Whenever I publish a story with a hand-drawn diagram, people ask how I do it.

There's really nothing to it. I draw the diagram and scan it.

To illustrate...

There are no tricks, but the pens really are fantastic. Highly recommended. I've been using them since 5th grade.

 8/25/2010; 7:42:18 PM.   .

In journalism, politics and business they talk about transparency as a universal virtue. If you disclose your conflicts, or say where your money comes from, or deal with your users openly and fairly -- those are obvious good things.

Transparency is different in software. When systems change you want the changes to be without any apparent effects on users and developers. It's like transparency in recording music. I want all the highs and lows and in the right proportions. I want my software to keep working even if you just rocked the foundations. That's what we aspire to. We hope.

Anyway, today I made a big change that's virtually impossible to show you because it's so transparent. But I'll try to explain it anyway.

When I write a blog post like the one you're reading now, I write it on a workstation computer. It could be my desktop in my apartment in Manhattan. Or on my laptop, or netbook. I write and save and revise and save, over and over, just as you would edit a word processing document on your desktop, with one important difference. The changed version of the document is saved to a content management system running on another computer, running in Rackspace's cloud. This saving process is done with XML-RPC, although it could just as easily be done with a REST interface or FTP.

From there, the document is passed through the CMS, rendered and transferred to a server running in Amazon's cloud. That server is the machine called scripting.com. This is the machine your browser RSS aggregator talk to, to get the latest stuff from Dave. That transfer was made via FTP and the finished content is accessed via HTTP.

That's the old flow. Here's the new one.

The workstation saves its document to a Dropbox folder. The CMS is watching that folder, sees something new, renders it, and drops it into another Dropbox folder. That folder is served by Apache on the machine running scripting.com. Everything is done using the file system. The software just got a whole lot simpler. And much better backed up. And more flexible, because different machines can easily play the needed roles, or the same content served through scripting.com on one box could be served via egypt.com on another.

In a sense the filesystem has been turned into a simple multi-machine networked queuing system.

This is what I was trying to get working a few days ago.

 8/25/2010; 11:37:23 AM.   .

Took advantage of the cold, wet weather to go to the movies today.

I wanted to shop for some new headphones, so I went to B&H; on 34th and 9th, which left me near a megaplex on 34th, so it was a matter of what movie was playing when I finished with the audio shopping, and it was Eat Pray Love.

It didn't get great reviews, but sometimes it's relaxing to go to a movie with low expectations. This one was okay, because it had a message that was simple, one that I was familiar with from my mid-life crisis a number of years ago. It goes like this.

Your mind plays tricks on you, and makes you think other people are your problem, and that getting them to do something or be a certain way will unlock some part of your future. The inverse also seems true, their unwillingness to change is holding you back from being the great person you could be if only they would change. It's a trick because it seldom is true. It's a trick because it allows you not to change to become great and happy because you're scared to.

The most powerful thing you can do to get through all this messy trickery is to first forgive your ghosts. You can let them off the hook, even if they're still alive, by realizing that the past is dead and can't hurt you or hold you back. And if they're actually dead, you can achieve great peace by not only forgiving them now, but retroactively forgiving them when they were still alive. Try to visualize saying to your mother or father or grandparent or uncle who was unkind to you. Say "I forgive you" to their imaginary body, the one they occupied when they were hurting you.

This letting-off-the-hook is enormously liberating, not so much for them, but for you -- because they're just foils for the person you're probably really holding accountable for the past misery (and shouldn't) or for the present misery (which you should) -- you!

Projection is such a powerful illusion, most of the time we don't even realize we're doing it and when people come awake from it, it can create adult memories that are as powerful as any from childhood.

