little off the mark. Who knew Yahoo! had music reviewers? Sign me up.

This post was written by eleanor, source: The return of the Warp Records catalogue to Yahoo! Music Unlimited

OK, all the signs are pointing to me needing to spend more time with WordPress. Among PhotoMatt’s 22nd, the fanfare around the launch of WordPress 2.0, and the fact that my VP is leaving to go work with Matt - all conjoining with a long weekend, time had clearly come to upgrade and finally port my whole bloggy world over to a vibe more manageable from my Yahoo! busyness.

So I’m down to 73 feeds, with a few more hanging on the edge of (in|ex)clusion. I’m proud - I used to find 200 almost indispensible daily reading.

Hello world, many happy returns, etc.

This post was written by eleanor, source: Hello world: Return from the silent majority

While at Supernova, my (disclosure) buddy JD Lasica and I did a video talking about JD’s book, Darknet, on the conflicts between remix culture, Hollywood and Washington. My first citizen journalism experience - what a dilletante.

I thought JD’s book was great, a really solid treatment of the subject. He used one of my favorite approaches to understand a space — a combination of a big picture survey with deep dives to profile specific instances. In this case, it was profiling people and how they were using technology (almost all of the illegal under the DMCA, poor folks) to do new things with media.

And that spurred me to finally do the Amazon review that JD asked me to do weeks ago (only after I said it was a good book!) - so I’ll post it here. Perhaps I should reread the T&C of the Amazon page to see what I signed away, but microcontent is microcontent (is microformats) and it’s all mine. And thus I will repost for you to remix.

In what is essentially a PR war of hysteria (on both sides), JD presents the middle ground, shifting the focus off the corporations and file-sharing teenagers. We learn about real people who, having become accustomed to technology in their lives, adopt it to create a richer media experience. These hobbyists have the tools and ambition to express themselves, except now the law has intervened. Before, fair use was an acceptable compromise because it was hard to make a perfect copy. Now with perfect duplicates, all fair use is suspect, since the tools used to digitally record a few seconds of a song or movie for a remix piece are the same that pirates would use to steal music or, worse, to profitably bootleg. Those tools illegally circumvent copy protection and the act is a crime no matter the intent.

This is the tension JD describes is his book - a world where an absolute law applies to a range of activities, many of which seem perfect resonable and socially beneficial.

JD presents no real answers because as a society we haven’t come up with them yet. Darknet triggers important questions: is fair-use an intrinsic “right”? should it be? what can people repurpose for their own use in a non-commerical setting? how can that be defined/controlled? where are the mechanisms to license use of this content?

JD points us to the root of the conflict: otherwise normal people become criminals in pursuit of creating their own art and entertainment - works as “trivial” as they are culturally important.

This post was written by eleanor, source: Finally, the Amazon Darknet review

While at Supernova, my (disclosure) buddy JD Lasica and I did a video talking about JD’s book, Darknet, on the conflicts between remix culture, Hollywood and Washington. My first citizen journalism experience - what a dilletante.

I thought JD’s book was great, a really solid treatment of the subject. He used one of my favorite approaches to understand a space — a combination of a big picture survey with deep dives to profile specific instances. In this case, it was profiling people and how they were using technology (almost all of the illegal under the DMCA, poor folks) to do new things with media.

And that spurred me to finally do the Amazon review that JD asked me to do weeks ago (only after I said it was a good book!) - so I’ll post it here. Perhaps I should reread the T&C of the Amazon page to see what I signed away, but microcontent is microcontent (is microformats) and it’s all mine. And thus I will repost for you to remix.

In what is essentially a PR war of hysteria (on both sides), JD presents the middle ground, shifting the focus off the corporations and file-sharing teenagers. We learn about real people who, having become accustomed to technology in their lives, adopt it to create a richer media experience. These hobbyists have the tools and ambition to express themselves, except now the law has intervened. Before, fair use was an acceptable compromise because it was hard to make a perfect copy. Now with perfect duplicates, all fair use is suspect, since the tools used to digitally record a few seconds of a song or movie for a remix piece are the same that pirates would use to steal music or, worse, to profitably bootleg. Those tools illegally circumvent copy protection and the act is a crime no matter the intent.

This is the tension JD describes is his book - a world where an absolute law applies to a range of activities, many of which seem perfect resonable and socially beneficial.

