Hunting The Muse

Calling Senator Wyden

So I just called my senator for the first time to express concerns.

Independent Judiciary: The Nominees This link describes Miguel Estrada, a current nominee to the DC appeals court. I also found an opinion article.

What strikes me is the denial of the request by the Judiciary Committee to see Estrada's opinions and briefs while at the Solicitor General's office. Another article that I can't find right now said that these requests have been normally granted in the past.

So it appears that the Bush administration is trying to keep this justice's background secret and not even allow Congress to know what they're voting on. The republican majority will vote for him anyway. I think this is grounds for a filibuster so I called Senator Ron Wyden and told him so.

Eloquence isn't enough

Eloquence isn't enough - This is a fine, noble reason to wage war against Iraq. It would have been a fine reason two decades ago, which is when Saddam destroyed those villages and the United States looked the other way because our bone of contention back then was with Iran. It would be a fine reason to topple other governments around the world that torture their own citizens and do other despicable things. Is the Bush administration prepared to enforce the no-torturing-children rule by force everywhere? And what happens if Saddam decides to meet all our demands regarding weapons and inspections? Is he then free to torture children and pour acid on innocent citizens without fear of the United States?

Man, I would have loved to see this kind of thinking from the "Democratic Response".

Bloggone

Yeah, I fell off the world again for blogging. I flew to Colorado for a reunion of my old a cappella singing group, and since then have been swamped with new projects and completing old ones. Soon I'll be porting my old blog and then we'll be moving again.

Flibblety-Flobblety

I'm liking Kung-Log more and more. This one is 1.2 and I have the brushed metal look, plus it's partially transparent. Very pretty.

New Kung-Log

I'm liking Kung-Log. I have a couple of feature requests. First, I'd like Tab to move between fields. Or it should at least be configurable. Second, there should be settings for the preferred checkbox state. Also, shift-command-I no longer puts in the iTunes track. And, I'd like trackback to be implemented somehow, even though I'm not sure what I'm asking here.

Junk, Junk not

Heh... I just got a junk email whose subject was "Tired of deleting junk mail?" And OS X Mail's intercepted it and correctly categorized it as junk mail, so I didn't actually have to delete it. That strikes me as funny.

Metaphorishness

American Open Technology Consortium It's a battle of understandings. And understandings are framed by conceptual metaphors. We use them all the time without being the least bit aware of it. We talk about time in terms of money (save, waste, spend, gain, lose) and life in terms of travel (arrive, depart, speed up, slow down, get stuck), without realizing that we're speaking about one thing in terms of something quite different. As the cognitive linguists will tell you, this is not a bad thing. In fact, it's very much the way our minds work.

But if we want to change minds, we need to pay attention to exactly these kinds of details.

This is a great quote. It's in the context of a copyright article, but it holds true for several other concepts as well, and I want to think about it a lot.

Trackback Synopses

Ben Hammersley.com: Trackback in the saddle again This is a good synopsis of all the different trackback technologies out there right now.

Thurgood Marshall -> Clarence Thomas

Here's a bit more linkage on the Marshall->Thomas lineage in the Supreme Court.

Thurgood Marshall Biography, a short description. Here is a video clip (Quicktime) of Marshall announcing his retirement. After the Anita Hill Senate Confirmation hearings, Clarence Thomas gave a stunning final statement (quicktime video). And here's a synopsis of the whole affair.

I don't know much about his voting record yet, but here is an editorial that makes reference to some of his votes.

Turn To The Right!

I'm learning about the Supreme Court today.

