“With this general statement of my principles and belief I will proceed to describe the plan and apparatus it is my intention to test. In explaining these, my object is to learn to what extent similar plans have been tested and found to be failures, and also to obtain such suggestions as your great knowledge and experience might enable you to give me. I make no secret of my plans for the reason that I believe no financial profit will accrue to the inventor of the first flying machine, and that only those who are willing to give as well as to receive suggestions can hope to link their names with the honor of its discovery. The problem is too great for one man alone and unaided to solve in secret.”

That paragraph is wrapped in wordy goodies.

Editors note: I updated this post to reflect that in fact Wilbur, not Orville, wrote this letter. My apologies.

Letters of Note, a site that transcribes old letters showing both an image of the original letter along with the transcription of it, is probably the best way to come out of this unplanned hiatus.

The letter that spurred me to write this suggestion was “I was ready to sink into the earth with shame”. However, a recent notable letter “I refuse to salute the flag” is also worth linking to.

I’ve been subscribed for weeks and have read every letter.

I’m still reading her daily posts on her blog from back in June, I hope to catch up sometime soon, but I’m hung on every word. She is a must read/follow/subscribe.

Marisa, we’ll be referencing Food In Jars a lot in the coming months. Thanks for the hard work involved in putting it out there.

Side note: Hurley is by far my most-favorite character on LOST. Charlie Pace was always a close-second and when we lost him in Season 3 I always said that if Hurley goes I won’t watch anymore. With only one season of LOST left I think it is safe to say that Hurley will be around until nearly the end if not the end – so I’m happy about that.

Why do I enjoy Jorge’s blog? Because of posts like this. Jorge recently came to New York to be a guest on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon ((Here is a video of him being on the show which I think is classic.)) and in doing so stayed at a hotel where he had some interesting observations. That is why I like his blog.

Tweetie for Mac, which I’ve been using all morning, allows for multiple accounts, posting from the browser, auto URL shortening, and much more. Although it feels like 1.0 it is certainly a well polished 1.0. Looking forward to watching this application mature.

“In our own time, I wonder if the very slowness of books makes them more valuable in the face of all the quickness around us, if their singular nature will prove to be their saving grace. And if so, can that inspire the design of a reading experience on the web that strives for the same lack of haste? Can we envision a future where leisure has its place?”

You really should consider reading the entire entry. Grab a cup of coffee, or maybe start some dough for bread, and enjoy.

Editor’s note: I don’t know Mandy Brown but her blog is definitely in the top three well-written blogs that I subscribe to. Every post is excellent. Her blog will, more than likely, make my Best of 2009 ((See my Best of 2008 list.)) list.

One thing I did like was that when the update was announced, they had taken steps to make sure that everyone’s feed subscription didn’t go stale. However, I don’t like that both elise.com/recipes and SimplyRecipes.com are one in the same. One should forward to the other. Google doesn’t like duplicate URLs (no matter what Jesse her web guy told her).

That’d be my only suggestion.

The reason I’m linking to this site, though, is really that I’ve been using Simply Recipes to find excellent recipes for a long time and I thought I’d throw it into my suggested tag.

Source: Simply Recipes.

In short, Readability removes ads from around the content. However, unlike its predecessors (at least the ones I’ve seen) Readability also formats the article that you want to read into a much more readable design on the fly. So, ad-blocker plus.

Source: Readability.
See also: The Arc90 Lab’s blog post with video.

For the past several weeks we’ve been interviewing for various positions at Viddler. We’ve gone through several resumes, conducted a few interviews, probed referrals for information about the interviewees, sent follow-up questions, and generally debated the fate of our would-be potential new team members for what seems like weeks. This is an interesting process on both sides of the table. I’ve been on the other side of the table more times than I care to recount, but it really is an interesting process to pour over one’s career (or lack thereof) to somehow build an opinion of someone.

It is somewhat disingenious to be sure. We could never really, really get to know this person based on a one-page document that they probably threw together the night before their interview. “Experiences? Why yes, I have those! X, Y, and Z. I’m familiar with them.” Seldom do resumes reveal the extent of that familiarity. Did the person take the time to prioritize the things they are experienced in based on the amount of time they’ve spent with them? Or, did they list them in order of the supposed importance for the job at hand? Or, did they write down anything they thought might be good to know for the job? No one can be sure – really – at least for the first few weeks they are on the job.

