Flutterby™! From 2003-02-01 to 2003-02-28

GEWIS Pronounced 'Gee Whiz' - is the Big Brother watching the net that you may be fearing it is.

Space Shuttle Columbia shatters on re-entry; crew presumed dead.

[ related topics: Space & Astronomy Current Events ]

Via Borklog, the disturbing Cool-2b-Real beef advocacy site for teen girls. Yep, the Cattlemen's Beef Board and the National Cattlemen's Beef Association are finding disturbing ways to... uhhh... slip the beef to pre-teens.

[ related topics: Food Consumerism and advertising Pop Culture ]

Just caught Bowling for Columbine at the Bijou in the AEC Independent Film Series. This is Micheal Moore's latest documentary. He's managed to surpass all of his other works to a significant degree. While there was plenty of his traditional harrassment, like taking a couple of the Columbine victims to K-Mart's headquarters to try to 'return' the bullets still embedded in their bodies (the bullets were purchased at the Littleton K-Mart store), the focus of the movie was much broader and didn't seem to simply beat a single political issue to death. One thing is for sure, the movie makes me want to move to Toronto with Barry!

[ related topics: Children and growing up Politics Movies Robotics moron Embedded Devices Guns ]

Prescription of Ritalin, other stimulants for children varies widely across nation. South and Midwest have higher use rates than the West. Dr. David Fassler of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry said:

"In areas where only 1 to 2 percent of children are receiving a treatment which is known to be beneficial, we need to ask why,"

Hmmmm... Looks like we can make some educated guesses on the makeup of his stock portfolio.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Psychology, Psychiatry and Personality Antidepressants ]

Ken was just on the phone, and I heard him give my favorite answer to user issues: "Don't do that", the "then" was implied. Anyway, if you're a Far Side fan, then yesterday's UserFriendly, paying homage to "Bummer of a birthmark, Hal", is a must read.

[ related topics: Humor User Interface ]

While I'm rambling about embedded hardware occasionally, if you got one of those Via Eden Mini-ITX boards that I mentioned here earlier and looking for more I/O than the one serial port can manage (if you're using, for instance, the AR-16 that I'm using based on Meuon's suggestion), Phil found the Industrologic RIO-8 8 relay output board with instructions for wiring it to a parallel port. Yes, I know there's nothing you couldn't do with a handful of 2N2222s and a few diodes and resistors, but sometimes letting someone else do most of the soldering is a good thing.

[ related topics: Robotics Embedded Devices Embedded Devices - Via Eden ]

I'm sure this is old news, but Sam passed along this letter from Dubya:

I AM WRITING YOU IN ABSOLUTE CONFIDENCE PRIMARILY TO SEEK YOUR

ASSISTANCE IN ACQUIRING OIL FUNDS THAT ARE PRESENTLY TRAPPED IN THE

REPUBLIC OF IRAQ.

[ related topics: Politics Humor moron Current Events ]

Yes, Salon has gone subscription or "watch ads to read", but as long as they keep the latter I'm actually willing to link to them occasionally. When they have good stuff. Of course the ads are all for the super-tackiest of SUVs ("When the Escalade is too refined."), so their demographic is becoming less me all the time, but occasionally they have a gem like this: John Snyder, president of Artist House Records, and Ben Snyder, write "Embrace file-sharing or die". Curious that Artist House Records doesn't have a web site, but they lay out lots of good reasons why the "intellectual property" argument isn't going to work for the record companies in the face of what's really a changing market. There's some discussion over at FactoVision

That article mentioned TechN9ne. Free downloads of their music there, music which but for this gimmick I definitely would never have listened to, and which is helping change my perceptions of rap ever so slowly. Keith Knight turned me on to the Marginal Prophets a while ago, and I enjoyed their first album, but the genre goes beyond that. If we only hear it as it's rattling the windows of the passing car with the gold-spoked wheels then it'll forever be a cultural divide to deep to cross.

TechN9ne is running a ads in which he ("they"? The whole rap/D.J. naming thing eludes me.) wear FTI^tm T-shirts, with no further explanation. As "The Industry" works towards enacting a tax on recordable media, the way they have in Canada and other places, folks like this need our support. Although sometimes it's hard to get past some of the lyrics.

[ related topics: Politics Music Art & Culture Marketing ]

Anti-news: Therapists, grad students and professors who study marriage much less capable than newlyweds or long-term married couples in judging marital happiness.

[ related topics: Sociology Current Events ]

Yesterday at lunch I saw that the cover story of the East Bay Express was a profile of Frank Moore. I recognized the name from a Squidlist posting for Exploring the Possibilities of Passion that had little more description than "performance art series" that looked interesting. I actually think I've participated in such a performance with Frank Moore before, but I hadn't made all the connections. I haven't explored his web site, EroPlay thoroughly yet, but I did run across EroArt Not Porn, which is one of the better manifestos for erotic performance and "changing porn" I've read:

What we are interested in is art that creates in people the desire to go out and play with other people, and to enjoy life. This is eroart. Historically, one of the tools of this art has been the sex act. But sex has only been a tool, not the goal. And it is just one of many tools

I've been trying to work up along rant about porn, incorporating some of the observations that the guy who writes Jewish Cheerleaders made (both consciously and not so) in his first set of journal entries (which are no longer linked there, but his second set still have some revelations), the "Punk Porn" thing that's getting some press, several of the new-wave porn blogs that are popping up, and some of my New York experiences, but haven't managed to pull it together into anything cogent yet. And before I really go off I need to see some of the Millerswork productions, and maybe some of the Good Vibrations favorites so that I don't unfairly lump "all commercial porn" into the same dustbin. This'll have to do for the moment.

[ related topics: Good Vibrations Erotic Sexual Culture Bay Area Theater & Plays Art & Culture California Culture ]

Borklog linked to Riding The Ultimate Wheel. Unicycle riding that one step further. Cool to do, but I'm not sure I have the patience to start by learning to ride a unicycle really really well, and then going on to something that much more complex.

[ related topics: Invention and Design Work, productivity and environment Sports Pedal Power ]

Anyone out there done an INN or other NNTP server config recently? Could be just with local newsgroups, but I'd like to set up a news server for Flutterby, it'd be really handy if it handled spaces in the user name authorization, and I'd like to mirror the discussions here on to the newsgroup. Just getting me through the basics of getting the authorization system set up should be fine, I haven't done this stuff since 1994, and that was a much simpler config in simpler days.