I remember two events in this waking up process. 1. I said to my therapist that I know exactly what my brother is thinking right now. She said, matter-of-factly: Really, how do you know that? (as if she accepted that I did know, which of course I didn't). I was baffled. I asked why she never asked me that before. She said she had been asking me that for years, but this was the first time (apparently) that I had heard her. 2. I was on a walk with a friend from a massage community I was part of. I was very frustrated with my girlfriend and was going on and on saying: I wish she would xxx, and fill in the blank with a dozen things she did or didn't do that bothered me. Every time I did it my friend would say: In what way do you wish you would xxx. At first it was just annoying, I wished she would let me finish venting. But she was making a point that eventually sunk in. My problem wasn't the girlfriend, my problem was me. The girlfriend was just a foil, a screen I was projecting on, a barrier to keep me from realizing that, as boring and undramatic as it is, the barrier was within me, not her.

Eat Pray Love takes over two hours to make this point, and it doesn't make it very powerfully, but no matter. For a certain number of people being able to visualize Julia Roberts gaining freedom from her ghosts might be enough to find their own way out of the fog.

 8/24/2010; 8:17:02 PM.   .

I got a lot of snarky comments yesterday when I asked a couple of questions on my blog. This was after posting a proposal for a new kind of commenting system.

Most people who commented simply objected to my proposal, liked nothing about it, and told me why they like the current form of commenting. A few people chose this time to make a personal attack, mostly ageist, the one ism you're not supposed to call people on. There wasn't much (if any) discussion of the idea. Nor would there have been if I had open comments on that post. Pretty sure it would have been the same. Some people would say they like it, others would say they don't. Others would write comments that had nothing to do with the post. I'd moderate-out the abuse. Most would be cries for attention. That's what Internet discourse is like in 2010.

However, the best posts for comments are the ones that ask specific questions, like how long does it take for alcohol to reach the brain, or where's the missing spacebar on the iPhone 4. It gives people a chance to show what they know, and get a feeling they're helping, which is the best of commenting on the Internet.

Why I have comments: I hope I might learn something new from the people who read the blog. It's mostly selfish. I like that there's a side-benefit that it creates a record for other people to learn from in the future. I get a lot out of that on other forums on the net. Esp when it comes to technical problems, these discussion threads can be invaluable.

But rebuttal, esp principled rebuttal, really doesn't add anything to a comment thread. Obviously there's room for disagreement. And of course it helps people feel heard. But that's for them, not for me, and not for future or current readers. Being very blunt and direct, it just doesn't interest me. I don't post here to get into debates. If someone wants to start a debating site, one that really works and doesn't just rehash childish points of view, I might show up there from time to time, when I feel like debating. But then it's going to be as an equal. Here, on my blog, I'm a host, which in some ways makes me more than equal and less. It's not a good context for debate. Maybe other people's blogs work that way, more power to them and vive la difference.

I like collaborative problem solving -- and want to do more of that.

And by the way, my post was a proposal. My hope was that it would spawn other proposals, other new ideas for systems of discourse. Where is the creativity? Where are the people who would like to try new ideas, no matter where they came from? I'm sure they're out there. But there's no place for them to comment because the debaters crowd them out. I wonder if some of the people who vehemently defend the current form of commenting realize that there are lots of people who won't participate in a system dominated by mostly mindless and repetetive prattle?

 8/24/2010; 11:14:08 AM.   .

Been reading comments by Dennis Crowley of Foursquare about Facebook's new check-in feature, and I think he could play it much much better. So this is a friendly open letter to my fellow New Yorker, urging him to learn about and practice positioning. To develop a clear difference between 4SQ and FB, one that makes sense to users, and allows both products to exist side-by-side.

After all, there is Toyota and there is BMW. And there are trucks and nimble sports cars and bikes and motorcycles, that all more or less do the same thing. They all have wheels and transport people and things. But they're used very differently for very different purposes.

There's lots of room for differentiation, and the products are already differentiated. But to summarily dismiss your huge competitor as "boring" -- well we understand why you would like us to think of them that way, but I don't think people do. You have to explain your product in a way that makes sense to the prospect. Craft a position that has lasting value relative to the competition. Do something they can't do because of their size and who they are. Or where they are. Or their talent pool. Or who they can strike alliance with.

Lots of opportunity here.

PS: Please no more Wired cover shoots.

 8/24/2010; 9:08:26 AM.   .

Rode up to 94th St on the HRGW and back. It's been a 10 mile ride the other two times I've taken it, but this time the GPS got whacked and came up with something pretty crazy.

