In case you’ve not seen it yet, Tina and I are blogging things for Evelyn to read someday. You can find it over here:

For Evelyn

I think I’ll keep the “stuff I’m learning about parenting” posts here on my personal space, but I like keeping an archive of fun / special things for Evelyn over there. Feel free to keep an eye on it as you like.

The Talk Show has moved over to Mule Radio Syndicate.  The places this is being reported are littered with comment threads about how Gruber’s a jerk on the air, Benjamin’s a jerk off the air, and the show won’t be any good elsewhere.

The show’s been fairly stagnant on 5by5.  It’s one of the original podcasts for the network – the first run preceded 5by5, if I have my timeline right – but since the full run of Bond movies finished, there’s not been a lot of great content short of the usual decent Gruber Apple commentary – and that just doesn’t carry a show week-to-week anymore… see MacBreak Weekly.

(I also love MBW.  But there are definite lulls of good content in that well.)

One thing that is a frequent topic on all the 5by5 shows is that you’ve got to love what you’re doing, and you’ve got to focus on it to make it work. I’m going to hazard a guess that both Dan and John felt the show declining in its current form, and simply couldn’t agree on exactly the direction to take it.

The great thing I’m seeing – or not seeing, I should say – is any kind of public bad-mouthing of “the other guy” by either party. Despite a number of calls for an explanation, some commentary, an acknowledgement of the situation, neither party feels this is worth addressing – and frankly, I agree. There’s a disagreement happening, it has no business being public, and it doesn’t need to be.  I hope neither party says anything in public save a simple, “Great working with him, I wish him the best.”

I doubt we’ll ever know the real reason behind all this, any more than we would know the real reason behind any given Apple product decision. The show isn’t about the show. It’s about the content, and these guys apparently have different decisions on how to present the content going forward.

So, it’s a change. I wasn’t consulted, neither were you, and neither of us deserves an explanation. I’m going to give the new show a try for a little bit, and I’m going to wear my The Talk Show T-Shirt when it arrives with pride. And I sincerely hope that both John and Dan get exactly what they need by doing what they do best: producing great content the way they want.

Update:

Dan posted a very nice response, that’s right in line with what I had hoped to hear above.

It’s pretty simple.  We have a freedom of speech – at least, we have it here in the U.S., where I’m writing this.

Speech, in everyday situations is carried by air.  When I speak – literally – I make vocalizations, which create sound waves, which are carried by the air to another person’s ears.  Or, often, just my own ears, as I talk to myself altogether too much.

This literal, physical speech knows no boundaries save the physical limitations of the space you are in.  If my friend is standing in Canada, and I’m in earshot in the US, he’ll hear me.

Speech, in the internet sense, is carried by technologies like TCP/IP.  It’s directed by DNS and NAT.

But because it’s carried by technology, which we’ve invented and thus can theoretically control, it’s somehow treated differently than speech carried by air.  Many countries have made laws about what speech is allowed to travel on the internet.

Now, I’m all for preventing child pornography.  I’m all for preventing piracy.  But not at the risk of sucking the air out of the atmosphere.  Let’s keep that kind of hijinks relegated to the movie Spaceballs, please.

We can use the DMCA to fight piracy.  We can use existing laws to find and prosecute child pornographers.

What we don’t need to do is hobble the fundamental nature of the Internet simply to protect a business model.  In fact, for the sake of capitalism, we should allow companies that cannot adapt to the realities of the Internet to whither and die.  Anything less than that is government protectionism – and not the good kind that keeps people in jobs and mortgages.  The bad kind that keeps unsustainable businesses taxing our economy.

The good news seems to be that The People are in agreement about what shouldn’t be done to Their Internet. The bad news is The People can’t afford their own Senators.  We just elect them.

Hopefully that’s enough for the politicians.  Hopefully, it’s enough to make them behave like Statesmen, which is what we expect them to be.

Banks are a valuable part of our society.  We bailed them out.  Car companies, maybe a little less valuable – but a big job center, and we bailed them out.

Hollywood doesn’t deserve a bailout; not when tickets are double-digit dollars in the theater.  Not when they’ve plugged their ears to Internet distribution.  Not when the movies suck.

We have no need to protect these guys.  They aren’t a significant factor in our economy, and they could use a new and improved business model.

It goes like this: Put it in the theater.  Then, put it on the internet.  No Blu-rays, no DVD’s, no pay-per-view (save internet rental) and no HBO window.  Scrap all the contracts, and get the best content to your customers the most convenient – and fastest – way possible.

We’ll be watching.  And we’ll be breathing.

Unfortunately, I’m in that position right now.  It wouldn’t be fair for me to pretend that I can still support people whose websites, and sometimes businesses, depend on me and my services.

I took a job just over two years ago that ended up being a really great thing for me.  I was given a lot of autonomy, and lots of opportunity to do things that really interested me.  All I had to do was sign on.  Full time.  8:30 am – 5 pm.

Since then I’ve learned a lot about my craft, a lot about project management, and a lot about how people I knew before the job depended on me.

Many of those people realized, without prodding, that I wasn’t as available to support them.  Many simply decided to go in a different direction.  I supported that every time – because hey, if I’m honest, I know that it’s better for my ex-client to find somebody who will focus their full attention on what ex-client needs.

