More teeny houses 

Ken Tompkins saw my gush about little houses and sent me a link to this little house builder. Entirely too sweet for words.

Here is the description from the website about the 240-sq ft Concord model in the picture: The Concord plans each have the following: a porch, board-and-batten siding, peaked gabled windows, cathedral ceiling, a stainless steel counter, refrigerator, sink, toilet, retractile vanity and table, Dovre cast-iron gas heater with a handcrafted metal screen, a six gallon water heater, vented loft for two (with ladder), a desk, more than 230 cubic feet of storage, a little daybed, a four burner range, a tub, 15Rs wall and floor insulation, and knotty pine interior wall finish.

I wonder if you could fit a leeeeetle bitty porch swing on that cute porch. (I really love porches, too.)

The crazy little things that stay in your memory 

I have nice memories about the porch swing at my grandparents' farm house in Michigan. So relaxing, especially on a summer night in the country, stars out, crickets chirping. It was the type that hangs from the ceiling of a porch from two big springs. One side of grandma's swing was a little more bouncy because the spring on that side was quite a bit larger, and made the suspension looser. Why would I remember that? Could be because it was a small annoyance in an otherwise pleasant experience. I think it must have bugged the six-year-old me that it wasn't symmetrical.

Kids are sticklers for symmetry 

Both of my kids were quite obsessive-compulsive as little kids. The big guy has grown out of it completely; little guy hangs on to a few of his rules. Sometimes we talk about the rules and they're funny. I think I'm going to do an audio interview in which I get him to describe in detail the rules he has for himself about eating Skittles: four in his mouth at once, two on each side of his mouth, bright colors on the right, etc.

Somehow I have a feeling that the need for symmetry has some relationship to a feeling of justice. Adam told me once that if he was accidently bumped or struck on one side of his body, he felt he had to give himself a little jab in the corresponding spot on the other side, "to be fair."

I don't know if all OCD behavior is about symmetry, I don't think so, but it seems to run that way in my crazy little family! That might be a good podcast topic for Dr. Fran.

Now I want to watch "As Good as it Gets."

Stuffed-up www folder always the culprit 

I'm finally learning not to give up too quick and reinstall the OPML Editor when it freezes up on me. It's happened some four or five times since I've been using it this past year and almost always I'm able to get it going again by cleaning out my www directory. I don't know if there if a limit on the space or number of files, but it always seems to work. This time I'd mistakenly saved a ginormous .mov file there and nuking it did the trick.

BlogHer post-mortem 

Debriefing going on at WoolfCamp Afterglow. RSS.

Had an email exchange with David Tebbutt yesterday about feed discovery, following my bitching about not being able to find feeds for the BlogHer coverage reading list. Finally realized using the new IE beta is probably the easiest thing for me. But people should still display their feeds -- above the fold -- if they know they have them. It's silly not to.

The presenting symptom today 

Writing avoidance tactic: desperate need to novel into a nap despite the fact that I only got up 3 hours ago. I'm going to let myself do this today because I want to. I'm re-reading Redemption, Leon Uris's sequel to Trinity. Conor Larkin is perfection, if you like heros who blow up castles just on principle.

Ways to keep it going 

Susan Mernit evaluates BlogHer06 with an overall big thumbs up. It does sound like it was a big hit! She mentions the need to find ways to keep the conversation going. I'm a big proponent of this, too -- not just for the onsite participants but also for us hermits. I think there are some distance learning tools that could help with this.

In a month or so, after I'm past a moonlighting deadline, I might try to fiddle with a demonstration of what I'm talking about. I was thinking about using Jay Rosen's presentation at BloggerCon as an example, unless somebody has a better idea. The reason I think that one might be good is because it could be made available to j-school classes after it's packaged up a SCORM unit, to give the new journalism ideas more exposure outside the tech community. I'd probably use Moodle, the open source LAMP LMS, as the organizing structure.

Yo Dave 

Long time, no Morning Coffee Notes. How about some nice long rambly off-the-cuff impressions of the BlogHer conference? (Trying to arrive at just the right encouraging but not demanding tone...) If you feel like it. Try to get yourself to feel like it!

Taboo chat 

That's what people are searching on, only to find my little chatbox.

When I named it ChattityChatChatChataBooToYouToo, all I was going for was a jab at Web 2.0 names and I get deviants. Doncha just love the internet?

All over but the killing 

Tom Friedman makes sense to me. He says it's time to stop the current conflict because it's all over but the killing -- that the point in Lebanon has been proved with both sides able to walk away with their pride intact. Too bad that posturing is all in international affairs but there it is.

The NYT writer is the guest on the second half of Meet the Press today. He's just back from the Middle East, and has covered it for years with clarity and depth. Plus the guy seems like a human being. He has a sort of compassionate objectivity about Muslim motives and the Arab idea of their place on the planet.

The mp3 file is up already. How about that. I don't know about you, but these speedy mp3 file putteruppers are spoiling me. I'm coming to expect to get my podcasts instantly after an event. I thought it was great that the cNet people put up the BloggerCon audio files so quick, within hours. I still haven't seen the Gnomedex stuff, though I don't compulsively check for it the way I do with some podcasts.

Sorry, Donovan 

(He got all his electronics ripped off.) That's awful, Donovan. Your heart must have been broken when you realized everything was gone. Suppose they'd been watching you?