[ related topics: Flutterby Meta Net Culture ]

Well there seems to be a small fan base for But I'm a Cheerleader so hop on to Netflix and order Kissing Jessica Stein. It's less sureal than cheerleader but has more complicated characters the the story is wound much tigher. I wont put spoilers on the main page but this is a thinking girls movie and I'd give it a 8 out of 10 on the wetness scale for comedy and sensuality.

[ related topics: Movies ]

The /. interview with Kevin Mitnick has arrived. I've mostly avoided the Mitnick thing, it seemed to me to be a cracker who got caught exploited for political gain by people who missed the real story because they were so overly proud of their meager accomplishment. Anyway, he's bitter about John Markoff, talks a bit about social engineering, has a few insights. However, as one poster said:

I'd like to thank slashdot for inflating the egos of script kiddies everywhere and giving them a role model. Way to go!

And another poster points out that:

Most geeks lead lives of quiet desperation. Woz hasn't given me a PowerBook. Slashdot hasn't interviewed me. I don't get to go on tech tv.

Really, if you hadn't been busted, where would you be? You'd be among us, commenting on some other guy's interview, one of the teeming useless irrelevant masses.

[ related topics: Politics Technology and Culture Net Culture ]

Via Columbine: Despair, publisher of the Demotivators series of inspirational calendars and posters, introduces BitterSweets hearts for Valentine's day. The press release is worth reading.

[ related topics: Humor ]

Via Daze Reader, a cute little online game: Hunt the Peach.

[ related topics: Erotic Games ]

From the latest in simulation technology watch the second gulf war unfold. It's kinda like Hunt the Peach except there are no naked people and there are SCUDs and JDAMs and tanks and....ok it's nothing like hunt the peach.

[ related topics: Humor Games Technology and Culture Movies History Television War ]

Stephen Wolfram will be speaking February 13th at the old Xerox Parc and I doubt I'm going to make it. I have his hefty tome on a shelf waiting for me to be in the mood to tear into it. If anyone is planning on going send me email and perhaps I could buy you a coffee and pick your brain on it?

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Cool Science Todd Gemmell Bay Area ]

I proclaim to be a recovering Catholic. With Stories like this I may never fully recover(from laughing). It's also nice to note that Mary is "pro" low rise jeans.

[ related topics: Religion Current Events ]

Warning: Dan geeks out here! I remember when Mike and I appropriated a 25MHz 386 with 8 Meg of RAM and something like 30 meg of disk space to be "arrakis.chattanooga.net", the Chattanooga On-line name server.[1] We were so proud when we managed to squeeze X on that machine, although it swapped like a mofo when we did. Well, my "limited machine" these days is that recently oft-mentioned Via Eden, over 20 times faster, with 16 times the RAM, but the disk is CompactFlash, so not much bigger and quite a bit slower. And since this is going to be deployed as embedded hardware I want nothing writing to the disk and as little as possible running.

So I'm learning a lot about what goes on in between the kernel and the prompt, and getting a chance to build an installation from source code. The LILO mini-HOWTO helped me build a disk that'd boot in an entirely different environment from where I created it. Although I initially was just going to boot straight into my app, I discovered that it's handy to have a minimal environment on the machine. Busybox, "The Swiss Army Knife of Embedded Linux", provides an environment which lets a basic shell run and gives limited (and small) versions of most of the standard utilities (just remember to run ldd and copy the dependent libraries over too).

I'm not sure yet if I'll use a small web server like thttpd or a USB serial converter to talk to this from other machines.

[1] This was the machine whose[2] "welcome" message referenced a medicated bipolar gun-toting sysadmin with lots of frequent flyer miles. Even in those days of telnet I don't think we had too many cracking attempts.

[2] Don't anthropomorphize computers. They hate that.

[ related topics: Free Software Open Source Robotics Chattanooga Embedded Devices Guns red neck culture Embedded Devices - Via Eden Embedded Devices - Linux ]

My other frustration today is that Ruby and Manfred borrowed my video camera to shoot some stuff for a marketing video CD, and I've been using my Linux laptop to make up for the lameness that is ... well... I don't want to name the Windows video editing system 'cause maybe I'm maliciously slandering it. Anyway, the other part of today has been using my laptop to do media wrangling between video formats. In that vein Slashdot has a good update on editing video and audio, including news that the latest Kino seems to deal with QuickTime files, so transferring to Cinelerra is much easier.

[ related topics: Free Software Open Source Video ]

Last night I went down to Santa Clara to have dinner with Robert Scoble and take a look at the upcoming (March) NEC Tablet PC. I've cobbled together some first impressions.

[ related topics: Cool Technology ]

Despite my hippy ways, I understand the necessity of war. And we in the United States currently have a problem. We have a region dominated by religious fundamentalists. In that region, we have a state that won't tolerate alternate views, and whose representatives defend imprisoning members of an ethnic group "for their own protection".

We're left with no option. We must bomb North Carolina.

I got to thinking about this after IsThatLegal pointed out Howard Coble (R-NC)'s bigotry: Lincoln pushed the War Between The States to keep foreign influences out of the South. As a part of this nation they were less of a threat than if we shut them out and made them independent. But in exchange for this peace we allow them to impose their sick morality on more freedom loving states. When does it stop? If we're going to go into Iraq in the name of freedom and erasing fear and feelings of terror, why do we still allow these states of the "United States" to impose their rulers on us? How many more "Jesse Helms"es and "Howard Coble"s and "Sue Myrick"s do we have to tolerate before we realize that peace isn't worth this crap?

Maybe it's time to use force to install freedom loving governments in these places until the citizens of such states learn to not impose their ways on their neighbors.

[ related topics: Religion Privacy History moron Civil Liberties ]

Debra looks at the Museum of Sex

[ related topics: Erotic Sexual Culture Art & Culture ]

Scoble talks about Microsoft and community. One of the discussions we had last night was about the ways that NDAs and similar restrictions keep us from giving manufacturers free press. Often good free press. But as I'm discovering with digital cameras, few people are willing to take the risk that their product is good in order to discover new markets, new applications, or let people share use patterns.

[ related topics: Weblogs Microsoft Community ]

The Ghost in the Shell type optical camouflage is close to reality today. Is it a suprise that this was developed by a Japanese scientist?

[ related topics: Movies Current Events ]

Went to see Chicago yesterday evening. Mostly watchable, but the second act really drags, the music has no soul, and Renée Zellweger's lip synching was intrusive at times. It really sounded like the band and the conductor were going through the motions, phoning in their performances.

