Flutterby™! From 2002-10-01 to 2002-10-31

For a few years out here in California we've been watching trees die from "sudden oak death". For a long time nobody had a clue about what it was, some suspected beatles, but now they're pretty sure it comes from a fungus. And while the initial guesses were that animal movement transmitted it, it seems to go from bay tree to bay tree without damaging them. Bill forwarded a New York Times in depth look at the current state of sudden oak death. Worth a read if you're wondering about all those trees dying in place out in the hills of Marin.

[ related topics: Nature and environment Bay Area ]

The Chronicle reports on Carol Queen and Robert Lawrence's search for a permanent home for The Center for Sex and Culture.

[ related topics: Sexual Culture Bay Area Sociology California Culture ]

I've noticed a huge upswing in the amount of violent porn spam I'm getting. I can't imagine that after this many years of porn on the net the number of folks with rape fantasies is spiking like that. Is someone from the vast right wing conspiracy trying to equate porn with violence in the public mind?

[ related topics: Sexual Culture Spam Conspiracy ]

Jerry Kindall had a link to the erotics of type. I'm trying to figure out if it's a review of Sex Appeal: The art of allure in graphic and advertising design, as it starts with a citation to it but makes no further mention, and the Amazon reviews of Sex Appeal don't make it sound like an overview of typography.

[ related topics: Books Erotic Sexual Culture Consumerism and advertising Art & Culture Typography Graphic Design ]

Happy 8th Birthday - Thank You Dan! On October 2nd (a Monday) in 1994 Chattanooga Online went online to the general public. It was born of idea's in Dan's, Debbie's and Mike's heads... and is still an internet company serving Chattanooga with much of the same vision. As children go, this is one Dan should be proud of.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Coyote Grits Chattanooga Net Culture ]

Keith Knight leaves instructions in the event of his death.

[ related topics: Humor Comics Salon magazine ]

At Burning Man this year, every morning at 11:00 Town Crier read a short story on the Firetown radio station. Charlene and I enjoyed this, so we've started reading short stories out-loud, and it occurred to me that not only should I be recording these for broadcast at Burning Man(where everyone's playing fast and loose with intellectual property for the week anyway but because it's so non-commercial and because I always come back looking for ways to support the artists I've discovered I'm not as concerned about such issues), but it'd be cool to be able to exchange these things, to put on the headphones during commute or whenever. I know short stories aren't terribly profitable, probably mainly a labor of love, but does anyone out there with small publishing experience have suggestions on how to share audio files of read stories with only those who've purchased the stories in dead-trees form themselves, or otherwise offer the authors and publishers recompense?

[ related topics: Intellectual Property Burning Man Books Music Art & Culture ]

So Charlene and I were looking for a specific sort of gift, and I remembered laughing over Not The Bible from high school. But it's going for $82 and up, used, over at Amazon. I'm not sure it was that funny, time to explore the online transcription a little more.

[ related topics: Religion Humor Books ]

As I struggle through conceptual models for the next generation of our software, I'm realizing that what we traditionally think of as "applications" are mature. However, the file system, and most of the ways we've developed to look at it, are lousy ways to represent data, and most new applications will be about developing better ways to represent what we think of now as "the desktop". If the open source and Linux folks want to leapfrog Microsoft, they'll stop trying to duplicate .NET and start thinking about how to integrate rows in tables and files in the filesystem and how that information flows around, and building higher level frameworks to move that data, rather than (as Microsoft is currently doing) trying to reinvent the wheel for which we already have reasonable protocols. At least that's what I'm looking at.

[ related topics: Free Software Microsoft Open Source Invention and Design Software Engineering ]

Finished Alma Marceau's Lofting on the subway this morning. The book starts out extremely strong, as a set of chat room transcripts, but once it started getting into the sex I lost the strong sense of characterization that it opened with. As the story progressed it certainly had some hot writing, but I felt that the sex overshadowed the stories and the characters, so that by the end I was simply being presented with a series of events, rather than a sequence of further revelations.

[ related topics: Books Erotic ]

Apparently LaughLab in England has been searching for something they can refer to as "the world's funniest joke". (Doesn't somebody do this every few years or so?) They finally came up with the following, which they say works across many different countries and with both genders and many ages. It was said to have "real universal appeal":

Two hunters are out in the woods when one of them collapses. He doesn't seem to be breathing and his eyes are glazed. The other guy takes out his phone and calls the emergency services.



He gasps: "My friend is dead! What can I do?" The operator says: "Calm down, I can help. First, let's make sure he's dead." There is a silence, then a gunshot is heard. Back on the phone, the guy says: "OK, now what?"

