I’m back out in San Diego for Adicio’s annual user conference. It’s always good to see some of the other papers and learn more about the future of recruitment classifieds. I’m taking the red-eye back on Friday night, a flight I’m sure will be sheer bliss.

It’ll be hard for this trip to compete with the last time I was out here, though. In January, 2004, I came out here and was joined for the weekend by my sweetiepie.

We stayed at the Hotel del Coronado, walked the beach, ate at fine restaurants, went to the zoo. Saw a polar bear:

Three weeks later, we were engaged.

Yep, it’s unlikely this trip will live up to the last one.

I’m starting to write more pieces on other sites, and I’ve realized I’ve never been very good about linking to them from here. So, I’m going to check in regularly with links to other pieces I’ve written or blogged.

From The Job Blog:

Journalism Internship in the Wild

The truth about interviewing

I keep promising myself that I’ll go back and actually write my Thailand travelogue. For now, I’m just flipping through the photos trying to figure out which ones should make the cut.

I really like this one from a traditional Thai fingernail dance:

My office is on the second floor, facing the alley behind our Congress Street building. Normally, I just get the regular city noise, and it’s not all that bad. I can still concentrate, hold conference calls, get on with my life.

But, this morning, some friendly person has decided he wants to feed bread to all the Fort Point Channel seagulls, and do it right outside my window. For the past fifteen minutes, I’ve been treated to an deafening chorus of gull screeches. What made someone possibly think this would be a good idea for 7:30 in the morning?

Grr.

Now that Sadie is a little bigger, she can stand in the exersaucer while we’re making dinner. She’s getting much better at it; a couple of weeks ago, she would just scream.

She likes her teether, though she doesn’t like to admit it. I’ll catch her going for it, and she’ll give me a look saying “I wasn’t going for the teether. Not me. Must have been some other baby.”

But, it’s mostly fun for me watching her figuring stuff out. I think she’s a smart little baby.

On Sunday, Sadie got to spend some quality time with Auntie Karen while A. and I got out of the house, all the way to the Colonial Theater to see Spamalot, a Broadway in Boston show based on Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

The show itself was good. The quality time with my wife was outstanding.

I’ve been using Emacs as my text editor for a little while now, and the keychords have been starting to bother my wrists. So, I went out to find a version of Emacs with proper Mac OSX keybindings (Apple-C for cut, Apple-A for select-all, etc). I found Aquamacs, which is everything I was looking for. Go download it. It will make your Emacs feel like a real Mac application, and the fonts are much more readable.

I’m edging into geekier spaces by customizing my Emacs with lisp extensions. I’m trying to follow the mantra of “automate anything I do more than twice.” I’m not quite there yet, but I’m getting better.

Technorati Tags: Emacs, Mac

One of the many great things about owning a Mac is the fact that it’s built on unix, a rock-solid operating system with generations of open-source tools. Unfortunately, the default OSX installation doesn’t include many of the popular unix tools I wanted.

Luckily, it’s easy to get and manage all the programs not pre-installed. Go to SourceForge and download Fink. Fink gives you a nice graphical interface for downloading all the tools you could want.

The Fink project wants to bring the full world of Unix Open Source software to Darwin and Mac OS X. We modify Unix software so that it compiles and runs on Mac OS X (”port” it) and make it available for download as a coherent distribution.

Very handy!

I’m going to try to spend a little more time on the linky goodness. I’ve been a little lax in how I’ve been stashing my links and notes, and I want to get back to posting the interesting stuff every couple of days.

To make that happen, I’m just leaving an Emacs window open all day to my linky goodness file. I’m dropping items in as I think of them. We’ll see if this makes a difference in how well I can make this work.

So, here we go.

The art of the board meeting
I’ve been reading Guy Kawasaki’s blog for the past few weeks, and I find it consistently entertaining and informative. Here’s a posting about how to compose a board and run a meeting.

WeSmirch
Memeorandum creator Gabe Rivera applies his secret sauce to celebrity news.

Massachusetts home-buyers turning to auction
If you can’t sell it the normal way, try selling it at auction.

Realtor commission structures under siege
Bradley Inman takes a look. Very interesting comments. (Via the New York Times’ Real Estate blog, the Walk-Through)

Boston Baby doesn’t deliver
This is why we ended up skipping all the baby stores and going to Pottery Barn Kids for our crib and Babies ‘r Us for our glider. I’d love to support small businesses, but sometimes (especially when dealing with the baby) I long for a little ruthless corporate efficiency. P.S., we love our crib and glider. (via Universal Hub)

Philip Greenspun’s Tips for Startup Companies

Why the Edgerrin James deal is a disaster for everyone
“When Arizona inked Edgerrin James to a four-year, $30 million deal Sunday, it marked one of those rare and remarkable meteorological moments when clueless management, disenchanted player, greedy agent and pathetic, delusional franchise all conspire to create the perfect storm of dealmaking.”

