I went to Jing Jing tonight and met some bloggers.  Not as many people as last one I attended, but a nice group of people.  I had fun.  I will update later with links to pictures taken by others.  More Dan Dan Noodles for Don Don!

Update #1: Dave's Pictures, Heiko's Pictures.  They took those pictures of me when I was doing a Laughing Hyena act.

Check it out here including source code.  Performance was pretty good, but I am sure your mileage depends greatly on the type of application.

I started reading Harry Potter books when the second book of the series came out.  It was when the series started to become a phenomenon among kids and I wanted to find out what made it different from other children's books.  I smelled magic sauce.

After four books, I still haven't figured it out fully.  One thing I am sure of is that components of Harry Potter stories are what kids want: special powers, secret places, close friends, payback, mythical creatures, and fast yet smooth pace.  Harry Potter is fun to read and made kids happy.

But the most recent volume, Order of Phoenix, seems different from the previous four volumes.  It goes deeper into Harry Potter's mind and tries to teach something to the kids.  While I breezed through other volumes in matter of hours, I struggled over several days to read few chapters of the latest volume.

My son had similar problems so he skipped through most of the book.  When I asked him his opinion about the book, he said it was fun.  I didn't probe deeper because he was obviously faking it.  Kids are innocent, but not always truthful, particularly when they want to please you.

Harry Potter series is going down hill from here on.  What a shame.

Thanks to Tim Oren for adding me to his blogroll and recommending my blog to others.  I visit his blog everyday because VCs' perspective is unique and very valuable.  IMHO, VC is not a profession nor skill, it is an orientation, not unlike being magnetised.  I value their opinions like I might a compass.  Two problems:

1. there are more than two poles and they move around.
2. relationship is mutual, like a confusing dance of compasses.

I don't know how many blogrolls I am on, but I do appreciate everyone of them because I enjoy deluding myself that blogrolls are friendships.

Confusion and delusion can useful when self-prescribed appropriately.  Confusion helps when ego overflows.  Delusion helps in the darkest hours.  Think of emotions like drugs that can help as well as be abused.

I am planning to have dinner at Jing Jing tommorrow at 7pm.  Be there if you feel like yelling at me with your mouth full of spicy noodles, have me punch holes in your ideas, receive lessons on the virtues of Selfish Pig in person, or just to enjoy my irresistable charm with soy sauce.

Joi stepped on an interesting blog-related problem when he was preparing to migrate his blog to TypePad.  It is a common problem, but it took me by surprise too.  Duh.  The problem is, as I call it, not-really-permalinks.  When you change blogging service provider/software or domain, your permalinks no longer points to your old posts, causing links from all the posts that reference your posts to be broken.

While most engineers would reach for a solution by reflex, I am busy thinking about how effective it is as a barrier-to-entry.  Opposite side is just as important: how effective an incentive is zero hassle migration?  So far, my answer for personal blogs is "important only to a small fraction of the market", meaning it is a serious problem only for blogging elites.  For business blogs, my answer is "important but less important than price."

Note that marketing can inflate the seriousness of the problem or the solution.

I woke up yesterday with these thought.

Blogs will fade away within two years.  What we know now as blogs will not be recognized by web users of tommorrow, not as blogs, but as websites.  Website technologies and blogging technologies will converge into one.  People take it for granted that webpages can be edited using their browser.  People will also take it for granted that any webpages can be subscribed to with a single-click.  Web browsers will be changed to support all this and more like highlighting of changes.

My family went for a little boat ride in the Bay today with my son's Weblos pack (Weblos is sort of like Boy Scout).  Great weather, a bit windy, short of sleep, and in need of a shave.  Here are some pictures from the trip.  The shot of Golden Gate Bridge from below was the best one of the bunch.  Pretty, eh?

Update: Dave was apparently taking pictures on shore as I was in the Bay waters.  BTW, I was in a powered boat named SSS Intrepid (I think SSS stands for Sea Scout Something) which was built for the Korean War.  I wasn't really sailing, but my hair was.

Just thinking out loud.

There is an interesting constraint inherent in the Newspaper UI (NUI) metaphor.  Newspapers are things where blogs are places.  Location of things are usually either temporary (camera in my office) or relative (camera in my pocket).  With personalized newspaper, it is difficult to talk to my friend over the phone about an interesting article on the frontpage of today's Just for Don Morning News if the content of the article (blog posts) has been taken out of its context (blog itself) in order to weave together a story out of multiple posts from multiple blogs.  Hmm.

My Mark Pilgrim Stalks Dave Winer post generated heated arguments over wide range including copyright, de-publishing, and morals.  While they are all good arguments, only Aaron Swartz bothered to asked me to clarify why I think what Mark is doing is so bad.  Thanks, Aaron.

From FAQ about Cyberstalking:

"Many states' anti-stalking criminal codes provide that someone is a stalker if he willfully and repeatedly, communicates, or harasses another and/or makes a credible threat to place the victim or the victim's immediate family in fear for their safety."

"In many states, the behavior must be "repeated," meaning it has to happen more than once either to constitute criminal harassment or behavior which the civil courts can address. Many states provide, however, that if the stalker is prowling a place where you live, work, or visit, then one stalking instance may be sufficient to commence criminal or civil proceedings."

"In some states, like California, you need not prove your stalker had the intent to carry out his threat. In Canada, you need not prove your stalker meant to scare you, only that you were scared. You do, however, need to prove your fear is reasonable."

First, I assumed that the intent of Winer Watch was to catch Dave editing or deleting controversial posts and then denying it later.  I maybe completely wrong and, if I am, I will apologize to Mark fully and as often as he wants.  Most people who responded to my post seem to agree with my assumption though.

Second, I feel that my blog is a place where part of me live.  Dave spends enough time with his blog that it is not unreasonable to think of his blog as a place where Dave lives and work.  If defacement of websites can be considered legally as destruction of property, the idea of a blog as a place of living and/or working is not crazy.

Being exposed as a lier can damage a person's life or career.  Sustained fear of being exposed and destruction of one's life or career is traumatizing.  Winer Watcher prowls in a place where the intended victim live and work.  The person who set these types of bots on a specific victim is a stalker.

For more information about Cyberstalking, go here.