Good morning everybody, it's
Dave Weiner and today is June
15th, 2005 and I was sitting
at my computer coding away, fur
iously solving problems, fixing
bugs, creating new bugs and
whatever. And all of a sudden
it starts raining outside and
there's thunder strikes and
earth
shaking thunderbolts. And at
first I said I don't have time
and then a couple more and
they're getting like huge, huge
, huge thunderbolts and I said I
have an obligation here. Here's
another one coming. You ready?
Now it was out over the ocean.
The cool thing about a
thunderstorm
that's out over the ocean when
you have a view of the ocean is
that you can tell when
you're about to get a big thing
happening. So this is the third
thunderstorm podcast.
Oh, there's another one. That
one was due east, I was about
to say. It's really, really
hot today. My internet was down
. Like first thing this morning,
I totally couldn't get
on and so I ended up going to
Starbucks and it was too noisy
and there were flies there
and I just couldn't concentrate
. I had things I needed to do,
programming stuff I needed
to do and I just couldn't
concentrate. So I picked up and
I went to the public library
and they have really great Wi-
Fi access there and it's free
and I got a bunch of stuff done
there but then school let out
and the kids started coming in
and they're really, really
cute and they come up and talk
to you. They really like the
library. I sort of forgot
about how much kids like
libraries but it made it really
hard to concentrate and then I
was
going in and out of the car and
at one point I looked at the
thermometer, it was 105 degrees
and of course, now there's
another strike and of course it
was 100% humidity and so
like all day, wow, you can feel
the house shake, you can't feel
it, I'm saying but so
all day long it's like what's
happening is it's cooking up a
great thunderstorm, a really,
really great thunderstorm and
so now we're reaping the
benefit of it and this makes
the
earlier thunderstorms look like
a triple strike. Here we go.
Now, not so big but that one
went
blip, blip, blip, three
different lighting bolts all
happening at the same time and
at
the same spot actually but not
the great big thunderbolt I was
expecting and of course
all the while it's just totally
pouring rain and I got a little
movie of the, oh wow, that
was just, that one was really
goddamn close. We ought to do
the math on this, somebody
ought
to figure out how close that
one was, you know, you can of
course figure that one out,
take the speed of sound for the
moment at which I exclaimed to
the moment that you actually
heard the damn thing, woo, I
wonder how loud that's going to
sound, I hope it sounds great.
Anyway so, yeah, we're getting
ready to release the Outliner,
it's a, the to-do list is
getting
short and the initial test
group, I guess there are like
what, seven or eight people,
I don't know if I remember all
the people, it's like Dave L
uber, Rogers Cadenhead, Casso,
Stan Crute, Andrew Grumit,
Lawrence Lee, Andre Radka, I'm
probably leaving somebody out
but, yeah, so they're all seem
to be using it, not well, I won
't say all, but we're getting
pretty good participation today
and that's a pretty good sign
and now people are starting
to report the China problems,
like Dave Luber reported a
thing today, he said, this is
something
that's just going to drive the
first, holy fuck, that's it,
people running, there were
people enjoying the
thunderstorm, that said them
running, that one was a block
away, that
one was right down the street,
so anyway, Dave was reporting a
problem, he said this is just
going to drive the first users
crazy and I said, well, great,
let's fix it, those are
exactly the kinds of things we
want to fix because, and then
of course the hope is that
we're getting, you know, what I
want from the next round of
beta testers do exactly the
same thing, I don't want to
know where the nitty little
display bugs are, the ones that
you'll see, you know, once
every couple of days or
whatever, I can't do anything
about
those things, I literally can't
do it, I can't go into the C
code and change the way the out
liner
performs, but what I wanted,
but I do know that the outliner
is usable, I've been using
this outliner for like 17 years
, so it's usable, I've written
tons of code with it, I've
written
every scripting news that's
ever been written has been
written with it, all the Dave N
ets
were written, well I don't say
all, I think I wrote, the first
ones I think I wrote with
more, that's scary, dear God,
help, this is what we called in
the first undercast, we
called this a Godcast, I called
it a Godcast because I felt
like my partner on the podcast
was gone, okay, anyway, so you
keep wanting to refine those,
you know, get rid of the
deal stoppers, things that
prevent people from getting
worked up, that's what you want
to get rid of, one at a time,
barrier after barrier comes
down, you know, and to the
point
where, I mean I know you can
get work done with this right
now, I know, because we are
getting work done with it, and
I have been getting work done
with the outliner, but I
want more and more people to do
it, and then what I want to do
is I want to attract developers
,
I want the kind of developers
to come when there are lots of
users, okay, and I want
them to listen to the users and
I want them to be users, and I
want the software just
to like attract the good
developers who like really like
to produce software for users,
and that's kind of, then once
we have that, then I feel like,
okay, that's, I've attained
the success here, that's what I
want to do, that's what I'm
trying to do, so, you know,
I don't want the kind of bug
reports that like aim for
perfection, because I know I'm
not getting the perfection, and
I don't have the patience to
get the perfection, I know
that I could try to get
perfection and I would never
get there, I could try to get
it a lot
better than it is, and I would
just never ship, it would never
happen, so I'm going
to ship for sure, and, but we
're just going to keep trying to
take care of the problems,
and then of course, I consider
this a platform for outline
based applications, and I've
got
a bunch more that I know how to
do, like I want to do a blog
ging tool for, you know,
for this, a really simple, you
know, outliner based blogging
tool, not built on the meta-web
API, not built to work with,
you know, the existing blogging
tools, although we know
that that's totally doable,
that's been done in fact, I
think I heard Andrew Grumit
talk
about that, Andrew has made an
outliner that works with Google
type out of this code base,
and so maybe Andrew will, you
know, release that application,
and you know, there's all
kinds of stuff that's possible,
and well known how to do that,
but I'm going to do like an
outliner that's just, I mean, a
podcaster, a, let's get this
right, a blogging tool is
just designed to work with an
outliner, and a simpler blog
ging API that, you know, blog
ging
API that works with that, and,
you know, a lot of reasons for
doing that, I mean basically,
you know, the developer
community hasn't wanted to like
unify and coalesce, they wanted
to
blow everything apart, so you
know, I'm not going to fight
with them on that one, I'm
just going to start something
new, and learn from what
happened in the last, the
communities,
and then try to make it work
out a little bit better this
time, so, anyhow, Thunderstorm
shows no signs of abating, but
I do need to get back to work,
and God has provided us
with a very entertaining
backdrop for a podcast, and a
rather hell-raising backdrop
for a podcast,
and so there you have it, that
's today, today June 15th, 2005,
and this is Morning Coffee
Notes, www.morningcoffeynotes.
com, and I'm Dave Weiner, and my
blog is www.scripting.com,
and that's where you should
tune into for news about the
editor that I'm talking about,
and all the latest juicy tid
bits, and from that, if you're
going to be at Nome Dex, here
comes another one, if you're
going to be at Nome Dex, I look
forward to seeing you, that's
just like next week, so that'll
be cool. Anyway, that's it for
today, we'll talk to you again
real soon, bye.
[wind blowing]
[BLANK_AUDIO]