Yojimbo, a solution looking for a problem

Anyone out there care to ping me real quick and let me know what you use Yojimbo¹ for? I’ve a sneaking suspicion I can get some serious mileage out of the application, but I’m not quite sure I’m totally grokking it just yet. I think part of the problem may be that I’m generally fairly organized (especially when it comes to computer stuff), and so a dedicated “information manager” may be a bit superfluous given my circumstances.

That said, I can definitely feel some Yojimbo-powered, obsessive-compulsive tendency welling up inside of me, I just can’t figure out how to take advantage of it and output something productive/useful. Help me.

I’m addicted to food shows

Even though I’ve never prepared a square meal, I can’t stop watching shows about food. The irony here cannot be overstated, and saying that I’ve never made a square meal is actually giving me too much credit; if I’m coming clean, the most I’ve ever “made” is grilled chicken on a George Foreman grill. I’m 27 years old!

It’s well known within my circle that I absolutely do not cook, nor do I even stock my kitchen with microvable (or other) food anymore because I eat it all within two days of buying it (which belies my somewhat diminutive size) — it’s cheaper to just eat out (I’ll argue that math all day long).

The point is, I have no idea why I’m so fascinated with food shows, and why, when I plop down in front of the TV, they always seem to take precedence over everything else on my DVR (save maybe, some guilty-pleasure, tasteless “reality TV”).

Some of my favorites:

• Anthony Bourdain’s No Reservations (it would be remiss of me to not mention Tony’s excellent book, Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly)
• Bizarre Foods with Andrew Zimmern (drinking game: have a shot every time he describes food as either “briny” or “gamey”)
• Top Chef
• Hell’s Kitchen
• Unwrapped
• Taste of America

Media Temple, a month on

I’ve had my Media Temple account for about a month now and am really happy to say that I’ve nothing to complain about — not sure I can give a better recommendation than that. As most of you know, I made the transition from Dreamhost, one of the largest and most popular web hosts in the world, and the decision wasn’t a light one; DreamHost’s referral program is second to none and I made a decent amount of money while being hosted there (though nothing like Mike’s astronomical numbers).

That said, things weren’t always rosy and their semi-recent security breach finally forced me to think seriously about an exit strategy. MT had been on my radar for a while, mainly because they were already hosting a lot of the people I follow online, and everyone had good things to say about them. I wish I could comment on the knowledge and speed of their tech-support, but I’ve yet to have to call on them; within a few hours of moving everything over to MT and making the DNS changes, my site was up and running and has been sailing smoothly ever since.

I’ll surely update this post (or write a new one) should I come up with anything to complain about, but if the status quo is maintained going forward, I’m afraid I’m going to have to look elsewhere for writing inspiration.

Quick subscribe

While this little site announcement is probably lost on this crowd (i.e., the crowd that already reads this site), I still thought I’d mention it as I’ve long made it a habit to write about the updates I make to this site, no matter how trivial.

I’m now sniffing referrers and looking for those readers sent from the big search engines (65% of my traffic), namely Google and Yahoo!, and changing slightly the posts they request (I used to do something similar when I showed Google AdSense ads on this site, but the implementation of this is a little different).

For individual archive pages, I’ve added a new section — “quick subscribe” — to the bottom of each post, which provides one-click subscriptions for the top five web-based aggregators used by my readership (i.e., Google Reader, Bloglines, NewsGator, Rojo, and Netvibes). I get that information by screen-scraping my FeedBurner “analyze” page once a week (though I’ll likely soon abandon this process and just set the links manually as it’s not really worth the effort).

The logic behind the addition is that if someone finds my site through a search and ends up reading all of the requested post, [s]he may be more apt to subscribe to the site, especially if, at the end of the post, [s]he’s offered a super-simple way of doing just that (and without those horribly tacky “buttons” :).

We’ll see how it goes.

The iPhone knows when you want to touch it

Perhaps this has been covered already, but I can’t recall any mention of it in the tons of iPhone material I’ve read since the device was released a little over a week ago. Turns out that if you are using the iPhone as a phone (i.e., holding it up to your ear), it keeps the screen off to avoid draining the battery, and when you suddenly move it away from your head the screen automagically returns. Very nice.

The device’s I-know-how-you’re-holding-me, inner-ear magic, makes this an obvious and logical feature, but, as is so often the case, and in this space in particular, obviousness and logic don’t always find themselves on the right side of fruition; when they do, as here, it’s almost shocking. Hopefully Apple will soon have us expecting these sorts of things from our mobile devices instead of being so surprised by them.

Jobs and I are very much on the same page

Remember the iPhone-will-become-a-UMPC idea I floated a few months back? Well, at the time it didn’t get too much traction (to be honest, I kind of wish I sat on it until after the iPhone was released), but I’m guessing that now, after people have had a chance to really dig into Apple’s latest offering, it’s going to be read in a different, slightly more ‘possible’ (probable?), light. Indeed, the spirit of that piece has been echoed throughout the blogosphere these last few days — the iPhone really is going to change things forever.

Steve, call me.

Slideshow v1.1

Since PHP 5’s release (and web host adoption), I’ve received a steady stream of e-mail complaining that my Slideshow script no longer works, though I suspect it actually broke before PHP 5, but after v4.4.4. In any event, I finally took a look at the source tonight and figured out the problem(s).

An updated version is now available on the project page. Please let me know if you run into any trouble.

iPhone v2.0 and my near-future plans

I’ll likely get rid of my iPhone sometime in the next few months; just like every mobile phone and PDA (remember those!?!) I’ve ever owned, I’m guessing I’ll tire of it rather quickly and soon be on the hunt for the next best thing¹ (if you’ve any doubt about my, uhh, addiction, take a look at a piece I penned almost three years ago on how to manage mobile phone purchases). However, the difference this time around, and for the foreseeable future, is that there will be no hunt — the next best thing is going to be the next iteration of the iPhone. Can any of us go back to a pre-iPhone phone after playing with this thing for a few days? Everything else is kind of laughable at this point and I think it’s going to be at least a couple of years before the iPhone begins to see any legitimate competition.

The best part about Apple making mobile phones is that I no longer have to scour the earth looking for the “new hotness” and then hoping that it’s unlocked, uses GSM, and costs less than $1000. The worst part about Apple making mobile phones is that I’ll now be the rule instead of the exception (and I think part of me kind of enjoyed being the exception).

I’m no longer going to be told, as I once was by some law school friends, that I should just “fly to Singapore and wait at the end of an assembly line.” Now I’m just going to be in the Apple line with everyone else.

OS X, the cat

I’ve convinced my girlfriend to name her new kitten “OS X.” Sure, she insists on calling it “oslo” (OS X is pronounced o·s·ten, which, when written out in numerical form, kind of looks like “oslo”), but it’s still a small victory as far as I’m concerned.

My favorite quip from one of the e-mail “debates” we had regarding the name: “Still, I don’t want my kitty to be obsolete in a few years.” Haha. I told her that OS X is just getting started (see the iPhone).