Flutterby™! From 2000-03-01 to 2000-03-31

The new Clean Sheets has some neat art by Mark Henson

[ related topics: Web development Erotic ]

Keith Knight takes on the Diallo case

[ related topics: Humor Web development ]

Well, George Bush (the older one) was fascinated by supermarket bar code scanners, Bill Clinton calls screen savers amazing.

[ related topics: Politics ]

So, you wanna know what sort of candidates we've got running for president? Check out Bob Jones University's response to why they're a big part of the Republican campaign. Remember that the little Bush not only deigned to acknowledge that these people existed, he made an active campaign stop there: "Bob Jones University's policy regarding interracial dating is more of an opposition to the rebellious and defiant antichrist spirit of the promoters of one-worldism than to interracial dating itself. Many who date and marry interracially are just as opposed to one-worldism and the spirit of Antichrist as we are."

[ related topics: Politics ]

Via the XPlane|XBlog comes an interview with Alan Cooper. I had been ignoring The Inmates are Running the Asylum because it sounded like another clueless "design" weenie whining about cultural differences ("when you've learned how to think you're welcome to critique my implementation, until then..."), but this interview shows the occasional clue: "Cool is not a good design reason." Alas, on page 2 of the interview he starts to exhibit some basic cluelessness about feedback in interfaces that shows that he doesn't understand that there are different types of users and doing the classic redefinitions and new words to provide a false sense of insight.

[ related topics: Web development ]

A new Topping the News.

[ related topics: Web development Sexual Culture ]

Who says Brits are uptight? Lots of 'em posed for a book of nude portraits called Naked London.

[ related topics: Books Erotic Sexual Culture ]

Death threats have ended clothing giveaway to naked shoppers. I suppose I'm not shocked, but it still angers me that people can be so closed-minded and threatened that they'd resort to threats of violence over something like this. But then, I guess that's what nudity laws are anyway...

[ related topics: Sexual Culture ]

I'll be voting "no" on a lot of stuff tomorrow, but most of that's just 'cause I'm on the political fringe, so I won't bother you with it. But, if you're a Californian, Vote No On Prop 22. There's no excuse for mixing bigoted religion with politics the way the Knight initiative does.

[ related topics: Religion Interactive Drama Politics ]

One of my frustrations is that I get the David Steinberg essays via e-mail, but I still have to wait for 'em to show up on the SHS web site to put 'em here. Anyway, the latest Comes Naturally explores the controversy over ads with mastectomy scars in SF, some issues with nubile young nudes versus less conventionally attractive nudes in Santa Cruz, and George Washington's watch fob.

[ related topics: Web development Erotic Sexual Culture ]

I've been thinking recently about social spaces, and how it's really becoming a hassle to keep ordering from my local bookstore, and how much I like being a regular at my local coffee shop but I really wish I could find discussion closer to the lunch crowd I hung out with in Chattanooga, and I recently read Spider Robinson's collected Callahan's stories. Anyway, Marylaine tackles that need for a social space in My Word's Worth.

[ related topics: Web development Marylaine Block ]

I'm not a player of The Sims, but it seems that enough regular readers are that The Sims Adult Patch would be apropos.

Wow. <link url="http://www.bigcharts.com/news/articles.asp?newsid=1134064&date=&orig=chartin">You've gotta admire spin control like this</link>: "Over the Presidents Day weekend, Microsoft revised its response, saying that the ability for any administrator to break into any area in Active Directory by simply transferring ownership of the directory object is a feature, not a bug. That way, according to Microsoft, if something should happen to the network administrator, another administrator would be able to assume control of an Active Directory server."

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Microsoft ]

Journalism is not dead, at least along California's central coast where 12 reporters for local weekly papers have resigned because their publisher wouldn't let them cover homosexuality or abortion issues in a positive light.

[ related topics: Sexual Culture ]

On the journalism-not-dead theme, a report about Tim Crews, that Red Bluff Red editor jailed for contempt of court Annoying fucking reporters," Crews grumbles sarcastically. "Now I know how it feels when you ask 'just one more question.' "

[ related topics: Web development ]

Remember that animated masturbation GIF I linked to (not linked to here for reasons that may become obvious...). The AMA took offense at that parody and took legal action against the person who simply republished it.