But the dancing and the costumes got us in the mood for some cabaret, so we dropped into the city. Soup and salad at Rock Soup(I love food prices in The Mission), where the band for the evening showed us good timing, then over to the Odeon to see Kitten on the Keys and Mr. Tinkler open for the Devil-ettes doing interpretive dance to the music of Harvey Sid Fisher. Kitten and Mr. Tinkler did mostly the old favorites that we'd seen before (some samples here), with a new ode to the Hello Kitty Vibrator that was... unrehearsed, and I mean that in a good way. Unfortunately, Harvey Sid Fisher and the Devil-ettes ended up on the lower stage, and we didn't find the music compelling enough to watch on the overhead TVs from our table, so we bailed towards home.

Oh, and since most of my drinking has been up in the financial district recently, I'd forgotten what a real bartender can do with a Manhattan.

[ related topics: Music Erotic Dan's Life Movies Food Burlesque ]

Must be a lifestyle thing: Last weekend Charlene and I went out to "the avenues" to hit Discount Fabrics. In that neighborhood was this store, advertising "easy money", "discount liquours", "cheap cigarettes" and boldly stating "if we don't have it, you don't need it".

On the flip-side, yesterday I biked up Rocky Ridge to the top of Mount Tam. I've done this route once or twice before and mentioned it to some of the hardcore mountain bikers in the coffee shop afterwards, and gotten a "why?" response. It's a challenge coming down, going up is a grind. And it's a total microclimate trail, in the sun sweating around one turn, the next the bike wheels are crunching through ice crystals in the mud. Perhaps that's why I like it, lots of variety in the scenery. And yesterday it was so clear I could easily see the south end of the bay, and Mount Diablo across to the east. An amazing pedal, and a good burn. Although I did dismount twice, once to catch my breath, and once 'cause the bike got caught in some gravel.

Afterwards, hung out at San Anselmo Coffee Roasters, where part of the discussion was about taking pictures of the owls that are roosting on top of the San Anselmo town hall. It was generally thought that strobes were okay if the bird was in-flight, but focusing is an issue. Anyone know if owls are sensitive to infra-red?

[ related topics: Photography Bay Area California Culture Community Pedal Power San Anselmo ]

Got to the Cartoon Art Museum yesterday. The "Women in Cartooning" exhibit was fun, but "Hate Mail", on comics that have generated letters and controversy, was great. Didn't go back terribly far, but it was fun to see the "Joanie and Rick" episodes of Doonesbury up against more modern controversies, like some of the reactions to a few of the For Better or For Worse and Boondocks, and realize that in another 25 years we could change so that nobody thinks twice about the behaviors depicted there.

To jump somewhat tangentially, one of the things that killed Bowling Alone for me was his assertion that levels of tolerance in the U.S. hadn't increased in the period in which he was chronicling the fall of bowling clubs. Hogwash. The exhibit was a clear show of attitudes changing in the bast two or three decades. Anyway, if you're in the Bay Area this one's worth astop by.

Especially the bit about the (pink) letter from Mary Kay thanking Berke Breathed for the publicity they got in his attack on animal testing in Bloom County. Damn but Mary Kay understands publicity.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Art & Culture California Culture Comics ]

Two black passengers sue Southwest Airlines over "racist rhyme". A flight attendant said "Eenie, meenie, minie, moe; pick a seat, we gotta go." Now I'm a big fan of the Southwest attitude about flight attendant speeches, and frankly I'd never heard the racist version they mention. It'd be a shame if two shameless publicity hounds managed to make a friendly airline lose some of its more endearing qualities.

[ related topics: Aviation moron Current Events ]

I've seen a couple of links to the Sun Microsystems: The Java Problem memo. Rafe says "if Java doesn't run well on Solaris, Solaris has big problems", and Borklog notes "Even Sun isn't fond of Java". I think they both miss the real conclusion of the memo, part of which compares Python with Java: The U.C.S.D. P-system failed for valid reasons, and notions of intellectual software purity and misguided visions of software engineering pale against the reality that what we need are more expressive languages, not more restrictive ones.

I come to this after helping a couple of teenagers with programming homework last night. They're taking a C++ class, but in reality the book so far is using C data structures with C++ streams for file access. These kids are totally lost, partially because they've been asked to assume that "magic happens" in one set of accessors while twiddling bits in other structures. The stdio.h interface would be far more logical for them, but someone has decided that they need to be learning C++, even when that means several extra lines of code cluttering up the page as they try to understand what a for(;;) loop does.

Java is failing not because of how it's written, but because how it's designed. C# and the .NET CLR will do better because Microsoft understands that they're not building a one-size-fits-all language, they're making Visual Basic with C++ like syntax; something for a specific application.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Dan's Life Microsoft Software Engineering ]

Interesting exchanges going on between Eric of IsThatLegal? and CPO Sparkey at Sgt. Stryker's Daily Briefing about the history of the World War 2 Japanese Relocation Camps as they relate to Howard Coble's defense of the camps. CPO Sparkey talks about the evacuation order and encrypted messages which started it and has a little bit about the Japanese response. Eric talks about the DeWitt memorandum, responds, pointing out that those who implemented knew nothing of the messages, and has a few words about Coble's dancing around an apology.

A few things that might help put all this in context. The Museum of the City of San Francisco has a section on the Evacuation and Internment of San Francisco Japanese. Japanese American Concentration Camp Haiku actually helps CPO Sparkey's case, the bit on the Tule Lake Segregation Center says that:

As it turned out, the "loyalty" or "disloyalty" of the Japanese-American internees depended principally on their answers to Questions 27 and 28. Question 27 asked the internees if they were willing to serve in the armed forces of the United States. Number 28 asked whether they would swear unqualified allegiance to the United States, and foreswear allegiance to the Japanese emperor and to any other foreign government.

Given that the draft had been in place for a while, I have trouble seeing this as singling out anyone. I didn't know, when I wrote a message on one of these boards, that by the time the Manzanar camp was built LA was already sucking water out of the Owens Valley.

[ related topics: Politics Bay Area History Political Correctness Law California Culture Cryptography ]

Tuesday is normally our "together" night, but I'm doing some programming tutoring (see yesterday's rant about computer languages, which I hope to expand on) tonight. So we went out to Limantour beach last night to see the sunset and walk in the sand under the moon, watch the birds in the surf-line outrun the rushing foam, see the seals play in the waves. Very restoring.

Something is weird with the autofocus on this camera, I'm not sure if it's been that way and I've just not taken pictures of this sort of scene in a while, but there are a few more images of the sunset.

[ related topics: Photography Dan's Life Nature and environment Bay Area Birds ]

At lunch today I noticed the headline on today's IJ: "NASA finds part of left wing". Given the recent and proposed assaults on our liberties I've been wondering where the hell the Democrats have been hiding.

