...more recent posts
Off to Long Island for afternoon dinner with MB's parents. Be back tonight.
Tomorrow will be a bit of a loss, so I'm trying to make progress today. I'm talking about that work over here to keep this page clear for the constant stream of witty and amusing anecdotes that have made this weblog so popular with ones of readers. I owe it all to my fans! Thank you, thank you, thank you. And, oh yeah, thank you. That should cover it.
I guess I should come clean. Minutes (well, O.K., days) away from finishing the new system software I had one of my strokes of genius™ and decided to start the whole project completely over. Long time observers may begin to notice a pattern of delusional behavior in terms of actually finishing anything, but the management requests them to just pipe down.
This madness will absolutely not continue past the first of May. No, really.
Took the subway out to Fort Greene, Brooklyn last night for some Cambodian food. We got the F at Delancey and then switched to the C at Jay St. / Borough Hall. We just made it through the closing doors on the transfer, it was crowded, and I didn't get a chance to grab hold of anything. The train started forward with a lurch and I stumbled back a few steps.
Now I hadn't seen him of course. I tend to keep my eyes to myself. But let's just say I had a sense of the crowd. And in the moment after it was all too quickly clear: the large afro, the impeccable head to toe baby blue track suit, and most importantly, the orange plastic Nike bag holding the oversized sneaker box of urban consumer conquest.
Train moves forward. I stumble back and my very black shoe lands squarely on his pristine minutes old all white Air Jordans. Yes it left a smudge. He shot me a look that managed to both frighten me and simultaneously conveying that killing me would be too much effort, and might well further dirty his shoes. Needless to say I tried to support that latter feeling in the tone of my quick and heartfelt apology. "Sorry" I said, meaning "don't waste your time with the hapless hippie - HE'S NOT WORTH IT."
Jumped off at Lafayette, relieved. Had a great dinner at Cambodian Cuisine, 87 South Elliot Place, Fort Greene, Brooklyn. Just be careful on the subway.
I have completely lost my mind. Possibly in a good way. No time for posting...
I loaned Janet my video camera this morning. It was last minute, and I didn't have a blank tape to give her, so I started looking through some unlabeled tapes in my drawer to see if any had enough space for her to use. The first one I popped into the VCR had my shots of the WTC on fire. Strong stuff.
Disregarding all the emotional and political issues surrounding that specific event, what most struck me was the degree to which I was immediately transported back to that moment. I could literally feel myself up on the roof shooting that footage. Part of this total recall was, undoubtedly, due to the rather charged nature of that day. But another big part of it was that I took those shots. I don't think seeing someone else's footage would have quite the same effect.
Maybe this is something to be mined in terms of supporting personal media (personal publishing? weblogging?) Maybe one important thing about weblogging is that the process of recording events gives you much better future access to those events. In other words, it helps you remember. And not just because you could always go back and look something up on your site.
This is also connected somehow with the memory effect where I often forget people's names right after being introduced if I don't repeat the name out loud. "Nice to meet you John Smith." Maybe weblogging is like repeating important facts out loud so that you remember them.
I guess the counter argument would be that you are remembering your recording of an event, and not the event itself. Hmmm. Does this matter?
Yes, this would satisfy me on the digital rights front.
Fritz Hollings has introduced the newly renamed SSSCA to Congress. This is the big one. They are actually going to try to outlaw general purpose computers.
Once known as the Security Systems Standards and Certification Act, the newly named CBDTPA says that all "digital media devices" sold in the United States or shipped across state lines must include copy-protection mechanisms to be defined by the Federal Communications Commission.Decan McCullagh has lots of documents at Politech. Here's the slashdot thread.
I know from trying to explain this to people - even to smart people in the industry! - that most do not understand the gravity of the situation. This is a serious threat to the future of freedom in general.
Apple introduced a new 10 GB iPod yesterday (twice as big as the old one.) But it's $499, and the 5 GB model stays at $399. People were reasonably expecting at least a small drop for the old unit ($350? C'mon, give us something!) It rules, no doubt, but ouch.
Also introduced was a 23 inch flat screen with 1920 x 1200 native resolution. Mmmmm.
And they demonstrated a new USB bluetooth adapter. To be available soon. I can't wait to see what they do with that.
Do-It-Yourself DMCA Counter Notification Letter.
One of the favorite tools of both cults and corporations seeking to take embarassing information off the Internet is to falsely claim violation of a copyright or trademark. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act, enacted in 1998, set out a notification procedure that can be used to request an ISP to remove allegedly infringing material from a web page. However, there is a defense against this attack: it's called a counter notification letter. Most people don't know how to write such a letter, which is why I've put together this helpful form.
aKa is in the running for best new cheap eats over at Time Out New York. Feel free to help us out.