JD presents no real answers because as a society we haven’t come up with them yet. Darknet triggers important questions: is fair-use an intrinsic “right”? should it be? what can people repurpose for their own use in a non-commerical setting? how can that be defined/controlled? where are the mechanisms to license use of this content?

JD points us to the root of the conflict: otherwise normal people become criminals in pursuit of creating their own art and entertainment - works as “trivial” as they are culturally important.

So, I’m pre-posting on this so in case there’s anyone out there that’s interested and doesn’t already know.

Mark Pincus, Marc Canter and Tom Luddy are trying their hands at viralizing an independent movie with Joan Allen (what an interesting forehead she has!) and Sam Neill called Yes in SF by SBC park at 6pm tonight.

An interesting marketing challenge, since the film’s name, Yes, is such an ubiquitous part of speech. That makes it a hard word to viralize, not quite as easy to pickup on as, say, Sideways is when it’s being debated at the next table. Let’s hope that the text based aggregation of getting bloggers and other cool kids to write about it will help.

I am signed up, but am probably not headed back up to SF since we were there all day yesterday for the KRON blogger meet up. I’ve got a bunch of posts to get up, and have the hankering to play with my WordPress install.

So if you’re in SF tonight, jot your name down on the evite, join the crew, watch the film, drink the kool-aid and then faithfully blog.

It’s curious to note that despite signing up and somewhat committing to attend, it’s only now, while searching for a link for you faithful readers, that I bother to get more info about the plot of the movie. Mark’s posts and the Evite just mention Joan and Sally Potter, no Sam Neill: I wonder who the customers of this project are ultimately? Are reputation effects of Sally and Joan enough to carry the film with no further info, or do bloggers just like a party and special sneak preview treatment?

It’s probably a great opportunity: I missed seeing Primer at both Gnomedex and Defcon last year, and haven’t caught up with it since. And that’s been my loss.
Tags - “Yes” film

This post was written by eleanor, source: Viral marketing movie preview for bloggers tonight “Yes”

So, I’m pre-posting on this so in case there’s anyone out there that’s interested and doesn’t already know.

Mark Pincus, Marc Canter and Tom Luddy are trying their hands at viralizing an independent movie with Joan Allen (what an interesting forehead she has!) and Sam Neill called Yes in SF by SBC park at 6pm tonight.

An interesting marketing challenge, since the film’s name, Yes, is such an ubiquitous part of speech. That makes it a hard word to viralize, not quite as easy to pickup on as, say, Sideways is when it’s being debated at the next table. Let’s hope that the text based aggregation of getting bloggers and other cool kids to write about it will help.

I am signed up, but am probably not headed back up to SF since we were there all day yesterday for the KRON blogger meet up. I’ve got a bunch of posts to get up, and have the hankering to play with my WordPress install.

So if you’re in SF tonight, jot your name down on the evite, join the crew, watch the film, drink the kool-aid and then faithfully blog.

It’s curious to note that despite signing up and somewhat committing to attend, it’s only now, while searching for a link for you faithful readers, that I bother to get more info about the plot of the movie. Mark’s posts and the Evite just mention Joan and Sally Potter, no Sam Neill: I wonder who the customers of this project are ultimately? Are reputation effects of Sally and Joan enough to carry the film with no further info, or do bloggers just like a party and special sneak preview treatment?

It’s probably a great opportunity: I missed seeing Primer at both Gnomedex and Defcon last year, and haven’t caught up with it since. And that’s been my loss.
Tags - “Yes” film

So last night Mike and I had a rocking soirée with 60 or so folks who I can only describe as the thinking man’s drinkers. Geeks and nongeeks, boys and girls - all very cool people.

Despite my best efforts to astonish with tasty snacks, the highlight of the evening was absinthe brought by Robert Rich and his wife Dixie. Side note, Robert injured his right hand horrifically a couple months ago and is blogging about the recovery process. Last week, Dave McClure blogged about heroism the other day, and this is my nomination for heroism in our time.

Many thanks to all who came - we might have something else next weekend, we have a TON of leftover beer. I thought this picture of the 23 different kinds of beer we have left would speak volumes. Yeah, I was playing with my camera a couple weeks ago and left it with the datestamp setting on. Oh well.

I didn’t blog about this because I wanted to make sure I knew the people who showed up. And we do, after all, just have an apartment. If you missed the evite, email me and I’ll make sure to add you to my contacts for next time.

