So meteorologists are worried that they’ll run out of names for hurricanes this season, at which point they’ll start calling them Greek names like Alpha, Beta, etc.

I propose that scientists and media drop the stupidity of calling them by name, and just give them big numbers. Like Hurricane E764. Quit calling them names like Andrew or Katrina or anything else that the human beings bearing those names will have for the rest of their lives, conjuring up the images of death and destruction and loss whenever someone hears their name. Especially don’t call them less common names like Katrina or Rita.

I keep telling people that if creating and running llor.nu could pay my bills, I’d focus entirely on that. As it is, I’ve been focusing entirely on that, and all other things have been suffering. I’m actually losing weight because my activity level has been low (I have about 3% body fat, so any time I exercise my skinny little muscles they double in weight – an easy feat).

It’s just so compelling to me to try to tame a tiny little economy into a predictable and balanced one. I’m terrible at math, and especially this kind of math, so mostly I just poke at it and wait for changes, but the variables are so great, I’ll never get it right. I’ve put in things that help balance the untamable but it’s still unpredictable and always will be.

One thing that’s hard to describe is the sense of joy I get when I can see someone playing it from the “admin” point of view. I see the data show up in the database, I can see their account balance shift, see their payment logs. I don’t want to call it pride, though some of that is there. It just feels great to see someone enjoy something that I’ve made because I thought it would be cool – not because I thought others would think it’s cool. And to see them come back day after day is sublime.

And I’m also getting that feeling of “I did this for the love of it” rather than the feeling I get when I pursue projects purely out of financial interests or because I think it’ll help raise some kind of imaginary Internet status. It has no social significance, it doesn’t change the Internet, it doesn’t enable people to make money. At the end of the day, it matters little, but I suspect it’ll get more exposure than any project I’ve done to date, and that’s exciting to me not for the status or money it might bring, but because it’ll mean I did what I loved and it worked.

Before we get into this: I’m exhausted. When you read this, picture me just hanging on. The tips of my fingers are sore from typing, and my butt hurts from sitting. In the past few days I’ve had about 6 hours of sleep, and all remaining time has been spent coding and talking online.

I finally launched llor.nu, or at least the beta (which means I can get away with having bugs). The game is sort of like a simple version of Monopoly. You arrive in the game with some money, and proceed to roll the dice. If you land on an available square you can build a hotel. If you land on someone else’s hotel, you pay them rent. There are other little things too, but that’s basically the premise right now.

It sounds too simple to be enjoyable, and might very well be if there were no one else playing, but as you’re playing, so are a lot of others. While playing people will land on your hotels and pay you money, just as you’re landing on their hotels and paying them money. And it happens when you go to bed at night. The world is persistent. This is fun!

It’s even more fun for me. The second I put it up online and people found out about it (and once I told Andy about it) it had 577 signups in 12 hours. This, as you might imagine, made my life interesting for a while. What ran as a perfect game in development was suddenly crashing and bugs were springing up all over the place. So I closed the doors to newcomers until I could feel comfortable with opening them again. Right now, I’m closer to reopening them, but very apprehensive.

In this pressure cooker, I’ve discovered something that I think is important for most people working on most projects, web related or not: you can only plan for so many things, but you’ll never be fully prepared for launch at launch.

Think about it – name one thing in this world, that upon launch, was perfectly suited for what it was intended to do the day it was sprung upon the rest of us? Everything fails to some degree or another – if you’re able to modify and tweak things on the fly, you stand a good chance of getting it right eventually, but it’s never perfect right out of the door.

So I’m embracing this reality. I’m having to move quickly to respond to user demand, but at least now I know exactly what my user demand is. It’s not just me making an educated guess.

This begs the question though – what if people hate the half of a product you shipped because it’s just half a product? How do you recover from that? At the very least, I believe I was able to plan for this. The game started with some very functional forums that allowed beta testers to quickly report issues and talk about what they were experiencing. I try to answer every question as quickly as possible, and make it as clear as possible that the game is just me. It’s not some big faceless entity that doesn’t see what’s going on. It’s me, this guy who wants to put out a neat toy, and is hungry for the voice of the people who will play with the toy.

Keeping my presence in the game and in the community that surrounds it, I believe, will guarantee it’s eventual success. Allowing the community of users to “own” the game by pushing me in interesting directions will also guarantee it’s eventual success.

Check back in six months and see if I was right.

The new Apple iPod Nano is super drool worthy. Super tiny, lots of space, and a color screen.

But there’s one big problem: the headphone jack is on the bottom of the device. This is no good for a lot of reasons (though you could totally live with it). While thinking about this problem, I thought of a bigger solution.

iPods with screens should allow you rotate the entire interface, including wheel controls. So, if the iPod is on its side as shown here, you could rotate the screen 90 degrees, as well as the wheel controls. It’s a little thing, but I think it’d be useful.

I’ve been working on multiple projects lately, some at the same time, and I’m finding that yet again, I wish I could control multiple mouse cursors to do things like window management. Lots of work going on means lots of windows all over the place, across multiple monitors.

