December 2006

For future reference: Firefox 1.5+ Toolbar Tutorial #

Ha! Rogers Cadenhead on Dave Winer: I can’t think of any high-traffic blogger who put down the crack pipe and reclaimed his life other than Russell Beattie #

Unbelievable news story of the day: Arnaud Stehle said today he and his wife are grateful that publicity about their disappearance over the weekend led to their dramatic rescue five days later in the Santa Cruz mountains, where they had huddled for warmth in a hollowed-out redwood tree. #

Awesome! MPAA engages in piracy of Kirby Dick film #

Headline of the day: Best not to take Bush too literally #

Passion in Mexico: Brawl Breaks Out in Mexico Congress #

Andre: Some people get hot for LEDs or overclocking their computers. Me: eBooks. Way hot. #

Stephanie is 2 years older than me (for 4 days): One more lovely year! #

Ouch! pay no attention to “anonymous bloggers, and other assorted misinformed fools.” #

“Domestic partners are a separate and unequal institution,” he said, noting that he had not seen details of Migden’s bill. “You don’t get federal benefits or protections, so I’m not sure what category of straight people would want to take that on and wouldn’t want to get married.” I would. #

Neat! Carved Crayons #

I’m not a fan of gov’t sanctioned relationships either way: they would not marry until gay and lesbian couples are also allowed to #

I am totally captivated by the search for James Kim

Update: this is so so so sad: James Kim found deceased. We found out in the middle of a long meeting around lunch today, and it just knocked the stuffing right out of us. #

Will Self:

“Alcohol and drugs tend to keep you from taking walks, or at least walks of the right kind, but I’m not addicted, I don’t need to score a walk.”

(what a captivating and strange article) #

Curious: The Secret Life of Words #

The reality-based community comes home to roost: The Iraq Study Group Report (which really should have been called The Iraq After-school Study Group Report, dontcha think?) #

Hehe: If real life were like film I’d be able to port wordpress to my toaster using a cat5 cable and a bag of glitter. #

On “liberal”:

And I really don’t know, in this context, what people are referring to when they say “liberal.” I have a terrible suspicion though that what they mean, actually, is “intelligent.” Or to be more specific, “intelligent, aspiring to intelligence and valuing thought over gut-level reaction.”

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On selling Flickr to Yahoo: One of the first investors was Stewart’s friend. He was extremely ill, and he stood to make a lot of money if we sold the company. #

Cory raves about No Starch Press’ Ubuntu Linux for Non-Geeks #

Theory of the day: language may have arisen as a “cheap” means of social grooming, allowing early humans to efficiently maintain social cohesion #

Someone from my high school graduating class was killed in Iraq on Saturday: Pflugerville soldier Yari Mokri killed in Iraq #

Indeed: Microsoft is no longer the primary place for technical talent (Niall Kennedy) #

I’m in, anybody else? Romeo & Juliet, a Fire Ballet (at The Crucible in Oakland) #

Yikes, I work for an advertising company, and I’m linking to an advertisement. What is the world coming to? But this is pretty cool: American Express’ San Francisco Dish with videos of Thomas Keller and other local Bay Area chefs talking about SF eateries #

For future reference: XUL, mozStorage and SQLite and Context Search 0.4.1 #

In French, blogger is spelled: blogueurs #

Stephanie is not a fan of spiritual warfare #

Eric Muller’s Open Letter to the Members of the Institute for Political and International Studies of the Foreign Ministry of Iran #

I love it, the Wall Street Journal, reporting on a video on YouTube, in a column called “Time Waster!”

Lasse Gjertsen’s YouTube video has no spoken language, zero sudden injuries and nothing in the way of narrative or pop-culture reference. No copyrighted material was harmed in the making of this film. Yet, in just a month, “Amateur” has been viewed more than 1.5 million times, according to YouTube’s tally, and the video earned the highest user ratings over that span — making it a certified viral-video hit.

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On databases: That would be two very large successful companies running their businesses on a BigTable-like backend. #

OK, so definitely NOT voting for McCain: John McCain’s War On Blogs (let’s open a can of blogosphere on his ass, shall we?) #

LOL: #

To read: Open Source Democracy by Douglas Rushkoff #

What I’ve always wanted!!! USB Humping Dog Flash Drive #

This makes me SO sick: foreigners being held in overseas military prisons do not have the right to challenge their detention, a right people inside the country normally enjoy. (at this point the only thing I can believe is that these people are being detained unlawfully, and since they’ve been for so long, the evil Bush administration is trying to cover it’s ass by making these people seem like supercriminals) #

DPSSFD is our acronym of the day #

For future reference: How to Mount a Remote Folder using SSH on Ubuntu (setting this up probably should be easier) #

WOW! 16 bloggers (Arrington, Ev, Tantek, Jeremy, Niall, Rael, Prillo, Rubel…) get Our Sixty Minutes with Bill Gates and NO ONE asks about Ubuntu? Man, so eerie… #

Quote of the day: Why does Google seem to be the only Valley company dead-set on innovating? #

Wow, low blow: Global Warming Denier Michael Crichton Fictionalizes Critic as Child Rapist, and excellent response by the critic, Michael Crowley, in the New Republic (get BugMeNot to read the second article) #

Since I happen to be a constituent of Nancy Pelosi’s, every time I find ADDITIONAL reasons to impeach President Bush, I am going to send her an email.

