Cafe Bucky

Golden Gate Bridge pouring rain, dark night, 2 cramped lanes above, and half a million crustaceans & mollusks below, gnawing away at the International Orange Paint on the towers. Howling wind outside. Pixies “Debaser” playing inside. Just want to get home

Oh, wait, s’not a travelogue posting. I was coming back from a WordPress get-together in the Mission District. Even though I was just there for an hour or so (weeknight, long drive), it tied together a number of threads that have been bouncing around in the noggin :

• It’s really cool that Matt Mullenweg and cohorts have come up with a great blogging package. It’s always fun and inspiring to meet one of the lead authors, and congratulate them in person. I’m glad I made the switch from MT. It reminds me to get my butt back to FlexiPhoto.. devote a few hours here and there, and feel like I am making progress.
• Why didn’t I go to SXSW??
• … or Etech?! .. I blogged this one in 2003. Missing the conference scene.
• I want to get together with someone to do something in GarageBand.
• Gotta get out and take more photos (I haven’t done Zoom Blurs of the GG Bridge, or indeed of San Francisco, yet I pass by it very often)

The gist is that I’ve been sort of a hermit lately in Petaluma (or hermetically sealed into a 2 block radius in the Mission, zipping my commute to and fro). Reached the point where it hit me all at once: make some new contacts, and get some creative output going. Time to wake up from a long winter’s nap :-)

Paul Graham wrote Hackers & Painters, which I was interested in reading, way back in June 2004. It’s finally available on Safari, so I’ll plunge in this week.

I gotta thank my pal Mike Schilli, because I mentioned H&P and Safari to him, and he pointed me at an excellent essay by Paul, entitled “How to Start a Startup” I don’t agree with absolutely everything in it, but I’d go as far as to say that it’s a “must read” for anyone thinking of starting a tech company. He’s been there, and shares his experience in an enjoyable read (chock full of great advice, delivered in a matter-of-fact manner)

A few of the best bits:

• work with good people that know the area of expertise. Don’t hire business people that don’t understand the tech (“newscasters”).
• don’t hire solely to fill up holes in an org chart
• use trade shows as a means of research – chance to listen and learn from customers as to what they want
• important to get a first version out there quickly
• best odds are in niche markets
• don’t burn up startup money on flashy offices (and, location is very important – got to be a place where people want to come back after dinner)

Somehow this photo reminds me of something I would have seen in “Tomorrowland” at Disneyland, sometime in the 70′s…

(Videoconference, Petaluma & NYC Dessert – Photo © Susan Price 2005)

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!

Someone has amassed a collection of photos of the NYC Starbucks. I joke with friends that you need a GPS device in NYC to keep them separate. This is proof that I’m not kidding :-)

It’s easy for me to write about some goals that have to do with
programming, or photography, or some techy project.

It’s harder for me to articulate goals that have to do with people.
People are cats that do what they want (well, the Right in America are
a bunch of sheep that do what others want, but that’s another story).

I do pay attention to the news, and don’t do enough in the form of
action/money to address causes. The least I could do is balance my
blog a bit more in the direction of politics and society. I don’t
want to be “just” a Silverback Nerd of some sort. The whole bit about
how the US government (and most major corporate web sites I am seeing
today) is so slow to respond to the Tsunami disaster is pretty
upsetting. How come Japan, Spain, and France (to name three quick
examples) can get this so right, so fast, yet we haven’t?

So that’s one example.

Another bit about all of this is just networking and keeping up
contacts. I’ve been way too flaky at this. I apologize for that, and
want to focus more on friendships and other contacts in 2005. I’m
always advocating the use of Instant Messaging to folks, and it’s
sometimes frustrating when people “just don’t get it”. My preference
is going to be videoconferencing, instant messaging, and email. So
anyway, I promise I will do a better job of keeping in touch
(especially if you are online!)

