Flutterby™! From 2001-01-01 to 2001-02-01

Via /., Perl::Flash. If you understand what that means, 'nuff said.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama ]

As I've explained before, I blew past Day Without Weblogs because I didn't have good examples of artists affected by AIDS. Via Medley, Catherine Jamieson is one such, and her work deserves to be celebrated.

[ related topics: Web development Dan's Life Weblogs ]

No resolutions, none of last year's misguided wishful predictions, just gonna take this year as it's dealt and see what comes down. And I hope y'all have a great next arbitrary slice of the earth's orbit around the sun.

[ related topics: Web development ]

There's a new Comes Naturally: Bush League Sex, looks at the nomination of John Ashcroft for attorney general. Bill Humphries also wants to stop the appointment of Ashcroft.

[ related topics: Politics Web development Erotic Sexual Culture ]

Oh. My. Deities. Jessi the kid - preteen girl model, nominally a site set up to sell... something... for Jessi's college fund. I'll just be lying in the corner in the fetal position in shock. I hope, for sanity's sake, that this is merely some law enforcement sting operation to string in pedophiles.

[ related topics: Sexual Culture ]

Ohio State University police officer sanctioned for web site content. Nobody's alleging anything was illegal about the site, just that it had "pornographic" content.

[ related topics: Sexual Culture ]

It's illegal in Oregon to bring home-baked goods to school.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Web development ]

Will California's mismanaged and overloaded power grid cause the social change that the desire for telecommuting hasn't? Silicon Valley companies are starting to get concerned about power. Since there's no real reason that servers need to be geographically close to companies, I can recommend an internet hosting company with its own power capabilities in an area that has a surplus of electricity.

[ related topics: Cool Science ]

Struggle of the day: Continually bringing a machine to its knees with an errant Flash script. Trying to get Internet Exploder to actually reload a Flash file rather than just executing it from cache. 'nuff to make a lad homicidal, it is.

Via Baylink, a 9 foot tall steel monolith appeared in Magnuson Park in Seattle over New Year's Eve. No clues as to the origin, although I wouldn't be surprised if Steve Ballmer is found, femur in hand, beating the crap out of a Windows ME CD...

[ related topics: Religion Microsoft ]

This one's for Topspin: The Onion: Ping-Pong somehow elicits macho posturing. "You should see him when he gets going. You'd think ping-pong was some kind of ESPN2 extreme sport," Hersh said. "He's all like, 'Time for a serious ass-kicking, Jason. Think you can take it when I bring the hammer down on you? Think you can handle the humiliation of another devastating defeat at the hands of the master?' Then, whenever he scores a point, he shouts, 'Boo-Ya!' and does this gloating victory dance, strutting back and forth and waving his arms in the air. I mean, it's ping-pong, for Christ's sake."

[ related topics: Web development ]

Okay, it's ridiculous day here: Dylan yelled from the other office to suggest Black-Market-Babies.com.

A dan.e.lope entry with some cool Windows security tools.

[ related topics: Microsoft ]

Yay! Success! So apparently Flash variable loads happen asynchronously and you can attach an event that happens when the operation finishes, but not in any place handy. Grrr...

Doh! Dan's mantra for today: "I will always make sure that the terminal window I'm in is really the computer in front of me before typing 'poweroff'". And I did a 'rm /sbin/poweroff' on my server. Sorry for the outage, I owe a few Chattanoogans some beer.

It's great that so many of the people helping out Blogger aren't blogger users, but I'm amazed at the "find their own damned way to make a living" I've heard among some of the Blogger users. Not all the free stuff on the web is funded by ignorant VCs, much of it is put together by people who care about the social changes that they're effecting and who'd really like to be able to make a living at it.

Ray Walston died. He played many parts but the one that he will undoubtedly be remembered for is Uncle Martin in the tv show "My Favorite Martian" playing opposite Bill Bixby. In searching for a few references to him I cam across the Bill Bixby Memorial Haiku Bake-off. Maybe Ray will be treated to his own Haiku Bake-off some day.

