randomwalks/dj

iCal calendar for the World Cup matches. Here's one for Outlook. (thx, armistead)

Originally from kottke.org remaindered links by jkottke reBlogged on Jun 9, 2006, 11:35AM

Originally posted by jkottke from kottke.org remaindered links, on June 10, 2006 9:00 AM

Coudal has a look at what people have read where they've read it with Field-Tested Books. Participants include George Saunders, David Rees, and Rosecrans Baldwin.

Originally from kottke.org remaindered links by jkottke reBlogged on Jun 9, 2006, 2:54PM

Originally posted by jkottke from kottke.org remaindered links, on June 10, 2006 8:59 AM

An update on how many players from Tecmo Bowl, Tecmo Super Bowl, and RBI Baseball are still active. The Mets Julio Franco is still playing at 47 years old.

Originally from kottke.org remaindered links by jkottke reBlogged on Jun 9, 2006, 2:24PM

Originally posted by jkottke from kottke.org remaindered links, on June 10, 2006 8:59 AM

My stitches are itchy. But I have to lick at them when Phoggie isn't looking. When she caught me the other day she put me in a baby bodysuit. I was mortified.

Originally from Blue's Sunny Life by find_me@dogster.com (Blue) reBlogged on Jun 9, 2006, 8:07PM

Originally posted by find_me@dogster.com (Blue) from Blue's Sunny Life, on June 10, 2006 8:49 AM

Thanks to all of your awesome bug reports and close work with our engineering team, we're about to release Movable Type 3.3 (Beta-2), which is really looking rock solid. Not only that, when we do, we're going to have a few other awesome additions. More on that in just about an hour or two...

Originally from Movable Type Beta Weblog by jallen reBlogged on Jun 9, 2006, 10:00PM

Originally posted by jallen from Movable Type Beta Weblog, on June 10, 2006 8:47 AM

The one semi-interesting thing to emerge from the half-hearted Matt-hacking is that Matt owns dashpress.com, .net and .org, and has for the past three months or so. From the context in which it was first mentioned, Dashpress sounds like some kind of server-hosted to-do list, you know, this sort of thing:

• Change password
• Bitch about Six Apart
• Write own version of common software from the ground up e.g. forum, wiki, stats, to-do list
• Become bigger than Google

What has this to do with the hacking? Well, if you see this strange new word ‘dashpress’, and Google turns up nothing, banging ‘dashpress.com’ (or .net, or .org) into your browser is the logical next step.
(It wouldn’t have been mine, by the way — I’d have gone subdomain hunting on wp.org. I tend to forget how cheap domains are these days, or think that there must be some limit on how many can be owned by one person.) There’s nothing there now, of course, but if things were under construction there may have been sensitive information left lying around.

(My other theory is that the strange new word was actually the password, but then I have to doubt whether anyone in the world would be that silly.)

Originally from wordpressâ„¢ wank by wank reBlogged on Jun 9, 2006, 10:19AM

Originally posted by wank from wordpressâ„¢ wank, on June 10, 2006 8:47 AM

Peg-leg pint-size pirate
Originally uploaded by schickr.

Originally from hello, typepad by David Jacobs reBlogged on Jun 9, 2006, 10:12AM

Originally posted by David Jacobs from hello, typepad, on June 10, 2006 8:47 AM

In a society that pops a pill for every conceivable malady, in a society that rewards athletes with hundreds of millions of dollars, in a society that values money over all else, we must recognize that performance-enhancing drugs are rampant and widespread in all professional sports, and we're not going to get rid of them by vilifying the users.

We've tried that in sports and in our other high-profile, punish-the-poor-and-slap-the-wealthy-on-the-wrist war on drugs.

Ben Johnson lost his gold medal. We ridiculed East German sprinters and Chinese swimmers. Nancy Reagan said "just say no" while politicians locked up black folk and won voting support.

Finally, some sanity is creeping into the mainstream coverage of steroids. Also, it appears Albert Pujols' personal trainer distributed Human Growth Hormone, a banned but difficult to detect steroid. In moderation, there are little if no side effects, and it made probably made Pujols an immediately better player. I bet 300 major league players are doing it - it still doesn't make the 298 of them who aren't Pujols and Bonds Ruthian sluggers.

Originally from hello, typepad by David Jacobs reBlogged on Jun 9, 2006, 12:25AM

Originally posted by David Jacobs from hello, typepad, on June 9, 2006 12:30 AM

The World Bank has a comprehensive package on World Cup 2006 and its relation to economics, including an economic analysis of who's gonna win and how the Cup influences economies in the winning/losing countries.
Update: Goldman Sachs has a 50+ page report on World Cup 2006 and economics [PDF link] as well. (thx, beau)

Originally from kottke.org remaindered links by jkottke reBlogged on Jun 6, 2006, 12:40PM

Originally posted by jkottke from kottke.org remaindered links, on June 8, 2006 10:34 PM

Is it any wonder (no pun intended) that music was so much better back in the days, considering that kids back then grew up on music like this and then the next generation grew up on Barney?

Originally from Tuberaider Video by Jay Smooth reBlogged

Originally posted by Jay Smooth from Tuberaider Video, on June 8, 2006 10:34 PM

Brad Choate on the new Tags plugin and about Movable Type development in general.

Originally from Movalog Sideblog reBlogged on Jun 9, 2005, 12:37AM

Originally from Movalog Sideblog, on June 8, 2006 10:33 PM

The plugin replaces the Keywords box with a single-line Tags field that lets you enter any tags you want and assigns them as categories to the entry when the entry is saved.

Originally from Movalog Sideblog reBlogged on Jun 9, 2005, 12:31AM

Originally from Movalog Sideblog, on June 8, 2006 10:33 PM

wp-hackers angst about some company repackaging WP and selling it on without explicitly stating what it is.

Whatever the morals of this, the code itself remains open-source by virtue of being PHP and, you know, editable in Notepad; so as long as they keep some form of credit tucked away in a random text file nobody ever reads, you can’t touch them. It’s GPL, you have no rights. The developers are fine with this (who needs intellectual property when you have venture capital?) so I’m not sure why anyone else needs to worry about it.

Originally from wordpressâ„¢ wank by wank reBlogged on Jun 6, 2006, 1:51PM

Originally posted by wank from wordpressâ„¢ wank, on June 8, 2006 10:32 PM

I've written a lot about Google and its decision in China - I've always thought that the company had a chance to lead here, but talked itself into doing what everyone else has done. In fact, back when Google was just getting into China, I wrote:

The Real Irony Here...is that Google is, for the first time, being a content editor. I've written extensively about how Google, by its very DNA, does not like to be an editor of content. But in China, it's doing exactly that.

Google's first big editing job? Deciding which sites to exclude because they might offend the Chinese government.

There's still time to pull out, guys. I've read your rationalizations, and Uncle Bill's as well. I don't buy them. I don't buy that this is what, in your heart, you believe is right. Sure, I understand the logic. But, well....in your heart, is this what you wanted to do? No? Then why did you do it?

Now comes this news from the AP: "Brin says Google compromised principles."

Originally from John Battelle's Searchblog reBlogged on Jun 7, 2006, 12:17AM

Originally from John Battelle's Searchblog, on June 8, 2006 10:31 PM

Clap your hands and say “yeah!” for Portuguese illustrator Marta Monteiro. Her folksy styled illustrations and comics are the result of a near-perfect blending of traditional and digital methods.

Originally from Drawn! The Illustration and Cartooning Blog by Johnny reBlogged on Jun 6, 2006, 11:18AM

Originally posted by Johnny from Drawn! The Illustration and Cartooning Blog, on June 8, 2006 10:24 PM

Thanks to Erin for pointing out something that I missed: Joe Dumars now admits he made a mistake drafting Darko Milicic. Drew Sharp reports in the Free Press:

Dumars was asked if the clarity of hindsight gave him a different perspective. He knows that he blew it. "Absolutely," he said. "As I've said before, the pick ended up being a mistake for the Pistons. It didn't work out, and I'm accountable for that. But I won't split hairs over it. After I made the pick, (we) won a championship, went to Game 7 of the Finals and came back and got the best record in the league. Want to split hairs that somebody else could have helped us more during that same period of time, and I'll give you the same answer. Maybe so."

No, the pick wouldn't have changed much about the Pistons' past much but it certainly would alter their future to have a young stud ready to take over. The next thing for Joe Dumars to worry about: will he be making another mea culpa in a couple of years about trading Darko Milicic?

Originally from True Hoop by Henry Abbott reBlogged on Jun 6, 2006, 10:47AM

Originally posted by Henry Abbott from True Hoop, on June 8, 2006 10:21 PM

If every camera is essentially alike, what's left to attract buyers? The answer: specialization. Adapt or die.

Originally from NYT > Technology reBlogged on Jun 7, 2006, 12:00AM

Originally from NYT > Technology, on June 8, 2006 10:19 PM

Awesome has been quiet this week because we've been preparing to release our first major serious awesome professional piece of literature, The Very Best Weblog Writing Ever By Anyone Anywhere In The Whole Wide World!