OK, I admit, I laughed when I finished reading it. Once. :-) I kinda like jokes that are funny more than once, though. CNN offers a sampler of the most popular jokes from several countries. (I included that link, rather than the one on the LaughLab site, because the LaughLab site seems to be very slow and unresponsive.) Interesting things this says about our various cultures, don't you think?

[ related topics: Humor Pop Culture ]

I've been looking for information on modeling workflow. The Workflow Management Coalition wins in all of the search engines, but they seem to be the usual moronic standards body, comitteeing themselves into irrelevance. But in this search, I've discovered the NEC Research Institute Research Index which has lead me to some kick-ass papers that delve pretty deep, and lets you surf citations in some really cool ways. This one has just made my list of "what the web was really built for" research tools.

[ related topics: Web development Mathematics Net Culture ]

Last night Scotch Night went to an art opening, then over to the Thirsty Bear brewery where we came up with a neat idea that we'll be pursuing a little further over lunch today. As we got up to go, I went to the bathroom and was accosted by Jesse James Garrett who, along with the rest of the Adaptive Path folks, was having a party for the release of his new book, The Elements of User Experience. Had a few good conversations, said high to Rebecca, missed at least Ev and Peter 'cause Phil, my ride, was ready to go. Need more evenings like that.

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

A few days ago I started to see these stickers appearing around school for a movie called Secretary. I just watched the trailer and it looks... interesting. I'm not entirely sure, but I think it's a [cute] S&M love story about a shy woman who gets introduced to the lifestyle through her first job.

[ related topics: Sexual Culture Movies ]

Didn't get a picture of it this morning, but as the ferry docked (and that commute was a nightmare...) looking south under the Bay Bridge there were lots of container ships at anchor, waiting for the lockout on the ports to lift. I'm wondering what effects this is going to have on the economy, it won't be good to have at least a week's worth of inventory stopped up, then suddenly flowing back into the system.

[ related topics: Politics Bay Area Current Events ]

Apropos of nothing, Think Of The Children (.co.uk) was having some legal problems, so I registered ThinkOfTheChildren.org and mirrored it.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Politics Sexual Culture Political Correctness Law ]

This is what keeps the Libertarians from being taken seriously: Blue Candidates for all the wrong reasons.... stupidity.

[Edit by Dan Lyke, June 2006: Candidate was "Stan Jones", http://www.billingsgazette.com...ild/local/72-candidate_large.inc http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/world/americas/2297471.stm and he turned blue from too much colloidal silver]

[ related topics: Politics Libertarian ]

The Exploratorium has a web exhibit called Skateboard Science which includes an overview of the physics of tricks.

[ related topics: Cool Science Skating ]

So we talk about other body modifications (piercing.. etc..) here. The King of Pop takes it to a new level and this is a funny read and pictorial about it.

[ related topics: Invention and Design Fabrication ]

It's BurningMan style art.. except the grass is green and there is a stream. A )^( friend sent this to me, and you have to look closely before you apprciate it.

[ related topics: Burning Man Photography Art & Culture ]

Not that I don't like you as real-life friends... but seriously, folks, I'm trying to immerse myself in people's stories of imaginary friends. (Full disclosure: imaginary friends will be a major part of the novel I hope to write in November. You may stop laughing now.) So. Did you have imaginary friends as a child? (Or still?) Did your siblings, or parents, or friends, or children have them? What can you tell me about them? What were they like, what did you call them, when did they appear, what were some of their defining characteristics, how did you interact with them, when did they go away? Even if you'd like to make some up, I'll be happy for the inspiration. And we'll all be amused by your admissions. (PS: This does not have to be PG-13. I fully expect some of their hijinx to be X-rated, hence my question to Dan last week about what he thinks makes a good sustained erotic plotline...)



((Addendum: see below. No need to air imaginary friends in public, sending me email would be a welcome alternative.))

[ related topics: Children and growing up Interactive Drama Erotic Coyote Grits ]

Anyone going to C E S this year? Not sure if I'm going but I've given up on comdex and Las Vegas can b4e a fun place for a few days.

[ related topics: Cool Technology Las Vegas ]

I haven't had a lot of spare time but A previous flutterby conversation piqued my interest in photography. I ended up getting the Cyber Shot F717. I guess I'm becoming a Sony zealot but this camera is slick.

[ related topics: Photography ]

A flash game Herding Cats probably proves that EDS will become the next ENRON.

[ related topics: Games ]

In Smog & Thunder is a film about the inevitable war between Northern and Southern California. They have some obvious technical problems but it's an interesting story.

