Wednesday, August 21, 2002

Tweaking my blog has become an addiction - I just added the previousDayLink/nextDayLink macros to the top and bottom of the main section of the page, I changed the divider between items, and put a partial border around the day declaration. Now I go to sleep - two hours after I meant to, before I made the mistake of hitting my news aggregator...whoops.
11:46:24 PM p e r m a l i n k trackback [] say something []

Super Audio CDs Rolling Your Way [Slashdot] ooooh... Now, while Slashdot lashes out because SACDs have physical watermarks and can't be played on your computer, ripped into MP3s, etc, etc...and I don't care. Why? 'cos I happen to have SACD capability in my nifty home theater - and they're releasing 22 Rolling Stones albums in SACD format next Tuesday. Gah. I *love* the Stones - my favorite album of all-time is Exile on Main Street by far. I'm quite willing to put up with the music industry's anti-piracy measures in exchange for getting really kickass sounding Stones. =) Call me a sellout, I don't care. =P edit: well, I'm less excited about this now than I was initially. They're re-releasing all Stones albums between 1962 and 1971...which excludes Exile. Damn.

10:29:34 PM p e r m a l i n k trackback [] say something []

Finding a Mover on the Internet [New York Times: Technology] I've been trying to figure out how to get my stuff moved when I move in a week and a half... I started looking online, and actually submitted a form to get estimates. Of course, the estimates I got emailed were way out of wack - I don't have THAT much stuff...I live in a small apartment, for chrissakes. But no matter how much stuff I have, we'd still be talking about $100+ an hour. That's a LOT of money for me. But my dad happened to mention to me that sons of two friends of his moved his stuff when he moved in with his wife a year ago...for only $15 an hour. Sure, they're not insured or anything, but the only at all fragile thing I'm going to have them carry is my TV - and I did manage to lug that in here on my own, so I have every faith that they'll be ok. This is going to be so much more pleasant than moving this all myself...

10:18:58 PM p e r m a l i n k trackback [] say something []

owowow. I've just unlocked Suburbia, the fourth level in Tony Hawk Pro Skater 3. And my god, do my thumbs hurt. This is an astonishing amount of pain - I feel like my right thumb is arthritic, since I end up using the joint to press one button while being able to easily reach another with the tip of the thumb. I need to work out a new system for this. This game is really, really good, by the way. I'd resisted picking it up for a long time... I mean, how much fun could a game about skateboarding really be? The answer - lots. But the constant directional changes and button mashing (and holding the buttons down - that's what makes this more painful than fighting games) REALLY REALLY HURT. Ow. =)

10:11:37 PM p e r m a l i n k trackback [] say something []

I can't believe how much baseball is pissing me off right now. I've gone through nasty spells as a result of being a Red Sox fan, but this season is the final straw. Seriously. They were great for two months - and I mean GREAT. They were actually unlucky, based on their runs scored and runs allowed, but still had the best record in the majors. Since May 31, they've sucked the meat missle. They're just bad - 18-20 since the all-star break, I think. They've got the two best pitchers in the American League, All Stars or former All Stars at closer, shortstop, third-base, center field, left field, and DH. And they CAN'T WIN. It's just too much. I'm tired of investing so much of myself into a baseball team that only disappoints me. The first time I was ever up past midnight was Game 6, '86 series...I was never as devoted to them again, until Game 5 AL Division Series '99 in Cleveland - I was there. The game was tied 8-8 going into the home half of the fourth - so I hadn't really been enjoying it so far. But then out from the bullpen comes Pedro Martinez, who'd pulled a muscle in his back in game 1 and wasn't expected to be able to pitch. Well, all he did was throw 6 innings of no hit ball, and win the game on a three-run home run by Troy O'leary (he hit a grand-slam earlier in the game, both times after an intentional walk to Nomar Garciaparra). That may have been the best I've ever felt in my life. After that, I was hooked. But the last three seasons have gone the same way - good to great start, collapse in the summer. This year's was just the most dramatic and painful yet. Screw it. I'm done.