[ related topics: Politics Space & Astronomy Civil Liberties ]

radio free beowulf had a link to an article about a Missouri death penalty conviction being upheld strictly on process grounds. It was a jail murder, a guard testified he saw another man running running away from the scene, but three inmates testified they saw the convicted. The three inmates have later recanted, but by this time the case is up to the State Supreme Court, and the prosecutor is arguing that innocence is irrelevant, process is what matters:

"So you would put an innocent man to death as long as he got a fair trial," Judge Ronnie White said.

Jung replied that the remedy in such a case is the governor, who has the power to pardon. The Supreme Court, however, has adopted the proposition that innocence should be considered only if a constitutional violation has occurred, he said.

[ related topics: Law Current Events Race ]

Daze Reader, in which we recently saw such gems as:

OK, Wai Wai is clearly starting to just make shit up for titillation value. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

And:

(Just for the record, Daze Reader will happily link to nude pro-war demonstrations if someone comes across one.)

pointed us to the Four Seasons Condom Company guide to positions, rendered with virtual humans. Which is good, because some of these look damned painful. But it is yet another step towards that virtual porn film.

[ related topics: Erotic Sexual Culture Animation Graphics ]

Because I'm teaching programming to people into games, Geoff Howland answers the "How do I make games?" question. From Borklog.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Games Software Engineering ]

A modest proposal: Let's turn grade-school students into inmates.

Details need to be worked out, but I want every child in California to be given a 13-year prison sentence at age 5, with the possibility of a four-year extension.

That way, the $7,000 the state spends per student each year could immediately be raised to $27,000 -- what the state spends on each inmate annually. And our criminally under-funded schools would qualify for the only category in the governor's proposed budget that's slated to get more money this year.

I hadn't thought about this, but think about how many children we could educate if we just let the pot smokers and the trippers go free.

[ related topics: Drugs Children and growing up California Culture ]

All the best theater is in eastern europe these days. Any guess to the title? Cats II rum tum tiggers revenge?

[ related topics: Politics Theater & Plays Current Events Wines and Spirits ]

For Boyz only. The very best UIs are the ones that are so intuative that you are not aware of them. The Fly in the Urinal inteferface is deceptively simple and extreemly effective. The dutch engineers take into account left vs right handedness and build it right in to the interface. What if these guys worked for Palm? would graphiti be more natural? How would you hold the stylus? Could women figure out the interface?

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Weblogs Technology and Culture Invention and Design Cool Technology ]

Normally I wouldn't slap up a picture this late in the day, making today's entry way abnormally long, but I'm stuck in Maya hell, there's a tied-up dog barking outside our building for the past hour and a half, and the rain is here again. So a view of Mount Tamalpais in the sunrise a few days ago, for contemplation, peace and centering. Before I go find the owner of said pooch and threaten violence.

Warning, picture suffers from JPEG artifacting because of all of the dark regions. Don't look that closely, enjoy it from afar.

[ related topics: Photography Dan's Life ]

Wow. Looks like someone is going all Marc Klaas on the statistics: Group says 3,000 girls sold for sex in San Francisco. Funny, you'd think half a percent of the population, especially if they're clustering:

They work in the Tenderloin, Mission, Haight, Bayview and Polk Street neighborhoods.

Would be more noticeable. The clincher seems to be:

It also found that in a recent survey of more than 7,000 high school-age kids, 17 percent reported they or their peers traded sex for money or other forms of payment.

Now I'm not going to condone coercive sex among minors, but I'm betting that someone's using loose labels, and if we phrased the question right we could probably get a whole lot of married couples to answer a question in such a way that we could paraphrase it to "sex for favors". I've no reason to doubt that "174 minors had been arrested for prostitution last year", but if we compare this to the couple of hundred non-related abductions per year it's pretty clear that the real issue here that needs to be solved relates to the home lives of these children.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Interactive Drama Sexual Culture Bay Area Sociology ]

Yesterday, Metafilter had a link to the Australia Battle Group, guys (no, don't see any women involved, Dave Barry has some possible reasons) who build 1/144^th scale WW2 era radio control battleships with 1/4" CO₂ cannons, go out to a lake, and sink each other. This, of course, got me interested in watching such carnage, so some searching found me the Big Gun Club down in San Jose, the South Coast Battle Group down in SoCal, and more background material at RCWarships.com. Apparently there are groups all over the country who do this, some with larger 1/72^nd scale ships. The rules change slightly from place to place, and safety and a desire for a sese of recreating real tactics keep this from turning into a arms race. Looks like a lot of fun, it'd be worth slapping on some goggles to go see.

[ related topics: Bay Area Machinery Guns Toys ]

Since a couple of child-related things have caught my eye this morning: From Arts & Letters Daily, How I Joined Teach for America — and Got Sued for $20 Million. Obviously anecdotal, and with an ax to grind, but it echoes a lot of what I've heard elsewhere, and is well written.

While we're rambling on about "the good old days", on our recent trip to New York my grandfather remarked that over the past few decades, while the number of people in his town have remained constant, ambulance calls have increased by over ten times. He believes it's because parents no longer do basic first aid.

I'm not sure what plattitudes I could add about changing culture and parenting here that wouldn't be trite, so I won't. Ad I'm further sure that none of Flutterby's readers are the folks I would rant about.

[ related topics: Children and growing up History Sociology California Culture ]

Energy Challenge 2003 is all about building paper airplanes. With human pilots. Sounds like fun.

[ related topics: Cool Science Aviation ]

Since the rain is back, here's a picture of a small section of Cataract Creek from a few days ago. It's a good hike, and some of the drops are stunning, but images of waterfalls always seem kinda trite to me. Must find a better way to see them.

[ related topics: Photography Nature and environment Bay Area ]

So by now y'all have undoubtedly seen that there are differing translations of the cut-and-paste audio tape from Emmanuel Gol Osama bin Laden. Here's the BBC translation. A Reuters article reports the early translation as:

"The fighting should be in the name of God only, not in the name of national ideologies, nor to seek victory for the ignorant governments that rule all Arab states, including Iraq," the statement said.

Others report similar translations from early U.S. online editions and broadcast versions. However, the MSNBC report spins it as:

U.S. officials say that while the speaker on the tape criticized Saddam, he stressed that the paramount battle for Muslims was with the United States and its allies and said Muslims were justified under Islamic law in defending Iraq from U.S. aggression.

Thus Ari Fleischer's statment that:

"If that is not an unholy partnership, I have not heard of one."

seems like a little too much of "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" attitude that's gotten the U.S. into so many foreign policy quandaries to begin with. We know that we can't trust the print media on this topic, but it bothers me that my government is doing such a freakin' lousy awful job of justifying a war that I essentially believe in.