So thank you to everyone who came - we had a ton of fun and you were great guests. Our kitchen still is a bit of a mess, but the rest of the place is almost as clean as it was when started.

This post was written by eleanor, source: Fun with the thinking man’s drinkers

So last night Mike and I had a rocking soirée with 60 or so folks who I can only describe as the thinking man’s drinkers. Geeks and nongeeks, boys and girls - all very cool people.

Despite my best efforts to astonish with tasty snacks, the highlight of the evening was absinthe brought by Robert Rich and his wife Dixie. Side note, Robert injured his right hand horrifically a couple months ago and is blogging about the recovery process. Last week, Dave McClure blogged about heroism the other day, and this is my nomination for heroism in our time.

Many thanks to all who came - we might have something else next weekend, we have a TON of leftover beer. I thought this picture of the 23 different kinds of beer we have left would speak volumes. Yeah, I was playing with my camera a couple weeks ago and left it with the datestamp setting on. Oh well.

I didn’t blog about this because I wanted to make sure I knew the people who showed up. And we do, after all, just have an apartment. If you missed the evite, email me and I’ll make sure to add you to my contacts for next time.

So thank you to everyone who came - we had a ton of fun and you were great guests. Our kitchen still is a bit of a mess, but the rest of the place is almost as clean as it was when started.

This post was written by eleanor, source: Fun with the thinking man’s drinkers

Mike and I saw the new Star Wars movie last night. While not as bad as the first two, the whole prequel series drives home a powerful lesson:

No matter how smart, gifted, driven, visionary, or well-financed you are, you will not think of everything and involving a group of people as spectacular as you are will make your thing better.

Everyone has blind spots, personal biases, and momentary lapses that keep them from achieving perfection. Peer review — even a simple chat among friends — exposes the weak spots, the obvious inconsistencies, the non-sequiturs, and the critical flaws in your venture. Reality checks can save your business.

As our operations/lives/business/jobs/industries become more complex and entwined, maintaining close connections and involvement with a group of your peers becomes even more important. And that’s part of the beauty and value of the blogosphere. It’s a huge distributed peer review system, as well as a tool for filtering news and attention. You can get a lot more of everything (news, analysis, criticism) that you want, but the insights can be tremendous.

But for some people virtual, distributed “mentoring” doesn’t work. And indeed, we all need real life relationships. A colleague, Blair Koch, with who I worked on a Product Management peer group happened to call this morning and tell me about how she was getting involved in The Alternative Board. Check it out - if you’re struggling on your own with these issues maybe you can find a valuable safety net, a trusty community of peers in this group.

It’s true it takes work. The smarter you are, the rarer you are. But that’s not an excuse. Keep looking and you will find them. Find mentors: good mentors collect people like you and can help you assemble peer groups.

It’s even harder here in the Bay area, surrounded by this culture of innovation where we lionize the coder or entrepreneur working independently. Of course we can do it “on our own”. Reading Darknet last night, I hit chapter 12, Architects of Darknet, where JD Lasica writes about Shawn Fanning (Napster), Bram Cohen (BitTorrent), Justin Frankel (WinAmp, later Gnutella) and Ian Clarke (Freenet) as lone warriors (notice these guys are… all guys - PubSub’s Bob Wyman told me women need get out and start more companies; which is undoubtedly true). These are guys waging an epic struggle, pursuing their vision, all on their own. But it’s “just” code. Important code, but scaffolding.

Vision is good. All strategy books say you need vision. But there’s a difference between a collective vision and a personal vision — especially when it comes to crossing from revolutionary to greatness. If you’re a guy with a revolutionary tool - if you’re brilliant and hardworking enough, you can do it. That same mindset doesn’t apply to building a company (or great films).

This post was written by eleanor, source: The importance of a peer group

Mike and I saw the new Star Wars movie last night. While not as bad as the first two, the whole prequel series drives home a powerful lesson:

No matter how smart, gifted, driven, visionary, or well-financed you are, you will not think of everything and involving a group of people as spectacular as you are will make your thing better.

Everyone has blind spots, personal biases, and momentary lapses that keep them from achieving perfection. Peer review — even a simple chat among friends — exposes the weak spots, the obvious inconsistencies, the non-sequiturs, and the critical flaws in your venture. Reality checks can save your business.

