I've had my HTC Hero for about 2 weeks now. Has it changed my life? No. I mean it's saved me some time with Google Maps/GPS; time which I would have had to spend on the computer before I left. And yes, I'm writing this post on my phone, but it's hardly easy--even if it is convenient.

And that about sums up my 3g, touch phone experience. I have the feeling that I can do anything I want, if only I could bear to thumb it out.

Mostly, having a phone like this has made me feel lonely. These phones are at their best when you're making plans, on the go, staying in touch. I simply don't have enough friends, and the new phone calls that into relief

So I decided that there was no point in learning Django just to do the same "entry.comments.first" and "comment.created_on" kind of stuff that I'm doing in Rails anyway. The framework doesn't seem sufficiently unique to warrant learning for the sake of learning. If I saw a major upside where I could use it at work or there was a big freelance market, that would be a different story.

I decided instead that my site just needs a visual refresh, but I am completely at a loss for what that refresh looks like. I tried something with a header and a footer that mixed around my color scheme, but my mom said it looked awful and bland (which are not generally descriptors you go for in design....).

So I'm back were I started, I guess. I vaguely feel like I want something new, something interesting...but I just can't figure out how to make it work. I wish I could meet up with a designer and do some bartering, coding for design.

Eric Mill over at Mill Industries has some interesting things to say about Google Buzz. Mostly it seems that he's not counting it out yet, despite the rampant privacy concerns and general sense that Google has intruded on people's sacred inbox space. The reason is because of comments by DeWitt Clinton, a Google developer.

I'll let you read now....

...

Back? Okay so basically DeWitt talks about this Internet Utopia where the whole web is one big social network and you can follow a friend/twitter like feed from any application that supports it. Turning friend feeds into email. Google Buzz has already decided that if your friend feed is as federated and easy as email, why not show it next to your email? For many people that should have been the final step, but if Google's coercion got more people on the playground then I don't really care.

But I do have a few questions. Like if someone leaves a comment on something in my Google Buzz, how do I see it in my Yahoo! Hum? I supposed the sites would have to be 'connected', which basically means that my Hum would have to subscribe to the pubsubhubbub feed of my Google Buzz.

But as far as the comment goes, we can't just import the names of the people, "Joey Shoad" and the like. Then we'd be facing the same supposed 'privacy concerns' as were created by the launch of Buzz. Actually, I totally think we should just show the guy's full name because he should have known that he was posting a public comment in a public form on a public post. But Joey could get mad about this. So as a compromise, I guess you'd have to md5 his email and get 'HanZ972oF0F...@GoogleBuzz' which could be shown to the user as "Travis' Friend", with each friend in a different color to help with threaded comments. Then, if you're subscribed to my Yahoo! Hum and you also know Joey by email, you'll see his full name.

Are there going to be pubsubhubbub nodes out there that represent groups and interests? If so, I think we should drop the word 'subscribe' and allow users to 'follow' these nodes. It's simply a less scary word...though I could see using 'connect' to, and treating the node as a site. But that would muddy the metaphor that sites you connect with share YOUR data. Anyways, would public nodes have options for joining? Twitter simply becomes the biggest friend feed pubhubsubbub aggregator. Of course, it's going to be up to the application to filter out redundant messages. Do Buzz posts have UUIDs?

Yeah, I'm not going to wrap this post up. Cheers!

Okay, okay, I'm doing it. I'm going to build a new website using Django which, from the getting started guide, looks a lot like Ruby on Rails.

I haven't done any significant development on this site in ages. Mostly it was because I felt the design was broken and it would take too much work to get it to be anything close to something better. But that's the whole freedom you get with a redesign from scratch. I'm not limited to staying within the bounds of what I currently have.

The new site is going to focus on my musical creations. I already have descriptions for each song, which I wrote when uploading them. But until now I've never had anywhere to display those descriptions. I should probably draft a formal TODO list, but for now I'm planning on adding a more intuitive music playing interface, separate blog and music sections, and Facebook connect and OpenID integration. If you're friends with me on facebook and you log in with Facebook connect, there will be a log that you visited the site (and a log of what songs you listened to). I'll also integrate my twitter feed. Those last two ideas, the log and the twitter feed are inspired by Eric Mill's website.

I want my new website to be interactive. I'm going to make it so that you can change the color scheme and background picture not just for you but for everyone who visits the site. Does that sound gimmick-y? Because to me it just sounds like fun. I'm also hoping that I'll be able to eventually integrate Twoopsaphone into the site. I wonder if I can integrate my Facebook wall somehow.

So right now I'm full of big dreams. The only thing stopping me is the knowledge that no matter what I change, still no one will read my shitty blog. :(

I just finished reading about the top 10 highest grossing movies of the year on Yahoo. The strange part is that I feel like I couldn't name 10 movies that came out this past year if I tried. Although all of the names of the movies were familiar, my memory simply doesn't have the stuff to generate even half of that list.

Now it's easy to mark me down for lack of interest in the subject on movies. I haven't been to the movies since Bruno....when was that, May? But even in areas where I have a high degree of professed
interesting, I can't keep things straight anymore. I can barely remember who pitched in the bullpen for the Sox this year, and when asked point blank if we had traded Buchholz during the season, I couldn't remember for the life of me.

I just get anxious that my life is so transient. I live day after day but none of it seems to make any lasting impression. I can't tell you, truthfully, if I'm doing subjectively better or worse than I was this time last year, or this time 6 months ago, or even this time last month. What did I do for thanksgiving again?