Flutterby™! From 2002-06-01 to 2002-06-30

I'm not a good movie critic, but I enjoyed Sum of All Fears. I also found it very disturbing. A movie about a terrorist detonating a nuclear bomb is no longer entertaining the way it would have been. The standard action adventure flick became a reminder of the recent past and hopefully not a glimpse of the near future.

[ related topics: Movies History WTC/Pentagon attacks ]

India and Pakistan claim the situation is "stable", even after Pakistan has withdrawn troops from the Afghanistan border to redeploy them in Kashmir. I'm not following the logic: If nuclear weapons is what's got everyone wigged out, it seems to me the right way to threaten the opponent is to withdraw troops from the region.

[ related topics: Current Events ]

Here it comes, the recession we've been expecting: Bay Area foreclosures jump 38%.

[ related topics: New Economy Bay Area ]

Off to LA to hang out at the Getty Museum for two days. Y'all be good, or if ya can't be good, be careful.

[ related topics: Dan's Life Art & Culture ]

Watch Jakob Nielsen talk out of both sides of his mouth. He is soooo anoying. Watch for future press releases stating Neilsen has saved Flash. I only hope Lynch is wise enough to filter Nielsen's BS from the ocasional good point he makes.

[ related topics: Business Web development User Interface Bay Area moron Current Events ]

New Anti Pirate Disc format is being proposed

[ related topics: Humor Invention and Design ]

Sometimes people are so pathetic it's funny. It's a cross between Bill & Ted and Strange Brew. Lot's of hosers in FUBAR the Movie

[ related topics: Movies ]

Dictionary.com seems to be down still. Does anyone have the scoop on them?

A cool person of note Dr Dean Edell seems to have become more of champion of logic than a radio doctor personality. It's extreamly entertaining to hear him step someone to a conclusion that they just bought a fad diet product or that their personal deity of choice is probably not punishing them by making their child sick or that legalization of marajuana makes sense. You can hear him on streaming radio here 1pm pacific time. Note KGO is owned by Disney so they have weird licencing going on with streaming ads and you get a lot of dead space where there should be ads. Maybe it's an improvement but sometimes it makes you think the connection got dropped.

[ related topics: Libertarian Psychology, Psychiatry and Personality Health California Culture ]

I'm sure y'all have seen this before, but I was trying to find it when I was over at Alec's the other day, and couldn't get to it, so here's Why BSD is better than Linux.Vinyl tops are great and all, but I think maddog in the back right of the Linux picture is the real deal clincher.

[ related topics: Free Software Humor Open Source ]

Good morning Perl fans! Larry Wall has published Apocalypse 5, on regular expressions.

[ related topics: Perl Open Source Software Engineering ]

Things I've learned playing Dope Wars:

1. Cash in the bank does very little good. Better to take less profit percentage-wise if your overall payoff is better than having that money in the bank.
2. If you're playing for big scores from anomalous events (drug bust, IPO, etc), inventory cost doesn't matter. Let the debt accumulate and don't wait for cheaper costs.
3. The strategy for big payoffs is completely different from the strategy for sustainable business.
4. Be in the right place at the right time, you look like a genius. In the wrong place, the loan shark breaks your legs. Either way, if you're playing for that big score, beyond the basics it's luck when you make it.
5. In the real world, the SEC prevents anyone from breaking your legs.

Along those lines, Hornswoggled looks at Krispy Kreme donuts relative to the new economy.

[ related topics: Games New Economy ]

I've tried dabbling a little bit, then realized that it's not my kink, but part of what's intrigued me about BDSM(nlop) has been that sense of implicit communication, an amazing level of the top understanding the needs of the bottom in ways that I would love to be able to communicate with my partner. Debra's latest diary entry touches on some of that.

[ related topics: Erotic Dan's Life Psychology, Psychiatry and Personality ]

Jerry Kindall linked to a set of free fonts from Chank. A few good headline fonts. My collection right now is a bunch of Type 1 fonts that came with a copy of Corel Draw, I've got some ideas for things that need some actual aesthetic design, so I'm on the lookout for fonts and art and styles that might have applications for those projects.

[ related topics: Art & Culture Graphic Design ]

Via a gazillion people, those of us on the left coast should get a good partial solar eclipse at sunset on Monday. I'm gonna have to see if I can borrow Phil's solar filter and drag the 300mm lens somewhere with a good foreground.

[ related topics: Astronomy ]

Heya Ralph...look, the dolphin is swiming with your wife. Wow they sure are cute, oh look he's doing tricks and splashing and what!?! what the... oh sweet merciful christ

[ related topics: Humor ]

Ah the good life. After his divorce Mr. Scibby decides to live the good life.

