The long-awaited Basecamp API was just launched. There’s a nifty Ruby wrapper available already, which uses serialized Yaml packets rather than the usual XML, making things even easier. I expect interesting things. More here.

Please see The Squid and the Whale. Jeff Daniel’s performance is truly great. This movie is about what happens to kids (and their parents) during divorce. It will make you laugh, but only because it’s better than the alternative. And you’ll get to hear _Metamorphosis_ described as “Kafka-esque”. It’s painful, adult, true, and a terrible sort of funny.

If you ever find yourself doubting that maintaining your integrity is the right move, you should see Good Night, and Good Luck. It’s a stylish, smart, grown-up movie that you’ll enjoy. So it seems Mr. Clooney can direct too.

Do you drive your big, selfish, me-first S.U.V. because you think it’s safer? If so, Malcom Gladwell thinks you’re wrong. S.U.V.s are unsafe because they make their drivers feel safe. That feeling of safety isn’t the solution; it’s the problem.  There’s an interesting chart in there with deaths per million cars for a number of vehicles. It’s interesting to see how poorly the S.U.V.s fared.

I’ve been writing scripts the past couple of days for synching things up between a few servers. I’ve wasted too much time already with 2 issues: When using rsync anywhere near mounted Windows shares, always include the option -modify-window=1. This will prevent rsync from trying to copy nearly *every* file each time. It has something to do with the differences in how Windows stores modification times. The latest OS X update to Tiger broke the –delete option.

With Annie Proulx’s whiny little rant about the Oscar’s, I need no further reason to skip Brokeback Mountain. I’m now officially glad that it lost. The grapes, they sour quickly, and all at once.

I was so happy to read Mark Morford’s piece titled _I am Done with Violence_. “Violence no longer informs me. It no longer has the power to teach. It is a one-note song I’ve heard so many times it has lost its power to stun or impress or delve deep. It now merely tears at the fabric of the soul, punches holes in the anima, scrapes its knuckles on the pavement of hate, and you can shrug and roll your eyes and go watch “The Hills Have Eyes” or “Saw II” or even play some hi-res shockingly ultraviolent video game and enjoy the brutal escapism and wallow in the bloodshed while pretending it’s not slowly, quietly blackening your world view like a smoker sucking down another carton of Marlboro Reds, but deep down, where the meanings are, I think maybe, just maybe, you might be seriously mistaken.

Tracking time on projects is hard. No, that’s not true, it’s easy to do, it’s hard to do consistently and accurately. Holding to my never-wavering belief that software can solve all of life’s problems, I’ve tried 6 or 8 time tracking apps. Each of them failed in its own way. So I’ve gone back to the most reliable and easy to use time tracking tool available – paper. I track my time by 15 minute intervals, so the form I use looks like this…

It’s just an optical illusion. Isn’t it?

Tracy has a fresh new look over at Sistercat. You don’t have to be a cat person to enjoy it. It would be inappropriate of me to comment further.

37signals gets a lot of flack in blog comments and elsewhere from people who probably aren’t as good, and likely have serious self-esteem issues. I disagree with the haters in all cases. The 37signals folks almost always say exactly what I meant, only better and to a much larger audience. A fun thing they’ve begun doing on their Signals vs. Noise weblog is to post some of the highlights of recent Campfire conversations.

Whatever you do, do NOT see Domino. Of course if you actually enjoy having every irritating and gimmicky visual director trick thrown at you almost non-stop for two hours, then by all means, rent it. Tom Waits shows up near the end, but his character is completely unfathomable and by that time you won’t care. Add to that a completely irrelevent Jerry Springer segway and Christopher Walken yelling “Why did you change the fucking font!