Here are the current Justices:

• William H. Rehnquist. Before being appointed by President Nixon, he was active in Republican politics. One of two appointees in 1971, the other belonging to Lewis F. Powell. Rehnquist is a member of the conservative bloc, and also replaced a conservative, John M. Harlan, who nonetheless often sided with the liberal majority on civil rights cases.
• John Paul Stevens. Originally seen as a moderate, independent justice when appointed by President Ford, he has come to be seen as a very liberal justice in more recent years. Although, this perception may be accentuated by the fact that many of his colleagues were replaced by much more conservative Justices. Stevens is not one for forging consensus and often authors his own opinions. Liberal groups that were originally opposed to his appointment have since become his biggest supporters. Justice Stevens replaced William O. Douglas, a much more activist Justice with a strong human rights interest.
• Sandra Day O'Connor. Appointed by Reagan, she was a Republican State Senator for Arizona earlier in her career. While not activist, she is not a member of the conservative bloc either. With some conservative tendencies aside from sexual discrimination cases, she is often a swing vote. She replaced another centrist, Potter Stewart, who nonetheless would probably have been seen as a liberal on today's court.
• Antonin Scalia. Appointed by Reagan, he filled the opening left by Warren E. Burger when Rehnquist replaced the retiring Burger as Chief Justice. Scalia is outspokenly conservative, a strict constructionist, defers to states rights, and refuses to judge whether a law is an unwise or bad law - only whether it is constitutional. His legal reasoning has been criticized as inconsistent when consistency would lead to an opinion misaligned with the political right. His predecessor Burger was a centrist and not a member of the conservative bloc.
• Anthony McLeod Kennedy. Appointed by Reagan after the unsuccessful nominations of Robert Bork and Douglas Ginsburg. Originally seen as conservative, he has come to be seen as a centrist, and as seen as part of the "centrist bloc", similar to O'Connor. However, his style is significantly more conservative than previous Court generations. He replaced another then-centrist, Lewis F. Powell, Jr., who was appointed the same year as Rehnquist (1971), replacing Hugo L. Black, who was a very liberal/activist Justice.
• David Hacket Souter. His appointment by President Bush was intended to strengthen the conservative bloc. However, he ended up being a key swing vote, aligned with the centrist bloc of O'Connor and Kennedy. His appointment is seen as a miscalculation by President Bush, and his tendencies are to not undo the precedents set by the liberal courts before him. He replaced William Brennan, who was seen as a liberal.
• Clarence Thomas. His appointment by President Bush led to what is probably the widest ideological swing from one appointment in recent history. Active in Republican politics earlier in his career, including an effort to mute federal affirmative action guidelines, he replaced Thurgood Marshall, a liberal activist black justice who was extremely active in civil rights. Thomas has become part of the court's conservative bloc with Scalia and Rehnquist. The confirmation vote was extremely close due to allegations he sexually harrassed a coworker, and the controvery surrounding the 98% male Senate voting on sexual harrassment led to a strong movement of women congressional candidates in later years.
• Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Appointed by President Clinton, her career was forged mostly on several important sex discriminations cases that she argued before the Supreme Court. Seen as a liberal, she nonetheless expresses some conservative views and aligns herself with the belief that the Court should not overturn bad laws; only unconstitutional laws. She succeeded Byron Raymond White, who was a pro-civil-rights Justice but conservative otherwise. Ginsburg's appointment is seen as a moderate shift to the left overall.
• Stephen Breyer. Appointed by President Clinton, he replaced Harry Blackmun, who was originally seen as conservative but came to be seen as one of the most activist libertarian Justices after the abortion cases of 1973. Breyer is a financial and antitrust expert and is seen as an "intellectual counterweight" to Scalia. While supported strongly by Democrats, his was not a controversial appointment.

Interesting statistics:

• Nixon(R) had three appointees with a four-year term, one of which is still active.
• Ford(R) has one appointee in four years.
• Carter(D) had zero appointees in four years.
• Regan(R) had three appointees in eight years.
• Bush(R) had two appointees in four years.
• Clinton(D) had two appointees in eight years.

That seems pretty skewed. For the last seven justices, democrats and republicans have been in power twelve years apiece, and yet (R) has five justices, (D) has two. Why?

Also you can see where the largest shifts in judicial belief were.