I rode straight through with only one break at the turnaround point.

Took yesterday off because of rain. Had a very positive effect on my biking today. Rest is an important part of a workout.

And this time it was a headwind going up and tailwind coming back. That's the way I like it!

Riding time: 52 minutes.

Couple of videos:

1. The river was choppy today.

2. This is my favorite stretch of the greenway. You're riding over water, very smooth path, perfectly level.

 8/24/2010; 8:50:51 AM.   .

Hey I don't know why it took me so long to think to do this.

http://links.scripting.com/

What it is -- Every link I've pushed to Twitter since April 2009.

How it works -- I don't call Twitter to get these links, so when Oauthcalypse Day comes, this little app might survive.

I store all these links in a database on one of my servers. I have a bookmarklet I use to create each link, even ones I create on my iPad, and because it needs to record info about the link to maintain the Top 40 list, the data is around, and I never delete it. So it was there.

What's interesting is how much it looks like the early days of Scripting News. Lots of links to stuff with snarky comments. We go so far just to come back to where we began! The earth is round, so is time. Big wheel keep turning. Etc etc.

It gets built at least once a night. I might have it rebuild every time I add a link.

 8/24/2010; 7:02:55 AM.   .

I wanted to search for "alcohol metabolism rate" on my iPhone, but where is the spacebar?

It isn't on any of the alternate screens.

What am I missing?

 8/23/2010; 1:19:47 PM.   .

I'm at lunch with Arikia at Cafe Tasia on 8th St. She ordered a strawberry mojito and offered me a sip, which I took. Less than 30 seconds later I already felt a buzz. She said that's not possible, that alcohol couldn't make it through the stomach to the blood and to the brain in that short a time.

She thinks it's a placebo effect. I think it's the real thing.

Who's right? (Please cite your source.)

 8/23/2010; 12:27:07 PM.   .

I was sitting around eating food and working my way through Season 2 of Breaking Bad and got itchy for some bike action. Looked out the window and saw it wasn't raining. Looked at the street and saw people walking by normally. So I put on the helmet, started my Cyclemeter and hit the road!

Short ride, great energy -- down to the Battery. Stop, take a picture of the harbor in storm mode, when big fat drops start pinging my helmet. Ping. Ping. Ping. Strap up and head out. No problem. It's summer heat and summer rain, so we all get soaked, everyone, but who cares.

A short ride, up and back.

Here's the map and the stats: 4.6 miles, 27 minutes.

Here's the song.

 8/22/2010; 6:14:03 PM.   .

I'm almost 100 percent sure that scripting.com was the first blog to have comments. And I'm equally sure that it was the first to have its comments flame out. The flameout was a good thing, although it didn't feel like it at the time, because it created the first wave of blogs. And when their comments flamed out, there were subsequent waves of new blogs.

Once the blogosphere had grown sufficiently that the central role scripting.com played was largely forgotten, I brought comments back. I've been mostly satisfied with them, but certain subjects evoke predictable and futile "arguments" in response and unless moderation is applied, they will spiral into a flamy back and forth that you can find in any of thousands of different places in the blogosphere. So I moderate according to a few basic guidelines.

1. Keep your responses focused on the piece you're responding to.

2. No ad hominem attacks.

3. Add value, a new idea, perspective, point of view. Simply saying "I disagree" is not helpful and likely won't get approved.

4. When moderating I'm always mindful of whether the comment needs to be tacked onto my post or if it would do better as a post of its own on the author's blog. I think a lot of people post comments just to get attention. If I get the idea that's what's going on, I don't approve the comment. That's a misuse of the comments, and disrespectful of the community, and of the blog's author.

So all this has led me to an idea that comments could work quite a bit differently and remove the incentives to replay old arguments, and keep the comments focused on the ideas being responded to.

1. A fixed commenting period for each post of 24 hours.

2. Until the period expires, none of the comments would be visible to other commenters.

3. You could edit and refine your comments during the period.

4. There would be a length limit of 1000 characters to keep people from using comments in place of a blog post. No one is going to read a blog post in a comment.

