[2004/07/30]

→ still watching cspan at 12:17 AM and watching bush's speach form the 2000 republican national convention. two observations: 1. my god was little bush a horrible speaker. amazing. listening to him made kerry look remarkably relazed, smooth, and so friggin coherent. 2. kerry, edwards, teresa, and edward's wife were wearing nearly the exact same colors (ties and dresses) in 2004 as bush and cheney and their wives in 2000. weird. is the red tie, blue tie, white dress, and light blue dress a standard thing? | comment 2 | trackback 0

[2004/07/29]

→ interesting to note which networks stay with the convention as the balloons keep falling and the (cheesy) music keep splaying. fox had already switched to the local weather within minutes of the end of kerry's speech and c-span is still going (lots of balloons yet to fall from the look of that ceiling). | comment 0

→ i've mentioned this before, but to reiterate, affter using it for a few (couple?) of months: zach wily's iPhotoToGallery plugin (for iphoto) is amazing. if you use both, you have got to try it out. so smart, so simple, so fast. not sure how it can be so much faster than gallery remote, but boy does is feel fast. and smooth. and simple (did i mention simple already?). | comment 0

→ so florida has some of them fancy touchscreen voting machines but hasn't been making any backups. mistakes happen, yes, but no backups for voting records for years? oh boy. this so doesn't bode well. this on top of: "The [State] officials also maintain that the computer systems running the machines can be trusted to count the votes accurately as they're cast, and give the final numbers when needed." yeah, ok. no need for the option to have recounts. right. what a silly waste of time. | comment 1

→ noah's post on reagan has a link to a short, easy read reviewing the darker side of this most-popular president: "It isn't the lies that kill us, but the myths, and Ronald Reagan was the greatest myth-maker we are ever likely to see." | comment 1

[2004/07/26]

→ interoperability is hugely important and one of the glaring failures of both the current technology landscape and of the modern view of copyright/ownership (and as strictly enforced by DRMs). this hacking by real networks of apple's ipod to allow it take real-formatted files is very interesting and raises all sorts of ownership/licensing/dmca issues. | comment 0

→ this nyt article on the 9/11 commission, forwarded by my fa, points out some aout and out lies by the current administration relating to 9/11. since the nyt charges for it's archives, i've (prob not legitimately) copied the full text into this entry. (more...) | comment 0 | trackback 0

→ this one's for jude: "A five-year-old monkey at an Israeli zoo started walking exclusively on her hind legs after recovering from a serious illness. . . Other than walking upright, the vet says Natasha's [the monkey] behaviour has returned to normal." | comment 0

[2004/07/24]

→ i'm sure which of ev's posts to track back this too, but a bit of reading in the voice (no link to the actual article) provided some useful swing state election travel resources. the best of those look to be swing state summer break, which aims to provide an "ultra-convenient, easy, and fun to get involved in the nationwide effort to defeat Bush this November. Just tell us which states you're interested in, and when you have time to do it, and we'll take care of the rest." and a slightly more diy version called driving votes, which "provides you with everything you need to register voters in swing states. If you don't live in a swing state, get your friends together for a road trip on the Democracy tip." and then there is the wonderfully named league of pissed of voters asking "Do You Want to Swing This Election or Not?" | comment 0 | trackback 0

[2004/07/21]

→ this bizarre ny press article argues that america a growing rotten and "we must reawaken in our citizens the ambition and ingenuity of the newly arrived immigrant." their solution is to force all youth to go abroad for a couple of years in "an obligatory national service that will, in fact, be an international service. International service in service of the nation: the Expatriate Corps." some overwrought language in there and i'm not sure the heck starts going down on page two, but thought-provoking for sure. | comment 0

→ (from rach) it's no a big secret that i've decided the new catwoman film looks like a stupendously bad film based purely on the ad shots of berry in an inane costume, but the fine skewering in this msn mini-review says it better than i can: "true fear set in when we saw pics of Halle in the most ridiculous costume since Elvis hit Vegas (come on, no self-respecting superhero kicks ass in open-toed shoes)." ditto. | comment 0

→ still weirds me out a touch to read a blog by someone else named noah (who i know, not an abstract, phantom stranger). oh, and the post is relevant to corin's recent "drilling holes in HD platters" activities too. | comment 1

[2004/07/20]

→ the powermax DA4000 looks like an amazing solution for mobile phone deadspots in ytour house. i can think of a half dozen clients who i would love to see install this device. might even be worth getting one to test with. | comment 0

[2004/07/19]

