[2004/08/29]

→ been watching this nydot traffic cam pointing at 5th ave and 23rd street all day. that's a lot of people out there. | comment 0 | trackback 0

→ looking for some plugins for movable type. found a few nifty options; last modified (adds a modified date tag), key values (adds, in a very clever, simple way, the option to use define keys within a entry field and then use them individually. would have been great for the jewelry site), and litst of entries in the whole system (would be handy for the team page). | comment 0 | trackback 0

→ back on august 7th, rach and i ran into a wonderful and colorful (quite literally; perhaps figuratively too) older couple named alexandra stoddard and her husband of 30 years peter brown (also a writer).

[2004/08/24]

→ looks like i didn't post a link to our photos from visiting gramps and nanny in providence a couple of weeks ago. | comment 0 | trackback 0

[2004/08/19]

→ while the study has a dubiously small sample, it nevertheless states that an unpatched windows computer connected to the internet (outside of a firewall) will be compromised in an average of 20 minutes. that is a stunning thing to think about: "The drop from 40 minutes to 20 minutes is worrisome because it means the average 'survival time' is not long enough for a user to download the very patches that would protect a PC from Internet threats." oh, also note that cnet apparently still capitalizes "internet." | comment 0 | trackback 0

→ this blackbrry connection kit for the mac is great to see, but do they really need to have that "Order Now" graphic on the page seven times? wouldn't one or two be enough? | comment 0 | trackback 0

[2004/08/17]

→ a handsome, simple site about where the heck is the law written that one needs to show id to travel. by a mr. gilmore. | comment 0 | trackback 0

→ hey david, does this very public wired style guide change mean "intermagoogleweb" should be lowercase too? you know, since i write everything in lowercase here anyway, i wonder if anyone even knows what i'm talking about. | comment 1 | trackback 0

→ this history of space suits goes out to nick. but he doesn't read this page, so maybe i should say it gets stuck here so in 2 years when this topic comes up in casual conversation i can come back here and search for "nick" or "space suit." ok, that works. | comment 0 | trackback 0

→ at times touching article at the new yorker on the new moveon ads about people who voted for bush in 2000 who aren't doing so in 2004. my fav. | comment 1 | trackback 0

[2004/08/16]

→ so i just posted on the bsa's weasel and then slashdot runs an entry on the librarian response. | comment 0 | trackback 0

[2004/08/15]

→ another article on issues with owning things that are intangible. maybe the core issue to owning is wether someone else using/having it prevents you from using/having it? hm. | comment 0 | trackback 0

→ this balloon lamp has armin written all over it. | comment 0 | trackback 0

→ dang, that photo sure looks like molly from neuromancer. | comment 0 | trackback 0

[2004/08/14]

→ is it really that hard to just lock down the operating system? | comment 0 | trackback 0

→ access to (and the manipulation of) kids by dubious special interest groups like the bsa is simply uncool. the bsa is a trade group funded by software makers (primarily microsoft and adobe) that uses disturbing tactics to get ex-employess to rat out their former employers for not having adaquate software licenses (which is not cool; we push hard to get clients into compliance, but not through fear-mongering). now they have a whole campaign aimed squarely at kids (more info). this stuff kinda makes me queasy. | comment 0 | trackback 0

→ (from eth) twenty-five classic flips and flops by the purportedly unwavering leader of the free world. | comment 0 | trackback 0

→ up to ninety-five and, of course, still counting: mcsweeney's reasons to dispatch little bush. | comment 0 | trackback 0

→ this succinct post on the al-qaeda's tps reports contains a choice quote: Reading the article, you can't help but develop a sense of dissonance between who we're up against and who we've been told we're up against (and our government's response)." yup. | comment 0 | trackback 0

→ (since ev's blog's comment engine is stripping out URLs now, i'm posting this on my site) not to inpune your creative shoelace solution, killer, but there are a few "commercial" solutions out there for this. | comment 1 | trackback 0

→ a thought on the feeling of helpessness and powerlessness i feel we fizzled with on thu night. making a difference in 55 minutes over your lunch break. | comment 0 | trackback 0

[2004/08/12]

→ looking for a new phone for a client's office and i've almost made my decision. it's down to the yellow (it's square), jeff (comes with heated travel mug!), or black (looks like a purse!!) one. . . | comment 1 | trackback 0

[2004/08/10]

→ not the most enthusiastic review of microsoft's new blog service. shockingly, the html code is sloppy, it laughs at standards compliance, and it only seems to work in IE. ok, only kidding: that's not really shocking. | comment 0 | trackback 0

