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kottke.org posts about Blake Eskin

A visit to E.B. White’s house

A lovely piece by Mira Ptacin about a visit to E.B. White’s home in Maine.

It’s late September and my husband and I are in North Brooklin, Maine, walking down a plain gravel path towards the cedar shake writing shed of someone who hasn’t invited us: Elwyn Brooks White, better known to some as the late essayist E. B. White, and to those who still don’t know, the man who wrote the classic children’s books “Charlotte’s Web” and “Stuart Little.” With each step away from the old brown barn and to the shed, we see living relics from White’s world: A lush emerald garden. His old chicken chopping block. A tall apple tree doubling as a raccoon lookout. The sterling pond, large brown geese skirting its brim. And then, as if it was just a shed, his writing studio appears.

(via @robinsloan)

Update: Last year, Blake Eskin visited the farm on behalf of the New Yorker.


Twitter changes their URL shortening strategy

From the Twitter blog:

When this is rolled out more broadly to users this summer, all links shared on Twitter.com or third-party apps will be wrapped with a t.co URL.

All links? Does that include bit.ly, tinyurl.com, flic.kr, 4sq.com, amzn.to, etc.? I’m obviously happy that they’re taking steps to get these largely unnecessary link middlemen out of the picture but some people are going to be pissed if they’re unshortening all links automatically.

Oh, and as far as how the feature will work, I like Blake Eskin’s suggestion:

Since @ and # work so well, why isn’t there one character to tell you here comes a link, replacing http:// ?

How about %? Or maybe //? So instead of “Check out http://kottke.org” it’d be something like “Check out %kottke.org” or “Check out //kottke.org”.