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June 30, 2003
Bad Luck + Good Timing = Good Luck?
Timing can certainly change your perception of events. Like if I said "the engine in my car seized up and it was a total loss" that would be a bad thing, right? But then if I said, "it had a 35,000 mile warranty and it seized up at 34,702 miles", that changes things, doesn't it?
Posted by John at 06:24 PM | Comments (0)
June 29, 2003
R.I.P. the great Kate
Just checking in to log my sadness over the passing of Katharine Hepburn today. Six decades of film, wow. One of the all time greats, and not just for "African Queen" with Tracy... check out The Lion in Winter, or Bringing Up Baby... Given that she lived to the grand old age of 96, and all we have seen of her these past few decades has been the Kate of the quavering voice and the shaking hands, it easy to forget that - in her day - she was smokin'.
Posted by John at 11:52 PM | Comments (0)
June 26, 2003
Tough Choices
Every meal you eat for the rest of your life has 12 ounces of sand in it.
--OR--
Your arms no longer bend at the elbows.
An entertaining and horrifying and thought-provoking series of difficult choices. YouMustChoose. Pick the one you most desire (or, more frequently, least abhor) and see how your choice compares to the averages. It would be really interesting to have a comments section on some of these. I'm very pleased to report that eating a litter of kittens on live TV is deemed preferable to consuming a box of puppies in like fashion.
Posted by John at 02:54 AM | Comments (0)
Look to thine own computer, Senator!
Senator Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), argued in a recent hearing with technology leaders in Washington that a legitimate legislative remedy for copyright infringement on the Internet would be to destroy infringers' computers. "There's no excuse for anyone violating copyright laws," says Senator Hatch. That'll teach those music downloaders!
But, wait... Laurence Simon of Houston, Texas, targeted Hatch after discovering that the senator had been using unlicensed software on his official website.
"I am very impressed with your website, Senator. However, I'm assuming that you are using Milonic Solutions DHTML menu under the non-commercial license agreement, correct? Have you or any member of your staff notified Milonic Solutions as to your intentions regarding the use of this software as per the license agreement?"
Milonic Solutions' JavaScript code costs $900 for a site-wide license, but is free for personal or nonprofit use. As a non-profit legislator's site, the senator's web site would qualify. However, the software's license stipulates that the user must register the software to receive a licensing code, and provide a link in the source code to Milonic's website. On Wednesday, the senator's site was neither registered with Milonic nor linked back to Milonic.
Posted by John at 02:06 AM | Comments (0)
June 25, 2003
For a good belly laugh,
For a good belly laugh, if you've seen The Matrix Reloaded, check out Rob Hilton's The Matrix Reloaded: The Abridged Script. Rod does a nice job not only of condensing the plot, but of inserting the Mystery Science 3000 commentary that was running through your head while you were watching the movie as dialog for the actors. Sample:
LAURENCE FISHBURNE We want Randall Duk Kim. I am totally dead serious here, as I always am.
LAMBERT WILSON I won't give him to you, but you can use my girlfriend, Monica Belluci to go behind my back and get him. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go have some matrix sex.
MONICA BELLUCI Grrr, I get so mad when he cheats on me. To spite him, I will give you Randall.
KEANU REEVES Wait, you're a program right? So some machine actually specifically programmed you and gave you the ability to be jealous, conniving, and spiteful?
MONICA BELLUCI Not only that, but they made me a hornball. I will only help if you make out with me.
LAURENCE FISHBURNE What? It's bad enough that the agents no longer pose any threat at all, but now these are the kind of obstacles we must overcome to save Zion? Make out with Monica Belluci? What will we have to do next, eat our way through a prison wall made of chocolate?
Posted by John at 02:24 AM | Comments (0)
June 24, 2003
For the record, JustGoodMusic went
For the record, JustGoodMusic went live over the weekend, and our community of music lovers is growing. Watch the site for more updates and band recommendations that are... off the beaten track. We were sending so much good info around on email that we thought it wise to start archiving it, in the process making it available for you, Gentle Reader.
