Flutterby™! From 2001-10-01 to 2001-10-31

Mary Anne Mohanraj talks about cooking biryani. Ideas for dinner...

[ related topics: Food ]

QOTD, regarding interactive drama:

To watch a performance of Hamlet might be uplifting. To portray Hamlet in a damatic performance may be deeply enlightening. To be Hamlet just sucks. I choose "not to be," and I think the vast majority of audiences will always agree with me. What I want more of in my interactive worlds is solidity, responsiveness, richness, accessibilty, beauty, and depth. Drama? Give that to somebody else, and I'll watch.

--- Walt Freitag on the idrama mailing list.

[ related topics: Quotes Interactive Drama Games Theater & Plays ]

Alec introduced me to Elasto Mania last night. Cool puzzle kind of game based on a fairly complex dirt bike physics and mechanical linkage engine, but played in slow motion, so it's sort of a thinking game. And fairly complete shareware before the whopping $10 registration fee.

[ related topics: Games ]

David Steinberg's photos are on display at the San Francisco Good Vibrations through December.

[ related topics: Good Vibrations Photography Erotic Sexual Culture Bay Area ]

There's a Silicon Valley Weblogger User Group on third Tuesdays. Down in Mountain View, probably a bit too far to attend regularly, but it'll be fun to hit the first one to meet a few local 'bloggers I haven't run into elsewhere yet.

[ related topics: Weblogs ]

A Salon interview with a RAWA member about women and the Taliban is disturbing reading. And confirms my suspicion that our foreign policy over there is likely to continue the stupidity which got us into this quagmire in the first place:

We condemn the cooperation of the United States with the Northern Alliance. This is another nightmare for our people -- the Northern Alliance are the second Taliban.

[ related topics: Politics WTC/Pentagon attacks ]

Keith Knight on the difference a day makes.

[ related topics: Humor WTC/Pentagon attacks ]

In Boondocks today, Huey tries to help the FBI find those who trained and financed bin Laden. Snicker.

[ related topics: Humor WTC/Pentagon attacks ]

Perl fans will want to read Apocalypse 3. My Perl has been slacking a bit recently, I'm trying to brush up on my C++ a bit, and do a little more where the browser isn't the interface, but time for personal projects has been mighty slim recently.

[ related topics: Perl Open Source ]

Dori Smith on the W3C patent policy. I hear where she's coming from, but what I'd really like are better tools against the evil that is software patents. Although I had occasion to turn style sheets back on recently (to go look at Eric Meyer's css/edge, which is cool), forgot to turn 'em off, and pulled up my daily dose... umm... having that particular patent withdrawn from public use wouldn't be skin off my nose.

[ related topics: Intellectual Property Web development Software Engineering ]

QOTD: Samantha, a Las Vegas stripper who was visited by Marwan Al-Shehhi, one of the alleged WTC hijackers, at the club she dances at:

"I'm glad he's dead with the rest of them, and I don't like feeling something like that," Samantha finally said. "But he wasn't just a bad tipper -- he killed people."

[ related topics: Quotes WTC/Pentagon attacks ]

Dan Sanderson has some great examples of Microsoft FUD, ways that they're spinning their handling of the Java vm, and the attempts to embrace and extend XML...

[ related topics: Humor Microsoft moron ]

Sometimes it's nice to be distracted by something of Beauty

[ related topics: Animation Movies tolkien Graphics ]

I'm a big Google fan, but here's a new search engine thats not too shabby.

[ related topics: Invention and Design ]

The Matwix is another distraction if you have bandwidth, flash and few minutes to kill.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Humor broadband Invention and Design ]

A few tidbits of what Perl 6 will look like. Wow that default operator looks very useful...

[ related topics: Web development Perl Open Source ]

Phil and Bill got me reading some Raymond Chandler, in the form of Trouble Is My Business, four Philip Marlowe novellas. Chandler is weird because I keep thinking "wow, this is really cool writing", but have trouble finding any one-liners, because it all blends into the total story so well. A sample:

The girl tilted her head and poured half a tumbler of whiskey down her throat. She sighed, said, "Goddam," in a casual voice, and curled up on a davenport. It took all of the davenport. She had plenty of legs. her gilded toenails winked at me from the shadowy corner where she kept herself quiet from then on.

