I’ve just finished the first pass of my successful Sunday drive (spanning well over a degree of latitude during the daylight hours is fun!), and I’m very happy with how the photos look. I just had to put this one up; anyone who knows the culture surrounding Sugarloaf will probably appreciate this sign I saw along Route 16 a few miles from Kingfield.
There are two roads in Maine that touch just about every aspect of the state: Route 1 and Route 27.
Route 1 is a comprehensive road that runs 529 miles from Kittery to Fort Kent. It follows the coastline and then heads along the Canadian border until it reaches the northernmost sections of the state.
Route 27 is a shorter stretch that runs from the mountains to the coast. It’s quite an amazing road; it runs approximately 100 miles from north of Sugarloaf and Carrabassett Valley through Augusta and down to Wiscasset on the coast.
Tomorrow I’ll be driving along Route 27 from the Carrabassett area down to the coast. I guess we’ll see how far I get; there are tons of great places along the way. I’ll try to capture how much of a variety one route can offer.
A couple of experiences lately have strengthened my belief in transparency within communication when dealing with a product or service. I’ll detail my stories later, but for now, I’d like to focus quickly on the benefits of transparency. Quite simply, it seems that giving customers accurate and truthful information allows them to build confidence in your product (even if that means you have to admit some mistakes).
Case in point: Panic. Panic has this wonderful product called Transmit, which is probably the best FTP browser for OS X.  I’m comfortable with stating that opinion even though I’ve never actually used the software. I’ve been a Cyberduck guy for a while (I like free stuff), but I’ve been very impressed with Transmit 3’s design and feature set. I subscribe to Steven Frank‘s blog (and no, not just because he mentioned mine), and his latest post on the latest version release of their product reiterated what I believe is missing in a big segment of the business world: the act of taking responsibility.
Stupid mistake on my part. Sorry for the world’s shortest-lived Transmit version, everyone.
Call it counterintuitive, but that post inspired me to download the demo and very well may cause me to switch FTP clients. Transmit looks really good… and I know there are people standing behind it that will make it worth my $30.
Amanda of the Lascivious Biddies posted an announcement recently that revealed a diagnosis of MS. In case you don’t know, the Biddies are one of hundreds of great bands that have embraced podcasting and have allowed podcasters to play their music. The Biddies are an extremely dynamic group: they can do jazz, country, pop, and more. I particularly like their jazz and cabaret-style music. I first heard about them on Accident Hash (my favorite podcast); if you’d like to listen to some of their tunes, head over to their page at the Podsafe Music Network.
The Biddies have started a fundraising drive for MS research that all leads up to a walk in New York City on April 23. They’re over 70% of the way to their fundraising goal already, but it’s a great cause; if you have a little spare change, please consider donating to the cause.
I’ve decided to put a new “Current Charity” (or fund, or cause, or whatever) section on my blog; Team Biddy is the first recommendation, and I’ll be changing it every so often. Please keep an eye on it and help if you can.
Man, that’s just not fair. NPR had a story about new tech right as I was waking up – I got all mad ‘n stuff that the reporter wasn’t grilling them on ethics. *sigh*
Google has some social commentary and geek humor via Google Romance, where even the 404s are funny. And if you ever questioned what good Flickr is besides looking at photos of people’s cats, today is (or isn’t) the day for you. (Flickr looks as though it did something very cool, but not all that difficult: a switch based on the user’s timezone. Now that’s geeky.)
Happy April Fool’s!
A lot of people in Maine are affected by seasonal affective disorder (or SAD, appropriately). The long winter months with lots of cold days cause people to stay indoors for a large part of their time, and when combined with the claustrophobia of all the trees around and a few other factors, people start feeling down. I’ve felt SAD-like effects strongly in the past, but thankfully this winter wasn’t that bad.
Regardless, many Mainers welcome the first signs of spring with open arms (ironically, many welcome the first snowfall with the same open, yet colder, arms). Today was one of the first spring-like days here (about 55 degrees… hey, it’s still Maine… that’s t-shirt weather!). How could I tell? Besides the weather, there are a few surefire signs. There were tons of dogs outdoors (yay!). There were tons of motorcycles (eh). There were people walking all over the place: attempts to fulfill resolutions that will undoubtedly be “forgotten” (ignored) in less than a week.
From the huge smile I wear when I see a dog happy to be both outside and not freezing for the first time in months to the lack of shivering when I walk, it’s clear: it’s spring!
You’ve probably noticed on your last visit or two that this blog has changed a bit. This weekend I converted the blog to a wonderful software package known as WordPress – a blogging system that is used by many, many, many bloggers around the Web.
Why is this notable? For just over four years (since March 25, 2002, when I launched my first dynamic blog) I’ve used blogs that I’ve coded myself. In other words, this is the first time I’ve used a third-party application for my blog. Why? Well, I always convinced myself that coding my own blog created a sense of pride; I could say everything on justinrussell.com was created fully by me. I thought that I could use it as a selling point for getting a job and the like (I never ended up using it). I’m glad that I was able to read the posts and comments from the old versions of the blog; as you can see from the archives to the right (if you’re viewing this at justinrussell.com/blog/ and not via the RSS feed), I’ve got quite a history.
My reason for for the conversion was twofold: philosophical and technical. I’ll be discussing the philosophical side shortly, but I’d like to focus on the technical side for a bit. Non-geeks, you can feel free to stop reading this post now.
I’ve been frustrated with the limitations of my blog for quite a while. I had a great plan (and quite a few pages of sketches) for a system I called PennyJar, a blogging system based mostly on modular post types. Quite simply, I decided that I’d rather spend my time on more experimental and challenging projects. The thousands and thousands of comment spam posts I was receiving was the last straw. I don’t consider the migration a sacrifice at all, though; WordPress offers many features that I’ve wanted for my blog:
Let’s talk about plugins for a minute. Plugins extend the functionality of WordPress to allow new features. I’ve already installed two plugins that I really enjoy: Geo and Geo Mashup. To see an example of its usage, check out my BlogMap. See why I like it?
As always, thanks for reading. I really enjoy writing here, whether it’s for thousands of people or just myself. This is the best journal I’ve ever had. If you have any questions or just want to say hi, feel free to e-mail me.
UPDATE: Oh, one other thing. I’ll be slowly but surely going back in my archives doing some conversion of links, images, and more. Hopefully I’ll be able to fix some of the links that have been broken for a while. If you see any links that are broken in older posts, please let me know.
Neapolitan Dynamite. Ha… ha ha. This one gang kept wanting me to join because I’m pretty good at eating ice cream.
I’d probably only eat the Chocolate Fudge Brownie half, but I’ll give them an A for effort.
