crapapult

8:00 PM
I arrive late to Amy’s birthday party with half a case of wine in arm.

10:30 PM
The “polite” guests begin excusing themselves. There are 4 of us left.

11:00 PM
Amy, Chris, Michael and I realize the very good wine I brought has gone untouched.

1:00 AM
The wine is gone.

1:05 AM
Chris decides to make screwdrivers, since there is no more wine.

1:06 AM
Amy: “Did you put any orange juice in that one?”
Chris: “It’s for Bradley”

1:20 AM
I stand up from the couch, put my glasses on the coffee table, and excuse myself to the powder room.

1:21 AM
Amy: “Is he ok, do you think?”
Chris: “You don’t take off your glasses to pee.”

In 2004, Noelle became a Maker’s Mark Ambassador, and put my name on the side of a barrel for my birthday. This April, that barrel came of age, and we were invited to come down and retrieve the spoils of shameless adoption of a consumer loyalty program.

… click for the Gallery:

Nambu was a desktop Twitter client… a great Twitter client. It was a simple, selfless client that dedicated itself to its users. Like so many Twitter clients, it was cut down before its prime. We gather here today to say goodbye, and reflect on why we may never see the likes of it again.

Metaphor aside, a huge portion of my job has to do with tracking and participating in social media on behalf of several different identities. I used Nambu for more than 18 months, and I was crushed when I read that the team that created it, “moved on”. There are no clients like it, and before it fades into memory (and stops working all together), I would like to point out a few brilliant, unparalleled design decisions the team made.

Before we venture on, let’s look at the object elements of a Twitter account:

Other twitter applications take one or two of the above elements, glue them permanently together, and give each its own, full-time, top down chronological feed, with no hierarchy whatsoever.

This is, I suppose, a good enough way to show a unified view. I find, however, the application view gets way, way out of control when you manage multiple accounts and have many saved searches.

As a result, a user has to mentally flatten the organizational aspects of each column according to how they set the app up, remember them, and navigate left/right while viewing content top/bottom.

If I had to use this client, I would have 2 dozen columns at minimum. Let’s revisit the original object list, and give it a mild, gentle hierarchical treatment.

Really, any node in this tree is all I need to see at one time. The only drawback of this is that sometimes what I view has overlap across multiple nodes. So what one would need is a persistent tracking system that can mark everything in a view as “read”, and keep track of it across nodes.

Nambu:

So there it is. The navigation is flattened as much as is sensibly possible, with a single content view that carries a persistent read/unread state across views. Surprisingly, I have yet to find a Twitter client that comes anywhere near this level of efficiency.

I wish the Nambu team the best in their future endeavors. Meanwhile, keep your nav flat, and your interactions simple. Adios, amigos.

I really just want to take pictures with my iPhone, then load them to my computer.

No Aperture, no iPhoto, no WiFi photostream, no iCloud. I plug in my device to my computer, and move files en-masse over to my machine to do with as I please.

Your humble slave,
Bradley

Testing what happens with a random gallery script: is it easy to use, does it stand alone, do other sites work and play well with it, etc…?

Hmm.. not bad, but I do like a script that auto-gens thumbnails. Will have to play with more later.

Personal Etymology:
“It’s becoming a [thing] about hats.”

Meaning:
A project or activity is being derailed/unfocused due to indulgence in fun but meaningless details.

Origin:
Lou Contey; 1995. Lou was directing us in “Detective Story”. As the play is set in the 1940′s, all the men had to wear or have a fedora as part of their costume. None of us really knew what to do with them, so there was a period of getting used to having and handling a hat as an important part of your personal appearance.

After two days of watching us fiddle, play with, and otherwise molest our headgear, Lou calmly called a stop to the rehearsal and explained to us,

“This is a story about the lives of people – and all of you have managed to make it a story about hats.”

I’ve spent the last few days dealing with someone that somehow brings this memory forward in my mind.

I tended bar in Chicago for several years, and it was very like me to go to a place called The Red Lion up on Lincoln for lessons in drinking and brinkmanship. There was a barman there named Joe, who was a life-long tender and owner. I always respected that he was quiet and to the point, and sensed there was a lot to learn from him.

On a semi-busy night, I was working my way into my cups. There was an older guy being loud and obnoxious at the other end of the bar. He was clearly alone, drunk, and trying to pick an argument with anyone who would listen to him. No one would, which drove him to get louder. I could see that I, and several others, were nearing the point where we would ask him to leave.

Perhaps sensing his pending ejection, he leaned over the bar and said, “Joe, give me two bottles for the road.”

Joe instantly grabbed two beers, put them on the bar, and took the last of the guys cash. The borachio took them, put one in each of his coat pockets, and stumbled out.

“Joe”, I said, “that was 6 kinds of illegal. You could lose your license for something like that.”

“Are you kidding?”, he replied, “I just preempted a fight, sold two beers, AND I got a loudmouth out of my bar.”

Lots to learn from Joe.

(Where haven’t I been?)

This space needs some looking after, it would seem.

I got my first job at 15 working in an ice cream/burger shop. After the first few weeks, the manager who hired me left. Her replacement did not understand why anyone would hire a 15 year old, and thus relegated me to emptying garbage cans and grease traps, restocking the deep freeze, and sweeping the parking lot.

My nemesis at this job was a woman named Severa (pronounced severe-uh). Severa did nothing but work the ice-cream counter and the register. Never in my days there did I see her do anything else. Severa was in her late 50′s, weighed about 250lbs, had a thick accent, and was blessed with a shrill, rattling voice. Though I worked every weekend, and had been given a name tag, she always referred to me as, “hey kid”. We did not get along.

I arrived at work on a particularly hot Saturday afternoon, some 8 months into the job. I came in the back door, finding the stock room chock full of foul, leaking garbage. It had clearly been left over from the night before, plus it appeared that not a bit of garbage collection or cleaning had been done during the AM. Severa waddled into the room as I was taking it all in and started with, “Hey kid – you have to take this out and bleach the room – then you do the front garbage..”

I know she went on further, but I don’t remember what she said. I looked at her and, screamed, “I quit”, walking out the back door. I kept walking all the way home. I think I had just taken off my name tag when I heard the back door open, and then turned to see my Mom come in. She stopped, confused.

“Aren’t you supposed to be at work?”, she said.

“I quit”, I responded, looking for sympathy.

“Nuh uh…”

Now, I was 15, and already the better part of 6 feet tall. I was quite surprised at how well my mother was able to grab me by the wrist and pull me off balance. She more or less dragged me to her car, threw me in and slammed the door closed. She came around, pissed, but also close to tears – rarely had I ever seen her so angry at me.

“You can put in your two weeks notice if you want, but you finish what you started. You don’t just quit – ever!”

So Mom silently, shamefully drove me back to the ice cream/burger shop. I walked through the front door, apologized for walking out, turned in my notice, and started cleaning.

Oh, and I seem to have this work ethic thing that I can’t shake for the life of me.

Happy Mother’s Day Mom. I love you.