[ related topics: Books Writing ]

Via a coworker of Charlene's from somewhere else:

Let's all do our part for patriotism!

The President has asked that we unite for a common cause.

Since the hard-line Islamic people cannot stand nudity, and consider it a sin to see a naked woman that is not their wife, tonight at 7:00pm all women should run out of their houses naked to help weed out the terrorists.

The United States appreciates your efforts and applauds you.

God Bless America!

[ related topics: Religion Sexual Culture WTC/Pentagon attacks ]

The Web Standards Project addresses the W3 C patent policy.

[ related topics: Intellectual Property Web development Web Standards Project - WaSP ]

For the love of God, Montresor: Angry woman bricks up ex-husband's door and windows, because of some wacked divorce settlement, the portions she bricked are actually on her property, so he can't tear 'em down. Gotta love them Brits.

[ related topics: Humor moron Current Events ]

Via Borklog, a scary bit in the New York Times about the adoption of surveillance cameras in the UK. Go. Read.

Riding a wave of enthusiasm for closed-circuit television, or CCTV, created by the attacks, John Major's Conservative government decided to devote more than three-quarters of its crime-prevention budget to encourage local authorities to install CCTV. The promise of cameras as a magic bullet against crime and terrorism inspired one of Major's most successful campaign slogans: "If you've got nothing to hide, you've got nothing to fear."

[ related topics: Politics Privacy Ethics ]

Sigh. Hopefully the Bush administration didn't lose the war yesterday, although Musharraf seems to be more US positive than the initial reports. But Iran is expressing concern and calling the attacks unacceptable, and, ominously, the Saudis haven't said anything. The US launched 50 Tomahawk cruise missiles and dropped 37,500 MREs. At one million bucks per missile, that'd have to be over thirteen hundred bucks per MRE for equity between military to humanitarian effort. Is anyone in the administration paying attention to what this war is actually about?

[ related topics: Politics Current Events WTC/Pentagon attacks ]

Via Starjewel, the Car Talk guide to the Ultimate Gay and Lesbian Cars. Don't miss the letters from readers:

Five of us gay girls went camping with two gay males. The girls all showed up in small pickups, with various large dogs in the backs. The boys showed up in a purple Dodge Neon, with a little lap dog (which, of course, rode up front with them in the air conditioning).

[ related topics: Sexual Culture Consumerism and advertising ]

Dang. I haven't bought music in ages, but I'm starting to listen a bit more recently, and realized that Catherine got half the Banu Gibson CDs when we split up. So I ordered a bunch of 'em, got a little slip from the Post Office, didn't leave home 'til 8:30 this morning only to discover that it's Columbus Day, and even here in politically sensitive Marin that means the Post Office is closed. But I'm coding, and that usually means Mahler, Holst, Wagner, that sort of music. I hadn't realized how much the Princess Mononoke soundtrack stole from Gustav Holst.

[ related topics: Music Bay Area Software Engineering ]

Via Must See HTTP, a compendium of Saturday Night Live transcripts. Alas, I couldn't find the Willie Nelson Great Moments in the History of White Trash bits.

[ related topics: Humor Television ]

Girl living normally after half her brain was removed to stop Rasmussen's encephalitis. Obligatory comparison to our commander in chief elided because... well... this is kinda cool and freaky and stands on its own, and frankly it sounds like she's doing better than him.

[ related topics: Health ]

You've probably already seen these, but included for completeness: I've been trying to find a good way to collect these and put 'em up, 'cause they're mainly available on a discussion forum that needs registration, but y'all have gotten the "tourist on top of the WTC tower with the airplane coming in behind him" picture in email, right? There's more to the story, Tourist Guy has been spotted in some pretty incriminating places.

