posts brought to you by the category “better
living”
Das eez kaput! Sometime around 2002 I spaced the entire database
table that mapped individual entries to categories. Such is life.
What follows is a random sampling of entries that were associated
with the category. Over time, the entries will be updated and then it
will be even more confusing. Wander around, though, it's still a fun
way to find stuff.
Excerpted : I emptied my studio at 06H30 this morning
July 24, 2003
Montreal
<snip />
Anyway, there are two things I'll remember about my studio :
On the far fall, as you walk in, the previous occupant had fixed a towel
rack to the wall. Over that, she glued mirrored glass which had been cut
into individual letters to spell the word : F U C K E R
On the near wall, as you walk in, there was an old and short filing
cabinet that had been left behind. I didn't use it at first; I just
moved it out of the way a lot. Finally, I did a Big Cleanup and put the
cabinet near a table where I could easily reach things like tape and
pencils and erasers.
The first time I opened the top drawer to put something in it I found
myself staring at a single fridge-poetry magnet that had wedged itself
into the corner where the drawer's bottom met its face. It said : LUST
Like I said, the rest of the year was really just one false start after
another.
Bill, that's a terrible analogy.
Matt Vella : WWW::Bugzilla.pm
Handles submission/update of bugzilla bugs via WWW::Mechanize.
Me : xml résumé (XSL) formatting extensions 0.2
The Washington Post on lifestyle porn for the ruling classes.
Homeland security. First there was the agency. Then there was the
department. Now there is the brand.
N.Y. Times : How to Boil an Egg.
Michael Bierut : "It is a hapless attempt to tame the
terrifying."
The perlblog sticks it's head up and asks if it's spring...
Just so no one is confused, Mont Royal and St. Laurent are
perpendicular to one another.
The Sync4j Project
Apparently, the CBC now has a line item for canaries.
Nooooooooooooooooooooooo!!
Mina Naguib : Weather::Underground.pm
Meanwhile, still in the "While I Slept" department
Things I learned on my summer vacation :
The dictified dictionary.com word of the day is : exacerbate
Exacerbate \Ex*ac"er*bate\, v. t. [imp. & p. p.
{Exacerrated}; p. pr. & vb. n. {Exacerrating}.] [L. exacerbatus, p.
p. of exacerbare; ex out (intens.) + acerbare. See {Acerbate}.] To
render more violent or bitter; to irriate; to exasperate; to imbitter,
as passions or disease. --Broughman.
web1913
exacerbate v 1: make worse; "This drug aggravates the pain"
[syn: {worsen}, {aggravate}, {exasperate}] [ant: {better}] 2:
exasperate or irritate [syn: {exasperate}, {aggravate}]
wn
The random pseudodictionary.com word of the day is : clink
Noun: A clickable link. Hypertext link. Verb: The act of
clicking a hypertext link.
ex. The page needs a clink to pseudodictionary. Clink to
visit pseudodictionary.
see also :
clink dict-ified
The dictified dictionary.com word of the day is : sang-froid
Sang-froid \Sang`-froid"\, n. [F., cold blood.] Freedom
from agitation or excitement of mind; coolness in trying circumstances;
indifference; calmness. --Burke.
web1913
sang-froid n : great coolness and composure under strain;
"keep your cool" [syn: {aplomb}, {assuredness}, {cool}, {poise},
{self-possession}]
wn
The dictified dictionary.com word of the day is : plenary
Plenary \Ple"na*ry\, n. (Law) Decisive procedure. [Obs.]
web1913
plenary adj : full in all respects; "a plenary session of
the legislature"; "a diplomat with plenary powers"
wn
Bill Kearney has created a bunch of cool weblog maps
"based on the site URL's IP address."
Dan Gillmor : "My readers know more than I do;
That is not a threat, but rather an opportunity;
We can use this together to create something ... educating all of us"
Julian Bond : A Weblog API and XMLRPC
"Then there's the social problem of how standards
like this are developed. Very occasionally a standard is developed and
succeeds as a group effort. But in almost all other cases, a single (more
or less benevolent) dictator in the form of an individual or organization
drives the standard forward and makes it happen. So we have Ev and
Blogger creating the first. And Dave and Userland creating the second.