Posted by John at 12:54 AM | Comments (0)
June 23, 2003
I love undocumented features. Google
I love undocumented features. Google has many, and one of the most interesting -- if you take the time to figure out how to use it correctly and interpret the results -- is the "link:" option. This option returns entries to all pages that Google knows contain a link to a given URL. Thus, the search "link:www.vitria.com" yields 542 links and "http://www.vitria.com/solutions/industry/financial/" yields 8. (Note that using URLs that contain references to subdirectories below the root requires that the URL ends with a " / " (which is not documented in Google's help feature).
You can use this option to assess the popularity of a given Web site, which is actually how Google ranks search results anyway. However, it gets more interesting. You can use it to do a stack ranking of your competitors. For instance, in the Enterprise Application Integration space:
TIBCO 28,700
webMethods 1,930
Vitria 542
Mercator 218
SeeBeyond 172
This tells volumes about your online presence, about the buzz you've created in the marketplace, about the effectiveness of your advertising and level of brand awareness. You can also use the feature to compare the market presence and awareness of your product lines, monitoring the internal bakeoff between products and services that might not compete directly in the marketplace with one another, but almost certainly compete internally for mindshare and budget. This is yet another gauge of the effectiveness of marketing -- product marketing in this case as opposed to corporate marketing. The list of sites returned is also a great starting place to monitor for copyright infringements.
For deep Google probing of all the hidden functionality, try Google Blogoscoped. For example, here's another little jewel for you - to protect against link rot in your "Favorites" list, save the Google searches under the keywords you used to arrive at the site. Details here.
Posted by John at 10:55 PM | Comments (0)
Matthew and Colin went to
Matthew and Colin went to the Grand Canyon with their grandparents a couple of months ago, and Matthew brought back 4 rolls of film, most shot in panorama mode. We took them to the local Wolf Camera for developing and prints, and even with our discount club card it was over $40.00. Seems ridiculously expensive to me.
Therefore, another on my growing list of wants/needs would be:
· A service that would develop standard 35mm file cheaply, and provide digital copies for free.
· A service that would develop my digital picutres when I want prints made. Cheap.
· The same serivce to provide electronic download capability to any number of friends to whom I might want to distribute them.
· OK, while we're at it, how about unlimited online photo storage? With online photo albums. Free.
So I went looking, and it turns out my wish has already been granted. It’s called Snapfish. Before I recommend this to anyone, let me caveat with (1) the fact that I haven’t tried it yet (but believe me, I will), and (2) free storage can disappear at any time – always get CD copies of your picture files.
Posted by John at 03:29 AM | Comments (0)
If you haven't played with
If you haven't played with the PuppetTool, you're in for a treat. This is a user-interactive graphics engine, similar to SodaPlay, but more complex and flexible. Each of the images (created and submitted by the users) has a different set of controls (although most are based on moving your mouse around, what it does when you move your mouse varies widely from one example to the next).
To preview each of the displays, mouse over the squares at the bottom of the second screen. Equus, for example, is a donkey on puppet strings controlled by your mouse to hilarious effect. Weekend, in contrast, has your mouse controlling your flight pattern as you move among the birds and clouds. Another stunning, artisitic and creative use of the web. [Note: This site requires Flash and Shockwave.]
Posted by John at 03:04 AM | Comments (0)
If you've got kids, BrainPOP
If you've got kids, BrainPOP is the place to send them. There is a staggering array of information on that site, from science, math and english to astronomy, health and technology. Plus, it's all organized in categories and presented in pictures, movies and games. Presentation is A++, and kids are guaranteed to learn something and enjoy it. BrainPOP - "the more you know, the more you know."
Posted by John at 02:04 AM | Comments (0)
June 22, 2003
Go see the drawings of
Go see the drawings of W. Heath Robinson. [link via MeFi] They are amazing cartoon illustrations, very intricate, charming and whimsical and often featuring Rube Goldberg-like mechanical contraptions. I would love to have prints of some of these. (Straight-through processing seems to be a recurring theme for me: there's even a drawing showing STP Shredded Wheat).
Posted by John at 11:00 PM | Comments (0)
Hooked up to the machine,
Hooked up to the machine, 40 percent of test subjects exhibited extraordinary, and newfound, mental skills. (NY Times article, registration required: keelhauling/ keelhauling)
Lawrence Osborne, writing for the NY Times, climbs under one of those brainwashing hairdryers from 1950's science fiction movies, and receives a dose of transcranial magnetic stimulation. The drawings - of dogs - that he produced while under the brain ray machine show dramatically enhanced artistic skills. Shades of The Matrix!
