So, let’s see: I just left the Globe, I’m bootstrapping my own startup, and I’m getting married in four weeks. Not at all busy.

So, I’m putting the blog on hiatus. See you in September…

If you’re in the Express Lane (7 items or fewer) and your entire order comes to $8.26, PAY CASH.

Do not futz with your wallet, pull out the credit card, fumble with the credit card reader and make everyone in line wait four minutes longer than necessary.

Eight dollars is not a major purchase. Carry cash. Grr.

A. and I went to the Sox massacre of the Rangers last night. I got there a little early and did a lap of the park with the new camera.

It’s always interesting to see which players’ shirts are selling best. It seems like Manny is leading the pack so far.

Then we wandered out to right field to watch the end of batting practice. I’ve never seen Pesky’s Pole up close and personal before.

The outfielders were having fun, and every once in a while they’d toss a ball to the kids in the crowd. Here’s a parent lobbying for his son.

Here is a girl desperately waiting for the ball

And, of course, no day at Fenway would be complete without folks talking on the cell phones.

No shortage of anti-Bush books at the Harvard Bookstore.

Welcome to Cambridge.

Abuzz-in-law Denis O’Connell is featured in one of our BostonWorks stories in the Globe this Sunday.

Denis O’Connell took that advice. Laid off from his job at a company building websites for packaged goods companies at the end of January, he considered taking a few months off. If the layoff notice had come this spring, he might have taken the whole summer off. But he saw what could happen if he went that route.

‘’I had some friends who got laid off two or three years ago,'’ he recalls. One of them said, ‘I’m definitely going to take some time off. I’m not going to go to work until I get done with my severance.’ He ended up not being able to find a job for over a year.'’

ESPN just made my day by releasing an RSS feed for Bill Simmons’ columns.

I’ve been following his writing since the Boston Sports Guy days, and it’s great to automatically see when he’s written something new.

We’ve been waiting for the Kenneth Lay perpwalk for a long time.

(photo: AP)

As part of my election-year attempt to learn more about the world, I’ve been seeking out blogs on geopolitics and counter-terrorism.

The best I’ve found so far is Global Guerrillas, written by John Robb. I met Robb briefly before in the context of weblogs, but his credentials in this field come from his experience as a special-ops pilot in the United States Air Force.

Definitely worth reading.

It’s no fun when you’re in a normal-sized car trapped between two monstrosities sporting tinted windows.

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about the closure of Whiskey Bar. Wired has picked up on the story, as part of a larger article about blogger burnout.

I haven’t really felt this pressure, because I’m nowhere near as productive or popular as the bloggers in the article. I write when I feel like it, going dark for weeks at a time when travel or mood dictates. I think the key for me is that, while I love you all dearly, my readership is not very large. I average between 1,200 - 1,500 page views a day, a couple of hundred of which are me and the fabulous A. As such, the world doesn’t end when I go missing for a little while.

There’s freedom in this obscurity. Without the pressures of the mass audience, all you have is your mother asking you why you don’t write any more. And that has been going on since way before the web.

Jeff Croft dissects a job posting in which the person is expected to know everything in the world.

Much better written is the job posting for my current/soon-to-be-former job the Globe. It just went up yesterday, make sure to take a look.

Jay Rosen, chair of Journalism at NYU, will be covering the convention here in Boston in a couple of weeks — as a blogger. He gives an interesting history of convention coverage and shares his thoughts on the future, what bloggers can bring to the party. Here are more bloggers covering the convention.

First, the obvious, how things work now:

Nothing happens except the unfolding of a promotional plot. This created a crisis in narration, as well as information– to which the press accommodated itself by means of hyper-informed irony. The eclipse of dramatic content was summed up in the word “scripted,” as in: the conventions have become scripted affairs, an observation made many thousands of times from the 1970s on.

How can journalists justify showing up to cover this thing where, almost by definition, *nothing* is going to happen.

Can bloggers save the day?

What’s the difference between a freewheeling blogger and a traditional journalist? Well, to me it’s obvious: we don’t buy the script. To [Washington Post writer Brian] Faler it’s also obvious: those webloggers don’t have standards! “Their authors mixing fact with opinion and under no obligation to be either fair or accurate.” Here he conflates the bloggers greater intellectual freedom with their right to be reckless.

So, it will be interesting to see for a couple of reasons:

1) This will be the first set of conventions where I really pay attention. 2004 is a critical election for this country, and I want to make sure I understand what I’m doing when I cast my vote.

2) This is the first set of conventions where I’ve been a member of the media. Even if I’m no longer credentialed through the Globe, I have JPButler.com. And that’s all the credential I need to espouse my crackpot theories.

CBS Marketwatch has decided it would be a wonderful idea to put ads in their RSS feed even if there’s no new content, ads which show up as new items every time I refresh my reader.