Speaking of things shaking my confidence, Charles Murtaugh had some sanity checking on disaster preparedness and a link to A Soldier's Viewpoint on Surviving Nuclear, Chemical and Biological Attacks. And Charles Olivier wonders about suffocation in your basement, which is a stupid place to be in the event of a gas attack anyway since I think most of these agents are heavier than air, someone does the math in his comments.

If the terrorist is someone who spreads fear through a population to acheive political ends, who are the real terrorists now? And whose fault is it that I have that question?

[ related topics: Religion Politics History moron Current Events Journalism and Media WTC/Pentagon attacks War ]

Dan's on a roll with posting, so I'll just pass one from Dean Edell about the Luv Seat. If your not sure how to use the seat, dig around and you'll find a section that has models in various positions to try, although one of them looks pretty pissed off.

[ related topics: Good Vibrations Sexual Culture Invention and Design Sports Cool Technology ]

Always one for shameless (yes, literally) publicity, I just thought I'd point out that there are Nude Blog Awards. I was a relative latecomer, there have only been naked pictures of me on the web since sometime in 1998, but there have been recent... ahem... showings, including some that... well... even I find disturbing. I'm not actually sure if nominations are still open, but surely there's some category I'm eligible for. Even if it's not "Weblogger we'd like to see nude".

[ related topics: Photography Sexual Culture Dan's Life Weblogs ]

Kiki reminds me that the Sunbrothers are having an open studio tonight and tomorrow night. We're not going to make it (alas), but there's an East Bay Express article on the Sunbrothers. If you're in the East Bay, definitely check it out.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Art & Culture California Culture ]

Lifted from /. - Opera releases Opera Released Bork Edition Browser, which treats MSN website differently than others, to show Microsoft that it takes cooperation to make the internet work. Kudos to Opera, I like what they did and how they did it.

[ related topics: Humor Microsoft moron Work, productivity and environment Net Culture ]

Quote of the day, as reported in today's Rob Morse column, Hekmat Karzai, the first secretary of the Embassy of Afghanistan, on rebuilding Afghanistan:

"We need to be occupied now by a new and benevolent army of doctors, teachers, civil engineers and even a few lawyers. Notice I say lawyers, because Afghanistan needs help with de- mining."

[ related topics: Quotes Politics Humor Law ]

Because we've maybe been a little too establishment recently here, a few police transgression reports. Dr. Susan Block sues the LAPD for illegal search, and here in San Francisco, when a police officer, son of the chief, mugged someone for a burrito, cops closed ranks around him and the investigator on the case got reassigned. Now it comes out that there was prior documentation of temper problems and authority abuses.

[ related topics: Bay Area Law Law Enforcement California Culture ]

Annie Sprinkle settles down

[ related topics: Sexual Culture Bay Area ]

I spent this morning resurrecting an ancient CalComp digitizer. No, not one of those little artist things, I'm talking about a 4"x4" back-lit, motorized pedastel CalComp 9500. Part of the process, I had to verify the firmware revision: upon openning the case, I found that it was running the latest firmware - rev N, copyright 1990! CalComp only supports through Win NT 4.0. Fortunately ESRI's new software runs on NT 4.0 and I get to 'downgrade' a new Dell to NT 4.0... Fun!

Anybody hear that the Dell Dude got busted for marijuana possession? Dell wasn't upset about the drug charges but did can him because pot is considered a 'Gateway' drug...

[ related topics: Drugs Microsoft Health Invention and Design Software Engineering Law Art & Culture Sports Copyright/Trademark ]

Text of U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission Executive Chairman Hans Blix's statement to the United Nations concerning the status of weapons inspections in Iraq. Go read it. All of it. Almost makes me want to march on Sunday (Saturday conficts with the Chinese New Year here). Almost.

In my Jan. 27 update to the Council, I said that it seemed from our experience that Iraq had decided in principle to provide cooperation on process, most importantly prompt access to all sites and assistance to UNMOVIC in the establishment of the necessary infrastructure. This impression remains, and we note that access to sites has so far been without problems, including those that had never been declared or inspected, as well as to Presidential sites and private residences.

[ related topics: Politics Current Events Guns War ]

In a time of increasingly intense rhetoric in the protest field, with much political analysis subsumed by ad hominem attacks, it might be interesting to look at the disconnect between somebody's ideas and the person themself. In the New York Times Magazine (sorry, registration needed)a veteran disability rights attorney writes about debating Professor Peter Singer of Princeton, philosophical founder of the Animal Rights Movement and recently attacked for arguing that parents have the right to kill malformed babies, or that society has the right to kill the suffering comatose. As a prime candidate for involuntary euthanisia, the author is appalled by the professor's ideas, but is troubled by the fact that that he seems to be genuinely nice person. She is attacked by her fellow crips (her term, not mine)for even shaking hands with him. Can we separate people from their ideas, or should we? A very good article.

[ related topics: Politics Law Civil Liberties Peter Singer ]

Charlene was super sick yesterday, high fever and everything. The fever broke, and today before the rains came she wanted some exercise. So we took the bikes out to the Bear Valley trail in the Point Reyes National Seashore. It's one of the places I like to take visitors, because it's a relatively easy (although a bit long) bike and hike out to some gorgeous cliffs and beaches, with a waterfall and a rock arch and some caves along the surf-line, and during the right time of year some incredible wildflowers.

Charlene's stomach didn't handle all the way out to the coast, frankly I'm amazed that she trooped along as well as she did, but we had a grand day out nonetheless.

No white deer this time. Leo has a write-up and some images from a previous excursion out there which we of the Sunday morning hiking crowd fondly refer to as "the death march".

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

2002 Medley Medals are up.

[ related topics: Weblogs ]

Source of "Sir Francis Drake" plaque hoax revealed. A famous brass plate allegedly left in Marin by Sir Francis Drake, accepted as genuine for 40 years after its discovery, was planted back in the early 1930s by members of "E Clampus Vitus", variously described as a "drinking historical society" or a "historical drinking society". I'm reluctant to link to a specific page, as these folks were something of the Cacaphony Society of the later Gold Rush era and are still active in various forms today, and I'm not sure which pages are hoaxes and which pages are real.

[ related topics: Bay Area History ]

A fun competition: Stupid Security - highlighting pointless, annoying, intrusive, illusory and just plain stupid measures to "protect" our security. Most such measures are. These folks also sponsor a Big Brother Award that is interesting. Despite my presence on the web, I've worked hard to disappear from the normally intrusive parts of our society.. I get no non-work related junk mail, I use cash as much as is possible.. no credit cards.. etc.. I'm not a nutcase, but I do try to keep my profile as small as possible. I think the two items are linked though, good security almost has to involve a violation of privacy. Bonding and escrow of some identity information/service would be useful, but bad people are often wealthy enough to purchase credentials or the semblence of being a decent person.

