Lars Pind

This was taken Monday afternoon right after we got home from the hospital.

Jason Calacanis: “However, yesterday we broke our $2,100 record with a $2,335 day. That’s an impressive number I know, because if we can take that number to $2,739.72 we’re at—wait for it—$1M a year.”

t pleases me immensely to hear this. When advertising on the internet really pays, it proves that journalism on the web con pay, and we can finally give up those silly ideas about subscriptions and paywalls and other mechanisms that keeps your writing out of the online conversation and keeps traffic away.

More traffic is what you want, because it generates more ad revenue. Just like in the print world where it’s called distribution, and where the free papers like Metro have figured out how to get the business model right.

The advertising problem is solved, the online publishing business model problem is solved, now we just need to wait for more publishing businesses to spring to life.

PS … does anybody know how well adsense works in Denmark? On sites in Danish? Are there enough advertisers willing to pay for exposure?

Just finished reading Lance Armstong’s book “It’s Not About the Bike” (thanks, Jonas), and it’s probably no surprise to anyone here that I’m psyched about the book—or, really, the guy and what he’s done.

It’s a testament to the effectiveness of perseverance over talent. Yes, Armstrong has a giant talent, but talent alone doesn’t do it. What sets Armstrong is that he combines his talent with working harder and more focused at winning this particular race than anyone else. You can see it when he fails to prepare properly, like for the olympics, and others beat him.

I’ve long treasured this quote from Calvin Coolidge:

Press on. Nothing can take the place of perseverance.
Talent will not. Nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent.
Genius will not. Unrewarded genius is almost a proverb.
Education will not. The world is full of educated derelicts.
Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.
The slogan “press on” has solved, and always will solve, the problems of the human race. (found here)

Other notables along the same lines include Sam Walton, who talks in his book about how they knew they weren’t smarter than their competitors, so they just had to get up earlier and work harder. And they did, and it worked. And there’s Madonna and Britney, whom I also admire, and for the same reason: They’re not the most talented musicians, far from it. But they’ve compensated by working hard, and by minding the business side, and that seems to have brought them pretty darn far.

What it all boils down to is that there’s hope, even for you and me, if we’re willing to do what it takes. You can’t achieve anything you want, of course, but probably a lot more than you think. That’s what I read into the story.

Flora has the hiccups. It’s the second time I’ve felt it. I find it odd and fascinating that the little girl in there, swimming around in the whatever the liquid in there is called in English, would have the hiccups. But she does.

Dave Winer: “Or perhaps they just aren’t listening and could have written the story without the interview but want a soundbite so it appears they did a deep investigation.”

I just got off the phone with a friend who spent a week as an outsider working with a team of journalists from a large Danish paper, and she brought fresh evidence that their work style is to go out and confirm their prejudices, they just need the soundbite. When the facts don’t stack up, the article still confirms the prejudice, it’s just a bit weaker. Now that’s confirming my prejudice :)

David Weinberger: “And why not encourage Bostonians to post photos to Flickr with a “BostonGlobe” tag if they want it to be picked up by the paper?”

Indeed, why not? Let’s make it easy for people to help the papers gather stuff. Same applies to delicious, and they could use trackbacks, too.

Når du har lyst til hjemmelavet pizza, så gå ned i dit lokale pizzeria og køb en pizzadej. De er flinke til det hos mig, men jeg har også været steder hvor jeg måtte love aldrig at spørge om det igen. Jeg betaler 10 kr, og det er godt givet ud. Det gør det fuldstændig trivielt at lave pizza, og der er ikke noget, der kan slå en pizza med masser af frisk mozzarella, der lige er kommet ud af ovnen.

My Copenhagen weather Dashboard widget hasn’t been updating for a few weeks. I just changed it to show Frederiksberg instead, and that works fine. Visiting the accuweather.com site directly shows two Copenhagens … maybe that’s part of the problem.

I started reading Harold McGee’s On Food and Cooking, and I am positively blown away. This is a book exactly to my taste—packed with information, about food, and well written. Finally there’s a way to put an end to speculation and resolve all these open questions, like whether to grill the meat at high or low heat; there’s as answer to all the “why”s.

The well written part surprised me. At first glance it looked very dense, and it is, but it is quite easy to follow, written with care, intelligence and depth. It’s ealy to just dive in somewhere and let it take you, hyperlink style, from topic to topic. I can’t wait to continue.

Hvorfor er et overblik forkromet?

About five years ago, my good friend, then boss, and English major Michael Yoon taught me this very simple rule: “It’s = it is” or “it has”. If you do not intend to say “it is” or “it has”, you’ll want to say “its”. Since finally learning this simple and hard rule, my eyes have been hurting every time I’ve seen this mistake made. (The final straw)

I am now at the stage in my transition, where I am not quite as fast on Dvorak as I was on qwerty, but then, it has completely destroyed my speed on qwerty. I am not too worried, though. Dvorak feels really good and I have no reason to believe I won’t get faster still.

There is also the added advantage of fever errors, both because keys are placed better, and because switching offers a chance to relearn your typing skills and eliminate any bad habits that have crept in over the years.

But I am also starting to get impatient and look at the keys instead of the printed keyboard layout I have in front of me, or to just let my motor memory type, which inevitably still ends in errors as my fingers still do the occasional qwerty.

The final Mac OS X weirdness is that when logging in after turning my laptop on, I have to enter my password in qwerty, which I can no longer do without looking at the keys, so I have to use tho built-in keyboard just for that.