Author Archives: robla

Orkut is in Alexa’s Top 10 sites…wtf?

Google’s social networking site Orkut was the coolest thing since sliced bread back in early 2004. It was a social network that actually had interesting people on it. It had a fun user interface. And then, the reliability problems kicked in, and then the Brazilians invaded every corner of it. So just about everyone I [...]
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Enough of this silly freelance stuff

As of this week, I’m no longer a freelance developer. Who wants to run their own billing department? Certainly not me. I had a hard enough time filling out expense reports…doing my IRS Form 2210 again this last quarter kinda sealed the deal for me. I have a new full-time job, working for Linden Lab, [...]
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Heh, scooping the West Seattle Blog

I’ve recently become a big fan of the West Seattle Blog, not just because I live in West Seattle. The author is very purposefully anonymous, but is clearly from around here. Why do I know? Well, because we seem to all share this small city obsession with new retail that comes to the area. I [...]
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Wikimania

I’m off to Boston, to be among fellow nerds at Wikimania, where I’m hosting a discussion about enterprise use of MediaWiki, as well as hanging around beforehand for Hacking Days. We’ll see what sort of attendance there is for my session; there’s a lot of parallel tracks at this thing. I’m hoping to figure out [...]
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Hazel’s Five State tour

Hazel got through her first plane ride just fine. Actually, we were more worried about us than her. Anyway, we managed to make it to five states: Nebraska, Kansas, Missouri, Illinois, and a token drive over to Indiana so that we could say we were there. Lots of pictures taken by all, especially at my [...]
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Roundabout Retardedness

We went out on a walk with Hazel today. On our way, we walked by a recently installed roundabout. In case we were under any illusion that we live in Europe, watching people try to navigate this thing will swiftly dispel those illusions. Left turns are fun to watch. After an awkward hesitation, most drivers [...]
Posted in Misc | Tagged | 1 Comment

We’re all home now

We got to check out of the hospital yesterday and head home. Everyone is doing well…Margaret and Hazel are sleeping, and this is the first time I’ve mustered the energy to get back in front of the computer since being home. Some more details below the fold…
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Hazel Mae Lanphier

Quick note: Hazel Mae Lanphier was born late last night. Mom and baby are fine…gotta run back to hospital, but took a sec to upload a couple of photos: http://photos.robla.net/gallery/v/2006/
Posted in Personal | 7 Comments

It’s about that time

As folks who know us may have heard, my lovely wife (pictured) and I are about to become parents.  Not that it’s really sunk in or anything, but I imagine it will some time this week, as, well, we’re due and the doctors aren’t too keen on the idea of letting the baby just chill [...]
Posted in Personal | 3 Comments

Seattle Parking Tax: Money Has To Come From Somewhere

Apparently, Mayor Nickels plans to propose a parking tax for downtown Seattle to fund transportation.  Fantastic!  That means that the people who commute to downtown from Issaquah or wherever pay some for Seattle transportation (as they should) whereas those of us who live and work in Seattle aren’t getting disproportionately taxed.
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Apple’s $150 IQ test

I’m not an Apple fanboy by any stretch of the imagination, but I do have to hand it to them with the new laptops.  Not points on quality, but on revenue maximizing genius.  Specifically, charging $150 more for a black laptop.  People will pay for the cachet, and charging $150 is just enough to make [...]
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Mobiguous company names

A friend recently told me about yet another mobile startup who I won’t name, but suffice to say has yet another one of those generic amalgams of “Mo” or “Mob” with some other word. It got me thinking “hey, I can automate this; maybe save everyone some time”….which I did (at least the first part). [...]
Posted in Tech | 8 Comments

What a great picture of me!

I’m on the right, talking to Brian Aker down at the MySQL User Conference. (photo by James Duncan Davidson/O’Reilly Media)
Posted in Misc, Tech | 1 Comment

28 years of “You Light Up My Life”

I’m a big supporter of moving back to a 28 year maximum term on copyrights. I’ve been thinking about how to describe that, and I think I’ve come up with one way of doing it. Rupert Holmes would still be able to earn a living off of his 1979 hit “Escape (The Pina Colada Song)”, [...]
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Scan of 1979 Sears Wishbook

It’s amazing how vivid smell memory is. I remember the exact odor of the Sears Wishbook 1979 after seeing it on Flickr. I believe the Total Control Racing (TCR) track was the highlight of my Christmas that year. The TCR track was supposed to kick ass because the cars could change lanes, but as it [...]
Posted in Misc | 1 Comment

“Playing politics” is Bush-speak for “thinking critically”

It seems that whenever Bush or the Republicans trot out the phrase “playing politics”, they really mean “thinking critically”.  Just visit the following links, and replace the phrase “playing politics” with “thinking critically” to see what I mean. “But here’s the question.  The question is, how do you respond to [the intelligence failures]?  Do you [...]
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Seattle Library/Amazon LibraryLookup bookmarklet

Stumbled into Jon Udell’s Library lookup bookmarklet and thought I’d give it a spin. It took some tweaking, but now I’ve got a Seattle Public Library/Amazon Bookmarklet To use, just drag the bookmarklet above to your toolbar. Visit Amazon, search for a book, and then click on the bookmarklet. It’ll check the availability of the [...]
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Giving Flock a spin

….and of course, now that I’m sitting in front of this really easy to use interface, I don’t have anything useful to say.  Well, that’s a blog for you.  Plus, I’m feeling all Web 2.0-y now. technorati tags: flock, allthecoolkidsaredoingit, iftheyalljumpedoffacliff, wouldyou
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Electowidget

For the past couple of months, I've been working on Electowidget. Electowidget is a plugin for MediaWiki designed to make it possible to conduct Internet polls and elections using many different voting systems, including the Schulze method, Instant Runoff Voting, Approval voting, and even plain old Plurality.
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MediaWiki OpenID patch

Looks like Dan Libby posted a [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki OpenID patch. I’ll have to give it a spin after I get done with my current project.
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