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September 30, 2004
Bulwer-Lytton 2004
Somehow in all the sound and fury, I missed it. The annual Bulwer-Lytton fiction writing contest results came out six weeks ago!
The winner, from Dave Zobel, a 42 year old software designer from Manhattan Beach, California:
"She resolved to end the love affair with Ramon tonight ... summarily, like Martha Stewart ripping the sand vein out of a shrimp's tail ... though the term 'love affair' now struck her as a ridiculous euphemism ... not unlike 'sand vein,' which is after all an intestine, not a vein ... and that tarry substance inside certainly isn't sand ... and that brought her back to Ramon."
Maybe it's a result of my short attention span, but I seem to find the brief entries funniest:
Criminy, thought Francine as she left the birthing center, if the baby's an unknown life-form, it probably means Ricky wasn't really from West Hartford, either.Read them all here.Stamp, stack, stamp, stack, stamp, stack, Rodney was going insane from the monotony of the job and the cruel irony of being guest of the New Hampshire penal system forced to read the words over and over: "Live Free or Die," "Live Free or Die," "Live Free or Die."
The knife handle jutted from her chest like one of the plastic pop-up timers in a frozen turkey, but from the blood pooling around the wound, it was apparent that this bird wasn't done.
Posted by John at 10:41 PM | Comments (0)
Darwin awards headline
This just sounds like a Darwin award waiting to happen:
"Gas powered inline skates".
Posted by John at 10:06 PM | Comments (0)
September 27, 2004
AllofMP3.com
I wrote an extended entry on the Russian music download service, AllofMP3.com, over at JustGoodMusic.net so rather than retype it, I'm just linking it. It's an interesting proposition, but it's got me feeling very conflicted. I'm almost certain that it's outside the spirit of US Copyright law vis-a-vis recorded music, but on the other hand the laws are outdated and creating an industry meltdown as recording artists are victimized by filesharing. And this is a Russian web site and US jurisdiction is nil, and the chance of stopping it through an international court of law - or a Russian one for that matter - is also virtually nil. On the other hand, the risk model for buying CDs in this country is skewed, and I'm reluctant to plop down $15 for a CD I don't have any way of previewing, and don't even know if I'm going to like. So if I use the site to find new music, and I don't share the files but instead go out and buy more CDs than I would have otherwise, I'm helping the music industry not hurting it. I think it boils down to personal accountability. Again.
Posted by John at 03:57 PM | Comments (0)
September 23, 2004
Furl it!
Ok, Furl.net is goodness. I have an extensive collection of bookmarks, and have spent a lot of time organizing them for use at home as well as in my job. The problem is link rot, of course. Half the time the information is still there, the idiot webmaster just keeps moving it around. They should take a tip from Keelhauling, where nothing ever changes!
Now there's a (FREE!) solution - you can Furl it. Basically you take a snapshot of the page, and then work with the snapshot instead of following your link. Some pages aren't appropriate to furl - they have ever-changing lists of links and articles and whatnot. But it's perfect for some sites, particularly reference pages with important information that you want to archive, and pages with nifty graphics that you might want to admire later on. This has some real advantages; it's sort of like an electronic hard copy of the most important pages (to you!) of the Internet.
Save a permanent copy of articles, pages and receipts with a single click
Search across all the data in your archive in an instant
Automatically share what you find through email, RSS or your own site
See what others are saving and find new, useful information
Access your archive from any computer, anywhere
It's free to sign up, and quick and easy to install
Posted by John at 10:48 PM | Comments (0)
September 22, 2004
Left... Right... Left
George Will pens an interesting article for Newsweek explaining how it is possible to be both right of Bush and left of Kerry. He makes good points on both.
Posted by John at 10:07 AM | Comments (0)
September 20, 2004
Due in the "fall of 2004"
After a succession of WAP-enabled and Bluetooth cell phones and PDAs, I finally got a Blackberry about one year ago. I hate it. Or more accurately, I hated it. It's gone now. My boss and co-workers at the software company where I work all have them, and are encouraging me to get one, but I've been there, done that, and I'm not going back.
Unless, of course, the right tool for the job finally comes around. OQO might be it. It at least has more potential than anything I've seen. I can't wait to check this baby out.
Posted by John at 08:15 PM | Comments (0)
Best of the 2004 Olympic Games
Here's an excellent collection of photos from the 2004 Olympic games in Athens, from the Canon website. This picture cracked me up.
Posted by John at 01:07 PM | Comments (0)
100 Photographs that Changed the World
... or at least 28 of them.
This series from Life magazine highlights the photos that have had the most impact on human events, changing the way we see ourselves and the world around us. Great brief explanations beneath each photo as well. Some of these I had not seen; they are all very powerful.
Posted by John at 12:56 PM | Comments (0)
September 11, 2004
Now Even You Can Lick Arnie
The California Republican joins Mick Jagger and Pope John Paul II, whose images also have appeared on Austrian postage stamps in recent years.
And the text in the article also says most native Austrians refer to him affectionately as "Arnie".
You can even buy it as a 22" x 17" poster.
Posted by John at 07:01 PM | Comments (0)
Want to buy a bridge?
