6/30/2007
6/29/2007
Pogue iPhone skit
David Pogue's goofy video about the iPhone. cool how the nytimes has leaped into nice video productions over the past year or so.word: "proprioception"
Twitter and other constant-contact media create social proprioception. They give a group of people a sense of itself, making possible weird, fascinating feats of coordination.
Clive Thompson on How Twitter Creates a Social Sixth Sense. ok, friends: now can you start joining twitter?
... proprioception, your body's ability to know where your limbs are...
wanting a new laptop hd
straightforward coke can
new coke can design: classy. can't wait to see these on shelves, not that I drink the stuff.youtube a major campaign element
I'm really disturbed by Hillary's "choose my campaign song" thing, but at the same time fascinated by the youtube use. not that using youtube is unusual in campaigning these days. also, as weird as the campaign song schtick is, I'm horrified by some (most?) of the responses.movie
just watched Go Fish, a somewhat arty lesbian flick from 1994. It made me really happy, even though the story is goofy and the dialogue is awkward. Even though it's black and white and has pretentious abstract sequences. It has a cheesy ending but isn't cheesy. It is full of '90s dyke style and regular dyke bodies. In it there was only one man who said one sentence (if that). I can't really figure out what made it so awesome. Maybe I'm just queer-starved.6/28/2007
MLK quote
MLK quote: "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly."quote
"I like to think of a CMS as a file cabinet hooked up to a projector." I forget who said this, but it was during Penguin Day in Lowell, MA last week.weird/annoying
I came into the office this morning after being on vacation for two and a half weeks. No one is here, and no one bothered to email about why they aren't here. Is everybody in line for the iPhone or something? oh, wait: it's not Friday yet.potter water
ceramic water filter for the developing world. can be made by a team of potters. via this Ask Umbra column.Porticus
Porticus, gui for MacPorts. I guess I'm missing the boat, I still have Fink hanging around. via df."zero day"
"zero day exploits" are exploits that are published before (or on the same day as) a vulnerability and/or patch is published. "zero day releases" are videos, music, or software cracks that are (illegally) released simultaneously with the day of the official release. (zero day on wikipedia)6/27/2007
nerd marble toy
binary adding machine with marbles. via defective yeti links. (back of the machine, etc.)6/25/2007
misc
6/23/2007
6/20/2007
Feed Quick Start
Feed Quick Start. Interesting: I never thought of subscribing to RSS feeds as a spam evasion thing.away
I've been visiting my family and friends for the past few days. I'll be around my computer more for the rest of the week, but probably the usual brain dump won't resume until the end of next week—after June 27th.6/17/2007
6/15/2007
Anil Dash on mangoes
Indian mangoes are being imported to the US for the first time this year. I want to try some.6/14/2007
women in tech communities
women-friendly communication in tech. via Simon Willison. I dude it up a lot (possibly too much) these days, but definitely recognize these patterns. especially:
Many women spend time observing online groups before deciding if they will participate, for this very reason. They want to ensure that they will not feel verbally attacked once speaking up, and that their issues, comments and contributions will be heard and handled fairly.
I don't wait to see how my comments will be received so much as wait to see where my questions and comments will fit in, but.
microformat notes
notes from Tantek Celik's "Microformats and You" slides:
- "POSH" = Plain Old Semantic HTML
- "Add to Address Book" links for hCard-microformatted data: link to http://technorati.com/contacts/URL (URL = the URL of the page containing the hCard.)
- check out the use of hCards in this list of @media 2007 speakers. not the standard rigid looking hCard markup, but hCard elements as part of paragraphs about people
hot
It hit 101° F yesterday, so I'm pretty glad to be missing whatever I can of of Sacramento summer. Even if it's only a week and a half.
(National Weather Service)
6/13/2007
inane lyric that I love
"it's sunny and seventy-five, it feels so good to be alive" -- from the Silver Jews' song "People." actually, most of their lyrics are inane, and I'm basically obsessed with a lot of American Water. (thx from xmas, ben)fuzzy vs. inaccurately crispy
mac- vs. windows- style font rendering. potentially an "I hate Safari" feature for windows users.6/12/2007
I has a flavor.
^flavor^style. so, my web app is open to the public now! I don't want to be a referrer, but here's the url:
http://calruralhousing.org/housing-toolbox/inclusionary-housing-policy-search
and here's my writeup at ctcvista.org.
mass emails
so I've made an HTML email and sent it to 450+ people. I guess I'm going to hell. Anyway: used an Outlook plugin called Send Personally. It generates and sends an individual email to each person in the "To:" field. Costs $24, but there's a free trial.6/10/2007
Solaris
by the way, this is how I feel about Solaris:
you should definitely see Solaris (1972) the movie, directed by Andrei Tarkovsky. the pictures and sounds are beautiful, and it's decent job of imagining a spacefaring future. on the other hand, it's long, obscure, and quiet. a fair portion of the film is just inanimate scenes with ambient noise. it's not particularly funny, but it's spooky and a bit trippy. good for a super-mellow night in.
or, maybe you shouldn't see it.