As our operations/lives/business/jobs/industries become more complex and entwined, maintaining close connections and involvement with a group of your peers becomes even more important. And that’s part of the beauty and value of the blogosphere. It’s a huge distributed peer review system, as well as a tool for filtering news and attention. You can get a lot more of everything (news, analysis, criticism) that you want, but the insights can be tremendous.

But for some people virtual, distributed “mentoring” doesn’t work. And indeed, we all need real life relationships. A colleague, Blair Koch, with who I worked on a Product Management peer group happened to call this morning and tell me about how she was getting involved in The Alternative Board. Check it out - if you’re struggling on your own with these issues maybe you can find a valuable safety net, a trusty community of peers in this group.

It’s true it takes work. The smarter you are, the rarer you are. But that’s not an excuse. Keep looking and you will find them. Find mentors: good mentors collect people like you and can help you assemble peer groups.

It’s even harder here in the Bay area, surrounded by this culture of innovation where we lionize the coder or entrepreneur working independently. Of course we can do it “on our own”. Reading Darknet last night, I hit chapter 12, Architects of Darknet, where JD Lasica writes about Shawn Fanning (Napster), Bram Cohen (BitTorrent), Justin Frankel (WinAmp, later Gnutella) and Ian Clarke (Freenet) as lone warriors (notice these guys are… all guys - PubSub’s Bob Wyman told me women need get out and start more companies; which is undoubtedly true). These are guys waging an epic struggle, pursuing their vision, all on their own. But it’s “just” code. Important code, but scaffolding.

Vision is good. All strategy books say you need vision. But there’s a difference between a collective vision and a personal vision — especially when it comes to crossing from revolutionary to greatness. If you’re a guy with a revolutionary tool - if you’re brilliant and hardworking enough, you can do it. That same mindset doesn’t apply to building a company (or great films).

This post was written by eleanor, source: The importance of a peer group

So I’m in a good mood apparently and not overly professional feeling. My feed reorg seems to be working: I caught a tag music game going on (I should set up searches on my name, but honestly I’m chicken). Jonas tagged me and I will participate.

Last cd’s bought: Winterkälte’s Disturbance and Casino Vs Japan early stuff. A bit epicurian for even my tastes, but CvJ’s Whole Numbers Play the Basics is one of my top 10 albums ever. The CvJ site gives a great sample of their sound. Soothing.

Disc volume: Server says 15.6 files in the main jukebox, but I’ve not burned everything and there are cds of mp3s offline too.

Current song: None. Last song played: (before I started this exercise - FoxyTunes displayed it in browser all day): Psychedelic Furs - Sister Europe.

My list is songs that have been stuck in my head over the last few days:

1. Converter’s “Dron(ritual)” off the very good Exit Ritual (note that “very good” in the category of power noise is a relative thing)
2. Death in June’s “Fall Apart” - neo-folk from Serbia. I have a couple versions, but Something is Coming is a good mix of acoustic and studio work. Warning, he occassionally uses Nazi imagery, but I think I would too if I was in Serbia thru the wars. Jonas?
3. Coil’s “Slur-Babylero-Ostia” (different parts of all three songs) off Horse Rotorvator
4. The Cure’s “A Strange Day” off the dark Pornography
5. Radiohead’s “Sit Down, Stand Up” from Hail to the Thief - this and Paranoid Android are about as mainstream as I get
6. Lastly, and quite enduringly, the “So Long and Thanks for All the Fish” song from HHGTG

I really can’t recommend most of that. I do have singular taste - love music with chirps instead lyrics, strange distinct beats and distortion. I find it tremendously focusing. But I do recommend:

1. Haujobb Vertical Theory - the kind of Industrial I favor besides noise.
2. Balligomingo Beneath the Surface - folks from Nettwerk back in the day (Delerium, FLA). Should I find it weird that Avril Lavigne is on Nettwerk now?
3. Autechre’s Amber or EP7 - excellent working music.
4. Anything Robyn Hitchcock - he’s an amazing songwriter and bard (even has a song with Eleanor in it!). If you can find his cover of The Furs’ “Ghost In You”, do it.
5. And on the rare, odd side - Coil/Elph’s Time Machines project - it all sounds like ciccadas. Here’s a review and I use the disc in the same way as the reviewer. It’s epic hot summer afternoon music!

Since I hate chain letters, but generally follow norms, I’ll tag Niall, MJ, Mike, and Russ. Ignore as you may.

And I’ll confess - between reading Darknet and meditating on all the file sharing I don’t do, I’m thinking of Yahoo’s music service. $5 is just about right. I even might be Russ’s sucker, but only if his Zen isn’t some girly color :-). A nice lime green is preferred.