[ related topics: Humor Aviation WTC/Pentagon attacks ]

But it's for the chyildruuun! A family has lost their appeal to be naked with their kids at Hippie Hollow in Austin. A 1995 change in the rules there made it illegal to appear naked before a child, or to be naked as a child, and Travis County is keeping children out of the park.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Sexual Culture Sociology ]

Wow! So much for pride in your work. Wes pointed out on Sunday that David McOwen, the guy currently fighting conviction for misuse of computing resources because he installed the SETI screensavers on DeKalb Technical College computers, was fired from his job at Cingular because a CNET News article mentioned his employer. Now Mark Pilgrim got fired for disclosing where he worked on his weblog because it tied his employer's name to an essay on addiction. I just got a new employee handbook last week, I'm not going to tell you where because it has that clause in it, but... well... here's hoping some of my other ventures take off soon, I'd like to feel like I can talk about all of my life again.

(Aside: David McOwen is getting screwed, but he was a fool for not seeing the liabilities inherent in running distributed computing projects on computers that weren't his. So slap him on the wrist, fine him for the electricity, and be done with it.)

[ related topics: Weblogs moron Writing Work, productivity and environment ]

Psyche! Just left Anne with a terminal program up on a Windows box, capturing printer output from AppleWorks on an Apple //c. And it worked. With two cables and a gender changer. As planned! That stuff never goes as planned!

[ related topics: Apple Computer Dan's Life Microsoft ]

Very cool BBC rundown of international reactions to the US attacks on Afghanistan. Lists of critical countries and short summaries of their official positions and statements on the attacks.

[ related topics: Current Events WTC/Pentagon attacks ]

So, based on the successes yesterday, I've got a spare Apple //c. Anyone have a use for such a thing, perhaps a nostalgic interest, before it gets trashed?

[ related topics: Apple Computer ]

Via Fucked Company, take a look on the lower right hand corner, on the big poster behind the sitting boy, of this picture of a Bangladesh rally for Bin Laden supporters.

[ related topics: WTC/Pentagon attacks Television ]

Andrew Sullivan makes a very well written argument that This Is a Religious War.

[ related topics: Religion History WTC/Pentagon attacks ]

on Oct. 20, a 14-inch, red-white-and-blue "Star Spangled Rammer" dildo will go on sale at sex shops across the nation, with proceeds benefiting relief efforts.

[ related topics: Good Vibrations Humor Erotic Sexual Culture ]

The Florida anthrax appears to be a Penicillin susceptible strain named after Iowa State University, Ames campus. That it's killable by that low-grade an antibiotic suggests that this wasn't something supplied by Iraqi or former Soviet Union sources.

[ related topics: Health Current Events ]

It's funny, I was thinking this morning that NOW and others who claimed women could have kids and careers must be bloody loons, given that I've got enough trouble giving Alec as much attention as he needs. No idea how Jeanne does it. Then, across the ATMP mailing list comes this: The Scotsman reports on a study that shows if you want to live long and stay healthy, don't have kids or get married.

A massive study of 15,000 middle-aged men and women, carried out in Paisley 30 years ago, has given researchers a unique opportunity to determine the factors which contribute to a productive dotage. And the startling results reveal that women who have never married and never given birth have the best chance of good health in their later years.

For men, career success seems to be the elusive elixir necessary for sustained quality of life long after-retirement age.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Health Sociology Work, productivity and environment ]

So I've finally gotten sick of supporting Macintoshes and Windows boxes. We have StarOffice for word processing, spreadsheet, presentations and database, we have GIMP for images, it's time to get rid of the phone calls and the hunting long-lost driver disks (when I know support's in the kernel) and transition all these folks over to Linux. The problem is that while that might solve some of the device support issues, I think I'll still be at the same place in terms of configuration; I like a working environment that's far enough from what they'll like that any compromise between our working styles will bring us back to the same dichotomy that exists now. Anyone that's got experience with desktop Linux want to share?

[ related topics: Free Software Dan's Life Microsoft Open Source Work, productivity and environment ]

In the "wait, these are our allies?" department, a hilarious account of being a western journalist in Pakistan, with heavy comparisons to Evelyn Waugh's Scoop.

[ related topics: Journalism and Media WTC/Pentagon attacks ]

Looks like NBC was hit by a skin anthrax, different strain than the Florida thing. Wonder if the attitudes driving whatever's going on here are the same as the terroris email hoaxes which are propagating?

[ related topics: Health WTC/Pentagon attacks ]

South African census staff being given condoms just in case they knock on a door and give in to temptation. Hey, wonder how Steve is doin' down there? Gotta ping him on this...

