WWDC sold out in two minutes, but it didn’t really sell out because there were all kinds of problems and Apple is still distributing tickets and trying to make it right. What’s clear though is that at current levels of demand, even if things had worked flawlessly from a technical perspective, and even if you were poised at the starting gate with all your ducks in a row, getting a ticket was a crapshoot. So, assuming the following:

• Apple wants to keep hosting WWDC.
• Apple wants to keep it the same size (5000 tickets or so).
• The current system is a lottery.

… what might be better? I doubt this is an original idea, but maybe instead of having one big lottery you have, in effect, a few different lotteries. Divvy up the 5000 something like this:

• 2000 (or 1000) tickets to a lottery for folks who have never been before.
• 1000 (or 2000) tickets to a lottery for folks who have been before.
• 1000 tickets auctioned off to the highest bidders.
• 500 tickets for the first people to solve 500 different puzzles, or some other game/challenge. Or maybe mined via some Bitcoin-style approach. Or maybe you earn chances in a lottery by dedicating processing power to folding proteins, or curing cancer, something like that.
• 500 tickets to Apple invitees.

You must have a valid developer ID to play, tickets non-transferrable, etc.

I didn’t align the second stencil quite right, but I’m still pretty psyched with how this came out:

I took this great Iron Giant design by Kyle Wayne Benson, made a stencil out of it, and then followed this bleaching guide to transfer the design to my rucksack.

Lots of backlash against the Kickstarters Zach Braff and Veronica Mars. The screediest of these seems to be Kickstarter Abuse by Dylan Gadino, which I disagree with in every possible way, but especially the ugly and condescending tone. Here’s how he treats Braff:

To be clear, Braff secured money for the project, but he would have had to make sacrifices — you know, the way we all do every day in every aspect of our lives. So, instead of accepting this financing deal and creating the movie like an adult, he’s decided to beg us for money. His other options included not making the movie or liquidating $2 million of his assets — that is, if he doesn’t have the much sitting in an account — so he can pay his friends to make the movie, which is what he’s now doing with the donations some of you gave him.

To put it another way, Braff’s life was already great: He’s rich, famous and gets to put his penis inside a model’s vagina. But his life could be even better if only he could make another movie — better still, if he can do it exactly the way he wants with the exact people he wants in the exact location he wants using the exact equipment he wants and with your money to pay for it. I’m not saying Braff’s wealth excludes him from pursuing more wealth and happiness, but isn’t it obvious he should be using his own money to do so?

And the fans? Desperate and deluded:

If you’ve already given to projects of these types and you still think it was a good decision, by all means, keep doing it. If you’re so desperate to feel part of something that you believe the rich have your interests — and not their own — at heart, commit to it. But don’t delude yourself into thinking you’re actually part of something special; you’re helping the rich get richer. There’s nothing special about that.

Class act. Not even worth refuting.

Ken Levine is much more reasonable. I can relate to his Sundance analogy; that the big players will crowd out the true indies. But there’s limited space and time at Sundance, while Kickstarter can scale. True, there may be issues around discoverability, but when you are a relative unknown discoverability is always an issue. As for backers having limited funds to go around, backers will back what excites them, whether it’s on the scale of The Avengers or El Mariachi.

Since then, Kickstarter has chimed in, Who is Kickstarter For? Noteworthy:

The Veronica Mars and Zach Braff projects have brought tens of thousands of new people to Kickstarter. 63% of those people had never backed a project before. Thousands of them have since gone on to back other projects, with more than $400,000 pledged to 2,200 projects so far. Nearly 40% of that has gone to other film projects.

Also worth noting that the traditional model failed to get us a Veronica Mars movie, despite the avowed desires and efforts of the creators. Now there’s going to be a Veronica Mars movie. And there’s a bunch more money kicking around Kickstarter for smaller projects. Win-win.

I thought I’d reboot this site. These days, with Instapaper being central to how I read articles on the web, I am increasingly grateful any time I am able to just get the words and the pictures and nothing more, so that’s what I’m going for with the new look (or lack thereof) here.

Not sure what the content will be like going forward. Right now I post ephemera to Twitter, and might bring that back under this umbrella, although I know I don’t want this to just be a linkblog. I dunno, we’ll see!

