mdh

I use it as a digital scrapbook of pictures, projects etc rather than a blog.

I clicked on a random sample of the links posted here and really enjoyed seeing the diversity of things people post about and the variety of designs the sites have.

Only pictures I made and commonplace book posts. I've tried long-form blogs in the past and just couldn't find a groove that was interesting enough (to me) to pursue. The pictures I've made however, have become a kind of notebook for things that have caught my eye or that have significance to me and mine. The commonplace posts capture things that have struck me as distilling wisdom or a useful perspective on life.

Art in its most basic form is anything that engages you beyond a strictly functional level.

David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest.

Bragg’s book ‘The Adventure of English’ is a good survey of the evolution of the English language too.

It might help to have an explanation somewhere in the app to explain that documents get saved as pdfs and photos as JPEG’s. Took me a while to work it out.

Oh, and the app icon is really fun too!

If however its a more general/vague concern about OSS support then you'll have a hard time dealing with it and acceptance may be the appropriate route.

Perhaps you could schedule a weekly (daily) catch-up with your boss to explain what you're doing, any issues you've had etc. If he won't commit the time to sit down with you, email him a bulleted list of what you're doing that week/day. Don't get lost in the detail but try to highlight any particular wins (e.g. "the database server we'll need for the quotation site is up and running") and any particular roadblocks ("[web services firm] haven't sent the documentation through I requested. I've scheduled a call for Monday to try and get it sent"). If you're not making the progress you expected/hoped for, always present it in a positive light by explaining what you're doing to deal with it.

If he is always coming to you to find out what you're doing, it might be that he's doing it at the wrong time for him (when he's dealt with all his crises and is tired/stressed) or for you (when you're having a short HN-break in which case you appear to be 'always' slacking).

Why not include a "Thanks to everyone who downloaded v1.0" message in the About screen in the next update of the app or the app info screen on the Market?

Agreed. Apple has a patent on multi-touch in three dimensions already[1] so maybe the next i-device will move away from the screen and towards a more touchy-feely :-) approach.

[1] - http://www.google.com/patents/about?id=FUOxAAAAEBAJ&dq=m...

edit: its also perhaps relevant that i don't tend to have much really long content. The DFW/Infinite Jest article from the New Yorker that was posted earlier is about the average for me (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1730153)

My experience with non-geeky friends is that they check facebook for messages and interact with friend/family through comments and wall-posts. Some of them get email notifications for these things but they use them as a prompt to go to facebook.com to view and respond. Email is the medium but not the message.

Isn't technology wonderful that our biggest issue is which app we have to launch to read the best that the literary world has to offer (and Dan Brown novels :-).

Oddly, i feel must less strongly about Amazon's hold over the the platform the Kindle represents than i do about Apple and its hold over the music platform iTunes represents. Irrational? Probably. Uneconomnical? maybe (i buy far fewer books than i do albums/audiobooks). I can't fathom why but i just somehow feel like, when i've read a book, the ideas it containws stay with me and become mine whereas an album is something that perpetually stays somehow external (apologies for the airy-fairieness of that: i'm not sure how to express it but i feels like a difference thats significant for me and i'm curious whether anyone else feels the same).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Erd%C5%91s

i) Take photos. Its amazing how much your child will change and how things that are front and centre in their/your life will fade when day-day life demands attention. Take as many pictures as you can so that you can look back in a couple of years' time and remember those things (and get a good backup plan in place NOW).

ii) All children develop at their own pace. Children pick up skills only on a very rough timescale: our eldest could do jigsaws when he was a year old but couldn't jump till he was nearly two. Our friend's daughter could draw recognisable pictures staggeringly early but didn't know where to start with a jigsaw puzzle. Now they're 3.5 and both of them can do all of those things perfectly well. Praise them for trying things not just for being good at them.

iii) try not to assume the worst. Its easy - especially with your first child - to get sucked into thinking that your child must have some uniquely awful illness or impediment to a normal life because they 'still' aren't sleeping/they have a cold that hasn't cleared up/they haven't fed well that day etc etc. Whilst these things can happen, and you should obviously watch out for signs of serious problems, chances are nothing sinister is behind it. Accept that this is a phase and that in a few days or weeks it will have passed and you'll get through the rough times much easier.

iv) share the sleepless nights the lack of sleep is tough. Try and agree a rota with your partner as to who will be 'point-man/woman' each night and let the other sleep (ideally in a spare room). The key word is agree - do your 'night-shifts' dilligently and don't be tempted to start comparing the difficulty of the shifts you've already done (i.e., a night where the child slept through doesn't mean your partner is on-shift the following night). These things will balance out.

If you have something worthwhile to say about Mohammed and his teachings (be it for or against) and a depiction of him will help, go ahead and draw him. If however, you're doing it just because you can, then you're doing nothing to help reduce inter-religion tension and, in fact, are exhibiting some of the same sort of dogmatic insistence that everyone conform to your views that you are railing against.

(NB speculation as i am not a muslim, i know only a small number of muslims personally and obviously haven't surveyed the world's muslim population for this). The subset of muslims who will threaten to kill you over this is VERY small and the proportion of that group who would actually ever attempt to do anything about it is miniscule. However, the number of muslims who would find your gesture unfriendly or just straight offensive is quite large. Net result: you've upset a large body of people with whom you have no real quarrel and the people whom you have a real beef with have 'proof' that the non-muslim world wants to undermine Islam.

In my opinion, if the picture on your website has no context (and a link to Facebook group isn't a proper context), then you haven't really helped matters and have probably hindered them.