[ related topics: Sexual Culture Current Events ]

I don't know how I missed this the first time around, but Derrick Sundquist was 19 when he had oral sex with a 16 year old, which, given their less than four year age gap, is legal in Utah, but now he's being tried under Utah's 1977 anti-sodomy laws. Need to find follow-up information on this...

[ related topics: Sexual Culture Law Current Events ]

Guess the speaker: Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, or Osama bin Laden.

[ related topics: Religion Current Events WTC/Pentagon attacks ]

A profile of Paula Houston, Utah's porn czar. Of course even in conservative Utah they're trying to suppress free speech for less than .07% of the population, I'm not sure quite how to read the article, but it looks like 2/3^rds of those were responding to a Victoria's Secret ad.

Attorney General Mark Shurtleff said the 1,500 residents who called or e-mailed her office prove the job's importance. "Those are the ones that decide if taxpayers dollars are well spent. In this state the concern about pornography is huge," he said.

[ related topics: Sexual Culture Law ]

I love Burning Man. But I fear that the Burning Man organization has lost the fire that makes that space what it is. Notably, Larry Harvey's article on the Jiffy Lube incident says "Earlier, I suggested that a 12 foot pornographic sign would be removed in very short order if it were placed on a residential street in San Francisco". Well, that sign was at the Folsom Street Fair. It's a shame that in the rush to turn Black Rock City into Pepeland the core of what makes that town so beautiful is getting marginalized. Time to start thinking about things to do for next year, a big copy of the Bill of Rights along the front of our camp seems like a good start.

[ related topics: Burning Man Sexual Culture Bay Area ]

The RIAA wants to legalize cracking services which might have copyrighted materials, but they've scaled back their efforts. I'll go for this if they'll allow an exception to cracking laws which allows defacement of web sites to point out that recording industry executives are fascist assholes who need a good thrashing.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Web development Current Events ]

Proof that religious extremism is religious extremism, regardless of the underlying tenets: Via Genehack, more than 100 abortion clinis have gotten letters containing white powder. So far all test negative for anthrax. Let's hope it stays that way.

[ related topics: Religion John S Jacobs-Anderson Sexual Culture WTC/Pentagon attacks ]

Elizabeth passed along Crazy Aaron's Puttyworld, which at first glance just looks like just another e-commerce site selling a SillyPutty^tm like substance called Thinking Putty, but look further. They have MPEGs of putty being shot out of potato canons, what happens when you hang putty from the ceiling ("It's like watching molasses run, only cooler!"). And no more of those silly little egg containers, you can buy this stuff in pounds! In cool metallic colors! Selling catfood on the web? Lame. Selling putty in bulk? That's the spirit that got me interested in the 'net.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Cool Science ]

Oh yeah, I knew there was an entry for today I'd forgotten! Via Pursed Lips and Daze Reader, if we want this war over with quickly, we should seriously consider the Porn Bomb concept.

[ related topics: Politics Sexual Culture Current Events WTC/Pentagon attacks ]

Had a fun time down at the Weblogger User Group last night. Hopefully I'll have a chance to check out a lot of sites and link to some of the cool and interesting people I talked to. Even some who don't think that they're very cool or interesting. Spent a bunch of time talking with John Abbe who introduced me to Palm Wiki Wiki which I'm going to have to explore more, and which got me thinking about certain aspects of content management more. And sometime I just need to hang with Bill Humphries, 'cause we always seem to have partial conversations.

[ related topics: Content Management Weblogs ]

So last night's shindig got some neurons on discussions that span websites firing, and Dave Winer's commening on some Kevin Werbach notes that might have some relevance to content management as I envision it.

[ related topics: Content Management Dave Winer ]

Off to Jury Duty today. I didn't get a chance to re-read up on the FIJA documents, alas.