[ related topics: History California Culture ]

This is about to drive me crazy. Go look in the comments for this post and tell me how the photo in there was done.

[ related topics: Photography ]

So Californians are suing the federal government to let them have their medical marijuana, the San Jose police are the latest to refuse to aid the DEA in their anti-medical marijuana efforts, and the Bush Administration is supporting a lawsuit against letting California have cleaner air. Obviously, federalism is bad for our health.

Meanwhile, our Republican candidate for governor has been caught using fake evidence against the incumbent, taking what was shaping up to be a close race between two slimeballs and turning it into... well, hopefully a widely separated race between two slimeballs.

Who says politics isn't fun?

[ related topics: Drugs Politics Health Bay Area moron Current Events California Culture ]

While we're making fun of Libertarians, Reason Magazine ran this doozy: Ronald Bailey argues against organic farmers having property rights because... well... you'll just have to read it. And if you agree with him, then you'll certainly consent to us putting a uranium mine in next to your house, because a nuclear materials processing facility would be so much more profitable than raising kids there.

[ related topics: Politics Objectivism Libertarian ]

David Chess is brilliant:

FROM:PRNCSS. L ORGANA

DEAR friend.

I AM PRINCESS LEIA ORGANA ONLY SURVIVOR

OF THE ROYALFAMILY OF ALDERAN (ALDRN).

I AM MOVED TO WRITE YOU THIS LETTER,

THIS WAS IN CONFIDENCE CONSIDERING MY

PRESENT CIRCUMSTANCE AND SITUATION.

[ related topics: Humor Star Wars Spam ]

Brad made a smarmy comment about this year's National Coming Out Day theme: "Being Out Rocks!". So does that have something to do with the recent KRON TV "puppetry of the penis" incident?

[ related topics: Sexual Culture Television ]

The large number of anchored boats has been replaced by a surge of traffic on the San Francisco Bay as the port shutdown lifts.

[ related topics: Politics Photography Bay Area Current Events Boats Machinery ]

Apropos of my former employment at Gracenote, Daze Reader had two entries (1 2) about the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra give-away CD presenting users with pornographic texts rather than song titles. Apparently somebody didn't realize that what they typed in at their computer got sent back to the Gracenote database and just entered stuff to shut the computer up. Data quality in public databases is indeed a huge issue...

[ related topics: Music Sexual Culture Net Culture ]

Sigh. It is my belief that, in a language that claims to manage memory for you, the act of creating a Bitmap object and assigning that Bitmap to the .Image member of an image control, then repeating that process with a different bitmap (discarding all my own references to previous images) should not cause the computer to run out of memory. Further, if said language had shortcuts because its garbage collector is apparently b0r|<3n, it would be nice if one could do something like ctrl.Image.Dispose(); ctrl.Image=null rather than temp=ctrl.Image; ctrl.Image=null; temp.Dispose() without causing the runtime environment to give one the hairy eyeball. Just saying.

And this isn't even harping on all of the missing attributes of controls, like a background color on a Tab, which lead the VisualBasic programmer I work with to say "Wow, .NET really isn't finished yet. I had no idea how bad it was".

Of course we'll leave off why one would be changing background colors from the Windows standards to custom values as a rant on another topic...

[ related topics: Microsoft Software Engineering moron Work, productivity and environment ]

Charlene is trying to find a gift for some kids she took care of. She was thinking something like a Krazy Kar, or a good pogo stick (which lead us to Jumping Jesus on a Pogo Stick (requires Java), but somewhere in there I discovered the rocket powered street luge. Another good reason Dan should not have kids.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Dan's Life Sports ]

Charlene and I watched How To Kill your Neighbor's Dog on video last night. Misanthrope Peter McGowen (played by Kenneth Branagh) has writer's block, and his wife wants kids, girl with cerebral palsy moves in next door, hijinks ensue. Would've been a great half-hour to hour movie or a fantastic book, as a full-length movie it tried to deal with internal conflict a little too much. Still, it had a pro-kid message without pissing me off, so that's an accomplishment, I just wish it had moved faster. Okay to give this one a miss.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Books Movies Writing ]

Via Backup Brain (entry here) via Politech, The Ugly Truth About the Republican Party: The Myth of GOP Conservatism:

However, the real reason the Republican Party is a threat to liberty is not because conservatism itself is an errant philosophy. The reason is because the Republican Party never stood for conservative values in the first place, and is lying to the public whenever it attempts to co-opt the values of conservatism.

Charlene was cooking this afternoon, and we had a yellowjacket enter the kitchen. She'd just ground a bunch of ginger and managed to trap the yellowjacket in the food processor container with the ginger. When she went to let it out, the insect behaved like the ginger was some sort of narcotic, it stood on the edge rubbing its hind legs together, then went down for more ginger. Didn't think ginger did that...