The rest of us can scream and shout and moan that they got it wrong and
we may think that they have a duty to listen and take our comments on
board. But in reality, there is no duty . The standard will succeed or
fail on a combination of it's merits and the extent of the deployment. We
may not like this, but it's the way it is."
Barrie Slaymaker : Bootstrapping AxKit
Tony Collen : "[H]ere's the BlogML discussion group."
Me : googlenews2rss 1.0
Me : My::SOAP::Transport::CGI.pm
Me : Hello world
The dict-ified dictionary.com word of the day is abed
| source : web1913 | Abed \A*bed"\, adv. [Pref.
a- in, on + bed.] 1. In bed, or on the bed. Not to be abed after
midnight. --Shak. 2. To childbed (in the phrase ``brought abed,'' that
is, delivered of a child). --Shak. | source : wn | abed adv : in bed
Me : DHTML::ypXmlTree.pm 0.1
Larry Wall : Apocalypse 3
"Ours is not to question why, ours is but to do
(the next one) or die."
Linda Greenhouse : The Clamor of a Free People
"Even war as a metaphor — the war on drugs,
for example — can have a dramatic, and unequal, effect on civil
liberties, as shown by the recent revelations of how widespread racial
profiling had become before the public even had a name for the practice.
"You fly the metaphor of war, and constitutional protections all cut in
one direction," said Dennis J. Hutchinson, a law professor and historian
at the University of Chicago. He said the "deconstitutionalization of the
automobile" — the ever wider discretion for police searches for
drugs — "is the most obvious recent example of panic moving the
terms of discourse." " see also :
Stallman,
Thousands dead, millions deprived of civil liberties?
TPJ : Constants in Perl
And that means that my little fugue state was apparently all for
nothing: the line in question does exactly what I thought it did (but
worried that it didn't!), and so it isn't interesting. The whole
episode has distracted me from the task of finding why the larger
program is misbehaving -- and it so exhausted me that I can't bear to
read the next line of code (something about ($< % 3 and exec
'cat')||dump, whatever that does!). And as I blearily give up
bug-swatting for the day, I suddenly remember the 22-year-old Pascal
book that I'd read, and I wish that the person who wrote "86400" had
instead followed the Pascallers' advice to use a named constant!
The dict-ified dictionary.com word of the day is arbiter
| source : web1913 | Arbiter \Ar"bi*ter\, v. t.
To act as arbiter between. [Obs.] | source : web1913 | Arbiter
\Ar"bi*ter\, n. [L. arbiter; ar- (for ad) + the root of betere to go;
hence properly, one who comes up to look on.] 1. A person appointed, or
chosen, by parties to determine a controversy between them. Note: In
modern usage, arbitrator is the technical word. 2. Any person who has the
power of judging and determining, or ordaining, without control; one
whose power of deciding and governing is not limited. For Jove is arbiter
of both to man. --Cowper. Syn: Arbitrator; umpire; director; referee;
controller; ruler; governor. | source : wn | arbiter n 1: someone with
the power to settle matters at will; "she was the final arbiter on all
matters of fashion" [syn: {supreme authority}] 2: someone chosen to judge
and decide a disputed issue [syn: {arbitrator}]
The dict-ified dictionary.com word of the day is vertiginous
| source : web1913 | Vertiginous
\Ver*tig"i*nous\, a. [L. vertiginosus, fr. vertigo a whirling around,
giddiness: cf. F. vertigineux. See {Vertig??}.] 1. Turning round;
whirling; rotary; revolving; as, vertiginous motion. Some vertiginous
whirl of fortune. --De Quincey. 2. Affected with vertigo; giddy; dizzy.