• Black->Powell->Kennedy was a clear move from liberal to centrist.
• Burger->Scalia was a clear move from centrist to conservative.
• Brennan->Souter was a move from liberal to centrist, while Bush's intention was for the shift to be more dramatic.
• Marshall->Thomas was about as dramatic a shift as could be imagined. A similarly dramatic shift in the opposite direction seems impossible.
• White->Ginsburg is a shift from moderate right to moderate left.
• Blackmun->Breyer is a shift from activist left to moderate left.

In terms of collective philosophy, Clinton's appointments probably actually resulted in a slight shift to the right, given how activist Blackmun was. However, there are now two left-leaning justices where there was one very activist judge, so it's actually a net shift to the left.

President Bush's appointments were by far the most aggressive in intent. I wonder if that is hereditary. One can also see the effect of 12 years of uninterrupted power by one party - both Justices he replaced were liberals, both resigning earlier in his term. Both were probably trying to outwait a Republican administration.

This is all relevant when trying to predict how the Supreme Court justices will act in future years - the general expectation is that at least one Justice will retire during this four-year term of President Bush.

While O'Connor is seen as a centrist, it's known that she was outspoken about not wanting to retire while Clinton was in office, due to her Republican history. Her politics can be seen as risk of another shift to the right.

Scalia has expressed dissatisfaction with being a Justice, due to not enough decisions going his way, but would probably not leave while a Democrat is in office. He is probably going to wait out a couple more court shifts to see if the court makeup changes to something more to his liking.

One has to wonder why Stevens did not retire while Clinton was in office. If Stevens retires while Bush is in office, we could see another dramatic ideological shift for the Court.

Rehnquist is seen as a likely retiree while Bush is in office. There's an opportunity for the Court to move slightly to the left if Bush is unable to appoint someone as strongly conservative as Rehnquist.

Finally, it is rumored that Ruth Bader Ginsburg is in poor health. This opens up another possibility for a shift to the right.

Thomas, Kennedy, Souter, and Breyer are all young and will probably be part of the Court for many years to come.

Sources: Supreme Court date chart, Rippon justice chart

iBookerie

This has got to be the coolest ibook moment I've had in weeks. I have a 1280x1024 ibook display now on an external monitor. Web browsers side by side. It's just hooray wonderful. I unhook my monitor and everything show up back on my small screen. I plug it back in and it shows up on my big monitor. If I have two applications split on two screens and unhook my monitor, then they just show up both on my small screen. It's so cool!

Tamara Is Behind Me

I am showing this blog software to Tamara.

Testing From Kung-Log

Now, this is cool - an entry from Kung-Log. The reason I like this is because I have a little Cocoa app I can blog from. Seems pretty reliable, too. It needs to be able to recognize my blog settings, though... like whether I want to convert line breaks or not. But it might soon be open-sourced which might mean I might be able to add features on it through project builder too! Hooray!

My First Post

Hello, this is my first blog post. I can write and write and write here, and make it be a big teaser, but if it's a really long post, I can also continue it by stopping here (at which point an automatic link will show up...) And I can then continue it here! Very cool. Now I just need to update the graphics.

Where's the Dissent? (2)

Where's the Dissent? The administration has participated in a very effective news management campaign since the days after the September 11 attacks ... People who raised their voice even a small bit were immediately brought under fire either by members of the network of conservative voices or by the White House itself. That has had a serious chilling tone on journalistic criticism.

I know, two entries on the same article, but man. Where do we find the source of creditable protest?

Where's the Dissent? (1)

Where's the Dissent? What would they have to do to get more media coverage?

There needs to be some voice of dissent coming out of Congress. It’s the way the media works in these matters. Protesters are taken more seriously when there are public officials who speak for them, and the media tend to go from that development in a story to find more grass-roots opinion to include in a story.