We started this project four months ago, and in two weeks the book will be available to the world. But today we're announcing a pre-order release! Which means you get it for just $15 and pay no shipping charge! And you'll get it A WHOLE WEEK before anyone else!

Now doesn't that sound like the best way to end our first week of Cheap Ass $50 June? We think so, and we think you should hurry up and order your copy!

Originally from Awesome! by S H reBlogged

Originally posted by S H from Awesome! , on June 8, 2006 10:18 PM

I love blue bikes, cute designs, comfy, flattering tshirts, and shit under 30 bucks, so this Hardboiled shirt is basically perfect for me.

If you've never bought one of these popular American Apparel shirts that all the designers are using these days, rest-assured: the material is so soft and wearable, you'll probably want to sleep in it.  The sizes tend to run just a little small, so when in doubt, go up just a bit. 

Oh, and don't really sleep in the shirt, y'all -- that's what these are for.

See also: Hardboiled Inc., one of our very first Awesome posts!

Originally from Awesome! by citywendy reBlogged

Originally posted by citywendy from Awesome! , on June 8, 2006 10:18 PM

Growing succulents in the windowbox on the fire escape portion of my rooftop garden has become a tradition -- most likely because they are just about the only plants that can survive the intense sun, heat, and drought.

Originally from ReadyMade Blog by Gayla reBlogged on Jun 7, 2006, 2:27PM

Originally posted by Gayla from ReadyMade Blog, on June 8, 2006 7:06 PM

A couple of months after Liz and I arrived in Portland in January of 2005, I did a photo series of NW Portland apartment building names. It was a way to say hello to the place, a byproduct of our apartment search, a study of typography, and an exercise in answering "how many different ways can you do the same thing?" In about a month, Liz and I will move back to the Bay Area, so I did another small photo essay (inspired by the work of Bernd and Hilla Becher). This one is on the surprising variety of fire hydrants in NW Portland, something I've noticed in walking around the neighborhood in the last year and a half. (the whole set is on Flickr) Although we haven't left yet, I guess this is my goodbye letter to Portland. I've enjoyed my time here, and I've made great new friends and deepened some old ones. Thank you, PDX, and although I'm not yet gone, I certainly hope that when I am, it's not forever. [Addendum: The Internet being what it is, here's an exhaustive history of Portland fire hydrants, including an explanation of the color scheme Portland uses to mark...

Originally from Orange Cone by mikek reBlogged on Jun 7, 2006, 3:57AM

Originally posted by mikek from Orange Cone, on June 8, 2006 7:06 PM

William Saletan's latest highlights the use of LASIK in sports today. It totally makes sense, but blows me away all the same.

Originally from random($foo) reBlogged on Jun 7, 2006, 2:31AM

Originally from random($foo), on June 8, 2006 7:06 PM

What if Google was so brilliantly twisted that they’re using Writely and Spreadsheet and Calendar and massive numbers of new hires as flares to distract Microsoft (and others)? Shoot up a flare (Spreadsheet) and scare Microsoft into paying even more attention to new attacks from new directions. The flares serve one purpose: to redirect competitors’ energy away from focusing on search/ads, which are Google’s core competency (and primary revenue source). Hey look over here!!! Is Google the best slight of hand magician around? Is the “Google Office” just a head fake?

Originally from Signal vs. Noise reBlogged on Jun 7, 2006, 10:45AM

Originally from Signal vs. Noise, on June 8, 2006 7:03 PM

Here is a picture of my thesis twins, taken at the foothills of Senate House, the inspiration for the Ministry of Truth in Orwell's 1984, and rumoured to have been Hitler's no. 1 choice for HQ location, had he moved in on London.


I handed them over to the flesh-eating zombie in the research degrees office, and he said 'BRAIIIIIINS....'. Gentle reader, I feel absolutely nothing.

Originally from the lady upgrade project by mr tibbles reBlogged on Jun 7, 2006, 7:04AM

Originally posted by mr tibbles from the lady upgrade project, on June 8, 2006 7:03 PM

Posted by Brian Rakowski, Product Manager

What could be worse than forgetting to bookmark the obscure page you found that maps out the perfect walking tour of Venice? Having bookmarked it on the computer sitting on your desk back at home, 6000 miles away, instead of on the laptop you brought along. Or how about the frustration of being on a new computer and not remembering your passwords because your browser on your old computer automatically filled them in for you?

These sorts of frustrations inspired us to build a Firefox extension that keeps your browser settings for all your computers in sync. Google Browser Sync unifies your bookmarks, history, saved passwords, and persistent cookies across all the computers where you install it. It also remembers which tabs and windows you had open when you last closed any of your browsers and gives you a chance to reopen them. We think you'll enjoy how it handles sync conflicts and "just works," enabling you to bring your browser with you everywhere.

Meanwhile, we've also been improving version 2 of the Google Toolbar for Firefox. We've fixed a bunch of bugs and made it more stable, so we're stripping off the "beta" tag. We'll be updating all Toolbar users to this new version in the next couple of weeks.

Originally from Official Google Blog by A Googler reBlogged on Jun 7, 2006, 10:02PM

Originally posted by A Googler from Official Google Blog, on June 8, 2006 6:59 PM

*I read her blog maybe twice a week. Three days go by, and she's found ten awesome things I have never heard of. Vivat Regina.

http://www.we-make-money-not-art.com/archives/008606.php I bow the knee, and so should you

Originally from Beyond the Beyond reBlogged on Jun 7, 2006, 6:20PM

Originally from Beyond the Beyond, on June 8, 2006 6:59 PM

Hello, readers. This is Lastings Milledge. Lastings has gotten lots of press since he’s come up to the bigs. Lastings thought he’d get lots of press, as he’s had a great minor league career so far, and is bound to do great things in the majors. But the press Lastings has [...]

Originally from Yard Work by Administrator reBlogged on Jun 7, 2006, 11:54AM

Originally posted by Administrator from Yard Work, on June 8, 2006 6:59 PM

The Grass-Fed Revolution: Beef raised wholly on pasture, rather than grain-fed in feedlots, may be better for your health--and for the planet. [via Saute Wednesday]

Originally from megnut.com blog reBlogged on Jun 7, 2006, 5:31PM

Originally from megnut.com blog, on June 8, 2006 6:55 PM

Diet Tips or How To Lose Weight with a Spreadsheet and a Web Site from Jeremy Zawodny. I like his advice, "Small changes have a major impact on weight loss because they're compounded over time." As with (nearly) everything: consistency and patience pay off.

Originally from megnut.com blog reBlogged on Jun 7, 2006, 11:18AM

Originally from megnut.com blog, on June 8, 2006 6:55 PM

Hot food is hot right now, and the trend's not cooling off. "While spicy is the in flavor right now, many say teriyaki may be the next big flavor. And, lavender and orange-lemon are developing a following."

Originally from megnut.com blog reBlogged on Jun 7, 2006, 10:34AM

Originally from megnut.com blog, on June 8, 2006 6:55 PM

yaaaaay! schacht table loom is on the way!


yaaaaay! iberia found my glasses! they are on the way!


dream friend quetzalcoatl arrived! he was in the gumball machine at the pizza place! i said, hey buddy! will paint image of him for YOU tonight! the janome arrived! will complete certain dress for YOU tonight!

(deep breath.)

yaaaaay!

Originally from serenalarogers by serenalarogers reBlogged on Jun 7, 2006, 8:38AM

Originally posted by serenalarogers from serenalarogers, on June 8, 2006 6:55 PM

The awesome Sarah Smith just found Awesome, and we just found her! Look at her adorable pendants at Rustic Relics!

This little cotton blossom pendant is so cute and feminine, and just the perfect touch of color and class for your favorite jeans and t shirt ensemble.

We're so glad you stumbled upon us, Sarah!

Originally from Awesome! by S H reBlogged

Originally posted by S H from Awesome! , on June 8, 2006 6:49 PM

Exactly one year ago today, I made my appearance on The Daily Show. Apparently, I am in some weird sort of seasonal cycle with Comedy Central, because tomorrow night (Thursday, June 8) I will be the guest on The Colbert Report, speaking truthiness to power, no doubt. It will be surreal, but also fun I hope. Tune in.

Originally from stevenberlinjohnson.com by stevenberlinjohnson reBlogged on Jun 7, 2006, 8:44PM

Originally posted by stevenberlinjohnson from stevenberlinjohnson.com, on June 8, 2006 12:33 AM

A blind inventor plans to make Internet accessible to visually impaired people by rethinking the whole damn thing. "To use a screenreader you have to understand the visual paradigm—what dialogue boxes are, radio buttons and all the rest. That's the wrong model as far as I'm concerned. What you really want is a model that is intrinsically orientated towards a one-dimensional audio stream." Chris Mairs, founder of assistive technology charity A-Technic.