[ related topics: Politics ]

I am in the process of rebuilding a smaller version of the transaction processing system that my ex-employers shut down last week. It was written in Perl on Linux with Sybase on the back-end. I've been asked to recreate a small, but significant portion of the system and for various reasons, I'm having to do it on WinNT. Initially, I'm building the system around an MDB file to highlight the fact the initial system is not intended to do significant numbers of transactions. Anybody have any hints on resources for working with MDB files in Perl? I'm assuming there is a DBD::MDB module out there. I also picked up a copy of the Perl Resource Kit for Win32. Any other resouces I might need? Also, has anybody see Effective Perl Programming?

[ related topics: Free Software Books Perl Open Source Software Engineering Work, productivity and environment ]

It's started, kids! Via More Like This, a man was banned from two United flights for carrying Hayduke Lives!.

[ related topics: Free Speech Aviation Current Events WTC/Pentagon attacks ]

Via Edgecase, there's an engineered vaccine which helps kill tumors caused by HPV.

[ related topics: Sexual Culture Health ]

Life imitates The Onion once again: National Enquirer declares "world exclusive" on itself.

[ related topics: Humor Current Events ]

Watched Different for Girls last night with Charlene. Interesting concept, Carl is a very feminine boy who gets attacked in the shower for his lack of masculinity, Paul is the guy with his heart in the right place who rescues Carl from the mob. Flash forward 15 years and suddenly they meet again, only this time Carl is Kim, and Paul is very uncomfortable.

We both felt like the movie was very full and yet dragged in places. At the end it's hard to say which scenes should have been cut, but during the movie there were places that felt slow. Perhaps an indication that this story would work better as a novel, where the space for all that character development exists. Or maybe it's cause this is a movie with a message, and as such some of the depth of the struggle didn't get fleshed out. Anyway, it's certainly the best written and least preachy "message" movie I've ever seen, and it was a really touching story that worked. Recommended with those reservations.

[ related topics: Sexual Culture Movies ]

Charlene wants to add stones to her massage routine. Commercial sets are way to freakin' expensive. So today we set out up the coast to find some. I had forgotten how incredibly beautiful route 1 is, and how cool some of those towns along the coast are. Lots of fog, so I've only got one picture that's worth a darn, but it takes something like that occasionally to remind me why I live in California.

I mean besides the money.

[ related topics: Dan's Life ]

Fixed link! Ellen Woodall of the University of Florida in Gainesville found that nudism in the US doesn't strip away as many social customes as you'd think

``I observed the formation of cliques, men commenting on or joking about the obesity of certain women, women giggling about the size of a man's genitals, sexual comments and harassment -- all activities one might commonly witness of larger society,'' she said.

[ related topics: Sexual Culture ]

Via Mouthorgan: Given that I've largely moved all my own computing to Linux, and that Linux doesn't have the funky new QuickTime codecs that people are futzing with, I'd stopped hitting AdCritic, which I'd especially enjoyed for their spec ads. But this Old World spec ad might get me to fire up the old Winders box more often. Now if the account info worked right on the AdCritic site or I could slip 'em a few bucks to get more than 9K/sec download speeds, I'd be even happier. Might wanna take the discussion over to the Mouthorgan entry.

[ related topics: Free Software Apple Computer Interactive Drama Web development Erotic Sexual Culture Open Source Invention and Design ]

I was looking for further information on Harvey Drouillard, whose work of nude people in everyday situations seems a little more subversive than, say, Spencer Tunick's mass nude gathering shots (flashback to my very first entry), and ran across Glen Johnson's photography. His family portraits and his nudes are interesting work.

[ related topics: Photography Erotic Sexual Culture ]

Mixed message spam OTD (emphasis mine):

find your solemate; this is your YEAR11791

[ related topics: Spam Sociology ]

Diane has a paragraph on the Exotic-Erotic ball, which I've never been to.

[ related topics: Erotic Bay Area ]

Unwarranted gadget lust: The Sony T415 runs Palm OS, is .41 inches thick, has a 320x320 screen, a "Jog Dial" (great for paging through longer documents), and no cheesey annoying Ideo flare at the base like the Palm V.

[ related topics: Invention and Design ]

Disney, Pixar in dispute over pact which has implications for Toy Story 3.

[ related topics: Pixar Animation Current Events ]

Howard Finster dead at 84. Anyone who lived in the southeast has seen the work of Howard Finster, whose work would probably be completely at home at Burning Man despite his strong traditional Baptist preacher background. Interesting folk-art.