Tank, I need a pilot program for a military M-109 helicopter. Now!
The article explores the interesting potential that this technology could unlock, from enhancing natural abilities - artistic, musical, logical - to "prepping" the brain for learning. If the brain is capable of things under TMS that it is not "normally" capable of, and if knowledge and learning are accomplished by laying down "tracks" among the neural pathways of our brains, why would the effects not linger? Who is to say where the limits are? As Dr. Allen Snyder of the University of Sydney, who is conducting these experiments, says:
''Remember that old saw which says that we only use a small part our brain? Well, it might just be true. Except that now we can actually prove it physically and experimentally. That has to be significant. I mean, it has to be, doesn't it?''
Posted by John at 09:35 PM | Comments (0)
Checking out local concerts and
Checking out local concerts and I saw that Dave Matthews is coming to the Shoreline; of course it was sold out already. So I went to a couple of ticket broker sites, and they're charging $750 per ticket for the good seats. $750.00!!! Seats on the lawn are $105.00!! I thought we were in an "economic downturn".
I have to find a good way to stay on top of ticket release and pre-sale dates, so I can buy them from the venue directly when they go on sale. I've been checking around and haven't found anything. All the sites have calendars of upcoming events where the tickets are already on sale (or sold out), but not much info on upcoming ticket release dates. The closest thing I've found has been weekly e-mail newsletter updates from ClearChannel or SFGate.
Anybody know of a better source online?!!
Posted by John at 12:39 PM | Comments (0)
June 21, 2003
I have a couple
I have a couple of very nice ties that are microscopic photographs enlarged - one of champagne molecules and one of a cabernet wine. I've been admiring the pathogenic ties; the Ebola is particularly attractive. But I never envisioned being able to snuggle up with bad breath or athlete's foot. With the plush toys from GIANTmicrobes, you can buy a birthday gift for one of your kid's friends and send a subtle message at the same time.
Athlete's Foot (Trichophyton mentagrophytes)
Posted by John at 07:23 PM | Comments (0)
June 20, 2003
Dang! Got there too late.
Dang! Got there too late. The Dialect Survey "uses a series of questions, including rhyming word pairs and vocabulary words, to explore words and sounds in the English language. There are no right or wrong answers; by answering each question with what you really say and not what you think is "right", you can help contribute to an accurate picture of how English is used in your community." Unfortunately, they apparently have all the data they need and so logins are closed. You can still check your own pronunciations against the mapped results, though.
What is your generic term for a sweetened carbonated beverage?
a. soda
b. pop
c. coke
d. tonic
e. soft drink
f. lemonade
g. cocola
h. fizzy drink
i. dope
j. other
Posted by John at 08:52 PM | Comments (0)
Ever thought of signing your
Ever thought of signing your name to the credit card receipt with something silly, or with someone else's name? You're not alone.
Posted by John at 12:06 AM | Comments (0)
June 19, 2003
I don't even have time
I don't even have time to tinker with '61 Corvette, much less build a Boeing 737 flight simulator cockpit. Unlike Matt Ford.
Posted by John at 08:39 PM | Comments (0)
I scored 94% on the
I scored 94% on the Caveman-O-Meter. Julie might argue that's too high, but before you comment, take the test yourself. Just how primitive are you? Take the challenge from the BBC's "Walking With Cavemen" and find out.
Posted by John at 08:38 PM | Comments (0)
June 18, 2003
Geek humor from Richard: The
Geek humor from Richard: The STP Burrito. For those of you unfamiliar with securities markets, STP is straight-through processing, referring to the processing of an order to buy or sell securities without human... oh, never mind. As Richard said, "Finally someone has figured out how to make B2C work, and it isn't even based on the web." For those of you unfamiliar with the ecommerce marketplace, B2C stands for business-to-consumer and refers... oh, never mind that either. Let's just call this, "How to Order a Burrito from your UNIX computer".
