Tag: Uncategorized

Let’s just all give a little thanks that sound thinking prevailed in Hollywood yesterday and the Simpsons voice cast made a deal with the producers. I didn’t see any financial details but the contracts are for four years (w00t!) and next season will see a full 22 episodes rather than the rumored 16 or 18 due to the late start. Hope they got the money because of all the people responsible for the (huge financial and critical) success, they appear to be the only ones not getting a reasonable share.

Interesting, if I were into playing games: Welcome to NationStates

Speaking of games, Arsenal kept their unbeaten season record alive today, though narrowly, with a ni-nil draw to Birmingham; only three matches left and all are easily winnable for the London side. One SoccerNet columnist recently claimed Birmingham’s keeper Maik Taylor has been the EPL’s best this year and this result certainly lends support for that judgment.

I wonder if my friend Annie went to town for the big party…

My sister wants me to wear a silver vest and tie for her wedding, along with a black tuxedo. My style is not nearly so flashy, I prefer a more..umm…understated elegance, but for her, I will quietly go along.

April Fool’s joke or serious threat?

Gunderloy: spamvalanche

The Night Exchange is now running a TV ad which consists solely of an attractive young couple having sex in a bathroom stall. The Night Exchange is one of those telephone personal services, so why am I not surprised that the company is using the promise of fast, easy sex as the advertising hook. I shouldn’t complain, at least sex is fun and (if done right) not painful or dangerous. Rockstar Games, on the other hand, is setting sales records with video games like Grand Theft Auto that celebrate wanton murder and violence.

The last page has been turned over on another calendar

Another faux important milestone has been passed

Fix the collar on your shirt, flick the dirt off your shoe

Watch the woman with the floppy orange hat throw her

Hands in the air–does she even care?

The Earth rocks here and there in and out of the

Ring of Fire and the Man in Black has passed into

Another plane of existence, singing songs his Momma

Taught him, to a new audience no less appreciative

Of talent and passion–does he even care?

The telephone rings in another room and no one

Hears either end of the conversation though the

Conversants give their all to embed purposeful thought

Into the other’s mind and evoke another reaction,

Precious partings of a company–do they even care?

The clocks strike 12, midnight midnight midnight, and

In another timezone people kiss, people hug, people

Grab onto one another and the stop to fix their clothes

When someone shouts to pump up the volume

But no one does–do we even care?

Can we see Reality and understand Time or are they

Another Illusion borne out of the fundamental disconnect

Between the Rider and the Horse? I play another hand of

Cards with a dealer I can’t see behind a TV screen

Showing a 22 men running–do I even care?

[1/1/1, 1/1/2, original inspiration via Garret]

More sad fallout from 9/11: about a dozen firefighters have left their own wives and families for the widows and children of their fallen comrades after being assigned as, more or less, a shoulder for the widows to cry on.

On Nov. 1, 1952, the United States exploded the first hydrogen bomb, in a test at Eniwetok in the Marshall Islands.

Nicholas Kristof just gets right down to it in his column today, which I urge you to read.

If you’ve sent me email in the last 36-48 hours, I probably haven’t seen it. I filed a problem ticket but being this is a holiday here in the US, I don’t expect any help until tomorrow. You can also try me on first initial (b) lastname at hotmail.com (all one squashed word). HTTP service, since you’re reading this, doesn’t seem to be affected.

Even Scoble says he cannot help on this but I want one nonetheless. This new machine is really tasty and then I have to run ugly old Office 2000 apps like Outlook and Word. Don’t get me started on OpenOffice or Mozilla Thunderbird, I’ve tried them and let’s just chalk it up to a “tastes great/less filling” situation. So who out there can snag me a copy? Someone? Bueller?

Update: Rob, an MS staffer (Visio developer) and all-around Harry Potter fan, caught the post and asked why I just didn’t . My response? D’oh! But then I also noticed that the beta copy ‘expires’ on Nov. 30th, which kind of defeats my ‘get a free copy’ strategy. Oh well, maybe next time.

Think outside the box. Find something you can do that is unconventional. Two of the many pieces of advice one hears when a job becomes hard to find. Fair enough, but concrete suggestions are much more helpful. Pam, being a smart and thoughtful person, understands this. She suggested that since I know a lot about weblogs and personal websites, computers and software, and am a reasonably good communicator, I ought to teach people how to put up their own sites. Hold some classes, bring in a few dollars.

Seems like a reasonable idea to me. So, starting small, I made up a flier and posted it a couple of places here in Mountain View. I wanted to put one up on the bulletin board at the Mountain View Public Library but the pain in the ass in charge of such things wouldn’t approve; apparently only non-profit organizations, based in Mountain View or not, are entitled while residents of the town like me who, through property taxes actually pay for the library can go stuff it. Anyway, I did post a couple of the fliers on Castro Street, one inside Books, Inc. and the other outside the Mountain View Market, and will keep looking for places to post. Know any?

