posts brought to you by the category “citizenship”
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.
Oh god, Karl's going to want these comments embedded as RDF in each picture...
- I fell asleep there, twelve years ago, next to a beautiful woman. When we woke up, we had one of those sickly-sweet lovey-dovey moments that marked the beginning of a two year roller coaster.
- I spent a lot of time there during high school. Skipping
classes, discussing the relative merits of movies seen at Cinema V
(Café Flesh was ultimately pretty boring though I've
never been able to forgot those weird baby people with the giant
rat tails; A Clockwork Orange forever marred by memories of a guy
named Solo yelling out, during the eyeball scene :
Check out that cleavage!
), playing frisbee and all that other stuff teenagers do. - I don't about that one, it was after my time. But doesn't he just make you want to kick him square in the nuts?
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Using English to Avoid Semantic Navel Gazing
I'm being a little unfair, seeing as I
haven't read this in full, yet. But, you know, if you're going to talk
about
syntactic rigor mortiswithout bothering to explain what the fuck that's supposed to mean and then, in the very first sentence, invite me to
realizeXML, well...you're just asking for it.
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Michael Bierut : "It is a hapless attempt to tame the terrifying."
All I know is that if I were looking for a
design firm to help me communicate something I thought was serious and
important, I would not hire these turkeys after reading their dorky
fan-boy comments. It's nice that they think they are being parodied but
it's kind of pathetic that they don't realize they are just being
mocked.
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Me : Log::Dispatch::Jabber.pm 0.1
Sent off to the CPAN, moments ago. Maybe
next week I will write Log::Dispatch::Blogger. see also
http://perl.aaronland.info/log-dispatch/jabber
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Quick! Someone lend Jim Holt a book, any book, by William Gibson.
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Michael S. DeGraw-Bertsch : Configuring a FreeBSD Access Point for your Wireless Network
The dictified dictionary.com word of the day is : sunder
Sunder \Sun"der\, v. t. To expose to the sun and wind. [Prov. Eng.] --Halliwell. web1913
sunder v : break apart or in two, using violence wn
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The dictified dictionary.com word of the day is : claque
Claque \Claque\, n. [F.] A collection of persons employed to applaud at a theatrical exhibition. web1913
claque n : a group of followers hired to applaud at a performance wn
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Radio Crankypants #1: Let it never be said that I have a problem with aggregating data.
But I've been watching the growth of
Radio Userland
weblogs with their handy-dandy
blog yer newsfeeds
feature and I don't like what I'm seeing. It seems sort of unfair to
"beat up" on Userland on what looks to be their big shipping day but it
is important to make the distinction that this is not an issue with the
technology, per se, but with the way people are using it. (Yeah yeah,
don't say it. The medium is the message. I know; I'm from Canada.) Not
to make too fine a point of it: too many of the Radio weblogs I see are
just plain boring. Boring not because the people running them are
boring but because the constant recycling of rss feed data just reeks
of laziness and group-think. It's the same thing, website after website
without so much as a peep of personal reaction. The only thing that
seems to change is the position of the post on a given webpage. Again,
it is important to recognize that this is not
a new
thing
. However, the technology at hand -- when you stop and step away from
the whiz-banginess of it all -- seems poised to only exacerbate the
problem. Which is too bad.
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UVM : ProcBuilder
"is a basic web interface to creating and editing
Procmail recipes."
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While thinking about YA-Project,
I found myself silently muttering that
oft-repeated phrase :
I'm too busy writing code, I don't have time to make a fancy
website.
I didn't think I would ever hear myself say those words...
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The dict-ified dictionary.com word of the day is redound
| source : web1913 | Redound \Re*dound"\
(r?*dound"), v. i. [imp. & p. p. {Redounded}; p. pr. & vb. n.
{Redounding}.] [F. redonder, L. redundare; pref. red-, re-, re- + undare
to rise in waves or surges, fr. unda a wave. See {Undulate}, and cf.
{Redundant}.] 1. To roll back, as a wave or flood; to be sent or driven
back; to flow back, as a consequence or effect; to conduce; to
contribute; to result. The evil, soon Driven back, redounded as a flood
on those From whom it sprung. --Milton. The honor done to our religion
ultimately redounds to God, the author of it. --Rogers. both . . . will
devour great quantities of paper, there will no small use redound from
them to that manufacture. --Addison. 2. To be in excess; to remain over
and above; to be redundant; to overflow. For every dram of honey therein
found, A pound of gall doth over it redound. --Spenser. | source :
web1913 | Redound \Re*dound"\, n. 1. The coming back, as of consequence
or effect; result; return; requital. We give you welcome; not without
redound Of use and glory to yourselves ye come. --Tennyson. 2. Rebound;
reverberation. [R.] --Codrington. | source : wn | redound v 1: be
excessive in quantity 2: be deflected; "His actions redound on his
parents" 3: be added; "Everything he does redounds to himself" 4: have an
affect for good or ill: "Her efforts will redound to the general good"
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The dict-ified dictionary.com word of the day is hubris
| source : wn | hubris n : overbearing pride or
presumption
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Village Voice : Wish You Were Here
Never mind "It happened (n) years ago today",
Aaronland is proud to introduce (the
proof-of-concept version)
What was I thinking?!
