Dean Landolt

“Obscenity is the crutch of the inarticulate motherfucker.” - cloak42

Interesting take from Hugh Macleod of gapingvoid…
As we move from proprietary to open worlds, we are seeing another transition. The customer is becoming the partner. And not a day too soon.
He’s got a tough road ahead of him, and good luck to him. Let’s hope this kind of fresh perspective can rub off on his […]

Another goodie from SvN, the advice “Don’t make a post a project”:
Jason F: it’s more important to get this content out there than to put it off further because there’s more to write.
Jason F: So don’t make the post a project
Mark I: Yep, I’ll publish within the next 5 minutes.
Ryan S: takes note on […]

Best. Website. Ever.
I laughed. I cried. I lament not having a digital camera to try and roll my own spin on such a creative idea.
[via SvN]

Am I the only one offended by the word bipartisan? Isn’t it a bit of an over-simplification? Even if we were all republicrats, isn’t there more than two sides to every issue? When describing a measure, this word seems to carry with it a positive connotation of inclusiveness, but it’s all a farce. It suggests […]

…with WordPress!
It’s only been a day, give or take, but I think it’s the real deal. Granted, I’ve had a tendency in the past to fall too fast for my CMS choices only to be heartbroken by their deficiencies later…
But this time, I think it’s for real <3

I’m constantly reminded of how poor a writer I am in my constant struggles to finish original work (a forthcoming series on Vendor Relationship Management I’ve been trying to pen for a month now is a good example). There’s something about a blank canvas — I’m just a deer in the headlights.
For my only class […]

A really interesting Techdirt article from last week just hit the front page of Slashdot. It’s a really unique analysis about some economic and political lessons of history — and how copyright cartels (MPAA, RIAA, etc.) are fighting for, and in some cases, winning police powers to enforce their own rules.
I saw a comment that […]

Finally! The procrastinator’s clock! I’ve been dreaming about this for years! I’ll buy it tomorrow…or whenever…

I was trying to figure out what will come of the promising young hula project after it tragically caught the sharp end of the Novell axe (just before Novell’s famed Microsoft partnership, conveniently), and it looks inevitable it’s going to get forked. It probably needs a fork, but the name I’ve seen being bounced around […]

I stumbled across a recent TechCrunch post and couldn’t help but think of some really interesting pseudo-gambling applications you could build right on top of this service! With the recent, very stupid anti-gambling legislation, it could be a really, really cool idea and pretty easy to mash something up.
If only I had some freakin’ time: […]

I just read through a recent Joel on Software post to take a much needed break from looking for good mandolin tabs (send me some links if you know any — a kickass xmas gift from my girlfriend, but now I have to learn how to play the damn thing!). In this novella of a […]

Via Slashdot: Apparently Google has decided to kill its SOAP API.
I was perusing the comments for this Slashdot story and it struck me that the prevailing perception of this move, per the usual was summed up by this one comment:
“Google is a company…Their responsibility is more towards their shareholders, not so much towards their users.”
I’m […]

For anyone who regularly reads this blog (hi Mom), you may notice I link to Techdirt pretty damn often, but lately I’ve been buried in work to really follow some of the posts. Luckily, I got just the break I needed to catch up on some blog reading during class tonight (thank you wifi!), and […]

I just read an amusing Jim Harper take on the recent push in a few European areas to dump traffic lights and a lot of our other nanny signs and signals. I can’t count how many times I’ve been laughed out of a room for daring to suggest that a lot of our completely arbitrary […]

I’ve been trying to convey the merits of the blogosphere (I still hate that word) to my girlfriend for some time, and last night, after patiently listening to me ramble on for a bit, she graciously allowed me to sit with me while I attempted cram her feed reader to the brim with all manner […]

I’ve been following the “dead” newspaper business (rumors greatly exaggerated and all) for a while now. I find it fascinating how an industry so seemingly tailor-made for the web can be so backward in its web strategies.
For generations now, news on paper has been about as close to free as possible, in spite of its […]

This is pretty interesting stuff (words I doubt I’ve ever uttered when discussing monetary policy). My vote’s for the first reason given for why the two-buck is back in fashion — currency inflation…
In 2005, depository institutions ordered $122 million in $2 notes, according to Federal Reserve statistics. That is more than double the average […]

For as long as I can remember, I’ve been managing my own mail and mail server, and just using Outlook as the mail client. Over the years I’ve become increasingly frustrated with Outlook’s bloat, and I haven’t exactly been too impressed with what the other groupware clients have to offer. On top of that, the […]

I just came across this blog entry from Freshbooks founder Michael McDerment (if you do any billing or client management and want something a little cleaner and lighter than QuickBooks, check it out). The push of the piece was how there’s a potentially lucrative business model in providing a bridge between traditional physicalized services and […]

Box sets are the perfect cop-out Holiday gift. It’s right in the meat of that obligatory good friend price range, and since you don’t have to dig too deep to remember (or guess at) the music tastes of most friends, browsing through this section of any music store can bang out a dozen Christmas gifts […]

An interesting Techdirt article just caught my eye, and riled up some old notions I’ve stewed over in the past. Apparently Cingular’s jumping into the act, and putting music on their headsets too. They’re a little late to the party, but have quite possibly one big advantage — it looks like they may not intentionally […]

So I’ve been looking for a nice, easy solution to the photo storage/sharing problem people like my mother face. Over a year ago when I started evaluating this stuff, the best I could really come up with was the open source PHP script MG2. It’s a really beautiful piece of software, requires no db or […]

It’s not that I don’t understand the point of social sites, I’ve just always perceived the social aspects of web2.0 as a means to whatever ends a given web app is trying to accomplish. That, and I’ve yet to find a featureful one done in a tasteful manner. I’d read about Vox in a TechCrunch […]