How to rattle a college basketball player
Invent a love interest, then pass out the incriminating instant messages before a game. Inventive social engineering.

AskMe: Where’s a good place to get an apartment in Boston these days?
I lived in Central Square from 1998-2005, and it definitely got sketchier over the past couple of years. It’s still reasonably safe, but it’s a little creepy at night. Porter and Davis are less scary.

Interesting reminisces about Will McDonough

Our little Sadie-kins is four months old today. She’s very sweet.

She whips her head around trying to figure out what’s going on. She gets a little frustrated when she can’t move where she wants.

She laughs when you tickle her.

She loves her little Thelonious Monk record, its plonky piano playing in the background as she goes to sleep each night.

She screams and screams when she sees the bath paraphernalia. And screams.

She likes trying to play with the cats. I’m not sure the cats feel the same way.

She loves her bumbo, the best invention ever.

She’s by far the best baby in her “mommy and me” class.

She goes to the gym and hangs out in the daycare without causing a scene.

She enjoys a rousing game of “You’re fine.”

She’s a good eater. She’s a good sleeper. She’s all we could ask for and more. And today, she’s four months old.

A good editor is hard to find.

That’s why I read the Globe online each morning, why I read the Times, the Journal. The world is a busy place and I have only a few minutes to catch up. I rely on the editors’ judgment to make the best use of my time.

Recently, I’ve been spending more time with the algorithmic editors, specifically del.icio.us/popular, Memeorandum and Reddit. Each of these sites use technical means to determine what’s important; each has its own algorithmic special sauce. They haven’t gotten to the point where I trust them to replace the newspapers, but by harnessing the wisdom of the crowds (at least the wisdom of techie crowds), they provide a useful complement.

Now, I just need to find an algorithmic solution that matches my own varied interests. One of my little projects for 2006 is to write a “Daily Me” program that will scour the web and find things I will want to read. I’ll be able to program it to find exactly what I’m looking for, while also preserving an element of serendipity.

I’ll keep you posted on how it goes…

Last May, I became a charter fellow of Boston Cares’ Civic Leadership Institute. Along with 30 or so other Bostonians, I’ve spent the last year learning how to apply my private-sector skills to public-sector challenges. It’s been a great year, and I’m sad it will soon conclude.

My year is done, but yours could soon begin. Boston Cares is now accepting applications for its 2006 class of the Civic Leadership Institute. I think you should check it out.

If you have any questions, please leave a comment or drop me an email.

It’s almost time to head back to Fenway. Makes me nostalgic for one exciting night in Fenway’s Monster seats.

It’s almost been four months now, and the little baby is still photogenic. Here she is sitting on her bumbo.

I, on the other hand, look like hell. The baby’s still pretty cute, though.

More pictures coming soon!

Very nice! I’ve had this site up for five years now, with my hello-world-ish first post on March 7th, 2001.

Five years ago, I was 28 years old, single, living in Central Square, taking a year off to recover from the dotcom era, about to leave for New Zealand, then Tanzania, then China.

Today, I am 33 years old, married with a beautiful little daughter, living in Holliston, going each day to a responsible job, planning a family vacation to the Cape. My life is pretty good.

The last five years have rocked; I can’t wait to see what the next five years will bring. And I can’t wait to tell you all about it, right here on JPButler.com.

I forgot to mention this when it came out, but we’ve added handy interactive maps to all the movie listings. Kinda neat, and actually pretty useful.

Andy Baio of Waxy.org has been hosting the parody House of Cosbys videos. The lawyers just sent him a nastygram, but he’s fighting it.

I’m not removing House of Cosbys. House of Cosbys is parody, and clearly falls under fair use guidelines. I’m not taking it down, and their legal bullying isn’t going to work. They claim that hosting these videos “violates our client’s rights of publicity as well as other statutory and common laws prohibiting the misappropriation of an individual’s name, voice and likeness and unfair competition.” Sorry, but the First Amendment protects satire and parody of a public figure as free speech. Also, the right of publicity only applies to unauthorized commercial use, and not a work of art or entertainment.

I work in the media and I enjoy getting paid, so I have a healthy respect for copyright, but I’m with Andy on this one.

However, this is different from the CBS example below. CBS is making a dumb marketing decision; Cosby’s lawyers are overextending their rights. (Note, IANAL so I could be entirely wrong, but I believe I am correct).