[ related topics: Drugs Food ]

Worth a read if just for lines like:

"As FORTRAN wheezed to a stop, COBOL was emphatically nodding its head, unable to speak, though, because of the oxygen tube up its nose (for which the other languages were secretly thankful because COBOL did tend to maunder a bit about its glory days)."

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Weblogs Software Engineering ]

Down along the Embarcadero, someone has marked up the ad for the Hummer H2 (don't bother clicking, the page sucks and they try to detect your browser, and like most such schemes they get it wrong) with a guide to scale. The arrow says "Insert Bike Here".

[ related topics: Bay Area moron Consumerism and advertising ]

My experience generally has been that architects are morons. Several times I've commented that what I wanted in that moment was to meet the architect who lit a building with a bat in that very same building. And beyond basic usability issues, there have been some ugly monstrosities foisted off on the world in the name of architecture. The picture doesn't do it justice, but I really like this portion of San Francisco skyline just north of the Bay Bridge. Good color without being garish, texture in the buildings without going all baroque.

[ related topics: Photography Bay Area Art & Culture ]

NASA shrimp stories. Hun, and all this time I though they were eating food sticks and tang.

[ related topics: Food Space & Astronomy Astronomy ]

Ok saw PornNchicken last night on comedycentral and it was a cross of Real Genius and Animal House. It wasn't as good as either of those ledgendary films but pretty entertaining although predictable from recycled plot lines. If you have flash you can see the trailers here

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Technology and Culture Movies Television ]

You can actually buy a chess program that will beat Deep-Blue for $99

[ related topics: Software Engineering ]

You lucky east coasters: The Museum Of Sex is now open. David Steinberg has a look and Salon reviews it.

[ related topics: Sexual Culture Art & Culture ]

Wired has launched a new site design using all XHTML/CSS and no tables. DevEdge (Netscape) has an interview with Douglas Bowman, who drove the design change.

[ related topics: Web development User Interface Content Management ]

Pardon the shakey camera, these were what I could grab when I ran outside without a tripod, bracing agianst whatever I could find. Apparently a rocket launch last night, the trail continued following whatever object it was across the sky 'til the object disappeared suddenly, the trail lingering longer.

Over on More Like This, Bill tracked down the whole story, with lots of links.

[ related topics: Photography Space & Astronomy ]

Oh baby. Justin has what sounds like a fantastic rub. I'm going to be out of town this weekend, but maybe next we can throw a pork shoulder in the smoker and I can get part of what I miss about the south. No matter how good the links and ribs are in the Bay Area, they aren't pulled pork.

[ related topics: Food Bay Area Chattanooga ]

The Register says that Microsoft is seeking ISO approval for C# and the CLI. Of course DateTimeFormatInfo.SortableDateTimePattern and DateTimeFormatInfo.UniversalSortableDateTimePattern do their best to hide their ISOness; Microsoft could start by better supporting standards of all sorts in their own systems.

[ related topics: Microsoft ]

Tao of Gun, gun control from a New Age perspective:

How can we with one breath repeat Louise L. Hay's first affirmation in her book You Can Heal Your Life, "We are each 100% responsible for all of our experiences", and then with the next breath insist the State forbid a particular sharp object so our world will feel safer?

Lots of great pull-quotes.

[ related topics: Politics Political Correctness Guns ]

John Gruber has some good commentary on the Microsoft "Switcher" fiasco. Including tracking down sources for the AP article which indicates that there might have been some fudging of the facts in that article to keep the blatant lie from coming out.

[ related topics: Microsoft moron Current Events ]

I picked up Nuala O'Faolain's My Dream of You at the bookstore on Sunday. I should've read more closely who said the glowing things on the back cover, now that I have I notice that they're all from publications like Entertainment Weekly, Vogue (as if they didn't kill enough trees, the electrons that died for that website fell in vain) and Newsweek. I'm a little over a third of the way through, and so far the narrator has managed to have 4 one night stands in her search for family, told one chapter of some horrible torrid overdone romance novelization of the potato famine era, and written in English that makes me have trouble imagining it said with an Irish accent. At this point I'm about ready to skip ahead to the end. What ever happened to novels read for the joy of the prose as well as the story? I want to discover a new Terry Pratchett or Robertson Davies.

[ related topics: Language Books History Sociology Terry Pratchett ]

Well, Blackhole may be gone, but Titillation Theater is back, and I strongly recommend it if you're in the Bay Area. Unzip reality. Fondle your mind.