Well.... that's just not right. What of the journalists that go against the mainstream to actually report things that aren't given an implicit go-ahead by a member of Congress? That used to be respected. Now they're all afraid they'll be discredited as a loony liberal or something? Where's the spine? Where's the desire to report and reflect what's actually going on in America?

PCWorld.com - Credit Card-Size Hard

PCWorld.com - Credit Card-Size Hard Drive Can Hold 5GB I want. I want. Hope it works on OS X.

Pattern: Someone does something.

Pattern:

Someone does something. It might be something boring, that only they do, that other people can see. A novelty.

Someone realizes that thing would be a lot more valuable if everyone was doing it and could connect to each other. So they set up a centralized server to aggregate all these someones doing somethings. Lots of people join up and do these somethings together. A movement.

Someone sees the service and decides they want to compete. They start another similar service. They attract some new audience and some of the other service's audience. The movement grows and fractures.

Someone allows every person to set up that service for themselves, for cost.

Someone allows every person to set up that service for themselves, for free.

For blogging, I guess it goes - Justin, Blogger, Livejournal and others, Movable Type, B2/snipsnap.

Checking out movable type -

Checking out movable type - it seems to do just about everything I want. I haven't figured out how to have different XML listings for different categories yet, but I think it should be possible.

Creepy Ads

So I just went to the Sports Page of msnbc.com, and I was given a download window - downloading ADSAdClient31.dll . You have chosen to download a file of type: "Windows DLL" [text/html content-length: 69] from http://rad.msn.com/

Creeps. Why are the selling ad space that automatically downloads software that probably allows running even more intrusive ads?

Instablog on OS X

Very nice. I successfully got my Instablog system working with vim and perl on OS X. posting from it now.

Basically I open up a terminal, type "blog", and a vi document comes up. When I save, it's blogged. I can come back and vi it again to edit it. It uses Net::Blogger.pm .

Jaguar CPAN

To install more perl libraries on Jaguar 10.2.3 using CPAN:

Do not use the default installed version of CPAN because it will try and force you to upgrade to perl 5.8.0, which will mess up the rest of the computer.

Instead, go to cpan.org, and download the most up-to-date version of CPAN - currently 1.63. Download the complete package (cpanxxx.tar.gz), not just CPAN.pm. Go through the normal perl install routine (perl Makefile.pl, make, sudo make install).

Then you can start up CPAN and start installing new perl modules to your heart's content. I installed Net::Blogger last night. Yay me.

No more flying?

I might have lost a little bit of myself last night. For a long time, I've had these really wonderful recurring dreams that I could walk on air, a few inches above the ground. And then I could glide, and then I could swoop a little bit. Always showing people around me, showing that we had a new stage of evolution coming, that everyone could do it, they just had to figure out how to unlock it inside themselves, and that we were close to being able to do so. And it was so fun. I could also jump high, too - not like superman high, but I could jump over tables and stuff.

Tonight I had a dream that I was in a conference room with a few people. I made a date with a lady (slender, red hair, light blue eyes, narrow face), who then left the room. Then I started floating and showing people. But then I realized, as one of the guys there was a bit envious. I went up to him and said, "It's okay. It turns out that when I'm able to do this, it really just means I'm dreaming." Then I embraced him, and deliberately shook myself awake. :-(

That makes me sad. Did I give up some sort of idealism? I don't want to. I really like the flying.

Lessig on Eldred

Lawrence Lessig writes more about the supreme court decision. The comments are interesting, too.

Prisons

Human Rights Watch World Report 2003: United States: United States About 25 percent of state prisoners and 57 percent of federal inmates were convicted of a drug crime. Of those prisoners, 58 percent have no history of violence or high level of drug dealing activity.

This is just astounding to me. I often think about what I would do if I were president. The first priority in my mind would be to address state-sponsored torture, which in my mind would be prison rape. Second priority would be to reduce prison congestion by reviewing all cases of prisoners whose only crimes are nonviolent crimes against themselves.