[ related topics: Web development Sexual Culture Animation ]

IP over email.

[ related topics: Web development ]

Via caught in between, a report that Cannabis may be effective against brain tumors. Toke for health!

[ related topics: Web development ]

The latest Clean Sheets has new poetry and fiction, and A Sneak Peek at Next Year's Sex Toys.

[ related topics: Humor Web development Erotic Sexual Culture ]

Prostitutes in London's Soho red light district went on strike mark international women's day, and to protest attempts to evict them. "We refuse to be divided into "good" and "bad" girls," The English Collective of Prostitutes said.

[ related topics: Sexual Culture ]

More of life's little victories from Keith Knight.

[ related topics: Humor Web development ]

A quick Salon profile of Tom Robbins, for those of you in search of the perfect taco.

[ related topics: Web development ]

A new RISKS digest has notes on the problems with the Arizona internet voting, a note that an affiliate of Aleph, formerly Aum Shinri Kyo of the subway nerve gas attacks, is a Japanese Defense contractor, and an amusing anecdote about a contract delivered in Microsoft Word format, the perils of fixed length fields and ordering flowers over the 'net, and what "highlight changes" showed about the lawyerly process and the thinking of the other side of the negotiations... giggle. Yet another reason to demand open standards from your software vendors.

[ related topics: Web development Erotic Microsoft ]

A compendium of critics panning Mission To Mars. Rarely do we get a chance to see critics get really creative in their discussions of how badly a movie sucks, it's really fun to see 'em all cut loose.

[ related topics: Web development ]

I've been hoping to write an entire rant on web design and similar issues when I've finished Jakob Nielsen's Designing Web Usability and Alan Cooper's The Inmates are Running The Asylum, but I'm not sure I'm gonna make it. Of the two so far Nielsen's is the better book, but it shows no particular insight beyond the ability to recognize bad websites, and with all the color plates dead-trees is a particularly expensive way to do this. I'm only in Chapter 4 of Alan Cooper's book, but so far it's coming across as just a tired rehash of the RISKS archives as interpreted by one with pointy hair. One gets the impression that if Cooper ever actually did any physical work he'd go after the hammer designers because they made a tool with which it was possible to hit one's thumb. And he makes many straight misstatements, I don't know which mail clients he's using when he complains that none of them thread, 'cause most of the ones I'm familiar with do. Obviously a Microsoft using luser.

In any case, if you've been looking at useability for any length of time, you can give both a miss. When the best we can do is rehash the old "software development is treated like jumping out of an airplane and sewing the parachute on the way down" you know that nobody but the scam artists writing the books is looking at the history and trying to figure out what we can do differently, they're just proposing the same things that have been failing for decades.

[ related topics: Web development Books User Interface ]

Pope seeks pardon for Catholics. "We are asking pardon for the divisions among Christians, for the use of violence that some have committed in the service of truth, and for attitudes of mistrust and hostility assumed toward followers of other religions"

[ related topics: Religion ]

Via Baylink, "innocence is when you've never slept with a bull elephant", or how Innocence Consulting got its name.

[ related topics: Web development ]

issue 3 of Ms Muffin is out.

Woohoo! I just got my Social Security statement. If you took just what I've paid into my social security account so far and got 5% on it until retirement at age 67, you'd be able to pay my benefits 'til I'm 82. Yet I'm going to continue to pay into this fund at the maximum amount for at least the next 36 to 39 years. What in the heck are they doing with my money? Yeah, I know, paying off the debts of previous generations, it just sucks that the government is involved in this Ponzi scheme, and theforefore requires that I be too. And since I believe marriage is a discriminatory institution and I refuse to participate in it do you think there's any way to drop death benefits for a spouse in exchange for higher end benefits? Nooooooooo. Oh well, at least if I became disabled they'd pay enough for me to live in Montana and eat dog food. Needless to say, Social Security doesn't figure very strongly in my retirement plans...

[ related topics: Politics ]

On the basis of this exchange, I've joined the NRA.