[ related topics: Privacy Sociology Current Events Consumerism and advertising Work, productivity and environment ]

Poached from Utopia With Cheese, entry here, How Auburndale, Massachusetts Got WMD Capability.

[ related topics: Politics Humor War ]

Just to pull us away from the politics, if you're into role playing games there's a new D&D out there: Dancers & Drugees, "the raver role-playing game".

[ related topics: Humor Games ]

I have ranted before about cell phones, but having missed a few people trying to connect in the city I've decided that once again I need a cute little instrument of the devil. So I wandered into the Radio Shack in San Rafael. Salesperson was great, which is a welcome change. Get two phones picked out. Then we try to activate the suckers. I have to use Sprint because they're the only company with coverage in a critical location. The phone operator tries the oldest "bait-and-switch" trick in the book on me; as we're looking at "Expires February 16^th" brochures and posters she's telling me "I'm sorry, the last date for that rate plan was yesterday, but here are two for more money that offer half the features." Store staff phone their Sprint rep, who says "yes, it's still on today". We finally get through to the operator trying to activate my phone that this is unacceptable, half an hour on hold while she fixes things, get one of the phones programmed, then the other one won't program. I end up driving up to Terra Linda, where a slightly less with-it salesdude set up the second one. Elapsed time: over 2 hours. For an operation that should've taken 15 minutes.

[ related topics: Wireless Dan's Life Consumerism and advertising ]

Yesterday's hike was just a quick jaunt to the top of China Camp to the remains of the missile pad and back down. The day was too clear for any good pictures, but occasionally I need an image for illustration. This is looking down on the Frank Lloyd Wright designed Marin Civic Center (Great Buildings has some more on the Marin Civic Center). And there's an image looking south to the profile of Mount Tamalpais.

[ related topics: Photography Dan's Life Nature and environment Bay Area Architecture Architecture - Frank Lloyd Wright ]

Want to know what the effects of a chemical weapons attack on the American populace might be? 21 dead in Chicago nightclub stampede after guards try to use pepper spray to break up a fight. Panic, not the agent, will be the killer.

[ related topics: Food Current Events Guns Douglas Adams ]

"As a rule, loose females have more and healthier children" says biologist Olivia Judson.

[ related topics: Sexual Culture Biology ]

A cool confluence of technology is used to defeat taggers in San Diego. While this particular scenario seems kinda cool, I worry about it's abuse and how it can further erode our privacy.

[ related topics: Privacy ]

Last Night is yet another movie about the end of the world. here's the catch, it's not a sci-fi movie!! In fact you never find out exactly what will destroy the world. There is no Bruce Willis saving the world and no salvation for human kind. The film is about humanity and is done in excellent fashion. 7.8 on the flutterby wetness scale for well crafted story and excellent acting by unknowns.

[ related topics: Movies ]

I've got a whole bunch of things I want to write something witty and intelligent about, but I've got a bunch to do this morning. So to keep you all mildly amused in the mean time if you'd like to check yourselves for signs of thinking and have some spare time to solder you might look at the OpenEEG project.

[ related topics: Cool Science Open Source Cool Technology ]

There are things in your life that you hope you'll never need to know, but do. the PS/2 mouse protocol is kept here for future reference because it has become one of those things for me.

Stop snickering.

[ related topics: Dan's Life Robotics Embedded Devices ]

The languishing Salon has an article about Andy Serkis not getting an oscar nomination for his work as Gollum. WTF! If you have seen the film then you know Gollum stole the show. I saw the "making of" the two towers and you see some pretty intense work by Serkis. We are talking wild acrobatic,foaming of the mouth insane twitchiness that actually translates from mocap to celluloid. Being an industry wonk I know he has to be a better actor to make Gollum more alive. While we are setting up foreign policy here #1Iraq #2France #3 The academy of Motion Pictures.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Photography Movies tolkien Work, productivity and environment Salon magazine ]

A few days ago, Mark gave me a heads up on Paul Graham's Why Nerds Are Unpopular. By now lots of other folks have linked to it, so I'm a little behind the curve, but: Mark's take expanded a little, but I think Paul missed a few critical things.

1. What was the class rank of all of those "smart kids"? Yes, my nerd group had its share of Mensa members, but it wasn't just the popularity contest that we were losing. Not that everyone did poorly, but the grades ran the gamut.
2. School is not for learning. Paul gets that. But he doesn't seem to realize that it isn't supposed to be for learning. It's supposed to teach you how to do the crap work, how to march in line. School is a product of the industrial revolution's need for workers in jobs that will eventually be automated away.
3. Paul seems to think high school is an abnormal condition. No, it's just that we're not forced to be together later on in life. Perhaps nerds get a little better at playing the games, but many of the ones I know still think the games are stupid.

So this seems a place to link to Ted Rall's Student Loans Are For Suckers, a Chronicle article on the "Rich Uncle" college fund for percent of earnings concept, a look back to the previously linked article in The Economist, Does Education Matter? Myths about Education and Economic Growth, by Alison Wolf, and a previous whine before I "got" the real purpose of grade schools.

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

It's been a book buying week. I picked up Mary Anne Mohanraj's Wet and Sarah Waters' Fingersmith on Sunday. Bill talked about a New York Times review of Max Barry's Jennifer Government, so I ordered that, and I've got a few more that aren't coming to mind right now still on order. Now two more look interesting: The Emperor of Scent: A Story of Perfume, Obsession, and the Last Mystery of the Senses by Chandler Burr, from a Washington Post review, and Danyel Smith's More Like Wrestling, a little local color set in the '80s drug boom in Oakland and profiled in the Chronicle today.

[ related topics: Books Erotic Bay Area moron ]

My rant of the week: power cords for computer equipment.

I just installed a new HP Deskjet 5550, which is a nice, cheap machine. However, the power transformer is an oblong box about 6 in. long, 2.5 in wide, and maybe 1.25 in thick, with the three power prongs sticking out of on of the long sides, about 10% of the way down. When plugged in, it covers at least two other outlets on the power strip. I don't need them right now, but the shape is ridiculous. My last HP had a box with a short power cord and plug connected to the power strip, and another line going to the device. But this new one is stupid.

Yes, I know HP builds the same printer for use in many countries that use varying power suplies, but why does this always have to be so clumsy? Why not have internal modules for each power standard that can be easily swapped out. Thus, the factory in Lesser Goonrat can make a million printers, and load the ones destined for North America with one module (and, most important, its attached cord), and load the next 10k with Mongolian 5-prong modules, etc.