7:49:28 PM p e r m a l i n k trackback [] say something []

Weird problem I just had - when I viewed my blog, the time/link/comment line for the mammoth entry went through the picture. It placed itself just below the end of the text, though the hard rule at the end of the item was still in the right place. I think I need to play with my item template a bit. ...ok, fixed it. The time/link/comment line was in the same td as the itemText - I took it out of there, and put in a new table row. Now it's all perfect - not that you care, but I do. =)

4:38:49 PM p e r m a l i n k trackback [] say something []

Sure, everyone's posting this, but you've GOT to go read Toby's Political Diary. A play-by-play of yesterday's events at the Bushie ranch... A preview, just to make sure you go there - Rumsfeld:  Mr. President, Sir, they are not actually in Iraq.  They are in an embassy in Berlin.  They’ve taken some hostages.  Also the German police are involved.   Dubya:  That’s great.  I knew those Germans would come around.  Ungrateful European bastards. We gave them their country, right!   Rumsfeld: Uh, Mr. President, the German police are not on our side.  They are trying to take back the Embassy for the Iraqi Government.  Also, Mr. President, I am not sure we need to be attacking embassies anyway.   Dubya:  Why not.  They probably got all that terrorist stuff in there.  Nukes and stuff.

4:33:00 PM p e r m a l i n k trackback [] say something []

Cloned mammoth to be main attraction at wildlife and previously extinct wildlife park [FARK] OK, if they pull this off, I am *so* there.
4:28:05 PM p e r m a l i n k trackback [] say something []

Good news on the space front! Status Center:  8/21/2002; 2:34:46 PM Cloud status: 95% of 40.0MB is free. Thanks to Scott Rosenberg for determining that the 10mb limit was, in fact, NOT what the limit was supposed to be and then fixing it all up for us!
2:41:52 PM p e r m a l i n k trackback [] say something []

Joe Conason's Journal. The night the lights went on in Georgia: Voters wake up, and kick Bob Barr and Cynthia McKinney to the curb. [Salon Headlines] If I remember correctly, there's one area that I've actually liked Bob Barr - crypto. Assuming my memory is not failing me, Barr is one of the few gun-nuts to realize that hard crypto rights are the next logical step for them to take. I'm far from being a gun-nut - in fact, I believe that a strict reading of the Second Amendment bans guns from everyone but the National Guard, the Michigan Militia, and maybe the police - are they an organized militia? But by the standard reading of the 'right to bear arms', the average individual has the right to own a weapon with which to defend themselves and their families. Now remember that the government has, in the past, legislated against crypto and handled it in import/export rules as...weaponry. So the Second Amendment seems to suggest that we, as American citizens, have the right to bear crypto. Hmm... Anyway, I'm not sad to see Barr go. He was just too frickin' loonie to survive - Bob 'Stealth Bomber' Dornan-syndrome. The Democrats self-select to avoid that kind of thing...sure, the rare radical will slip through, but Dems are too afraid of losing elections to put strong, left-wing partisans up for election in districts where the Dems would win no matter who the candidate was - which Republicans have a knack for NOT doing. In fact, their strong, right-wing partisans creep up into leadership (*cough*Tom the Exterminator*cough*). Just another thought from an irritated leftist from Massachusetts...where I only get one race of large-scale this year that actually is being contested: governor. My current representative is Ed Markey, though I'm being redistricted to Barney Frank, and before it even becomes an issue I'm moving back to Marty Meehan, where I've been the last three congressional elections. Phew. Oh, and John Kerry's running for the Senate unopposed by Republicans. And yet every Democrat candidate for the governorship is STILL losing to Mitt freakin' Romney. Argh.

2:34:43 PM p e r m a l i n k trackback [] say something []

Romney, in break with Democrats, calls for death penalty. WBZ Aug 21 2002 5:36AM ET [Moreover - Boston news] ARRRRRGGGH. Now I feel the need to keep this man from getting elected even more than I did already. The fact that Massachusetts has no death penalty is something I am extremely proud of. I've decided that I will not pay taxes to a state that will use that money to kill - I'd like to generalize this and not pay taxes to a federal government that kills, but I haven't found a country that's got a perfect record on this. Anyway - the death penalty is a horrible, horrible thing. It came up for a vote in the Mass. legislature a few years back after a disgusting kidnapping/murder case, and was voted down by a tiny margin...if we get a governor who supports the death penalty, keeping it away from Massachusetts gets all the harder. Maybe I do need to just move to Vermont...

11:44:22 AM p e r m a l i n k trackback [] say something []

Call It the U.S. Open Source. Venus Williams, Serena Williams, Jennifer Capriati, Andre Agassi, Lleyton Hewitt and Gustavo Kuerten will be dominating the attention, but Linux's Tux the Penguin will be running the show at the prestigious U.S. Open tennis tournament. Michelle Delio reports from New York. [Wired News] They'll be using Linux-based IBM laptops to report scores from courtside, to the Internet, storage, even the giant scoreboards. That's cool, but what's REALLY cool is a quote from the IBM program manager of Worldwide Sponsorship Marketing: "We're confident that the penguin is completely ready for prime time." IBM does really like the penguin imagery, don't they?