They [the angels] grew vertiginous, and fell from the battlements of
heaven. --Jer. Taylor. -- {Ver*tig"i*nous*ly}, adv. --
{Ver*tig"i*nous*ness}, n. | source : wn | vertiginous adj : having or
causing a whirling sensation; liable to falling; "had a dizzy spell"; "a
dizzy pinnacle"; "had a headache and felt giddy"; "a giddy precipice";
"feeling woozy from the blow on his head"; "a vertiginous climb up the
face of the cliff" [syn: {dizzy}, {giddy}, {woozy}]
Reuven M. Lerner : CodeRed.pm
"This Perl module should be invoked whenever the
CodeRed or CodeRed2 worm attacks. We don't have to worry about such
attacks on Linux (sic) boxes, but we can be good Internet citizens,
warning the webmasters on infected machines of the problem and how to
solve it."
The dict-ified dictionary.com word of the day is paterfamilias
| source : web1913 | Paterfamilias
\Pa`ter*fa*mil`i*as\, n.; pl. {Pateresfamilias}. [L., fr. pater father +
familias, gen. of familia family.] (Rom. Law) The head of a family; in a
large sense, the proprietor of an estate; one who is his own master. |
source : wn | paterfamilias n : the head of family or tribe [syn:
{patriarch}, {head of household}]
The dict-ified dictionary.com word of the day is clamber
| source : web1913 | Clamber \Clam"ber\, v. i.
[imp. & p. p. {Clambered}; p. pr. & vb. n. {Clambering}.] [OE
clambren, clameren, to heap together, climb; akin to Icel. klambra to
clamp, G. klammern. Cf. {Clamp}, {Climb}.] To climb with difficulty, or
with hands and feet; -- also used figuratively. The narrow street that
clambered toward the mill. --Tennyson. | source : web1913 | Clamber
\Clam"ber\, n. The act of clambering. --T. Moore. | source : web1913 |
Clamber \Clam"ber\, v. t. To ascend by climbing with difficulty.
Clambering the walls to eye him. --Shak. | source : wn | clamber n : an
awkward climb; "reaching the crest was a real clamber" v : climb
awkwardly, as if by scrambling [syn: {scramble}, {shin}, {shinny},
{skin}, {struggle}, {sputter}]
The dict-ified dictionary.com word of the day is distrait
| source : web1913 | Distrait \Dis`trait"\, a.
[F. See {Distract}.] Absent-minded; lost in thought; abstracted. | source
: wn | distrait adj : having the attention diverted especially because of
anxiety [syn: {distracted}]
The dict-ified dictionary.com word of the day is effete
| source : web1913 | Effete \Ef*fete"\, a. [L.
effetus that has brought forth, exhausted; ex + fetus that has brought
forth. See {Fetus}.] No longer capable of producing young, as an animal,
or fruit, as the earth; hence, worn out with age; exhausted of energy;
incapable of efficient action; no longer productive; barren; sterile.
Effete results from virile efforts. --Mrs. Browning If they find the old
governments effete, worn out, . . . they may seek new ones. --Burke. |
source : wn | effete adj : marked by excessive self-indulgence and moral
decay; "a decadent life of excessive money and no sense of
responsibility"; "a group of effete self-professed intellectuals" [syn:
{decadent}]
Thomas Frank 7#34;A lot of business thinkers thought they had
happened onto a kind of Golden Age,
onto a new world. There's a business magazine out
there calling itself Business 2.0, as if all of, all of history was,
like, version 1.3, 1.4, that sort of thing — and then now we've
turned this Grand Corner, and market populism is kind of the expression
of that feeling, of business at its most righteous, and at its most
self-confident, and most willing to take on its enemies and, and shout
them down if you will. Basically, market populism understands
corporations and the workings of the market as more LEGITIMATE than
government, as closer to the people, as something the people understand
— and that's why they, according to market populism, even C.E.O.'s
as wealthy as Bill Gates are men of the people in a way that someone like
Al Gore, because he spent his life in government, can never be."