Posted by John at 07:37 PM | Comments (0)
June 14, 2003
I was trying to find
I was trying to find a line from a movie that I can't quite dredge up from the depths of my failing memory (the guy asks, "Are you trying to be funny?" and our hero instantly snaps back, "No, if I was trying to be funny I would have said..." and delivers a short joke) when Google came back with a Baghdad Bob movie. Who knew our hero Comical Ali was a movie star?!
Posted by John at 07:40 PM | Comments (0)
At its worst, the dispute
At its worst, the dispute raised tensions between Kentucky and West Virginia to dangerous levels, and it took the intervention of the US Supreme Court to cease the hostilities. The Hatfields and McCoys lived near the Kentucky-West Virginia border, along the valley of the Tug Fork River, off the Big Sandy River. Both families were among the early settlers of the area. William Anderson ("Devil Anse") Hatfield, the patriarch of his extended family, was a huge shaggy gorilla of a man described as "six feet of devil and one hundred eighty pounds of hell." Randolph ("Ran'l") McCoy, the leader of the McCoy clan had many of the same physical characteristics: a shaggy beard, sullen gray eyes, and broad shoulders.
Both men were farmers on a large and successful scale. Their lifestyles, however, did not reflect it, living as they did in rough country cabins and working 14 hour days on their farms. The Hatfield farm, for example, was over 2,000 acres of prime timberland. Both families were liquor distillers and distributors, priding themselves on their local whiskies, although its production and consumption were illegal in the 1840's and 1850's when the respective family enterprises were established. The Tug Fork marked the boundary between West Virginia and Kentucky and was also the dividing line between the families' farms. The Hatfields were West Virginians, the McCoys Kentuckians.
The origins of the feud are lost in the mists of history; there were already bad feelings between the two families in 1878, when a dispute over the ownership of two razor-backed hogs in a Hatfield pigsty provoked the first recorded incident of violence. The McCoys, upset when a court decision over the pigs went against them, ambushed a group of Hatfields who were deer hunting. No one was killed, but a few days later Staton Hatfield fired on two brothers, Sam and Paris McCoy, injuring one before he himself was killed by a single shot through the head. Through marriages and divorces, kidnappings, arrests, trials and murders, the feud escalated through the 1800's, reaching its peak with national press after an incredibly violent attack by the Hatfields. You can read more about the history here.
Today, more than 100 years later, over 60 descendents of the Hatfields and McCoys get together to sign a peace treaty, declaring an end to the fued that has spanned generations. The event if recognized by both State's legislatures, who are declaring June 14 "Hatfield and McCoy Reconciliation Day."
As Reo Hatsfield, organizer of the event opined:
"We're not saying you don't have to fight because sometimes you do have to fight," he said. "But you don't have to fight forever."
The Israelis and Palestinians could learn a thing or two from these stubborn old country boys.
Posted by John at 08:41 AM | Comments (0)
June 12, 2003
In London on business all
In London on business all week, and it's been interesting getting the British perspective on world events, especially on the USA and its actions. I think it can best be summed up by the title of a play going on right across Leicester Square from my hotel, "The Madness of George W. Bush."
My daily reading has been downgraded to The Guardian, a rag which fares poorly even in comparison with the San Francisco Chronicle. We did get in the paper today, however, a nice infusion of bon mots from the editor of the Oxford English Dictionary, which celebrates its 75th year this year. John Simpson, chief editor of the OED, picks his favourite words with unusual origins: 1. curfew, 2. to be hoist by one's own petard, 3. gossip, 4. hobbit, 5. dunce, 6. bastard, 7. alarm , 8. to curry favour, 9. to be the apple of someone's eye. Detailed explanations are in the article.
Posted by John at 11:49 PM | Comments (0)
June 07, 2003
Better SearchingWe've talked about the
Better Searching
We've talked about the so-called "hidden Internet" here before. Despite the fact that Google advertises that they're "Searching 3,083,324,652 web pages", the vast majority of the information on the web is in databases and on corporate intranets where Google can't get at them. Well, that's starting to change.
The advent of Turbo10 marks a new era in web searching, boys and girls. This is the real deal. It's been slashdotted at the moment and response times are slow, but as its popularity increases so will its funding and therefore its hardware budget, so this is a temporary problem. Let me repeat it: this changes the game. Most of the searches I do are fairly complex ("derivatives trading" AND "process models") and the most relevent results are typically articles from niche trade publications and academic research papers. Both of which are typically stored in databases, and invisible to Google.