It occurs to me that what I really want, regardless of the interface, is a way to very rapidly organize windows exactly as I want them. For example, if the windows on my screens were sheets of paper on a desk, I’d be able to very rapidly organize them across my desk as needed, using two hands or by simply being able to quickly grab them with a single hand.

In Apple’s OS X, the Expose feature lets you, at a glance, see every window available. This is good but this is only good for switching between windows. It doesn’t do anything for organizing an already cluttered mess of windows. It only briefly organizes your windows so you can see where something is at, and then returns you to the same mess.

I think a simple solution would be to allow you to press a key combo or mouse button to switch into “organize mode”, where the interface suddenly allows you to size and drag windows very rapidly by removing the ability to interact with the window contents. It’d be sort of like invoking Exposé except instead of zooming out, it’d show the desk exactly as you expect it, and windows would highlight and grab focus when the mouse hovered over them, showing what window would then be affected by your next action.

Basically, you’d be decreasing the accuracy required to do things like resize windows (which requires you to slowly, in relative terms, approach a sizing control) or move a window (which is slightly easier, but still requires you park your mouse on a specific portion of that app window). Reducing the required accuracy would equate to faster “target acquisition” and “action execution”.

It almost makes me want to learn Cocoa programming on my Mac just to try it out. If anyone has any experience with things like this, I’d love to hear about it. It seems to me that you could extend already existing Expose libraries and use the underlying behaviors.

I’m happy to see what looks like a significant support effort taking place in New Orleans. This is the kind of thing that was needed yesterday (and from the looks of it, could have happened yesterday if people were simply given the orders to deploy).

While things are still out of control, this is the first time in a few days since there was any sort of order being applied to the chaos.

I’ve been watching The Interdictor for most of the day, and the information is coming in faster (and likely with less spin) then any other news outlet. The site is run by a New Orleans ISP that’s holed up in their office building, running off of a diesel generator.

The same people running that site are also reporting things as they happen in the #interdictor IRC channel on irc.freenode.net.

If you want to be able to form a good idea about what’s going in New Orleans, compare what you’re seeing on CNN and Fox with what people like the folks at directNIC are doing (the ISP behind The Interdictor). CNN has been a bit soft on the raw details – gangs of murderers roaming the streets, women and girls getting raped, arson, NOPD officers ditching their badges and joining in, uncontrolled oil spilling into the Mississippi river, buildings collapsing, random people getting sniped.
The Interdictor seems to be able to fill in some of the details where CNN is empty, and vice versa. Whatever you do, don’t just watch a single news source.

I’m glad that Bush has decided to actually get on the ground, but any shred of respect or “benefit of the doubt” sort of feelings I had for him are completely gone. His own Homeland Security advisor refused to believe, despite an NPR reporter stating it as fact in the middle of an interview, that there were thousands of refugees holed up in the Convention Center with no food or water, avoiding the restrooms so as not to get raped, robbed, or killed. He simply refused to believe it – he didn’t even concede to the possibility. I feel like Bush had the same sort of reaction regarding the entire thing. He thought it well enough to say “Help is on the way” and seemed to brush it off. I can’t think of any other President who wouldn’t stop everything, give a televised presidential address, and get themselves on the scene immediately, accompanied by armies of support. Either he didn’t care, or didn’t really know what was going on, and both of those things are damning for me.

I’m enraged. My body is near shaking with the anger I have over the lack of response our current administration is giving the situation in New Orleans. This CNN report is harrowing – truly harrowing. How is it that as a nation with enough military might to surgically flatten a foreign city in a day can’t get people in our own damn country the aid they need?

Update:
As if the CNN story above wasn’t soul crushing enough, things are getting worse in the Superdome. I’m rarely political on my blog, but I have to say, I’d be remiss if I didn’t express my utter and complete disgust over how Bush is handling this. Scott McLellan was on television, and when asked what the people in the Superdome area could do, said “they have ways of getting help”. I nearly vomited.

Clearly if camera crews are able to get in and send video back to the network, people can get into the fray and help those in need. If I were close enough, I’d be spending my own money on whatever I could fit in my truck, and be driving it down as deep as I could get it until I couldn’t do it anymore. It’s simply insane that armies of people haven’t been deployed to go in and help those in need. If getting materials is too difficult by vehicle, get enough people down there to hike it in, to do whatever it takes. Fly cargo planes over the place and drop food and water and temporary shelter.

The lack of response certainly can’t be because we’re afraid of a few idiots with guns reveling in the havoc – we put our troops into worse situations overseas, surely they’d be able to handle it. I’m baffled, nearly out of my mind.

Update:
The mark of a good leader is often evident in those who serve beneath him. Dennis Hastert, speaker of the House, has this to say about New Orleans:

“It looks like a lot of that place could be bulldozed,” and “It makes no sense to spend billions of dollars to rebuild a city that’s seven feet under sea level”.

Sure, both are valid arguments to make. Maybe six months from now genius! I think that choice quotes like this are prime evidence of the lack of understanding or sense of urgency to fix a serious problem that our administration has. If our president were the Mother Theresa, and acted like Bush is acting now, I’d have just as much venom for her as I do for Bush. We can drop Pop Tarts from the sky into the rugged mountains of Afghanistan, but we still can’t get water to people within our own borders.

