January 30, 2001
And in the category of
And in the category of "Did you ever wonder....?", these observations from George Carlin.
Posted by John at 05:21 PM | Comments (0)
The victim mentality is everywhere,
The victim mentality is everywhere, at least among the dotcom community. The Internet turned out not to be the economic engine of stock option prosperity they were looking for, not a warm and cozy place full of chat rooms, weblogs and thin client applications, not simply a centralized repository of information delivering answers at the push of a button or a click of the mouse. Instead, like a malignant Chuckie doll, it sprouted fangs and ate their jobs. Engineers, business development, sales, marketing, the valuation meltdown showed no favoritism and took no prisoners. On the way down it smashed technology fund managers, venture capitalists and angel investors alike. And many good websites, with solid business plans but insufficient greenbacks in the till, were swept along with the tide. In years to come, the economic and history textbooks will examine "The Internet Bubble" just as they do the 17th Century Dutch Tulip Bulb Mania. But that is in the future. Here and now, who shall mourn the e-dead? The Museum of E-Failures, that's who! Link found on metafilter. Hey, web horror stories are a dime a dozen these days, but this one's got pictures!
Posted by John at 03:34 PM | Comments (0)
January 29, 2001
www.mrwakeup.com That pretty much says
www.mrwakeup.com That pretty much says it all.
[Well, you could also say "Ms. Reminder", "Mr. Notify", "Ms. Followup", "Dr. Dose" and "Mr. Dollar", all services of iPing.com, which is one of the coolest things going, in my humble opinion. I love the fact that it takes our Internet-based online world and automates an interface with the "real" world. Your phone rings! You get a message! The Internet is calling, are you there?]
Posted by John at 02:41 PM | Comments (0)
Follow up on the link
Follow up on the link below to the offical U.S. government atomic clock time. They also provide a nifty little program that will synch your PC clock automatically via your Internet connection.
Posted by John at 02:38 PM | Comments (0)
January 27, 2001
Well, it's about time! No,
Well, it's about time! No, really... I mean it's about time. The link is, that is. [.....sigh.....] Just click on it. You'll see.
Posted by John at 01:16 AM | Comments (0)
There's been a veritable flood
There's been a veritable flood of new games out recently, as the Shockwave tool kit gets better and better. Here are a few of my favorites, including some old standbys and some new kids on the block.
Posted by John at 01:04 AM | Comments (0)
January 26, 2001
It seems my post on
It seems my post on 1/23 with the Bill Clinton comedy video, congratulating him on departing the Oval Office in style, was premature. It's still a funny clip, but now it seems some errant souls on the Clinton team went overboard in pranks and practical jokes on their way out, even destroying some property and trashing the joint in a couple of instances. All the gory detail from MSNBC.
Posted by John at 03:13 PM | Comments (0)
January 24, 2001
And more good privacy-enhancing tips,
And more good privacy-enhancing tips, tricks and software at JunkBusters. Don't miss it.
Posted by John at 09:34 PM | Comments (0)
I am not happy about
I am not happy about the Doubleclick tactics -- buying up marketing databases and matching them to their own user profiles so that not only will they know where you've been and what you've clicked on, but they'll have your name, address and phone number, too. Note: you can "opt out", but the next time you clear your cookies, they've got you. I wasn't happy with that solution either. Fixing it at work seemed simple, just adding "127.0.0.1 ad.doubleclick.net" to the hosts file. But then I noticed I was getting some Doubleclick ads anyway -- they have multiple servers names like m.doubleclick.net, n.doubleclick.net, etc., and identifying them all was going to be a pain. Plus at home, I don't have a HOSTS file running Windows 98 on @Home, and getting it to recognize the localhost was going to require editing a register. Guidescope to the rescue! Free software for Netscape or IE that will block ALL ads, user selectable, and it's smart enough to replace the ads with a clear GIF the same size, so page formatting isn't messed up. I've noticed pages load much faster without accessing the external ad servers. Oh, and it selectively blocks cookies, too, if you want.
Posted by John at 09:10 PM | Comments (0)
"Accept our valuation or let
"Accept our valuation or let Sand Hill put you into Chapter 11." Yikes! Sort of sums up the dotcom funding environment right now. Thanks to Gretchen for sending me the article from Red Herring.
Posted by John at 03:13 PM | Comments (0)
Fun with Jehovah's Witnesses on
Fun with Jehovah's Witnesses on a Saturday morning.