Titillation Theatre 9:00 pm October 23rd & 30th and more to come. Reservations only. Call 415-208-0431.

[ related topics: Erotic Bay Area Theater & Plays ]

After reading this I am still not sure what is wrong, but it involves This patch and the DMCA aka Digital Millenium Copyright Act (105-304).

[ related topics: Copyright/Trademark ]

Aaaaugh! Okay, .NET mavens, anyone else find that instantiating System.Drawing.Bitmap objects in a thread, then passing them through to the primary proceess via a delegate/event system where they get attached to a PictureBox control causes random crashies? Why would instantiating a bitmap in the thread not be safe?

[ related topics: Dan's Life Microsoft ]

Off to Fresno for the weekend. Read y'all on Monday.

[ related topics: Dan's Life ]

I first saw this as part of a video from this year's Ig Nobel Prize ceremony in Chemistry (for the Periodic Table Table). It's a Flash animation by Mike Stanfill, quite a lovely presentation of Tom Lehrer's "The Elements". And as Stanfill says, I dare you to sing along.

[ related topics: Animation ]

OK.. I admit, the techo/rave music thing hit me at Burning Man. I had forgotten how much fun it was to just DANCE to the MUSIC just letting yourself go.. and yes.. I made a complete and utter wonderful fool of myself, just like everyone else there. The local dance clubs are just not there. I went to 'Drink' which had a great dance floor and sound system.. and for two hours the only thing on the dance floor was some grubby (not grungy) guy in a baseball cap (looked like a drunk trucker) working on BOTH of his dance moves and this was AFTER MIDNIGHT on a Friday night. Lots of people, lots of drinking, but NO DANCING. I went to Christophers, which has a TINY dance floor (but good sound) at it was elbow room only. 15-18 people dancing.. the rest packed in drinking.. no room to dance unless you call standing still and swaying dancing.

The Altec Lansing speekers on my desktop are good.. and my Sony 5:1 DVD Player is better.. but I no longer have a 'stereo' system.. that kind of sound system requirement died from my life (I used to water cool monolithic amp chips and heat sinks and build my own tower speakers). Dancing with headphones is OK, except they get in the way.. so I went looking for some Powered computer speakers... My computer speakers are now Fender's and they run off of either 110 AC, or 12volt DC.. (250 Watts / 125 per channel) and they make you want to Dance... I dumped a bunch of MP3's on my laptop... techno.. blues... trance.. rock and roll.. Patched XMMS on RedHat 8.0 to play MP3's.. and Wow. I blew the 'ghetto cruisers' on E. Main and Central away.

Anyone else want to Dance? I feel a Halloween party coming on.. and the immobile truck has it's future sound system.

[ related topics: Burning Man Music moron Work, productivity and environment Heinlein Sports Machinery ]

It was an interesting weekend, and I need to talk with a few of those involved to get clear on what they feel comfortable with me saying, but I gained a new set of sympathies and empathies for guardians and caretakers of developmentally disabled people, a real appreciation for parents and guardians of developmentally disabled people who organize activities rather than pissing and moaning about the shortcomings of Special Olymics, and heard "fifty one fifty" used as a verb by someone who wasn't a Van Halen fan. Along with some good inline skating, the first miniature golf game I've played since middle school, at least, and various other highlights and lowlights.

Then this morning I had a great experience at the DMV, got in fast and talked to a really helpful person who sped me through the process of getting a replacement front plate, and taking care of my screwup which caused my renewal to be slightly late.

Later, on the ferry just south of Belvedere, I watched a seal play in the spray behind the boat, arching out of the water over the waves and then gone, and we slowed for the visibility as we passed Angel Island, the old immigration detention center buildings just visible in the fog, as we carved our furrow through the flat grey.

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

Interesting little fluff piece on the art and science of hitting a baseball, note particularly the infographic. I've found testing my own reaction times to be very informative; it's amazing that with unplanned reaction times in the quarter second range, and planned general purpose reaction times (ie: clicking a stopwatch to something crossing a line) in the 1/30^th to 1/40^th of a second repeatability that a human can specialize accurately to a thousandth or two.

[ related topics: Cool Science Sports ]

Eidos just anouced they will miss their November 15th ship and will delay release until February. The golden rule in the game industry is that you can't miss christmas. People get fired fired over these things, even worse not ready games get shipped. It looks like Core and Edios are acting responsibly. Go Team.

[ related topics: Games Machinery ]

What can't you make with legos

Looking for that special out of the way vacation home? Real Estate in Ramallha is dirt cheap.