5. After the commenting period is over, the comments would become visible, and no further comments would be permitted.

I know some people think that blogs are conversations, but I don't. I think they're publications. And I think the role of comments is to add value to the posts. If you want to rebut a post, then you can create your own blog and post your rebuttal there.

I've always felt this way about what blogs are, and in a similar way I feel Twitter is not a conversational medium. it is even more inappropriate to try to converse there because of the 140-character limit.

I've disabled comments for this post to give a brief demo of what it might feel like to find other outlets for your ideas, or to allow you more time to consider your response.

 8/22/2010; 11:34:20 AM.   .

Here's how it was explained to me by someone who says they understand what I saw at the 5th Ave Apple store this morning.

1. The people lined up there were employees of resellers, companies who buy iPhones and resell them overseas and online at higher prices.

2. They line up there every day, in case there are any they can buy. Most days there aren't.

3. They come back the next day, because there's money to be made. These people aren't there to buy phones for themselves.

4. The line went round the corner and down the block.

5. This would be a good story for a business reporter to dig into. Imho.

Click on the pic below for a blowup. Sorry for the lack of clarity in the picture. I might ride by there tomorrow morning to see if I can find out more about what's going on.

 8/21/2010; 6:19:27 PM.   .

And Christians and Jews, athiests, agnostics. Men, women, boys, girls. Bike riders, walkers, runners. Tourists. No one seemed offended. Or in any hurry to get anyone away from anywhere in particular. It was a sweet, relatively quiet summer morning in NY.

I rode past the Fifth Avenue Apple Store and saw a huge number of people lined up. I asked what they were lined up for. iPhones. They were almost all, if not all, Asian. Many did not speak English. I asked why, now, after all this time -- they're lined up. I was told it's been this way ever since the product launched. I took pictures.

The map. 13.5 miles, 1.5 hours.

 8/21/2010; 9:30:37 AM.   .

And Howard Dean and Newt Gingrich and Sarah Palin. Send them to overseas to a country where they don't have our Constitution and tradtiion of tolerance for diversity and freedom of religion. Where they can learn the lessons of history on their own dime. Make them wear yellow stars, as my ancestors did, as a show of good sense and courtesy. So everyone can know they are Americans who weren't good enough to live in America.

I was thinking deportation might be the final solution for the problem, when Karen Hughes wrote a positively Nazi rationale for "moving" the Park51 community center, as a show of national unity. Like so many Americans who have spoken out on this, she needs a refresher course in civics. Or a lesson in 20th century history.

You can't single out people who practice a specific religion to be persecuted, just because a majority thinks it's sensible to persecute them. What other rights would you like to deprive them of? Due process? Habeas corpus? Maybe we should just re-settle all American muslims to camps far away from New York, so the people still grieving over 9/11 don't have to think about them? After all why should they be in New York at all? If two blocks from our hallowed ground is too much to bear, why should we put up with 20 or 200? (And btw, in the US, there is no such thing as hallowed ground. We are not a country that's based on a religion.)

Obviously this whole idea is ridiculous and un-American. In a way it would be better if the people wanting to open this community center were less ideal American citizens, if only to prove that our tolerance isn't subject to hypocrisy or seasonality or popular styles. Freedom, Mr. Dean and Mr. Gingrich and Ms. Palin and Ms. Hughes, is an absolute. Not something that is subject to your idea of good sense or unity. Or as Hughes puts it, courtesy. For crying out loud, this is the United States, not your country club.

 8/21/2010; 7:26:55 AM.   .

When my Windows servers reboot I'd like them to go all the way, to log on and run the startup apps.

This happens all the time, when they automatically update themselves, which is a good thing.

Unless I'm awake and around when it happens it means my servers are off the air for a while. Sometimes hours.

There must be a setting somewhere?

 8/21/2010; 7:12:36 AM.   .

I'm having no luck getting through to the web admin interface for the new cable modem Time-Warner installed here.

I need to get in there to adjust the config so I can get to my desktop remotely using a dynamic DNS address. It worked fine with the old modem. It's a pretty simple matter to program the routing table so things work properly. But you have to be able to get through to manage the configuration, and I can't get to the login screen.

