Was going through some old stuff and came across this picture of me and Alex, taken in 1993 when she was about four months old.  Awww.  And now she's almost 18 and off to college.  Meanwhile I haven't changed a bit :)

Onward, a quick quarter-end filter pass...

Paul Hsieh: Why the 'unexpected' keeps happening.  Aka, why the media continue to seem surprised that Obama's policies for the economy aren't working.  As he notes: "In the words of Ayn Rand, they should 'check their premises'." 

Ha!  A hot or not style way of picking the world's best Unicode characters.   I like ൡ which is currently in first place :) 

The iPhone effect: how the iPhone changed everything.  It is now four years old, and it isn't hyperbole to suggest it is the most important consumer device ever.  Well, okay, radio and television were pretty important too, and the telephone and telegraph ... and personal computers.  But the iPhone is a sort of confluence of all of those trends. 

I love this headline: HP webOS tablet plays solid hand against stacked deck.  Especially because webOS uses a 'card' metaphor for running apps.  The early reviews (Engadget, Pogue, Snell) are mixed; people like the UI and overall approach, but it appears to be slow, and that will kill it dead. 

In retrospect that sums up my whole Palm Pre vs iPhone experience; I liked webOS, but it was slow, and that tipped the scales in favor of the iPhone.  I thought it was the Pre hardware, but I guess the HP TouchPad has the same pokiness, so it could be fundamental; maybe the difference is interpreted JavaScript vs compiled Objective C.