→ those of you may remember the remarkable brazillian influx over at fotolog.net (and the accompanying tensions) will get a wicked case fo deja vu from this slashdot article on the brazillian influx at orkut.com (of which i am not a member). oh, and hey, google (who owns orkut, btw), found me an article exploring this very issue. | comment 1

→ nicely expressed post at david neiwert's orcinus entitled forbidden reality about how the true central issue of the 2004 election is the 2000 election. | comment 0

[2004/07/18]

→ curious that apple has chosen to distribute the 9-11 commission hearings (for free) through the itunes music store. that seems really interesting. i'm not exactly why or what that means, but still curious. what if all public politics debates where available in a format that made it simple, seamless,a dn easy to download them and pop them on your ipod/music player. would that change something/anything? | comment 0

→ do note that little bush is not a poet. or an emailer. or an iraqi citizen. or, curiously, a member of the legislative branch. | comment 0

[2004/07/16]

→ my sister asked about options for where to donate your old mobile phone. looks like Phones 4 Charity is one option, Charitable Recycling looks like another, and about.com has a page on the topic. | comment 0

→ i'm sure it's great that google just bought picasa: "automated digital photo organizer software, instant photo albums, sharing" but is it me or (click the "watch the flash tutorial" button) doesn't this look just like iphoto? how does this always happen? i think iphoto's interface is pretty limited (maybe even flawed) and yet the rest of industry still keeps just directly copying apple's interfaces. weird. | comment 0

[2004/07/15]

→ little post at engadget on a pet pheremone device. calming pets (esp dogs. . . ah, chici) = good; simulating lactating animals = um, ok. righto. | comment 0

[2004/07/14]

→ this blog software comaprison is super handy. i think i'll stick with MT for a little while, but this page is a great reference. | comment 0

→ so biweekly means both happening "once every two weeks" as well as "twice a week." that's confusing (same issue with bimonthly, btw). semiweekly, fortunately, only means "twice a week" . . . though this does beg the question of how do you say "happening every other week" unambiguously? (more...) | comment 1

→ do you think kerry really (and still) uses a powerbook? interesting. | comment 0

→ this one is for keiji: a little page on quick dry underware. luckily, looks like they have boxer briefs too. some serious recs on that page. | comment 0

[2004/07/13]

→ you know, i was just looking for an ideal way to protect a destination drive from exposure to atomic, chemical or biological substances. ok, actually i wasn't. | comment 1

→ a new development on the patent front. china just revoked the viagra patent. onmce details come out, i'll be curious to hear the reasoning. | comment 1

[2004/07/09]

→ little technote on how to set up wireless distrubution system on a few airport (extreme and express only) basestations | comment 0

→ handy little pdf browser plugin plugin that allows safari to display pdfs in the browser window. | comment 0

→ i can't decide if this lighting control stuff is actually interesting/useful or just dumb gadgetry. being able to dim all lights around the apt in one swoop and to control stuff from the machine that runs itunes seems maybe interesting. or maybe overly complicated. theoretical useful concept: small lights tucked in out of the way places (bookshelf, above closet/behind curtains) that can't easily be connected to a dimmer/wallswitch but could be controlled with one of these devices. hm. not that i've actually bought anything yet. | comment 2

→ another snippet from that nielsen interview. this part about two points: the first, off the shelf software versus customized apps (for intranets): "You might say that the lack of a clear technology platform was in some ways a surprise because you read so much about this and that solution being supposedly the way to great intranets. In fact, when we go and talk to those companies that have done great intranets—first of all, they all use something different, and, second, all of them say of whatever [technology] they happen to be using, "Well, we had to make a lot of changes ourselves to make it really work for us." So I think there is a big contrast between advertising and reality, and that these technologies are not all there yet. You really have to take responsibility yourself if you want to get a good solution." and the second, about email-reduction as a goal of intranets and other systems: " Another thing that was quite striking was that several of these best intranets had reduction of e-mail as being one of their priorities in their project, finding ways of taking information away from e-mail and sticking it into a more kind of organized and searchable space on the intranet. It was probably because you can provide better features on the intranet than you can an e-mail reader, but it's also partly because people are just getting so buried in their e-mail, we've got to take things out of e-mail if at all possible." | comment 0

[2004/07/08]

→ yo, dallas' film a home at the end of the world is opening next week (previews). check out the trailer. a huge congrats out to our own mr. roberts. | comment 0

[2004/07/06]