Originally from Rebecca's Pocket reBlogged on Jun 7, 2006, 8:30AM

Originally from Rebecca's Pocket, on June 8, 2006 12:33 AM

I don't know if it's the white wine or what but I'm feeling good. Here are some other reasons why.

My tummy had been hurting for a few days. I think it had to do with dairy but who can be sure. I had a difficult conversation with a friend that I am still processing. That might be it too. This week started out with a bit of a whimper.

But last night I saw an advanced screening of a documentary that I worked on. The experience of making this, as with most films, was filled with highs and lows. I knew though that the film would be good. That the film would look beautiful and it did. I feel proud of it. It's one of those PBS art films that I used to watch as a kid. One of those films that made me want to be an artist.

Afterwards we went to one of the most beautiful bars I had ever seen. I met some new people and got a good feeling about someone I was not sure I could have a good feeling about.

I ducked out a bit early because I knew the food was going to be a small fortune! As I turned towards the escalator, I heard a voice that was familiar. I thought it was a friend of mine. I'd had three glasses of wine and two vegetable spring rolls so my judgment was challenged. I turn to see who it is and look right in the face of Terrence Howard!

I smile because I can't help it! He smiles back and we both stand there for a moment. I guess he was waiting for his friends. I overhead his ask someone if the bill was ok. I assumed it was. As I turn to get on the escalator because I was feeling like I had stood there a bit too long, he says, "We have the same glasses." And I realize we do. My ridiculously expensive Armani glasses were money well spent!

I reply, "Yeah, we do." I am about to say more but then a woman appears. I can't tell their relationship but I can read folks enough to know that the conversation was about to end there.

"Good night," I say. I get on the escalator and know that he is behind me. I smile the whole way home.

Originally from tuckergurl by Angela Tucker reBlogged on Jun 7, 2006, 7:48AM

Originally posted by Angela Tucker from tuckergurl, on June 8, 2006 12:33 AM

Handling drags to your Cocoa application is pretty simple: you just have to implement the informal NSDraggingDestination protocol in some view hierarchy object that has been registered for particular drag types.

Usually a drag is handled by a specific view that can make sense of the drag’s data type. For instance, an NSTextView will accept text from the dragging clipboard and plop it down into the edited documnt. Most of the time, drags should only be handled by these specific views, but sometimes it makes sense to intercept “unhandled drags” and make something useful happen for the user. For instance, when a user drags a URL to a web browser, you might as well assume that they want to open the URL, even if they carelessly let go somewhere in the browser window’s non-descript background texture.

Apple made it easy to handle such “drags of last resort” at the window level, by kindly passing along all dragging offers from NSWindow to the window’s delegate. If your delegate simply implements the required methods, you can snag and make useful any drag that would otherwise bounce back to the originator.

But handling such non-specific drags at any level lower than NSWindow becomes tricky. There is no corresponding “delegation” when it comes to NSView, so drags that hover over or release in an uncooperative view will not be accepted, even if you’ve asked the view to register for the desired types.

When you are faced with the desire to “stake out” part of a window’s real-estate as a drag destination, the simplest way to do so is to sneak a custom NSView into the hierarchy that does accept drags. But instead of writing a custom view every time you need to do this, why don’t we follow AppKit’s lead and write our own NSView subclass that makes use of the delegation strategy.

RSDragDelegationView (MIT License) is a very simple NSView subclass that does just this. To mark the background area of a part of your UI as dragging-receptive, just select items in Interface Builder and “make subviews of custom view.” Set the class of the custom NSView to RSDragDelegationView (drag the header file to your IB document to teach it about the class), and connect the “mDraggingDelegate” outlet to the delegate instance. From your delegate code, you can now ask the custom view to register for your desired drag types, and all dragging messages will be forwarded on to you as they’re received.

An example of where I use this in my own code is in the “product registration pane.” I want to accept drags generously, because I advise users to drag their product registration email into the window after they’ve paid. If they can’t figure it out, they might email me, and while I’m always up for a nice customer chat, I’d just as soon talk about other things. There’s no reason for me not to make this as error-proof as possible, so I stake out the entire space of the tab view item in which the pane is installed. By using a custom drag-enabled view I avoid inflicting drag receptivity on the rest of the window, and keep the dragging-related code right near the controller code for the UI that needs it. If another section of the window’s UI needs to accept drags liberally, the same trick can be applied without complicating drag-handling at the window level.

Originally from Red Sweater Blog by Daniel Jalkut reBlogged on Jun 7, 2006, 1:44PM

Originally posted by Daniel Jalkut from Red Sweater Blog, on June 8, 2006 12:30 AM

I'm hosting my own yatta meetups drinkups each night of Vloggercon. A yatta drinkup means we find a table or a couple of couches at an existing night event and NOT talk shop.

That doesn't mean you can't talk shop. In fact, the person who makes up the funniest fake or existing Web 2.0-compliant app does a shot with me. In participatory media fashion, the users folks at the table browse and tag your content listen to all entries and generate the user ratings do the judging. I'm hoping to have several winners.

Originally from braintag reBlogged on Jun 7, 2006, 11:24AM

Originally from braintag, on June 8, 2006 12:30 AM

---

Cory Arcangel has created a web page with Kurt Cobain's suicide note that, when refreshed, pulls up different sets of Google Ads based on "keywords" in the letter. Pretty droll, and about says it all about our ad-annotated culture. I should say, so-called suicide note because, this being the first time I've read it, it sure didn't sound like he was planning to kill himself. More like, explaining why he was going to stop touring. As Paul notes, there is a conspiracy theory about the "suicide" that this note certain lends credence to.

Originally from Tom Moody by tom moody reBlogged on Jun 7, 2006, 10:31AM

Originally posted by tom moody from Tom Moody, on June 8, 2006 12:30 AM

Mike Monteiro on why you shouldn't unilaterally call professional athletes a bunch of jackasses just because they play sports. While FIFA's preemptive cease and desist was stupid, the anti-sports stuff in the Boing Boing post Mike references was surprisingly closed-minded and disappointing, considering the source.

Originally from kottke.org remaindered links by jkottke reBlogged on Jun 8, 2006, 12:33AM

Originally posted by jkottke from kottke.org remaindered links, on June 8, 2006 12:27 AM

Awesome must-read article about people who have implanted magnets in the tips of their fingers, effectively giving themselves a sixth sense, a sense of magnetism. A very simple human/machine hybrid...or a mutant like the X-Men's Magneto.

Originally from kottke.org remaindered links by jkottke reBlogged on Jun 7, 2006, 7:14PM

Originally posted by jkottke from kottke.org remaindered links, on June 8, 2006 12:27 AM

BIRD FLU DANCE WATCH! Here's the earliest instance of the Jamaican strain of the bird flu dance I could find on YouTube. A "1dance creation" it says...

Originally from kottke.org remaindered links by jkottke reBlogged on Jun 7, 2006, 11:02AM

Originally posted by jkottke from kottke.org remaindered links, on June 8, 2006 12:27 AM

While shooting Kagemusha, Akira Kurosawa directed a number of ads for Suntory whiskey. With Francis Ford Coppola, executive producer of the film, as a guest star. The ads might not be as fun as Orson Welles drunken attempts to sell Champagne but anything by Kurosawa grabs my devoted attention.

The armies of the Takeda clan on the march in Kagemusha

Via Crazy Japan. Related: Akira Kurosawa Poster Cards.

Originally from we make money not art by Regine reBlogged on Jun 7, 2006, 3:58AM

Originally posted by Regine from we make money not art, on June 8, 2006 12:27 AM

Mark Wilkie and I are having a Web 2.0 conference tomorrow at 3pm. Venue: The Shake Shack. Speakers: TBA.

UPDATE:

Jason Kottke has purchased a keynote at the conference. (Whether or not he keynotes is another matter). All participants who attend will receive this Deck-sized ad that they can place on their website. Thanks to our "Motivator" sponsors at Mule Design for the badge.

To particpate in the virtual Web 2.0 Shake Shack conference, place this badge on your web site:

<br /> <object width="88" height="31"><br /> <param name="movie" value="http://buzzcompliant.com/media/web2point0.swf" /><br /> <embed src="http://buzzcompliant.com/media/web2point0.swf" width="88" height="31"></embed><br /> </object><br /> <br />

Originally from hello, typepad by David Jacobs reBlogged on Jun 5, 2006, 1:47PM

Originally posted by David Jacobs from hello, typepad, on June 6, 2006 12:44 PM

I'd be remiss if I didn't link to Skyline for Sale, the latest Times coverage of Bruce Ratner's proposed development surrounding the Brooklyn Nets' new stadium.

The article is promising, but ultimately delivers only gossip and some rough ideas about how architects should theoretically act. There's no news. One of the Times great city writers should take a Brooklynite under their wing and cover this story and all of the characters surrounding it with a McNulty-like[1] tenacity. This is the kind of thing that a blogger should do well, but I don't know of anyone who is.