[ related topics: Humor ]

For the last couple of years, Lycoris (originally known as "Redmond Linux" and based on Caldera's OpenLinux distrobution) has been quietly gaining momentum as one of the premier Linux distros aimed at desktop use.

They've now partnered with Transgaming to provide [what is, by all accounts excellent] support for Windows games.

When I finally manage to get a new computer, I've already decided (before the Transgaming announcement) this is the distro that will go on it.

[ related topics: Games Open Source Marketing ]

Sigh. I realize that there are a couple of topics that people probably expect me to cover that I'm burned out on. Lots of my favorite blogs are covering topics that I see as further depressing continuation of the status quo. For instance, it's not really news to me that the Bush administration cares more for the life of the baby than the mother (via Medley) or that The Heritage Foundation thinks women should marry and breed rather than getting an education (Medley again). Yes, Iraq releasing prisoners, even those held for political beliefs is a PR ploy. But even beyond politics, the fact that there is a person out there stupid enough to try to streak a hockey game (and who then falls on the ice and knocks himself unconscious) doesn't even phase me. So sorry, if you're looking for actual news my contributions will be sparse.

[ related topics: Politics moron Current Events ]

I have been reading about this lately - and its interesting...

So I was all gung ho then I read this very nice committment ceremony -

" XXXX my darling:

What I promise you now is not new. It has been true in my heart for a while now. I promise it here, before our friends and family, so that they will know how I feel, share in the happiness these feelings give me, and remind me of my promises if I ever need reminding.

I love you. My life, while separate, is linked to yours.

I will be there when you need me. I will give you space when you need it. Sometimes I will get the balance wrong, and when I do that I will redress it with the minimum of fuss. I respect that you are an independent person with your own beliefs, interests and points of view, and I will celebrate those differences, not dedicate my life to removing them.

Because I am committed to you, I am committed to those people and things in your life that are important to you. I support you in your relationships with Giles, Dave, Simon, David, and the many other people whose lives intersect with yours in some way. I will be there for B, C and R when they need me, and will help them grow up as any parent would. Your job, your degree course, your beliefs; all these and anything and anyone you become involved with in in the future, I promise to support.

I cannot promise that the person I will be in twenty years will still love the person you will be in twenty years, but I can promise that the person I am now very much wants that to happen.

I love you, and I want us to grow old together. "

The part about 20 years form now sets me to thinking - the part about Giles, etc. makes me hesitate - how about you?

Ziffle

[ related topics: Ziffle Interactive Drama Invention and Design Space & Astronomy Sociology Heinlein ]

Today's SF Gate article on Puppetry of the Penis finally got me off my butt to buy tickets for the November 5^th performances at Theatre on the Square.

[ related topics: Sexual Culture Theater & Plays ]

A good story quoting actual core net-geeks about the recent DDOS attacks on the 'net that are the 'worst ever' in some ways.

I amazed that it was barely noticed by most people, including us. but it was noticed.

[ related topics: Technology and Culture ]

On the car ride this last weekend we ended up re-reading enough that I've bought a microphone and am finally set up to record some of those short stories I asked about on the laptop so I can burn 'em to CD or MP3 them. In the process of playing with various recording options under Linux I realized that recording music is not the same as recording prose. I can sit down and write something that does what I want, lets me hit a key every so often to checkpoint or return to the previous checkpoint, in a very short time, but as I start to think about additional features I realize that if someone else has already started on such a project I'd like to build on their work. Anyone know of audio recording systems set up for prose that'd run on my Linux box?

[ related topics: Free Software Books Music Open Source ]

I've been geeking out a lot recently, but oh well, here's more: Had dinner at Sakae in Burlingame last night with Diane, then we retired to the local Starbucks (because they were the only place in the area aside from a few hotel lobbies that had wireless net access, through T-Mobile) to work on setting up her new Movable Type blog. Sakae was excellent, although given the way traffic and all worked out we should have stuck with the original plan and gone down to Mountain View to Dana Street Roasting Company, where the coffee wouild have been better and the net access cheaper (T-Mobile was $50 for 300 minutes, since I didn't want to sign up for their $30/month recurring billing).

In retrospect too I should've just bit the bullet and set up Diane on the Flutterby CMS, despite the rough edges. Movable Type suffers from the problem that I see in most "user friendly" software, in abstracting the interface to things like uploading templates it makes minor incremental gains in usability for naive users in exchange for having to learn a whole new way of doing everything. But we got the basic concepts down, got the domain registered (and I checked this morning, Diane, it's live now), and I'll set up to spider the old site so that we can move all the content over.

I also want to check the Movable Type templates to re-use their page structure here, so that spiders and syndicators can use style sheet information on common blogs, rather than having to republish in silly formats like RSS.