But I had no idea that the percentages were THAT HIGH. 14.5% of state prisoners, and A THIRD of federal prisoners are those guilty of non-violent crimes against the self. How many of them have been raped? While the government looked the other way?

Anyone who defends the threat of prison rape as effective deterrence is just flat-out evil.

Human Rights Watch

Human Rights Watch - not much to comment on here, just something else I'm glad I'm reading.

Safari bookmarklets

Cool, I got the blogger bookmarklet to work with Safari.

Marketing and Filtering

I was reading some comments about an essay (linked to from the comments), written by Arnold Kling. It's about Creative Commons. The essay's opinion is about how its existence solves no real problem in the inherent quality of available art. (To which I say, well, DUH... that wasn't its aim!) But a thought occurred to me:

You know, marketing means massively describing and displaying content to a large amount of folks in hopes it will stick.

Filtering means that a consumer makes his desire reach far and wide to pluck up and find only the stuff that he REALLY wants.

Often times filtering and marketing are described as converse.

Filtering means that you have to really explicitly detail your criteria so you won't get flooded. (Tangent: Isn't there something about that that just missed the point? It reduces exposure to pleasant surprises.)

But filtering means that the works you'd eventually find would have to first be exposed to your searching/filtering system. Which means that the creator has to put a lot of work into describing their work really specifically, or in such a way that it will match to a wide variety of searchers.

Which brings us back to marketing.

You know, there's some cool elements to the whole approach, but isn't it a little bit circular, too?

Create, Describe, Introduce, Sell. Traditional marketing comprises the middle two steps. The secret isn't just to cut out the manual effort of "Introduce", but also the manual effort of "Describe".

Heretofore Wheretofore and Everywheretofore

I tried reading the opinions supplied by the supreme court. I care about the issues but I'm glad I'm not a lawyer.

Lessig breaks the news

Lawrence Lessig announces that the supreme court decided against eldred in the copyright case. This is very depressing. There's of course more opportunity for people get motivated to fight against future extensions, but it doesn't change the fact that it's a complicated issue and that congress is tricky and could slip things in to other bills. Lessig is taking it really hard, too. :(

Deimos Falling

I'm done playing Deimos Rising. I can get through the first level without taking damage. I can get through the first four without losing a life. I can get through the first five at 100% ground accuracy. I can get up to nine lives regularly. I have reached Yucatan Rift. The game bores me now and it's too tedious to go further.

Plantraco Desktop Rover

Plantraco Desktop Rover tracked micro vehicle explorer More hilarious toys!

Scared Straight

A Giant Lava Lamp See, you don't need to get high.

iBook Spanning

Erweiterter Desktop muahahahaha. Pete?

Mid-Night projects

So I'm staying up way too late, but I got two projects done and I also have finally launched the beginnings of my piano prelude project. It's to collaborate with an artist to create a collection of prelude/painting pairs for display or sale. I'm deep into "Incubate" mode now, really investigating to see whether this project will work. It would me finding an artist whose work I feel a kinship with, who also feels a kinship with my music... which, when put together, might be a tall order! But it feels good to follow through with this idea.

cuboro - I want

cuboro - oh, I want this. What fun.

My ibook is possessed

My ibook is possessed recently. Earlier I closed my lid to take it into the other room, and when I opened it back up, all of my applications had been closed.

Just now it froze trying to close Mozilla. I closed the lid, nothing. I tried all the key combos, nothing. I held down the power button until it turned off. Screen went dark. I closed the lid. Then I noticed it was breathing. I opened the lid, and Mozilla was there again, and it closed, and I'm right back where I was, on the desktop, with all my other applications open just like they were before Mozilla froze.

Plus I'm having all sorts of crazy file type weirdness.

I'm going to bed.

Eczema on Alias

Alias had an advertisement for a drug.

So, that eczema-medication's most common side effect is "a feeling of warm foreboding". That is hilariously creepy. And that they meant that as REASSURANCE!