Posted by John at 10:37 AM | Comments (0)
January 23, 2001
Always leave 'em laughing. Kudos
Always leave 'em laughing. Kudos to Mr. Clinton for departing the Oval Office with grace and style, and having enough of his sense of humor intact to be able to do this. Adcritic.com has the best collection of commercial spots, movie trailers and shot features like this one on/by Bill Clinton. I also particularly like the Bear Fight (John West) and the Tornado (Nascar) commercials.
Posted by John at 06:44 PM | Comments (0)
The Harry Potter phenomenon continues
The Harry Potter phenomenon continues to grow. The huge (>700 pages) fourth volume is selling like hotcakes, and the merchandise flood is overwhelming. Julie did a Harry Potter puzzle with the younger boys just last night. A search on Google for "Harry Potter" turned up 428,000 hits. Now, however, a problem... seems that Harry's Dad and Mom were killed -- in that order -- by the evil Lord Voldemort way back in volume one (Mom died protecting Harry). But here in volume 4, it seems that Mom died first. HP fans by the hundreds have picked up on it, and the emails are flying asking what is the significance, what does it all MEAN? This is a clear sign that we are witnessing the birth -- or maybe we're already into the adolescence -- of another fan sub-culture. "Potties?"
Posted by John at 03:11 PM | Comments (0)
January 22, 2001
The best free stuff on
The best free stuff on the web, compiled by SiteSherpa. Unfortunately, the list is a lot shorter than it used to be!
Posted by John at 09:33 AM | Comments (0)
January 19, 2001
I love the outdoors. I
I love the outdoors. I live in Marin County, California, where much of the land is "designated open space". It's nice. But I am tired of the militant tree-huggers out there who don't realize that people have to come first. We're all in this together, boyz-n-girls, and what we need to do is be conscientious and minimize the damage that we do by inhabiting this little orb. Quotes from leaders of the green movement, by way of (bad) example.
Posted by John at 05:29 PM | Comments (0)
Standing outside my office in
Standing outside my office in San Francisco's "South of Market" (SoMa) district this afternoon when a truck flew by on Howard Street, dumping vast quantities of little Styrofoam peanuts out the back door. Cars that followed down this one-way stretch of road flew through the cloud of peanuts creating winds and eddies that kept them aloft for several minutes. Those that came to earth were promptly tossed back into the air by the next car to come along. Gradually the entire mass of Styrofoam peanuts picked up enough momentum from being buffeted by the the passing traffic that the cloud began to drift down Howard Street, following the cars. It's 56 degrees outside, and I'm in a San Francisco snowstorm.
Posted by John at 04:21 PM | Comments (0)
I set out to create
I set out to create the ultimate road trip CD. You know the songs; the ones that make you roll down the windows, turn on the radar detector and put the hammer down. I had so much fun with it that I asked a few of my friends for ideas, and then it got kind of weird.
Posted by John at 09:51 AM | Comments (0)
January 18, 2001
Feeling morbid today? Check your
Feeling morbid today? Check your death clock.
Posted by John at 05:52 PM | Comments (0)
I did a (very) little
I did a (very) little preliminary research on the Parker name, and found a web site that says our Family Motto is "Try". What kind of weak-kneed, pitiful excuse for a motto is that? I think Yoda summed up my feelings best when he said: "Try? Try not. Do, or do not. There is no try." I'm going to officially change my family motto. Anybody know how I go about doing that? I want something with some teeth in it, like the Kurgan in the movie Highlander, "...better to burn out than to fade away."
Posted by John at 09:12 AM | Comments (0)
January 17, 2001
Richard Bach, author of Jonathan
Richard Bach, author of Jonathan Livingston Seagull, also said in his book Illusions, "we are game-playing, fun-having creatures, we are the otters of the universe". Works for me.
Posted by John at 08:07 AM | Comments (0)
January 16, 2001
If you're so smart, how
If you're so smart, how come you're not rich?
Posted by John at 06:17 PM | Comments (0)
I heard on the radio
I heard on the radio this morning that 30 years ago today the Roper poll was announced naming Walter Cronkite the "most trusted man in America". And that was 5 years after he got out of broadcasting. I'm somewhat disturbed that I can't think of a single public figure today that I would vote for as a candidate for that title. Bush or Gore, or as I prefer to think of him, Bush/Gore? Not. Rather, Brokow, Jennings? No, no, no. Clinton? Ha. Nader? Ha ha. Are we more cynical, or is the press just more effective at exposing all the character flaws of our icons? Maybe both.... Ah, the good old days... Remember what life was like in the 1900's? Hey! It's 2001! Where's my flying car?