[2004/08/08]

→ e-voting looks more and more like trainwreck waiting to happen the more i read. and while lots of "experts" are worried, very few members of the public are: "Twenty percent of the experts cited system and programming errors as their top concern, followed by attempts to influence the outcome of an election (17%). A potential breach of security by hackers and cybercriminals ranked third (15%) as a potential e-voting worry among the Black Hat/Defcon attendees. Among the public, the top worry was a decline in voter turnout because of fear or distrust of e-voting systems (18%), followed by human errors and privacy violations (15% each)." oh boy. | comment 0 | trackback 0

→ the other noah links to an article on the stunning correlation between bush administration bad spots and subsequent dramatic terror alert announcements. simply unbelievable. i've claimed these announcements were primarily for political gain before, but honestly had expected that the connection would be rather subtle (the conspiracy skeptic side of me assuming the ties would be vague and unconvincing). well, i gotta say it sure looks pretty night and day to me. what about you? | comment 1 | trackback 0

→ nearly one thousand people. well, a lot more than that many people; it's just that many soldiers. 924 baseballs. plus an officially unknown number of civilians. | comment 0 | trackback 0

→ my vote is for dumb idea (medinfo chip). the use of filemaker is interesting and weird. the product is just another flash-based usb drive, but maybe the target use seemed smarter on paper than it is in the real world. so i'm voting for the med-alert bracelet if you really care. | comment 0 | trackback 0

→ this page on airpwn use at defcon is an excellent demo of the lack of security on wifi. we all know that when using wifi anyone can listen in, but it's easy to forget/not realize that with a bit of effort they can change what you see in your web browser too. | comment 0 | trackback 0

→ this how not to buy happiness def bears further reflection. | comment 0 | trackback 0

[2004/08/06]

→ fake rocks? half-buried green cylinders? who knew outdoor speakers where interesting? the page starts off flat but just gets more excited (yes, excited, not exciting) the farther down you go. | comment 0 | trackback 0

→ at the end of this nyt article on his 70th birthday and his life is an especially stirring quote from wole soyinka: "It's my duty to fight those who have chosen to belong to the party of death, those who say they receive their orders from God somewhere and believe they have a duty to set the world on fire to achieve their own salvation, whether they are in the warrens of Iraq, or in the White House," he said to me. "I prefer to be a card-carrying member of the party of life." | comment 1

[2004/08/04]

→ this article on slashdot about the company who made the original (open source, GPL) australian voting software apparently deciding o release the next version under weird, bad license ends with this fantastic quote: "This is the great thing about open source software. If the old lead developer goes insane, you can always fork it, right?" (in this context, fork means make your own diverging variant, not to "stick a fork in it and call it done.") | comment 0

→ i referred to gallery a few days ago, and we're exploring using extensis portfolio (with netpublish) for making a client's smalll image asset library (semi-)publicly available, but noah's question is a good one. while vanilla MT lets you upload images/files, it doesn't really let you manage that content in any real way; gallery is fine but limited in it's customization without heavy lifting. i did end up using MT for my silver work site and just keyed all main images to a keyword/part number, but that was a bit of wrestling match. curious to know if the small/open blogging/content/publishing systems will go more "multimedia" soonish or will stay essentially (ironically perhaps) text-based for a while. . . then again, i might have totally misunderstood noah's post. if i did, the point i think he's making still interests me. yeah. | comment 0

[2004/08/03]

→ noteworthy that the sheraton at 53/54th and broadway has free wireless internet access in the lobby. oddly not up in the meeting/conf room areas, but down in the lobby. the ESSID is, un-obviously, "turbonet" and appears to be official (you need to open a web browser and click through an acceptable use agreement). | comment 1

[2004/08/02]

→ this article by gladwell titled the naked face (originally published in the new yorker) is so full of juicy bit's i'm not sure which to hilight. like this one: "People fail at the nurses tape, Ekman says, because they end up just listening to the words. That's why, when Tomkins was starting out in his quest to understand the face, he always watched television with the sound turned off." (more...) | comment 3

[2004/08/01]

→ another simple way to listen to the dnc speaches, this one on itunes. i've linked to the 911 commission before, but the day one and two dnc links are new. | comment 1

→ another good election guide in the form of a map, this one by the nyt. i particularly like the "presidential calculator" with the option chosen to "view map according to: electoral votes." | comment 0