Actually, this is not a new problem. Almost 30 years ago I was pissed at open-reel tape decks I used for conference recordings that had detachable power cords. These are not optional items, so why make them detachable?

I feel much better now.

[ related topics: User Interface Invention and Design ]

From the "if I had a nickel for every time" department (I could just about make a call from a pay phone): Couple sues over hotel maids interrupting sex. The vacation was in Cuba, they claim the "Do Not Disturb" sign was out, and they're suing the tour operator, I'd guess because anyone in Cuba wouldn't have the resources to make a suit worthwhile.

[ related topics: Humor Sexual Culture Travel ]

I didn't link to the news about the 302 killed in the crash in Iran, including the 284 Revolutionary Guards, because large deaths happen overseas all the time, and my impression of Iran's Revolutionary Guards is that "it couldn't have happened to a nicer bunch of guys". Robert Scoble wonders why webloggers are ignoring the crash while confirming my impressions (several times). I guess I didn't link to it initially 'cause I had nothing to add to the conversation. Still don't, but maybe Scoble does.

[ related topics: Politics Weblogs Current Events ]

Eric Wagoner had an entry which matched my view on the upcoming war with Iraq which linked to Thomas Friedman's editorial in yesterday's New York Times: Tell the Truth.

[ related topics: Politics War ]

Big sigh of contentment. Yesterday I got back to working on our embedded system some more. The motors now have web page control, as I'm just going to talk to this machine via HTTP. Today I do some drawings so that we can go to the machine shop on Monday and have a bunch of these puppies built. Learning all sorts of cool things about clutches and belts and stuff.

It is so nice to get away from VisualStudio and back to Linux, where I'm working in a real development environment again. And it's so cool to be working under an API developed by people who've really taken the time to develop commonalities between elements, so that unit testing doesn't require lots of test harness code.

Aside from lame-ass environments and bad APIs, I'mn frustrated with the legal challenge that programming is becoming. /. alerted me to a ruling that when Microsoft licensed key SQL Server technologies from Timeline they didn't get the license for developers to use those technologies from a program. So, apparently, you can use the Data Transformation Services in SQL Server directly, but you can't build a program to use those services to transform data for your customers without paying royalties to Timeline. The Register on Timeline vs Microsoft, News.com.com... on the same.

I really want to go back to the days when programming was about thinking, not about puzzling out someone else's ideas of the hoops that I have to jump through and keeping current on a gazillion bad patents and legal issues.

[ related topics: Business Microsoft Open Source Robotics Software Engineering moron Current Events Work, productivity and environment Embedded Devices ]

Borklog pointed to Heather Firth's Earth Erotica saying: "I figure the Flutterby crew would enjoy them.". Baby, we gotcha covered, like back in November, even. But yep, we enjoyed 'em, and there's no harm in enjoying them again. 'cause she's got some really cool pictures there. Just don't do it too often or you'll get hair on your palms and go blind.

[ related topics: Photography Erotic ]

A fascinating Law Meme article on the Laurie Garrett memo from Davos (in case you're lost, here's the original email) had Lyn over at Medley pushing it in various places and linking to it. Rafe Colburn has more background.

Once I fix the HTML templates for the new Flutterby code and check that in so that Todd and others can use it, I've been thinking that my next home programming project should be a personal content manager. It'd be cool if I could organize all my email and photos and web surfing together, and be able to look through it with various different search and sort functions, and associate it in different patterns. Of course I also want to be able to share some of these collections, and in doing that I need to make sure that I don't betray any confidences. Most of the email forums I participate in have fairly strict "do not archive" rules. Some have "don't hint to anyone that this exists" rules. And I'll leave it to you to find it, but I push the boundary of one of those rules in this very entry. So looking at the factors of when I should copy data rather than linking to it, what sort of history and retraction mechanisms there are, and what happens when a friend passes a link to that data along to another friend, is all interesting to me. I'll try to ramble a bit in the comments to this later.

[ related topics: Invention and Design Software Engineering Law Current Events Community ]

Kiki had an experience at the peace rally.

[ related topics: Politics War ]

Don't ask me how I ran across this... The English part of the homepage of Mauve AG says "We speak the language of fonds". Dictionary.com says that "fonds" is the plural of "fond", "The background of a design in lace." My German is a a little rusty, but I don't think that's what they're selling.

[ related topics: Language Humor ]

Court strikes down Georgia law against unmarried sex!

[ related topics: Sexual Culture Law ]

The weather was is so great that we decided to try the Bear Valley trail again. I needed that trip. The flowers are starting to come out, and the butterflies are around. Only the white and blue butterflies stayed still enough to get pictures with the little point-n-shoot, but I got landed on by a big black one, and this little blue one landed on Charlene, and then wandered around our fingers for long enough to get a couple of cool pictures. Although he never did open his wings while he wasn't in flight.

[ related topics: Butterflies Photography Dan's Life Bay Area ]

Following Dan's cool critter pics is tough, but yesterday I did happen to attend the elk release in the new Cumberland Forest. Most of the elk took off, but these two big bucks strutted slowly past us. My thanks to my friend Arleen for what is likely the closest encounter I'll ever have with these beautiful creatures.

[ related topics: Photography Nature and environment ]

Okay, it looks like we're converted over to the new database. Ignore the more hideous than normal web design for a few days, I'll get to it, but mainly I wanted to get the new system up so I had some reason to go fix things.

I'll just say that Topspin goaded me into it. I don't know if this is "wildlife", as these dudes are in Phoenix Lake, which also serves as some sort of reservoir, hanging out on a water pipe of some sort. And this is also where I fell in love with the Canon D-60 and am going to have to get me one now. Dang gadget lust.

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

It might be the case that "processing" and talking about injuries just keeps the shrinks employed, those who repress end up with less post-trauma stress.

George Bonanno works in New York City, while Richard Gist works in Kansas City; the doctors have never spoken, but they should. They share a lot. Gist told me: ''The problem with the trauma industry is this: People who successfully repress do not turn up sitting across from a shrink, so we know very little about these folks, but they probably have a lot to teach us. For all we know, the repressors are actually the normal ones who effectively cope with the many tragedies life presents. Why are we not more fascinated with these displays of resilience and grace? Why are we only fascinated with frailty? The trauma industry knows they can make money off of frailty; there are all these psychologists out there turning six figures with their pablum and hubris.''

[ related topics: Psychology, Psychiatry and Personality ]

Just after I'd given another hundred bucks to Planned Parenthood, the Supreme Court upholds Indiana abortion restrictions.