The martian smiles.

He'll later get called a dick

Back at Ridgemont High.

[ related topics: Jorn Barger Cameron Barrett Web development Technology and Culture ]

Via Marn's Big Adventure: For all you climbers out there, the splat calculator.

If you fill in the height, you'll get the time and speed at the end of your fall. If you're kind enough to supply your mass, you'll also get the energy in joules (newton-meters) when you deck.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama ]

Last Friday's sunrise at the Golden Gate, last Sunday watching the fog pour over the ridge into San Anselmo with Mount Tamalpais in the background, and same hike at the base of Big Rock Ridge.

[ related topics: Photography San Anselmo ]

The Linux 2.4 kernel is out In a move unanimously hailed by the trade press and industry analysts as being a sure sign of incipient braindamage, Linus Torvalds (also known as the "father of Linux" or, more commonly, as "mush-for-brains") decided that enough is enough, and that things don't get better from having the same people test it over and over again. In short, 2.4.0 is out

[ related topics: Free Software ]

The ATT@Home saga continues: They blew off the appointment and ignored an email yesterday. The person in their chat room has rescheduled me for next Wednesday. If this doesn't work I'm tempted to go get iDSL or something. Whatever happened to the days of small ISPs and good service?

[ related topics: Interactive Drama ]

Charlene took me bowling last night, something I haven't done since a 3^rd or 4^th grade birthday party. Cavernous echoes of the crashing pins, the pretentious Country Club Lanes name and Jetsons styled Brunswick ball returns and scoring displays, despite the Marin location not a yuppie SUV in sight. Lots of fun, she rolled 145 on the first round (although didn't do nearly as well thereafter), it took me 5 games, 2 beers, and progressively lighter balls to (barely) break a hundred. After reading Bowling Alone I'd thought of bowling as a dying sport, but I was amazed at how young everyone there was.

[ related topics: Humor Photography Games Dan's Life ]

Via Gary: Tired of abstinence only education? The folks at Technical Virgin have a solution: ...the safest way for teens to avoid unwanted pregnancy while satisfying their carnal needs is to limit themselves to homoerotic encounters until they are ready for procreation. But many boys and girls are uncomfortable with the idea of same-sex encounters. Anal sex, however, can be fun for both sexes, and thanks to modern improvements in strap-on sex tools, girls can enjoy being in control of their own anal encounters.

[ related topics: Erotic Sexual Culture ]

Back on New Year's Eve Dave Winer told a story about progress in computing technology which ended: At every step, a well-meaning person would say "What do I need that for, I like entering my programs on front-panel switches. What does this do that I can't do with switches?" The first computer I programmed on was a KIM1. It had a 20 key keypad and an extremely small, limited (6 digit LED) display. The computer I expect to code for in the next year that I'm most excited about exploring has, coincidentally, a 20 key keypad, a small LCD display, and probably similar computing power to that 1MHz 6502 (A Google search on "6502" is interesting...). It's my cell-phone. The more things change...

[ related topics: Nostalgia Dave Winer ]

In her January 7^th entry (apparently it's not in the archive system yet so I can't link to it directly), Debra Hyde laments that Bdsm.about.com requires AdultCheck for access, which makes some of the articles no longer freely accessible. One of the reasons I like the "weblog" model of web publishing is that control of the articles remains with the original author. Of course this means each author has to figure their own revenue model, and without some sort of personal archiving infrastructure, akin to a bookshelf or personal library for our dead-trees content, we're out of luck if our favorite publication decides to change policies later. No answers, but a few questions.

[ related topics: Sexual Culture Weblogs ]

QOTD, by Matt Groening: "If he calls me passive-aggressive one more time, I'll get back at him in ways so subtle that he won't have any idea why."

