Category: Personal

On the lighter side of nausea

Very interesting: Getting Started with Your Own Software Company (and the inevitable /. discussion).

Tech’s medical marvels: “For the past two years, more venture funding ($3.2 billion) has gone to medical device companies than to semiconductor makers ($2.8 billion), according to research firm VentureOne.”

Word of the day: Hermeneutics. Because I just love the way it sounds and it turns out to be an interesting topic.

System overload: Doc says what I’m thinking in Orwhat?

There are dinosaurs among us? The Sci Fi Channel has given production go ahead to a two hour movie version of Eric Garcia’s Anonymous Rex and intends this as a pilot for a series.

A group of Star Trek and Voyager actors teamed up for Roddenberry on Patrol, a parody of the Great Bird himself. Bad web site, though.

This is not a metaphor: Swedes have more and more animal sex

The nets keep coming up with more and stranger reality shows. The NY post runs down The Littlest Groom and many other anti-highlights planned for the February sweeps.

Today I can twiddle my right thumb

Well sort of, it’s still a bit stiff and painful. But better than last week. Aren’t you glad? If not, read on.

One more thing to make you feel good this morning: U.S. Uranium Stock in Peril. Or is this just part of the studio hype for The Perfect Score?

Dan Gillmor reports that a Mobile Phone Uber-Directory in the Works which is a good thing (right?) because the fact that no one can now look up your cell number is such a terrible obstacle for all those well-meaning people who need to call and tell us about their great thing. Whatever that thing might be. You say the FTC’s Do Not Call system will protect us; I reply that politicians and charities, not to mention corporations that have a relationship with us, are exempt from that otherwise fine idea.

The sad ending to Leon Wagner’s life is one of those stories which says to me, man, we suck at taking care of each other. Though there is little overt connection to Wagner’s tale, thinking about it makes me want to call up Dick Cheney and ask him if he can look his daughter in the eye and say “I support the constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage.”

This is funny, for contrast: Rory’s Career Pinata explains a lot about the last few years for me. [via the non-homophobic Joel]

Football coaching merrygoround: Seven and done

The Oakland Raiders today hired Norv Turner as their new head coach, filling the seventh and last opening in this NFL off-season. Turner most recently was assistant head coach and offensive coordinator for the Miami Dolphins the past two years and before that was head coach at Washington for nearly seven years with a fairly poor 49-59-1 record and just one playoff trip. His big claim to fame was as Jimmy Johnson’s offensive coordinator in Dallas during a stint that included two Super Bowl wins.

Which would make him different than Joe Bugel, the only other person Al Davis hired for this job who had previous experience as a head coach; in every other instance the Man in Black hired a noob. The local writers have repeatedly mentioned that what Davis really likes best is someone to be offensive coordinator–he’s still, at age 74, the real head man–and Turner does match this profile. The team has a young QB, Marques Tuiasosopo, whom Turner can mold plus a couple of other young skill position players (Jerry Porter, Justin Fargas) to be the offensive core. There will surely be a major roster turnover either this coming season or the next but Turner has a five year contract.

Bushinations: Constitutional amendment this, Constitutional amendment that

The biggest problem I have with the social reactionaries who insist that marriage must and can only be between one man and one woman is it reeks of tyranny of the majority. Sure we live in a democracy but this is an absurd intrusion of religion and bigotry into personal affairs. Seriously, who the fuck cares about the next person’s love life unless he (or she) is so afraid of what might be inside their own heart (or groin); don’t tell me this is a sacred concept because, of course, the Constitution itself makes that a meaningless answer.

And more than that, where exactly is Bush going to get the $1.5 billion he mentioned in the SotU farce that he proposes the government spend on educating us all on how to be better married people. As long as we’re heterosexual. Very sad.

Clark, Dean, Kerry or Edwards, please

Robert Kuttner suggests a dark vision for America should Bush win re-election this November: America as a One-Party State [via Doc via Micah Sifry’s One Party, uber alles]. So many aspects of American–if not global–society has moved to the edges in recent years, we should hardly be surprised if politics does as well. Tattoos, reality shows, WWE, the ultra-violence of top video games, Enron and WorldCom, mutual fund abuses, Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore, they’re all of a kind. Too bad they’re not of the good kind.

Dangerous, ha!

Garret Vreeland calls his website dangerousmeta after a warning about dangerous meta characters he found funny but if I would pick any description of him after reading his site for the last three years, many emails and a few phone conversations it would be genuinely humble and gentlemanly. My grandma might have called him a true mensch, unlike a mutual acquaintance of ours who only thinks he’s one.

Many people of good will have connected across the internet as I have with Garret, helping out, answering questions, enjoying honest conversation. But I’ve found few who will go to the same lengths and a simple example came along just last week. He went to school at Princeton and then lived for awhile nearby, which is close to where my folks live now, and TS1 and I were hoping to get in a little sightseeing. I shot him off an email and in return I got something that would barely be out of place in a travel guide!

For the last few years he’s made a living as a web site developer, an independent contractor/consultant, though you’d hardly know it from his own site as he makes no mention and gives no links to customer sites. Perhaps you recall Behind the Curtain, one of the first big global community web projects, which Garret conceived and implemented. Mention of that effort is the only self-advertisement you’ll find on dangerousmeta!

And the ease with which he moves through technology is pretty impressive, just from what you can see by observing the site over time. In fact, he started having problems with MovableType early in the week and by this afternoon he completely migrated to WordPress, a server-based blogging system written in PHP. With a completely new, very attractive design as well. Over the last few years, the site has changed underlying tech several times: first the free Userland editthispage.com system, then their Manila server, a Zope/Python application Garret wrote himself (though I don’t recall him ever offering the software for others to use), then MT and now WordPress. Perhaps now that an A-Lister is using it, people will start thinking of WordPress as cool and worthy of reference as WP?

So where am I going with all this? I guess I was spurred by the tech migration to comment in some manner and let the post get out of hand. Then I wanted to verbalize my impression of the man, who probably would have been a Latin scholar or modern agronomist if he’d been born in 1859 instead of 1959. Add a bit of gratitude for his help, advice and insight, not to mention the traffic he’s linked my way. Plus some hot fudge and whip cream, because those go good on a Friday night dessert. Cheers dude!

I wonder which network will reassure us that there is no such thing as too low to go by showing a reality series that is (or might as well be) named White Girls on Dope. The Simple Life came dangerously close but this probably needs to be on cable to capture all the wretchedness.