A few weeks ago while driving up to Seattle, Cameron stated quite authoritatively that steeply rising gas prices would likely set off widespread civil unrest throughout the United States, and there was nothing Bush nor anyone could do about it.

Following my normal tact of calling anything that I don’t fully understand totally crazy, I told him he was totally crazy. He insisted that steeply rising fuel prices were a catalyst of lots of bad things that could happen so rapidly, by the time we knew what hit us, starving middle Americans would be throwing trash cans through the windows of Wal-Marts to get diapers for their kids.

So I’ve been thinking about this a lot. I lived near the LA riots when they broke out, and an entire city basically went nuts over a, arguably, smaller tipping point. If you recall, when the riots broke out, the economy wasn’t so hot. We were at war with Iraq (Bush Sr. dropped bombs in 1991, the riots broke out in 1992) and in the beginning of a recession, and gas broke the $1.00 barrier. I think Whitney Houston was big then too, as were Hyper Color T-Shirts.

There were entire families, kids and all, throwing heavy things through windows and marching in to steal Pampers and Keds. And I’m not at all exaggerating – if you were there, you saw it too. There was widespread news coverage of people who on any other day you would never peg as looters, yet there they were, mobs of kids and adults with ear to ear smiles as they held up pairs of Air Jordan’s while carting home massive quantities of toilet paper.

Compare that to today. Not much support for the war (certainly no where near as much as for Desert Storm). Bush Jr. has made record breaking low approval ratings. I’d say a huge amount of conspiracy buffs/people who like to go nuts in America think we’re fighting Iraq to take their oil (and yet, prices still go up). Pampers are expensive enough as it is as prices of gas rise past $3.00 a gallon, and experts predict they’ll hit $4.00 in no time. Natural disasters are threatening domestic supplies, speculation on the oil market isn’t going well, and prices for consumer goods are already rising.

How long before Wal-Mart needs to start raising prices on goods that lower income families rely on? Or shut down because shipping costs and rising overhead costs threaten their profit margin? How big are the populations bearing similar demographic and social traits to those that went nuts in LA when the riots broke out then compared to today? Think of all the corrupt police reports out of the Rampart district in LA alone, and think of how many local variations exist across the nation – police and the lower middle class to impoverished haven’t exactly been happy with each other for the past several years.

Maybe I’m freaking out, but it seems to me that those who will instigate things like rioting and looting and the traditional sorts of going nuts don’t need much of an excuse. They’ll do it when the LA Lakers win, or every July 4th in the town where I grew up*. But once those guys get started, those who are feeling oppressed in some way tend to think that what the crazies are up to isn’t such a bad idea, and all it takes is for a few of the non crazies to join in, and then everyone decides that it’s socially acceptable and begins rationalizing their behavior. (In my best redneck accent: “Wal shoot Nigel, ah reckon.How is ah supposed t’be able t’buy diapers fo’ mah kids when ah cain’t even put gas in mah Chevy. Lets hoof it chase thet mob on over thar an’ bust into th’ Wal Mart so li’l Ho’tence will stop poopin’ on th’ po’ch!”)

• I’m only half surprised I can’t find much news coverage of Huntington Beach riots. There was the big one at the OP Pro Surf contest in 1986 (burning police cars, massive mayhem on the beach) but also there has been a tradition of riots and destruction each July 4th, or there was when I grew up there. HB police are notorious for restricting press coverage, as I’m sure my brother can attest to.

I’m not sure if I’ve shared my super good method for meeting effectiveness before (as if that were possible in the first place), but I thought it worth mentioning now that I’m back from my little vacation and I have some meetings to attend:

Before the meeting starts all participants should slap each other in the face. Not excessively hard. On a scale of 1-10, 10 being a slap that would make someone cry and walk around the rest of the week with a shiner, you should give slaps in the 3-6 range.

The slapping is good for a lot of reasons:

It gets your adrenaline pumping. When we were cave men and women, we used to beat chests, claw at each other for the best spears, and then rush off and take down mighty mastodons. We don’t get to do that any more, but our bodies want to. Adrenaline helps you think a bit better.

It’s also a morale booster. You’re not just having a meeting, you’re having a thoughtful sit down with people you just spent some time slapping in the face. These are your friends, people you’d let slap you in the face, and people you swung your arm at so that your hand would connect with their, arguably, most important body parts.

And finally, it gives meetings a purpose (something all meetings that don’t start with slapping lack). If you’re just gathering in a room without slapping, there’s no adrenaline pumping. There’s no “we’re going to take down a herd of mastodons” sort of feeling. It’s just a bunch of people digesting their lunches that they didn’t even have to hunt for or even pull out of the dirt. They’re all thinking about something other than the meeting, rather than “that was a pretty good smack I gave Stu from Accounting, and boy, his slap got me riled up alright – we’re ready to tackle some important issues now aren’t we.”

Slap your fellow meeters please.