23andme for adoptees

There has been plenty of coverage of [23andme](http://23andme.com), lately[^1]. Like any self-respecting nerd (I took three years of biology in high school) I had my own DNA analyzed. If you’re not aware: you send a spit sample which is reviewed for known DNA markers to help identify traits, your propensity towards certain diseases and ancestry.

AmazonTote

Place an order with AmazonTote and you get free batched “shipping” to your door once a week. No minimums, no obligations, no subscription. If you have Amazon Prime then you have two delivery days available each week. At first I thought this might cannibalize Prime subscriptions (I only have Prime so I can get free shipping in just a few days) but this just extends the benefit.

Game Tonight?

One of [Crowd Favorite’s](http://crowdfavorite.com/) recent [workshop](http://crowdfavorite.com/workshop/) projects has been to answer the question: [is there a (professional sports) game tonight that would affect my commute](http://gametonight.in/)? Now there’s a simple web app to answer that. Even living downtown, I think to myself “why are there so many people in my bar tonight?” and quickly I realize there’s a baseball game down the street. Additionally, Apple recently selected it as a [Web App Staff Pick](http://crowdfavorite.com/news/2010/06/game-tonight-selected-as-apple-web-app-staff-pick/).

iPad is for consumption, so what?

People think that the iPad is going to destroy a lot of wonderful things about computers: [tinkering](http://diveintomark.org/archives/2010/01/29/tinkerers-sunset) and [programming](http://al3x.net/2010/01/28/ipad.html), [creating](http://www.buzzmachine.com/2010/04/04/ipad-danger-app-v-web-consumer-v-creator/) and publishing. So what does that leave us with? Consumption. Or in other words, being an audience.

WordCamp Boulder 2010

As with last year[^1], [Crowd Favorite](http://crowdfavorite.com/) will be hosting and organizing the local [WordCamp conference for the Denver/Boulder area](http://2010.boulder.wordcamp.org). If you don’t know, WordCamp is a WordPress conference for people of various backgrounds and interests (it’s like no other conference I can think of). I’m excited to see how our [Hydeified](http://andrewhy.de) approach works out this year. We’re always open to suggestions and ideas, feel free to reach out.

The Stone Age ended

People had ideas, innovations, technology and the Stone Age ended. And not because we ran out of stones.

My job is to hold the umbrella

My job is to hold the umbrella so the shit from above doesn’t hit you. Your job is to keep me from having to use it.

People lie to the press

We’re doing the best we can, we’re fixing mistakes. But what happens is — people lie. And then they run to the press and tell people about this oppression, and they get their 15 minutes of fame. We don’t run to the press and say “this guy is a son of a bitch liar!” — we don’t do that.

I love downtime

Nothing frustrates people more than a website going down at the same time they’re in need of it’s services. Just look to twitter when Media Temple or Gmail experience unavailability; people lose their cool. Twitter was down so much that it accidentally popularized their growing pains via the fail whale.

Adding footnotes to Tumblr

Here’s a little known secret: you can add footnotes to a tumblr blog by switching your Account Preferences to use the Markdown[^1] editor. I looked at Marco’s blog[^2] and, after reviewing the markup, realized there had to be an automatic way to generate his footnote links. After extensive searching to no avail, I realized Markdown Extra[^3] has a few extra syntaxes (like footnotes). Nice!