Walking to work this morning I passed the setting up of NYU's Strawberry Festival (scroll down page). Promising a "Big Fun DAY!", the Festival will take place on W. 4th Street between Washington Sq. and Mercer from 11 AM - 3 PM. It's free and requires an NYU or government-issued photo ID. There will be cotton candy (yippee!) and all sorts of other street fair delights, a DJ, and they promise strawberries. What's odd is that they must be California strawberries, or some sort of import. It's too early in the year for local berries, isn't it? Regardless, it could provide a fun alternative to deli sandwich lunch if you're nearby.
OK, before I lose my mind and tear apart everything on my desk, I thought I would turn to the wonderful world wide web for some help. I'm trying to do some CSS-based tabs. I want them to work in the major browsers (read: pretty much everything but NN4). I've read a variety of articles about this, including Mark Pilgrim's Pure CSS Tabs and Mark Newhouse's CSS Design: Taming Lists, and I'm stuck. Can you help?
If you're interested in seeing, fondling, or purchasing a new iPod in the NYC area, you'll have to wait until Friday night. The Apple store in SoHo (and I suspect the other stores as well) is having an iPod event from 6 - 10 PM with a "Live DJ, Free event poster, Limited-edition T-shirt. And more." You can also "win an awesome JBL sound system." I asked a salesman today why they didn't offer iPods at the store as soon as they were announced. He said they wanted, "to have everyone here, at once." While that may be fun (fun?) for the Apple store, it seems annoying for a curmudgeonly consumer like me. I don't want to pack into an Apple store on Friday night and hang out with a bunch of geeks and wait in a big line and be all crowded and bonked into. I just want to touch it before I buy it, and I can't do that online. Whine whine whine. I want an iPod now.
Update: Liz Phair will be at the SoHo store on Friday night. So maybe it *is* worth going! Tip from David.
Here's my presentation from the O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference, "From the Margin of the Writable Web" in your choice of Powerpoint [112 KB] or HTML. Enjoy! And thanks again to everyone who took the time to offer suggestions. I'll try to post all of those when I get a chance later this week.
Update: here are the collaborative notes taken during my talk by some folks in the audience using Hydra. And here are Cory Doctorow's notes from the talk.
Six Apart: Six Apart Ltd. Announces Close of Series "A" Financing
Six Apart Ltd. Announces the TypePad Personal Publishing Service
Six Apart Ltd. Names Anil Dash as Vice President of Business Development
Wow wow and wow! Way to go Ben and Mena!
Ludicorp has whipped together a really cool social space called Confab for ETech.
Confab is an ad-hoc conversation space mapped to the conference facility's floorplan which allows you to discuss and debate sessions live with other attendees, make contacts, send instant messages and create conversations to plan group meetings and activities.
It will be very interesting to see how well it works and what sorts of behaviors emerge during the conference.
This conference has confirmed my inability to multi-task in anyway, shape or form. I can't even manage to take notes and pay attention, never mind blog a talk, and Google it, and ask questions, and everything else that other people seem to be doing. So I'll point you to Jason's ETech coverage. Who knows how long he can keep it up, but it's great while he's doing it. I think I'll resign myself to listening for know.
I'm going to see the folks I dig, and attend the O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference. None of my bags are packed, I'm not ready to go. But my presentation is all set and I can't wait. Yippee! And to everyone who I owe email (many going back months) I'm going to try and answer a bunch on the plane. Honest. Really. At least, I hope. That's the plan. Thanks for your patience.
It's getting on summer time and you know what that means -- time to plan some vacations! One of my favorite places in the whole wide world is Lassen Volcanic National Park in Northern California. It's got boiling mud pits, sulfery pools, and an active volcano, all less than five hours from San Francisco! It makes a great weekend hiking getaway, and you can rent a house up there that'll sleep many (like 13!) for $300/weekend. I tell you this because I got a brochure today in the mail from the people I've rented from twice before, McGovern's Mt. Lassen Vacation Chalets. If you're looking for some good outdoor hiking fun, and an alternative to the crowds of Yosemite, Lassen's your park, and McGovern's chalets offer clean, cheap, and close access to some really spectacular sights.
Last night as I exited the subway, I stopped at the booth to have more money put on my MetroCard. As my transaction was being processed, a train pulled in. Several people began exiting through the turnstiles, while at the same time a woman came rushing into the station, mumbled about being in a hurry and missing the train, and got on line behind me. Just then, a woman exiting called out,
"Hey lady! Lady!"
We both turned.
"I just swiped my card so you could go through. Hurry! Don't miss your train!"
And with that, one woman dashed through the turnstile, calling out her thanks, and onto the uptown train. The other headed off into the evening. And I walked the whole way home with a smile, my mood brightened by what I'd witnessed.