[ related topics: Quotes Interactive Drama ]

So in this article are they saying that President-elect Bush's choice for Defense Secretary is a "yes man" or a racist? Those tapes will get you every time.

[ related topics: Politics Web development ]

Via It's dlevy, a neat online personality test sorta thingie: Color Quiz. No, I won't share my results, you prying jackals!

[ related topics: Psychology, Psychiatry and Personality ]

When the news came out a little while ago that high school "virginity pledges" were effective, I thought "Hmmm... Wonder how they're cooking that data?" and went on my merry way. Well, here's how the virginity pledge effectiveness statistics were cooked.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Web development Sexual Culture ]

Fake prostitutes posing as undercover cops fleece potential clients in Toronto.

[ related topics: Web development Erotic Sexual Culture ]

Wow! Good day at Salon! In addition to the next two entries, Simpson Garfinkel on Java: "slow, ugly and irrelevant".

[ related topics: Web development ]

via Genehack, The Register explains CPRM, the spec for serial numbers on ATA hard disks to allow licensable content.

[ related topics: Web development John S Jacobs-Anderson Privacy ]

Branding is everything in the .com economy, right? So why is Andersen Consulting changing their name. To Accenture. With a greater-than symbol over the 't', something that shows up in no character set I've ever seen. Maybe they got sick of being called "Anderoids". Hmmmm... perhaps it has something to do with the symptoms of my Andersen Consulting story...

[ related topics: Andersen/Accenture ]

Antitrust: The Movie

Via Medley, a proposal for concurrent patents which seems to miss the point: If multiple people are coming up with the patents in that short a time space the ideas are natural progressions of the technology and bloody well shouldn't be patented.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Web development ]

Wow, I guess retro self-abasement is back in. Normally I'm not one to make fun of D/s relationships, but it really seems like this movement's happening without a real understanding of the underlying power dynamics, and ignorance is not bliss: Laura Doyle, a Californian housewife who is making a fortune by encouraging other women to please their men, is setting up groups of so-called Surrendered Women in several countries, including Britain.

Two quick business notes from Wired: They agree with me that the PS2 has missed its window, and Corel ditches Linux to pursue Microsoft .NET strategy, ironic since their too early support/requirement of Windows 95 was what allowed Adobe to pass them in the first place.

[ related topics: Free Software Web development Microsoft ]

Those wacky folks at The Register will vulturize your cell phone for free! This entry is here so that Todd and I can track down the SMS hack which does this...

[ related topics: Web development Wireless ]

So my next ATT@Home appointment window starts in 45 minutes. The power is off to my neighborhood. From what the first guy who botched the install said there's only one physical connection left to make, but how much you wanna bet they'll figure they can't do anything and be at 1 show for for 4 promises to arrive after today... Sigh. Sitting here seeing how long the laptop and Ricochet batteries last, thinking more seriously about self-contained power systems for the house.

The Shadow passed along a link which lead to the SMaL Camera Technologies product line. There's a bigger picture of the SMaL credit card sized camera from Imaging Resource. The resolution's only about 640x480, but they've done some smart things about handling dynamic range, and the size of that thing is beyond tiny.

[ related topics: Web development Photography ]

Yay! Dan has bandwidth at home! (kinda) The power came back on just in time, the installation guy figured out that the terminator was actually at my house and not up on the pole, and when I can get throughput I get 390k/second (yow!), but there seems to be some flakeyness that's giving me roughly 80% packet loss on long-term pings to the gateway, so they've promised yet another trek out here to re-run some cable. So the initial report was overoptimistic and I'm typing this on the Ricochet again.

So, lemme get this straight: They were having trouble landing a $2.5M lighter than air craft that still had fuel, so before they could get to the helium release they jumped? Blimp crashes into restaurant in Oakland. If my cable modem were really working I'd go look at the video...

[ related topics: Interactive Drama ]

Since we all know someone who's dieting: First USDA study on diet shows high carb low fat works long term.

