I think I’ll try something a little different for a while.

The new blog address is jackbaty.com. That is where you’ll find me.

While I enjoy sharing things, I don’t like the writing part so much. Good grief, each and every little post needs a Title and its own private page with comments and trackbacks and all sorts of overhead. I don’t need that kind of pressure!

So instead I’ll be posting just the important bits of things like quotes, links, images, code, tips or whatever else strikes me. Each post will contain no title or date. There won’t be a place for commenting - and here’s the best part - there’ll be very little commentary from me. There’s even an RSS feed so you don’t really have to pay attention.

I’ll keep the archives here (blog.jackbaty.com) for the time being, but the real blog from here on out will be at jackbaty.com.

Let’s see how it goes.

[Update] It didn’t go very well. Let’s move on.

It’s possible I might have enjoyed myself by renting something other than Hukkle tonight, but I doubt it. The film is Hungarian, although that doesn’t matter because it is almost entirely wordless so you won’t have to read anything. But you will listen to it, because the sound is amazing. And you won’t take your eyes from it because the visuals are stunning. And, although it moves rather slowly, you’ll pay attention because it’s breathtaking. The sudden perspective shifts are both jolting and perfectly natural. There are all sorts of circle-of-life type things going on, much preparation and eating of food, bugs, animals, dirt, pig testicles and quite possibly a murder. And oh yeah, hiccups - lots of ‘em. It’s marvelous.

Would one of y’all buy me an Ambient Executive Dashboard please!? I’ve been avoiding it for months, but as we all know, I’m not very good at that. Hurry!

Clive Thompson (NYT) has a very interesting article about Life Hacking. The article actually only spends a portion on life hacking, and the remainder on the effect interruptions have on productivity. Good read.

If you ever have a need for a simple, elegant timer app for your Mac, look no further than Minuteur.

Jack Shafer, in his recent Slate piece describes what he calls a “crush” held by media outlets over Steve Jobs and all things Apple. He cannot understand why significant updates to one of the most loved and popular consumer devices ever would cause a stir. He suggests that Fortune, Globe and Mail, San Francisco Chronicle, Detroit Free Press and others are just blindly slathering unearned adoration on what amounts to a collection of ho-hum products. I mean, if it weren’t for catchy ads and Steve’s undeniably dynamic personality, why there’d be nothing to talk about.

Personally, I think he may have just a tiny little bit of a point in there, but let’s not forget that we are after all dealing with a raging success. We don’t buy iPods because Jobs tells us they’re cool. We buy them because they are cool. Mr. Shafer wants to see articles “… comparing the V-iPod’s technical specs to those of competing brands.” I don’t know anyone who bought an iPod because of it’s technical merits. They bought them because they’re damn sexy and dead simple to use. Hold any of the competitors in your hand, then hold a nano - no comparison. Hell, I don’t even want one, yet I want one. Know what I mean?

And then…

“When the V-iPod’s super-duper, long-lasting, big-screen replacement shows up in 12 months, the press will have forgotten this second-rate box, too.”

No shit. Do you know why? Because the new one will be a super-duper, long-lasting big-screen replacement that everyone will probably love. Not because of the reality distortion field or some sort of Apple fan boy mentality. It will be because it’s still far and away the best damn player out there.

Even if you’re not a fan of street or fine art photography, Elliot Erwitt is guaranteed to make you smile. Some of his stuff is just miraculous.

I learn a lot from lesscode.org, and recommend it to others. However, today’s post beating up on 37signals is just way off. The complaint is with the very nifty new 37signals product, Writeboard. Alex says that he sent a writeboard to his wife who then struggled because she couldn’t just click on the text and start typing. I’m sorry, but unless she’s never done anything useful with a browser before, this just seems silly. Even my dad, who struggles with the most basic tasks on his computer, would click, pause, glance up and say “oh, there’s how this works right there” - then he’d be off and running (at his usual blindingly fast 12 words or so per minute) without more than 5 seconds of thought. I can’t imagine anyone thinking it was “very frustrating.”

“How’s this possible? I still can’t believe that the simplicity messiahs managed to deliver the product that is more complex than MS Word. You see, my wife never had a problem logging on to the Word document and create/edit/revise the content on the spot.”

More complex that MS Word? If by “complex” he means completely-different-and-much-less-complex than Word, I might agree. Sigh. Yes, I know it’s a writing tool, like Word. And even though I understand his point, there’s just way too much drama here over essentially a moment’s confusion.

I’ll assume we’ll be back to the usual quality programming tomorrow.

Steve has been going on about Under Armour underwear like they were the only thing in the world that mattered. Okay, that’s a lie, but he did say that wearing them made him happy. Hey, I’m all for happy, so I ordered a couple. Damn, now I’m happy too! Seriously, these are some great underwear. Better is better. Thought you’d like to know. Get yours

Some good advice about doing it right the first time, even when we “don’t have time right now,” from David Heinemeier Hansson…

“Realize that “don’t have time right now” is a self-fulling prophesy. You will never have time right now if you don’t take it today. The business is not going to slow down to allow you to clean all these things up one wonderful day. It just won’t happen.”

I think we all find this tough to do under pressure. And we all regret it eventually.