Just a quick note, I jammed a finger on my throwing hand awhile back and have needed to tape it to another finger to play Ultimate, and no tape could deal with the sweat for more than an hour or so. Tried a couple brands of athletic tape, gaffer’s tape, and that emergency silicone tape that bonds to itself. Enter Leukotape. Totally awesome. Stayed in place for a full tourney day, was still sticking aggressively when I peeled it off at the end of play.

I somehow stumbled onto How Not to Make a Hang Drum, which is a hilarious mini-documentary of a failed DIY project (although I can’t really call it “failed” since it produced such a fun little movie). Here’s part 2.

Anyway, from here it was down the rabbithole (again) of various Hang-style drums:

• The Original Propane Tank Hank Drum on YouTube, by Dennis Havlena.
• His Hank Drum instructions and his impressive DIY instrument repository.
• Same idea, the TuneTank, and a smaller version made from an 11 lb. tank.
• Then there’s the Zen Tambour (YouTube) made by Exotic Vessels.
• … or these by Milltone Drums.
• Not big enough? There are Whale Drums by Jim Doble, who does pieces for Playgrounds and Children’s Museums.

A couple things have convinced me that I need a better camera than the one on my iPhone. I mean, I love it, and “the best camera is the one you have with you” and all that, but:

• Marco Arment got a retina Macbook Pro and discovered that almost nothing he’s shot since 2010 is usable as a desktop wallpaper.
• I visited with a buddy of mine who is an excellent amateur photographer, and he told me all about the advantages of shooting in RAW, showed me his Lightroom workflow, showed me the absolutely stunning archival-grade prints that are possible on a pigment-based printer, and more (wow, the technology we can have in our homes, magical times).

Anyway, so now I’m thoroughly overwhelmed, so thought I’d stumble through a few links for the next person who comes along similarly overwhelmed. If you want to read something by somebody that actually knows what they are talking about, you’ve come to the wrong place.

First, my knowledgable buddy recommended the Panasonic DMC-FZ150K, which looks great, but I know from past experience that if there’s any chance I will carry a camera with me, it will have to be smaller than that. He also had a Panasonic Lumix GF1 with the pancake lens, and I have to admit the size alone is awfully tempting. That, and I remember when the camera first came out and there were these glowing (and beautiful) testimonials like Panasonic Lumix GF1 Field Test – 16 Days in the Himalayas and my experience with a micro-4/3rds camera.

Since the the GF1 Panasonic has released the GF2 and GF3, and now the GX1. Whether or not the GF2 and GF3 are worthy upgrades seems to be up for debate (I get the sense they are almost for different audiences), but various forum threads (like this one or this one) seem to suggest that the GX1 makes some worthwhile improvements.

So the Micro 4/3 form factor and performance look great, but is that the right Micro 4/3 camera? There’s also the Samsung NX200. They are in a dead heat at dpreview.com (here’s their GX1 review and their NX200 review). In one of the threads above somebody mentioned, “But the price. GX1 too high. At that price, OM-D is attractive :D with more performance, build quality!” So I had to look that up, and indeed the Olympus OM-D E-M5 gets a great review, but it is also significantly more expensive, and I already feel like I’d be buying more camera than I have any right to as a newbie.

(This just in: the always-great Wirecutter has a new piece up, Best Mirrorless Camera Over $1000, and it’s about the Olympus.)

Along the lines of not buying too much camera, I’m not sure how I found it, but somewhere somebody mentioned the Panasonic Lumix DMC-LX5 (actually, my buddy also owns a point-and-shoot, maybe this one?). It sounds like a helluva point-and-shoot. It gets lots of love from dprreview, is a LOT cheaper than the GX1 with pancake lens would be, and shoots in RAW. There are a bunch of helpful Amazon reviews, with this one titled ultimate serious photographer’s point & shoot summing up nicely.

I also wonder if shooting in RAW is biting off more than I will chew. I recognize that it’s the right way to go, but there will be a learning curve. Without post-processing, photos will look worse to the eye. So part of this decision rests in trying to predict how much time I will realistically put into this. Will I invest the time necessary to get good? I would like to think so…

Anyway, I thought these summed up the RAW thing pretty well:

Anyway, no answers here, but this is what I’ve found so far. The question is, do I buy for who I am now, or for the dream of who I will become?