Sunday Morning Shards #20

Smokler on January 9, 2005

On my mind and in the reading queue this week. The “Back to Work” Edition:

MacWorld is this week in San Francisco. I have never been able to filch a pass. I will however be attending the 43 Folders Meetup on Wed. in hopes of filching a Moleskine notebook or an OS X productivity tip.

The simply awesome play The Bright River begins the last two weeks of its run at the Julia Morgan Center for the Arts in Berkeley. Point blank: You cannot afford to miss this play. So don’t. It’s that good.

Does anyone know how to transfer contact information from a Palm Desktop to the Mac OS X Address Book? I tried to use the Missing Sync program by Markspace and got nowhere.

Great Business Week cover story “The Future of the New York Times.”

A Lazyweb request: Some needs to design Del.ici.ous for RSS feeds. In other words, lets say I want to know what feeds my favorite weblogger subscribes to. Would it be cool if a widget would allow them to place their feed list, blogroll style, on their blog and then allow a passerby to drag and drop the feed links into their own rss reader?

Lots of neat people have died in the past week or so. Shirley Chisholm, Will Eisner and Danny Sugarman.

Digital Web profiles the Top 10 Web Companies to Work For.

The AMPEX cassette tape company has filed for bankrupcy and closed down its last factory. There are no other cassette tape factories in the U.S (via Scott Andrew).

The Original Hip-Hop Lyrics Archive is a giant database of tracks and their rhymes.

Musicplasma lets you type in your favorite artist and presents a dots-and-nodes diagram of other artists that sound similar to them (via Del.icio.us/popular).

Who knew rooting out bad grammar could be so much fun?

I finished reading two books this morning. Which felt great.

What I’m Writing:

Smokler on January 7, 2005

My cousin was visiting last week and asked “Now that your book is done, what are you writing?” I got very nervous when he asked me because I didn’t have a ready answer. I hadn’t started on the proposal for my second book and no editor was holding a deadline over my head. What was I writing? You have to say something. Or at least I felt like I had to say something. That is what I tell my clients and what I say when I speak to groups. Always be writing something. It’s the only way to keep yourself honest.

In that spirit and because I promised in the last ‘Shards’ that my writing here would more closely tie to my writing in the real world. I’m going to use WTS to keep tabs on writing ideas and projects. By posting about them every so often, I’m hoping it’ll keep me straight about working my way through them.

What I’m Writing

1) An essay called “Why I Don’t See Live Music”

Where it could go: San Francisco Bay Guardian, SF Weekly.

2) A reported piece on MP3 blogs

Where it could go: Paste Magazine

3) A reported piece on author blogs

Location: Poets & Writers

4) An essay on unconventional book groups

Location: Pages Magazine

5) A series on the history of the streets of San Francisco

Location: SFist has asked for it. I need to do it.

6) Another ‘Light’ or ‘Tool’ piece for The Believer

Location: The Believer

7) Book and movie reviews:

Location: San Francisco Chronicle, SF Station.

I know it’s an ambitious list. Trying to aim big.

Why the Design of this Site Will Never Change:

Smokler on January 6, 2005

Because way back in the long forgotten days of 2002, I approached a young designer who was also a friend named Mena Trott to spice things up here at Where There’s Smoke. She was smart, talented and I liked her aesthetic. At the time, she and her husband Ben had designed and were marketing a weblog tool named MovableType. I had agreed to shift over to it from Blogger as part of Mena giving me a serious bargain on the design. We settled on that and the Gone with the Wind Deluxe Box Set as payment.

I read today that Mena and Ben and the other 70 employees on three continents in their company Six Apart have acquired LiveJournal, the third largest weblog tool provider. In this space, it’s the equivalent of Ford buying Chrysler.

Someday in the not to distant future, I predict a large media company like Yahoo or Apple will swoop in and buy Six Apart. Ben and Mena will be millionaires, then march off, design something else, and have the same kind of success. I’m still amazed that, when I met with Mena at their apartment to talk about the design, Six Apart was being run out of their spare bedroom.

So I can’t move things around here too much. The design is like a historical relic of the weblog’s teenage years. It’s got one of the giants of the medium’s finger prints all over it.