Matt Kruse : Bookmarks Tree Creator
"is a simple CGI utility to create a Javascript
from a Netscape bookmarks file."
If you didn't think it could get any worse
Washington Post : Do-It-Yourself Checkout
"We're so Internet-oriented, so ATM-oriented.
It's a natural transition. It's a natural extension of what we do every
day." And you just know that whenevers he mouths drivel like this he sees
not his sorry-ass grocery store self but instead Obi-Wan Kenobi jedi
mind-fucking stormtroopers telling them : "There is nothing to see here."
Stephane Dion, Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs
"It seems to me that it would be bizarre, even
unprecedented in the history of democracy to hold a referendum to
determine if the result of another referendum is clear."
For those outside the States
Butthole Surfers : buttlegs
"By the mid 80's there were a bunch of bad
sounding live bootlegs of the band in the shops. In '87 we felt we could
bootleg the band as well as everybody else, so we joined the crowd and
released our own crappy bootleg too. ... Since it's doubtful we'll ever
reissue this again, here all the songs in the MP3 format, for those who
want it but are reluctant to cough up the 100 bucks or so for an original
copy on Ebay."
Confessions of a font-addict
LA Weekly on Napster
"Dr. Lincoln Stein, part of the project at the
Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York, is exploring how to use
Napster-style automated resource discovery to enable scientists to
publish their discoveries in the genome. The reason Stein and other
experts are so excited is that Napster turns the prevailing computer
technology of client-server on its side. ... 'We've been stuck in a
client-server paradigm for many, many years. People who had stuff to
share had to learn arcane knowledge, like FTP, static IP addresses -
there were a lot of technical hurdles. The beauty of this system is, it
does automatic resource discovery. Napster publishes the route to the
user's information. Not just the IP address, which may change, but the
port.' " If you didn't already think that Lincoln Stein was cool enough
for having written
CGI.pm
, he's also written
MP3::Napster.pm
(requires threaded Perl).
The Electrohippies Collective
Libération : Dessine-moi un cyberespace...
Cyberia : Life in the Trenches of Hyperspace
Douglas Rushkoff has put the complete text of his
third book online. I tend to think that Rushkoff gives hyperbole a whole
new meaning, but he's always interesting. via
metascene
Charles Naylor has a vision
"that would see Northeastern American states like
Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont split from the United States and form a
confederacy with the Atlantic provinces in Canada." There are actually
quite a few people in Quebec --or atleast Montreal-- who think Vermont
should secede from the U.S. and form a new country with an independent
Quebec. I've always been fond of the idea, but I've also wondered whether
contemporary North America has managed to avoid many of the conflicts
Europe has lived through over the centuries, by virtue of having so few
countries. Look at a map of the world, [we] are something of an anomaly.
Those wacky Frontier people!
Saturday Night on Kalle Lasn
"Like the car out back, it's not the glue that's
important, it's the idea of the glue." Lasn is the founder of the Media
Foundation and editor of
adbusters
wtf?
-
dude, where's my car
This document uses
CSS
kung-fu and a small amount of JavaScript for rendering its
contents. Efforts have been made to separate the form from the
content so if you are viewing this in a text-based browser it
shouldn't be an issue.
On the other hand it may look funny if you are viewing it in a
browser with incomplete
CSS
and/or JavaScript implementations. Internet Explorer 6 comes to
mind.
It's not that I don't love you. However, my time is limited and
I no longer feel very good about spending it working around any one
browser's inconsistencies with little, or no, confidence that they
will ever be fixed or otherwise made more inconsistent at some
later date.
On the other hand, if something is down-right
unreadable
please let me know and I will endeavour to fix it.
-
yes, we have no bananas
This page may not validate. It's not that I don't care, it's
just that I'm not aware of it yet. Part of the reason that I
rewrote the entire back-end for managing this site is that the old
stuff made it too easy for these kinds of mistakes to slip through
the cracks.
See also :
W3C::LogValidator.pm
-
it's the software, stupid
Use the source, Luke.