[1] That is, like a dog drying to dig up a bone in the yard.

Originally from hello, typepad by David Jacobs reBlogged on Jun 5, 2006, 12:21PM

Originally posted by David Jacobs from hello, typepad, on June 6, 2006 12:44 PM

Firefox has this neat feature that when you type in some words in the address bar (where you normally enter urls), it takes you to the first result for a Google search for those words. In other words, typing in your address bar is like typing the words at google.com and then clicking the “I’m Feeling Lucky” button.

Only, for a long time, I have been irritated by this, and wished I would just be taken to the google search results page for the words I typed in. For this, by default, you have to prepend your words with “google”. So if you type in “google american express”, then you are taken to the page with the search results for “american express”. I wanted NOT to have to type in the “google” and still be taken to the search results page.

So as I am known to, I went searching for a solution at 2 in the night

The results are surprising! Not only can I do that, I can do one better. Google introduced something called “Browse by name“, which, as the page I linked-to explains, takes you to the “obvious result” if there is one, or just gives you a search results page if google’s not too sure if there is only one result that best fits the words you typed in. For example, typing “MIT” sure takes you the MIT homepage, but typing something like “cheap computer” takes you to the search results page. Now, how do we change the way firefox’s address bar behaves?

In comes Jesse, back in 2004, with the right solution. Type in “about:config” in the address bar of firefox, then type in “keyword.url” to search for that configuration key. If you want the neato “browse by name” search in firefox, as opposed to the default “I’m feeling lucky” search, just modify that preference, by pasting in:
http://www.google.com/search?ie=UTF-8&sourceid=navclient&gfns=1&q=

Then save that by pressing “Ok”. Now you’re free to use the improved address bar. Go nuts, since now you can search by entering the search terms in the address bar and pressing enter. You will never need to visit www.google.com again!

Originally from Ubuntu Blog by ubuntonista reBlogged on Jun 5, 2006, 2:02AM

Originally posted by ubuntonista from Ubuntu Blog, on June 6, 2006 12:44 PM

Piece d'resistance
Originally uploaded by jayallen.

I love this image - I can't explain why!

Originally from hello, typepad by David Jacobs reBlogged on Jun 4, 2006, 11:36PM

Originally posted by David Jacobs from hello, typepad, on June 6, 2006 12:44 PM

Serena LaRogers writes:

the larogers house loves doom because it's slow, excruciatingly slow, and "doom voice" obscures lyrics, which don't benefit from being discernable. we like it because we feel doom, in chest cavity, when we read paper, watch news hour with jim lehrer*(*almost never), contemplate restrictions on reproductive rights, nearly get abducted by nyc's least gentile cab driver, and for me, i feel it at work. somehow, i just don't give a shit about well, it's not fair to name band names, not that anyone cares what i think, anyhow different music for different moods. and books too.

In our house, we like the movie Sideways. SANS ROCK.

Originally from hello, typepad by David Jacobs reBlogged on Jun 4, 2006, 10:35PM

Originally posted by David Jacobs from hello, typepad, on June 6, 2006 12:44 PM

A week ago I vented my dislike for ajax abuse. I got a few comments about that, including one from Ray, who recommended Safari Stand as a possible answer. I'm here to say that it works really well.

It's a bit of a mystery application, apparently written by a Japanese developer as a sort of browser swiss army knife, adding all kinds of navigation features to Safari. I've come across it before, but have stayed away because I generally prefer lean software. I've been able to ignore all of its features, except for site alteration:

Each domain listed on the left can be modified to enable or disable certain site features, and impose new behaviors or stylesheets. I have most of these sites modified to kill javascript, and a few also have font-size adjustments. It's been a significant change for the better. The New York Times and Wired are both now usable, and I've also disabled scripts on other sites that seemed to be doing a bit too much client-sniffing or slowing down normal interactions. Even Flickr benefits: what I thought was server slowness for the past few months turns out to have been Ajax lag. Photo pages load significantly more quickly, and the only drawback has been the appearance of useless "For a better experience, please upgrade to a Javascript-capable browser" messages on NYT and Flickr. The reason there are a bunch of Google's in the list is that I'm shutting out all of *.google.com, and selectively allowing certain google.com subdomains that seem worthwhile. Stand reads the list from top to bottom, and the first match wins.

So far, I've been taking a black list approach. Sites that annoy me get the axe. If the list grows especially long, I may switch to a white list and allow Javascript only on certain domains. In the meantime, this is working very well.

Originally from tecznotes reBlogged

Originally from tecznotes , on June 6, 2006 12:44 PM

The Day That Nothing Happened

The Wal-Mart in the basement of my building sells live frogs in a big aquarium, for eating. I don't know what surprised me more when I moved here - the frogs, or the Wal-Mart. [...] In addition to the frogs there are live turtles, plastic bar code tags threaded through little holes in their shells. [...] This being China, any employee handling food inevitably wears a gauze mask and sanitary outfit that gives the deli counter the feel of a level-3 containment facility.

There are two Chinas - a small urban China that is getting richer, and an enormous rural one that remains desperately poor. Imagine cities in the United States surrounded by rural Mexico and you have the dynamic. [...] What makes the situation exceptionally weird is that this is happening in a country that still professes to be Marxist. And the new Chinese capitalism feels like it was introduced by people whose understanding of it came solely from reading Marx: it is ruthless, exploitative, and contains the seeds of its own destruction. The only hitch is that the inevitable finale - proletarian revolution - is supposed to have already happened.

Wal-Mart's Data Center

Behind a fence topped with razor wire just off U.S. Highway 71 is a bunker of a building that Wal-Mart considers so secret that it won't even let the county assessor inside without a nondisclosure agreement.

Wal-Mart's ability to crunch numbers is a favorite of conspiracy theorists, and its data centers are the corporate counterpart to Area 51 at Groom Lake in the state of Nevada. According to one consumer activist, Katherine Albrecht, even the wildest conspiracy buff might be surprised at just how much Wal-Mart knows about its customers - and how much more it would like to know.

"We were contacted about two years ago by somebody who runs a security company that had been asked in a request for proposals for ways they could link video footage with customers paying for their purchases," Albrecht said. "Wal-Mart would actually be able to view photos and video of customers paying, say, for a pack of gum."

Originally from jwz by jwz@jwz.org reBlogged on Jun 5, 2006, 5:50PM

Originally posted by jwz@jwz.org from jwz, on June 6, 2006 12:42 PM

They say one of the traits of a successful entrepreneur is persistence, the ability to keep pounding away on your original idea until you can shape it into something viable. That's what Ben Smith has been doing with MerchantCircle, and it may pay off. When Smith first told us about MerchantCircle over a year ago, it had something to do with local merchants and newsletters. We nodded politely and walked away scratching our heads. Today, MerchantCircle, based in Los Altos, is something much different. It's a place where local merchants can build online profiles, network with each other and get help placing ads on Google, Yahoo and other search engines....

Originally from VentureBeat by Michael Bazeley reBlogged on Jun 5, 2006, 12:41PM

Originally posted by Michael Bazeley from VentureBeat, on June 6, 2006 12:40 PM

Apple blossoms
Originally uploaded by schickr.

Promise of sweet

Originally from Cognections by charlie reBlogged

Originally posted by charlie from Cognections, on June 6, 2006 12:40 PM

I've always been a little vague on the details. Thanks to the Moonball blog for pointing out this Wikipedia entry, which tells the story succinctly.

Originally from True Hoop by Henry Abbott reBlogged on Jun 5, 2006, 6:56PM

Originally posted by Henry Abbott from True Hoop, on June 6, 2006 12:36 PM

But if you read the whole thing, it seems like maybe his beef is really with Allstate for jacking his rates.

(I tend to think he's wrong, but I won't rehash the argument now. It's here, if you're curious.)

Seriously, it's a long story, but worth reading. And he gets an A-plus for honesty.

Originally from True Hoop by Henry Abbott reBlogged on Jun 5, 2006, 4:27PM

Originally posted by Henry Abbott from True Hoop, on June 6, 2006 12:36 PM

Good overview of the digital book controversy, elevated to the sublime by this quote at the end:

That history gives great comfort to writers like Vikram Chandra, whose 1,000-page novel, "Sacred Games," will be published in January. Mr. Chandra, a former computer programmer who already reads e-books downloaded to his pocket personal computer, said he saw no point in resisting technology. "I think circling the wagons and defending the fortress metaphors are a little misplaced," he said. "The barbarians at the gate are usually willing to negotiate a little, and the guys in the fort usually end up yelling that 'we are the only good things in the world and you guys don't understand it,' at which point the barbarians shrug, knock down your walls with their amazingly powerful weapons, and put a parking lot over your sacred grounds. "If they are in a really good mood," he added, "they put up a pyramid of skulls."