Then there is the entire struggle to really get to know who someone is. To peel away the nerves, the front they are showing in order to impress us, the bullet points on the resume, and the clothes they wore to the interview to reveal who the person is after they’ve known us for a few years. Do they like to cook? Have they traveled? Do they want to? What do they think about family? Religion? The state of the economy? Are they really a morning person or are they just saying that they are? Time, it seems, is the only tool that can be used to find out the answers to these questions.

Sorry. I’m ranting. That isn’t what this post was supposed to be about.

I wanted to review Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain. I just finished it the other day. The book reminded me of this process. Kitchen Confidential, it could be said, is the resume of Anthony Bourdain – a New York City chef that has 30+ years experience working in what he calls “The under belly”. The book begins with his first experience eating a raw oyster in French waters when he was just 9 years old. That one, raw, delicious oyster changed his entire life. I’m guessing it would be the first bullet point on his resume.

But this book serves as something much better than a resume. Resumes are cold, factual, and do not leave room for too much expression. The “story”, if there is really a story in this book, is revealed to us in a rather haphazard way. He bounces around through his career to slowly describe who he is through what he experienced. Want to know his thoughts on meat? You’ll slowly begin to draw that picture based on several experiences he had at many of his jobs. Tip: Don’t ask for your meat to be well done. Want to know when to order seafood? Learn from the guy who buys the stuff in the hundreds of pounds. Hint: Not on Monday or Tuesday. What about his thoughts about personal work ethic? Immigrant labor? Race? Gender? Or even about who should or should definitely not own a restaurant? You’ll need to read the entire book to find out.

I’m not sure what I find fascinating about Anthony Bourdain other than his style of thought. It is obvious, when he’s given the opportunity, that he chooses his words fairly carefully. I suppose I see an older version of myself somewhere in there. Someone who notices the little things, enjoys the fine things, can only afford the not-so-fine things, and yet has the privilege to once and a while dip my hand into the “fine things cookie jar”. A self-reflective kinda dude. It could be that I would love to have his job (not the chef bit, but the traveling eater raconteur bit). Either way, I’m enjoying my attempt to glean as much experience vicariously through Anthony Bourdain as I can. His show, his books, his blog are all my tools in building my own food, travel, and writing resume without the expense.

Kitchen Confidential, for some one that even remotely enjoys food, the restraunt business, or interesting people, is an essential addition to the book shelf. It has inspired me to continue to do what I love, to be willing to have my mind madeover later in life when my ideals are proven incorrect, to learn as much as I can from every single job that I do in order to make the next one better, to build a list of hard working people that I wouldn’t mind working with again in the future, and to eat weird in hope of epiphany.

Source: (non-breaking-space).

Last night, somewhere between the hours of 2:00am and 4:00am (yes, I was awake, lying in bed, watching TV) I watched an incredibly good documentary on PBS called THE ATOM SMASHERS which is part of the Independent Lens series.

Being a fan of science, I found this documentary very educational and entertaining and it helped to catch me up-to-date on some of the developments of subatomic research. Many of us have seen the headlines about CERN – but there is more much to the story about the research they will be doing at CERN. People have been doing this research for years. Physicists at Fermilab, a government-funded particle accelerator, have been searching for the Higgs boson before the idea for CERN was conceived. THE ATTOM SMASHERS reflects on their journey, struggles, successes, and failures.

I found it riveting.

Source: PBS – Independent Lens – THE ATOM SMASHERS.
Photo credit: PBS.

Terry Gross, the host of Fresh Air, is an unassuming, casual interviewer that consistently conducts interviews that hold your attention for the entire length of the program. She’s intelligent, in touch with what the audience wants to know, and obviously tirelessly prepares for each episode.

Being a radio program – it is well produced with high-marks for living by its own rules even though it is consumable as a podcast. If you like talk radio and enjoy interviews of incredibly interesting people – Fresh Air is for you.

Source: NPR’s Fresh Air from WHYY with Terry Gross.

Be sure to check out other suggestions I’ve made.

I’ve long respected Roger’s opinions of movies. It turns out I agree and respect his opinions on a great many things. Consider this my recommendation to subscribe.

Source: Roger Ebert’s Journal (Sadly it seems “blog” isn’t a good enough word.)