[ related topics: Wireless Dan's Life Content Management Weblogs Bay Area Software Engineering ]

The latest RISKS digest has a link to the FBI "FISA mistakes" memo, documenting FBI wiretap law violations. It also points to background information from EPIC and EPIC's background on FISA.

[ related topics: Privacy Law Enforcement ]

See the Ads and info about who made them. The Good the Bad and the Stupid all for your viewing pleasure/pain.

Spoof or Filter for the truly stooopid. You decided.

An interesting article on building online communities. I usually agree with Chromatic on at least technical issues but I think he misses the boat(at least philosophically) by focusing on commercial communities which again strikes me as rather odd coming from a Slashdot contributer. Despite that I agree with a lot of the observations and think a lot of them apply to our little petri dish

[ related topics: broadband Boats Machinery Community ]

Wow, way back in the early days of Flutterby I'd linked to the Electronic Journal of Human Sexuality, but I just ran across A Taste of Erotic Rites, Building Erotic Communities while searching for vacation information (yeah, what the heck, let your imagination guess what I'm up to) and wanted to note it for later reading.

[ related topics: Sexual Culture Community ]

Aaargh! Okay, it started as just one self-administered box run by someone who didn't know what 127.0.0.1 was, but now Earthlink is giving mail from this server, 66.129.1.132,

550 Dialups/open relays blocked...

When I try to send mail to users there (well, at Mindspring, but who's nitpicking?). This box relays from 8 IP addresses, all known, and I've removed the address I'm sitting on and tried to send mail and had it blocked by my machine. The big meta list at relays.osirusoft.com shows this machine as not blocked by every list it knows about. None of the help messages are at all useful. WTF?

[ related topics: Dan's Life Flutterby Meta Net Culture ]

Scotch Night yesterday was a blast. We gathered at Laszlo down on Mission, Leo described it as "classy place but dive price". Hit Burger Joint for dinner, then wandered down to the Odeon where we saw the second half of the Thrillpeddlers "Shocktoberfest" show. Good acting, creepy effects. And it's running for a few more weeks, I think Thursday after next we're going to try to do that scene again.

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

btw isn't Google the coolest at producing signal vs noise? I know a lot of people have been complaining about their google hits but considering the problem they are taking on I think they do an excellent job. I think their mutable logo is a fantastic example of this philosophy.

[ related topics: Photography Art & Culture Heinlein ]

Dan Savage, author of the Savage Love weekly advice columnm, has a new book out, Skipping Towards Gomorrah. It's a chronicle of modern applications of the 7 sins in American culture. Looks promising.

[ related topics: Books Sexual Culture Sociology ]

I've though about making art for next years trip to BRC. If I do I think I'll be welding in style

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Art & Culture Travel Fabrication ]

Yikes! I guess centralized blogging is a tempting target

Via Tastes Like Chicken: If your refrigerator is like ours it's getting pretty crowded with comic clippings and magnetic poetry words. Of course, it's probably not exactly like ours because the phrase "fondle luscious object-oriented quaternion" probably doesn't appear on yours. But if you're redecorating, you might want to consider magnetic wall paint to give yourself that much more room.

[ related topics: Dan's Life Writing Toys ]

Wired article 'spam hits blogs': I had not really noticed this on Flutterby's referral logs, but it is coming..

98% of the internet is 'good people', .02% are social engineering 'bad people'.. but the 0.8% are spam sprewing scum that live on the stupidity of the general 'net population and should be flogged to death for ruining good things for the general 'net population/society just for a dot.con scam.

Factiod percentages provided by Meuon's internal swag(rand()) function

[ related topics: Spam moron Sociology Current Events Net Culture ]

Sometimes is seems like the police are out to F*ck you

[ related topics: Photography Law Enforcement ]

Ollie Rides Again, a quick history of the Florida skateboarding scene, and Alan "Ollie" Gelfand's contributions to the sport.

[ related topics: California Culture Skating ]

Huh, who'd've thought the Republicans were right to be worried about rising crime? Turns out under their watch the FBI reports the first rise in crime rates in 10 years.

Murder, rape and every other violent criminal act except aggravated assault rose last year, the FBI said Monday in reporting the first year-to-year increase in overall crime in a decade.

[ related topics: Politics Current Events Law Enforcement ]

Walking from the ferry building this morning I passed this banner outside of Golden Gate University which reads "Law, Business, Taxation, Technology", and it occurred to me that those, in order, are what American enterprise is working to exploit. It's a shame they've left technology 'til last, but exploiting that actually requires dealing with physical reality, so I understand why they can't be bothered.