Here is reason #1

Saying that he was mentally damaged as a result of his three years and eight months in a naval brig in South Carolina, lawyers for Jose Padilla asked a federal judge in Miami yesterday to determine his competency to stand trial on terrorism conspiracy charges.

(via AE)

Also, in the SF Bay Guardian this week: Enough of Bush’s war: Pelosi needs to let impeachment proceed #

Great Luddite-advertising: BOOKS PLUS #

Thing I did not even know:

Between 2001 and March 2006, over 1,900 Guatemalan women and girls have been brutally murdered. Exceptional cruelty and sexual violence characterize many of the killings. Some of the victims had their throats cut, were beaten, shot or stabbed to death. Many of their bodies show signs of rape, torture, mutilation or dismemberment.

Why only until March 2006? What happened in 2001? #

How awesome, I mean awful: Annoy-a-tron #

I thought maybe this had something to do with drugs: Speedcubing #

Hypothesis of the day: we are pursuing the possibility that a shortage of … micronutrients inhibit[s] satiety leading to a continued cycle of overeating #

The faculty of Southern Methodist University on the creation of a presidential library on their campus for George W. Bush:

“We count ourselves among those who would regret to see SMU enshrine attitudes and actions widely deemed as ethically egregious: degradation of habeas corpus, outright denial of global warming, flagrant disregard for international treaties, alienation of long-term U.S. allies, environmental predation, shameful disrespect for gay persons and their rights, a preemptive war based on false and misleading premises, and a host of other erosions of respect for the global human community and for this good Earth on which our flourishing depends.”

Can I just say: OUCH! And well-written. Bush is going to have a lonely retirement. #

Photo of the day: It’s a mercury vapour rectifier… #

Road of the day: Magnificient Guoliang Tunnel Road in China

Great photos here too: The Most Dangerous Roads in the World #

Food for thought: Shoppers across America have millions of gift cards tucked away in envelopes, drawers and wallets. And some of the nation’s largest retailers are profiting as a result.

On the deadweight loss of Christmas.

All of this is why I have something of a philosophy of Gift Giving. #

Blasphemy! Competing Melt-In-Your-Mouth Cookies (the original Watt-family recipe is here) #

John on corporate permission: The whole “Cingular to Let…” concept. I mean, my God. Since when do I give a shit about what Cingular will or will not let me do? #

Brilliant! Richard Dawkins on Santa Claus: Together we should be working toward a point in the not-so-distant future where the words “Santa Claus” or “Kris Kringle” or “Father Christmas” create the same response as fingernails on a chalkboard. #

Gag:

Included with the license you’ll find the 2007 Microsoft Office System User Interface Guidelines. This 120 page document includes all of the information you need to implement Office-style UI; think of it as the specification for how the UI needs to work in your product. To stay within the terms of the license, you must follow these guidelines.

and it goes on:

The 120+ page guidelines document is confidential, so you’ll need to visit the licensing site and agree to a short evaluation license before downloading it.

and more:

There’s only one limitation: if you are building a program which directly competes with Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, or Access (the Microsoft applications with the new UI), you can’t obtain the royalty-free license.

No thankyou! #

Ha! I am going to give you a sequence of minimal length that, when you enter it into a car’s numeric keypad, is guaranteed to unlock the doors of said car. It is exactly 3129 keypresses long, which should take you around 20 minutes to go through. #

This is ridiculous: Republican Rep. Virgil Goode’s letter to constituents also warns that without immigration reform “we will have many more Muslims in the United States.” #

Ack! This is right in my parents’ hood: Small plane crashes near Connally High School #

Dad on yard work: yesterday I went out and got a brand-new handy-dandy gas-powered leaf mulcher. No more blowing for me. I’m now all into sucking those nasty little tree bio droppings into a bag with their other compariots. #

How is it possible that this is the first I’ve heard of this??? Line Rider #

Apparently Adam Sandberg is the best thing on SNL: Dick in a Box #

Oh no, Kentucky fears loss of traditional critter dish, Burgoo #

This sounds exciting: A group of librarians at the Georgia Public Library Service has developed an open source, enterprise-class library management system. The system, Evergreen, manages, catalogs, and tracks the circulation of library holdings. It’s written in C, JavaScript and Perl, is GPLed, runs on Linux with Apache, uses a PostgreSQL database, Jabber for messaging and XUL as client-side software. #

Ha. Google above Cosmic… Google Chapel Hill? #

As an hors d’oeuvre before Christmas dinner, Stephanie and I brought my deconstructed pesto idea to life and we took pictures!

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Wow, watch a giraffe being born #

Who is more famous? Noah K (more info here: He Oughta Be in Pictures) #

Got to see dad’s shadow box of marathon medals. #

Kottke gives 5 stars: La Jetée #

Ha. By reading this article you are contributing, at least indirectly, to the Joel Gets a Hot Tub fund. #

Really interesting illustrative image: Vector Video Standards #

That’s one hour per 17,351 civilian deaths since we invaded Iraq: President Bush worked nearly three hours at his Texas ranch on Thursday to design a new U.S. policy in Iraq (off goes another email urging impeachment to Nancy Pelosi) #

Acronym of the day: OEIS (more info here) #

I find these ads interesting in light of this: Do you “Google?”

I will say one thing. I’ve never thought seriously about getting a PDA phone until now.

Update: This is ironic.

Palm advertising Treo advertising Orbitz on Orbitz #