[ related topics: Politics ]

The code is in transition from being specific to another site I'm working on to being generic, so there's some sucky looking design, and I haven't tested it heavily yet, and I'm not even convinced that this is the right way to be implementing comments, but you can now add your voice to the melee here. Rather than writing big long articles here, if you've got essay-length responses to something I say I'd prefer that you link to them on your site with just a synopsis or teaser in the comments here. This is another application of a web content framework I'm implementing in Perl and SQL which will eventually be open-sourced and be the basis for many of the projects that Coyote Grits will be building.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama ]

$100 including an LCD screen, but you've gotta pay some exhorbitant price for 'net access.... Perhaps not, here's a page on hacking the iOpener.

[ related topics: Free Software ]

A new Clean Sheets includes an interview with Robin Schone, yet another author trying to bridge that gap between romance and erotica.

[ related topics: Web development Erotic ]

Thanks, y'all, for exercising the comment engine! Don't worry about the duplicate entries, maybe I'll try to cull them, or maybe I'll just leave 'em as a testament to why we should check our user interfaces a little more thoroughly before we release 'em on the unsuspecting. I'm bailing out some folks today and tomorrow, and gonna be vacationing in Carmel Friday and the weekend, but I can see that I need "delete", "edit", and "new comments" features fairly quickly, and I've gotta fix whatever's putting default text in the entry boxes. I also need to make the URL to "do.cgi" more consistent even when I'm using "post" to do navigation, you should be able to bookmark anywhere. Other note 'cause it's come up: The code that allows HTML has been through several incarnations, at one point it was pretty good about making sure misentered tags got matched, and it doesn't allow all tags through (Eric tried to execute "rm -r /tmp/*" server side includes, you also should be safe from JavaScript hacks, not that any of you are foolish enough to have that turned on). On a social engineering side, I want to try to make ongoing discussions some sort of threading between weblogs, encouraging longer articles and rants rather than just glib quips traded back and forth here. Any suggestions on that would be appreciated.

[ related topics: Web development Weblogs ]

Keith Knight meets Maya Anjelou. I've gotta say that when I met Keith Knight even though I found him very approachable I was a little star struck. Either that or I was a little embarassed to be seen in the company of a man wearing a sandwich-board which said "Buy this book or the sheep gets it... again."

[ related topics: Humor Web development Books ]

Via the Daily Illuminator, the I can eat glass project, compiling ways to say "I can eat glass, it doesn't hurt me" in as many languages as possible.

[ related topics: Web development ]

I rarely post resources on the basis of regular updates before I have a chance to track 'em for a while to see if they really are, but the proprietor of Sex News Watch has been around for a while on one of the mailing lists I frequent. It looks like an overview of much of the mainstream stuff that I usually don't bother to pass along, and it doesn't have some of the fringe sources of Pursed Lips, but it might be up your alley, I'll track it for a bit.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Erotic Sexual Culture ]

This Ottowa exhibit of aboriginal Canadian erotic art looks pretty cool.

[ related topics: Web development Erotic ]

Sigh. Guess this incident where a 7 year old kills a 5 year old with an air rifle will be all over the news tomorrow. This isn't stuff I'd normally put on Flutterby except that it seemed germane to the <link url="http://www.flutterby.com/archives/do.cgi?action=browseentry&id=2341">discussion on gun control</link> in that without (responsible) parenting we're gonna see accidents no matter what controls on weapons exist.

[ related topics: Web development ]

Off to Carmel for the weekend. Hi to all the folks that I met at NBMA yesterday evening, No updates 'til Monday, when I'll come back refreshed and tanned.

In My Word's Worth Marylaine talks about a trip to the hardware store, and segues into the loss of information passed down through the generations.

[ related topics: Web development Marylaine Block ]

Back from Carmel, well rested. In a house two blocks from the beach with a gorgeous garden, we had a great time. Saw some more work by Christopher Burkett at the Photography West gallery which made me want to buy even though I don't really want to be spending money right now, a few things at the Weston Gallery, and had a fun conversation at Focus, but the commercialism of the strip caught up with us quickly and we spent the rest of the weekend well away from the downtown, watching sea otters swimming around on their backs pounding shells against rocks, and the herons and pelicans, and the waves breaking against cliffs.

[ related topics: Photography ]

Via BackupBrain, Californians for Same Sex Marriage is trying to undo the evil done in the last election.