[ related topics: Photography Bay Area Work, productivity and environment Education ]

Man calls for a hooker and daughter shows up. No mention of a family discout being had but I suppose they are saving every cent for therapy.

[ related topics: Psychology, Psychiatry and Personality Sociology Current Events Television ]

Hey! I found a guy that is more angry and sarcastic than me. Dam!

I've had complaints that Flutterby is getting way too techy of late, so I apologize in advance to Tyler for this. /. had a link to a SiliconValley.com report on Karl Auerbach getting booted off of the ICANN board. Karl seems to have been the only ICANN director who actually gave a damn about ICANN being an open and honest organization, so this is a great loss.

[ related topics: Net Culture ]

For the truly gross at heart. Halloween Recipes

I'm sick of the press giving all this time to the winona rider case. Read the court transcript (trust me it's short) about the case where Arnold Chrysler is accused of stealing 40k hotel hangers. It's the best you'll get out of me on this no tech tuesday @ flutterby.

[ related topics: Humor Law Travel ]

A writer trapped in a cabby's body. I just heard this guy interviewed on the Ron Owen's radio show and something is amiss because this guy is way too articulate(let alone speaking english) to be a cabby but his stories are great.

[ related topics: Writing ]

This week's Flutterby Girl is compliments of Debra, a friend. Posted in honor of Non-Tech Tuesdays.. And for Halloween.. Meuon is introducing El-Wire to the local Chattanooga scene.. sequencers and all.. Pictures will be posted. :)

[ related topics: Photography ]

So I'd hoped to avoid that most Christian of holidays, but Charlene said "we've been invited to a party on Thursday: Come as a Tarot character." So tonight I spent a little time at the sewing machine throwing something together, and a few moments on Google figuring out enough of a backstory that when I'm asked about irregularities I can say "Oh, that's because in the Rider-Waite Deck...". At first I thought I was terribly clever, now I'm starting to feel trite. But I thought it'd make a a good Flutterby conversation: Which bit of the Tarot deck are you?

[ related topics: Religion ]

The UK story about an MIT and London student exploring the sense of 'touch' over the net. "and perhaps a remarkable new spice could be added to internet sex."

[ related topics: Erotic Sexual Culture Invention and Design Current Events Net Culture ]

Keith Knight muses about the Bush sisters on Halloween:

"So why the get-ups?"

"It's Halloween, and I know mah daddy would never catch me if I dressed as Osama bin Laden."

[ related topics: Politics Humor Comics Salon magazine ]

One of the highlights of a recent trek to Fresno was fresh ripe pomegranates. I'm told that when ripe, they're actually split, which is why the ones I buy in the store just don't match up to the ones plucked off the tree. Jonno linked to a New York Times article pimping the efforts of Paramount Farming Company to push pomegranates, with a few interesting history bits.

[ related topics: Food California Culture ]

The Senator from Hollywood proves that at least she stays bought: Diane Feinstein supports PG&E in San Francisco power squabble. I don't know why this caught my eye except that I have no idea how Diane Feinstein keeps getting elected, and I'll jump at every opportunity to take a swipe at her that I can.

[ related topics: Politics Bay Area California Culture ]

Looks like a movie that might be worth a watching: Green Eggs and Hamlet.

This feature length twisted creation is based on Shakespeare's tragedy of almost the same name, but the annoying iambic pentameter has been replaced by a more accessible Dr. Seuss style rhyme.

[ related topics: Movies Theater & Plays ]

Okay, back to techie tie-ins: Ditching Red Hat isn't just a statement about software, it's a statement about freedom and international politics. Salon has the scoop on Red Hat removing the Taiwan flag from their version of KDE.

[ related topics: Free Software Politics Open Source Civil Liberties Salon magazine ]

High Heel Race in D.C. proves that all the cool people are NOT just in california. The caption picture also proves I'm a raving heterosexual, ya look at those two asses and it should clear up any doubts. I only wonder what women see in men...

[ related topics: Sexual Culture Current Events California Culture Shoes Clothing ]

And now on the day when people set out fake tombstones for humor or shock purposes, we have something completely different: Eternal Reefs.

An Eternal Reef combines a cremation urn, ash scattering and a burial at sea into one meaningful permanent environmental tribute to life.

[ related topics: Humor ]

I've heard "Enron Exec", "Marth Stewart", I've even proposed dressing up in a trenchcoat and handing out candy to kids as a way to scare the parents, 'til someone asked me "but how is that different from...". Anyway, I think the best idea I've seen comes from today's Foxtrot:

I just wish I'd thought of dressing as a blue screen of death

[ related topics: Children and growing up Microsoft ]