iWalt.com

Anne Smiles

I love this kid. :)

Fireproof Blogging

Brent Simmons:

And so, even in the year 2011, if your weblog gets Fireballed, there’s a good chance it won’t be able to handle it. That seems crazy.

That is crazy. But here’s some anecdotal evidence that suggests going back to static publishing isn’t necessarily the answer.

I got Fireballed last year and TypePad (the app that serves my blog) didn’t so much as break a sweat.

I don’t know all the ins and outs of how TypePad handles load balancing, caching, and so forth but I know a lot of great engineers put a tremendous amount of work into building a platform that can handle that kind of traffic.

(I should probably also mention that I’ve been working for the company that owns TypePad for almost seven years.) :)

Update: Sam runs with it. (I have nothing but love for Brent and everything he’s done, but Sam makes some good points.)

Stellar

Jason Kottke:

People favorite things on all sorts of services across the web and the services don't really do anything with them. They take the stuff that people love the most and ignore it. And that's a damned shame. So I built Stellar.

Awesome. Surfacing this information is exactly why I started tinkering with the my little Microfeed/Mobile whatsit. But take that, blow it up a bit, add following, and cha-ching. Very nice work.

You can follow me on Stellar, if you’re so inclined.

Device-Optimized Apple Touch Icons

I completely missed this when iOS 4.2 came out but it looks like iPhones, iPads, and the like will look for Apple Touch Icons that are optimized for the device before falling back to the (now) generic option. I was going to look into using link tags, media queries, and resolution values to guess the device, but this is much better. And it’s great news for people with icons that look terrible when they’re automatically resized. :)

My Representative

The fightin' 12th!

Proud (again) to have voted for Ms. Speier.

How do I watch the Super Bowl?

O lazyweb,

I have a fairly old television which I like just fine thank you very much. It’s not HD or really any kind of D but it gets the job done. We’ve got a couple of things hooked up to it to make it more fun including a DVD player, a Wii, an Apple TV, and (yes) an Apple IIc.

One of the things we don’t have hooked up to it is cable, satellite, or an antenna. And that works pretty well for us most of the time. But once in a while, it would be nice to watch actual broadcast TV. This is something we used to be able to do with a little analog antenna.

But of course the kids these days with their digital everything have destroyed even that simple joy. And I am now left scanning lists of digital antennas and digital-to-analog converters trying to answer one simple question:

How do I watch the Super Bowl?

I’m happy to run out to Best Buy and buy some little gizmo, but what do I need? Ideally there’s a cheap box that’s both antenna and converter, and plugs directly into the coaxial cable jack. Is that a thing? Do I have to have two boxes? Is this going to cost more than $50?

Help me lazyweb. I’d like to watch the Super Bowl tomorrow. You’re my only hope.

Blinded by Cuteness

:)

Anne Joan

Anne Joan Grayson was born this morning at around 1:30. Both she and Tabitha are doing fine.

I'm pretty sure they said she weighed in at 8 lbs, 15 ounces and is 22 inches long. She is also just completely amazing, just like her mother. :)

Nani + Evan

“The Winning Proposal” @ 7x7:

We asked soon-to-be-weds to submit their best wedding proposal stories to win tickets to Sunday’s San Francisco Wedding Fair at the Four Seasons. Many of the entries were memorable, but the tale of Nani Dickinson and Evan Stern won our hearts and (no lie) made our jaded eyes a bit misty. Evan went to extraordinary lengths to surprise Nani, sending her on a riddle-studded quest around San Francisco before he dropped to his knee at one of the city’s most scenic spots. You must watch the video.

Great. Now I'm getting misty-eyed at work. Jerks.

Congratulations again. :)

Meet the Graysons

So we had a number of options. She could take my name. Not down with that. Fair enough. I could take her name. No, thank you. Also fair. We could give the kid one name or the other. The odd one out on that approach doesn’t really feel like part of the family. So scratch that. We could hyphenate. But Dickinson-Granshaw (or vice-versa) is a tad long. Not fair to the kid. Not happening.

And the other option was to embrace the oft-joked-about mergification option. The “Dickinshaw” solution, as I liked to call it. But of course Dickinshaw is rediculous. (My sincere applogies to any Dickinshaws out there who find their way to this post.) So we enlisted the help of our families and scribbled down every combination we could think of until we finally settled on... wait for it... Grayson.

Dickinson and Granshaw. son and Gra. Gra and son. Gra y son. Grayson.

It feels a little bit like we finally finished getting married. :)