[ related topics: Sexual Culture Law Current Events ]

Had a good QCad experience today. I'd originally looked at it as a solution to some of my GIS questions, and didn't feel like it quite fit the bill. Today I needed to do some technical drawings, and needed something that understood dimensions. The interface is a little quirky, but once I got over the initial learning curve it did quite well to help me draw out instructions for the machine shop, and clarify a few issues about how things would fit together. As the FAQ says, it isn't a replacement for AutoCAD, and it sure isn't a general vector drawing program, but it some of the quirks that made it unusable when I tried to do that with it became quite helpful in today's exercise. If you don't have a CAD program handy, this makes a decent little 2d fallback.

[ related topics: Free Software Graphics Maps & Mapping ]

Today, Jerry Kindall linked to a story on the Straight Dope message boards about things that go blimp in the night. My throat hurts from laughing and tears are still rolling down my cheeks.

[ related topics: Humor Aviation ]

Hey, I kinda like this more visually interesting thing. A small falls on the trail from Phoenix Lake up to the Eldridge Grade.

[ related topics: Photography Nature and environment ]

U.S. raids firms selling items used by pot smokers, Ashcroft blames Internet for paraphernalia. Okay, what can we do to keep these assholes under control and out of our lives? Who elected these fuckers, who still supports them, and how can I keep those people from voting in the next election and buggering up my freedoms still more?

[ related topics: Drugs Politics Net Culture ]

Woot! Today's announcement for Titillation Theater on the Squidlist quotes my short review! With the reorganization of The Examiner, Flutterby is poised to fill the space for a second daily news outlet for San Francisco.

But all of this is a way of squeezing in a mention that you've got a chance to experience a subset of Titillation Theater at Aloft this weekend, if you're not going to the grand opening of the Sacred Profanities gallery on Saturday evening.

[ related topics: Quotes Erotic Sexual Culture Dan's Life Bay Area Theater & Plays Current Events ]

Hey, I know a few of those pixels spelling out "truth". This seems like a good time to rip off a link from Jay: Bush cited an economic report that doesn't exist. To add to the litany of lies.

[ related topics: Politics War ]

I'm not sure which composition I like better, this was the first shot so I'll go withit, but there are two of the dam that must be a part of the old Marin water system. From that hike up from Phoenix Lake to the Eldridge Grade.

[ related topics: Photography Bay Area ]

Scoble's comments are down, so I can't put this there, but a few additions to his 17 things to make a conference great. #4 is "Start a secret party society". I'd go further: Encourage lots of small parties, make them easy to find, and make them numerous enough that nobody feels left out. The SIGGRAPH party that Phil, Leo, Sam and I threw was one of the best there, not because it had nudity (which it did), but because it had a wonderful mix of luminaries and newbies, and because the party was small enough that they all interacted. If it's a big official party then the usual cliques will form. If it's a bunch of small intimate parties there'll be more mingling. A few of his other suggestions can be boiled down into: Make the conference newspaper virtual, and let the community feed information into it. If it's a show, I want to know what the attendees thought was cool, not what the organizers thought was cool.

[ related topics: Business Weblogs Journalism and Media Community Conferences ]

Back in August, I read John Sundman's Acts of the Apostles, and put myself on his mailing list. This morning he sent around his Salon article about the Loebner Prize. The Loebner Prize is an annual competition to create a program that will pass the Turing Test, with annual competitions that pay $2000 to the best entrant, offering $100,000 to the first program that actually passes the test. I especially like the protectionist attitude of the establishment A.I. researchers, rather than setting up ways to promote free-form research themselves, they spend a lot of time ripping on Loebner for the ways he's getting people to push the envelope (and make asses of the A.I. researchers, but that's a long and much older rant). Of course Loebner is a controversial figure without this, doing lots of activisim for the legalization of prostitution, and working to discredit the Olympics.

[ related topics: Libertarian Sexual Culture Artificial Intelligence ]

An interesting online art collection with a a twist. One favorite is the Cats painted in the progression of psychosis of a Schizophrenic Artist. Some of the 'anotomical' art is interesting as well. Neurons firing.. brain cells as art.

[ related topics: Art & Culture ]

Only a few of you care, but just for the record I have unsubscribed from the RSS-DEV and Syndication mailing lists. The bickering, newbie arrogance ("I am an old timer. I've been doing this Linux thing since 1998."), layering of solutions on top of solutions to make things "easier" for people who can't figure out how to do things right thereby creating endless complexity, have just blown the signal to noise out so far I'm not sure I wasn't imagining signal in the first place.

[ related topics: Content Management Weblogs Dave Winer ]

Steve is happily bouncing through the middle-east, and since he's stopped updating his web site I take a deep breath every time I see email from him. The author of inexplicably fancy trash has been absent since early October, and it's got me wondering about at what point we should declare the missing dead and hold a wake. And when all we know of someone is a pseudonym and a few of their writings, what does their absence mean? What's the difference between death and disappearing?

Now I really must get to work.

[ related topics: Coyote Grits Writing Work, productivity and environment ]

Last night I looked around at our CD collection and realized that it's time to put an Ogg Vorbis player in the house. Maybe two. So I ordered a stripped down Via Eden box from iDot, and while I was there noticed that they had a $1500 3 lb Tablet PC with 4 hour battery life. Scoble showed me the NEC Tablet PC which was gorgeous, only 2 lbs, but fairly expensive and with less battery.

[ related topics: Music Weblogs Embedded Devices - Via Eden ]

K, I've been remiss in posting so here are few quickies.

I punished myself by following the Haselhoff story ouch! I guess Kitt did the driving most of the time.

Proof that war is a certainty.

Buffy has been slayed. I don't know about you but I tivo it as a guilty pleasure and this year has sucked and not in a friendly vampire way.

Speaking of TIVO you network them now.... bwhahaha more power

Speaking of power, Netflix has one million serverd under their golden arches.

[ related topics: Technology and Culture broadband History moron Current Events Television David Hasselhoff ]

Scoble had a couple of entries linking to people talking about Jim Allchin's comment that "Google's a very nice system, but compared to my vision, it's pathetic". Great, so we've got a company who's idea of innovation, as far as I can gather from what's been leaked about "Longhorn", is reinventing PerlFS, dissing Google now for something that may or may not be out in the future. That's the usual Microsoft "stop innovation by telling people we're going to stomp them with marketing" attitude. And I don't care what light you cast it in, "compared to my vision, it's pathetic" is arrogant to the N^th and the sort of thing we generally hear from the aging blowhards at SciFi cons.

[ related topics: Microsoft moron Consumerism and advertising Marketing ]