Originally from stevenberlinjohnson.com by stevenberlinjohnson reBlogged on Jun 5, 2006, 11:12AM

Originally posted by stevenberlinjohnson from stevenberlinjohnson.com, on June 6, 2006 12:36 PM

Hey fam, PBS.com's Border Talk series has given me a chance to blog on the topic of Hip-Hop and American Identity this whole month. Who knows if that was such a good idea, but hey! You get to decide.

(Apologies to the great Nelson George, BTW, because it looks like they bit your book title for the blog. Sorry for that.)

Over the next month, we'll hear from people like Reginald Hudlin, president of entertainment at BET, and Cristina Verán, Rock Steady Crew member turned UN writer on indigenous people's movements, and many more.

Here's a teaser from today's entry:

Is it strange for an Asian Pacific Islander who grew up in the suburbs of Honolulu to be writing about hip-hop? I didn't think so.

But when I went out to promote my door-stopper of a book last year, I found out differently. Seemed like everyone wondered how someone of my background might have come to write a 500-plus page biceps-enhancer on the topic. (Thankfully, I never met the ones who didn't think there were 500-plus pages worth of the topic.)

I mean, did they live on the same planet as me?

When I got over being so defensive, I realized that unpacking that question could actually be quite interesting...

Read it all here. And definitely comment if you feel the spirit.

Originally from zentronix: dubwise & hiphopcentric by Jeff reBlogged on Jun 5, 2006, 5:20PM

Originally posted by Jeff from zentronix: dubwise & hiphopcentric, on June 6, 2006 12:33 PM

From Beiruit to Pakistan, Srebrenica to Iran Richard Mosse shows the aftermath of war and natural disasters through it's effects on the architecture in his extraordinarily powerful photographic series.

Posted to Art

Originally from Stunned reBlogged on Jun 5, 2006, 4:48PM

Originally from Stunned, on June 6, 2006 12:33 PM

Quick interview with me over at leahpeah. "I was never one of those kids who had a ready answer for what they wanted to be when they grew up."

Originally from kottke.org remaindered links by jkottke reBlogged on Jun 5, 2006, 12:08PM

Originally posted by jkottke from kottke.org remaindered links, on June 6, 2006 12:28 PM

This recipe for lavender and lemon brined pork roast sounds delicious. I'm a huge fan of brining so I think next time I get some grass-fed pork from the Greenmarket, I'll try this out.

Originally from megnut.com blog reBlogged on Jun 5, 2006, 5:32PM

Originally from megnut.com blog, on June 6, 2006 12:26 PM

I have been happily using WordPress as the infrastructure for this blog since its inception, almost one year ago. Since I’m perhaps slightly geekier than than the average WordPress customer, I have been wanting to get to know the sources a bit better and possibly make my own tweaks or write plugins to suit my particular needs. I also like to keep up to date with the latest versions of the software. The problem is that these activities are at odds with each other. See, if you don’t tweak anything, updating is a simple matter of “un-tarring” the package file over your existing installation and visiting the “update.php” URL. But if you’ve made any sneaky changes, you’re liable to overwrite them when you clobber a source file with the updated version.

This situation has led me to an unfortunate state of moaning about having to install WordPress updates. This is bad, because often the small updates contain security fixes, which are exactly the kind of thing I should want to install immediately. Furthermore, I’d like to stop editing WordPress with vi on the server, and searching the source base with grep. I’m proficient with these tools, but I have a Mac! It’s better at such things.

I need absolute WordPress control. Specifically, I need to be able to:

1. Install WordPress updates with ease and confidence.
2. Hack on WordPress and test results on my Mac before updating the live blog.
3. Do so in a way that meshes with my regular work habits.

How do I address this? The problem screams for Subversion and Xcode, so that’s what I will throw at it. By integrating my WordPress hacking with Apple’s Xcode, I can treat the technical underpinnings of my blog just like I would any other code project. I spend so much of my day “building and running” that it’s distracting when any technical project does not fit in with that process.

Step 1: Get Things Under Control

Source control, that is. I decided that I needed a single repository where both my live web site and local Mac could access the same WordPress sources. That means I need an SVN server accessible from both locations, as well as Subversion client tools in each location. Luckily DreamHost comes standard with Subversion support (minor gripe: they’re stuck on version 1.1!). If your web host doesn’t offer Subversion, you might be out of luck for this particular round of magic.

Typically with Subversion repositories, the “mainline” of the project is identified as a subdirectory of the repository called “trunk.” In my case, I don’t control the mainline of WordPress, so I’m choosing more clear identifications. My repository is “all branches,” if you will, so I’m not including any folder called trunk, though “official” is the closest thing to being that:

% svn ls file:///home/jalkut/svn/opensource/wordpress/
hacking/
official/
redsweater/
redsweater-assets/

What I’ve done here is take advantage of the “smart copying” in Subversion. I started the repository out with “official,” containing the latest 2.0.3 release of WordPress. I then copied that in the repository to “redsweater” and carefully copied all of custom bits and pieces in. If you do this right, only the customized parts take up repository disk space. Everything that’s the same is shared in the database. The custom bits include the database configuration, custom themes, installed plugins, images, etc.

Where possible, I took advantage of a feature in Subversion called “svn:externals.” This lets you specify points in the project hierarchy that, when encountered, will trigger a checkout from a different repository. It’s sort of like an NFS Mount-Point right in Subversion. In the mysterious “redsweater-assets” repository folder above, I’ve added folders for most of my custom elements. So when I checkout “redsweater” and Subversion gets down to the “themes” section, it notices that it needs to checkout my custom theme from the redswetaer-assets/themes repository folder. This technique works great in almost every area of WordPress, except for the plugins directory. Because svn:externals can only specify a directory, it breaks down when one would hope to use it to plop individual files down into a checked out directory. I imagine this limitation comes from the fact that every folder in a working directory has a single “.svn” folder for tracking the entries at that level. Therefore, a directory of assets from mixed repositories would be tricky.

Even with the svn:externals shortcomings, the setup works pretty well now. I have a “redsweater” branch that I can integrate changes into, and then update my web site directly from the command line. At any time, I can examine the differences between my customized branch of WordPress and the official release I last integrated with. Comfort!

Step 2: Integrate with Xcode

The Subversion infrastructure goes a long way toward calming my nerves about integration and updates. I can carefully stage any update by first updating and testing it on my local machine. That’s cool, but it’s not really good enough. I want to be able to hack the heck out of it on my local machine (Note: You need to install a PHP-compatible Apache server before you can really do this on your Mac). Furthermore, I want to possibly be able to maintain a separate, highly experimental copy of WordPress for days, weeks, or months while I continue to serve (and perhaps update) the more stable version of the blog from my site. It’s time to look at the “hacking” branch that I hinted at above.

The hacking branch started life as a copy of the redsweater branch. I want it to closely mimic my real blog, but I want to have freedom to mess around with it big time. So the first thing I altered after copying the branch over was the wp-config.php. Instead of pointing to my live database, I pointed to a local MySQL database on my Mac (yet another custom install, sorry!). This database contains a subset of my live blog’s content. The idea is it’s a totally safe sandbox for me to work in. I can add comments, posts, pages, etc. I can delete everything and start from scratch. I can even post drafts of my entries from MarsEdit to see how they’ll really look when they finally go live. The ultimate preview! One of the things I’ve noticed so far in hacking on WordPress is that I need to provoke different situations before I can play around with the behavior. For instance, if I want to tweak the spam-filtering behavior, I have to first cause a spammy comment to appear on the blog. I don’t like doing this on the live blog, but fake spam comments are fine in my sandbox.

What else does the hacking branch contain? This is where it gets fun. The branch contains an Xcode project file, and supporting shell scripts to facilitate a streamlined development process. First I added all the WordPress sources to the project, for easy global search & replace. It’s amazing how much faster you can get to know the project when you get a “birds-eye view” from Xcode:

I find that I understand a project much better even by doing simple tweaks like globally replacing something so that it behaves differently. When I can observe the changes, it connects my test changes to the project’s design as a whole.

Next up I attacked the problem of “fixing the workflow.” What does it mean to “build & run” a WordPress project in Xcode? I decided that building WordPress means “copying the files into my local web server directory,” and running it means “opening a suitable URL in my web browser.” To that end, I added a single target to the Xcode project, “Install Local,” which is a simple copy files build phase target. It takes all the specified files and plops them over to the “blog” subdirectory of my local test server:

Sweet! Now when I want to try out my changes, I can just press Cmd-B to build and then load up my localhost URL in Safari. But the scenario isn’t quite complete. When I build an application in Xcode, I don’t have to navigate to the Finder, find the resulting product, and double-click it. Why should I have to go manually reload this web page? With Xcode custom executables, I don’t. I added a couple shell scripts to my “hacking” tree that, when specified as custom executables, simply cause the local blog to open up in the default browser. This trick is accomplished with some simple AppleScript bridging:

#!/bin/sh
osascript -e "open location \"http://localhost/blog/\""

For every commonly debugged location in the blog, you can just pop another custom executable into the project with a slightly different blog URL. Then you select the desired executable from Xcode and “run” the project to see how your results are shaping up.

