dsandler.org/wp

[Crossposted from the toastycode blog. —ds]

The day after Thanksgiving, November 28, has been declared National Day of Listening by the StoryCorps oral history project and NPR (among others). The idea: With family in town, bellies full, and (hopefully) a little time off work, we might all take an hour to sit down and tell each other stories. An essential part of the NDoL is to record those stories, because they probably don’t already exist on blogs or email or Twitter—particularly if the storyteller isn’t of the Internet generation.

We realized this is a perfect use for TapeDeck, our fast, fun, and foolproof audio recording software for Mac OS X. So this week we’re taking 20% off the price of TapeDeck with the hope that you’ll use it to capture your family’s stories this Friday. Just download TapeDeck and press the big red REC button to get started. By purchasing a registration you’ll remove TapeDeck’s time limits (so you can record for as long as you like); do so before Sunday, November 30 to get the discounted price.

We sincerely hope this helps you and your family start and preserve your own oral traditions. Happy Thanksgiving!   —Dan & Chris

A quick note about my Twitter experience this morning:

I went to post a remark about this article from yesterday’s New York Times on the computer science gender gap (particularly how this graph shows how the tech boom utterly failed to inspire young women) and found that Twitter was down:

Actually, that’s a lie; at first, I didn’t notice anything, because this is what I see when I use Twitter:

This is a screenshot of Birdfeeder, a prototype implementation of a distributed and secure microblogging protocol called FETHR, which operates independently of (but connects to) Twitter. I posted my comment to a personal instance of Birdfeeder, which happily accepted it, digitally signed it, entangled it with other messages in my timeline, and forwarded it on to my FETHR subscribers—one of which is a Twitter gateway, which takes care of forwarding my messages on to my Twitterstream. It’s also responsible for sending me messages from people I follow, so (as you can see from the screenshot) I never have to leave my Birdfeeder interface—and therefore can occasionally miss minor Twitter glitches. (Or, as in this case, major hour-long outages. Nothing yet on the status blog, either, so it must really be all-hands-on-deck over at Twitter HQ. Update: Over an hour in, there’s a small note on the status blog.)

When Twitter eventually comes back up, the gateway will busy itself with the task of forwarding along my queued messages and fetching news from my Twitter subscriptions. I can continue to tweet in the meantime and even page back through my entire history and the archived messages of my friends. This is the fundamental benefit of decentralized micropublishing: independent providers may experience local failures without bringing the whole damn thing to a screeching halt.

So, in something of a twist on the usual, Twitter is down for everyone—but not me.

This is fun and exciting new research (currently under submission) and I hope to push out a technical report version soon so that others may begin to evaluate and improve the system design. Hit me at dsandler@ (or @dsandler, once Twitter wakes up again) if you can’t wait and would like to know more.

Photo credit: Doug Mills / The New York Times

It occurred to me that, in the unlikely event that I start blogging in earnest again, nobody will want to read any of it with the site in this state.

So I’m firing up my first draft of a long, long, long-awaited dsandler.org refresh. At first glance it probably looks like just another tightly-tracked Helvetica design; while I do believe that that particular Max Miedinger Old Style look is timeless, I’m actually going for something a little different. Font nerds with Avenir (or Gotham, a slightly boxier substitute) installed will see more of what I’m going for: something a little more open and friendly. [Update: See a screenshot of the Avenir version.]

Feedback is welcome in the comments or shouted to @dsandler.

Twitter feedback

al3x @dsandler I’d click it.

boredzo @dsandler Much improved; thank you.

dangerdave @dsandler v. pretty. But the Avenir family is expensive: I can’t afford Sandler Platinum.

davidrperry @dsandler new layout = elegant & clean. I did get a kick out of the temp version, though!