A couple of people have written about this thingie codenamed "IT" or "Ginger" developed by Dean Kamen, the guy who did that ultracool wheelchair, that's getting so much press. I'd ignored it 'cause it seemed like a lot of book hype. From the article in Inside ya kinda knew it had to be a transportation device. Boing Boing has the lowdown on IT/Ginger, it's a scooter using some of the same all-terrain ideas from the wheelchair. No news on how it's going to be powered, which was the big problem I saw with the wheelchair idea.

(Later: Ooooh, just hit me: This is smart wheels ala Snow Crash, can the magnetic 'poon for high speed sketching be far behind?)

[ related topics: Business Web development Books ]

If you're an Interbase user, get the source and patch it, Interbase has a backdoor. The joy of Open Source is that we can fix this, the pain, that we know this.

[ related topics: Free Software Interactive Drama ]

Via Scripting News, if yr e-mail looks like this, u must be the boss.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Dave Winer ]

Despite the "Stage 3" emergency, no supply related blackouts in the Bay Area last night, although it sounds as though a large coalition of politicians and industry officials are working to change that. Who is John Galt? This does bring home some scary reality, especially since we have the example of North Korea which got overly dependent on cheap power supplied by China and the Soviet Union, and when those sources dried up entered some really hard times.

Via Must See HTTP (that "cultural relevance" is gonna bite him in the tuchus), the Supreme Court Bitch Slap Game.

[ related topics: Politics Web development Games Weblogs ]

Via Cardhouse: When I was in high school in Connecticut a couple of times I got over to New Jersey to Action Park. Alas, Action Park is no more, but the memories live: Action Park made adults of a generation of Tri-State Area kids who strolled through its blood-stained gates, by teaching us the truth about life: it is not safe, you will get hurt a lot, and you'll ride all the way home burnt beyond belief.

[ related topics: Children and growing up ]

Via StackFrame, versions of Lynx for Windows and DOS.

[ related topics: Weblogs Microsoft ]

Because of overwhelming demand I've removed the Joe Blog ad from the Flutterby ad rotation. I found the ad annoying, but I was willing to let it go 'til I started getting email on the matter.

[ related topics: Web development Weblogs Dave Winer ]

"being human is not a crime!", said Vincent Bethell on being cleared of causing a nuisance in what is probably "the first trial in British legal history where a defendant has been naked throughout the proceedings."

[ related topics: Web development Sexual Culture ]

Microsoft: You'll buy Whistler because ME and 98 suck!

[ related topics: Web development Microsoft ]

A 16 year old called |)e@th@bove just gave me some very demonstrative Counter-Strike coaching, then the map changed and I lost 'im. If you ever find this, |)e@th@bove, Gunther thanks you.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama ]

Todd goes Walkabout ......

[ related topics: Web development Photography ]

I'm down sick today, taking it easy and going through a lot of tissues. Maybe I should talk to Alex Chiu about his immortality device. There's even a weblog by someone using his device called Am I Immortal. Current title? Immortality - Day 6.

[ related topics: Web development Weblogs ]

Mother prosecuted for buying 13 year old son condoms.

I know of Scott McCloud from Understanding Comics and Reinventing Comics, but the first actually non-meta comic I've seen from him is Hearts and Minds. Pretty good, and when you wonder if it's going anywhere, yes, it is.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama ]

So bandwidth is kinda disappointing. Low latency for ssh sessions is good, but he higher speed bits of the 'net are a lot like cable TV. There are bright spots of high bandwidth content: Asian Pride Porn, for instance.

[ related topics: Erotic Sexual Culture Technology and Culture ]

In the breaking news department: Truck crashes into California Capitol building, preliminary witness reports seem to suggest deliberate suicide bombing. Certainly given the amount of flame they showed on TV there was substantial accelerant coming from somewhere.

[ related topics: Technology and Culture ]

According to Brian's Belly - The Belly News, the habanero pepper has been dethroned as the world's hottest pepper.