[ related topics: Humor Theater & Plays Current Events ]

These People are cool. I kinda feel like a slacker when I didn't have broadband available all I did was whine to providers.

[ related topics: broadband ]

In the current Scarlet Letters, Heather Corinna has a dramatic visual take on Síle na Géige.

[ related topics: Erotic Mythology ]

Several weeks ago, Mark linked to The Rise of the Creative Class: Why cities without gays and rock bands are losing the economic development race. Given that the book related to that article is now in the publication media blitz stage (1, 2 with responses), I wonder how Zach Wamp saying "Technology Is The Key To Economic Development" ties into this.

[ related topics: Books Sexual Culture Journalism and Media Chattanooga ]

This one's for Diane: hybrid car geeks gather to discuss efficiency tips.

[ related topics: Automobiles ]

Welp, I'm off to Phrontisterion IV for a few days. hopefully I'll have a few stories when I get back.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Games Todd Gemmell ]

After listening to Dan expound on the virtues and coolness of eBooks for the umpteenth time, I finally decided to give it a try. The clincher was the Baen Free Library, which I became aware of through another reference of Dan's to an essay by Eric Flint, one of the founders(?) of the Library.

I've always known that I wanted to try toting books around on my Handspring Visor (a Palm Pilot clone) but I had several doubts and concerns: First and foremost, I've never been able to find any sites that have [sci-fi/]fantasy books that I am interested in. Also, I wasn't sure that I would get the same comfort and enjoyment curling up on the couch with a PDA. I worried that I would not be able to lose myself in the story due to the distraction of holding something so different from a [paper] book.

The Baen Free Library took care of the first issue, as I fell completely for their nefarious plan. On their site I found a couple of books that I had eyeballed for years but never spent any money on because I was unsure if I would enjoy them. And I also found another book that looked interesting, but that I never would have bought in a store.

So far, I am immensely enjoying the first book - both the story itself and the act of reading it on my Visor. Precisely as planned, Baen has exposed me to the fantasy stylings of David Weber, and if Oath Of Swords ends as well as it's going now I'll most likely be buying the next one.

Reading it on my Visor has turned out to be more an absolute joy than I ever could have imagined. The Mobipocket reader is clear and easy to navigate. And the size and weight of the Visor coupled with the up/down scrolling buttons allows for easy, one-handed reading without the cramping usually associated with holding a paperback open. There are, of course, less words on each page but I find this keeps me more engrossed in the story as my eye has a tendency to skip to the next page in paper books if a paragraph becomes too boring.

Thank you, Dan, for continuing to champion both ebooks and freely available offerings :-)

[ related topics: Books Technology and Culture Consumerism and advertising Cool Technology Shawn's Life ]

Ms Muffin has a new episode, #6.

[ related topics: Comics ]

Finished Judith Levine's Harmful To Minors: The Perils of Protecting Children From Sex this weekend. I was slightly disappointed. Maybe I was looking for something closer to what I've heard Not In Front of the Children: Indecency, Censorship and the Innocence of Youth presents, but I found strong arguments on how our attitudes about childhood sexuality are wrong, broken up by rants on things like welfare policy, in a way that I'm sure would alienate any of those who might be persuaded. In a few middle chapters I was considering buying copies and leaving them absolutely everwhere, at the end my enthusiasm had waned to thinking that she had some good arguments, but they would only be accepted by those of us who already think that way.

Shawn mentioned Harmful To Minors earlier on Flutterby.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Books Sexual Culture Free Speech ]

Via Arts & Letters Daily, The Economist looks at Does Education Matter? Myths about Education and Economic Growth, by Alison Wolf. The book sounds interesting, among the arguments are that the push to give everyone a college education has resulted primarily in lower standards in education.

[ related topics: Books Education ]

The SF Chronicle reports that the FBI and CIA collaborated in disrupting activities at UC Berkeley, and helped Ronald Reagan dodge possible felony prosecution. The whole report is Reagan, Hoover and the UC Red Scare.

[ related topics: Politics Bay Area Law Enforcement Civil Liberties ]

Daze Reader points to an Eric Raymond rant on good porn versus bad porn.

There is no evidence of massive market-rigging, and good porn is no more expensive to produce than bad porn -- in fact, it may be less expensive (the same models can be used for good and bad, and the good stuff needs less in the way of elaborate props). Therefore, if most porn is bad, it's because most porn consumers want it to be bad.

[ related topics: Erotic Sexual Culture Consumerism and advertising ]

So Emmanuel Goldstein Osama bin Laden is still on the loose, but from Eurasia Moscow, John Ashcroft announces that they've caught a terrorist planing to build a dirty radioactive weapon, or who might have had training in building such a device, or... well, anyway, bad people are being put in jail, good people are looking out for you, no need to fear, Citizen.