SMBmeta NOT Samba

SMBmeta Introduction - I ignored this at first because (judging from the title) I thought it was about Samba. But it's actually a way for small businesses to describe themselves through XML. More information at the about page.

MozBlog just shy

Man, MozBlog just almost works. And not quite, not really at all. I haven't found that real bit of blog integration I'm craving. I want. Urgh.

Back On Track sorta

Finally getting back on track with work. After the holidays it made it really difficult to get back in the swing of things in terms of putting in my freelancing hours. Last year since starting work I put in an average of 18 hours per week - I really would like to raise that average this year - nothing insane, but I want to increase my bandwidth and efficiency without increasing my stress level.

Heard from one of the developers of snipsnap today. He read my earlier blog entry and asked for more feedback. It's always nice when that happens. It sounds like they are doing some cool stuff there - as I get back into Java this year, I might get more involved.

First I have to finish a couple of deadlines. :) I need to get a couple of my piano preludes digitized to send off to some artists I might collaborate with. And I need to upgrade my blog. Then I'll really be cooking with gas.

Scorpio Woman

"I'm a Scorpio woman. All I respond to is sex and candy." - Anonymous, after I tried to bribe her.

Decentralized RSS Syndication

Two Steps to Decentralized RSS Syndication

What is the need for Decentralized RSS Syndication? Well, first let's define some terms.

RSS is a way to quickly sling around headlines and summaries (and sometimes full content) of articles that other people write. If I have an article I write on my site, then I can make an RSS (Rich Site Summary) file of it that other people and programs can subscribe to. So they'll automatically notice when I write.

Syndication is republishing someone else's content.

Decentralized means everyone collaborates and does it and it grows virally.

It's something of a holy grail for DIY journalism.

Step One - Subscribed Re-publishing: TrackFrom

In the past I'd manually go to another person's blog, decide I liked the content, and blog (republish) a link to it on mine. Subscribing has been problematic. It might mean I'd get a blog entry through email but it's still coming to me.

There are two other existing options. I could write a scraper, but that's rude and bandwidth-intensive. A more elegant solution has been creating a trackback url to my blog and then asking other people to trackback my blog when they post. But that relies on them doing it.

So instead what should exist is a way to ping someone's blog, automatically giving them my trackback url, having their blog system note it down, and then whenenever the person blogs to that blog, it will automatically trackback mine.

This could be an approvable action, and could exist for only certain subcategories, by someone publicizing their "subscribe" trackfrom link. Or it could be in a link header.

Step Two - Filtering

People could choose for the blogged that is tracked to to be private. A tool could be written for the person to quickly review all the links and then publish them to a real live blog, perhaps interspersed with their own entries.

The filtering would be only to get rid of duplicates or entries thought to be irrelevant.

Both of these put together would be a way to fully automate dynamic DIY decentralized journalism.

OS X corrupted plist

Something pretty annoying happened today with my iBook. Was downloading something that must have been corrupted. Stuffit never quit trying to unstuff it, something got larger and larger, I ran out of disk space, which means I ran out of memory, and my software couldn't quit properly.

Well I guess when the software quits it needs to be able to write its configuration data BACK to disk for reasons I can't fathom, because when I quit my applications and killed the processes and restarted my apps, all their configuration data was gone. No bookmarks in Mozilla, no preferences in iTunes, and Mail.app didn't recognize all the folders I had set up for it before, which for a while had me under the impression that all my mail had been deleted.

That wasn't fun. It doesn't sound like there was a good explanation for the problems manifesting that way, either. I'm open to hearing how I'm wrong.

Aren't Bushes Clones Too?

Show me the goods - This is a brilliantly playful article that I love. Iraqi clones! Oh no!

