After a couple of great years working with Jeremy, he’s officially moved on. Seems as though a juicy position at a seemingly well-run startup in Boston was enough to lure him away from us. I’m sure he’ll continue to kick ass. I’m just sorry I won’t be there to see it. We’ll miss you. We already do. All the best, Mr. Durham. All the best.

When it comes to photography, I’m a gearhead. I can’t help it. I spend an inordinate amount of time at photo.net and dpreview.com reading about camera equipment. Here’s a list of a few things I want right now…. Canon 5D Ricoh GR Digital Leica M 35mm f2.0 (4th, tabbed version) Voightlander 15mm Another AlienBees strobe A black muslin backdrop

One of the things on my list this weekend was to write some fancy deployment/configuration Switchtower recipes to aid in setting up new sites (which I’ve been doing a *lot* of lately.) After seeing the RailsMachine video it appears that they’ve given me yet another reason to believe that procrastination is good for you. Apparently, their recipes are to be made available, and they look very similar to what I had planned on trying myself.

Andreas Pfeiffer writes a piece on Why Features Don’t Matter using Apple’s iPod as a leading example of the soundness of the 80/20 rule, and why deliberately leaving out the other 20% works. Simplicity means getting something done in a minimum number of simple steps. Practically anything could be simpler – but you don’t get there by adding features.

New Yorker columnist and author of _Blink_ and _Tipping Point_ Malcolm Gladwell has a blog. You see, he’s a _writer_ with a blog. This means he has interesting things to say and writes them in a coherent and interesting way – on his blog. Exactly the inverse of most of what’s in your RSS reader right now, I’d wager. You should read it.

Bryan has finally gotten some momentum behind his new blog 10secondsofmylife.com. It’s a neat concept. Sort of like a photoblog, but with video. Each post contains a short video clip representing 10 seconds (or so) of his life. Imagine the value of that over time!

I’ve gotta say, as much as I like Apple stuff, today’s showing was a little disappointing. I know, it was a small event, not meant to thrill anyone, but they did say it was about some “fun” products. What we got was a couple of overpriced iPod accessories that should’ve been left to third parties. The Mac Mini is a nice step, but still short of the PVR I *really* want.

A few days ago I read about the quantum computing experiment which basically claimed to have used a “quantum based optical computer” to solve a problem – without even turning it on! Okay, that’s just crazy talk. I read the original article twice. I understood none of it. Today, a [3QD post][2] has culled a number of resources helping to explain the whole thing, including [this wonderful explanation][3]. I still don’t get it, but I don’t get it less than before, which I think is good.

Tonight, after several years, I unsubscribed from the PHP General mailing list. That probably means something.

Check out this movie on youtube showing the process of Microsoft repackaging the iPod. Pretty much summarizes the entire industry of dysfunctional marketing departments.

The first really interesting new camera announced at PMA today is the Panasonic Lumix DMC-LC1. It’s an SLR similar to the Oly E-300, but with a couple of notable differences. First, it looks a *lot* better. The lines have been cleaned up and smoothed out. Second, there’s a shutter speed dial right on the top. And most exciting is the new 4/3 format Leica lens on it. This new lens looks pretty sweet.

I’ve used a couple of TextHelper methods in Rails, but never looked at the docs for the entire module. Bad move, as I just (unecessarily) wrote a “truncate” helper method myself. Should’ve used the built in “truncate”. Note to self, Read the Docs.