A Salon article debunking the "Internet uses more power" myth, that power consumption through the '90s grew at a lower rate than previous decades, well below the economy, and I'm not completely sure 'cause they don't present enough numbers, but pretty close to population growth. Doesn't mean we're not getting more efficient in other areas to make up for the increased computer use, but it's another example of where the irrational extremist environmentalists are killing credibility for the ones with real points.

[ related topics: Web development ]

Although I've had my heat turned up during the day for the past two 'cause I've been sick, at night I turn it nearly off (40-45F or so, just enough to keep the pipes from freezing). This morning it's running. This is California? So cold the lawyers have their hands in their own pockets.

A Literary Alamo looks at the Bush literary tastes, and shivers.

[ related topics: Politics ]

Hmm, this NATIONAL POST ONLINE News story has got me thinking. How is this really a privacy issue? We are talking about people out in public, showing their faces in public, in areas that are known to use video surviellence. I don't see the problem with digitizing the faces and comparing them to a mugshot data base. It does cause one to think of other applications. One could compare the faces of customers of retail shops to those of known shoplifters.

[ related topics: Web development Privacy ]

It's a stop Ashcroft pile-on: So from one face Ashcroft says "My primary personal belief is that the law is supreme, that I don't place myself above the law, that I shouldn't place myself above the law, so it would violate my beliefs to do it." From the other face, Ashcroft told Bob Jones University students "We have no king but Jesus." No wonder he lost to a corpse.

[ related topics: Religion Politics Humor Web development ]

TooStupidToBePresident.com: An entire site dedicated to ragging on our new President! Great MPGs parodying Grinch...

[ related topics: Politics ]

It seems the Clinton Administration didn't learn from Gore's example: Clinton "guided" Internet growth, report says. For example, "We have blazed a trail that others can follow with confidence and conviction," Gore said.. Ironically, it appears that the Bush Administration might have a clue: "The tech explosion happened because the administration wasn't quick enough to notice it and regulate it before it could develop, because the bureaucracy moves too slowly," said Richard Diamond, spokesman for the Texas Republican.

[ related topics: Politics Web development ]

I've been working on a report for work - probably the lowliest of all programming tasks and yet the most common. Because the report is going to be given to bank Presidents and such I am using Microsoft Access to generate it. I started the work at the office and then decided to work at home. To do this I copied the Access .MDB file to my notebook (a diminutive Acer 313T). I just bought the laptop and this is the first real project I've attempted on it. I set it up on my coffee table in the living room, plugged into a full-size keyboard and mouse. The screen's a little small (being technically a 'sub-notebook', the Acer has an 8.5" screen) but I've been able to bang away quite productively while watching the Al Pacino movie The Insider. The movie was OK and I still have more work to do on the report but this sure is alot more comfortable. Now if I can just get wireless ethernet and internet access in the living room but I'm sure glad I sprang for the extra 128MB of RAM...

[ related topics: Web development Wireless Microsoft ]

Danger of getting (ahem) gored at inaugural party. I guess they'll be slingin' the bull.

I'm almost sure I linked to this earlier, but the dates don't work out for that to be possible, so David Steinberg on Bush League Sex, or what we're gonna face in terms of sexual freedoms in the next 4 years.

[ related topics: Politics Web development Erotic Sexual Culture ]

Public notice: I (Dan) bet Todd one bottle of scotch of the winner's choice that on January 1, 2020, the majority (50%+1) of consumers will be getting their entertainment content through some sort of broadcast type network rather than point-to-point network. My sense of security in making this bet comes from the vested interest of the entertainment businesses in keeping their product on a producer-consumer basis, and that the O(N²) basis of network expansion isn't economically viable if there are substantial peak times ("Prime time"). My worry on this, and something Todd and I will have to refine, would be the existence of neighborhood caching systems that work like the Tivo except on a slightly broader scale, so that one could choose to see "this week's 'Friends'" downloaded from a neighborhood server. Todd, you wanna refine this in the comments?