[ related topics: Religion Burning Man Current Events ]

Borklog reminded me that the 2002 Demotivators are out.

[ related topics: Humor ]

Mark Nyman wins British National Scrabble Awards with "waxworm", with two games of 480. I got the official Scrabble dictionary and we played an open-book game last night, Charlene trounced me with 365, largely with her strong opening, beginning with "scolders" for seventy-some-odd points.

[ related topics: Books Games Current Events ]

The Register's Cash'n'Carrion signs a deal with Need To Know for distribution of Need To Know T-shirts.

[ related topics: Humor New Economy ]

Wow. The IRA is disarming. This is amazing on so many levels. I want to believe it's the right strategy, I want to think that the British government will have the resources to stop the pro-Unionist violence, but... well... wow.

[ related topics: Politics Current Events ]

Do not go to CNN after surfing porn sites, otherwise you might be tempted to read otherwise content-free articles, such as US pounds Taliban front.

[ related topics: Erotic WTC/Pentagon attacks ]

This is the bit about being poly that scares me: A Swaziland court orders man to keep both his wives happy in bed.

[ related topics: Sexual Culture ]

Okay, I kludged in a hack to make the Flutterby CMS notify the new Weblogs.com when the front page has changed. I should probably make it a little stand-alone Perl app that looks for file changes, but I'm not in that mode right now. Anyway, if you want to use one of the Weblogs.com XML feeds we're correctly included now.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Web development Content Management Weblogs Perl Open Source Invention and Design ]

I whipped togeter a quick Perl hack to take Palm memo files as used in PalmWiki and convert them to a set of HTML pages: palmmemowiki.

[ related topics: Web development Perl Open Source Software Engineering ]

It seems that Microsoft has taken it upon themselves to police our language. This would be funny except that MS Word has become such a standard in all offices now that it will affect the language used by people who do use a thesaurus. I wouldn't mind it so much if their thesaurus was open so that third party packages were available but I don't think it is.

Oh, the above link to the NYTimes Online requires you to be registered. Registration only costs you a little privacy. TANSTAAFL.

[ related topics: Humor Microsoft Political Correctness Heinlein ]

Whoopsie: Man accidentally leaves gun in briefcase, ends up handing it to flight attendant for safe-keeping. Yet I get hassled sooo often going through security. Oh yeah, profiling's doing us a lot of good.

[ related topics: Aviation moron Current Events ]

Catty political observation of the moment with no real point: Notice how bad David Satcher, the US Surgeon General, comes across in radio interviews, and how everyone's using Jeffrey Koplan, director of the CDC, as their interview target because Satcher is sooo bad?

(Aside: It was only tracking down these links that I discovered that Satcher is black. His voice, to me, sounds very Southern white.)

[ related topics: Politics Health moron Journalism and Media WTC/Pentagon attacks ]

Via Must See HTTP, an article on the International Male catalog, titled You've Got Male.

And then there's The Sock, an International Male legend -- a jock without the straps, for those not on the mailing list (unlike YOU). I was set to wear my Sock to the gym, to really give it a whirl during a much-anticipated cardio blowout...but the real blowout was happening in my pants, as my goodies kept falling out! Prompting me to ask aloud: "Who wears this stuff and WHERE?"

"Believe it or not, we're HUGE in the Midwest," Paulie told me. From the praries of the heartland to the bayous of the deep south, everyone is not in leather as the Gap would have you believe. They're in I.M.!

[ related topics: Sexual Culture ]

Windows XP launches. Before anyone takes me to task for the following snide comments, let me cynically state publicly that I believe that Windows XP will be a tremendous success, embraced by consumers. I weep for humanity. From the article:

The system promises fewer computer crashes and will allow users to delete data from their hard drive.

Oh good. Now we get the choice. Previous versions just randomly destroyed data. In his remarks Bill Gates added:

"New York City is the perfect place to announce the worldwide availability of Windows XP."

