I’ve been bitching about podcasting for as long as the word has existed. More specifically, my complaint centers around the way podcasting is typically done - by a geek or two who do nothing but wank on and on about the same boring crap that’s on their weblogs. For a long time I thought that was all there was to it. This is changing, and now that Apple’s iTunes 4.9 has all sorts of podcasting goodness built in I’m slowly changing my tune. This could actually get interesting.

I didn’t think much of this the day after the one-day Rails competition. I must not have been paying attention, because YubNub is sweet. It takes a little while to understand why. Bookmark it for a few days, then add one or two of your own commands. You’ll get it.

I added “jbsearch” as a command to seach this blog, for no particular reason, but it works just fine.

When I finally snap, assuming I survive the first 20 minutes, I’ll probably buy this quaint little 17th century fort on its own island, “Imposingly poised in the central approach to europe’s 4th largest port, with spectacular and moody setting, own jetty, and many parts.” Starting at only £150,000. That’s like $12.00USD right?

Please read Peter Merholz piece entitled How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Relinquish Control as another example of a better, smarter writer saying what I would if I could.

You all know the hype surrounding Ruby on Rails, so we don’t have to talk about that. What needs talking about is the idea of “Web 2.0.” AJAX, Javascript libraries, Rails and other bits are coming together to enable some really nice, useful, usable web applications. For example, yesterday I spent 10 or 15 minutes reordering a list on one of my Backpack pages. So of course today they’ve introduced the new drag and drop interface for doing just that. This is the sort of useful thing that makes stuff better. Much more to come in an upcoming Rails release. A few examples can be found at script.aculo.us.

Is it really “Web 2.0?” Perhaps not, but it sure is getting closer.

UPDATE A few minutes after posting this, I spotted this post calling those of us pointing out the general neatness of the drag and drop interface on Backpack “fanbois [sic]”. Well then color me a fanboy. A quote…

“I’m subscribed to just a few blogs that talk about Ruby, and every damn one of them posts this with a wide-eyed vigor that Java people can only hope to match.”

Java? What’s that and why would I care if they match anything? So, to clarify. The drag and drop interface on Basecamp is neat. I hope that many more apps use things like it, and wisely. Now, back to the circle jerk, already in progress.

Cory Doctorow’s new book is out. He always releases books under a creative commons license and with the complete text available online, for free. Of course I bought a signed, inscribed dead-tree copy. It’s cooler that way.

I’ll bet most people would benefit from saying “no” more frequently.

Here’s how…

Snoop Dogg’s Drop it Like it’s Hot and Led Zeppelin’s Whole Lotta Love make for the best mashup ever.

MP3 Link

[via boing boing]

I don’t read Slashdot much these days. Not because I don’t have time, but because the noisy drone of idiots is unbearable.

But this post might get me back

I hate iCal for lots of reasons that I no longer need to go into, since I’ve found the perfect replacement in the form of Remind. Yes, it’s a geeky unix tool. Yes, it requires command line skillz, but imagine a single, light-weight text file with all of your events in it. Each line looks like this…

REM Sun AT 21:00 +15 DURATION 1:00 MSG Family Guy

That says every sunday at 9:00pm show me that Family Guy is on, and start to warn me 15 minutes before it starts. That’s easy, but it can also do things like remind me…”every 3rd Tuesday from now until December 31st unless it’s a holiday or blue moon”

Wrap it up using a fabulously simple Curses-based “gui” called wyrd (pronounced like “weird”) and I’ve got lightweight, portable, fast, easy and flexible. All for free.

Oh, and I pipe the timed reminder alerts out through Growl so that it looks pretty when talking to me.

A nice piece by Mike Harris on 43Folders should get you interested.

This Linux Journal article by the author is also helpful.