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

I've got an old laptop that won't recognize more than 8 meg of RAM. I've been thinking about ways to use it as, say, an Ogg Vorbis player. But even the gentle whirring of a hard drive is annoying. Luckily, there's a Compact Flash to SFF IDE adapter.

[ related topics: Hardware Hackery ]

Somehow I missed this East Bay Express article on the tribulations of The Spectator. Today Debra ran it, saying she stole it from Daze Reader. I've noticed that The Spectator's web site hasn't been updated in a while, perhaps this is part of why.

[ related topics: Sexual Culture California Culture ]

David Steinberg sent around mail saying Judith Levine, author of Harmful To Minors, will be at Cody's Books on 4^th street in Berkeley this Thursday. Scotch Night this week will be at Skate's, maybe come by there at 5-ish, have a drink, head over to Cody's at 7:00?

[ related topics: Children and growing up Books Sexual Culture Bay Area ]

The Web Standards Project is back. My dissing them gave Flutterby its first big readership boost. This time they seem to be making a more careful statement, but it'd be nice if they could find some good designers; it's still a necessity to be able to turn off the wonky line spacing, either with Ctrl-G in Opera, or by using Lynx or Links. What's up with that, do they think they're still on paper?

But generally, I like this new focus on output rather than consumption, the members have more pages that are actually usable in alternative browsers like Lynx than ever before (still a lot of "[spacer.gif]"s and content that gets missed in text modes), and Flutterby will probably be going XHTML and CSS before too long, hopefully not alienating too many users. So we're finally getting rid of Netscape 4.x at 5 years, just a bit ahead of Jakob Nielsen's predictions.

While we're talking about accessability and standards, I'd be amiss not to mention Mark's new push, use scenarios of a blind user and a color-blind dial-up user, but the SubAverage parody of Mark's stories rules. Speaking of which, anyone else noticed that with modern browsers in-line ads are now much more user-visible than pop-ups?

[ related topics: Web development User Interface Web Standards Project - WaSP ]

Yesterday at lunch, Julie mentioned The Legendary Stardust Cowboy as "a Syd Barrett for our time". Apparently this guy is the inspiration for David Bowie's "Ziggy Stardust", and is just an all around whacked guy. Julie has his latest CD, after listening to a few samples and learning a little more I'm now alternately repelled and intrigued...

[ related topics: Music Pop Culture ]

I can't remember if I've mentioned this before, but a while ago Julie mentioned Emily Strange, I don't think there's any story line, just art, but Emily is something of a more subtle Johnny the Homicidal Maniac.

[ related topics: Art & Culture ]

Is it another case of the politically correct "me-too" victim, or just [extremely] poor reporting? I can't tell. This article at the NYPost simply states that a woman has come forward to say that Bishop James McCarthy had an on-again, off-again "sexual relationship" (elsewhere in the article, referred to as an "affair") with her, starting when she was about 21. And that she knows that he had "relationships" with other women. The accuser says:

I was appalled at the thought that the bishop who abused me was going to Dallas to help make a policy about sexual abuse,

(Emphasis mine.)

[ related topics: Sexual Culture Political Correctness Law Current Events Journalism and Media ]

I've got some character set encoding issues to resolve, so I haven't put completely proper XML headers on everything yet, but the major Flutterby pages now claim to be XHTML (transitional), and should parse with an XML parser. Now I've got to figure the easiest ways to get ISO characters (such as appear in post #5072) into UTF-8 encoded Unicode.

[ related topics: Web development Content Management Flutterby Meta Typography ]

So yesterday's XHTML efforts bring up a few user interface questions. A big problem with validating XHTML is getting the tag nesting right; in the simplest case <blockquote> can't be inside a <p>aragraph. I do a lot of hoop jumping to make sure that messages entered in "Text" mode are okay, but how should I indicate that user entered HTML is invalid? Suggestions appreciated.

[ related topics: Web development User Interface Flutterby Meta ]

Okay, one more instance of leeching off of Julie's cultural hipness. At least for this week. Winston Smith is a montage artist whose work has graced the Dead Kennedys albums, among others. Some cute visual puns, some a little tired and drawn out, but worth a look.

[ related topics: Art & Culture ]

In Policing Pirates in the Networked Age, Stan Leibowitz seems to have a bit of a change of heart:

Technologies that make it easier to pirate copyrighted materials have undergone economic examination for over two decades. Prior analysis, and prior experience, has indicated that the previous generations of copying technologies have not had dire consequences for copyright owners.

There's a Salon interview with him in which he talks a bit about DRM and such. It's very clear to me that if the music industry were serious about stopping piracy, they could just make high profile busts against a couple of big pirates and the P2P networks would dry up fairly quickly.