I subscribe to all sorts of daily and weekly emails but none please me as consistently as the Manhattan User's Guide. It's always the perfect length. It arrives in a timely fashion. It covers topics of interest to me (food & restaurants, shopping & services, neat things to do, etc.) and it does so with humor and insight. As a new New Yorker, it provides me with a wonderful blend of practical and special, giving me insider-like knowledge of all things Manhattan even though I've lived here less than six months. Best of all, it's free. If you live in NYC and you're not subscribed, I'd say you're missing out.
As part of Passover, I knew Jews celebrated Seder but I wasn't aware of a Christian Seder movement. Reading the details, some of it makes sense. Some of it, "Seder is Christian and we can be confident that it will be a worthwhile experience because Jesus told us to do it," does not. For those that are celebrating, whether Christian or Jewish, Happy Passover! For those sweet-tooths that are celebrating, here are some recipes for Passover Tollhouse (chocolate-chip) cookies and Passover Chocolate Mandarin Torte. Yummy.
I am probably the last person in the world to learn this, but in the off chance that I'm not, I wanted to share this fabulous discovery: ladies, if you wear a beige bra beneath white t-shirts or lightweight cotton blouses that are rather sheer, you get no bra outline! Stupid me, I usually wear white bras, and I could never figure out how to hide that horrid "bra outline" that appears. But now I know, it's all in the wearing of the beige bras. Of course, if your skin isn't a shade of beige, it probably won't work for you. So in that case I'd recommend a brown or black bra. But you get the point -- if bra matches skin, it doesn't show through shirt! But I bet your probably already knew that, didn't you?
Thanks to everyone who's sent in thoughts about the cutting edge of blogging. The stuff I've gotten is really great. I think I'll post some of it to the site because a lot of it won't fit into my presentation but it's good stuff worth sharing. I thought "I want to be your naked personal assistant" from Candi had a lot of potential, but when I opened it, it turned out to address a different subject matter. Naked assistants and blogging, what more natural fit could there be?
Tomorrow (Thursday) night at New York City's The Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine (the largest cathedral in the world) from 9 PM to midnight there will be a reading of Dante's
The Inferno. From the website: "New York poets and writers will read 'Inferno' by Dante Alighieri during the vigil on Maundy Thursday, the very hours Dante intended the events in this masterpiece to take place. Free admission."
I'm into the final push for my presentation, From the Margins of the Writable Web, for the Emerging Technology conference next week. I've been working on this for weeks now, but now I need you -- the general public -- to make sure I haven't missed any bleeding edge weblogging stuff (i.e. not warblogs or anything you'd read about in the paper). What's happening on the far-frontiers that I might have missed? If you've any ideas, please let me know via email. You'll get credit in my presentation if I use your example, of course. And I'll be posting the presentation afterwards to this site. Thanks for your help and participation, I appreciate it.
"Every woman needs the following: her 'fuck me' shoes and her 'don't fuck with me' shoes." - Heather Champ
ATTN: L'Oréal Marketing Dept.
RE: Round Two
Mesdames:
After my inablity to achieve experte hair color last night (and as you now know, achieving instead garish results), I found myself Open to different hair colors. I sought something that would perhaps even out the cheetah-colored blend, while helping me, "see sparkling color alive with highlights." Alas, it turns out I am more than open about hair color, I am a foolish risk-taker who cannot learn a lesson. Didn't I learn about mixing red and blonde back in January '00?
It was the picture on the box that tricked me, mislead me, gave me hope. I wanted the "color that's never harsh, never fake." I wanted to be ZENITH 7c Copper Dark Blonde. It was, I admit, your marketing copy about ZENITH that sold me:
When you imagine your personal best, where are you? What are you doing? That's up to you. But your hair is probably this coppery dark blonde.
When I imagine my personal best, I am in New York City. I am walking down the streets of SoHo, wearing something sexy, something snuggly fitted that shows off my body. Heads are turning, both men and women, in my direction. Not because my hair is this coppery dark blonde, but because my hair is bright orange, a comic spectacle, a dye job so bad is supercedes the cheetah look of 24 hours ago.
Must I give up on L'Oréal completely? Is there no cheap hair product for me?
Living my personal worst,
Megnut
ATTN: L'Oréal Marketing Dept.
RE: Product names
Mesdames:
You recently launched a new hair coloring product with the name Couleur Experte. My understanding, based on your marketing campaign, was that I would couleur like a pro and achieve experte results from my home bathroom. I write today to suggest an alternative marketing campaign. While your intentions with the name experte may have been good, my results speak for themselves, and highlight (no pun intended) the need for an immediate rebranding of Couleur Experte.
May I recommend Couleur de Débutant -- novice color, as we say in English -- as an alternative? While it may not spark sales like the other title, it more aptly describes the couleur de cheetah result I have achieved with your product.
Experte? Pas moi,
Megnut
Bend it Like Beckham, the wonderful movie I mentioned recently, is getting a wider release across this US this weekend. So if it wasn't playing in your neighborhood, check again, it might be now.
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