- The holidays could have been better and it could have been worse, but I’m glad to have it behind me. It was nice to visit with some of the family, and it’s interesting to see what changes from year to year. The food was great and I got to visit with both parents. On a scale of 1 to 5, the whole experience rates a 2.
- We got to finally meet Sab’s friend Justin last Wednesday. He came in from San Luis Obispo to visit. We went to Hyde Park Bar & Grill for dinner, which Sab seems to love for some reason. Justin was very cute and funny, and everyone seemed to have a lot of fun. He’s the kind of person who needs to move to Austin because he’s easy to talk to.
- I spent about 20 hours this weekend just playing World of Warcraft by Blizzard Entertainment where some of my friends work. It’s super-addictive. Here are just a few things I got to do in game that were really cool:
- Tamed a mountain lion and named it “Meow”. She fought by my side until level 15 when I ditched her for a Hyena I named “Giggler”. Apparently, I’m damn creative with pet names. (screenshot)
- I fished for a long time off the docks and banks and pulled up some clams with pearls inside as well as all sorts of fish.
- Helped get rid of Alliance players (Dwarves, Night Elves, etc.) who invaded our area. PvP is fun! It’s also something EQ2 lacks.
Software / Internet
29
Nov 04
Short Jots
29
Oct 04
gmail exploit
All gmail users should be aware of the potential for a gmail exploit. Described here.
21
Sep 04
Minor change
I’ve made a minor change to the website as I am wont to do. This only affects people who use RSS/Atom/XML feeds to view the site. Instead of publishing small excerpts from the entries in the XML feeds, I’m publishing the entire entries (minus the comments) as feeds. This way, if you’re like me and you do most of your regular surfing via RSS reader you never need to visit the actual website. You can just pull the feeds down into your reader and check regularly for changes. Using feeds is good idea for a number of reasons. It’s quicker, lower profile, more efficient, and you’re getting the essential data of the blog rather than everything else that comes with it.
06
Sep 04
Belle nuit
It’s a beautiful night tonight, Open your windows!
- China will send troops to Haiti: “”It’s been a big year for China,” says one official opposed to the deployment. “They put a man in space, won gold medals at the Olympics, and now they are going to put troops in the Western Hemisphere for the first time.”
The official says China’s first military presence near U.S. shores would boost Beijing’s long-term strategy to “supplant U.S. influence” in the region. “China is pursuing a maritime strategy in the Caribbean to gain access and control over port facilities, free trade zone infrastructure, fisheries, oil and minerals, and off-shore banking platforms,”
For example, a Chinese company whose leader is close to Beijing’s communist rulers operates major port facilities at both ends of the Panama Canal.
“They will assert political influence [through Chinese companies],” the official says. “That is where this is headed.”
Administration officials say the decision to permit the Chinese to join the U.N. force in Haiti was made quietly, without a full debate among defense, foreign policy and national security agencies. “ - Report: Civil war most likely outcome in Iraq
- Violence May Force Iraq to Bypass Hotspots in Election
- A Guide To Firefox Extensions Awesome list
25
Aug 04
Gmail invites!
I finally managed to get five Gmail invites! Yay! I’ve been waiting forever.
24
Aug 04
Average is beautiful
- The Face of Tomorrow. Via Take one hundred people and create a composite face from their faces. The result makes me think that the ideal of human beauty is not particular but average. The composites are all good looking, so take one hundred people strip the unique characteristics or oddities and you have a good-looking person. Strange.
- Boring game? Outsource it. A sure sign of cultural decadence
- The democratization of advertising revenue. Google lets Blogger users in on a piece of the ad game.
- Analog meets digital. A typewriter (yes!) that collects the input you use while typing into a buffer then sends as an email. Via.
- NYT on Team America.
19
Aug 04
In blogging news: Six Apart hires Brad Choate
Six Apart, the blogging software business founded by the creators of Movable Type, has hired one of their most productive and talented volunteers, Brad Choate. It will be interesting to see what they come up with in the upcoming releases of Movable Type. The more people they hire the more important it will be to keep growing the business and begin selling a lot more MovableType and TypePad subscriptions. The addition of Choate may increase their capabilities in the direction of supporting more dynamic content in MT and that in turn could lead to the development of additional products. We will be watching with interest.
19
Aug 04
RSS Feeds
I’m the king of missing important details, so I noticed a while back that the RSS feeds for LNS were not working then I promptly forgot this. Today I noticed it again and it took me all of two seconds to fix. The point is, the feeds are working now, which means you can just view the feeds without coming to the main page of the site.
To that end here are some cool RSS/XML tools that might help you.:
- Convert eBay searches into feeds with RSSAuction.com
- Create a calendar and share with friends in RSS
- Sage News Aggregator extension (plugin) for Firefox
18
Aug 04
The trend toward commercial blogs
I’ve been watching Boing Boing pile on the ads and cluttering their front page for the past few months. They need a fresh redesign of the site if that’s what they want to do. The Boing Boing people have some ties with Denton and the Gawker Media crowd and it seems like they’re trying to do something along the same lines by placing prominent advertisements along each side of their page. Boing Boing shoots for a more eclectic and general subject matter, whereas most of Gawker Media’s sites are based on targeted themes (most likely to concentrate on a target ad base), for example: their gadget site, Gizmodo, and their porn site, Fleshbot. Is this the start of a trend toward more commercial blogging? With the proliferation of so many personal blogs is there a demand for strict content-based blogging? Do more blogs need editors to be successful? Will more blogs jump on the ad bandwagon?
Update: Most of the editors at Boing Boing are also contributors to Wired or Wired Magazine. Back in June, I speculated on the link between BB and Gawker Media because of all the gratuitous cross-posting and mentionitis going on at the time. Back then, Wired/BB contributor Xeni Jardin denied a link or deal between Boing Boing and Gawker, yet now at Nick Denton‘s website it describes Gizmodo (the gadget blog) as: “Gizmodo, a blog for the gadget obsessive, recently partnered with Wired Magazine. ” Interesting?
Edit 19:56 CST: Maybe, but Chris Anderson, the editor of Wired, points out in the comments below that there is no money changing hands between Gawker/BB/Wired and that the relationship could be best characterized as that of mutual admiration:
“I’m a big fan of Gizmodo (and Nick’s other projects), so when we launched Gadget Lab, our weekly email newsletter, we agreed to highlight some Gizmodo content in exchange for a link on their site. Just a trade, with no money changing hands.”
This may all be true, although I would argue that since all three groups derive most of their income from advertising revenue that this amounts to a de facto business relationship as items of value are being exchanged as part of an agreement. It goes without saying that I do not have a problem with business of this type, only that it is important to know that such relationships exist.
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