I'm as big a fan of shiny objects as the next person, and UrbanPeel.com has some of the shiniest. Also, however, some of the most ridiculously expensive and ridiculously... well, ridiculous. Consider, for instance, Watur, a door formed from constantly falling water. It pushes for a redefinition of boundaries and obstacles by forcing one to choose to be denied or refused access. And it can be yours for only $5,760.00 (plus shipping and handling). (And water bill). (And electric bill).
As opposed to the more prosaically named Door. Which for $189 provides a reassuring 6'8" solid wall of mahogany, not merely delineating but defining the physical spaces of inside and outside, while keeping your inside stuff securely inside and rebuffing entry from outside stuff.
Posted by John at 12:24 AM | Comments (0)
September 10, 2004
Lump of Clay
So I've had this terrible chest cold for four days now, and it's getting worse every day instead of better, and work is getting more and more intense as the deadline looms on a response to a request for information from a client that has generated over $100 million in revenue for my company. Every day, between 4:30pm and 4:45pm all my body's systems start to collapse - head imploding, sinuses stuffed, breathing sounds like gargling, and my body feels like somebody's been working me over with a baseball bat. Sometimes you need a little therapy.
Herewith, 4 minutes of same.
Then I went down to the potter's house, and behold, he was working at the wheel. And the vessel that he was making from clay was spoiled in the hand of the potter; so he made it over, reworking it into another vessel as it seemed good to the potter to make it. Then the word of the Lord came to me:O house of Israel, can I not do with you as this potter does? says the Lord. Behold, as the clay is in the potter's hand, so are you in My hand...
Maybe I'm just being molded this week.
Jeremiah 19:3-6
Posted by John at 01:08 AM | Comments (0)
September 09, 2004
Buying a car
I have seen a lot of articles and advice columns about how to buy a car, all purporting to save you gobs of money. There's probably some truth - to some of them. But this article is the best. If you ever find yourself in the market for a new car, here's how to buy it.
Posted by John at 08:05 PM | Comments (0)
September 08, 2004
The Berging of the Tricolor
http://www.havenarbeiders.be/fototricolor.htm Go and see. And if somebody can translate the text from this page for me, I'd appreciate it. Every time I read it, I wind up sounding like the Swedish chef. I think it's just a copyright notice on the photos, but I want more information on what's going on in these pictures! It's the scale of the thing that boggles...
Posted by John at 12:23 AM | Comments (0)
Remember the victims!
You lost over half your firm in the collapse of the World Trade Center towers. So what do you do when the Government agency that was supposed to figure out what happened to your dead colleagues drops the ball? Nobody will give you a straight answer about why.
Well, I'll tell you what you do, sonny boy. Like any resourceful bunch of Americans, you take matters into your own hands: you research; you examine documents; you figure it out and decide to make things right.
And if you're Wall Street firm Cantor Fitzgerald, a company that lost 658 of their 1050 employees in the World Trade Center bombings, you just might have enough mojo to take those mountains to Mohammad. So to speak. [sorry, sorry]
Delving into Al Qaida's financial affairs -- where the 9/11 Commission declined to go -- they have filed suit against a variety of Al Qaida financiers. The most notable of these is the nation of Saudi Arabia.
Cantor Fitzgerald is a true investment bank, and has enough smart accountants, financiers, bankers and brokers to actually follow the money trail. They also cut a wide enough swath in the corridors of both politics and business to make this stick. They even have the lawyers to take it to a higher court if need be. It might need to be, if the Department of Justice once again claim that the Alien Tort Claims Act is a relic and have the case thrown out.
As Cantor Fitzgerald's investigation unfolds, I think we'll see a caliber of detective work and accounting that will put the DOJ investigations to shame. I can't imagine how anyone could be more dedicated than the surviving Cantor Fitzgerald employees. We could learn more about the how and why of 9/11 than we have seen before, and it will create enormous - and overdue - pressure and friction in our ties with Saudi Arabia.
Posted by John at 12:02 AM | Comments (1)
September 06, 2004
Narrow Escape?
After all the buzz about computers locking up when upgrading to Windows XP Professional Service Pack 2 (SP2), and the recommendations to do a thorough scan for ad-ware before doing the update, I was approaching the exercise with some trepidation. I ran Spybot - Search & Destroy and I ran AdAware, and commenced the upgrade on computer #1. Meanwhile, I went downstairs to computer #2 and started running the anti-adware programs.
I was wondering why I hadn't received an updated data file from AdAware for several months. I always click on "Check for Updates", and had been getting "No Updates Found" for months. I watched the update request a little more carefully as a result and noticed that it delivered a link to "Upgrade to free AdAware Personal Edition". I followed the link, and yes, there was a whole new version of the program out. I downloaded it and started the scan, and it quickly found 30 programs running in the background!
I ran upstairs and killed the SP2 upgrade mid-stream, hoping I was not too late. I felt the wind of disaster brushing my neck. Success! After downloading the new AdAware, I did the SP2 on both computers and had no problems. But the final tally for the main computer is shown below. Computer #2 had over 100 spyware programs detected and eliminated. Moral: if you don't have AdAware SE Personal (freeware), go get it right now!
Posted by John at 11:06 AM | Comments (0)