SnipSnap Gander

SnipSnap is a pretty cool blogging system. It's a blog/wiki combination. You can blog, but then anywhere you blog you can put a word into brackets if you want a wiki about that topic, like about [Beethoven]. Then when you (or anyone) clicks on that link, they can view a new page that is editable by anyone. Within that wiki you can make new wikis just by putting more words in [brackets], which the system understands as a new entry to a wiki.

But the wiki features itself aren't that advanced yet - no snazzy revision diffs - and the blogging system is inferior to most other blogging systems. Really it's just the integration it has going for it right now. Pretty neat but I'd rather figure out how to get a wiki system integrated into another blogging system.

Still gotta find out the most advanced wiki system. twiki is in there but it's perl and it seems slow.

Safari Tweaks

Journal of Twirlip of the Mists (615030) - A way to have a more bleeding-edge version of Safari.

This might just be the first time I have ever invoked the phrase "Bleeding Edge" non-ironically.

Footsieball

Salon.com News | Football: America's favorite homoerotic sport - "Hey. If there's a gay player on my team, and he scores a touchdown? I'm gonna go up to him and give him a hug and smack his ass just like any other player, because dammit, HE SCORED A TOUCHDOWN!" - Well, no one said that, but it's a quote I'd LIKE to hear someone say.

Ultra Efficient Solar

NEWS - Ultra Efficient Solar Cells On The Way - I barely understand this but it sounds like good news.

Blogging in Safari

Blogging in Safari. It's a bit strange... but fast. I think it's premature to use as my browser, though. My own blog doesn't even render right. Then again, my blog might not be standards-compliant.

Lifli Software

::Lifli Software:: Here's an OS X blog client that MIGHT work for blogger, but it looks like it is the only hope. I'll check it again in two weeks.

Fink OS X X11

Fink - Running X11 - Installing XFree86 - instructions on how to install Apple's new X11 package with Fink.

Kung Loggerie

chaotic intransient prose bursts - I tried to give b2 a chance, I really did. But it just requires a bit too much programming - I want to write. So I'll be investigating movable type soon, and then probably using this kick-ass os x client to blog to it.

Blog Ficklery

Well, in addition to the blog servers I'm checking out, I'm also trying out various blog clients. Right now I'm blogging from mozblog, which has progressed. Unfortunately it still doesn't handle edit recent posts very well. I can't find one that does. BlogApp doesn't work, BlogScript doesn't work... sigh.

Apple Envy

I think I have my first case of apple envy today. Just sorta blah after the announcements today. I guess my shiny new iBook isn't so shiny new anymore. Oh well.

It's not major blahs. Probably about the same level of blahs as when the broncos would lose a playoff game. You know, just grumbly blahs.

No layoffs here!

Salon.com | Joe Conason's Journal Meanwhile, the administration has ordered the Labor Department to stop reporting mass layoffs.

Big Geekerie

I've been a complete geek in these last few blog entries. I'll be back to normal soon, I promise. Just powering through my todo list.

b2 gander

b2 - a classy weblog tool - this is the blog system I took a look at tonight. It's on my private site right now and so far I really like it. Full feature set, gpl. php and mysql. I'll also try out movable type but it seems to me that this might actually be superior.

I wonder if it can have separate rss files for each category.

It has both trackback and pingback. Oh, I found out about pingback. Does the same thing as trackback, just using a slightly different method.

Trackback Grokkery

Hmm... I just grokked one thing about trackback.

I could have a blog named "friends". And it would have a trackback url, which is like a secret url. Meaning, humans don't click it, other blog systems do.

And I could give that "friends" trackback url to all of my friends that have blogs.

So, if they wanted, whenever they blogged to their own blogs, (if they were running a blogsystem that knew about trackback), they could also choose for their system to hit/activate/ping my "friends" trackback url at the same time.

The end result? Well, I'd have a "friends" blog that would automatically blog an update whenever my friends updated their own blogs. It would excerpt their post. I mean, normally I do that anyway, manually, when I notice a friend says something interesting. But this way it's automatic.

