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I was disappointed in this Salon interview with Jack Valenti of the Motion Picture Association of America. I wish they had thrown him some tougher questions about playing legitimately purchased DVD's on "unauthorized" players, or copying DVD's without breaking encryption. Of course, what I'd really like to know is why the recording and motion picture industries is determined to assume that all of their customers are crooks who will use their goods inappropriately given half a chance.
Added Monday, February 14, 2000
This may be the CSS site I've been looking for. Inamongst other useful HTML tips, it talks about the differences between the ways Explorer and Navigator render style sheets, and how to work around them. I must experiment...
Added Monday, February 14, 2000
The Paradox of Our Time, an essay which has been making the rounds on the net of late, is not the work of comedian George Carlin, to whom it has often been attributed. Remember the Wear Sunscreen essay that was attributed to Kurt Vonnegut back in '97? Same thing, only no one seems to have identified the true source for this one yet.
Added Monday, February 14, 2000
Maybe I shouldn't put much stock in Amazon's book reviews after all.
Added Monday, February 14, 2000
My favorite part of Dan Bricklin's account of the Demo 2000 conference has to be the Citizen PDA that fits into the Visor's "Springboard" slot. Imagine, a PDA for when your PDA is just too bulky to carry around. The camera module looks pretty spiffy too. Update: Bleah. Bricklin moved the story to an archive page an hour after I wrote this. Reminder for Evil Master Plan: always provide a "permanent" link.
Added Monday, February 14, 2000
The death of Peanuts creator Charles Schultz can not be news to anyone by now, but I just wanted to make a few comments. "Sparky" died on Saturday, the day before his final Sunday strip ran; it seems both tragic and fitting that he did not survive his creation. By all accounts, his work was his life. A lot of people, myself included, have said that Peanuts had been on a long downward slide, and that Schultz should have retired much earlier; I regret ever saying such things. Peanuts may have peaked long ago, but it was only declining relative to the phenomenally high standards which Schultz himself set at the hieght of his powers. Even at its worst, Peanuts was superior to most comic strips at their best, and will be sorely missed. Rest in Peace, Sparky. By the way, I think Iliad's tribute to Schultz is the best User Friendly I've seen in quite some time.
Added Monday, February 14, 2000
No, I do not have a copy of The Sims. No, I did not spend all weekend playing. Really. Don't you believe me?
Added Monday, February 14, 2000
My search for useful info on style sheets (Karaoke?) continues. I'd seen this page before, and am listing it so I won't lose it again: a guide to style sheets that explains (among other things) which tags work in which browsers. I want to use CSS1 in my redesign (RSN) in such a way that will "degrade gracefully"; that is, I want browsers without style sheet support to display my page clearly, and browsers with support to display it better. I also want a sidebar with text wrapping around it, like the big orange one on this page. I must have spent an hour yesterday not getting Netscape to wrap text properly. I wish browser developers could follow the bloody standards properly.
Added Thursday, February 10, 2000
Anthropologist Roman Hristov believes that Romans may have reached the Americas centuries before Columbus, Leif Ericson, or even my favorite, Brendan the Navigator. A terracotta head unearthed near Mexico City in 1933 has been dated to 200 AD, and is believed to be of Roman origin. Update: found the actual New Scientist article via Robot Wisdom.
Added Wednesday, February 9, 2000
I guess that, according to Neale's taxonomy, I'd be a member of the Pitas gang. Pitas is an awesomely easy to use system; much thanks to Andrew for creating it. Also, the recent entries page seems to add a nice sense of community. However, I have to admit that I've considered joining the Pyra gang and giving Blogger a spin. Eventually, I'd like to split off on my own and develop my own weblogging software, partially for the sake of further customizing my weblog, partly to tech myself some new tech with an interesting project. If I ever do, I'd like to play around with other weblogging tools to get ideas. Of course, as long as I've been putting off redesigning this page, I'm not likely to start an even bigger project anytime soon. Anyway, I doubt any flirtation with other blogging tools will shut down this page; they'll just be side projects until (unless) I complete my Evil Master Plan.
Added Wednesday, February 9, 2000
A bunch of monks seem to be up in arms about this article. It seems to use the same logic that caused PHB's to dump all their Unix systems and sysadmins in favor of "easy-to-maintain" Windows NT systems. Which required more licensing fees, pricier hardware, and fatter paychecks to MCSE's once they found out just how "reliable" NT was. Bah.