[ related topics: Intellectual Property Music ]

Whoah! Came back from lunch and Flutterby was out of disk space. Not sure what was going on, but I have my suspicions about someone having a transaction open over some huge database operation... ("oh Toooooodd?"). (Don't take that as a direct accusation, I'm not sure yet what was going on [grin]). Anyway, we're back to a comfortable space on /var.

[ related topics: Flutterby Meta ]

Can't tell ya yet why this is interesting, 'cause there are some surprises for a few folks in store this summer, but over on The Jer Zone there was a link to the Water Rocket Index.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Toys ]

A great rant over at /.: McAfee Manufactures Virus Threat, about the fear-mongering the anti-virus manufacturers are spreading. Not that viruses aren't a problem, Klez has settled down to about half a megabyte a day, but the noise is overshadowing the real issues.

[ related topics: virus ]

Ever heard someone complain about how a change in accounting rules makes carrying book inventories so expensive that publishers can only carry a few current run best-sellers? How Thor Power Hammered Publishing describes how the Supreme Court's 1979 ruling in Thor Power Tool Company v. Commissioner of Internal Revenue changed accounting rules to make carrying low-turnover inventory more expensive, and why fixing it isn't as simple as you'd think.

[ related topics: Books Law ]

Speaking of publishing, Bill Brent, of Black Books just sent around a heart-felt plea for help. His distributor, LPC group, is in bankruptcy, and this means Black Books is not only out the money it already hasn't been paid, but may be sued by American National Bank to deliver more books even though they haven't been paid for those already delivered. If you've been eyeing anything, this would be a good time to buy from the publisher directly. If you need an editor or writer, he's available. If you can arrange a venue for fund-raisers, he'd like to hear from you.

If helping Black Books is of interest to you, even if it's just having enjoyed a Perverts Put Out! evening, email me and I'll forward his message to you.

[ related topics: Books Sexual Culture Writing ]

Link stolen from slashdot, Insulting Stupid Movie Physics is a well done rant and wants to know where the sidekick with the wheelbarrow with the thousands of rounds and hundreds of pounds of ammo is.

[ related topics: Technology and Culture Movies ]

Charlene and I spent the weekend up around Dunsmuir and Mount Shasta, in northern California. First stop was Mossbrae Falls, a mile or so of walking north along the railroad tracks from Dunsmuir. The falls extend for a couple of hundred feet along the side of the river, and, except that it's a very popular destination, are a great place to hang out and enjoy the sound and the sunlight.

We made a quick stop in the city of Mount Shasta for supplies, were reminded of why neither of us is keen on the vibe there, then went up to Castle Lake to camp overnight. Saw some cool gull-like birds which soared and chirped. Can't find 'em yet in the reference books, the closest thing we've found is listed in the "rarely seen only in truly remote places in the Trinity range", which we don't think this was. Next morning we took the Maxima down a fire road, and hiked out to a promontory overlooking an incredible gorge, which opened up towards Mount Shasta. Spent a few hours soaking up the vibes, watching the Turkey Vultures soar the thermals in the down the wooded slopes and below the rocky cliffs, with the roar of the water echoing up.

(Apologies for the exposure, this needs to be stitched and processed into a panorama.) In all, logged more double-dash road in the Maxima than most SUVs see in their lifetime, did some good hiking, saw some incredible scenery, and got a good shakeout on camping gear I haven't really used in a few years. I'm starting to resent Burning Man 'cause I've got stuff to fill my weekends, stuff other than hanging out on a mountain top.

My previous notes on Shasta have some older photos.

[ related topics: Photography Dan's Life Nature and environment Automobiles ]

My order still hasn't shipped from Amazon but I'm curious to hear from those that got their books already.A New Kind of Science looks to be an interesting (long) read. Is there still interest in a mailing list(support group) still?

[ related topics: Books Invention and Design ]

The Rogers Profanisaurus is a nice supplemental tool to Dictionary.com

Well for fathers day my girls took me to the movies except they got to pick the movie and so we went and saw Scooby Doo. Hun, this movie sucked waaaaay less than I thought it would. They actually did a reasonable translation of the 70s Scooby Universe to a contemporary live action movie. They throw plenty of jokes in for the grown-ups and treat scappy-doo like the antichrist he is. The cherry on this particular sunday is Sara Gellar(Buffy)in her Daphne purplest role which will please all the XY and saphicly inclined XX in the audience.

[ related topics: Movies Theater & Plays ]

Wearing Wool is an organization Celebrating the ancient art of spinning and the ageless beauty of women. Perhaps a bit tame for this crowd but I think these people are cool. Check out their calendar. I liked December best.