My plan: Classes will be held Thursday evenings (or otherwise as requested) here in my house or nearby, depending on attendance, any Thursday evening at least four people sign up for about 90 minutes to two hours. The classes will cover the basics of such sites including the available tools, types of hosting, related tools and services (blogrolls, RSS, directories), basics of content. I don’t expect to provide personal consulting during the class time, or actually set anyone’s site up; of course that would be fine for a small extra fee afterwards or whatever. Let’s see how it goes and where it goes.

Want to learn or know someone who does? Let me know!

Interesting article from the Toronto Sun (which apparently uses my old Netscape Application Server judging from the URL) on the state of the manned space effort in America. From a Canadian perspective, of course, with quotes from Canadians: science fiction writer Spider Robinson and astronaut Chris Hadfield. The latter hits the problem squarely on the nailhead:We want to go, in person, but why do it?

Someone should explain to the illustrious list of founders at Metapop : a collaborative weblog that they should have just joined MetaFilter. Which they obviously knew about, since there using the FreeFilter software clone and have the word Meta in the site’s name. Dan gillmor, who talks a good game, falls down on the details as usual and gives this site linklove without mentioning the original. Ego, what terrible curse on us all.

I’ll be off the air, most likely, for the next couple of days. I have to make a quick trip to Seattle for [mysteriously deleted] and don’t expect to have web access. Afterwards I hope to have a good tale to tell.

No, Virginia, there won’t be a Simon & Garfunkle reunion tour this year. So sad.

With the initial phase of the 2002-3 TV season over (marked by the appearance of new shows and cancellations), I thought I’d toss in my 32 bits about the new shows still on the air that I enjoy. Right up front you should know that this exclude all reality shows–I think the whole genre sucks, bites, and should suffer a rapid cancellation en masse–even though the Sweet One is a huge fan of The Bachelor, Joe Millionaire, and the like. Most of the good new stuff is police-focused, have yet to see an enjoyable new sitcom this season.

Boomtown – complex police drama that ignores the standard single point of view, straight chronological ordering. Another series that is the vision of a single creative person (Graham Yost) as are the acclaimed Sopranos (David Chase), The Shield (Shawn Ryan), even The West Wing (Aaron Sorkin). Some really good acting from Donnie Wahlberg (yes, the ex-white rapper), Neal McDonough (another Aussie dropping the accent), and Gary Basaraba (chubby guys deserve a little fan support too!). The way Yost takes a story and slices it up among the various character perspectives and time sequences is terrific. Several episodes have shown us (what look like) the last events right at the start and not once did the spoil my enjoyment. And splitting the POV gives a much more real understanding of how police work is done–complex cases take teamwork, not one man.

John Doe – the title character is clearly reminscent of The Pretender (another great, underrated series) but this time he works with the authorities (Seattle Police Department) instead of being on the run from them and so far John hasn’t shown any special physical skills other than coordination. Still wants to find out, perhaps even more than Jarrod, who he is, where he came from, and how he came to be so different. Because of the police focus of the plots, the producers will need to keep coming up with interesting and different cases to solve, a problem that many such series don’t seem able to solve that well (I’m thinking of the last couple of years of NYPD Blue and all of The District specifically). Really good actors: Dominic Purcell (also an Aussie), Jayne Brook, and John Marshall Jones with good wiseass support from William Forsythe. Will be a challenge as well to develop the story of how Doe came to be Doe, government or private concern conspiracy, aliens, or whatever, and keep it meaningful should the series survive and thrive for five or seven years.

BBC America police procedurals – two shows here, Waking the Dead and Wire in the Blood, shown in the same Monday night time slot and two hours per episode. Waking the Dead features the Cold Case Unit (what this team is a unit of, Scotland Yard or other, is not clear nor could I find out via Google) investigating old unsolved cases that come back to prominence through some recent event. Very much a team effort here also in solving the mysteries though with a clear chain of command, just solid, creative police work.

Wire, starring Robson Green, only made three episodes initially but four more will be filmed for broadcast towards the end of the year. Green plays a clinical psychologist working, as needed, with a police squad that investigates serial killers. Green’s Dr. Tony Hill had specialized in researching these villains after their capture but is now called upon to use his profiling abilities to solve and capture current murderers. Waking the Dead also has a civilian psychologist on its team.