Posted by John at 10:11 AM | Comments (0)
A Joke? Engineers tend to
A Joke?
Engineers tend to ask, "How can I exploit that phenomena?"
Physical scientists tend to ask, "Why do such phenomena occur?"
Mathematicians tend to ask, "What is the class of the description of that phenomena?"
Those educated in the classics tend to ask, "Would you like fries with that burger?"
Posted by John at 12:29 AM | Comments (0)
I suck at staying organized.
I suck at staying organized. But my brain is a very organized place, and I actually enjoy trying to figure out how to classify things. [Hence, my current job.] When I first became interested in the taxonomy of the animal world, the natural starting place was "how many species"? The answer, from an encyclopedia, turned out to be some 960,000, mostly beetles, plus a total of 50,000 protozoa. Only. Then a few years ago, work in the tropical rain forest canopies put the total at 3,000,000 to 8,000,000 species, mostly beetles. I see last year that the figure was revised to about 50,000,000, again mostly beetles (Haldane said God's handiwork showed "an inordinate fondness for beetles"). Then in the letters column of New Scientist, a specialist wrote in noting that based on North Sea bottom core samples, in one of which he had noted 257 species of one genus, the total of nematode species alone would be up to about 100,000,000 worldwide. Now it turns out that for bacteria, species were usually named after growing the bacteria in a suitable medium and testing them for differentiating characteristics. No medium = no species. Now we have DNA probes to directly measure species diversity. And the answer is vast numbers of unicellular species exist with unknown potentials for assisting humankind in industrial, medical and other applications. No figures yet that I've come across, but you can bet there'll be trouble finding names for them all using the current Linnaean (genus + species) binomial nomenclature.
Posted by John at 12:09 AM | Comments (0)
January 15, 2001
I love good graphic art
I love good graphic art on the web. eLogic has some of the best. Check out their gallery of home pages.
Posted by John at 11:28 PM | Comments (0)
Every once in awhile, you
Every once in awhile, you just stumble over something that makes you laugh. That's the beauty of the web, isn't it? I wonder what's around this corner?
Posted by John at 11:23 PM | Comments (0)
I love a good quote
I love a good quote as much as the next person. OK, probably more. Anyway, I have lists scattered around several different places. Bartlett's it ain't, but they're the ones that speak to me. So I've started saving them on the website. This whole internet thing comes in handy for stuff like that. I'll post more as I come across the various lists.
Posted by John at 02:43 AM | Comments (0)
We're sitting around the table
We're sitting around the table finishing off the first tier of a box of chocolate truffles that my brother sent us for Christmas. You know that feeling of anticipation that you get when you've finished the top level and you lift out the piece of cardboard that was the "floor" of the top level, and then that sheet of puffy plasticized paper whose purpose is a mystery to me (melting shield?), and you're ready to break new ground and dive into the second layer of candies? So we lift out the cardboard...., and yes, there's the obligatory piece of plastic paper, and then.... a one inch thick block of styrofoam. Just to make the box look bigger. Not to name names (Swiss Colony), but that is a cheap, misleading packaging trick, and I resent it. I will never buy anything from those people. And I am advising my brother of their shifty ways, too.
Posted by John at 01:43 AM | Comments (0)
I ran into a bit
I ran into a bit of a problem when some inconsiderate hacker downloaded a "distributed net client" through my brand new cable modem on @Home. (Details here.) So on Jan. 9, I purchased a firewall program. Today, 6 days later, there have been 72 attempted "attacks" on my system, not counting 49 NNTP port probes that my firewall reads as "authorized" -- i.e. coming from the folks at @Home. 15 of the 79 are ranked as "critical" attacks -- mostly scans for Trojan Horse programs like BackOrifice or SubSeven. Had I had any idea of the volume of hacker traffic out there, I would have ordered the firewall program sooner. Beware, kids, it's a dangerous world out there....
Posted by John at 01:30 AM | Comments (0)
January 13, 2001
OK, very first post to
OK, very first post to the new weblog "Parkerama". See how fresh and NEW it is? Testing out the blog software from Blogger.com -- so far so good! Now if only it's easy to set up a community log.... we'll see.
Posted by John at 12:02 AM | Comments (0)