[ related topics: Art & Culture ]

Life imitates satire: Via MetaFilter (discussion here), Islamic Bloc, Christian Right Team Up to Lobby U.N.. "Axis of Evil" be damned:

"We look at them as allies, not necessarily as friends," said Austin Ruse, founder and president of the Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute, a New York-based organization that promotes conservative values at U.N. social conferences

"The enemy of my enemy is my friend", huh?

[ related topics: Religion Politics Civil Liberties Community ]

America advances to the quarterfinals. America seems to domainate a lot of things but not soccer errr football so it's espcially cool to see these guys do well. Most people seem to have a sense of national pride about their teams, not me, I just think it's cool for an underdog to do well.

"I think that the United States always has seen us as inferior and it always has tried to humiliate us. And now they've really gone and done it." ALEJANDRO DUARTE,on Mexico's 2-0 loss in the World Cup.

[ related topics: Sports ]

More waterfall this morning, still Mossbrae Falls.

Just so I don't have an excuse to keep reusing the same scene for the next few days, here are two more views, and one that needs a little contrast enhancement and could really do with a train on those tracks in the foreground, walking north along the train tracks towards Mount Shasta.

[ related topics: Photography Dan's Life Nature and environment Trains ]

Lots of people have linked to this Forbes article by Gary Reback, Patently Absurd. If you have any illusions left that patents are about protecting intellectual property, go read it.

"OK," he said, "maybe you don't infringe these seven patents. But we have 10,000 U.S. patents. Do you really want us to go back to Armonk [IBM headquarters in New York] and find seven patents you do infringe? Or do you want to make this easy and just pay us $20 million?"

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Invention and Design ]

Life imitates Always. A C-130 air tanker crashes while fighting a fire in the Sierra. One picture (a still from a TV crew who were filming interviews with locals) shows the wing separated from the fuselage, with flame on both parts. The guys who fight forest fires have always stuck me as being the... damn, words fail me..., the folks who do it from the air are that plus fighter pilot tricks in big turbo-props. Anyway, a little time out and a deep breath for three people who got caught pushing the envelope.

[ related topics: Movies Aviation Current Events ]

Equal time for non Microsoft exploits too: Upgrade your Apache, there's a hole which allows DOS attacks on 32 bit architectures and stack exploits on 64 bit machines.

[ related topics: Free Software Microsoft security ]

The winners of the webby awards have been published. Some of the sites are slow or even non responsive due to the "slashdot effect" of their new celebrity.

[ related topics: Invention and Design California Culture Graphic Design Community ]

It's been said before, but I'm finding that Google is becoming worthless. Searches pull up stuff I've already seen before; if I wanted to see that stuff wouldn't be using Google. Unless I'm using it as a memory refresher, the first thing I do is click somewhere randomly way down in the list. In fact, for the search Charlene and I were doing last night (trying to find that bird we saw up at Castle Lake), it seems like AltaVista turns up better search results. I wonder if they'll keep up, or, if, like every other search engine, someone will come up with a better scoring system and trounce them.

[ related topics: Web development Dan's Life Net Culture ]

Back in the early '80s, I ran across one of those late night SciFi TV shows while dialing BBSs at midnight that had as its premise a teenage hacker with a terminal disease, who managed to move his essence into a computer. Since then I've thought about the organisms we create with computing, and I've set up systems that were self-sustaining to the point that I didn't know they were there 'til I accidentally killed them, by trying to move my user account between machines and missing a cron job or some other system which existed outside of my daily routine.

Dave Winer is in the hospital, I hope he gets back on his feet soon, but one of the interesting side effects is seeing what happens to the systems which Dave has created when he becomes absent. For the most part, Weblogs.com continues, but a few things don't: /. hasn't shown up in the change list since Dave took ill.

Columbine often ponders about the meanings of on-line relationships. Various virtual deaths in the online journal community have also brought up questions. We exist in the ways we impact the community, some of those impacts happen beyond our existence in a community, and in that way we might "live" beyond or corporeal existence. Sometimes.

[ related topics: Dave Winer Community ]

Okay, one more picture from the recent trip, a panorama of the cliffs at the south end of Castle Lake.

[ related topics: Photography Dan's Life Travel ]

OMG I wan't one of these. this brings back grade school memories If I only had a giant robot, I could do that type stuff. They don't seem to take VISA and the shipping from Finland has gotta be steep.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Interactive Drama Robotics ]

Shoot me now. My neighbors are idiots. No better yet shoot them, just use enviormentally friendly bullets.

[ related topics: Humor moron Law California Culture Guns ]

Forget John Deere's latest toy. I just watched a very strange commercial during prime time television. I'm not entirely sure... but it appears that Honda is claiming to have a consumer-model, bipedal, humanoid robot.