Penn & Teller’s Bullshit – I’ve seen only one episode so far but it was so good, so informative and so funny, that I must include it. The first episode totally dismantled (as if any intelligent human being) the so-called Talkers to the Dead like John Edwards (Crossing Over with…). Definite echoes of the recent South Park episode (The Biggest Douche in the Universe) which had much of the same information/target. Queued up for viewing on my Tivo is the second episode, on alternative medicine, can’t hardly wait.

Already cancelled shows that would easily have made this list are Firefly and Robbery Homicide Division but not, sadly, Birds of Prey.

Aside: I wrote this with CNN on over my shoulder, trying to distract myself a little from the grief of this morning’s tragedy. I have nothing useful to add on that event.

Happy New Year Babies

congratulations on three years of blogging to garret and thanks for the cool and always dangerousmeta. amazing that he could go so long an never once need to use a capital letter, at least not that i’ve seen. funny, he posts many great and creative photos but hardly any of himself. garret is a friendly, helpful, caring man and i would back all of this up with links to his site except that the one thing he’s never had are permalinks or a sitewide search facility. doesn’t that seem strange for someone who make his living building websites and web applications?

i need to visit santa fe and meet this guy in person soon.

Or perhaps hypocrisy is the better word choice. A frat house at the University of Tennessee has been suspended because several (white) members painted their faces and dressed up as the Jackson 5 to attend a Halloween party last week (report). Black students complained, calling it insulting. The national fraternity (this was ) suspended the local chapter’s charter, meaning it would no longer be recognized by the school. Bad rednecks!

On the other hand, and this is where I start to get a little annoyed by the whole thing, beginning in January UT will have a semester long program to “celebrate Africa’s cultural, entertainment and educational contributions to non-African cultures around the world.” So I guess during this program students of all races will be paying tribute to these artists.

A few guys getting out ahead of time, on their own initiative, is no good though. The administration is “distressed.” I could be wrong, the article doesn’t particularly go into detail, but I didn’t read anything about the students who dressed up as the Jacksons doing anything, or behaving in any way, that is insulting or mocking. I kind of thought part of ignoring race is that people of any group should be able to idolize, or honor, people of any other group. Would a black student dressing up as, say, Bruce Springsteen be just as distressing?

For all the good they want to do, I think for our society to truly get over this issue will require a tad less sensitivity on the part of some people. Another instance of the campus PC police going overboard.

“The first thing, of course, was to begin using computers.” RL continued to relate the story to Jamie of how he came to be involved in something that could cost his life by dinnertime. “Having just come back from college he was enamored of the new machines from Digital. Much more elegant than the huge lumbering mainframes from IBM to the young man. The first step, which looks obvious to us years later, was to convince his father and uncle to buy a small DEC model to use for accounting.

“Of course mobsters never wanted to put anything on paper, which could at least be burned easily if there was even a moment’s warning. They had no taste at all for such complex, expensive machinery. Joseph’s thoughts went further than just the machine–he would locate the server down in the Caribbean, on a little island that the family essentially owned and where the American authorities had no way to confront them, and only have terminals in family offices. After a year, having proven the worth of his system, he even purchased a small telephone company through fronts so he had that much more control.

“For several years Joseph worked to improve his software and the ways in which he could track and even forecast the family’s businesses. He began to see patterns and understand where the risks lay. Three years in, he twice predicted to his uncle when the police would raid certain warehouses and once when a trusted lieutenant was about to try and, well, go out on his own. Joseph made his bones by putting that lieutenant’s body in deep water about a half mile offshore from the island he used as the computer system’s home. He worried, though, that the Feds began to develop equipment to tap his private phone lines and he went out and hired an expert in encryption software.”

RL reached down to his waist and pulled a flask off his belt. He took a drink of water and handed it to Jamie. “You’re wondering what this all has to do with you already, right?” Jamie nodded. “Well that expert he hired was essentially the first event of the second stage of this plan. Even after seven or eight years, no other mob families were using computers, not the way that Joseph was doing for his. He’d kep this whole operation walled off from the rest of the work, using a small group of extremely trusted men as the go-betweens, the ones who brought the information from the real businesses to Jospeh so he could manage the data entry.

“Hiring that encryption expert made him realize that he had massive amounts money to spend on improving his system. Why not hire the best people? He even recognized the opportunity to invest that was beginning to happen outside San Francisco and over the years made money that way as well.

“Of course not everyone was thrilled by the idea of working for the mob. Many people were hired through front companies and they never knew who was really printing their paychecks. Some of these were thought to be so valuable that ways were found, money, drugs, women, threats, whatever would work, to bring them in on a more permanent basis. Some didn’t care or at least were bright enough to realize they had no choice. Most eventually came to that point of view, happily or not. A few joined the lieutenant under the blue Caribbean water.

“You’re the one Joseph’s people want today. After you make this delivery, if you make it.”