Wednesday, June 9, 2004
Blasts from the present
I was going through my electronic rolodex, preparing to export it from one place to another, when I ran across the name of somebody I didn't want to throw away, even though I'm sure all the details in the 'base are long since out of date.
The name is Scott Humphrey. Last I knew, Scott was living in Portland, where he moved from the Bay Area about ten years ago, maybe more.
I worked with Scott, in various capacities at a series of different Silicon Valley companies, back in the days. He was one of the best marketing and PR guys I've ever known (especially around Big Iron topix, which he understands deeply), as well as a great guy.
So I just found Humphrey Strategic Communications, in Portland. Maybe we can hook up when I'm at OSCon this July.
Voice of experience
If you can not prove -- on an ongoing basis -- that the computers on your network have been patched, your solution will fail.
Life of Larry. Or Linda.
Talk about revelations.
I didn't run across this piece of news until yesterday. In addition to reminding me of this scene from Monty Python's Life of Brian, it kind of explains why the (er, former) Wachowski brothers have been so shy about talking with the press.
Noncontext: The (original, episode I) Matrix remains my favorite movie, ever.
EventuWatch
While I'm working on my next SuitWatch, it occurs to me that I forgot to point to my last one. It's about DIY-IT.
Wouldn't it have been cool
... if Tim Pozar had blogged all this stuff? I guess when you get this much ink (and pixels), it's cool enough.
A walk in the light
Jeffrey Sawyer:
Starvation isn't much of a concern in the West, but beneath the surface, at a very base level, is the fear that one will go hungry. We're also afraid of losing our homes, our reputations, our loved ones. Ultimately, we fear death. These fears have us act in ways that, over time, burden us to the point where we live either a grave or a superficial life.
That's from An Inquiry into Living While Walking the Roads of America, Mexico, and Beyond, by Jeffrey Sawyer, who has made a living at living, rather than at business. He carries little money, or anything else. He lives off edible plants and the unsolicited generosity of strangers.
He does not inhabit the connected world on which we write, but rather the physical world that supports it, as a platform supports an application. Reading him reminds me of civilization's many options, including itself.
Sawyer's piece is in the June 2004 issue of The Sun, a magazine that opted out of the advertising market many years ago, and thrives entirely in the market where readers pay for writers. (Also poets and photographers.) Every month, it features some of the most remarkable writing ever to grace a periodical.
I wrote often for The Sun in its early years. In fact, I met its editor, Sy Safransky, when he was hustling one of the first issues from the street in front of the old post office in downtown Chapel Hill. Sy is one of the best writers I have ever known, and easily the best editor I ever had (and I've had some great ones). The superfluous sentences I just cut out of the last four paragraphs are late victims of the mental knife Sy taught me to use.
When they run the credits of my life, The Sun, and Sy, will be among them.