[ related topics: Politics Sexual Culture Marriage ]

Apologies for the slowness this week, I've got a project that I wanted done by the end of the month that's slipping because I'm bailing out a project that should have been done back in February, and I'm working on lining up a few more projects so that I've actually got some income going on.

Scoville does Ginsberg: Howl.com: I saw the best minds of my occupation destroyed by venture capital, burned-out, paranoid, postal, dragging themselves through the Cappuccino streets of Palo Alto at Dawn looking for an equity-sharing, stock option fix,

[ related topics: Web development ]

For a moment, Keith Knight thinks he's Vex Vomit, with superpowers.

[ related topics: Humor Web development ]

Todd Belton tackles User Directed Narrative.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama ]

A month or so back there was an exchange between Lindsay and Peter about the relevance of the web. I've been puzzling about this for a while, because it seems to me that despite the huge growth of the web it's become a less useful and interesting place for me in general. I don't know if it's because the novelty has worn off, but I suspect not, most of the discussion forums that I used to find indispensable are now flooded with FAQs (perpetual September), and most of the web sites that I thought were so cool back in the early days are gone because their authors couldn't keep up with the load of the growing user base. One such site which has reappeared is Jourdan Shelbourne's Ivory Gates, assorted erotic stories and ramblings. Note particularly such stories as Virgin (On the Ridiculous) and Unwrap Party.

[ related topics: Web development Erotic Sexual Culture Weblogs ]

A comment of no particular wisdom just 'cause I got bit in the @$ by my own user interface and made a double entry which I should edit to two distinct entries: I now read all my favorite comics on the web, of the SF Examiner and the Marin IJ which I could read in my local coffee shop as part of my morning routine, each carries only one of them (different ones). I'm also realizing that the thing keeping me from living in a smaller house is the size of my library, something I'm trying to solve by finding more of my reading material on digital form (the Palm Vx ain't perfect, but I find it usable, certainly better than trying to read big heavy hardcovers). No conclusions that haven't already been made, but another data point.

[ related topics: Language Books User Interface ]

As I've been coding today I've been sitting next to Steve who's trying to install NT4.0 on a system that formerly had Windows 98 on it, a procedure which, after enough crashes of NT's fdisk, included a partial install of Linux to get a partition table that wouldn't crash the NT installer, seems to finally be working, albeit with regular walks over to another machine because various dialogs that prompt for install files won't let him browse. Once again, I wonder what sort of funky hallucinogens anyone who says that Linux is hard to install is on.

[ related topics: Free Software Microsoft ]

Obligatory Oscar note: On this morning's hike Terrence, recently of ILM was whining about how The Matrix was probably going to win the effects Oscar 'cause people were gonna confuse story and entertainment with effects excellence, and Phil, apparently innocently, asked "The Matrix and...?" It took a while for the howls of laughter to stop, but then we all agreed we'd be tempted to vote that way too just to give George his come-uppance for the overall entertainment value of Episode 1. But I also took pains to not point out that the main new effect in The Matrix was also used in Wing Commander(giggle)...

[ related topics: Movies ]

The new RISKS digest has an interesting note on people whom the loss of Iridium will effect, yet another note on the issues of people who think they've got redundant phone/fiber/whatever lines that the phone company has run through the same physical space.

[ related topics: Technology and Culture ]

In honor of getting the results of my second semen test following my vasectomy, John Stossel interviews Elinor Burkett, author of The Baby Boon. I read the book recently, and while it didn't have any new information and Burkett doesn't really have any answers, it did bring all of the perks and allowances that parents get together in one place, and points out how NOW have abandoned "equal pay for equal work". Worth an evening if you ever want yet more reasons to get pissed off at "the system", but alas it doesn't really offer any ideas for solutions.

[ related topics: Books Child-Freedom ]

Giggle. I was unplugging a friend's toilet during the Oscars last night, but I saw the picture of Trey Parker and Matt Stone in the paper this morning, so now I haven't missed anything, but Columbine sums up the Oscars wonderfully:

"Wasn't the Thalberg award supposed to honor lifetime achievement? Doesn't that imply that you've achieved something? Besides making a long string of mediocre movies and sleeping with everyone in Hollywood, I mean?"

