I was glad to see John Stewart revel in the death of Osama Bin Laden. I’d begun to feel like the only liberal in America happy to see that dogfucking monster go to his grave. After it was news—not just... | Continue »

So, here's the update I promised last week: I'm thrilled to join DotCloud as a software engineer, starting May. Many of you have seen the news that they recently shipped the support for its Perl stack that I know a lot of Perl hackers are excited about. As they point out in the post, I contributed my experience and knowledge for them to build the perl support, but it was actually an hour of whiteboarding session to figure out what the right stack would be (i.e. uWSGI and PSGI, perlbrew, local::lib and cpanminus for a start, but more support to come), and the following few hours of hacking to just build it. It was so much fun and inspiring to... | Continue »

Last week we announced some new tools for fighting spam and promised a follow-up when we were ready with more features. Today we're releasing the ability for any TypePad user to block spammers. This has... | Continue »

SAY Media has this tradition (I later learned that this was actually a national event of some sort) of welcoming employee's kids to work for a day, so of course I brought Maelys in, so that she understand a little... | Continue »

I wrote about Jessie J's earful of a first album, Who You Are, for the Voice this week, and in it, I talked about the arsenal of annoying sounds this woman makes (and words she says). It is a vast... | Continue »

The Facts Fabric: Stretch cotton, thrifted - $1; knit wool - $1, thrifted; denim - $.50 Patterns: Simplicity 2553, McCall's 2591, Simplicity 3703 (free from swap), Simplicity 4687 - in total, all no more than $5 Year: c. early 1960s-early 1970s Notions: vintage zipper for shorts Time to complete: 10 hours First worn: April 2011 Wear again? Sweater, definitely; top, probably not; sunsuit, yes. Total Cost: ~$8 Here's a little secret about my ensemble: Gidget wasn't my original inspiration. The first item I made for this challenge was the navy sweater in the first photograph, a sweater that I intended... | Continue »

I know I’m behind the news cycle on this by about 24 hours, but If you haven’t seen it yet, Postagram is a thing of wonder. It’s a new web and iPhone app that does something simple and ingenious: connects... | Continue »

“Complain about the way other people make software by making software.” I keep wanting to tweet that, but I feel like it's too big of an idea to stuff in a tweet without explanation. It should be unpacked because not... | Continue »

Saving this for an appropriate forum discussion: via 1.bp.blogspot.com | Continue »

The daily work you put into rearing your children is a kind of intimacy, tedious and invisible as mothering itself. There is another kind of intimacy in the conversations you may have with your children as they grow older, in... | Continue »

The other night we were playing charades at a party -- an actual grown-up party for grown-ups! Jane came with us and slept in a back room, and incidentally, we have reached the stage where I am not at all sure that she is still welcome at any given event just because she was welcome there a few months ago, as she becomes less and less a portable baby and more and more a mobile yet distinctly non-adult person, though the hosts for this party were nice enough to mention explicitly that we should bring her and her sleeping tent,... | Continue »

I love imposing my love of historical costumes on Penelope. Penelope loves stickers and pretty dresses. This all makes this book -- Fashion Long Ago -- a darn successful purchase. We were looking at the book yesterday when one particular dress popped out. From the 1950s section, I saw a dress I actually recognized! It's the Horrockses Day Dress from the V&A Golden Age of Couture exhibit (they have a printable version of that dress pattern available online.) There it was, in glorious sticker form. I'm not sure how much she -- as a three year-old -- appreciates the fact... | Continue »

At the Vintage Fashion Expo a couple weekends ago I found a vendor selling the most adorable vintage girl dresses. Most of them were never worn and still had their original tags. They weren't traditional deadstock -- they all sat in the closet of the same owner. Apparently, she just shopped *a lot* for her daughter. I picked up six of them for $50, a price that I think was great for their condition. The above two dresses are my favorites. The yellow dress is the perfect party dress while the plad one is just, well, perfect. The shirtwaist dress... | Continue »

The Facts Fabric: Repurposed skirt from theater sale - $15, turquoise fabric, black fabric - $1, houndstooth fabric - $.50 Patterns: Bodice, Simplicity 3398; Bolero, Simplicity 4474 - $1 Year: 1963 Notions: invisible zipper, $2.50; embroidery floss Time to complete: 25 hours First worn: March 2011 Wear again? YES! Total Cost: ~$20 That my dress is called The "Mondo was Robbed" dress dates its start exactly to October 28 of last year. If you're unfamiliar to that reference, Mondo was a finalist in last season's Project Runway and lost to the Chiccos-designing Gretchen. His inspiration for his final collection was... | Continue »

During our Unrequited Love in Film challenge, the inspiration for my "Yellow Rose of Texas" Dress was Elizabeth Taylor's character in Giant. While I was never a huge Elizabeth Taylor fan (I'm more a Debbie Reynolds sort of person), she was one of those celebrities that sort of seemed like they were immortal. Especially for me, as a child of the 1980s. I remember her being the living icon of "Old Hollywood." Like so many other child stars, she regretted losing her childhood to Hollywood (that was her bond with Michael Jackson). Lest we think that turning very young teenagers... | Continue »

I love this kid. :) | Continue »

Here are some things I've been working on lately. * [Convore for iPhone][]. Leah, Eric, and Eric at [Convore][] were kind enough to let me pitch in for their iPhone app so they could submit it in time for SXSW. It's definitely a 1.0 but people seem to like it... | Continue »

This from someone in response to my tweet this morning: What planet are you on? The one WITHOUT thousands dying from an earthquake? SO FINE?!?!?! I hadn’t yet read the news when I tweeted this morning – I get up early to write before making breakfast and reading the papers - but it made me stop and think about whether... | Continue »

When I first moved to Oregon I often heard local Pinot Noir wineries proclaim "we're at the same latitude as the best wine regions in France! That's why our wine is great here too!" Every weekend in the Fall, I... | Continue »

If you haven't seen the movie "Inception" and have not seen Lady Gaga's "Born This Way" video, you should mosey on to the next post, hombre. Otherwise I'mmabout to blow your mind across +6 dimensions that don't actually exist. LEVEL... | Continue »