11:38:41 AM p e r m a l i n k trackback [] say something []

Iraq 'explains' Abu Nidal death [BBC World] Iraq gives details of guerrilla's 'suicide' [BBC World] You know you're untrusworthy when the BBC puts quotes around 'explains' and 'suicide'. The funny thing is that Iraq would actually have quite a lot to gain by claiming that Abu Nidal was murdered - they could spin it as Bad Israeli or Bad American anti-terrorist forces sneaking into Iraq and murdering a dying man, blah blah. Some people in the Middle East might even believe it (even though the most likely killer of Abu Nidal would be another Palestinian... Arafat and his crew HATE Nidal). I'm willing to take Iraq's story at face value here...

11:35:18 AM p e r m a l i n k trackback [] say something []

My Other Keyboard is a Mouse. Microsoft makes a relatively unknown, huge monstrosity of hardware, that's actually kind of cool.  Moreover, it seems to have extra uses beyond the manufacturer's specifications. [kuro5hin.org] The article is about Microsoft's Strategic Commander, a weird contraption that has 11 keys and a switch on something shaped kind of like a mouse, with swivel and plane control as well. The keys and switch combine to give you 72 possible combinations - shift keys and all that. Everything's programmable, with multiple profiles you can switch between easily...the writer of the article talks about how he doesn't use a keyboard anymore - his right hand is his mouse hand, his left hand is his typing hand, on the Strategic Commander. I've wanted one of these for a long time...I've always been a big fan of lots of buttons on the mouse that I can program to do lots of stuff. =) Save me the effort of moving my hands? I'm in. I think I'll pick one of these up once I've got my workspace set up at the new apartment...

11:30:26 AM p e r m a l i n k trackback [] say something []

Alright - just finished Levy's blog article. As is often the case with Steven Levy, it's an intelligent, well thought out article. I've been a fan of his since my dad reccomended Levy's Hackers, a wonderful acount of three early hacker communities (the earliest hackers at MIT in the '60s, Lee Felsenstein and the Homebrew Computer Club of Northern California in the '70s, and the first computer game companies of the early '80s, focusing mainly on what's now Sierra On-Line...oh yeah, and a bit about Richard Stallman as the supposed last of the true hackers in the early '80s). Whenever I get bored with comptuers and feel like I'd rather be doing something more tangible, I re-read this book and have a sudden urge to code a glider gun in Life. =) Anyway - I'm a Levy fan, though I far prefer his in-depth books to his shorter magazine articles. This was a good summary of blogging history and why we blog. The highlights for me were: A tidbit in Levy's blog that he started for the article, talking about someone whom he interviewed for the article blogging about being interviewed by Newsweek...Levy says "Hope Time doesn't read this and get any ideas." - which is a good point, actually. The immediacy and real-timeness of blogging makes it great for getting information out quickly, but if you're blogging bits and pieces of a bigger story or idea along the way, it's possible that someone else will read your blog and steal your idea. The second thing that jumped out at me was a section at the end, talking about a high schooler who had started a blog, got his 25 or so readers, and was happy - until his mother found his blog, and read about the illicit activities (drinking, drugs, partying) that he documented in his blog. Said high schooler is now worried that he's going to have to self-censor in his blog. This is something that causes problems for me, too...not so much in terms of personal dirt that could come back at me (while there are a few things I've done in my life that I don't want certain people to be able to find about, I have absolutely no desire to share those things with, well, anybody, so I'm safe. heh) but more in terms of bitching about work. I work for a Major Tech Corporation, as you can tell from a mention here or there in the blog, and by the email address whenever I post a comment. (I really need to start using alternate email addresses rather than my work one - someday I *am* going to leave and getting all my mail forwarded around will be hell. anyway...) I've got some problems with the way this corporation operates - not in an Enron/WorldCom sense, but I don't like our CEO very much and I don't like how upper management treats us employees. I'd like to blog about it - it's something that's really bothering me that I need to get off my chest, and it's information that I think should be out in the public eye, though not so critical that mainstream media would care. I don't blog about it because I'm afraid of it ending up getting me in trouble...there've been a few bloggers who've lost their jobs because of blogging...I have no desire to be one. Blogging, unlike much of the rest of the Internet, isn't about anonymity, and that can make things more complicated.

10:15:46 AM p e r m a l i n k trackback [] say something []

Woke up late this morning - real late, actually, about 15 minutes ago. I'm sitting here eating some cereal and reading Newsweek - when I come across Stephen Levy's blog article. Surprised me...I forgot about it. Anyway, waking up now. I woke up at 7 but didn't stop dreaming until 9:30. Really, really weird...
9:46:41 AM p e r m a l i n k trackback [] say something []