This post was written by eleanor, source: Music fun

So I’m in a good mood apparently and not overly professional feeling. My feed reorg seems to be working: I caught a tag music game going on (I should set up searches on my name, but honestly I’m chicken). Jonas tagged me and I will participate.

Last cd’s bought: Winterkälte’s Disturbance and Casino Vs Japan early stuff. A bit epicurian for even my tastes, but CvJ’s Whole Numbers Play the Basics is one of my top 10 albums ever. The CvJ site gives a great sample of their sound. Soothing.

Disc volume: Server says 15.6 files in the main jukebox, but I’ve not burned everything and there are cds of mp3s offline too.

Current song: None. Last song played: (before I started this exercise - FoxyTunes displayed it in browser all day): Psychedelic Furs - Sister Europe.

My list is songs that have been stuck in my head over the last few days:

1. Converter’s “Dron(ritual)” off the very good Exit Ritual (note that “very good” in the category of power noise is a relative thing)
2. Death in June’s “Fall Apart” - neo-folk from Serbia. I have a couple versions, but Something is Coming is a good mix of acoustic and studio work. Warning, he occassionally uses Nazi imagery, but I think I would too if I was in Serbia thru the wars. Jonas?
3. Coil’s “Slur-Babylero-Ostia” (different parts of all three songs) off Horse Rotorvator
4. The Cure’s “A Strange Day” off the dark Pornography
5. Radiohead’s “Sit Down, Stand Up” from Hail to the Thief - this and Paranoid Android are about as mainstream as I get
6. Lastly, and quite enduringly, the “So Long and Thanks for All the Fish” song from HHGTG

I really can’t recommend most of that. I do have singular taste - love music with chirps instead lyrics, strange distinct beats and distortion. I find it tremendously focusing. But I do recommend:

1. Haujobb Vertical Theory - the kind of Industrial I favor besides noise.
2. Balligomingo Beneath the Surface - folks from Nettwerk back in the day (Delerium, FLA). Should I find it weird that Avril Lavigne is on Nettwerk now?
3. Autechre’s Amber or EP7 - excellent working music.
4. Anything Robyn Hitchcock - he’s an amazing songwriter and bard (even has a song with Eleanor in it!). If you can find his cover of The Furs’ “Ghost In You”, do it.
5. And on the rare, odd side - Coil/Elph’s Time Machines project - it all sounds like ciccadas. Here’s a review and I use the disc in the same way as the reviewer. It’s epic hot summer afternoon music!

Since I hate chain letters, but generally follow norms, I’ll tag Niall, MJ, Mike, and Russ. Ignore as you may.

And I’ll confess - between reading Darknet and meditating on all the file sharing I don’t do, I’m thinking of Yahoo’s music service. $5 is just about right. I even might be Russ’s sucker, but only if his Zen isn’t some girly color :-). A nice lime green is preferred.

This post was written by eleanor, source: Music fun

Well, not that I was at the first ones, but I heard they rocked. Scott Beale of Laughing Squid and crew are putting on another Webzine. It’s a conf, party, subversive get together, geek-out and art thing all at once. In September. And we don’t even have to head out to the playa.

Yes, the rumours are true! After FOUR long years, Webzine will return later this year to San Francisco. We don’t know how we could have gone so long with a Webzine event either. What is Webzine you ask? Webzine is your momma’s cookies, a cup of warm tea, a masturbating monkey, Carl Sagan in the shower, orgasmic, educational, a party, a couple days at the beach, living chinchilla earmuffs, a Habitrail, a snort, 10 hours of sleep, a magical sword, a French kiss, a conference, an expo and celebration of independent publishing on the Internet. It’s an excuse to bring some of the most amazingly brilliant online content creators together under one roof, exposing their secrets so YOU, dear reader, are inspired to create your own. That’s what this is all about. Creativity, ideas and the tools to take you there. Listen, learn and leave inspired.

Webzine’s in SF the weekend of 23-24 September. And it’s going to be cheap as hell.

I’m definitely going and volunteering to help out in any way I can. Check it out.

I like conference sites that are run on blog software. Anyone else noticing that blogs are just a cheap, quick and easy way to get stuff in a web-based database?