→ i have posted on this numerous times before, but this article in the seattle post on harris is newly relevant for two reasons. first, like moore's 911 and the corporation, it revisits issues and events that have been bouncing around the news for years and compiles them into a tight package. this seems especially important nowadays with the media doing such a poor job differentiating important from non-important and fact from allegation. and second, it reminds me of an ongoing discussion about peta and "what is the role of extreme activists?" since we've entered a time where conservative/incumbent positions are (in my opinion) quite extreme (in contrast to moderate/centrist positions), we seem to need equally extreme views far to our own left to bring the dialog back to a balanced the center. not, mind you, that i find any of harris' conclusions even remotely extreme. the conflicts of interest she sees are stunningly glaring. but perhaps not really any more shocking than scalia and cheney's private hunting trips. | comment 0

→ from an interview with ole jakob nielsen called time for a redesign, a short list of his pet peeves about site design: "1. Fail to include a tag line that explicitly summarizes what the site or company does, 2. Neglect to use a liquid layout that lets users adjust the home page size, 3. Don't use color to distinguish visited and unvisited links. 4. Use graphics to decorate, rather than illustrate real content. 5. Give an active link to the home page on the home page." while i don't feel these necessarily apply to all sites (e.g. macktez), we do do pretty well with that list. i think we avoid 1. (it's the big bold text), 2. (this is a pet peeve of mine too), 4. (the only graphics on our pages are the navigation elements at the top and they all have alts), and 5. (the logo on every page, including the first one, links to the root of the site). we do not do 3, though, and that is because i find that the "visited" vs "not visited" state of a link provides minimal if any value to readers; if the site and link itself can't effectively convey where you're going to go when you click, what value is a diff color? | comment 0

[2004/07/05]

→ speaking of protecting your email, intego's (mad famous by their dubious "mac trojan" discovery claim earlier this year) chatbarrier x3 (for encrypting ichat sessions) looks very interesting. and only $100 for 10 people. | comment 0

→ cacert is a community non-profit certificate authority. free certs. if mail.app works with these certs that would be especial.ly interesting. | comment 0

[2004/07/04]

→ we saw the corporation yesterday afternoon at film forum. really, really well done. most certainly worth seeing. i feel that it doesn't leave itself open to any of the potential criticisms that moore's 911 does and it sidesteps countless temptations to stay tightly focused on making a limited (though wide-ranging) argument: that the very (legal and probably conceptual) concept of a corporation as an "entity" (my word; they use person) in the eyes of the law has has created a frankenstienian monster that we all need to be paying a lot more attention to. (i have a lot to say on this, so i am going to just keep adding to this entry over the next few days.) (more...) | comment 0 | trackback 0

→ twex responded to a comment of mine a short while ago; while this is not directly related, a discussion on EPA estimated mileage figures does have some interesting, relevant bits to that discussion. and this site on hybrid cars implies that even modest gains in mileage (which the prius does generally get) do make a huge difference in aggregate. | comment 0

→ so, speaking of the feds (homeland security this time) and warnings, "The Department of Homeland Security's U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team touched off a storm this week when it recommended for security reasons using browsers other than Microsoft Corp.'s Internet Explorer." now this warning, honestly, does make sense to me. and not just cause it's not-pro microsoft. slashdot has a more useful explanation of what the exploit actually is and does. ouch. how can an enormous, giant corporation that since 2002 keeps continuously claiming "security is our top priority" yet still keep getting slammed with very real massive, gaping, and real world exploits? more commentary. and yes, the simplest solution once again seems to be just stop using internet explorer. | comment 0

→ another sign of an interesting trend. the whole world is affected by the decisions of the us, so just because you're in europe why not have a kerry rally and target expats and non-us citizens? brilliant: "Do you want a new American president? Then tell an American to vote." | comment 0

→ moore's 911 was spot on in his pointing out that the bush administration's use of the "terror level" and it's vague, useless, but frightening warnings of "things you should keep an eye out for" is flat out manipulative. and there is a new, especially insultingly inane warning today: "The FBI issued a warning last week for state and local authorities to be on the lookout for booby-trapped floating material in and around the nation's marinas, warning they could contain explosives. A homeland security official told CNN on Sunday there is 'no intelligence terrorists are planning to or want to do this.'" ok. that's helpful. look for floating crap in the water. hey, and if you want more "useful" warnings, check out this terror warning site where you can "receive instant terrorism updates via email, stay informed and stay safe!" yay! oh, and you can click on the ad at left to get a NukAlert state-of-the-art personal radiation monitor too. | comment 0

[2004/07/01]

→ how to make marzipan carrots and pumpkins. i like marzipan. tiny carrots are cute. | comment 0