This is cool. Spamradio.com. Some evil genius is recording his computer reading spam he receives aloud to the sound of light ambient noodling. And it's all streamed in MP3 around the clock. On a dial-up, open this URL in an MP3 player:
http://relay.spamradio.com:8000/spam_low
If you have a faster connection use:
http://relay.spamradio.com:8000/spam
On an apple use iTunes. Go to Advanced -> open stream... and paste in the url. On Windows I guess use WinAmp or something similar. Not sure on those instructions.
Like listening in on the New Age flavored collective unconscious of the modern techno capitalistic world.
Dave Winer has New York Times headlines flowing through Radio 8. That's cool, but I'm with Bill Seitz in wanting to know more about the architecture. Is it really something new? Does this signal a change in direction at the NYT? Or are the headlines just out there (like they are/were with AvantoGo) but with all the back end negatives still in place?
I don't care that much about the headlines. What we want is to be able to point to articles and be sure our readers will see the same thing we are pointing to - not a redirect to a useless sign in page, or not a note saying the article is no longer available. I'm trying to build something permanent here. And we want google to be able to index them too.
Full size projected virtual keyboard.
Close call for spaceship earth. That's at least the third time I've seen a CNN story use that asteroid impact graphic.
Over the weekend we met a little puppy on Long Island. MB and I (and everyone else) really liked her. She is incredibly sweet. Now it turns out she needs a home. I know I probably shouldn't but we're both tempted. Feel free to talk some sense into me...
Here's a picture of the puppy sleeping with Theo.
Last night was the best conditions I've seen yet for viewing the WTC Tribute in Lights (I hate that name.) Anyway, here's one shot (150K) from the inbound Williamsburg Bridge. Doesn't quite catch how dramatic it was but it's the best I've gotten yet.
Stephen finally received his new iMac. We set it up yesterday. Everyone was impressed by how it looked. And by the lack of setup instructions. All the PC people were like "what do you mean you just plug it in?" It really is very simple to get going. Well, except that we plugged it in, powered it up and nothing happened. Nothing. I took off the bottom to check that the memory was seated correctly. It was. I looked for a reset switch but couldn't find one. Called Apple. They were very nice. Had me do a couple of things but it still wouldn't boot. So much for impressing the masses. Apple bumped me up the tech support line, and the next person had me remove the bottom again. Turns out there is a reset switch, but I guess they don't want people using it too much because it is very hidden. Under a membrane of plastic so you can't really see it. If you have the iMac on its side, with the bottom off then either the airport is on the left and memory on the right, or vice versa (depending on how you layed it down.) If the memory is on the left and the airport slot on the right, then under the bottom right corner of the airport slot you can just make out a square button under a sheet of plastic. That's the reset. Pressed it once, put the cover back on, and it booted right up.
The screen is very nice. Of course I'd like a bigger one, but the quality is great. I could work on it without complaint. The machine boots into OS X which I think is great for beginners and experts alike. The Windows tech in the crowd had no idea OS X was BSD at it's core. I popped open a terminal window and SSH'd into my server. I think he was impressed. But for the beginner (or just the regular user) the best thing is all the applications it comes with. I ran through iTunes and iPhoto and these programs are really well thought out in a traditionally Apple way. That is, they are powerful, but the interfaces are very simple. They make it so you can actually do something, right out of the box. Stephen's Canon G2 connected without a hitch. His HP printer connected after a no-hassle driver download. For someone accustomed to the hell of Windows program installation, the idea that you can just download a program and drag it to your hard drive to install it is quite a revelation.
We also downloaded Pod Master 1000 which is by far the best of the iPod utilities. Using that I could transfer the entire contents of my iPod into Stephen's iTunes (I mean theoretically - my lawyer made me put that in.) And not only is it the best utility I've found, it also has the best dialogue boxes. When you first connect it pops up a window that says "Pod Master is probing your iPod." Yikes.
Had a nice drive back in. We were passing the iPod around the car taking turns as DJ. Seems like everyone falls in love with that gadget once you get to handle it. Bruno made a really good suggestion that I wish Apple would consider including. While a song is playing you can browse the library without effecting the current track. That's good. But you can't select the next song until the present one is done (or if you do the next track starts playing immediately, interrupting the current selection.) Bruno's idea is to have another mode so that any song you select just goes into a buffer to start playing as soon as it's turn comes up. This would be sort of like making a playlist on the fly. I guess it would be called DJ mode. They should do that.