Now I can make changes, build, run, examine the results, and even use Xcode’s built-in Subversion features to review what I’ve changed!

If you want a head start at making your own WordPress hacker’s paradise, you can download and plop my WordPress Xcode Project files into your own local WordPress “hacking” directory. It should work just fine with a standard 2.0.3 copy of the sources. The archive includes the Xcode project itself as well as a couple example “executable” scripts.

Originally from Red Sweater Blog by Daniel Jalkut reBlogged on Jun 5, 2006, 1:22PM

Originally posted by Daniel Jalkut from Red Sweater Blog, on June 6, 2006 12:26 PM

How about if this year, we forget about all those lazy sports journalists and commentators out there who every 4 years come out with the same old "why don't Americans care about soccer?" routine that is increasingly tedious and...

Originally from Amy's Robot by Amy reBlogged on Jun 5, 2006, 11:09AM

Originally posted by Amy from Amy's Robot, on June 6, 2006 12:26 PM

Ladies and gents, it's time for another giveaway, and this time's for teeshirts! Game-related ones, of course - the kids over at Way Of The Rodent rang up and said they'd hand over a teeshirt a day to one of you lot, and of your choosing, too - colour, size, whatever, check out the range here.

I know which one I'm going for - they've only gone and done a Katamari World Cup mashup, and it's genius:

So. Rules - you have to be in Europe, for postage reasons. You have to be human, for shape reasons. Otherwise, it's pot luck - send us an email with your name in, and I'll pick out one lucky entrant per day for the whole week - that's five free shirts for five lucky readers. Wahay!

Dress me!

Originally from Wonderland by Alice reBlogged on Jun 5, 2006, 5:33AM

Originally posted by Alice from Wonderland, on June 6, 2006 12:26 PM

For the past few days I’ve been playing around with a beta account of Six Apart’s Vox.com, a somewhat late entry into social networking for the pioneering company behind Movable Type and Typepad. (My account came courtesy of Anil Dash, who, magnanimously, bears no apparent grudges from my earlier, less than kind remarks about Movable Type, circa 2006.)

Vox follows the by now familiar interaction model for social software: buddy lists, comments, photo sharing, blogging, etc. If you’ve used Friendster, Flickr, MySpace or any of their competitors, you probably already understand how Vox works sufficiently well to get up and running with little learning curve. Apparently, one of the site’s intended key differentiators is its tiered approach to functionality. ‘Starter’ users can do more or less what you can at, say, Friendster: create a profile, build a buddy list and participate in comment threads and discussions. So-called ‘standard’ — and presumably paying — customers will also be able to blog, manage media (photos, audio, video) and choose from various built-in themes to skin their presentation in the Vox universe — those features haven’t yet been released to everyone, but Six Apart promises them in the near future.

A Tradition of Looking Great

I would have liked to have been able to re-skin my Vox page entirely from customized CSS, but apparently that’s not in the cards. Though to b fair, such customizability may not be quite as necessary as it is at, say, My Space; Vox is easily among the most attractively designed of the Web 2.0 sites I’ve yet seen. To begin with, its logo is subtle and unexpectedly smart: a cloud like compound object made up of individual circles framing a simple, sans-serif, uppercase “VOX.” It manages to denote community and friendliness without resorting to speech balloons, smiley faces or generic ISO-style figures.

Above: Red Vox; one of the smartest Web 2.0 logos I’ve seen yet. Below: Purple people eater; a user page from within the Vox universe.

For that alone, Vox’s designers deserve a round of applause, but the rest of the site is impressively orderly and comforting in appearance, too. One thing Six Apart have done consistently well is use design with great care and precision throughout all of their products. I still look back at early versions of Movable Type — which was designed by one of the company’s two founders, Mena Trott — as among the best examples of graphic design in the early part of this decade. Apparently, Mena has had significant, hands-on involvement with Vox, too, and she hasn’t lost her touch (or she’s really come into her own as a leader of a talented design team) because Vox possesses a sharp, deft design sensibility that’s both of its Web 2.0 contemporaries and a step beyond them. Let’s hope this team brings something similar to a future redesign of Movable Type.

The Features I Want: Not Coming Soon

Design aside, there’s not a whole heck of a lot about Vox that sets it apart from its competition, at least not yet. Six Apart allude to some coming, yet-to-be-announced features that will further distinguish it from the rest of the pack, and for now I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt and consider Vox to be a work in progress.

One thing that I’m pretty sure that Vox won’t provide, though, is de-centralized social networking, which is something that I’m willing to bet that many of us who run our own weblogs and Web sites would like to see: an open API that allows users to include the apparatuses of social networks such as buddy lists, photo sharing, comment threads, etc. into our own sites. As I experienced with Newsvine, it’s a significant hurdle for me to integrate Vox into my day-to-day online authoring process when I’m already maintaining Subtraction.com on my own server. It would be a sea change for moderately advanced users like myself to be able to integrate right into Vox — or any social network — and enjoy full or nearly-full ‘citizenship’ without having to pass through its gates first.

Granted, the market for such technically daunting features is a much smaller one than the market that Vox clearly has its sights set on: the vast public who have no desire to get their hands dirty with code or advanced customization, but who do have a growing interest in participating in networked communities. Which is a shame; part of what made Movable Type such a revelation five years ago was its exceedingly pliant user experience: relative to its ease of use, it was unparalleled in its willingness to conform to the imaginations of the first generation of bloggers. Vox is an aesthetic triumph — and it may yet be a commercial and popular success — but it’s unlikely to be the cause of a similar sea change in what creative hands can accomplish on the World Wide Web.

Originally from Subtraction by Khoi Vinh reBlogged on Jun 6, 2006, 12:54AM

Originally posted by Khoi Vinh from Subtraction, on June 6, 2006 12:24 PM

their web office suite is coming along nicely  

Originally from Waxy.org Links reBlogged on Jun 5, 2006, 11:42PM

Originally from Waxy.org Links, on June 6, 2006 12:24 PM

Google maps 37Signals with Flickr iPod [via] 

Originally from Waxy.org Links reBlogged on Jun 5, 2006, 2:46PM

Originally from Waxy.org Links, on June 6, 2006 12:24 PM

The new campaign is geared to the show's core fan base of young, Internet-aware viewers.

Originally from NYT > Technology by LIA MILLER reBlogged on Jun 5, 2006, 12:00AM

Originally posted by LIA MILLER from NYT > Technology, on June 5, 2006 6:15 PM

So creepy, yet AWESOME

Originally from random($foo) reBlogged on Jun 4, 2006, 8:36PM

Originally from random($foo), on June 5, 2006 6:15 PM

Yahoo! Sport | Ullrich to retire within two years

T-Mobile's Jan Ullrich, winner of the 1997 Tour de France and five-time runner-up, says he's unlikely to ride more than 2 more seasons.

Ullrich, 32, told German TV channel ZDF “Maybe I can ride for another one or two years if I am still motivated.” Motivation has long been a question for Ullrich, who seems to enter every season 10-20 pounds overweight, then manages to hit a high performance peak in time for the Tour.

As for this year's Tour, Ullrich said he's taking the win:

"Anything other than a victory will be a huge disappointment," added Ullrich Sunday.

Originally from Tour de France 2006 by Frank Steele reBlogged on Jun 5, 2006, 12:04AM

Originally posted by Frank Steele from Tour de France 2006, on June 5, 2006 5:58 PM

Talk about the dangers of machine translation. I went to a Chinese restaurant in Portland's outskirts (on 82nd St. NE, for cognoscenti). Very few nods to the English-language crowd in this place, but the menu had its own special translations. The first thing we noticed was "Shredded Pig's Spicy." Hmmm. We wondered if they shredded the entire pig before salvaging the "spicy." And of course we had an interesting discussion as to what this Spicy might turn out to be.

Then we turned the page and were startled to see: Peppers with Pig's Rectum. This didn't sound all that appetizing, to be honest, but I was tempted to order it just to see the presentation. Lots of intriguing options. In the end, I concluded that some person or machine looked up the English for "rump" and settled on wrong word. My sister thought it might turn out to be a tripe dish. One way or another, you can be close to the right word in a foreign language and still be very very wrong. Of course the possibility exists that they chose precisely the right word--but I'm more comfortable trusting that they didn't.

The waiter came. I chose the Shredded Pig's Spicy without asking what it was. It only cost $3. Turned out to be a pile of pig's ear, cut into fine slivers and served cold with a subtle sauce. A little chewy for my taste, but considering the possibilities, a bit of a relief.