Like they need another disaster this soon after the first. Well, I guess if Dubya went to ground zero to pimp his war on terrorism, Billy can do it for the war on users. They're using Madonna's Ray of Light as the theme tune, I guess Material Girl was a little too close to the mark. Simon Witts, VP of Microsoft Europe, Middle East and Africa said: "Windows XP will lead to a reinvigoration of the PC...", ie: Buy Intel stock, 'cause this sucker is gonna dog hardware, with "a better "Start Menu," a snazzier look, and brighter icons".

So far as I can tell, it's Windows 2000 with embedded advertising for Microsoft marketing partners. And for those of you who talk about the NT derivative OS as stable, which has not been my experience, I'll leave you with Dave Winer on Windows 2000

Once I installed Microsoft's Back Office on a server just for fun, and found out why people say W2K is a crashy OS. If you don't install any Microsoft apps, it's actually a rock-solid OS. Go figure.

[ related topics: Dave Winer Microsoft Consumerism and advertising ]

I used some lingering ailments as an excuse to take a day off from work and "sharpen the saw" yesterday. Had lunch with Todd. Was reminded of the many reasons I like Todd, he can sit and listen to personal discovery without saying "I told you so", even when he did. I think a bunch of us are bouncing around, looking for something invigorating to do, trying to see ahead of the curve and beyond the current trends of trying to sell more flash.

[ related topics: Todd Gemmell Work, productivity and environment ]

Dave Winer discovers that SOAP is Microsoft misdirection. Sorry, Dave, but anyone who's tried to use a non-Microsoft browser or media player on Windows can tell you that Microsoft is not interested in interoperability, and anyone who's followed, say, the whole Direct 3D versus OpenGL thing understands that they'll blatantly lie to distract developers. Watch the hand that doesn't have the ball in it, because that's where the ball is.

Correction: Microsoft's support of SOAP is a misdirection. In Dave's clarification he notes:

Now if I take off my SOAP hat, I have to say if MS achieves interop in SOAP, it would be a milestone, and unusual behavior for them, and newsworthy.

[ related topics: Dave Winer Microsoft Graphics ]

Via Adam Curry, Dutch and British women have the largest breasts.

[ related topics: Sexual Culture ]

One of the reasons I think the Web Standards Project browser upgrade campaign is misguided is that it gets users used to accepting actions like this: Yesterday, MSN.com started filtering by browser type. There's a News.com article on the original MSN exclusions and a later article that claims that MSN has backpedaled, but from Opera (there are reports that if you munge headers enough to get the page, Opera renders it fine) to Lynx (which can make pretty much any page that doesn't have lots of its content in JavaScript, even Jeffrey Zeldman's pages, readable) I just get the "use our software" message. Hopefully this will wake up the W3C to reasonable resolutions to their patent mess, but having seen where recent standards from them are going, i'm not optimistic.

[ related topics: Intellectual Property Business Web development Current Events Web Standards Project - WaSP ]

Debra has started the Pursed Lips Good Deeds Store, with proceeds going to a number of worthy enterprises. I don't need another T-shirt right now, but I might just have to get something with the God works in mysterious ways design...

[ related topics: Sexual Culture ]

Yet another reason to love San Francisco: Nude inline skating.

[ related topics: Erotic Sexual Culture Bay Area ]

Via /., a guy building a car mounted computing system, including detailed notes on his power supply work. For all the car-based computer projects we've dreamed about...

[ related topics: Cool Science ]

Dan Savage prints masturbation horror stories.

[ related topics: Sexual Culture ]

I needed a good shake-out this morning, and there were a few things that I thought I might find at the mall, a place I try to go as little as possible. My right wrist has been aching a bit recently, so rather than take the bike I slapped on my skates, which I hadn't been on in several years, and kicked out towards Sleepy Hollow, up over the Terra Linda divide (the fire road there is steep enough that they paved it), and down to the Northgate mall.

What is it with "Northgate Mall"? Why is there one everywhere? Does CBL just not have any better ideas for names? Just checked, it's not a CBL development, which makes it even worse.

Anyway, I was reminded of why I never go to malls. Macy's is already decorating with a Christmas theme, and the long cotton runner rugs I found had just horribly tacky patterns (this from someone wearing blue tie-dye shirt, slightly different blue Guatemalan weave shorts, and mostly red patterned fleece socks...). Although Lechter's was having a going out of business sale and I did get a few more things for the kitchen (you can never have too many mixing bowls or instant-read thermometers...).