Here are three distorted shots of midtown Manhattan from my favorite vantage point, the Kosciusko Bridge. Since I live on the Lower East Side, right over the Williamsburg Bridge, this is the approach I usually take for reentry. Spectacular by day or night. I love coming home to this city.
Getting it together for a quick trip out to Long Island. Hope the weather cooperates. I'll be back tomorrow. Should remain connected in the meantime.
Oprah pushing weblogs?
New cryptogram. Contained these two interesting non computer related stories: Richard Bizarro who mistook the Federal Air Marshalls on his flight for terrorists, and a weird identity theft scam.
So far I've missed the tribute in light. Two nights ago I looked, around 9:30, and couldn't see a thing. I have a perfect view of the area from my window (assuming the lights are right where the WTC towers stood.) People assured me they were on at that time. So I'm underwhelmed, to say the least. Didn't even think to look last night. Ho hum.
AOL is going to switch from Internet Explorer to using Mozilla as their browser for AOL 8.0. That's the biggest jump in users Mozilla could possibly get at once. Excellent. Redmonk pointed out this NewsForge article discussing the switch.
A browser shift by AOL is going to leave an awful lot of companies that assume their Web sites only need to work with Explorer scrambling to rewrite their code so that they don't lose AOL's 30 million-plus subscribers...
I really like routines. At least when they are of my own devising. I like being a regular. I have my bar where I'm known. I have my favorite restaurants where I usually order the same things to eat. It's nothing extreme. I don't get nervous when outside of these habits. But I tend to find what I like and stick with it.
The coffee shop on avenue A is an example. I go there most days around noon for a coffee and a toasted sesame bagel with avocado and tomato. They start making it before I sit down. This makes me extremely happy. Most days I cross paths with my friend N. who seems to be in the same routine. She gets an avocado bagel too, but with no tomato.
N. just opened a clothing store on avenue B. It's a small operation, and she spends most of her time minding the store. She confessed to passing the time doing jigsaw puzzles. I suggested she should get an internet connection instead, and she replied, in the most natural way possible, "What would I do on the internet?"
I had no answer. I hadn't even considered the question before, although I have heard variants of this thought. Just never so clearly. I was really struck. What exactly do you do on the internet? Just why is it so great? I mean for someone who doesn't already think so. It's a hard question to answer.
I struggled for a second and then shrugged my shoulders, like, "I guess you're right, that's a stupid idea." Still, I'd definitely want internet access. I want it everywhere, all the time. But not so I can do things, in the sense that you "do" a jigsaw puzzle. I don't play on-line games. I'm not compiling my family geneology. I don't even download music. But it would be very difficult for me to be without the net. I'm trying to figure out exactly why this is so. Here's my first try:
It's not so much that I want the net in order to accomplish some particular activity. Instead, having net access is a way of being. A way of doing things in the real world. And it boils down to this: I used to put off learning. I'd come to some problem and think, "you know, I really should figure this out some day." But I usually wouldn't do it. And once I put off learning something, I usually have to wait for it to come back up as a problem before I think to figure it out again. But with net access the answer is always just a google away. And I really do it. All my "I wonder...." moments are now swiftly met by a "hold on...." click, click, google, click, "...right, here it is."
And the benefit is not so much in finding all this information. It's more in my changing expectations. I expect to be able to find the answer to almost anything, right away, by myself. This is tremendously empowering. Just knowing that I have access to almost all knowledge changes everything about me. It makes me better. More curious. More independent.
But I still have no answer to my friend's question. I don't so much "do" stuff on the net (well, not counting my programming time.) I do things in the real world, and the net is there to back me up. The net is there to let me be my own expert. Even at things I don't know much about. I can't wait until I'm wirelessly connected all the time. My guess is that as this happens the question of "what do you do on the internet?" will make less and less sense. Like asking "what do you do in your long term memory?" Well, nothing, but you use it all the time. And you certainly couldn't get along without it.
I've been writing a little about the new system over here [update: I moved that page to here]. Not very interesting stuff. More like notes to myself. But I think I will continue this trend and write anything pertaining to the software I'm writing over there, and try to get this page back on a slightly more personal track. Still, it will remain largely about computers and the internet I'd guess.
The Artist-in-Residence Program at Sanitary Fill Company, a 44 acre solid waste transfer and recycling center in San Francisco. Why do I want to nominate Bill for this position? (via caterina.net)
Here are some links to posts on the other site explaining what I've been up to. Here is a description of the new feature I'm most excited about [note: I updated this link on 3/14/02] . I'm calling it "reference logging." It's sort of like back links in a wiki, except they can extend out to any other site on the web. And here's a much too long general explanation of the new site. It's just a place for me to experiment with the next generation of the software that runs this site. I'm looking for people who would be interested in using it so that I can get more feedback. Here's a page that is already using the new system. Comments are very much appreciated.
