Josh Babetski : Quixotic Bravado

• spending labor day weekend laboring. yesterday I played the role of ui designer, working on making my wireframes into presentation layer …
• @AprilRox My best to your parents I hope the hurricane passes them by!
• @fredwilson turned a prediction about Palin by @stephenbjohnson into a bet http://bit.ly/1t5B2o
• @zappos No, In fact your mention of “naked people” made me immediately click through to your site. People really do need to lighten up.
• My little brother has an “afternoon drive” slot on his college radio station this semester!
• @antthelimey’s attempts to get me into soccer may be working. Sat facing the Prem. Lea. match at lunch; was happy about Arsenal’s 3-nil win.
• Reading about the massive, warrantless, preemptive raids on RNC protestors. Scary stuff: http://tinyurl.com/6hjxkx
• @alexknowshtml The mention of “zoot suits” still makes me think of the Tom & Jerry cartoon where Tom makes one out of a hammock and a hanger
• @gruber has an interesting string of McCain/Palin tweets going on today. Palin writing emails in the voice of a deity is especially amusing.
• This election is going to come down to a generation fight and those who want change vs those who have been trained/programmed to fear it.

Recent links posted to Delicious:

• Tutorials - jQuery JavaScript Library
• QuirksBlog: iPhone events
• Juggernaut The Juggernaut plugin for Ruby on Rails aims to revolutionize your Rails app by letting the server initiate a connection and push data to the client. In other words your app can have a real time connection to the server with the advantage of instant updates.
• A List Apart: Articles: CSS Sprites2 - It's JavaScript Time
• Woork: 10 Awesome typewriter fonts for web designers
• 10 useful jQuery plugins :: ENHANCE
• Textmate Footnotes Plugin in Ruby on Rails This plugin saves you time when moving between your browser and Textmate. It adds clickable links to the Rails backtrace when an error occurs, and clickable “footnotes” to the bottom of each page (in development mode only). These links open the correct file in Textmate and move your cursor to the precise line of interest.

  Install with:

  cd myapp
  git clone git://github.com/drnic/rails-footnotes.git vendor/plugins/footnotes
  rm -rf vendor/plugins/footnotes/.git

• @elliotjaystocks Weeping good at new jquery or weeping bad?
• @jrishel Amazon Prime is great. I’ve had it less than 6 months and it’s already more than paid for itself. Recommended!
• Last plug for the SXSW panels. Thanks for the recommendations! Please vote these up: http://icanhaz.com/sxsw2009

• Road Trip! Was in VA today with @antthelimey for a really good meeting. Then took some AOLers to Sweet Water in Sterling.
• Airport Extreme in the office died today. Every product has a failure rate, but am I wrong in thinking Apple quality is on the decline?

• OH: “… told us how he was going to work for [redacted] for 2 years; retire a millionaire.” “how’d that work out?” “he’s living in jersey.”

• I’ve currently gotten the upper-hand on this authentication code. Quitting for the night while the going’s good.
• @thorpus has a great post up worth reading (and retweeting): http://tinyurl.com/5rhthf Then go get the http://iheartpandora.com widget.
• Why yes, that is a new logo and branding for @mapquest! http://www.mapquest.com. Great work by @graham310 and the MQ team!
• @AprilRox Thanks. Been workin’ out ‘n stuff. You’re looking mighty good your… oh, you meant the logo. Umm — thanks?
• @iamkyle Curious, why Coda vs. TextMate? Not knocking Panic, they make great apps. I use TextMate for everything though.
• Grillin’

• I’m locked in an epic struggle with authentication code. It currently seems to have gained the upper hand on me — rematch tomorrow!
• @icelander “Adults are just obsolete children and the hell with them.” –Dr. Seuss.
• @umAndy Very cool indeed. Everyone please check out Andy’s screencast: http://is.gd/1QKO and SpatialKey, which uses the @mapquest platform.
• Overheard @dweakl01 just say: “Nothing washes down carrot like a cigarette.”
• Taking another look through the SXSW panels. Do you have one? Any recommendations? Here’s ours: http://icanhaz.com/sxsw2009 Please vote!

• The Ruby on Rails team should be embarrassed over the condition of their wiki and ability to onramp people to current 2.x tutorials.
• sitting on the porch enjoying the breeze and a beautiful day.
• @lilitroy Glad you’re back too! We redid the UI in all green, so there’s that. Also, @chipd was reported weeping and calling out for you.

• Reading through the schedules and road closings for the DNC next week. My sympathies to friends in the Denver area; rough week ahead.
• Told you so: Called it on 16th that people should move on from the Manga thing. http://tinyurl.com/5exb7h stopthemanga.com = funny!
• New Blog Post: “Before You, There was iPhone Girl” http://icanhaz.com/iphonepics

I came across this article today on Gizmodo (via Friendfeed): “Surprise: New iPhone Comes Loaded with Photos of the Girl Who Made It.”

I wonder how much thought people actually put into where all the things they use in daily life come from and the history of things in general? This article was great in that someone in the UK actually got to see who helped build the iPhone they’ll be using. I would have loved to seen a message too in the Notes Application with her name, some things about her life and work, but a picture is great. I wish I knew more about my iPhone prior to the AT&T guy pawing it up with fingerprints when I bought it.

I think in a global economy, there’s a lot to learn about the people who bring us our possessions and consumables. That perspective would help shine a light on labor practices abroad and more insight and understanding into how things come to be.

Do you ever wonder about the history of the things in your life?