Delighted to see John McFarlane here. I got introduced to Markdown through StackOverflow, became a fan, and am now a huge fan of Pandoc as well. I'm with you, except on one point: while inviting John Gruber to get on board is the right thing to do, he's not going to play ball. Perhaps you could pick a reasonable deadline, and when he's not on board by the deadline, move on without him. His idea of good stewardship clearly differs from ours.

In hopes of reading the notes, I downloaded the presentation. But I live in the Linux ghetto, which sucks. And I have to try to use OpenOffice, which sucks. I did see some notes, but they are apparently set in a column that is one letter wide, so they run down the left side l i k e t h i s and off the slide. Does anyone know how to view the presentation, with notes, on Linux?

I lived and worked through the early laser-printer era. 200dpi was a technological marvel but not actually useful for real work. 300dpi was a game-changer: you knew you were looking at computer printout, but you could actually work with it. TeX came into its own, math formulas and all. When 600dpi came in, you could work with the printouts without really noticing that they were computer printouts. I also had a chance one summer to work with an APS-5 phototypesetter having, I believe, 7200dpi of resolution. The letterforms were absolutely gorgeous, but it was clearly ridiculously high end and far beyond what was needed for usability. I have seen the new Retina display, and I welcome the new standard. But I will be even happier when we get another factor of 4 up to 500dpi. Pixels rule!

The slides are fun, but baffling in places. Videos would be great, for sure, but if there's no video, what are the chances of enhancing the slides with some audio or some captions?

Jeff, Thanks for the interesting article and the links. For years I have been lighting my computer work area with a swing-arm, Luxo-style desk lamp with a simple 60W incandescent bulb. I point the lamp upward to the white ceiling and the direct illumination washes the wall as well. Now I know what to call it! I recently moved the HTPC with its 50-inch screen to a room whose walls are painted a very dark green. The indirect lighting does not work nearly as well. Any commenters who have ideas, I would love to hear them. (Or maybe there is a Stack Exchange site for indirect lighting now?)

Jeff, Jeff, Jeff, How could you do this without one decent ergonomic keyboard? My personal favorite is the Kinesis Contoured. Whether Essential, Advantage, or Pro, the mechanics are all the same---only the firmware is different. This keyboard saved my career. I got my first one in 1994, and I own six of them. New costs $300 but a reconditioned is just as good and you can save some cash. I do sometimes miss my original IBM PC keyboard, which not only was a great mechanical keyboard, but was also rugged enough to use as a cricket bat. But the Kinesis is better.

My friends at Bell Labs used to love to say that behind every great design is some guy who says "No!". When embarking on a project, it's quite helpful to make sure that a designated naysayer emerges.

Great post. I've known about Fitts' Law since forever, but you've made me see it in a new way. I'm now going to see eject levers everywhere. Norman P.S. Login with openid was hell. typepad does not accept yahoo.com as claimed on yahoo's openid page. Orange! ORANGE!!!