David Weinberger (JOHO) on the web as utopia. Thought provoking as always.
Some guys have all the luck. I dropped my camera in the toilet and was out one camera. This guy dropped his in the river, and now it's magic (from mefi.)
Well, yes, if you're really keeping track, I did say that I would link to something explaining the work I've been doing on the new system either yesterday or today. And while it's still technically possible for this to happen, we're not giving it a very good chance of actually happening. Like no way. So I thought I'd just pass that along in case anyone is sitting in front of their computer frantically reloading this page, wondering when, oh when, will I post that link. (What? You weren't doing that? Nevermid.)
Probably I'll do it sometime this weekend when you're not looking.
Brilliant. Here's a very clever way to get ie toolbar like functionality out of the location field in Mozilla. The result? Now if I type 'gg jimslog' into the location field in Mozilla (where I would normally type the URL) I'm taken to the results of a google search for 'jimslog'. If I type 'dd mantic' I'm taken to the results of a dictionary.com lookup of 'mantic'. The article shows you how to make keywords (the 'gg' and 'dd') for any site.
The Bruce Sterling Online Index. A guide to every Bruce Sterling work on the web (or so they claim.)
Julie pointed out the first Alias review
Looks like the end of internet radio.
Great day of work. I'm flying. My new feature is basically done over at the other site. I'm excited about this one. I'm going to write something up and point to it by tomorrow or the next day. Otherwise not much to report. Heading towards a beer....
Our most proficient bug hunter Tom pointed out that the ability for guests to leave comments was completely, well...., let's just say it wasn't working. And this must have been for quite some time. (Well, to clarify, if there were already comments in a thread you could add another, no problem, but if an anonymous commenter tried to add the first comment they would be thwarted.)
This is a big problem. I fixed it fairly easily, that's not the hard part, rather it's finding these things that is so difficult. I swear I tested that, but evidently I did not. It's hard to know when you've tried every single possibility in even a moderately complex system. Probably I tried to comment in threads that had already been started, and then just figured that it worked in every commenting case.
My apologies if anyone ever tried to leave a message here and was unable. I really would like it despite the previous broken nature of the tools. Looks like the new system (which I am currently testing on another site) might already be more stable than this one. Or maybe not. I really need to learn more about rigourous testing procedures. Or I need like 10 more of Tom.
I know I've said it before, but I think this is the mobile communicator for me. I'll have to look into pricing.
Is it just me or is there an incredible amount of air traffic over NYC right now?
Perfectly toned open letter to Jack Valenti and Michael Eisner. Right on the mark.
Bruce Sterling on SXSW and everything else. I'd pull a quote, but you should really read the whole thing. Nobody is safe with him at the keyboard.
I have the new system up and running (on a different site first, for testing.) Everything went pretty smoothly. I grabbed the old site contents with an HTML scraper I built, and loaded it into the new database running locally on my imac. Then I used mysqldump to get a textfile of the local database, sent it back up to the remote server, deleted the old database (gulp,) and loaded in the new one from the mysqldump file. Took down all the old scripts and put up all the new ones. Took about one hour, plus two more to fix a bunch of stuff I hadn't thought of in my planning. Not too bad.
So I'm on schedule. I'm hoping the users on that site will find any obvious bugs this week while I try yet again to write some help files. It will be a triumph if I can finally make myself do this task.
If all goes well I'll have this site changed over by the end of the month. Theoretically I could have it done in two weeks, but let's just say one month. No sense getting carried away.
Go read rageboy right now. At least that entry and the next three. That is some good stuff.
This world, this life so intricate, delicate, complex. Precious beyond measure. I’m slamming my head against the walls of empire, the habits of power, enraged. Blasting and burning for your love. Imagining the network finally connected. Imagining joy. A wall of horns and drums and dangerous magical noise. I’m bending over my Fender, working the circuits, incendiary, incandescent. Rocking in the free world, serving notice on Babylon. Ain’t in for a dollar, ain’t in for a dime. Ain’t going down for no two-bit dream. Armed only with imagination, I’m back in your spiral arms tonight. Everything has at least two meanings. But one thing girl that I want to say, love is love and not fade away.
I've got a new feature coming soon. It's pretty simple, but I think it might be powerful in terms of really helping conversations flow. Particularly for these highly interlinked conversations that have been going on, around, and through doc, rageboy, David Weinberger, Tom Matrullo, AKMA, etc.... These guys are saying some interesting stuff about blogs, and what this all means, but sometimes it's hard to find the periphery of the conversation. More soon.