Categories
Just Shelley

California business costs

I just had a call from the San Fran tax collector. I didn’t need to pay one tax fee, but I didn’t pay my city business registration fee. So now they’re holding the one check until I send the other. I’m not sure if there’s something else I’m missing, somewhere.

Checking my finances, I find that I probably don’t have enough money to pay my rent in April. Screwed up again with trying to handle all the filings in California. It is so complicated and so expensive here. O’Reilly’s cool and I’ll focus on writing as quickly as possible in order to get advances more quickly. It will be touch and go though.

I want you all to send me an email every day and tell me to write on the books, NOW! Nag me for all your worth 😉

 

 

 

Categories
Weblogging

Shy bunch

Very long day today with some tough times, interspersed with bits of hurt and difficulty but hey — The Bird bounces and continues. I am nothing if not resilient.

I just left a vlog (“voice blog”) on Gary’s answering machine. I hope I didn’t say anything that would get him in trouble if someone else in the company picks up the message. Pretty tired tonight so the message was probably incoherent and fatigued. I hope I don’t scare the man.

Rogi was a gutsy man and posted his photo today. And Gary posted an MP3 file of Sharon’s voice. Both were very pleasant surprises. Nice moments of sharing — thanks!

We are a shy bunch, aren’t we? It’s interesting finally seeing the face or hearing the voice of people you literally “talk” with on a daily basis. If you all think about it, we in the virtual neighborhood talk together more frequently than we do with most of our realspace friends and relatives (immediate family excluded of course). However, we have never met and would easily pass each other on the street without a blink or a nod.

I wonder if we don’t talk more freely because we don’t see each other in realspace. Tell me — do you talk more openly on your weblog than with the people you work with, or your casual friends? In realspace, I’m quite shy and reticent except when I’m talking technology at conferences, in meetings, at work and such.

(Though I have been known to babble when I’m nervous. And giggle at times, which is surprising for a woman who is close to six feet tall — yup, you read that correctly. I once had a guy come up to me on the streets of Seattle and say “Wonder Woman!” I took it as a compliment. )

Speaking of baring all, since Rogi and Sharon have shared — and TX Meryl has shared in the past — I did a little self photo of myself , which isn’t very good but at least it won’t break your monitor. Sorry — no glamorous babe. No hot chick. Just me. Update Ahem. Very Tired Me.

Now, on to other more interesting topics in my next posting. Though the TechBlog has been getting fairly juicy today…

Categories
Technology

Radio and P2P – not

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

Okay, I’ll be the first to admit I’m a mood today, but there’s few things that tick me off more than this application of “P2P” to any old technology that comes along. And then this proud standing back as if all is explained.

Give me a break.

John throws this simple little sentence out as if the word comes from on high:

What’s the killer app for a desktop content management system?  P2P + Web Services + desktop CMS (Radio).  Killer combo.

I posted a comment to the note asking where the P2P was in this equation. I am not expecting a response.

There is no P2P with Radio. Period. Please don’t tell me “full peers” or any bullshit like that. If there is an assumption of a hard coded IP that is online 7×24 then that is a server. I don’t care what you call it.

Web services. Yes. Desktop content management. Yes. But Radio has no P2P element.

It is a good product and I enjoy using it, and I think it’s interesting that Userland has been able to get all these people to do all this work for no pay via the new publishing paradigm but there is no P2P element in Radio!!

Categories
Technology

Radio and P2P

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

John did respond, in his comments, to my query ,in his comments, about Radio and P2P:

I need a real P2P system to pull this off. Something that can go through firewalls and NATs. Unfortunately, most P2P systems are run by people that are only interested in Napster-style file transfer (essentially a file pile). There is more to this: apps and Web Services.

Appreciation for answering, but one request: don’t go there — don’t go with the limitations of P2P as an answer to the question of P2P expectations in Radio. I can point out more than one application that uses P2P based technologies and whose focus is not based on file manipulation, starting with a mainstream app John probably knows — Groove.

What does Userland want from P2P? Web services imply a server, which implies a traditional approach to serving application needs. Been there. Done that. Next page, please.

If you’re talking publish and subscribe, now we know we’ve been there and done that. Can anyone say “channels”? The technology is neat and seems to be coming into its own — again — but how P2P is this? Isn’t this dependent on a Radio cloud handling the intermittant connectivities of the individual Radio installations? Just as Groove does within its cloud?

Really, with clouds like these, I’ll never have iron-poor blood, will I?

The technology is neat and important and a real step in the right direction, but I don’t think this is what John was talking about. Or is it?

What do you need from a real P2P System, John? If you articulate this, you might find there are people out there with an answer. But we can’t take a shot if you don’t ask the question. Given the right information, we’d enjoy the opportunity, you’d enjoy the opportunity, we’d all learn from the experience, and we’d all have fun.

And we might even come up with some interesting ideas in the process.

Categories
Connecting

I beg to disagree

One last thing, on the subject of online discussions and disagreements.

People will disagree. And that is what makes the world interesting. And people will sometimes be very vehement in their disagreement. This makes things even more interesting. Occasionally this may result in Person A not talking to Person B. Hopefully not often, but this is going to happen.

And if people feel strongly about an issue, regardless of what we say, we are not going to change their mind unless we somehow take on the appearance of Divine Truth.

No, no. Just looked in the mirror. No Divine Truth here.

Unless the issue is one that you feel can’t be ignored, state your opinion, listen to theirs, and agree to disagree. If you can’t ignore their opinion, write the person off and move on. Such is life.

It is okay to agree to disagree. And it’s also okay to write a person off and move on. However, we should use the latter sparingly — if we surround ourselves by people who only agree with us, our lives will be deadly dull.