...And no, I am not going crazy. It appears to be entirely true! They're also saying the technology might be used to build exoskeletons.

[ related topics: Technology and Culture Robotics Invention and Design Work, productivity and environment Cool Technology ]

Disturbing information on a candy wrapper of the moment: "Charleston Chew" advertises "Vanilla (artificially flavored)" and "chewy flavored nougat with a delicious chocolately coating" (emphasis mine). In other words, there ain't nothin' in this beast that isn't trying to be something else.

[ related topics: Food Chocolate ]

Fellow Burner Wally has a Gallery of the Stupid that will give you a giggle to get the day going.

Salon ran an interview with "Lizzie Borden", director of the much reviled Forced Entry. It's a fairly fluffy piece, mostly a personality profile of someone who self-admittedly is a bit disturbed and inconsistent (...and grew up in Orange County. Imagine!). Anyway, as Salon has sunk into fluff I didn't expect much, the whole article can be summed up in the closing quote:

"Yeah, I'm fucked up," she says, shrugging. "I can admit it. People say they are sorry for me, and I'm like, why? It's made me a better person. I don't want to be a pansy."

But over at inexplicably fancy trash, Nicholas Urfé took it as an occasion to rant on the brickbats thrown at Borden, to good effect.

[ related topics: Sexual Culture Psychology, Psychiatry and Personality ]

Via Eric Raymond's Armed and Dangerous, Which deadly sin are you? Surprise, surprise, I'm "lust".

[ related topics: Humor Dan's Life ]

Not Zen pointed to a Register article claiming computer programs are beating stock traders by roughly 7%. It should be pointed out, regarding stock trading, that in the long term growing your holdings with the growth of the economy is average. If you're doing better, others are doing worse. Now that many of the stupider day traders have been wiped out of the '90s markets, it doesn't surprise me that programmers are smarter than stockbrokers.

[ related topics: New Economy Software Engineering Cool Technology ]

This reminds me of a question that some of you wiser types might know. What is the legality of caching? Google obviously does it. It would not be much trouble to whip up a LWP script that copies pages locally to the Flutterby server. Disk space is pretty cheap but I'm not sure what that would do bandwidth wise. Suggestions?? Maybe we could start wearing ribbons to raise funds to stamp out linkrot...

[ related topics: Intellectual Property broadband Space & Astronomy Law Community ]

(I hereby proclaim this Robot News Week)

A 'thinking' robot attempted to escape from the Magna science centre in London, where it and its buddies were being studied for their ability to learn. Gaak made it to the main parking entrance before almost being run over by a visitor's car.

[ related topics: Technology and Culture Robotics Artificial Intelligence ]

An article called Version Fatigue, on how difficult it is to keep up with changes in technology, caused Eric Raymond to gloat that because he's been using Un*x based tools he hasn't had to, to which Arnold Kling replied, and then I thought an article flaming that reply needed to get written.

[ related topics: User Interface ]

Last night Charlene and I went to Titillation Theater at Blackhole. The Squid List announcement described it as:

Titillation Theater is a series of 12 vignettes with an erotic theme performed by a cast of 4 women and 1 man. Written and directed by Jennifer Hotchner. From serious to downright hilarious, touching on many aspects of sexuality from youth through adulthood. These provocative skits will have you taking a new look at just what "titillation" means to you.

I've sent off our request for reservations for Wednesday, so I guess I'm safe in recommending it. Highly recommending it. From a little boy's nightmares to the Yoga instructure who speaks the subtext, the performance had us laughing, kept us interested and, yes, was titillating. And it managed a high level of eroticism without going into territory that'd keep me from recommending it to even my more conservative friends. Jennifer Hotchner is going places, and the cast she's assembled pulls off her work very well.

Wednesdays and Thursdays, the email I got specified June 26^th and 27^th, but it might be ongoing. Email me if you'd like contact info, because of the nature of the venue I don't want to drop all that stuff on the wide-open web in the archives.

[ related topics: Erotic Dan's Life Bay Area Theater & Plays ]

Another reason caching might be useful. Check out this London Eye Millennium Wheel Jigsaw before they find the "mistake".

Ok I know I'm going to the inferno and this post may just bump me up to one of the more prominet layers. Caelan has developed a windows program that tracks menstrual cycles so the unkowing XY can know when it's safe.

[ related topics: Humor Technology and Culture Microsoft Bay Area Software Engineering Political Correctness ]

OK a nice fluff piece on the RoboCup. Since it's Robot week at Flutterby and The American team did such an excellent job this Cup. The article is luke warm but Robots AND Soccer c'mon I had to link it.

