Dollarshort

Generations of Moms

As part as my Mother's Day gift to our moms, I created a photo book of pictures of Penelope (since she's the one the moms really want to see). One page of the book, however, wasn't Penelope but instead a family tree of sorts documenting all the moms in our families going back to Penelope's great-great grandmothers. I'm quite proud that I was able to have a photo of every woman. 

I love seeing the visible class and age differences in our two families. While five out of seven of the mothers on my side were born outside of the United States, all of the women on Ben's side were born and raised in California. And for the most part, my collection of moms were born about ten to fifteen years later than Ben's side. 

In other mother's day news, Penelope and I were featured in a San Francisco Chronicle story about being online and pregnant/birthing. I loved seeing a photo of Penelope in the paper this morning and I'm certainly going to frame her first press mention. 

And yes, I was in labor for 32 hours and it was quite unpleasant. But that's why today I got to have Dim Sum!

Wasted on the Young: Vlogging from the Past

Yesterday, I spent way too much time watching teenagers on YouTube bleat and bitch about their daily lives. You have to hand it to these kids with regard to production values -- they've mastered the art of self-indulgence. And they're just so addictive to watch! 

It got me thinking. What would my own vlog be like if I had had the tools available now, but in 1994 -- when I was sixteen years old. 

I'm pretty sure it would have went something like this (watch it on YouTube for the larger size):

Five Years with Anil Dash

I'd be remiss if I let the anniversary of Anil's five years [1] at Six Apart pass without a post here on Dollarshort. Especially since Valleywag already mentioned his dedication in their own special way. 

Whether you like Anil Dash or not, few can honestly doubt his passion for blogging and for our company. Even the fine folks who like to accidentally misspell his first name in comments will have to admit he has a zealousness to his craft of evangelism that very few in our industry possess. Even if he drives you crazy with his desire to play devil's advocate or his need for a little exaggeration here or there, Anil does so with such sincerity it's difficult to truly fault him. 

Anil is Six Apart -- as much so as Ben or I am. And it's been a pleasure to work with him and learn from him. We were friends before we were ever co-workers and this friendship began as a result of this pathetic post that Anil wrote in 2001. Even if Anil now takes pleasure in mocking his tendencies to bloviate, he is, deep down a person who can still be humbled by some praise or a sincere gesture by a friend. 

Since Anil isn't dead and I'm not writing his obituary, I should probably wrap this up. What better way to end a post about his commitment to blogging and Six Apart than with a photo that shows the dedication writ large?. Here is a photo from the week five years ago when he became an "official" employee. He's crashing on the couch in our office -- aka the spare bedroom in the Trott apartment -- after a long night of work. 

 

[1] Today is also the five-year anniversary of our first funding announcement and our intentions to launch TypePad.

I'm a Pioneer Woman, Not a Polygamist!

To Ben's dismay, I'm a big fan of those Old Time photo shops that take up real estate at most tourist attractions. Ben hates them, but has, on more than one occasion humored me and taken photos. I know they're pretty tacky and a rip off but I just can't resist the lure of tie-in-back costumes.

So when we were in Old Sacramento this past weekend and I got the urge to take ye old fashioned shot, I let Ben take a pass and instead partnered with my wee buddy who can't yet protest. She had been in a bad mood the entire day, so Ben was worried about a breakdown. But, as soon as she put her little costume on, she started beaming! In fact, with the exception of this photo of the two of us, she was smiling in every shot.

As an aside, in my copious free time, I'd like to start an Old Time Photo business that uses period costumes that are a lot less gimmicky -- like clothing from the 20s or 30s, that is not gangster or flapper-themed, but something that your great-grandparents might have worn in a family photo.

More About Roots & Growth

The first few paragraphs of our news post about the launch of Six Apart Services and Six Apart Media do quite a nice job of connecting the work we did in the early years to the direction we're going in today. While Six Apart has come a long way since our core business model was all about "recently updated" keys[1] and installations by Ben, these new additional services are clearly evolved from those roots (plus the addition of tons of talented people -- a nice change from just the two of us).

We're incredibly happy to have the Apperceptive folks join Six Apart. You may not have heard about them prior to the announcement, but you most likely have seen and admired their work. A warm welcome to the entire team, especially co-founder David Jacobs. They're quite a talented team who understand what a good blog (and good blogging) is all about.

[1] In the early days -- from October 2001 to about January 2004 -- I sent out all the recently updated keys personally. There was a little script I'd run that would generate a random key after I entered the donor's email address (which I got from PayPal). Then, I would send an email to the person with the key(s). Even though I used a form letter, I'd always make sure to greet them by name -- which required me to check out their blog. This, of course, didn't scale well but I refused to automate it further -- I liked the personal connection to these folks. Even though the task became a bit overwhelming, I now look back at it with much fondness.

And, I still remember who the first donor was -- Dawn M (from a life uncommon). It's great to see she's an accomplished photographer and powers her site with Movable Type 4. And she had a daughter too!