Originally from BusinessWeek Online - Blogspotting by stephen_baker reBlogged on Jun 4, 2006, 12:57PM

Originally posted by stephen_baker from BusinessWeek Online - Blogspotting, on June 4, 2006 10:40 PM

Home video of the Mavericks arriving in Dallas a few hours ago:

Originally from True Hoop by Henry Abbott reBlogged on Jun 4, 2006, 11:52AM

Originally posted by Henry Abbott from True Hoop, on June 4, 2006 10:40 PM

I spent nine (9) hours at Shea Stadium yesterday, the first three of which were spent staring at a tarp in the rain. The first game was a fairly straight-forward affair that the Metropolitans couldn’t put away, though it did feature some nifty plays in the field (Endy Chavez doubling up a gimpy Bonds at first in the first, ending the inning; Lastings Millage taking away a double with a nifty two-handed diving catch).

The second game, which was played almost entirely in a cold, swirling, wind-driven mist, was notable for its speed. Entering the sixth, Tom Glavine had been averaging 10 pitches an inning (he finished with 85 in 7 pitched, which is still a impressive 12 pitches per inning), and Jamey Wright, his Giants counterpart, matched his efficiency. I admit that we did not stay for the climatic 11th-inning victory, having left after watching Barry Bonds pinch-hit in the top of the 10th, going up against a 99-miles-per-hour-throwing Billy Wagner (I still think that Wagner’s entrance music should not be Metallica’s “Enter Sandman” but rather the Prelude to Tristan and Isolde).

And of Barry Lamar Bonds? Say what you will, but the guy has awe-inspiring (as in Old Testament awe, i.e. “a feeling of reverential respect mixed with fear”) bat speed and he hits the ball harder than anyone I’ve ever seen. In the ninth inning of the first game (amidst chants of “Let’s go ster-roids”), he spanked a rocket down the first-base-line that got to the corner so fast that he was limited to a single.

Note that despite the lusty boos directed towards the Giants’ left fielder, the crowd boo’d just as lustily when Bonds was intentionally walked.

Originally from pf.org by Paul Frankenstein reBlogged on Jun 4, 2006, 11:32AM

Originally posted by Paul Frankenstein from pf.org, on June 4, 2006 10:40 PM

Mark Pilgim, the writer and programmer behind the Dive Into Mark blog, recently published a list of things he bought this weekend, including a Lenovo (IBM) ThinkCentre M52 with an IBM staff discount. As he notes in his Bye, Apple...

Originally from Guardian Unlimited: Technology blog reBlogged on Jun 4, 2006, 11:16AM

Originally from Guardian Unlimited: Technology blog, on June 4, 2006 10:40 PM

My friend Maciej found this map of NYC divided into sections that contain the same populations as other American cities. The page containing the image says it's from an unknown "City of New York publication". Anyone know where it's from or where to get a better copy? Email me.

Originally from kottke.org remaindered links by jkottke reBlogged on Jun 4, 2006, 2:11PM

Originally posted by jkottke from kottke.org remaindered links, on June 4, 2006 10:37 PM

June 4th is the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre. Go search YouTube for Tienanmen, lots of good stuff including several versions of the famous guy-and-the-tank footage. The best book I’ve ever read about the spring of 1989 in China is Jan Wong’s Red China Blues. It still seems to me that China’s current political structure is flimsy, teetering, and ready to implode.

Originally from ongoing reBlogged on Jun 4, 2006, 1:31PM

Originally from ongoing, on June 4, 2006 10:37 PM

All of the tools you need to poke, prod, and monitor your JavaScript, CSS, HTML and Ajax are brought together into one seamless experience, including a debugger, error console, command line, and a variety of fun inspectors.

Originally from unmediated by yatta reBlogged on Jun 4, 2006, 2:52PM

Originally posted by yatta from unmediated, on June 4, 2006 10:36 PM

still waiting for janome to arrive, my poor heart balloon dress. so let's discuss doom metal. dr and i very into it for the past few months & startled upon return from vacation to see it featured in last week's NYT magazine. now, in this week's NYT book review, terrence rafferty reviews genre of horror fiction. why?

the larogers house loves doom because it's slow, excruciatingly slow, and "doom voice" obscures lyrics, which don't benefit from being discernable. we like it because we feel doom, in chest cavity, when we read paper, watch news hour with jim lehrer*(*almost never), contemplate restrictions on reproductive rights, nearly get abducted by nyc's least gentile cab driver, and for me, i feel it at work. somehow, i just don't give a shit about well, it's not fair to name band names, not that anyone cares what i think, anyhow different music for different moods. and books too.

mood. doom.

mood<>doom. this is my doom metal band name. who wants to be in a band with me until the new sewing machine arrives? it's called mood<>doom, and we're gonna be slow and nasty.

you in, vincent?

Originally from serenalarogers by serenalarogers reBlogged on Jun 4, 2006, 5:41PM

Originally posted by serenalarogers from serenalarogers, on June 4, 2006 10:31 PM

Flickr user thinkmo turned an oil painting landscape into a "lanscape" by adding the password for the local wireless network on it.

This would never fly in a household that included non-geeks, but it's SO much better than keeping the password on the router with a sticky note (what I do.) What I want to see is art with the WEP key incorporated in it a bit more subtilely- part of the picture somehow, so that peeping Toms couldn't see it and non-geeks wouldn't mind it. Now that would rock.

Password Painting [thinkmo's Flickr set via Waxy]

 
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Originally from Lifehacker reBlogged on Jun 4, 2006, 4:00PM

Originally from Lifehacker, on June 4, 2006 10:31 PM

david posted a photo:

Originally from david's Photos by david reBlogged

Originally posted by david from david's Photos, on June 4, 2006 10:31 PM

I've been thinking a lot about wool lately. In knitting circle I've been stuck in a bit of a cotton-yarn with a hint of soy-silk rut, and thinking about the ethics of using wool yarn.

It's not like leather or fur, which is clearly wrong. Wrapping myself in dead animals just feels like bad karma. But sheep aren't always horribly mistreated, and I'm sure I can find wool online from sources that treat their sheep well.

So, my dilemna is, why do I still feel wrong about buying wool, even if the source is advertised as humane?

I don't eat animals, but I probably would eat dairy and eggs if I wasn't lactose-intolerant, and I knew the animals were treated completely humanely, and if they were only fed organic grains, and if they weren't so fattening, and if my race-times hadn't improved so much since I went vegan...

But see, I don't have this long list of negatives for wool, and it's so soft and wonderful. Yet, even thinking about purchasing it makes me feel sad and guilty. What's a knitter to do?

Originally from iPalimpsest reBlogged on Jun 2, 2006, 11:20PM

Originally from iPalimpsest, on June 4, 2006 10:21 AM

Movable Type 3.3 introduces the ability to create "Transformer plugins" which can modify and control input and output for the Movable Type admin interface in any way. This feature was not only inspired by Kevin Shay's BigPAPI plugin but actually uses an extremely similar model. However, because BigPAPI overrides the portion of the Movable Type code which offers this function, it has the potential to cause severe weirdness.

If you are upgrading an installation to Movable Type 3.3, you should disable BigPAPI from the System Overview plugin listing if you have it installed. We shall shortly have updates for all known BigPAPI plugins which use the native Transformer plugin callbacks.

Originally from Movable Type Beta Weblog by jallen reBlogged on Jun 3, 2006, 5:02PM

Originally posted by jallen from Movable Type Beta Weblog, on June 4, 2006 10:15 AM

<!-- comment --> I run a site that pulls together blogs and posts by people in Oregon called ORblogs. The idea started as this post on this site: Oregon Weblogs, after I met Michael Buffington and Nick Finck for the first time at SXSW in Austin that month. I found out they both lived about 45 minutes away and I thought there should be some way for local bloggers to find each other.

I set up ORblogs.com with a simple link list of the Oregon bloggers I could find. Then a few months later (three years ago today) I moved from a simple list of links to a database-driven site that gathers posts and information about the blogs. And I moved from actively finding weblogs, to making the site a voluntary, participatory space. In fact, if you go to the blog detail page for this site—onfocus at ORblogs—you'll see that the date my weblog was added is June 3, 2003. A quick SQL query tells me there are 58 weblogs that are still active and were added that day. There are currently 1,055 active weblogs in the directory.

I've been able to virtually get to know a number of my fellow Oregonians by reading the site daily for three years, and I think it's helped me get to know my city and state better than I would have otherwise. I've even met a few bloggers in person, and I'm not sure that would have happened without the site. I also appreciate the fact that I see diverse viewpoints from people across the state. I don't always agree with everything I see flowing through ORblogs, but I think it's healthy to read outside of my normal ideological bubble once in a while.

So I just wanted to mark the milestone with a post. I always have grand plans for ORblogs, a whole stack of ideas I'd like to implement that would help connect Oregon bloggers and their ideas together. (I've been talking with people about an ORblogs get-together forever, that'd be a fun way to connect with other bloggers too.) But the site is a side-project, and I'm not making any money from it. Hopefully someday I'll figure out how to turn the intangible value I feel from participating at the site into tangible value so I can focus more time at ORblogs—a classic personal Web dilemma.