Delete.

And the great part is, they have no further control over me. Unlike email, they can’t send me any more “special offers.”

Steven Johnson writes a review, incorporating many thoughts I wish I’d written.

Fast Company feature article on Whole Foods, in which they discuss the company’s effects on the farming industry and its radical HR policies.

Actually pretty interesting as a business case study.

(via the excellent Fast Company Now blog)

This is really neat, a 360 degree view of the Freedom Tower site on the 4th of July.

It may take a little time to load, but it’s worth looking at and playing with.

Those of you reading in a newsreader may not have seen my new banner logo; you should click through and check it out.

At our celebration at the end of last December’s Habitat for Humanity build in Chiang Mai, we went to a show and later gathered in the parking lot, where they were unleashing these firebags.

These were big bags of light canvas, almost like cellophane. In the middle was a brick, a little like charcoal. The person would light the brick, and everyone who was looking for a little good luck would hold the edge of the bag. When the bag was fully filled with hot air, we’d let it go and make our wish.

The logo is using a picture I took as it was maybe thirty feet above our heads. We were able to watch it fly for a couple of miles into the sky.

It’s probably wildly illegal here in the states, but it was a wonderful ceremony.

Life caching.

“Get it write” top tips.

Michael Moore has a blog. No RSS feed, though. Boo.

New York Times RSS Feeds.

“America is…“, an ongoing series from a freelance photojournalist traveling America.

Ferris’s principal hasn’t aged well.

“We think it’s very dangerous when one company controls all ownership of communication tools in Thailand”

My PC blew up yesterday — spontaneous reboot, blue screen of death.

The good thing is that I’m finding it hardly irreplacable. Almost everything I did on the PC I can do as well or better on my Mac.

I do miss some of the programs I’ve accumulated from small independent software shops over the years. So, here is my love letter to applications I can no longer use.

TopStyle
This is the outstanding CSS editor from Nick Bradbury, who also was the mind behind HomeSite. I can use BBEdit to hand-code my CSS files, but I’ll miss the intuitiveness of Nick’s interfaces.

NoteMap
This is an outstanding outlining tool I’ve been using for a couple of years. It was originally made for lawyers, but it’s probably the best pure writing environment I’ve used. How did Microsoft Word ever make it this far without a “hoist” feature? Closest analogue on the Mac: OmniOutliner

TreePad
This is another outliner-style program. It allows you to stuff anything anywhere. I’ve been using it to manage my to-do list and projects at the Globe for the past year or so. Definitely worth a look. Closest analogue on the Mac: Tinderbox (in which I’m composing this, and all my blog posts and other writings)

I know I’ve said this before, but you’re far better off using a Mac than using a PC. Everything’s compatible enough at this point, and the Macs don’t “just break.”

Here’s a list of companies that advertise with WhenU, one of the most notorious of the spyware/adware/scumware pushers.

In case you are looking for someone to thank the next time your computer is overwhelmed with popups, make sure to thank Priceline, Time/Life, Verizon, etc….

Just deleted 994 spam comments. Some “marketers” think the best way to attract attention to their pornographic wares is to spew comments all over my site. Insane. Evil.

That’s part of why, in order to comment in the ultimate community application, you must be a) registered and b) a paying customer. More coming soon

Happy Birthday, America!

Fray: Fireworks.

The Amazon.com knee-jerk contrarian game.

Really good view from the cube this week on a job-seeker’s insight from the other side of the table.

Interesting use of a weblog: Make money on eBay.

An insider’s view of Microsoft Money’s development process.

The long-lost ArsDigita Systems Journal Archive.

We have a policy that we’re not being hacked.

Why PHP scales.

Netflix came through with Miracle last night.

Not the deepest of movies, but for a kid who was playing hockey at the time, it was a thrill to relive.

A. and I saw Fahrenheit 9/11 last Friday night at the Fenway theater. It’s what you expect, demagogic and entertaining. The editing was really good, the musical cues were masterful. The opening-night crowd in Boston was into it, looking for any excuse to cheer. I learned a couple of things, including the fact that no one looks regal while having makeup applied. As propaganda, it was actually quite effective.

And because Fahrenheit 9/11 is propaganda, it also annoyed the hell out of me. I despise being manipulated, and this movie exists for no other reason than to try to make me hate President Bush.

That being said, I think everyone should see it. It shows a different viewpoint from those in the mainstream media, and it’s important to be exposed to different viewpoints, if only to reinforce your belief in yours. And that’s where Michael Moore fails; he refuses to even acknowledge that there may be a smidgen of logic in Bush’s decisions.

I disagree with President Bush on many — ok most — of his policies, but I don’t believe he’s evil. I’ll do my best to un-elect him this fall, but I won’t question his basic humanity.