Now, what's really the extension of this is that I could do this on a per-post basis. Have a trackback url for each post, and let people refer to it when they blog something of their own that refers to it. It's clearer now that that is described as an extension.

Okay, got it.

Barber's Adagio

The original string quartet version of Barber's Adagio For Strings is so much better than the supersized string chorale version. Kronos Quartet has a recording of it.

TrackBack up a bit please?

TrackBack Development So, I'm trying to learn about TrackBack and PingBack. I was about ready to understand it, but then they had to spring these other things on me like TrackForward and TrackBackAndForth. Jerks. Anyway, what I'm missing is a good high-level technical description. I've got the high-level "It lets you see who links to you!" and the low-level "just put a trackback client together with a trackback server and click the trackback ping url from the source on the client to the server and the client tracks the server which pings the client but please use post and not get!" but (cough) I still don't know what the hell is going on. Probably because I've thought too hard about other things today.

I guess what I want to know is how to use it. If I have a blog with trackback links at the bottom of every entry, does that mean I'll know about every blog linking to me, or just the ones that bother to jump through hoops?

Ah, I'm being lazy; I'll study it more another time. Irrelevant if I'm using blogger anyway, I suspect.

KILLER DONKEYS!

So. Erm, evidently, every year, more people are killed by donkeys than by airplane crashes.

No, don't ask me for my source. But gosh.

Kelso's Journal

Kelso's Journal - You know, all this blog stuff I'm doing, and I never hear about LiveJournal. Seems like the two crowds just don't mix. I go to a random LJ today and run into this. Oof. Poor gal. :(

iPoddery

Making progress on my iPod project. I had five categories:

1. music I've never heard (or rated)
2. music I've heard once and not rated (to form opinions on)
3. music I've rated but not listened to (to listen to and make sure)
4. music I've heard many times and not rated (overdue for rating)
5. music I've rated

#3 was easy to get past since there were only a couple of examples. #4 was harder since I had over eight hours of music in that category, but it's finally all rated.

So now my system is easy. If I listen to a tune more than once (recently) and it's not rated, then it's removed from my iPod and shows up in a special iTunes playlist for my attention. I rate it and then it goes back into my iPod if it's three stars or above.

So I can either choose to listen randomly, or to only new music, or to music that I'll have to rate soon if I have the attention span to be judgemental.

Right now half the songs on my iPod are three stars or above, and the other half are unrated. The 5gb iPod is full.

Doesn't that make it fall OUT?

So, I had a dream I went to a hair salon yesterday and they tried to push me on a plutonium hair growth lotion.

iApps for Pay?

Slashdot | Apple To Charge for Some iApps Oh, ugh.

I dreamed about this chick

megnut.com - a weblog by meg hourihan One of the highlights of Christmas vacation was playing Grand Theft Auto: Vice City on my brother's PlayStation. I didn't think I liked video games, especially the horribly violent kinds like GTA. But it was so fun! It was like being a character in The Godfather or some Guy Ritchie movie. I was stealing motorcycles and punching cops and doing all sorts of other nefarious things I would never ever do in real life.

Little Things Overwhelm, film at 11.

Today was just an exhausting day. I really do feel like I was doing productive things all day today, I just can't remember what many of them were. I think I am about ready to mail off my accounting information to my accountant so I can pay my last estimated tax bill by January 15th. I finished testing some midi hardware I have that is keeping me from being gloriously musical, and will mail it off soon. I networked quite a bit and got some stressful situations off of me, including a contract that someone thought I accepted that I didn't. I bought a plane ticket for my singing group reunion in January. I installed the new versions of iCal and iSync. I found the mp3s for my star wars radio drama to replace the audio cassettes that I quite unfortunately ruined with, uhm, an electric drill. And now I'm tired!!

affero.net

affero.net: the service - this is basically very very similar to a website project I had planned out in my head last year, and not enough time to launch. Oh well. I have plenty of other ideas.