. This graph charts the number of posts per category across the history
of this weblog. It should be noted that early posts were added before
there was a category system to tag them with; most have not been
updated since. Lots still to do. Enjoy.
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The dict-ified dictionary.com word of the day is hinterland
| source : web1913 | Hinterland \Hin"ter*land`\,
n. [G.; hinter behind + land land.] The land or region lying behind the
coast district. The term is used esp. with reference to the so-called
{doctrine of the hinterland}, sometimes advanced, that occupation of the
coast supports a claim to an exclusive right to occupy, from time to
time, the territory lying inland of the coast. | source : wn | hinterland
n : a remote and undeveloped area [syn: {backwoods}, {back country},
{boondocks}]
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ActiveState : XSLT Cookbook
Daniel Lundin : xmlrpc.el
"is an XML-RPC client implementation in emacs
lisp, capable of both synchronous and asynchronous method calls (using
the url package's async retrieval functionality)."
Yay! via
scripting news
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From the shooting fish in a bowl department : "It's easier for him to stay on message
when the interview lasts only a few minutes."
This, of course, is the first thing they
teach you to say about the party leader in press secretary school.
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The dict-ified dictionary.com word of the day is dotage
| source : web1913 | Dotage \Do"tage\, n. [From
{Dote}, v. i.] 1. Feebleness or imbecility of understanding or mind,
particularly in old age; the childishness of old age; senility; as, a
venerable man, now in his dotage. Capable of distinguishing between the
infancy and the dotage of Greek literature. --Macaulay. 2. Foolish
utterance; drivel. The sapless dotages of old Paris and Salamanca. --
Milton. 3. Excessive fondness; weak and foolish affection. The dotage of
the nation on presbytery. -- Bp. Burnet. | source : wn | dotage n :
mental infirmity as a consequence of old age; sometimes shown by foolish
infatuations [syn: {second childhood}, {senility}]
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Douglas Adams, 1952 - 2001
developerWorks : Zope for the Perl/CGI programmers
Zope has so much going for it that any
compare-and-contrast that spends time fretting about the path for
/usr/bin/perl
changing seems more than a bit disingenuous. Likewise, how many
Perl-weenies do you know who use CGI.pm *and* send content-headers by
hand? Once upon a time, I counted myself among those who frowned on the
CGI.pm (X)HTML
methods
, but even I used the
$cgi->header
,
$cgi->start_html
and
$cgi->end_html
widgets
. Sad really, because Zope has so many cool and fruity features and
articles like this just do it a dis-service.
via
zope
newbies
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351 -> ./bin/perl/dictwotd
No defintions found for 'bricolage'
Frankly, I'm a bit suprised by this. A quick
and dirty investigation suggests that the word is less likely to appear
in the more snoot-ish dictionaries or those whose online database was
built using a pre-1960 reference. In the meantime, I invite you enjoy the
ASL Sign of
the Day
page, the
Dictionary of
Difficult Words
and the
Wilton's Word
& Phrase Origins
site.
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Frans de Waal : "The question whether animals have culture
is a bit like whether chickens can fly. Compared
to an albatross or falcon, perhaps not, but chickens do have wings, they
do flap them, and they do get up in the trees."
And in case you needed anymore convincing
that the street finds it own use for things,
chickens
are raised on trees in Guangxi
. [thanks
jessamyn
]
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Bob DuCharme : Editing SGML Documents with Emacs
(pdf)
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Chris Gibbs on installing a Dict server
Pierre Dittgen : PalmLib
"is a set of functions that allow you to convert
text or HTML documents into 3COM PalmPilot documents. PalmLib is written
in PHP3 and can be used to provide on-the-fly document generation on Web
sites."
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Spider Robinson : Mugging the poor for their own good
"Tobacco's secret, magic gift is solace. Simple
solace. Smoking doesn't make you feel good, exactly; there's rarely any
real pleasure in it. What it does is make you feel just a little better.
Not quite as bad as a moment ago. Reliably, 100 per cent of the time, 20
to 60 times a day, you can light up a cigarette and maybe your problems
and sorrows will all remain, but at least you've scratched that one
urgent itch for the next few minutes. You've taken action, and bettered
your lot, however briefly or illusorily. ... O World Bank and World
Health Organization -- ye patricians in grey suits and United Nations
politicians in phony white medical coats -- here's a news flash for you:
The poor have the greatest need of that kind of solace. They have damn
little else. You make your living on their backs: You cannot convince me
you honestly believe that raising the cost of that pitiful solace will
brighten or lengthen their lives. You cannot convince me 42 million poor
people will quit smoking, abandon the only comfort you have left them, if
you raise the price by 10 cents a pack. I resent the implication that I
look that gullible."