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Dan and Todd's Bandwidth Bet ]

Clinton pardons over 100, the only one that really pisses me off is that John Deutch got off scot free.

[ related topics: Politics Web development ]

Ok saw Beach Blanket Babylon last night. Good Show! It's the kind show you can take your grandma, but you still have a good time. The show is like what saturday night live would be if it was a musical. My favorite skit was the recent presidentinal election sung to the melody of Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody...

[ related topics: Interactive Drama ]

I drove up to Knoxville Friday to see Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (or Wo hu zang long for those purists). All I can say is you must see this movie even if you aren't a Kung Fu fan. It's easily one of the best movies I've seen in quite a while. I can't wait to see it again so I don't have to read the subtitles and can pay closer attention to the visuals.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama ]

On my way back from Knoxville last night I stopped at The Katch - a strip club just outside of Knoxville. Like most small city strip clubs in the Southeast, it was populated by lots of truckers and too much poorly implanted silicone. But I still enjoyed myself as long as I considered it a performance art as well as a decadent pleasure (indicative of the fall of the American empire, I'm sure). Some things I had not noticed before: Always be the first patron to tip the girl on the dance stage. They really appreciate it because it breaks the ice for the other 'gentlemen' to tip and she'll put on a much better show since she still has most of her clothes on and can actually strip for you. Also, try to pick out two girls who are likely lovers and pay them both for table dances at the same time. Following these two rules made me feel less like a sexually depraved urchin and more like a connoiseur of an art.

I hate Flash 5. They got so close! First, the lack of typing on the variables means that occasionally i++ will have the numeric variable i interpreted as a string, leading to functionally i.concat("1") (with no pattern to this occurrence that I can discern), now I'm dealing with a place where _level0.loadVariables("./saveactions.cgi",POST) is resulting in a GET operation with no variables. And the code looks exactly the same as another instance of it that works, and this code used to work!

Pardon any performance lags, I'm running my incremental backup script for the first time, doing things to my 'net connections that are illegal in both Missouri and Georgia.

Giggle I love practical jokes that make a point but don't hurt anybody. I wonder how many memos were typed with out Ws in them???

[ related topics: Politics ]

Bang. That's the sound of Dan shooting himself in the foot. If you tried to send mail yesterday, while I was out getting a sanity fix (pictures and travelogue sometime today), try again.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama ]

Salon proposes some alternatives to Tempation Island, for instance: "Atheism Island" THE CONTESTANTS: Clergymen WHAT'S ON THE ISLAND: Everywhere they turn, documentary footage of atrocities that no just God would allow. Of course I think "documentary footage" is taking the easy way out...

[ related topics: Religion Web development Technology and Culture ]

Via Rebecca's Pocket, Searching for the God Within, a quick intro to neuro-theology, people researching the measurable physiological effects of prayer and meditation. Be interesting to read further, it seems to me that many atheists have tried to believe because of cultural pressures, and failed, and I wonder if we respond differently.

[ related topics: Religion Interactive Drama ]

From the Boston.com site: <quote>

Man without a brain

no plan, no vision, no hope;

his name is Dubya.</quote>

[ related topics: Politics ]

DDR is massively popular in Japan. I saw one in the metreon the other day but didn't have the kahuna's to try it. Are these the next new thing is video games? <sarcasm> After Dan looses our bet everyone will be able to watch people playing this game on their own personal video stream...</sarcasm>

[ related topics: Web development Games ]

DDR is massively popular in Japan. I saw one in the metreon the other day but didn't have the kahuna's to try it. Are these the next new thing is video games?<sarcasum> After Dan looses our bet everyone will be able to watch people playing this game on their own personal video stream...</sarcasum>

[ related topics: Web development Games ]

Rick came over a little while ago to share some beer with me. We got talking about Dan and noted how Dan had been a little more 'chatty' than usual. Later in the conversation we got talking about cable modems and suddenly realized what's up with Dan. Evidently Dan is suffering from some kind of IQ decrease due to his proximity to primetime TV coming from his new cable.