Added Tuesday, February 8, 2000
Found this absolutely shocking passage in an editorial about the Amadou Diallo shooting:
African-American parents spend lifetimes teaching children to “commit to memory” life-protecting behavior in the presence of police: No back talk; no sudden movements; keep your hands in view. The black child in America not schooled in these survival skills has not been truly parented.
Good grief, do I really live in a country that is so bigoted that a significant portion of its children have to be taught how not to be killed by those who are supposed to be protecting them?
Added Tuesday, February 8, 2000
Roger Ebert has written a thoughtful editorial for ZDNet about how people aren't learning about computers. His point is one of those so-obvious-it's-brilliant ideas: the only way to learn anything useful about computers is by fiddling around with them. I got my first computer (TRS-80 Model I, and yes, I am an old fart as far as computers go) when I was nine or ten; the manual that came with it was primarily a "How to program BASIC" tutorial. I spent most of the afternoon and many days to come reading, typing in programs, and tweaking them. I had no tutor but that book, but I had no fear of hurting anything, no fear of making a fool of myself. Hmm, I thought I had a point, but now I'm not so sure... Wait, it's right in front of me! That's one of my main reasons for creating this web log, whether I realized it before now or not: to recapture that feeling of exploration.
Added Tuesday, February 8, 2000
Jon Katz, writer and media critic, has posted an excerpt from his new book Geeks on Slashdot. Katz has his faults (self-promotion and over-generalization among them), but I do enjoy most of his writings on "geek culture". I'll probably pick this beast up sooner or later.
Added Tuesday, February 8, 2000
When he said, "Bite Me!" I don't think this is what he meant.
Added Tuesday, February 8, 2000
Hollywood.com has announced the winners of their second annual Trailer Awards. The Matrix was the big winner, taking home four out of eight Golden Hitches. Didn't "Drive-In Movie Critic" Joe Bob Briggs award the "Golden Hubcaps" every year? Don't know if that tradition has continued, now that he's host of TNT's "Monstervision".
Added Monday, February 7, 2000
Okay, Neale: "That idiot on wetlog made a serious error of judgement with his pathetic weblog junior high portal. The moron must be a couple of ten-sided die short of a gaming convention if he thinks that an ill-written, unintelligible piece of crap like that is going to even border on witty. Neale must have some major self-esteem issues. He's probably impotent." (Actually, I kinda liked it.)
Added Monday, February 7, 2000
Got a good deal at a computer show yesterday. As a result, I gave riddler, my old Pentium Pro 200 MHz sytem, a motherboardectomy, producing a new K6-2 500 MHz machine named madhatter. (Hopefully, I'll be able to resurrect riddler as an experimental workstation in a few months.) The only tools I needed were an anti-static wrist strap and the Victorinox CyberTool Swiss Army Knife my folks gave me for Christmas. I know the Leatherman is the trendy tool of choice among the geek elite, but I've always been a Victorinox kinda guy. Besides, I like the bit driver with four double-ended bits, and the cool transparent red casing.
Added Sunday, February 6, 2000
Spent the last day or so upgrading my computer, and am just now getting back online, so I don't have any new links of my own. Therefore, I'll steal a couple from Jay. The first is an old Onion story about "business as usual" at Columbine high school. The other is a long rant about High School Hate. Furrfu. I still have issues about high school myself, but this guy... OK, I'll try and steal material from someone else now.
Added Sunday, February 6, 2000
Been following the DVD/DeCSS case? Somebody on /. was wondering what Richard Stallman's take on the situation was. I think that this old essay makes it pretty clear. While I respect Stallman, I don't agree with all of his ideas. However, I do believe, as I'm sure he does, that the flap over DVD encryption is more about controlling access to information than about piracy.
Added Saturday, February 5, 2000
I just realized that if I were in the movie Logan's Run, I would only have two weeks to live. Sobering thought.
Added Friday, February 4, 2000
Looks like Fox and Chris Carter will be creating the show I've been waiting for: The Lone Gunmen (all three of them) from The X-Files may be getting their own show. They seem to be planning on adding a female character to this boys' club; IGN Sci-Fi has nominated the Marita Covarrubias character, but the Suzanne Modeski (sp?) character seems more likely to me. Wish I knew more about the status of another proposed Fox project; haven't heard much about the new Buckaroo Banzai series lately. And, of course, I'm looking forward to taking a look at the new NBC sci-fi series tomorrow night.