I'd also like to take this post to say thanks to all of the Oregon bloggers who have chosen to participate at ORblogs, who bother pinging the site, and who are teaching me more about Oregon every day. The site wouldn't exist without the Oregon blogosphere collectively nodding in ORblogs' direction.

Originally from onfocus.com reBlogged on Jun 3, 2006, 2:32PM

Originally from onfocus.com, on June 4, 2006 10:15 AM

In the past, I have written an article on this blog titled - 10 seconds guide to Bash Scripting - which explained the finer nuiances of learning to write scripts for the bash shell. But there is much more to it than scripting for one particular shell as there are numerous shells available for the Linux/Unix environment.

The site Shelldorado positions itselves as a site which explains all the things related to shell scripting. This site contain among other things, articles explaining good coding practices while writing scripts, tips and tricks related to scripting, a good collection of scripts and much more. I found this site really informative in its depth of coverage of the art of shell scripting. In fact the tips and tricks section is categorized into beginner, intermediate, script programmer and advanced sections and is worth a look over.

Originally from All about Linux by Ravi reBlogged on Jun 3, 2006, 1:04PM

Originally posted by Ravi from All about Linux, on June 4, 2006 10:15 AM

Like any beta software, there are a few known issues. Below is a list of those issues which will be updated continuously until the final release.

Extremely important issues

The following known issues are extremely important and should be understood before upgrading to Movable Type 3.3 (Beta-3):

• Backup your database and files!
• New minimum Perl version: 5.6.1
• SQLSetNames for MySQL 3.x and 4.0.x users (resolved in Beta-2)
• Possible category/entry archive URL breakage
• BigPAPI plugin incompatibility
• Documentation for Movable Type 3.3

<!-- Case 27411: DOCS: Document how to configure for using DBD::SQLite2 Since MT::ObjectDriver::DBD::sqlite supports using DBD::SQLite2, we should add this module to the list of data drivers we support in mt-check. We also need to make sure to document how to configure MT to use that driver ('UseSQLite2' config setting). Case 11480: DOCS: IIS users need to set IndexBasename upgrade, IIS users will need to put IndexBasename default (or something) into mt-config.cgi. We should document this. Case 28637: DOCS: Tell user to config IIS to recognize index.html as index http://www.sixapart.com/movabletype/kb/installation/register_indexh.html Case 6764: Order of template tag attributes respected; repeated attributes allowed -->

Other known issues

The following are known issues in Movable Type 3.3 (Beta-3) and shall be fixed in an upcoming release:

• Many actions for Activity log and feed items have not yet been implemented

Previously reported/fixed issues

• The number of entries on the tag listing screens is inconsistent with the number of entries returned when clicking on it if the tag is a non-normalized derivative of another tag (e.g. Tag vs tag vs t.a.g)
• Weirdness abounds in multiple blog searches from the public blog (i.e. not from admin interface)
• Users without the XML::Parser perl module installed will receive an error upon request for Activity feeds.
• The entry tags auto-complete feature is currently disabled
• The template textarea height is not persistent after resize and save
• A warning is not currently triggered when navigating away from an edited template

Won't fix prior to release

• Entry tag intersections are not currently supported in the tag search mode

Originally from Movable Type Beta Weblog by jallen reBlogged on Jun 3, 2006, 5:40PM

Originally posted by jallen from Movable Type Beta Weblog, on June 4, 2006 10:12 AM

Kiyoshi @ 1.08p
Originally uploaded by yatta.

Ken Ikeda from Youth Sounds came by the Eyebeam Education Lab on Friday. Youth Sounds is about to establish a youth-staffed R&D lab in the Bay Area where young folks are trained in open source software development before working on projects for real world clients.

Apparently they're just breaking ground on the new site. I'll have to see if I can schedule a quick visit to their BAVC office while I'm in SF for Vloggercon this week.

Originally from braintag reBlogged on Jun 3, 2006, 4:53PM

Originally from braintag, on June 4, 2006 10:12 AM

I dumped a heap of photos off my camera tonight and pushed a few to photosets at flickr.  One set is of the SCAA show in Charlotte (how timely).  The other includes photos of the GB5 installation in Brooklyn. 

Coming soon:  Norway espresso training and tour.  Mirage Idrocompressos at the Corning Museum of Glass.

Originally from gimme! coffee by Kevin Cuddeback reBlogged

Originally posted by Kevin Cuddeback from gimme! coffee, on June 4, 2006 10:12 AM

november's exodus from brooklyn interrupted threads magazine subscription; occasionally a back issue arrives in a brown envelope. hence why no post til now about MAY, issue 124... the standard threads headline reads something like, "master the pivot point," or "color code pleat marking lines." yawn; do it. anyway you can imagine my delight to read THIS byline:

"Ruth Ciemnoczolowski's custom clothing career was launched at the Omaha Playboy Club."

ruth teaches us how to achieve a "treasure chest" (haw!) of cleavage effects by sewing padding directly into our dresses. i am blushing! and it's a really good article. i fuckin love threads, forever.

Originally from serenalarogers by serenalarogers reBlogged on Jun 3, 2006, 7:55PM

Originally posted by serenalarogers from serenalarogers, on June 4, 2006 10:11 AM

A chronological list of the largest cities through history. The five most recent cities and when they became the largest: Constantinople (1650), Beijing (1710), London (1825), New York (1925), and Tokyo (1965). The first city over 1 million was Baghdad.

Originally from kottke.org remaindered links by jkottke reBlogged on Jun 4, 2006, 1:34AM

Originally posted by jkottke from kottke.org remaindered links, on June 4, 2006 10:10 AM

You've seen the warning signs, you can tell something's not quite right--so now's the time to do something about it. A step-by-step guide on how to rid yourself of a hipster infestation.

Have you recently found yourself asking any of the following questions? —Whose fixed-gear bicycle is that in my garage? —Where do I keep misplacing the charger for my iPod Nano? —Why are there vast amounts of food mysteriously not missing from my pantry and refrigerator each week? Yes? Then, chances are, you’ve got hipsters. Hipster infestations have become commonplace in modern times. One day, life seems completely normal. The next, you’ve got an anorexic in a train-conductor hat scurrying across your kitchen in the middle of dinner. This, understandably, can be a pretty disconcerting sight. Not to worry, though. While hipsters can really slaughter a nice mood, they are otherwise harmless and probably just as frightened of you as you are of them. Still, they are a nuisance, of course, and need to be treated as such. Following are suggested measures to pinpoint the location of hipsters in your home,... Click here to continue reading this article.

Visit The Morning News.

Originally from The Morning News reBlogged on Apr 21, 2006, 9:02AM

Originally from The Morning News, on June 4, 2006 10:10 AM

I ate one whole cup of food today. And I didn't pee in the house! But Phoggie had to chop my pretty coat off because I was too sick to keep myself clean. (I think she used a lawnmower.) I look weird.

Originally from Blue's Sunny Life by find_me@dogster.com (Blue) reBlogged on Jun 4, 2006, 9:36AM

Originally posted by find_me@dogster.com (Blue) from Blue's Sunny Life, on June 4, 2006 10:06 AM

At this point, I'd like to extend an invitation to come down here and join me in my liberating orgy of honesty and admit something - that there is something else behind the thundercrack of publicity that's currently raging over the heads of cyclists. And I think it's this: most readers of the picket-fence press get angry when they see a rider jumping a red, not because of the danger it poses to school-children, but because, somewhere deep and murky, they wish they were doing it. They sit at the leatherette wheel of their 100-grand Mercs, temporarily emasculated by the 7in disc of red light, and are possessed by a wrenching, envious rage at the tatty bicycle soaring off into the distance. Perhaps because their vehicles cost more, car users can see themselves as the road's chosen race. How humiliating it is, how infuriating, to have that hubris popped by an oik.

Yes! Excellent article about the perils of being a two-wheeled road user. I confess, I jump red lights at night, no way I'm hanging around at a junction peopled by loons with nothing to do.

Originally from the lady upgrade project by mr tibbles reBlogged on Jun 4, 2006, 9:32AM

Originally posted by mr tibbles from the lady upgrade project, on June 4, 2006 10:06 AM

Here.

Also, pictures, prints from the Edo period I think, for serena.
For me.

Having finally co-ordinated the grand total of 3 men (two academics, one administrator) to complete a very basic task, which took them the best part of two weeks, my final thesis is being bound this weekend by the nice people on Holloway Road. I'll get 'resulted' soon. I hope I get a badge too, to sew on my swimming costume.

Post-doctoral proposal: the child-bearing and rearing practices of x house, y street, London, with special reference to the use and abuse of R Kelly. (I am an expert.) But this is why the Good Lord gave us Aphex Twin, after all.

Originally from the lady upgrade project by mr tibbles reBlogged on Jun 4, 2006, 5:32AM

Originally posted by mr tibbles from the lady upgrade project, on June 4, 2006 10:06 AM