monotonous tooth-activating cream
Yes, I know all about the website engrish.com. Evidently someone has taken this a step farther and has a blog for Engrish
There seem to be some real gems in here.
July 2002
Blogger insults
If you get two-thirds of these, you qualify as a major web-fiend and geek.
Goldmember
Just saw Goldmember, very silly but fun. This one doesn’t have the goofy five-second musical interludes, but does have a few tricks up its sleeve. Not high art, but who cares? I enjoyed it.
Riding the waves
While I know that none of my friends with full-time jobs, whether they’re at startups or blue-chip multinationals, have much sense of job security anymore, there’s still something weird about freelancing.
The past two weeks I had almost no work, which is damned alarming, you can bet. Today I am sitting on about 24,000 words worth of work. That’s a fair amount—probably $3500 in two weeks.
Go figure.
Shorty Long
Went to see Shorty Long again last night. They’re fantastic. No, it’s not enough that they have a seven-foot-tall nose-flute player, he stands up, sways rhythmically, and makes funny faces while playing it. And the music…Where do they hunt down stuff like “Flaming Ukulele in the Sky”?
Two great web phenomena that taste great together
The whole hot or not phenomenon, which spawned a brace of imitators, seems to have achieved critical mass around the same time that blogging did. So it’s only appropriate that the two be combined. Yes, you can now rate whether blogs are hot or not.
Chimera 0.4
Chimera 0.4, a browser for Mac OS X, is out. I’m using it right now. I like it.
It’s still very obviously a work in progress, with odd behavior when new windows pop up, or when typing in a field (as I am doing now), etc. But it seems to be well behaved, fast, and designed with good “instincts.” Joe Bob says “Check it out.”
Big Brother lives in Hollywood
As if we needed further convincing that Big Media is evil: License to Hack: Black Hats win.
A bill is being prepared that would allow copyright holders to hack into your computer if they suspect you have illicit copyrighted materials. The bill would also shield them from damages if they happen to mess up your computer.
via Kuro5hin.
Firenight in the tunnels
Another Tuesday, another firenight. Our status at our beloved usual location being somewhat up in the air, we met in the tunnels. I got a few pictures.
Taking the plunge
Although I have been using and enjoying Blogger for some time, I decided to try something different and blog using Movable Type. The recent silence in my blog has been due to this migration.
MT offers a lot more fine-tuning options, at the expense of a lot more complexity. But it’s a bigger sandbox to play in.
I also am in the process of redesigning my personal site, so that my blog is my front page. All my miscellaneous writings will need to be updated. It’s coming…
“In the spring, we’d make meat helmets”
And you thought Dr Evil was kidding in Austin Powers. Apparently not. Check out Hats of Meat
Minority Report
Saw Minority Report yesterday. Good movie, but like it’s spiritual predecessor, Blade Runner, which was also based on a Philip K Dick novel, this one has an obviously tacked-on “they lived happily ever after” ending that needs to be lopped off. Ridley Scott had a chance to do that with his director’s cut; knowing Spielberg, he probably wouldn’t do so.
The movie was especially appropriate at this time in our history, with one of its themes being the government that can’t be trusted. I haven’t read the original book, but I suspect that was played up in the movie.
Blogchalking
I have commented before that I am interested in the ways cyberspace can be mapped to real space. Blogchalking is an effort to bootstrap just this kind of thing. I like it. I’m including their meta tag.
The following is included to get the attention of the search engines:
Google! DayPop! This is my blogchalk: English, United States, Austin, Hyde Park, Adam, Male, 36-40!
Scalia
From Justice Scalia, a Chilling Vision of Religion’s Authority in America
A tightly argued article on a troubling justice. What do you do with someone like Scalia, who is so obviously brilliant, and yet resolutely channels that brilliance in the most wrongheaded ways?
In the news
A couple of news stories worth pointing at:
Apparently some marketing weasel at Eli Lilly thought it would be a fine idea to send unsolicited samples of prozac through the mail. The mind reels.
Despite the shrill editorializing in spots, this article has some sobering thoughts about the war in Afghanistan.
Internet Radio
Many of you have probably heard the now-old chestnut from John Gilmore that “the Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it.”
I’m wondering if we won’t see something similar happen with Internet Radio. As far as I can tell, if a webcaster moved operations offshore, he would pretty much be exempt from the recent CARP ruling unless the new host nation passed similar legislation. Right now I’m listening to Radio Liechtenstein, which I suspect has been unaffected. Perhaps some of the other webcasters I have enjoyed but have now been silenced can take advantage of this. There’s an opportunity here.
Road Trip
I recently went on a road trip with Gwen. You can check out the words and the pictures.