The instructions in the manual are pretty clear.

They say to connect to http://192.168.0.1/ and enter cusadmin and password as the username and password. But when I go to that address, it says it's connecting, then sits there for a while and times out.

Here's a photo of the plate on the back of the modem with the MAC addresses blocked.

Any ideas?

 8/20/2010; 7:10:55 PM.   .

I read this review of Pogoplug and then the reviews on Amazon.

Sounds really cool. Not quite sure what it is.

Do you have one? Do you like it? Should I get one?

 8/20/2010; 3:41:23 PM.   .

Couple of items.

1. Logged into Twitter for the 187th time this morning, and was greeted with the message: Sorry, that page doesn't exist!

Problem is the page that doesn't exist is http://twitter.com/. Don't get all existential on me now.

2. I had to log into my pharmacy's voicemail system to renew a bunch of prescriptions. After the second presscription, the voice seemed very familiar. By the third I knew who it was! It was the male voice from the "I don't care" viral iPhone 4 video. Made the rest of the experience a lot more fun.

As a sidebar, I can't hear the name iPhone 4 without thinking of the idiot customer.

 8/20/2010; 12:15:34 PM.   .

I'm on the east coast, with a car and a bike, and a week to spare starting on Tuesday next. Looking for a place with (here's the kicker) with 1-week rentals available, relatively flat (for biking), and good swimming. Doesn't have to be salt water.

I want to bike on country roads, do some writing and reading, maybe have a couple of friends join me from elsewhere on the east coast.

Got any ideas?

 8/20/2010; 11:56:38 AM.   .

For some reason I decided to re-watch There Will Be Blood, starring Daniel Day-Lewis. I didn't care for it the first time, but the second time, wow I really did. Especially the music. And he's a great actor, and the movie is more like a painting than a plot. A few scenes, a few characters, they interact, there's a little drama here and there. But mostly it's the music and the scenery and the sets and the acting. Especially the music.

So the title of this piece is a play on the title of that movie.

Another title that would have worked: No Country For Old Software.

What am I talking about? Twitter's Oauthcalypse, of course!

I promised that I would not convert my Twitter software. I plan to keep that promise. But now I can see how much I'll be giving up. I have lots of little systems that depend on Twitter, here and there. You hardly notice them, but they will be noticed, when they're gone.

I suppose I could convert them. But then they have promised to rip up the pavement again when the next version of OAuth is finalized. They say that one will be easier to support, but sheez, I already did the grueling work to support the first one.

Whatever. The Twitter platform is going the wrong way. Deprecation is bad software culture. I've never liked it.

Once I broke my users in a transition that involved changing the names of API routines that had clearly been labeled as toys. They screamed, and they were right. You pick a name, you stick with it. You don't decide one day that Amy would be a better name for your daughter Jody. "Henceforth, I, your father, proclaim the name Jody is deprecated. You and your friends shall now refer to the person formerly known as Jody as Amy." Your daughter and her friends would tell you to fuck off. And they would be right.

Sometimes there is a right and a wrong, and Twitter is just plain wrong about this Oauthcalypse nonsense. If I were making any money from my efforts with Twitter it might make sense to suck it up and do what they ask. But now seems as good a time as any to just say no and let it go. I'll try to think of a movie title that goes with that sentiment.

 8/20/2010; 3:36:56 AM.   .

Interesting piece with a simple point by Marco.

He shows how the smartphone market was transformed in 2007 by the introduction of the iPhone. He's right that the lack of a removable battery and slots did not hinder the adoption of the iPhone. But I don't recall people saying it would be a failure because of its lack of expandability in hardware. However I do remember criticism for its lack of expandability in software.

Marco then extrapolates that the same is about to happen in netbooks. I agree with his conclusion, but I don't agree with the reason. And as with the iPhone, we're losing something important if the transition we agree is happening actually happens.

The key difference: There was no bottleneck for software in the pre-iPad netbooks. It matters. I just read an article about the Republican party running sexist TV ads, on my iPad, but had to get up and look at the same page on my Mac so I could watch the video.