[ related topics: Technology and Culture ]

Via Backup Brain, Guy Kawasaki's top 10 lies of entrepreneurs, or ways you shouldn't try to BS your VC.

[ related topics: Apple Computer Web development ]

Continuing the decline of Flutterby because of proximity to network cable feeds, more use for bandwidth: Via User Friendly, Three Dead Trolls in a Baggie.

[ related topics: Humor Web development Music ]

Backpedalling on the earlier "It's Network Solutions fault!" accusations, Microsoft admits router configuration errors caused DNS outage. Apparently they had all 4 name servers off the same router. D'oh! Speaking of which, it'd probably be a smart thing for me to move the Flutterby.com DNS to the same geographically disparate servers that handle the rest of my domains.

[ related topics: Web development Microsoft ]

Interesting SF Gate article on the CTC tax, yet another piece of the "deregulation" lie that's contributed to California's power woes (this week's Pacific Sun claims that California is actually 49^th in per capita electricity use, there's an interesting DOE electricity usage by state that could be combined with population information to verify that). So, does anyone have experience with alternative sources? Solar4Power has some worksheets on sizing electrical systems, but I'd like some real world experiences on what the al useful life of batteries and such is, not necessarily to replace heating and refrigeration, but to run the computers and some of the lighting.

[ related topics: Politics Web development Cool Science ]

I was wandering the web trying to think of an edgy name and came across a cool porn...errr erotic photography site

[ related topics: Photography Erotic Sexual Culture ]

Just so Todd can find it and 'cause this computer isn't set up to send mail, a bunch of Counter Strike map packs, and the rats and mice and other novelty CS maps, which lead to yet more CS maps.

[ related topics: Web development ]

In A Game Called Suicide, Amy Benfer interviews Jane Katch about violent children's games, and the necessity of them. Not a terribly deep article, but a good reminder that the reason that we play with violent imagery is that it's powerful.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Web development Games ]

I'm concerned: Do you think that these new Disposable Paper Cellphones will interefere with my Eternal Life Ring?

[ related topics: Web development ]

Whooo Hoooo! they are taking applications for Junk Yard Wars. Just making an application video would be fun...

Via Morbus Iff, some questions about The Essence of Gaming as a Storytelling Medium. I don't know whether to write the same thing over and over again, but I'm trying to formulate a response...

[ related topics: Games ]

It's been a bad, bad winter for me, cold-wise. I'm sick yet again, something nasty that's got my throat all swollen.

After getting fed up with Bonzi changing my home page and popping up everytime I view a new item on Amazon (trying to help me find better prices...) I went to Add/Remove Programs and uninstalled him. After the necessary reboot, I still have this $ icon in my task bar that is trying to get me to upgrade Bonzi! I'm now searing the registry and removing all keys referring to Bonzi... I wouldn't mind Bonzi so much if it were easier to turn him off.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Books ]

Crikies, mate! Upon searching the registry for Bonzi dropping, I came across this key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\General For some reason, Windows has seen fit to cache my passwords - and not just my webpage passwords. Even my ssh passwords are in there - in PLAIN TEXT!!!

[ related topics: Microsoft ]

Since I was sick and not up to watching socially, I skipped the Super Blow, figuring I'd catch up on the Super Bowl ads at Ad Critic. I've seen a couple, I think I'm going to wait a few days to hear the buzz before I waste any more 30 second chunks of my life, but what's been fun is watching the evolution of the site as it breaks, comes back up, snide comments appear in the ad descriptions, then get replaced by the real ones. Obviously digitizing all those ads and filtering them onto the site is a huge and complex task.

