28 Sep 2011, 11:43 a.m.

Gentleman Scientist

My spouse is trying to figure out what makes Kickstarter fundraising projects most likely to hit their goals. Economists, have at!

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23 Sep 2011, 9:03 a.m.

Community Of Practice

I have found Danny O'Brien's new blog: the Noisebridge mailing list. noisebridge-discuss entrances me because it's techno-anarchism in action, a lot like the Wikimedia movement, except it's way smaller, a higher proportion of the members …

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22 Sep 2011, 9:28 a.m.

Sigh

Just finished REAMDE, walked into the study, thudded it onto Leonard's desk, and said with wonder, "I cannot recommend that you read this." I cannot recall the last Stephenson I read that had fewer ideas, …

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21 Sep 2011, 19:48 p.m.

Pretty Spoiler-Free, In My Opinion

I'm now 812 pages into REAMDE. It reads as though Cory Doctorow, in preparing to write For The Win, had drawn upon his eleventh grade lit teacher Thomas Pynchon, who had taught him what "puissant" …

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20 Sep 2011, 22:38 p.m.

UN Convention On the Rights of the Mild

For professional development reasons, I'm starting a four-week course that'll teach me JavaScript/jQuery/CSS/JSON stuff in the context of the Etsy API. This meant that today I read the Etsy terms of use, and had to …

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19 Sep 2011, 8:48 a.m.

24 Fames Per Second

Some recent videos of me: My talk at Wikimania, "How to get what you want from MediaWiki's developers" (first 22 minutes of video); talk, notes. An interview with me at OSCON about "the role of …

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14 Sep 2011, 9:16 a.m.

Usually Five Things Make a Post, But Four Will Have To Suffice

Randall Munroe got married and I wish him all the best. The bell sound I use to alert me when someone mentions or messages me in IRC is bell-octave2.wav, which came in a bundle of …

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14 Sep 2011, 8:06 a.m.

You

Seven years ago, I received a copy of Yevgeny Zamyatin's We in the mail. I don't know who sent it to me. Two days ago, the same thing happened to my friend Will. Is this …

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12 Sep 2011, 23:30 p.m.

Sustain

Gratitude isn't just validating because it rewards narcissism or vanity. Genuine gratitude sustains because it is empirical proof that we were of use, that we made a dent in the universe.

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11 Sep 2011, 21:56 p.m.

A Little Better

Went to the event, saw someone I knew, got ridiculously bespoke teetotaller drinks with cucumber and ginger and red pepper flakes and egg white, listened to Mountain Goats and Dar Williams and Everclear on the …

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