I thought about what I might write about the election. It’s easier for me to say that I agree with many opinions I’ve seen in the New York Times, on Salon, and elsewhere. Michael Moore had a good piece entitled “17 Reasons Not to Slit Your Wrists”. John Perry Barlow wrote Magnanimous Defeat.

And I could point at 20 others. I’m not alone in my realization that we’re living in Two Americas, all intermingled on the Interstates on our respective trips to Starbucks or Walmart. This chart sums it up nicely (thanks Andrea PS!): http://chrisevans3d.com/files/iq.htm

I’m not surprised to hear that the Canadian Immigration web site is receiving a sixfold increase in traffic. A lot of people are shocked and fed up, and in a mind to move on. I could see moving to Vancouver, and perhaps Montreal could be fun for a while…

But hey, I’m back in California for a while; perhaps two months. Land of Life Guard Station #25 in Santa Monica, The Golden Gate Bridge, and more practically, a new contract in the San Francisco’s Mission District. I’ll get my fill of Mexican Food, which is something I miss when I’m in New York. It’s also nice to have a little space and to be able to drive. I’m looking forward to heading up to Lake Tahoe and skiing this winter!

California is the Golden State, with a little tarnish here and there as compared to its best days (which I think were the 1960′s). We have had a fair number of Republican Governors. Just look at the history in my lifetime:

1959-1967: Pat Brown (Democrat)
1967-1975: Ronald Reagan (Republican)
1975-1983: Jerry Brown (Democrat)
1983-1991: George Deukmejian (Republican)
1991-1999: Pete Wilson (Republican)
1999-2003: Gray Davis (Democrat)
2003-present: Arnold Schwarzenegger (Republican)

I was also surprised from my research of how we’ve voted for Presidents. Check out the .gov archives. California helped elect Clinton, but it also voted for Nixon, Reagan, and King Bush I. Don’t look at me, I didn’t vote for them!

Ok, that’s enough political stuff for now. It’s a Sunday Morning in California, and that means the Sunday Morning Ride. Since I don’t have a crotch rocket (that would be a motorcycle.. as in Road Racer.. as in speed, man…), I’ll climb into a four wheeled substitute, an E36 M3. Time to appreciate the hills and valleys!

New York City and the SF Bay Area are two places that are like countries unto themselves. They’re so different in temperment and outlook than much of the USA.

And since I flit between the two (back to California on Friday), it’s hard for me to predict what will happen on Election Day. In the countries of Bay Area and Gotham, we will have elected a President Kerry. Our respective populations are a bit more politically clued in than the mindless Walmart Nation mainstream. We tend to be a bit more savvy on foreign policy than the “Freedom Fries” idiots. We don’t choose our president on the basis of one pet issue (like Social Security), and blindy ignore what’s really going on in the world outside our ticky tacky tract houses. We understand really basic distinctions such as “church” and “state”. And we sure don’t let fearmongers control our votes. We’re not the Tupperware Vote, or the Not So Good Ole Boys.

So it’s with great anxiety that we wait for the election outcome over the next 36 hours. New York and the Bay Area are a given, but will we roll our eyes in disgust over how much of the country votes? One wants to trick the GOPpy people into reading more tabloids on November 2nd, or hanging on to that remote control to watch one more “reality” show. Tell them they can still vote on the 3rd.

My hope would be for a landslide in either direction (for Kerry, or, for Kerry!). The fact that the polls are a toss up means that we have a very divided country right now, and that won’t fade away come Inauguration Day. We really need a mandate. Will the youth vote make a difference? Will the people who would waste a vote on Nader get an 11th hour clue? Will we ever get rid of the anachronism of the Electoral College?

… and, exhale.

So I’ll stay mostly within the two other countries of New York City and SF Bay Area, where there seems to be some notion of politics grounded in reality. Hopefully the rest of the populace will join us in taking our country back on November 2nd. It is not a country “by and for the corporations, or the religious right who would dictate science”. Is it for the people, and should be governed by someone who has a working intellect, and who has earned their right to be on the scene. Let the people speak with their votes, unimpeded, with freedom and ballot receipts for all.