Added Friday, February 4, 2000
Listen, I know we're supposed to be boycotting Amazon because of their idiotic "One-click" lawsuit. However, my aunt gave me an Amazon gift certificate for Christmas and I'm not letting free bookage go to waste. In addition, I find Amazon more useful as a book review site than as a shopping site. So, I was curious about whether Professional Style Sheets for HTML and XML was worth picking up. I go to Amazon and do a search on "professional style sheets". My top matches are three tapes of Karaoke music: Bing Crosby, Willie Nelson, and "Hot Country Female Style Music". WTF? Anyway, I eventually found the book under "professional stylesheets" (two words, not three), and decided that it did not meet my needs. But still, Karaoke? Karaoke?
Added Friday, February 4, 2000
Picked up The Moreau Factor, the new SF novel by Jack Chalker, last night. Aside from liking the author's stuff, I knew I had to read this from the first line: When the matter of the flying werewolf first surfaced in Washington, D.C., I never once thought of the dinosaurs. Maybe I'll review this when I finish.
Added Thursday, February 3, 2000
A few comments on weblogging by another blogger. I'm still trying to figure out not only what I'm doing here, and how I want to do it, but why I'm doing this at all. The reasons I can think of at the moment:
- I'm trying to develop the habit of writing something every day.
- I want something on the web I can point to and call my own.
- I'm always telling people about the links I found interesting (this morning, I had to show my boss a cool use of JavaScript), and weblogging seems to be an outgrowth of that behavior.
- I want to get in some practice at web programming and design. (The graphic redesign is coming RSN. Really.)
- I'm not a very social person by nature, but I'd like to change that; there seems to be sort of a community feeling to weblogging that I want to become a part of.
Especially in light of this article, I think that these are all valid reasons to create one's on weblog. With cool free resources like Pitas available, there doesn't seem to be a reason not to weblog if you're so inclined.
Added Thursday, February 3, 2000
A couple of scientists from Kiwi Country claim to have found an explanation for the mysterious phenomenon of ball lightning. Supposedly, lighting strikes create tiny filaments of buring silicon. I've heard so many different bizarre stories about this phenomenon (there are a few in the /. thread where I saw this) that I tend to believe there must be multiple causes which produce similar effects; no one explanation I've seen seems to cover all cases.
Added Thursday, February 3, 2000
Simcoe finds great science articles, especially biological/medical stories. Scientists at Purdue have developed a material from the small intestine of a pig that vastly improves the healing of human tissue. Applying this stuff to a wound seems to provide a framework for natural healing processes, speeding up repairs and reducing or eliminating scarring.
Added Thursday, February 3, 2000
I have mixed feelings on this piece from Salon. As much as I love some of Orson Scott Card's science fiction, especially Ender's Game, I don't care that much for Card himself after hearing him speak at a con several years ago. However, I wish this "journalist" who writes about an interview she did with Card had been a bit more objective than judging him primarily (or so it seems) by how his ideology differs from her own. It reads like once he started disagreeing with her, she started going out of her way to find issues of contention.
Added Wednesday, February 2, 2000
The World Wide Web Consortium, the group that sets (or tries to, anyway) web standards, had adopted XHTML 1.0 as an official recommendation. While, overall, I think of this as a Good Thing, the transition is likely to be painful no matter how gradual. WebMonkey has a basic commentary on the new spec. The biggest changes for me are likely to be putting my tags in lower case, and ading slashes to stand-alone tags.
Added Wednesday, February 2, 2000
Spotted this on both randomWalks and Baylink: A guy who claims to be breaking up traffic jams by simply driving slower. Very interesting, thoughtful article on the way people behave in traffic, and how we might change that behavior.
Added Wednesday, February 2, 2000
I could not read this without imagining Bill Gates with a 1/8 scale clone on his lap: the next consumer release of Windows will be called "Microsoft Windows Millennium Edition" or "Windows Me" for short.
Added Tuesday, February 1, 2000
Moved the remainder of my January entries into the archive. Hopefully, I'll be able to get some graphic design done by the next time my page starts getting long. I've been meaning to spend some quality time with Paint Shop Pro and dress up the page a bit. Besides, since I'll be hosting my graphics on a server where I get logging info, I'll see if anyone is actually reading.
Added Tuesday, February 1, 2000
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