Posted April 29, 2010, 11:00 pm.

I heart Panic

So here’s an email I just sent off to the fine folks at Panic, the makers of “Shockingly Good Mac Software”.

Thanks! <3

Hello Team Panic,

I wanted to thank you for making such good software, and being a really interesting, exciting & respectable company.

I don’t think you’ll remember our first encounter, but I do. It was a little over two years ago when I registered a copy of Transmit 3. I had been using the usual suspects of free FTP clients for a while and held some pretty naive views about what good software was worth.

To be really frank, I was used to pirating software and probably tried to find a crack for Transmit before the trial period was even half over.

But Transmit worked great, better than anything else in fact. Looking at your site it was clear (and still is) that you were (and still are) a small but really passionate group of people. So I decided to pay for some software and was glad that I did. When the receipt landed in my inbox the signature convinced me that, yeah, I did the right thing.

Thanks again for purchasing from us! We truly appreciate it!

Best, Cabel and Team Panic

When you introduced Coda it was a few weeks after I’d started at my current job. One of the miscellaneous “computer-person” tasks I took on was the redesign of our website. I was familiar with the Textwrangler-Safari-Transmit dance and the unity of Coda was very appealing to me. Once again I took full advantage of your generous trial period to pretty much create the entire site. Once the trial ended though, I went back to the old ways of app-switching and told myself I’d buy a license for Coda sooner or later.

Well, today I did just that. I also grabbed the 4.0 upgrade for Transmit.

It was a (very friendly, not spammy, very un-PR) email announcing Transmit 4.0 that reminded me to check in with what you’ve been working on lately. I read your blog for a little while, smiled at the Noby Noby t-shirts, and ultimately read the history of Audion. That’s what won my heart, really.

So thanks for being company that I’m really happy to buy software from. Thanks for being the honest and transparent kind of company that makes me wonder “is there anything I could do at a company like that? I wish I worked there…” Thanks for being a company made out of people.

Sincerely,

-Jono Davis

Posted April 21, 2010, 2:12 am.

Nearly Impossible

Posted April 21, 2010, 2:12 am.

PX600

Posted April 21, 2010, 2:12 am.

R! & B!

Posted April 21, 2010, 2:12 am.

Posted April 15, 2010, 7:52 pm.

Chico Soft Rock Choir

Posted April 14, 2010, 11:32 pm.

Napping from 7pm-11pm leaves me feeling like I’m all whacked out on goofballs.

Posted April 13, 2010, 9:25 pm.

Moving Day

Good news kids, we’ve moved!

In a 20 hour fit of self-interested geeking I created a new little collection of websites for myself. Most notably (but not all that importantly) I’ve moved my blog from a WordPress install at meatmachine.info to Tumblr, with a shiny new domain of jonodavis.info. I even set up a friendly homepage for stalkers.

If you’re keeping up via the RSS, you may want to update your reader with the new feed. If you were already following my blog/tumblr/twitter/flickr I’m sorry for any duplicates that may have spammed your reader during the transition.

Almost everything is in place at the moment. The new setup pleases me with its organization, and will hopefully demand less of my attention to maintain. It might even lead me to spend less time twiddling the Internet and more time actually making things.

Alright now, back to work.

Posted April 13, 2010, 1:46 am.

Sacto Polo.

This Sunday Pat, Tom, Brad and I went to a bike polo tournament in Sacramento. We spent an hour and forty minutes driving down, eight hours playing and watching polo, and two and a half hours driving home.

The last time any of us Chicoan polo players had a chance to play with a collection of other teams was in 2007. Brad and I plus Ryan and Nathan went down to San Francisco for the polo tournament attached to NACCC. We showed up with our home-brew wooden 6 lb. mallets and got thoroughly beaten by a Portland team that went on to win the day. I remember coming home and thinking “we’ve got to make some lightweight mallets out of golf clubs and ABS piping like those guys had.”

