Cafe Bucky

I want to give a quick plug for my wife’s updated web site.
Check out SusanPrice.com

Jason Kottke has decided to quit his day job and blog full-time. He won’t be accepting ads, and will derive his income from micro-patronage.

I hope it works for him! There are only so many artists, performers, creators that can make a go of doing what they love full time. I think my writing would warrant a Mocha (hmm, perhaps just a single) every other week month or so. (but while y’all are holding off, I’ll keep buying my own :-)

I don’t know Jason personally (I see him at Apple SoHo, or ETCon), but my impression is that he’s at a good stage of life to do the all-out risk-taking thing. Perhaps it’s not so much of a risk. He knows he has tons of readers, and 7200-odd links from Google to his site. I’d wager that he has a good chance.

The last bit here is: will it change how he writes? It’s one thing to write for fun. Will it be any different when others are giving bucks? Is there the temptation to steer words towards what the patrons might want to read? Does it make the difference between cooking at home versus grabbing a slice and a beer? I think this is the most interesting part of the experiment: can you get paid to be yourself, or do you change yourself to get paid?

Go for it, Jason. Break a leg!

Sophia & Elephant - Alabama Street, Mission Dist. SF.

One in the morning quiet Oakland International Airport wait and wait and waiting area. Liz Phair iPods my ears with “Supernova”. Sophia’s flight from JFK is an hour late. Airbus A320 with late start, pushing against headwinds for 3000 miles.

First time for the kid flying alone. 6 hours is a long time. I do my best as a slightly nervous father to stay planted in my seat, pass the time, and not look at the arrival board every 90 seconds. Lots of weather to fly through.

Nokia buzzes. Takes .8 seconds for me to intone “hey there kid!”. She’s landed. Phew. They give kids the best treatment on jetBlue. Escorted onto the plane before everyone. Won’t stop asking them if they want some more almonds. Escorted off the plane first. I sign for my daughter in the security area (that sounds wierd, jetBlue as a sort of human FedEx).

Don’t get used to it, Phia, once you turn 12 you’re just like everyone else on the plane! But for the moment, it’s pretty cool. I didn’t get to fly on my own until 16 or so, and that didn’t really count (SF to LA).

Rite of Passage. First big trip alone. Wasn’t she losing her first tooth not so long ago? Time flies, and so does my daughter. I’m a happy and relieved Father.

And we’re live!

I’m happy to say that I have WordPress 1.5 running, that I have imported the contents of JavaJoint.com, and that this is the new home for my blog.

The old posts will need some going over to look ok here. At least all of the content is there. I’m sure I will learn something from the entry I just found on Dan Hersam’s “Admist a tangled web” site. The layout will change, for sure.

So, Welcome to Cafe Bucky! (yes, I have a few nicknames) I tossed in a goofy photo. You can tell by the size of the room that I am obviously not in New York at the moment :-)

Interesting… the default theme squishes img.. That’s not a skinny PowerBook :-)

Gettin’ set here…

I had mentioned in an earlier post that I was about to switch blogs.

That’s true! I am. I became aware that WordPress 1.5 was about to hit, and so I decided to be patient. It’s easier to customize than 1.2.

So it’s just out. Got it. Workin’ on it.

A couple of hellos …

Good Luck to Andrea & Jerry in Denver!

and to Susan & Sophia.. get well!

A real quickie post … I gotta pack and get back to California in a couple of hours. I was happy to see the very beginnings of Christo’s Gates project in Central Park this morning. These are all from my Nokia 3650 phone, so this is more about impression than quality :-)

My journeys begin and end with the Golden Gate bridge:

…but today in Central Park, we began to see something else that’s orange, and that has some “passage” significance…

One day we’re here…

… and the next day, we’re here…

… we still have nature, here in NYC…

… but there are other gateways…. each subway station a means of passage to the rest of the City …

We have our “before” …

… anticipation ….

… and after!