[ related topics: Robotics Current Events Heinlein Sports ]

In half an hour or so, I'll let the door latch behind me at Gracenote, but this time I've handed in my keys. It's been a year of a lot of code written, a little learning, and experience with tens of gigabytes of distributed XML databases and systems meant to answer "web services" queries at the rate of millions per day, but eventually a number of factors pushed me to move on, and this seemed like as good a time as any.

On Monday I'll be starting at Alvanon, in "the fashion industry" (Cue Barbizon ad VO: "Would you like to be a model? Or just look like one?...").

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

Cool things happen out in the middle of nowhere. An attempt at the first amateur space launch should happen out on the playa before the month is over.

[ related topics: Space & Astronomy ]

I'm packing up the Clan and we are going on Safari overnight. Looks like they have most the things you can do on the real savanna except the shoot the lion in the cage for a few dollars extra part. I'll bring the camera since last time I went to see animals I got to see camels "hump"

[ related topics: Children and growing up Photography Movies Todd Gemmell Bay Area ]

Ok you guys have been pretty lax on the posting lately, so follow this link and recieve your punishment. The beatings will continue until morale improves.

[ related topics: punishment link ]

David Steinberg reports from the 2002 Faux Queen Pageant, for "drag queens trapped in a woman's body".

[ related topics: Sexual Culture ]

4^th street in Berkeley contains a bunch of light manufacturing, small machine shops, and then the extremely yuppie bit of shopping for 3 blocks or so north of University Ave. At first I thought that Steamworks was another such place, maybe custom pressure fittings, but it turns out it's just a bunch of guys playing with their tools; one of the Bay Area's last bath-houses.

But it says something about my level of naivete that when someone commented "oh look, a little blue pill outside of Steamworks", my first question was trying to figure out The Matrix reference...

Other gratuitous Steamworks story: The kindly grey haired old ladies who stopped us on the street and asked "Do you know where 21[mumble] 4^th street is?" I could swear they asked about 2107, and it took me a moment to wrap my mind around that they probably weren't headed there. Probably.

[ related topics: Sexual Culture Bay Area California Culture ]

Cause they are my people and they are wacky, an article about the high incidence of sightings UFO sightings. I'm suprised nobody has found a correlation between scotch consumption and sightings or my personal theory is that as Loch Ness tourisum dollars dwindle ufo sightings go up. Yeah they are crazy...crazy like a haggis.

[ related topics: Humor Current Events ]

A new low in BLOOD SPORT. You can now bet on the location of the next terrorist attack with odds depending on location. Gambling and Porn have got to be the most robust industries known as they seem to be able to take root anywhere. BTW does this war seem like it's becoming a star trek episode. Perhaps we could convince them to clean up the war with those disintigration booths??

[ related topics: Erotic Sexual Culture Star Trek Invention and Design History Space & Astronomy ]

I'm a huge fan of Zepplins and would love to see them come back for a variety of uses but I am a tad dubious about their use as fire fighting airships

[ related topics: Current Events Pyrotechnics Cool Technology ]

The hardest bonds to loosen are the ones I tie myself. The toughest bit about my first day at the new gig was rearranging my thinking, going from working on a platform which does development right, but on a project which strongly restricted my methods of solving problems, to Windows, on projects where "make it work" is the goal. Today I'll be struggling with running escapes through WIA drivers to talk directly to the USB bus because the WIA drivers in question only do a part of what we need the hardware to do. So, ironically, I'm having to dig through open source software to figure out how to make Windows drivers work. Hmmmm. I'm glad Todd's picking up the slack link-wise, though, as I'm not going to be doing much web surfing in the next few.

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

Okay, maybe one set of links: Back when Meuon, Robert, Rich, me and a bunch of other folks were first talking about setting up a real-time network, we saw the internet as a way to fund the local network. Now, with the information overload, we're seeing a return to restricted communities. Sometimes geographically. Warchalking seems to be about localized 802.11 networks, the way BBSs used to be, with access indicated via chalk marks much like Hobo signs were (and are) done.

[ related topics: Wireless broadband Net Culture Community ]

OK well it looks like Burt is no longer Evil but you can watch Maritess vs the Superfriends in a battle of the Aliens.

[ related topics: Humor Movies ]

Martha Stewart is perhaps one of the most reviled people on the planet and with the recent scandal it can be concluded Martha Stewart is EVIL.

[ related topics: Humor History Space & Astronomy Current Events ]

Poor Dan being crushed by another EVIL employer. Dealing with evil is not as easy as it used to be. Evil has organized and a whole evil supply chain has formed for the advancement of Evil ways. You can even buy evil supplies online. So Dan is writting firewire drivers for evilOS? I guess it feels like an EVIL day.