I uploaded a video to Flickr from my iPhone 4, looks fine on my desktop but the video is postage-stamp size on the iPad.

I wanted to set the location on the map but Yahoo's mapping software doesn't work on the iPad.

We're entering an era of deliberate degradation of the user experience and throwing overboard of software that works, for corporate reasons.

That said, I'd prefer to read a book like Computer Lib/Dream Machines on an iPad than on paper. But I don't want a corporation deciding what software I can and can't use, or what I can and can't read.

What I want is the convenient form factor without the corporate filter.

It's way too simplistic to believe that we'll get that, but we had it. That's what I don't like -- deliberate devolution.

PS: Looping back to an earlier piece that mentioned in passing that Microsoft was once able to think and act big, look at how they blew the opening created by netbooks.

PPS: Why the iPad form is winning -- the netbook makers are abdicating. It's likely because Microsoft and Intel have exerted too much control, behind the scenes, and kept the market from growing.

 8/20/2010; 2:07:21 AM.   .

Every time I head north on the Hudson River Greenway, I go a little further. All the while my eye was on the huge milestone looming in the distance. The George Washington Bridge.

Well, today it looms no more. It has been acquired. I ownz the GWB! Me and my Giant blue bike.

I knew great things were up when I mounted the bike and warmed up between the Village and the Intrepid. Then I paced myself through Riverside Park, and felt strong as I approached 125th St. I knew I would go all the way. And I did.

Then I turned around and man did it get tough.

The funny thing about a good tailwind is it makes you feel macho and all the while you aren't aware that there's a tailwind at all.

But when you retrace your steps the tailwind turns into a headwind, and there's no mistaking that. What was free and fun on the way up becomes arduous and painful hard work on the way back.

But I survived. And now that it's over, I feel grrrrreat!

Here's the map and the stats: 1 hour 58 minutes. 18.56 miles round trip.

 8/19/2010; 3:41:25 PM.   .

I was in the middle of watching the first episode of The Big C, the new Showtime series starring Laura Linney and Oliver Platt when I saw that I could watch The Zuckerberg Show on Facebook.

Things were all flipped around, because Zuckerberg was a rerun. On so many levels. It was a rerun in that here was a huge tech company doing something that was interesting only because of their hugeness. And it was a rerun because it had all been done before, by Foursquare.

It was also a rerun because it's just another loop around the tech circle. Every feature shows up in everyone's product. You can see there are three companies, Apple, Google and Facebook, at least, that are largely cloning each other.

And to the extent the Facebook announcement was interesting, it was equally sad that Yahoo and Microsoft, two passed-over tech giants, couldn't put something like this together now, if their corporate lives depended on it. And they do.

So after about 15 minutes of nauseating product annoucement from Channel Zzzz, I switched back to The Big C, which answers the question: Can you make death by cancer funny? with a resounding YES!

What a wonderful show.

You know why it's so funny -- because it's original. There are all these themes that have never appeared in a 1/2 hour sitcom because they were never willing to approach impending death this way. A character with less than a year to live can do and say things that other characters just can't, believably. And the writing is superb as is the acting.

Everything is backwards. You'd expect a show about dying to be hard to watch, and you'd expect young people on top of the world to be interesting. But the young people are boring while the dying is compelling.

If you haven't seen The Big C because you don't think death can be funny, you owe it to yourself to take a look. It's very very good.

 8/18/2010; 9:04:17 PM.   .

Dave Winer, 55, is a visiting scholar at NYU's Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute. He pioneered the development of weblogs, syndication (RSS), podcasting, outlining, and web content management software; former contributing editor at Wired Magazine, research fellow at Harvard Law School, entrepreneur, and investor in web media companies. A native New Yorker, he received a Master's in Computer Science from the University of Wisconsin, a Bachelor's in Mathematics from Tulane University and currently lives in New York City.

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"RSS was born in 1997 out of the confluence of Dave Winer's 'Really Simple Syndication' technology, used to push out blog updates, and Netscape's 'Rich Site Summary', which allowed users to create custom Netscape home pages with regularly updated data flows." - Tim O'Reilly.

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