Since then our game has been improving, and our mallets have gotten much lighter and quicker. We’ve gone through generations of polo mallets. But this Sunday we saw once again how out of touch our little team is with the cutting edge of polo technique and technology. Hardcourt polo is not a rigid or standardized sport just yet, and Sunday’s games proved that we country bumpkins still have a lot to learn from the city kids.

So we got our asses handed to us, but it was still awesome fun. We met some really nice people, learned some new tricks, and in general made some big strides toward great polo justice.

It was funny to realize how much disdain I can spontaneously muster for players on an opposing team. All this contempt for their superior skills, for their energy and commitment, even for the bikes they ride. And then suddenly, as soon as the match ends, I love these people.

“Oh, you take polo way too seriously also? Oh, you take it even more seriously than I do? Oh you are so rad.” Everyone we met was another bike dork like us who didn’t mind a few dents in their frame.

The court they played on was perfect. It was an abandoned parking structure with polished smooth cement floors, an enclosed playing surface with walls and little angled corners, and they even had plenty of lighting for night play. The sky was dumping rain but we all stayed dry inside that warm little polo building.

There were plenty of teams from out of town, but Sacramento has a pretty big pool of players on their own. They have pickup games three times a week and generally play from noon ‘til dark on Sundays. They were very well practiced on the court.

We’re definitely heading back down for the next tournament they host, and will likely try to check out some pickup games too. It was really cool to find out there’s such an awesome community of players so near.

Posted April 10, 2010, 1:54 am.

Gdmrnng.

It’s only a little past one in the morning, so maybe I should go back to sleep. But I’m feeling kind of restless, so maybe I should try to write. It’s been a while since I’ve felt like writing much of anything, which I guess means most of my thoughts are finding other escape routes. Or maybe I’m just thinking less in my old age.

That’s a terrible excuse. Here’s what’s new:

Tomorrow morning (later today, technically, urgh) I’m going to go to the farmer’s market, eat some tamales and drink some Chico Chai, and maybe go for a bike ride. In the evening my friend Emily’s having a birthday and a big group of us are going see Ira Glass (swoon). After that we’re going skating, or mini-golfing, or just out the bars.

Last week Emily, Carson, Suzy & I played some music in a basement. We kind of just plinked around, and I broke my guitar, but fun was had. Trenton & I have also come up with a great concept for a band. Chuck Yaeger: the fasted band on Earth. We’d play speed noise metal, with songs like Sonic Boom, Pushing the Envelope, and X-1. Great idea, right?

This Sunday the bike polo team/gang/kids is driving down to Sacramento for a little mini tournament. We’ve been itching for some competition for a while now, so we were very excited when we heard about the nearby opportunity.

The semester is almost over with only five weeks until finals. I feel pretty good about it. I’m still riding the wave of “actually getting shit done” from last semester, that is to say, I’m no longer slacking off and fucking up in all of my classes. I just sent out my transcript in an application for a scholarship, and there were far too many F’s.

Almost immediately after finals week I’m going to be splitting from Chico for the summer. First stop is my mom’s place in the bay are for a week. I think Im going to be helping her with some remodeling or something along those lines. Maybe building/fixing a porch? Could be fun.

A lot of times when I’m down at her house there’s very little to do, and the fact that it’s up in the hills leads to feelings of isolation and lethargy. I mean, it’s nice seeing fambly and all, but it feels like I’m just floating there doing nothing. Hopefully the week this summer will be filled with enough labor to keep that particular variety of brain rot from setting in.

At the very tail-end of May I’m going to be flying out to see Xue. This will be our forth cross-country rendezvous, and the longest yet. I’m going to be staying with her for the whole summer, and flying back to Chico in the fall.

I don’t really know what to expect. I’ve never lived with someone I’m dating before, but I’m very excited. It’s a big thing.

While I’m there I’m going to be working an internship with the Dutch Bicycle Company. They’re a shop in Somerville that imports Dutch/Danish city bikes and has recently started designing their own for manufacture in the US. The owner seems really cool, and I’m looking forward to working for them.

That looks like a lot of words. Nearly two AM now, so I’m going to hit post, hope I didn’t misspell too many words, and fall asleep.

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