Ps. You can have a post-script on a blog, right? Anyway – I think I should take a taste of my own medicine and get back to some real blogging myself. Hmmm.

How in the world haven’t I been subscribed to XKCD? Thanks to SuggestRSS (more on this service soon) now I am. The above is one of my favorite recent comics. The subtle details, even in a simple drawing style such as it is, are a really nice touch.

Source: XKCD.com
Via: SuggestRSS.

I’m no literary scholar by any stretch of the imagination. But I do know that there are only so many ways to tell a story. It is sort of like skinning a cat. There are many ways to do it but there are a few that are the most common. The Lord of the Rings is a “hero’s journey” story arc. It is the story of Frodo and the Ring. It doesn’t hide this, in fact, it states it plainly.

However, I won’t judge the story arc of The Fellowship of the Ring due to it being only the first three parts of a six-part series. In fact, it was never intended to be a book all its own at all. The rather anticlimactic ending shows this to be all too true. Instead I’ll focus on the way that The Fellowship of the Ring slowly unravels itself.

What I mean by that is that, I think, J. R. R. Tolkien does an incredible job at slowly, but not too slowly, revealing the backgrounds of the various characters that appear in the story line. The story progresses while at the same time it goes back and forth through time, mostly through the characters telling stories, so that the reader gets all of the information they need.

There are a number of ways to do this in story telling. Usually this is done by keeping the protagonist, or one of the main character’s in the story, ignorant of all the facts. This gives the other characters in the story many opportunities to fill in the details through dialogue. Many stories have a cast each with their own areas of expertise. An action hero paired with a scientist or scholar so that the “brain” can inform the “muscle” of the facts for the benefit of the audience. Or, this can be done with a narrator. The narrator, whether it be a character in the story or just someone telling the story, usually has all of the information because they are telling a story of times past. The Lord of the Rings has both of these really. Two of the main characters are, in fact, the narrators (and writer’s) of the books while their own characters, in this case the protagonist, is learning all of the details along the way. This leaves ample opportunity for explanation. Frodo is learning the story and telling the story at the same time.

I rather enjoy the way the back stories unfold in The Fellowship of the Ring. The deep history of the lands, characters, peoples, trees, and even mountains in The Lord of the Rings really shows the context of the current story. It shows that this particular story is only a small part, albeit an important part, of the history of the world in which this story is set. Small details are intertwined in dialogue, descriptions, and events that – unless the reader is paying attention – they may altogether miss. A few examples of this come to mind; Aragorn’s approximate age, the lineage of Arwen, and the history of Sauron. These stories are never told flatly but are rather pieced together through bits of information you get along the way. The only history not told in this way is the history of the hobbits which is told in the prologue. The history of Men, Elves, Dwarves, and many of the main characters are all unraveled from within the story itself.

By itself The Fellowship of the Ring is a great opening to a fantastic story. I was going to watch the movie version of this book in between finishing it and starting the next. But I fear that will ruin my mind’s impression of the book’s version of the story (since the movie version is a lot different). I’m looking forward to The Two Towers.

Oh, and I’m back on the diet. I’ll be posting screenshots of my own progress once I get at least 14 days worth of data recorded into Weightbot. At which time I’ll be sharing my method for weight-loss this time around as well.

If you have an iPhone and want to track your weight; get Weightbot.

Source: Weightbot by Tapbots.
Additional resources: How to calculate your own BMI.

“Say the thing with which you labor. It is a waste of time for the writer to use his talents merely. Be faithful to your genius. Write in the strain that interests you most. Consult not the popular taste.”

Not that I’m planning on going against the grain just for the sake of doing so, but I like the sentiment to always do what you feel passionate about rather than conforming for audience or peoples.

I recommend adding THIS DATE, from Henry David Thoreau’s Journal to your reading list.

Source: THIS DATE, from Henry David Thoreau’s Journal.

The gameplay is great. The game has no “controller” interface, as with most well-done iPhone games, but there is an amazing attention to detail in Rolando. If you have an iPhone or iPod touch – this is a game that I highly recommend you buy immediately.

Source: Rolando.

Reading the changelog you can see that this is a fairly large release when you weigh it against previous versions. You can also see that it has been one of the longest periods of time between releases. This is most likely due to Todd Ditchendorf, the developer of Fluid, taking on the much more challenging task of creating a full-fledged Web browser called Cruz.