6/09/2007
Doing Local Right
Slides from Simon Willison's talk, "Doing Local Right." I fantasized about doing something like this in Portland, Maine when I lived there.6/08/2007
esri mapping techniques blog
ESRI Mapping Center blog. guess I'll be keeping an eye on that, as I use ArcMap 9.x (reluctantly)."hot queer sex writing"
except not.
- there was a photography show at [somewhere] entitled "Safe and Dirty." there should be more of this. (The McGill Daily)
- "Latex was a part of my sex life from the beginning. For me, latex is not weird or unsexy." also, "the thing that I really want to do with this book is teach straight people how to be more queer." Salon interview with a sex columnist/author
I don't have specific feelings about latex, but am kind of fascinated about the ideas around it.
magpie saying
I've been meaning to look up the saying that goes with magpies since first seeing them in Ireland this summer. Also: a group of magpies is called a "parliament."
One for sorrow, two for joy; Three for a girl, four for a boy; Five for silver, six for gold; Seven for a secret, never to be told; Eight for a wish, nine for a kiss; Ten for a bird that's best to miss.
I kind of prefer the version that ends at seven, but also there's one (found here) that goes to twelve.
Eight for a wish, Nine for a kiss, Ten for a letter, Eleven for Worse and Twelve for Better
homemade tortillas
"Sin City Breakfast Tacos." cooking on youtube. homemade tortillas! cool chopping cuts! but otherwise it's totally dude-food. via trenchant.org/dailycheerios
neat trick from the June 8th diesel sweeties print comic: the text on the low-res cheerios boxes is made legible by alternating the colors of the letters between grey and black.
6/07/2007
new MapWindow
a new version (4.4) of MapWindow is out. (MapWindow is a free GIS tool for Windows)Pogue on Parallels
David Pogue on Parallels (using windows on a mac). nytimes, via my dad. possibly my long-term goal of getting him to buy a Mac is closer to realization...autoerotic
pictures of people kissing themselves (photoshopped). half of them are looking in weird directions. via kottke.emacs movement keys
emacs movement keys. these work in a lot of places in OS X, but are especially useful for editing sql statements on the command line. on the Mac, 'C-a' means control+a, 'M-f' means option+f.6/06/2007
Nollywood
oh, this is cool: "subsistance film making;" "You can make a movie in seven days for $10,000." from Ethan Zuckerman's writeup on a talk about Nollywood, the Nigerian film industry.New School graduation
New School grads share tales - I spent my last highschool semester at TNS. (thx, Jen)
also in the news: a friend from the New School, Timmy Gagne, died in a car accident last weekend.
meringue cookies
Meringues - fluffy crispy egg white cookies, impossibly delicious texture. how to make them.6/05/2007
families with their food
more of the What the World Eats photos, this time at Time Magazine. (I took a picture of myself with two weeks food back in December)fancy HTML Mail with Microsoft Outlook
how to make fancy HTML emails with Outlook: make the email as an HTML file, view it in IE, and choose "send page" from the IE mail button. Tips: don't use background images; don't expect anything to center with margin:auto; it is weird and difficult (and weirdly, modal) to edit the email in Outlook, so you might as well do all the editing on the original HTML file. Test the email on yourself so you know what CSS outlook will disregard. Also, in IE 6/Outlook 2003, an <hr /> gets tacked on the end; delete it before sending. HTML Mail with Microsoft Outlook.fixing gmaps street view privacy concerns
by adding hats and mustaches to all faces. via waxy links. uh, not real.London 2012 olympics logo
2012 London Olympics logo animation. I guess the world is being invaded by jaggy shapes from the eighties?countries
countries graphed as traditional vs. "secular-rational" values and survival vs. self expression values. via kottke.6/04/2007
new circuitous design
I've scraped together a new design for circuitous.org, I think. now, if I ever get around to implementing it...
work organization
tasks get written on a sticky note and stuck to the desk. today's tasks go on the main desk, future tasks go on the side desk. after I do something I get to snatch it off the desk and crumple it up.6/03/2007
iPhone tv ads
iPhone TV Ads just came out. they showcase the user interface (pretty!). via daringfireball.flying spaghetti monster toast
I'm really curious to see how much this goes for: eBay: Flying Spaghetti Monster Toast FSM Religious Holy Relic (end time Jun-10-07 18:15:00 PDT).