The only new years resolutions that I make any more deal with simplifying my life. This year I thought I would get rid of a literal pain in the ass by cleaning out my billfold, paring it down to the bare essentials and go with a front pocket wallet. I don't want to sit on any more credit cards and stacks of grocery store receipts. I was doing pretty good, I had my drivers license, a key card to one of my customers plants, one credit card, one ATM/debit card, my fishing license and a couple of insurance cards. All this fit nicely into a Fossil® front pocket wallet. Then I went to the local Food Lion. "Do you have your MVP Card?", the clerk asked. What? I've got to carry another card in my pocket to get all the good prices. Not only are these things a contributor to the pain in the ass I had finally gotten rid of they are also an assault on my privacy. Fear not, Rob's Giant BonusCard Swap Meet comes to the rescue. This only works with the mid-Atlantic's Giant Food Store chain but I'm sure other sites won't be far behind.

[ related topics: Privacy ]

Arnold Schwarzenegger starts his run for California Governor in Salon. Interesting to watch his shift from "a woman's place is in the home" to "I am socially liberal and fiscally conservative." Remember, he's an Austrian, like Kurt Waldheim and Jorg Haider. (There, I've started the thread by Godwinating it...). [thanks Ray L. for the spelling fix on Haider]

[ related topics: Web development ]

Via Hack The Planet, SGI has released XFS Pre-release 0.9 for Linux.

[ related topics: Free Software Web development ]

I'm on hold with BellSouth. I called to cancel my home phone service due to my pending move to Boston. I called the 'Home Service Support' number and within a few minutes manage to cancel the dialtone service (after deflecting a 'you can transfer your service' with an 'I'm moving to Bosotn'). I then asked if that cancelled my ADSL service and was told she would have to transfer me to another department for that. I've now been on hold for 24 minutes. I wonder if they will get to me before my cellphone battery runs out...

[ related topics: Interactive Drama ]

Unfortunately, this review of Sandra Ryan Heyward's new one-woman play "Tallulah" doesn't tell me if the play's worth seeing. I'm putting it on my "worth checking times and doing if it's convenient" list. "Going down on a woman gives me a stiff neck, going down on a man gives me lockjaw and conventional sex gives me claustrophobia."

--- Talullah Bankhead, who died the year I was born

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Erotic Sexual Culture ]

Woohoo! I just got the Nigerian Petroleum scam letter air mail, with two cool looking stamps from the Republique Du Benin. There's info on an interested related scam involving NIGERIAN NATIONAL PETROLEUM CORP. v. CITIBANK, N.A

Another must see: O Brother, Where Art Thou? I really won't say much more other than you might want to bone up on your Homer before you go to catch all the allusions. It really is the Odyssey retold in 1920's Mississippi.

According to The Dallas Morning News, Fairfax County, Virginia may make it illegal to sleep anywhere other than a bedroom. Okay, they are attempting to address a legitimate problem of cramming 27 people into a two room apartment but this is a poorly conceived solution to the problem.

[ related topics: Web development ]

No uniforms. No cleats. No cups. Naked cheerleaders. The day before the Stupor Blow, over in Land o' Lakes, they played football the way it should be played (at least in Florida): Buff Bowl.

[ related topics: Sexual Culture Sports ]

Handheld porn big in Singapore.

[ related topics: Erotic Sexual Culture ]

Phew. Just got BIND upgraded to 8.2.3 on all the appropriate machines to stave off those potential root exploits, but while I was sshing around the living room and the continent I realized that there are probably people who've thought about ssh key management better than I. Eric, or anyone else, got some suggestions about how to manage public and private key zones for that elusive compromise between reasonable security and ease of use?

If you tried to send me email in the past few hours and got a bounce, try again. I think I'm finally done twiddling sendmail. Boy, I wish the m4 version of the config docs were a little better.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama ]

Lego Porn shamelessly stolen from the prolific Todd Belton at Mouth Organ

[ related topics: Web development Erotic Sexual Culture ]