So I stroked up and over along the 101 frontage to San Rafael, where my shopping plans were cut short by the "no skating on 4^th street" thing. Sorry San Rafael merchants, I'll be spending it elsewhere.

But back to the skates. Ouch. Need to do that more often, 'cause my legs are tight enough right now that I'm using my brake.

[ related topics: Dan's Life ]

Yeesh, do they think it's Georgia or something? German tourist jailed in Zambia for oral sex.

[ related topics: Sexual Culture Current Events ]

While we're confusing locales, a Chicago detective plead guilty to participating in a jewelry theft ring. Maybe he thought he was part of the LAPD?

[ related topics: Current Events ]

Ahh, those wonderful Kansans. Besides the whole school board and evolution thing (how come it's those who rail against evolution that seem to be the best evidence that we have common ancestry with the apes?), Via Ron on the SHS mailing list, the Leavenworth Kansas County Commission voted 2-1 Thursday against renewing a special-use permit for a spiritual retreat center that allows nudist retreats and pagan ceremonies:

Some claimed the camp was responsible for numerous wrecks nearby. But they also expressed another fear: that the nudity the camp allows could foster pedophilia and other illegal sexual activities.

"What about the moral cost of this?" asked county resident Mike Stieben.

Sigh.

[ related topics: Religion Politics Sexual Culture ]

Via SatireWire ANTI-TERROR BILL REQUIRES AMERICANS TO INSTALL WINDOWS XP

[ related topics: Microsoft Current Events ]

What do you do with a person who plays EXPONENT across two triple word squares?

[ related topics: Scrabble ]

Have I mentioned the cookbook Blue Ginger, by Ming Tsai, here before? My first experience from it was making fried steamed buns. When I order Dim Sum buns out, I have this image of how they're going to taste, which they never live up to. The recipe from Blue Ginger consistently turns out ones which do live up to my expectations. I'm working through other recipes, playing with twists because friends I cook for often like to avoid wheat and dairy and I like to keep fats, especially animal fats, lower than most professional cooks.

Anyway, we went to Jeanne's for dinner last night, so I've got two sushi grade Ahi steaks in the fridge which need to be used now, and should probably be cooked a little given the day of delay, so I'm going to sear them with a hot curry oil. And I can't wait for the lemons to finish pickling so I can start playing with those...

[ related topics: Dan's Life Food ]

You know why geeks celebrate Christmans on Halloween?

Because Dec 25 == Oct 31.

yeah I know it's old but it still makes me laugh...

[ related topics: Humor ]

Awww, isn't that sweet? DanD just got back from 3 weeks in Japan, and brought with him packaged rice crackers with a little nut for the head. We are all thankful that there was no Hello Kitty merchandise.

[ related topics: Photography ]

I got a request for a quick-and-dirty program to display some text in a specific graphic mode and a specific screen location (some really poor design engineering in a computer controlled sign). So, instead of whipping out the dusty copies of Watcom C/C++ or Turbo C++ and MetaGraphics libraries, I decided to give DJGPP a whirl. Low and behold DJGPP, the DOS port of the GNU C/C++ compiler, is feature rich, has a very thorough game/graphics library called Allegro, and even sports an IDE that I would died for back at Signal Data with Dan.

[ related topics: Language Books Games Coyote Grits Software Engineering Graphics ]

Just because it doesn't show up anywhere near the top of a Google search, the original Dope Wars for the Palm home page, including source code.

[ related topics: Drugs Games Open Source ]

Via /., Janet West says digital photos are endangering our past, not because of archival issues, but because the editing process quickly reduces images to what's interesting now. I just sent off a whole boatload of slides to get scanned, and I'm wondering if I should just trash the ones I haven't found worthy of scanning and keeping, if they'll just be more stuff that never gets looked through, or if someone could ever find something useful in them.

[ related topics: Photography History Current Events ]

In Nashville, haunted house aims to scare teens into safer sex.

Hoping to combat one of the nation's highest rates of sexually transmitted diseases, city health officials have staged the "STD Free! Haunted House."

[ related topics: Sexual Culture Health Current Events ]