The Register article on Turbo10 may go a little too far - Turbo10's value is not in being a "better" search engine than Google, it is in searching places that Google doesn't. Still, for some people, it may well be better for their purposes.
Posted by John at 04:36 AM | Comments (0)
The Tyranny of the Machine
The Tyranny of the Machine
Your password has expired. You must change your password before you will be allowed to log in. Your new password must adhere to the following rules:
1. A new password must begin and end with an alphabetic character.
2. A new password cannot be the same as the previous three passwords.
3. Passwords are limited to between 6 and 8 characters.
4. A new password must contain at least one non-alphabetic character.
5. A new password must not contain four consecutive characters of old password.
6. A new password must not contain three identical consecutive characters.
7. A new password must not contain your UserID.
Actually, it's the tyranny of the IT department. This defeats one major purpose of a password, which is for it to be easy to remember but hard to guess. With all these funky rules, I have no choice now but to write it down. I have over 30 passwords I use every week to various systems, accounts and so on. There's no way I'm going to be able to remember a password like "b$456#g" without writing it down. If I write it down, a hacker can find it. How idiotic.
Posted by John at 02:29 AM | Comments (0)
June 05, 2003
You know the Bush family
You know the Bush family has a dog, a Scottish terrier named Barney. First dog, as it were. But did you know you could get a view of the white house from Barney's perspective? Through the Barneycam, of course.
Posted by John at 09:45 PM | Comments (0)
Often I look for a
Often I look for a service or product and can't find it, and I wonder "why isn't this being provided by the free market? I can't be the only one who would use this", only to have it show up weeks or months later. Such is the case with MyExercisePlan.com. One place to manage your nutrution, weight loss, exercise log, stress levels and so on. Submit your profile information and receive a plan tailored for you - modified for your current health and wellness, with your specific goals in mind.
Posted by John at 09:42 PM | Comments (0)
Back in January 2001 I
Back in January 2001 I wrote about Road Side America, still one of the best Americana sites I know of. Now along comes Road Side Peek to give it a run for it's money. The Route 66 tour is excellent, great photos throughout the site.
Posted by John at 09:35 PM | Comments (0)
Would you like to send
Would you like to send a message to a loved one who's passed away? Now, through a new service called Afterlife Telegrams, you can! For a mere $5 a word, terminally ill patients will memorize your message, and personally deliver it to your loved one in the afterlife.
Wow. Consider for a moment the likelihood that there are a sufficient number of suckers in the world who would even be remotely interested in something like this AND trying to convince anyone this could ever be a business proposition, combined with the astronomical odds that one or more totally amoral people would ever waste the necessary time to organize something like this -- I mean they're SOLICITING DYING PEOPLE! "Gee, Frank, so sorry to see you on that life support machine, but I can help your family with those medical bills if you'll just memorize this little note to... um... Esther for me. OK?"
Questions abound. What if your loved one went to heaven, but the messenger is going to hell? That's the first thing that occurred to me. The Frequently Asked Questions page is simply beyond description. Sample questions:
How can you guarantee that the telegrams will get through?
Who are the terminally ill messengers? Can I meet them?
What do you consider "terminally ill"? Who qualifies as a messenger?
Is this legal?
What EXACTLY do customers pay for?
Are telegrams kept confidential?
Can you deliver non-English telegrams to non-English speaking people?
And my favorite: How are the messengers supposed to deliver the telegrams after passing?
Posted by John at 12:15 AM | Comments (0)
June 04, 2003
Honestly, I am not browsing
Honestly, I am not browsing around life insurance sites, there's nothing wrong. I just keep stumbling over them in other searches. Maybe because with the first wave of baby boomers headed for retirement now, they recognize that they have a once-in-a-century kind of opportunity to take a lot of that surplus cash off the hands of the nation's huge emerging elderly class. So they're expanding their marketing efforts like never before, and building some pretty cool functionality into their websites. Well, here's The Longetivity Game, which evaluates lifestyle risk factors and combines them with the latest actuarial data from the insurance companies to tell you how long you've got until you're pushing up daisies.