On the Fluid blog Todd mentions that “This release incorporates most of the features and fixes that went into Cruz 0.1…”. That makes me happy, since I’m not a big fan of Cruz, but am a big fan of Fluid. At least the work Todd is doing on Cruz doesn’t mean that Fluid is being left behind. Kudos to him for developing in this manner.

Source: Fluid.

I’ve been subscribed to Sarah Marchant’s blog, dreamdust, for a while. I believe Mike found her photos on Flickr, suggested her profile to me, and it went from there. That was years ago. Recently, however, Sarah has been on fire on her blog.

She posts about her life, plain and simple. It isn’t that her life is any more exciting than any of our’s – it is just about the way she looks at things, describes them, and focuses on details that would go unnoticed by most of us. Most recently I’ve enjoyed fair warning, Yucky things, and Oh good, she’s talking about compost again.

I suggest visiting her site. If you like what see, subscribe.

Source: dreamdust.

I’ve been subscribed to Koren Shadmi‘s Livejournal titled Paper Feast for a long time.  This morning, while sipping my coffee and reading his latest entry called China Rocks, I did a quick search for his name on my site and was surprised that I’ve never mentioned him.

I’m rectifying that right now.

Koren is an amazing illustrator. Paper Feast is a behind-the-scenes look at his work for newspapers and magazines when they ask Koren to provide an illustration for their articles.  The process is as amazing as the results.

Here are some of my most recent favorites; China Rocks, What’s Driving Toyota?, Daddy’s New Job (pictured), and well, I could go on and on.

Ladies and gentlemen, this is a must-subscribe.

Source: Paper Feast by Koren Shadmi.

Brand New is a blog that covers the world of corporate and brand identity as it relates to work that has been recently released.  This blog is refreshing since it doesn’t look into the past, as many other blogs are doing so well already, but looks towards the future of these brands with their very latest iterations of identity.

Some of my favorite recent posts include: Popeyes Gets Jazzy, Philips gets a Nip/Tuck, and A Leaf grows in New Jersey.  There are several others that are definitely worth a look.

Source: Brand New.

Especially on today’s Internet. I’ve had “my own site” for as long as I’ve ever been online. It all started on some Geocities and Tripod powered sites in the mid-90s. Then, when I switched from using AOL  (read: When I finally realized AOL was not the Internet.), I used some shared space on Prodigy.net, my ISP at the time. It wasn’t long before I discovered the world of Web development and purchased a domain (then called colinspage.com) for around $70 per year.

Fast forward about a year and a few of my friends put together a Star Wars related news site called thehutt.net. I didn’t help out too much with the design and development but I did write some for the site.  It wasn’t long after that when I wanted to scratch my own itch and had my own blog.  Which ended up turning towards theubergeeks.net, and now I have cdevroe.com.

I think having your own Web site is a valuable thing, especially for those of us that work on the Web.  It helps you stay in touch with what people are going through when they want to publish content online, edit some code, or even customize an open source project.  There are countless lessons to be learned by having your own site to fiddle with.

Great work Kyle. I’ll check in on you and your site(s) in 14 years.

Source: Kyle Slattery.com.

You’ll notice that after each link on my site, I have the following text:

“Have a recommendation? Do you have a link, product, service, book, or something you think I’d be interested in linking to? You can write me an email and let me know about it.”

If you find something interesting, please let me know about it!  If I find it interesting, I’ll post about it here on my site and give you credit for the find.  Oh, and I don’t want this to be limited to virtual things, quite the contrary.  If you let me know about a physical “thing” that I might be interested in, I might just beg you to send me one so I can try it out for myself and then write about it.

Buy! Buy! Buy my photos!  I am not sure why I haven’t done this sooner but you can now ask to purchase any of my photos.  You can request the original digital file or a print!  Here is the text that appears below each photo here on the site.

“Please note: This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License. If you would like to buy an original copy of this, or any of my photos, please contact me.”

I’m mainly doing this for anyone that would like to use my photos commercially, obviously.  The license that I’ve decided to use, for any content on my site, pretty much states that you are free to use my “stuff” non-commercially so long as you give me proper attribution.  If you want to use it commercially, you’ll have to throw a few dollars into the tip jar.

So please, use the suggestion and money boxes.  I’m excited to learn about interesting things that you come across in your lives.  So get started!

Source: Rion.nu a photoblog by Rion Nakaya.