Now it’s time to kick the rest out.  I’m drafting a nice – but stern – email that will effectively state that my services will go dark completely in a few months.  It goes out this Saturday.  Option A is to find another provider.  Option B is to say goodbye to your site.  (And in some cases, Option B has probably already been exercised anyway – none of these sites are so big that they’re daily movers.)

I really loved running my own business.  I miss being able to work from home, in my pajamas. On the other hand – I make a lot more money, a lot more reliably (direct deposit!) than I ever did running a business.  That’s enabled me to really start a family and provide them with a nice house and good meals – without going further into debt every day.

Someday, I do want to return to running my own business.  Someday, I want to go back to teaching classes at the University.  In both cases, I know there’s some things I’d do differently.  But today I want to work a 9-5, come home, and enjoy the family I’m working to care for.

So goodbye, former clients.  I will, really, miss you.  Thank you, and I hope you understand.

Doing a little tweaking to the ol’ blog here.  Picked up a nice responsive design theme for WordPress based on Skeleton.  It’s not perfect, but it’s nice to start with something solid and work from there.

So, have a little look around.  I’ve eliminated some of the busy stuff, and I’ll probably trim it further still.  I’m going to try to get better at consistently blogging.

Rock on, all.

Topics include P&T’s Realtor™ stumbles, Adult Swim, and Mentos.  The Freshmaker!

Starring @pauld, @teenydvl, @raislak, and @sikkdays.

Although the analogy is flawed in a number of ways, the most interesting to me is this:

Google does not give a crap about whether current hardware will be able – at all – to run the next version of the OS.

You could certainly say that Microsoft, in the early days of Windows, was pushing the performance envelope.  There were definitely computers being sold that wouldn’t be able to run the next version of Windows – my lowly 33MHz 486SX with 4MB of RAM needed a lot of coaxing to run Windows 95.

But at the time, that computer was a few years old already – at least three.  And it did indeed run Windows 95, albeit slowly.

On the other hand, the Galaxy S and Galaxy Tab are just over a year old.  Yet, they will never receive the Android 4.0, Ice Cream Sandwich.

Maybe it’s unfair of me to say Google doesn’t care about this; I’m sure somebody there cares.  But apparently, as a team, they don’t care enough to make sure that Samsung can get it running on a phone that is, at worst, only one generation behind the current.

And maybe that’s part of why the Google/Microsoft analogy is so flawed.  Fundamentally, the market for phones and tablets is different than that of computers in the 90′s.  So, perhaps a more forward-device looking approach is better.

Perhaps not.  I like that my wife’s iPhone 4, clearly a generation behind, runs the latest iOS.

This is a throwback episode.  How far back you ask?  Well… climb into your TARDIS and go back to… about a year ago, as best I can tell.

Yep.

Topics include burgers, Doctor Who, life, death, and of course, Mr. T.  Starring @raislak, @pauld, @teenydvl, and @sikkdays.

Macrumors links to what they characterize as a dubious claim of an updated iPod Touch with 3G capabilities.

I’d agree this is dubious for a single reason: at that point, I don’t think they’d call it an iPod Touch anymore. Here’s what I think we could see from Apple: no more wifi-only versions of the iPhone or iPad.

At some point, cell network communication chips just don’t cost enough to justify making a separately designed product without them. My theory is that if you want what today is an iPod Touch, you can buy a cheap iPhone. It’ll still be contract free, it’ll still be cheaper – a cheaper, thinner design, that looks like today’s Touch possibly using the last-gen chip instead of the latest-gen. Maybe it doesn’t have a retina display.

And it will have 3G. If you want, you could turn on cell data (voice as well if you want), if you don’t it will still be an iPod Touch.

Carriers could use this model as your cheaper, pre-paid iPhone. Instead of selling the 3Gs, this could be subsidized to cheap-or-free.

Right now, Apple maintains some level of production on three models: the iPod Touch, the 3Gs, and the 4. If you can eliminate one of these lines, still provide a cheap entry-level iPhone that can do double-duty as the Touch – and can become a phone at any time – it seems like it makes sense to do that.

I’ll grant that’s probably crazy. And maybe with LTE on the horizon, you wait until you can do this same thing with LTE instead of 3G. That then also gets rid of your separate Verizon model. On the other hand, maybe you simply use a dual-mode chip.

Just some crazy thoughts from a fanboi.

I guess that could be scary, and there are things that I’m scared about. But being scared, being afraid, is usually about knowing something could happen, that you have no control over, and fearing it out of sheer instinct.

That knowledge doesn’t make all the what-if’s less scary. But it does mean that I don’t need to be blindly afraid of them. Because I can control myself, and my reaction to that fear.

One thing that I’m not worried about is being a good dad. I am actually luckier than most in that I have two really great examples of strong, kind fathers. If I can follow in their footsteps, I’ll be a great father. If I can improve in any way, all the better.

I know the routine for Delivery Day. I know where to go, I have all the numbers in my phone to call, and I know what should happen, and generally what’s likely to go wrong.

So I remain patient and yet anxious. Time is going fast and slow simultaneously.

All this to say, I’m adjusting to a new perspective. I’m excited about the final Harry Potter. I’m awaiting the new iPhone with baited breath. But these kinds of things aren’t even on the same chart as my joy and wonder at becoming a father. This is the next challenge. This is the greatest thing I will ever do. And I can’t wait to get started.