Screw music critics! I picked up Liz Phair’s new, self-titled CD yesterday. A big fan of all of her past efforts (Whip-Smart, whitechocolatespaceegg and the ground-breaking Exile in Guyville), I was intrigued by all of the negative, pre-release hype from the music press about Phair selling out because she chose to work with pop-record gurus The Matrix. Like so many things these days, wanting to make a living doing something you love seems to be crime. Pardon my bluntness, but that is bullshit.

Yes, these songs have a considerably more polished feel to them than previous efforts. But, naysayers neglect to mention this polish applies to all of the songs on the album, not just the four cuts produced by The Matrix. Phair turned to them for 4 of 14 tracks. The rest were produced by Michael Penn, R. Walt Vincent or Phair herself. Moreover, those four tracks (Extraordinary, Why Cant I?, Rock Me and Favorite) do not stand out as overly glossy when compared to the rest of the album. In fact, the entire album is thematically sound.

As for claims that Phair is trying to be an older Avril Lavigne or Michelle Branch, please give me a break. No disrespect to these bright young stars, but they cannot hold a candle to Phair. If any established female artist is pandering to youth, it is Jewel; whose new album, 0304, appears to be weak, over-produced kiddie-pop more in the Britney Spears vein. This is truly a shame, because Jewel has too much talent to waste.

Besides, Phair is still raw. Her lyrics remain gritty, introspective and brutally honest. Think I am kidding? Listen to H.W.C., Favorite and Bionic Eyes, then come talk to me. Moreover, Phair’s music remains … at the core … stripped-down, in-your-face rock-n-roll. Granted, the arrangements are a bit more slick, but this should be no surprise. One of the things that makes Phair great is her ability to take an established form and turns it on it’s ear with a knowing wink. See "Exile in Guyville".

Clearly, I love this album. It is one of the best releases to grace my CD player in years. I hope this album accomplishes it’s apparent goal and adds commercial success to Phair’s already hefty indie-cred. It is about time the rest of the world had the opportunity to discover Liz Phair.

Would you trust this man to build the biggest, baddest DSL infrastructure in the United States? Rob Pickering, friend and former boss, was entrusted to do just that when Cincinnati Bell launched ZoomTown. For as much of an IT bad ass as he is, Rob is badly in need of a blog and a makeover for his website; Pickering.net. As this picture shows, he apparently has better things to do.

Anyone who has worked with me knows how much I value prior art.

Here’s how it goes. We’re designing a feature, getting ready to implement it. At some point in the design process we ask “Has anyone else done this?” and if so, we consider doing it that way.

Prior art as a design method
by Dave Winer

To use slightly stale vernacular … "You go Dave!"

In my relatively short time in the OSS Community (almost 3 years), I have always been amazed at how many folks refuse (and I mean absolutely REFUSE) to levrage one of OSS’s most compelling reasons for being … reuse of what works. In the same vein, most also ignore collaboration to achieve true interop. Gregor feels my pain.

All one need do is look at the gross proliferation of Forum software (InoVision, PHPBB2, pnPHPBB2, PopBoard, vBulletin, ad nauseum). The CMS space is overcrowded as well. Hell, the glut has even become a bit of a running joke with it’s own acronym … YA** (e.g., Yet Another Bulletin Board; Yet Another Content Management System).

Start this conversation in the wrong IRC channel and expect to be flamed to silence for being a facist standards bearer (pun intended). The only real solution is the development, proliferation and adoption of standards. Prior Art is a way of arriving at standards in a very practical, dispassionate way that is founded on reason and successful experience in the adoption of a technology.

Opponents of standards claim it kills creativity. I suggest that ignoring stards is the actual killer of creativity and productivity. Rather than adopting a base foundation (standards) and building a wild, funky-looking house on it, those who decry standards run around building presumably unique foundations which, in truth, are itterative one-offs that present little or no demonstrable difference from their predecessors other than the name etched it the dubious cement of the foundation.

Ask yourself, which would you rather have … 100 wonderfully unique homes which share the same plain jane infrastructure but connect with one another seamlessly? Or, 100 “unique” foundations, from which no houses, or worse poorly designed houses, spring.

Pretty simple when you get right down to it.

It has been a bit of a sad week for me. Last Wednesday, I lost one of my cats. Flygirl (so named because she relentlessly hunted flies as a kitten) was always skittish around people. Though she loved to be scratched behind the ears and on the belly, she hated to be picked up. As she emerged from young adulthood, she was finally warming up to folks. Shortly after my return from Las Vegas, she allowed me to pick her up with out a single mew of protest for the first and, sadly, last time. Two days later, she lost her life to a passing car. I’d like to offer my heartfelt thanks to Dr. Wendy Weil (friend and betrothed of Drew Vogel). She was a great help with burial arrangements.

Gladly, Peta remains. He has been clearly saddened by the loss. Always rather aloof, he has sought more attention and ear-scratching this last week. It is funny. Peta and Flygirl never were all that chummy. I guess absence truly does make the heart grow fonder.

Finally, if you grieve a lost pet, visit www.petloss.com. Drew recommended it to me and it was good to know others feel the loss of pets deeply as well.

I’d appreciate your thoughts and suggestions on the perils of blogging. When a technology goes mainstream, the technology both affects society and is affected by it. The hype cycle may be starting now. What may happen? What can we do to prevent or mitigate unpleasant outcomes?

To get the conversation going, I started the Don’t Blog weblog and a slide show of “headlines from the future.” Please stop by, suggest your own headlines, and we’ll go from there.

Don’t Blog

Another interesting idea from a fellow Ryze member (Phil Wolf). It explores the possible negative ramifications of blogging with tongue firmly in cheek.