This post was written by eleanor, source: Webzine 2005 is back

Well, not that I was at the first ones, but I heard they rocked. Scott Beale of Laughing Squid and crew are putting on another Webzine. It’s a conf, party, subversive get together, geek-out and art thing all at once. In September. And we don’t even have to head out to the playa.

Yes, the rumours are true! After FOUR long years, Webzine will return later this year to San Francisco. We don’t know how we could have gone so long with a Webzine event either. What is Webzine you ask? Webzine is your momma’s cookies, a cup of warm tea, a masturbating monkey, Carl Sagan in the shower, orgasmic, educational, a party, a couple days at the beach, living chinchilla earmuffs, a Habitrail, a snort, 10 hours of sleep, a magical sword, a French kiss, a conference, an expo and celebration of independent publishing on the Internet. It’s an excuse to bring some of the most amazingly brilliant online content creators together under one roof, exposing their secrets so YOU, dear reader, are inspired to create your own. That’s what this is all about. Creativity, ideas and the tools to take you there. Listen, learn and leave inspired.

Webzine’s in SF the weekend of 23-24 September. And it’s going to be cheap as hell.

I’m definitely going and volunteering to help out in any way I can. Check it out.

I like conference sites that are run on blog software. Anyone else noticing that blogs are just a cheap, quick and easy way to get stuff in a web-based database?

This post was written by eleanor, source: Webzine 2005 is back

Perhaps it’s that I’m used to holding out to read books a bit after the hype has died down, but JD Lasica’s Darknet is downright freaky in how current events it still feels. I’m only about halfway through now, but it’s been very good. And weird. It’s like not having to zip around and hunt and read blogposts to get the back story. JD said he finished it last summer, but it was clearly edited to include events up to late 2004 (and I can’t find it now, but I thought I even saw a 2005 date).

But it’s so current it’s freaky. Like in yesterday’s massive news trawling I ran across this bit about Macrovision and what you can and can’t do and why. And TiVo’s email newsletter is promoting Record, Burn, Go, a $400 combo DVDR-PVR device.

We’re so much in the midst of this now, I wonder how it will standup once we get further out - or if it will be like Smart Mobs, which I read quite a bit after it came out (it think it described the Euro-Asian mobile zeitgeist much more successfully than here in the US).

I’ll write more later, but wanted to throw out how relevant the book is immediately. The stories about people (a bunch of whom I know) are much crisper than either Howard Rheingold or Neil Gershenfeld manage - somehow the interviewees speak more for themselves without extraneous description. Usually I take personal stories as just color and dialogue, but JD does a good job here weaving them into the larger narrative. This is just an off-the-cuff observation, but I’ll have to ask JD how he managed all this info. There were some direct quotes in here from a long time ago.

Things like quotes and sources are an odd thing for me to pick up on in a book (other than as bibliographic inputs to further research!). Jayson Blair was just ridiculous, but the story of Michelle Delio hits a lot closer to home since I can recall reading (and like Techdirt, scratching my head at) some of her pieces.

This post was written by eleanor, source: Darknet - the “now” in book format

Tonight there are two book events for more scholarly pursuits (not everything is food & drink):

• Steve Johnson has a book signing for Everything Bad is Good for You at Books Inc. in Mountain View at 7:30PM.
• Scott Berkun takes time out from talking to big corps with a chill meet up during his book tour of the Bay area. He’s out promoting his new project management book, The Art of Project Management. This one is, yes you knew it was coming, at Faultline Brewing Co., a bar in Sunnyvale starting around 7.

Niall and I (currently listening to Tim Draper of DFJ at Stanford) are headed to the 2nd event, though I am still eager to read Johnson’s book too.

This post was written by eleanor, source: Being bookish: events tonight

And now I’m off down the coast with my dad! See ya tomorrow night.

This post was written by eleanor, source: Coastal

Courtesy of Jonas (and Courtney for the bus!) we had a geek out in vino-ville yesterday. A herd of 24 (or 26 depending on your math and the time of day) descended on Napa. We picnicked at VS Sattui, where a few of us tasted (the one free tasting of the day - hit Sonoma for the free tastings!) while the others teetotaled. Jonas and Stephanie found a most snacky dessert - chocolate pretzels (think chocolate teddigrams) and this sublime dipping sauce with an improbably perfect combination of pear and cinnamon with caramel. Like a psycho apple butter. I had to snatch some for my own pantry as shown below. Yeah, it remains unopened (I hoard; it’s restraint that gives me the warm feeling all over). Hey Mike, you better hurry home.