‘Good Company’:

Smokler on January 6, 2005

Suzan and I were fortunate enough to see an advanced screening (yay Balboa mailing list!) of In Good Company, an intelligent, sensitive comedy about life prioirities, particularly for men. Both of were sold after seeing the trailer but when the opportunity came to see it early and for free, we jumped. Afterwards, we determined we would pay to see it again.

We also talked afterwards about how few movies exist that ask, with some thoughtfulness, what it means to be a man, what your values and priorities are, and what emotions are yoked to those issues. So I’m asking you…Can you name any?

R.I.P Shirley Chisholm:

Smokler on January 5, 2005

Shirley Chisholm, a seven-term Congresswoman from Brooklyn, New York, the first black woman to both serve in Congress and run for president, died on Monday from a stroke. She was 80. Congresswoman Chisholm had been retired since 1991 and living what she called “a quiet life” in Florida.

A former Brooklyn schoolteacher, Congresswoman Chisholm was elected to the New York State Legislature in 1964 and the House of Representatives in 1968. Running for the Democratic nomination for President in 1972 under the slogan “unbought and unbossed”, Congresswoman Chisholm was an opponent of the war in Vietnam and a vocal supporter of woman and gay rights. As a legislator, she was a key player in the passage of minimum wage law. Bucking the silly orthodoxy of the Democratic party, she visited noted segregationist George Wallace in the hospital after his attempted assasination.

I was fortunate enough to see Shola Lynch’s excellent documentary Chisholm ’72: Unbought and Unbossed at the San Francisco International Film Festival and wasn’t aware of Congresswoman Chisholm. She struck me as a person of integrity, courage and patriotism, a rarity in politics today. She served 7 terms in Congress, was a role model to politicians like Barbara Lee (who worked on her president campeign as a college student), Carol Mosley Braun and Barak Obama. She was a gifted orator in the tradition old fashioned street-corner soapboxing. I would love to see a CD of her speeches released.

Although I only knew about Congresswoman Chisholm for a short time, I will miss her. I am moved beyond measure that politicians like Chisholm, like Senator Barbara Jordan who have every demographic reason in the world to believe that the American political process is closed to them have not only claimed their place but have done so with more pride and integrity than those who wear their patriotism on their sleeve. In Congresswoman Chisholm’s own words…

“I ran for the Presidency, despite hopeless odds, to demonstrate the sheer will and refusal to accept the status quo…
The next time a woman runs, or a black, a Jew or anyone from a group that the country is ‘not ready’ to elect to its highest office, I believe that he or she will be taken seriously from the start…
I ran because somebody had to do it first.”

Sunday Morning Shards #19

Smokler on January 2, 2005

On my mind and in the reading queue this week. The “Happy New Year” edition

Hey look, it’s 2005. Here’s what I’ve been thinking about…

*The death toll from the tsunami which has reached 150,000. Officials have pretty much given up hope of finding any more survivors. President Bush has enlisted former presidents Clinton, Carter and Bush Sr. to lead fundraising efforts. Here’s a list of charities that could use your support.

*A round-up of 2004’s major trends in journalism. Courtesy of the Online Journalism Review.

*Cluesome. Played at a New Years Day game party (hosted by my friend, Austin). Wonderfully fun yet sadly requires like 18 friends to play properly.

*My favorite 80s band Glass Tiger is apparently still touring and playing in their native Canada. They just released a DVD called “No Turning Back” which I must purchase immediately.

*’39. An against-type little 19th century-sounding folk number on Queen’s “Night at the Opera.” It’s the first track on my Ipod, alphabetical and all.

*The Hebrew Hammer. Sounds like my kinda movie. Netflix has got it on the way.

Re: Josh’s post on writing, I couldn’t agree more. It’s one thing to stay informed, to be in a continuous state of learning. But a raging river of input with little output leads to a soggy mind, a waterlogged consciousness. It’s something I’ve felt for a long time but couldn’t vocalize.

Which means that I need to be doing more non-blog writing. Apologies to the dozen or so of you who read Where’s There’s Smoke regularly. But I think I’ve been using my jotterings here as rationale for not expending more effort on more substaintial pieces for publication.

So as my single concrete New year’s Resolution, I plan to write a little each day, not just on my blog but with an eye towards something bigger.