Posted by John at 11:21 PM | Comments (0)
If the weather's nice this
If the weather's nice this weekend, maybe I'll take the kids to the Infrared Zoo. Viewing the animals with infrared lenses allows you to actually see the differences between warm- and cold-blooded animals, and to see the effectiveness of the insulation that animals get from their feathers, fur, scales and skin. The otter's fur is such an efficient insulator that in order to get an image, the sensivity is dialed up so high that its eyes shine like headlights.
Posted by John at 09:05 AM | Comments (0)
Decima, seis folk, danza, plena,
Decima, seis folk, danza, plena, bomba and, of course, salsa. Native music genres, all catalogued and explained on this fabulous site, Music of Puerto Rico. Check out the "Audio Clips" link over the left!
Posted by John at 08:54 AM | Comments (0)
I did a training seminar
I did a training seminar for salespeople recently, and I wanted to gather some feedback on how they thought it went. Survey feedback forms are b.o.r.i.n.g. I was putting the questions together late at night in a NY hotel, and I decided to throw in some humor to keep their interest. So I inserted a joke as one of the questions:
13. A butcher is six feet two inches tall, wears size 14 shoes, and has
a 50-inch waist. What does he weigh?
A. Fifteen stone.
B. Fifty quid.
C. Thirty fathoms.
D. 3. 14159265358979323846
E. Meat
Seven out of eight sales reps missed it. I bet you can figure it out, though. If you need help, here's a conversion tool.
Posted by John at 07:59 AM | Comments (0)
Suppose you want to see
Suppose you want to see if you can figure out where this whole Internet phenomenon is going to end up, how it all turns out. Well, silly, if you really want to know, just look it up on the Internet. You might find Phrenicea that way. The outcome of the revolution in biotechnology is thrown in as a bonus. Your mileage may vary. Not valid in Vermont.
Posted by John at 12:38 AM | Comments (0)
Every once in awhile, I'll
Every once in awhile, I'll be in a meeting with the CEO and several other top company executives, and someone will notice we're all wearing blue shirts. You know why? Because I'm affirming my identity as a go-getter, a "mover and shaker", and a true maverick. People immediately recognize me as the no-nonsense, jet-setting, rule-breaker that my blue shirt says I am. That's why. {I didn't really understand before, but now it all makes so much sense!)
Posted by John at 12:30 AM | Comments (0)
June 03, 2003
Pencak Silat codes: 99999 :
Pencak Silat codes:
99999 : 99999 points (Story mode)
jannata : gives a secret message (does nothing)
allclear : all location defeated (Story mode)
starwars : gives a secret message (does nothing)
allitems : get all items
I know you don't care, but where else am I going to put them?
Posted by John at 12:35 AM | Comments (0)
June 02, 2003
Hickory, North Carolina is one
Hickory, North Carolina is one uptight place. Here's a kid who spends 13 years focused on one day - graduation. He arrives !! Success !! He yells "Woo!!" and gets escorted off the premises. (Link is to RealPlayer movie) You'd think, with all the worries about drugs and alcohol, teenage gangs and violence, that the fine folks who run our educational institutions would have a better response than "sit down and shut up." Woo indeed.
Posted by John at 07:07 PM | Comments (0)
Mohammed Saeed Al-Sahaf -- Found!
Mohammed Saeed Al-Sahaf -- Found!
Posted by John at 04:24 PM | Comments (0)
June 01, 2003
Also on the new games
Also on the new games front, if you're a fan of Tom Clancy you've probably read about Silat -- an Indonesian martial arts style -- in his NetForce and CyberNation books. I found it interesting because the descriptions (most of which come from Clancy's co-author, Steve Perry, who is a beginning Pencak Silat student) sound very much like Aikido. (Always liked Steve Segal's fighting style.) Fast movements, inside fighting, but small and controlled and graceful; a smooth, flowing style focused most of all on controlling your opponent. Well, if you're interested, there is now a fighting game on the Internet called Pencak Silat, that I think might make it to the Keelhauling Games Hall of Fame.
Posted by John at 04:16 AM | Comments (0)
The kids really seem to
The kids really seem to enjoy the role-playing dueling card games, so I'm betting they'll like Tactics Core. I can't beat it, even at level 1, but I can appreciate the really professional graphics. This is almost commercial software quality.
Posted by John at 03:14 AM | Comments (0)