Then we did nature tourism0-trekking. From the petrified forest (did you know St. Helena was a volcano??) — I especially liked this shot –

and the geyser, you could hear just the most inappropriate comments - it was clear none of us left our real lives too far behind. Then we went to Sterling, which was pricey but tasty (as long as you kept on keepin’ on with the tastings). On the trip down the hill (Sterling has a fancy gondola ride), we had a little incident. Mischievous, sauced geeks vs gondola and gravity. Bounce bounce. We didn’t fall, but we probably coulda, and got some pretty nasty looks from the crew as they (off in the distance) scrambled to restart the gondola. They eventually sent a truck from which descended a guy who pressed a button to get us moving again (kind of anticlimatic). And yeah, when you’re already pushing Treo-photography to the limits, it’s best not to take pictures while howling with laughter.

I don’t even think he gave us a dirty look when we (docilely) floated by, but I can’t be sure ‘cause I was laughin’ too hard. Probably not, I bet they rock the gondola during the off hours. Oh yes indeedy.

As the Treo shots show, I didn’t have a real camera then, being the non-camera born in Rochester never-worked-for-Kodak iconoclast I tend to pose as. But I actually have been suffering camera envy all week, and got one this AM (in time for the food pR0n up above). Not sure I’m gonna keep it, but you’ll start seeing better pictures soon. In case you’re interested in what the rest of the pro-quality camera toting crew captured, the flickr tag for yesterday is (teehee) Rockin Gondola.

The group was great - some people I knew pretty decently, others I’d seen and barely talked with before, and still others completely new. Because we were not geeking, we didn’t start a company, invent a new AJAX type thing, or a new programming language, but we did talk about having a “geek prom” (spurred by the fact that all of the East Bay seemed to be on prom night), outings to Winchester and other places and also a more oenophile wine outing.

But in my book the exceptional factor of the group (beyond that I liked them all) was that it was almost 50% women. And if a pugnacious warrior like Jonas can build around him a group of really competent, interesting women, why can’t other guys?

This post was written by eleanor, source: Wine and geeks and gondolas: girls and boys together having fun

I’m trying to get on top of happenings again, and will post this sooner rather than later. Especially since I’m gettin’ outta town for both wine country and and crashy coastline adventures in the next few days. What a lucky girl. We can’t all go to Finland, but this sure beats U.S. Customs!

As Mike and JD blogged, there’s going to be a Grassroots Media/Booklaunch for JD’s new book, Darknet: Hollywood’s War Against the Digital Generation next Friday May 13 early on from 6-9 pm at CNet’s offices in SF.

Congrats to JD on getting another one out there!

Well, what could be more grassroots than caustic humor?

Afterwards, we can keep on keepin’ on with the guys from the Onion who’ll be spinning and partying at 12 Galaxies (2565 Mission Street) from 10 til 2am. Craigslist and INFORUM (the hipster scion of Commonwealth Club) are playing host, and the event is free. I got this from a pr buddy, and will post a link to Craigslist when they have it up. Here’s a link from INFORUM.

Ah, the Onion. I recall after college when I went into office life that it struck me that Onion distribution had to be one of the web’s killer apps… While occassionally hit-or-miss for me now (I’ve grown so humorless), I found this particularly choice specimen. It’s nigh headache inducing, but is probably profound.

This post was written by eleanor, source: Advance notice this time: Onion/Craigslist party after JD’s media stuff

So the blogher project is up with the detail on the conference announced…. not the full agenda, but the most critical details:

• Dates: Saturday 30 July - all day, with pre-dinner Friday night
• Location: Techmart, Santa Clara, CA. Note on Gmaps that the little J should be across the street. It’s a good venue (a tad sterile, but we’ll girl it up somehow) in the heart of Silicon Valley. To give folks the flavor I tried A9’s neighborhood maps, since it came off so well at last night’s great BayCHI search session. But there was no data here for this ‘hood. Too bad. (Incidentally do see Mike’s notes on last night’s session.)
• Cost: $99, with scholarships available for those who commit to live blog. Nearby hotels and a girl network for more communistic, sleep-over style accomodations.

Blogher.org will be the core community site, so keep an eye there for the group blogs and other community building resources as they roll out.

The final agenda for the conf should be out 1 May.

This post was written by eleanor, source: www.blogher.org goes live, conference ‘05 logistics announced