To Tom (of Backup Brain) who supplied the picture link: The guy in the middle is the third author of "Blame Canada")

[ related topics: Movies ]

I saw Boys Don't Cry last night. I had forgotten what good movies are like. Pretty powerful, it took a while to get over the "wow, this is a social class that I haven't encountered recently", but that soon gave way to seeing a person trapped by ignorance and bigotry trying to find a way home. And I thought the editing and cinematography were first rate too. Recommended, although a few people in the audience (including me) were stunned enough that it took a while to get up after the credits were over, and I had to take a walk to try to assimilate it.

I think we're gonna see more of this: McSweeney's online magazine bailed out by the McSweeney family of Boston. Dave Eggers and the folks at McSweeneys.net have been bailed out by the family whose personal website is McSweeneys.com. On a side note, I recently read Eggers' A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. I've got a longer rant coming as soon as I can get my content management back to working, but it seems to me that memoirs are filling the character study space that novels used to, but they're not doing it nearly so well. The guy can write, but after a while the book just fades into chattering self-indulgence; there's about a third of a book there.

[ related topics: Web development Books Content Management ]

QOTD: What's got 4 legs and one arm? A *really* happy pit bull. --- SnowCat in alt.support.childfree

[ related topics: Quotes Child-Freedom ]

Keith Knight tackles both sibling rivalry and economics

[ related topics: Humor Web development ]

To go along with lumbermansexchange and corelusers, Jessamyn suggests the Handspring Analink.

Tara passes along: In a story allegedly about the all-time high birth rate to "unwed mothers" is a note that the overal US birthrate up 2% last year. The problem with the article in general is that it doesn't correlate "unwed" with anything else, but beyond that alarmism, the one paragraph of substance: Birth rates for all women in the 20s and 30s was also on the rise. After falling during the 1990s, the birth rate for women between 20 and 24 - the principal childbearing ages - rose 1 percent to 111.2 births per 1,000. The rate for women aged 30 to 34 rose 2 percent to 87.4 births per 1,000 women - the highest rate since 1965. I guess this means we'll have plenty of slaves to support our social security in our old age, but where the !@#$%^&* are we gonna put all these people?

[ related topics: Web development ]

It's been a movie heavy week (especially for me, the non-movie goer). On Monday I saw Boys Don't Cry, Tuesday Being John Malkovich(Yes, Spike Jonze shows promise, I thought it was fun movie in a surreal acid trip sort of way, but I didn't think it was a great movie and I wouldn't rush out to see it again), last night I rewatched South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut with some of the Scotch Night folks. Trey Parker and Matt Stone are just total geniuses. No way around that. Laughed harder this time than the first time, and they still manage to deliver some good messages. But c'mon, members of the Academy, there were better songs in that movie than Blame Canada.

Those forward thinking Canadians are considering dropping a bounty on Indian scalps. The Nova Scotia government has asked for confirmation from Ottawa that the 1756 proclamation by then governor William Lorence is no longer in effect.

QOTD: By their nature, pornographies cannot be said to proselytize, since they are written for the already hooked. The worst that can be said of pornography is that it leads not to "antisocial" sexual acts but to the reading of more pornography. As for corruption, the only immediate victim is English prose.

--- Gore Vidal, Pornography, collected in Gore Vidal: Sexually Speaking.

[ related topics: Quotes Politics Erotic Sexual Culture ]

Unattributed to protect the innocent: Apparently some telcos and ISPs were hit pretty hard during the recent DFW tornados, they were the ones that "haven't learned to insulate their CO gear from tornados by placing management offices around the window perimeter."

A friend of mine's going to Italy this year, I envy her, 'cause she'll be able to see this exhibit of ancient Roman erotica that's been suppressed on and off over the years. It's Roman as in the empire, not the city, as most of it probably came from Pompeii, Herculaneum, and those other southern spots (although, if Dangerous Beauty is to be believed Venice once had its share).

[ related topics: Religion Interactive Drama Erotic ]

The new RISKS digest covers a couple of NASA blunders, the perils of UCITA, and a bunch of people lambasting that MIT dude who used a spreadsheet to do a database's job. Philip Greenspun, who's fond of complaining that MySQL isn't a database, needs to go over and kick some butt.

[ related topics: Web development ]

Well, Mozilla seems to be compiling this time, hopefully in a few hours I'll be able to join the next generation...