A True Blogger is Born

Many magazines have been delivered to my mailbox in the last ten years -- hundreds have been read, stacked, boxed and then finally discarded when it's time to move to a new home. In the last eight years (and six moves), my Martha Stewart Living collection has always spared a trip to the recycling bin. In fact, in our home office, I have one shelf reserved for the back issues and each of their white spines reflects the perfect decorative and craft world I aspire to be a part of.

My fondness for the Martha Stewart aesthetic is partly why I'm very proud to have her blog hosted on TypePad.

Today, however, the pride I felt was not because of our association with the Martha Stewart brand of aesthetic perfection, but about our association with Martha Stewart, the blogger.

The post that inspired this pride? Sadly, it was about the passing of her precious Chow, Paw Paw. So much talk about blogging is about blogs with a capital "B," the blogs that are supposed to act as change-the-world media. When the punch line to many a joke about blogging happens to involve a reference to a dog or cat, it's hard to appreciate the impact a post like Martha's could make.

As someone who has written about losing a pet, I know how difficult sharing this sort of news can be. The tribute to Paw Paw's last day was, as a friend put it, "the sort of post that they wanted to write when their own dog passed away." My friends and fellow bloggers who read the Paw Paw post were touched by Martha's candid reflection on the animal that meant so much to her. A few of my friends were even moved to tears.

But the best part about Martha's post was its simplicity. It was a real blog post, not something manufactured for a glossy magazine. It was a chronology of Paw Paw's last day. The captions, as written by Paw Paw, were brief and so not about perfection and good things, but about a good life.

"I went out for one last pee" is a phrase I never imagined would be penned by Stewart's hand, but there it was.

And because this was a blog conversation, we were able to read the comments from well-wishers and see how her post affected them.

So, thank you, Martha Stewart, for demonstrating how a media mogul and household name can use blogging to show such a different side of a person, as well as take the best of media and personal communication and make it completely heartfelt

To Paw Paw, here's to a good life!

Celebrating a Half-Year with Penelope

Complete with a half-cake and a half-candle.

Compare and Contrast: John McCain's 1936 with Barack Obama's 1961

Growing up, my two favorite books were the yearly Almanac and The Book of Lists.  That's  why I enjoyed The Age Factor, a very brief piece in the latest issue of Time Magazine, in which Mark Halperin presents a few famous people who share birth years with John McCain and Barack Obama.

I decided to do a little more research and see who else shares the birth year with these two. As with the Time piece, I left out Hilary Clinton because she's almost right in the middle of McCain and Obama, being born in 1946.


Going a bit further, I looked up milestones that happened in 1936 & 1961. Here's a few:

1936

• 1936 Summer Olympics open in Berlin, Germany
• The first edition of Life is published
• King Edward VIII abdicates the throne
• Franklin D. Roosevelt is reelected to a second term

1961

• John F. Kennedy becomes the 35th President
• The Beatles perform for their first Cavern Club gig
• The Bay of Pigs Invasion of Cuba begins
• The Vietnam War officially begins

No political analysis here.  Other than the obvious observation that twenty-five years really makes a difference when it's presented with historical events and famous faces  And I may be bias since I'm already an Obama supporter, but anyone born in the same year as George Clooney and Michael J. Fox is alright with me.

Rockwell's America

I’m an unabashed Norman Rockwell fan. My family had a couple books about Norman Rockwell in our home when I was growing up and I spent a good amount of time (probably more than the average kid in 1986 did) staring at Rockwell’s illustrations.

In my Ted Talk from 2006, I mentioned this fascination with Rockwell and how I viewed blogs as a sort of equivalent to his illustrations. Just as Norman Rockwell’s work is mocked for its sentimentality, commercial and pop culture appeal (and so not considered high art), blogs are often mocked for their mundaneness and far too personal touches. Especially when contrasted with pure journalism or published writings.

That’s why I was pretty excited to go and see Rockwell's America: Celebrating the Art of Norman Rockwell at Charlotte’s Discovery Place Museum. Even though it was created for children and their fun little imaginations, my parents and I (and Penelope) had way too much of a good time walking around within the recreations of 20th century living and Rockwell’s covers.

Custom CSS, TypePad and a Blogging Milestone

Greetings to all the folks coming from Web Creme and CSS Mania!

While I haven't written up a tutorial on how I used TypePad's Custom CSS to design this blog, the tutorials posted last week on Everything TypePad pretty much spell out the two fairly minor (but big impact) changes I made to the default CSS -- custom banner, blog background and the content background). I tweaked other values, as well, but you should be able to go along way with just those two customizations. The best thing about this design is that I'm using basic templates that didn't require me to touch any code other than the CSS.

For those who want to play along, check out the TypePad Design Assistant. Tip: I used the Asterisk Wide theme to get started.

Having my design spotlighted on these two sites makes me feel quite honored because after all these years at Six Apart doing a lot of different things and having a lot of different roles, I always can find my bliss pushing pixels in Photoshop.

And because everything in life comes full circle, today is the seven-year anniversary(!) of my launch of dollarshort.org.