...more recent posts
I remember Dave linked to a story a long time ago about "number stations." These are shortwave broadcasts that have been on the air for decades. They feature only a single voice reading lists of seemingly random numbers. These number stations are widely believed to be a method for spy agencies to communicate with their agents in the field. NPR did a story on them recently. Slashdot had a story today about The Conent Project which is releasing a 4 CD set of these recordings, and sponsering a cryptograpic challenge to crack the code behind these numbers. Assuming they are not using a one time pad, which would be unbreakable, I can't wait to see what these numbers mean.
I'm still waiting for the first flash site to totally blow me away (like when I first saw Zaxxon and it's pseudo 3/4 view 3d effects,) but in the mean time there are lots of cool little flash gizmos out there to whet your appetite. Here's some. (Flash 4 required, 56k friendly.) [update: O.K., now I have almost seen everything. Can someone explain this site to me?]
I watched a little of the Hillary town hall meeting on PBS last night. Dave has the detailed report. I was impressed by her ability to field questions and speak off the top of her head. She did much better than I would have thought. I'm not suggesting she converted me, but I was impressed by her abilities. How far could she go? 2004? Say it ain't so.
This sounds interesting. A WABC nostalgiathon, with full length segments, not just the usual snippets. The Post article is more informative than the station's site. This is said to be the epitome of top 40 radio. Growing up in Detroit, we had top 30 radio from CKLW in Wisdsor, Ontario. They were big until Canada passed national content laws. After that, they played a lot of Anne Murray, and a little Neil Young.
I think the best discussions are the ones where both sides sound like reactionary idiots and with that in mind I must say that even from 1500 miles away, and that being in a city where murder is common as dirt, I am still deeply moved, and saddened, by the news of the Queens murders yesterday morning. Relating to a freedom discussion on another page it is my primary nature to agree with jimb about there being something amiss with the nature of internal freedom in the US but at the same time I want to start seeing a lot less than 30,000 gun related deaths each year (and of course I don't mean to suggest that jimb wishes that number to stay the same, or grow). While clearly not the overall solution to the problem I want to see more restrictions on guns, more buy back programs, more effort goddammit. And I want back that 40 million or more spent on the Clinton investigations and I want it spent on something useful. I want more restrictions in my world. I want my US government to quit whoring itself to the NRA and other lobbying groups that promote ill health, and death. I'm late for work. f Ted Nugent.
Today is for me like the last day of summer vacation and tomorrow is the first day of school, and I'm dreadfully excited. My temporary electric pole was installed last Thursday and tomorrow Entergy is promising to run the juice to it. Now there will be no excuses for short days at the renovation project on Rocheblave, although I would like to say that temps in the mid nineties is too hot to be doing all this work. No excuses though, you damn sissy, its time to get on with getting on. The building supply stores known as Home Depot are open 24 hours a day in this area. I can buy framing timber at 3 in the morning and I can run lights at the jobsite. I can swat mosquitoes under the glow of a halogen, or a florescent, or that ever popular incandescent. Tonite I'm drinking ice cold budweiser (watch the typos grow), and might paint the pages red. Look at that boy go.
Cam is organizing a blogbowl night of bowling for bloggers in NYC. The place: Bowlmor lanes (of course.) The date: Tomorrow (5/25) 9:00 - midnight. Here's the sign-up sheet (they have to make a reservation.)
My humble apologies. This page disappeared for a day or two while I was away. Actually, it was still here if you had it bookmarked, or knew the address, but the home (top 0:1:) page was not listing it. I had not set the time range (I guess you could call it 'decay') correctly for that page, and the group page and system news drifted out of range, so they were no longer shown. Whoops. Easy fix. Everything should be back working now.
jim mentioned this to me. congrats to wylie.
Looks like Rudy is out of the running.
this was listed on blogger. an npr story on blogs. listen to some of our friends in the bloggerati.
Bird-Man Pondering Convergence (nyt)
describe the dmtree in 10 words or less (haikus acceptable)
I'm pretty sure this guy is not serious:) He's got some hilarious business plans for the web that he tries out on a pretty funny audience, in a sort of mock open-source vapor web business way. Huh? Try this one, or this one (loved that first feedback comment), or I think this is the first (last) one. Or is it just time to for me to log off?
You can also use the location: field in your browser (where the URL is) to enter commands to the system. For instance, you can force the database to think you've read everything presently on the system. Just hack off everything after the dmt2/ and type clear.php3 (digitalmediatree.com/dmt2/clear.php3). It will ask for your name and password, and then clear the database so the system thinks you have read everything. Maybe that's useful? I'm not sure.
Still looking for a graphic to replace the tree in a bottle that I'm very sick of. Forward any suggestions my way, or post a url below. Winning entry wins big big prize.
Security Alert. Massive hole discovered in Microsoft's implementation of javascript for Internet Explorer running on Windows. This hole allows a hostile web site to see the contents of your cookie jar. This is very bad. Protect yourself by turning off javascript. More info on my page here.
Tip of the day: If you are just starting out, the new system thinks that you have not read any of the posts (even though you may have read them on the old system.) When you click down into, say, the main page, and then reload the home page, it will still show tons of messages unread on the main page. This is because when you clicked down to read the main page, it didn't print out all the posts on the page (it only prints out the last two weeks.) All of the earlier posts are still marked as unread. If you regularly read the site this kind of thing won't happen, but becasue we transfered everything over it is a little weird. The answer is to 'reset' the system, by actually printing out ALL of the posts in that section. The [nested] option does just that (although the main page is so large that it takes quite a while to download.) Just do this once, and those annoying red numbers will be gone (until somebody posts something really new.) (Thanks to Alex for pointing out the possible confusion.) If you really want to go crazy, go here which will give you a nested view of the home page (0:1:) and therefore of everything on the site (go get a cup of coffee while it downloads though.) [update: yeah, I had to try it. 354k so beware. Although it's not as big as I thought. The whole database is over 7 megs now - but a lot is duplicated between the old and new sites.)]
Here's the malathion release, er, the press release about malathion, complete with non-functional link. This is the official notice. Seems there's no problem at all, but feel free to comment. Nice to have these folks looking out for us.
Can’t seem to get much of a post together.
The NY Post says the EPA is about to declare the malathion we were dosed with last summer a carcinogen (now they tell us). The Post didn’t post it, though, and I have yet to find an online source. The EPA ain’t talking yet, but there should be something official tomorrow.
Then there’s the New Yorker’s Mother’s Day cover. Of course, they don’t have much of a site, losing enough money in print, I guess. Just a thumbnail of the cover (changing weekly, no doubt); no enlargement. Maybe you’ve got a copy, or saw it on the newsstand. It’s set in the Park, and depicts a scene that’s not unusual there; a mother with children in tow, seated next to a modern career girl type. The mother is morphing into a full blown Mother Nature, and the young woman gazes at the children with a mixture of solicitousness and envy. I’d like to believe that different faces of the Goddess are not incompatible, but this image gets into a side of Mother’s Day that Hallmark and the mainstream tend to shy from. Pretty good cover, I thought, but I noticed that it was drawn by a man. Wondered if we had any female feedback out there?
Absolutely amazing thunder going on right now in NYC. Here's a little rainy night academic reading from the MIT press (no not that one, I mean the infamous roof and tunnel hacking MIT press.)
Wow. Life on the sun? A little technical, but short, and very cool (or is that hot?) (via robotwisdom)
Because I don't expect anyone to read the instructions, I'm going to start posting a tip of the day here in the main section:
'post' in the left side menu always posts to the present page. [add a comment] always posts to the new page below the post.