[ related topics: Humor Work, productivity and environment ]

Been visiting family (and now friends) in New Orleans. People I have not seen since I was 14. Got some great pics, and spent just enough time in New Orleans to realize how much true culture Chattanooga lacks. OK, New Orleans is far from perfect, and I spend very little time in the 'district', and a lot of time running around with kinfolk that live and work there. My favorite non-family picture is of the lake, when the rain hit. 5 minutes later it was bright and sunny again:

[ related topics: Photography Work, productivity and environment Chattanooga ]

Aahh the joys of virtual clothing. Overheard: "Do your pants get stuck?" Took everyone a moment to figure out it was a question about a rendering glitch...

[ related topics: Quotes Dan's Life Graphics ]

The DOD has recognized that the sound of a crying baby is the most frustrating for our species and has turned it into a new weapon

[ related topics: Children and growing up Cool Science Invention and Design Guns ]

OK everyone (except meuon) follow this link and receive your spanking. Bad posters! bad bad

So the Ninth Circuit US Court of appeals rules the "under god" phrase of the Pledge of Allegiance unconstitutional. This ruling will undoubtedly fall when it hits the Supreme Court, but maybe some teachers out there will be able to use this as impetus to do some education about what kids are really pledging allegiance to when they blindly recite those words every morning. I grew up in a Waldorf school, so I didn't get the pledge 'til the family moved, in 8^th grade, and though the "under God" phrase didn't bother me then, parts of the rest of it did, like "with liberty and justice for all", as I wasn't ignorant of the history of this country.

Burning Bird has some thoughts on it, and User Friendly suggests a revision.

[ related topics: Religion Children and growing up Politics Law Education ]

It's quoting IRC day, apparently. Pete linked to the QDB Top 25 Quotes, and Burning Bird use some while talking about feminism.

[ related topics: Quotes Weblogs Net Culture ]

The Whole Earth 'Letronic Link is in danger of going down with Salon.com. There have been many classic 'assets' of .COMs that have died because of the .COM bubble bursting. But The Well has alot of personal history for me. I haven't participated on the Well since about 1992 because it tends to take WAY too much time out of my life - but it was always nice to know it was still there. If you haven't experienced the Well, give it a try. It's not free, but you get what you pay for!

[ related topics: Interactive Drama ]

An AP fluff piece on a letter to Nature suggesting thoughts can alter gene expression. My first response is "well, duh", mainly because the difference between altering genes and altering what those genes express is pretty huge, but it does suggest that there's a little more consciousness of the mind as the controller of the body.

[ related topics: Health Nature and environment Bioinformatics Current Events ]

Console Wars is an Economist article on how the big three are duking it out.

Iron Port has an interesting idea to solve the SPAM problem. Allow legitimate emailers to post bond and be put on a white hat list that could be accessed by spam software like spamassasin.

[ related topics: Spam Software Engineering Monty Python ]

Instructions on getting to E&O for Scotch Night this evening from Ruby, a coworker and city dweller: "Toward Crocker Galleria, right after Versacci, up towards Loehmann's...". We all have our landmarks, I guess I would've used street names 'cause the photography galleries in that area are referenced by address.

[ related topics: Dan's Life ]

Okay, so I'm an idiot because I put the wrong check in the wrong envelope when paying bills, but that doesn't stop me from being a bit disturbed that Verizon successfully cashed a check made out to Cox. WTF?!

[ related topics: moron ]

After my dentist's appointment this morning, walked past a couple of zealots protesting outside the Ninth Circuit US Court of Appeals on the previously mentioned Pledge of Allegiance shenanigans, being covered by about the same number of TV news folks. Took a picture, but I'm not set to upload it right now. Waiting for the light to cross a young lad approached me for advice on a counter-protest involving... well, I'm not sure, 'cause he wasn't terribly coherent, but I believe it involved an American flag and his anus. Wandered on to work, where I was promptly convinced that there is indeed a deity: I'm working on a Windows Installer issue this afternoon. Definitely the work of some supernatural entity plotting to get me. Bastard.

[ related topics: Religion Politics Dan's Life Current Events ]

A local Ex-ST3 guy now a VP for TensorData pops in looking for a partner. Some ideas never die. I am probably breaking the non-disclosure by mentioning some of my favorite buzzwords from the tech overview he sent me: "linking embedded meta data with a fully implemented transaction online tracking and billing system running on a fully encrypted VPN using 1000000 bit keys..." It even allows "direct viewing of compressed images without decompression". It claims 5000:1 compression for video. It even has "time date stamping by an atomic clock" and my favorite: "fuzzy variable logic".

I should have trounced him and shown him the door. But with morbid curiousity I kept talking to him, like playing with a snake. You know it'll bite, but the way it moves is fascinating. In the back of my head a little voice asks: "Is he funded?" But milking snakes is dangerous. Any snake handlers need a pet?

[ related topics: Sports Cryptography ]