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Hrvoje Niksic : htmlize.el
"To use, just switch to a buffer you want
HTML-ized, and type `M-x htmlize-buffer'. After that, you should find
yourself in an HTML buffer, which you can save. Alternatively, `M-x
htmlize-file' will find a file, font-lockify the buffer, and save the
HTML version, all before you blink. Even more alternatively, `M-x
htmlize-many-files' will prompt you for a slew of files to undergo the
same treatment. `M-x htmlize-many-files-dired' will do the same for the
files marked by dired." If I could be any computer program, I think I'd
like to be emacs.
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Does History Matter?
"in an increasingly technologically oriented
present?" A discussion between Jack Granatstein and Michael Ignatieff
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CBC : A woman from Tampa, Fla
"wrote, asking Orkin to buy her a new television
set. She broke hers when she tried to kill the roach by throwing a
motorcycle helmet at it."
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Lydia Pallas Loren : The Purpose of Copyright
"[T]he conclusion that a greater numbers of works
will be created when there are greater monopolies fails to account for
the negative implications of broad monopolies on creative expression.
When the scope of the copyright monopoly becomes too great, the creation
of new works is, itself, hampered. After all, each creator of a new work
builds in some way on the works of the past. With overly broad
monopolies, new works that build upon old are not created, creativity is
stifled, and thus the net value to society is lessened. We have, what
Judge Walker referred to a 'monopolistic stagnation.'"
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Perl Month : MacPerl and XML
via
CERT : Results of the Distributed-Systems Intruder Tools Workshop
"In November 1999, experts addressed issues
surrounding distributed-systems intruder tools. This paper is one outcome
of the DSIT Workshop. In it, workshop participants examine the use of
distributed-system intruder tools and provide information about
protecting systems from attack by the tools, detecting the use of the
tools, and responding to attacks." (pdf)
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I've been working with a Finder-less Mac
for about four hours now. I finally got around to
installing OS9 and today the Finder bailed, but left everything else
running. I can't see anything on my desktop, but I seem to be able to do
pretty much everything I want with a quasi command line using Finder-Pop,
the Script Editor, Frontier and DAVE. I'm not sure whether to be annoyed
or impressed, but it's been fun.
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Kenneth Tibbetts : Writing Friendly Code
"Call it my Millennium Resolution, I'm gonna quit
writing crappy code. I don't like writing it, I don't like seeing it on
the Web, and most of all I don't like going back and tinkering,
endlessly, with code that was too darn specific to start with." Truer
last words were never spoken more famously.
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Simson Garfinkel
"It used to be that the best way to protect
yourself from being spammed was to be cagey with your e-mail address. ...
At the Spam Roundtable, I learned that more and more spammers are
resorting to dictionary attacks, where they send e-mail to any address
that's likely to be valid. If the message gets through, that's great for
the spammer. If the message bounces, the spammer doesn't care."
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Seattle Times : Free-speech rights vs. protest ban
"If the mayor used his emergency powers to close
downtown to everybody without WTO credentials or a job downtown, it might
be legal, some experts said. If it was closed only to those who wanted to
protest, most agreed, it would not be legal." Meanwhile, accountant
Mike Ferguson
supports the protestors but is bummed that their actions have led
Starbucks to close all its Seattle branches because "I've had to look
everywhere for a cup of good coffee."
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Groove Collective, live in Hogtown
requires the evil g2 player.
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Bill Humphries : Using a Glossary to Unwind Comments from Links
"Automating WebLogs that are more than a list of
links presents a challenge when representing them in XML. One way to
solve the problem is to unentangle links from narrative in the XML
representation."
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Big Brother isn't on your TV
The Comics Journal : Superman Opens Can of Copyright Worms
"Due to the split between the trademark and the
copyright, if the Siegels decided to publish their own new Superman
works, they might have to find a way to do it without using Superman's
image, costume or logo."
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Tell me about the first time you bought gasoline.
"A growing number of CEOs have become convinced
that they cannot sell their brand of deodorant, or deli meat, or
automobile until they first explore the Jungian substrata of four-wheel
drive; unlock the discourse codes of female power sweating; or
deconstruct the sexual politics of bologna."
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Do Androids Dream of Jon Katz?
"As he was thousands of years ago, man will again
become a fairly rare animal, probably a nomadic one. Towns may still
exist in places of unusual beauty or historic importance, but most homes
will be self-contained and completely mobile, relocatable to any spot
within hours. The continents will have reverted to wilderness; a rich
variety of life forms will return." Huh? Who programmed these uber-gaia
machines? How does [he] know that all artificial life will come with the
soul of a Greenpeace activist built in? I enjoy reading Jon Katz' work,
but it would be so much better if he would just focus focus focus on the
topic at hand rather than running everything through a
better-living-with-technology / politicians-are-stupid filter.
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Wired : Real Agents fro Virtual Models
"The Elite modeling agency has created a new
division to manage the careers of computer-generated models and
actresses." There's a passage in William Gibson's
Virtual Light
where he talks about the feedback loop of cops learning how to be cops by
watching shows like "Cops". For a while now I've been kind of worried
that ( the collective ) we are living in a similar loop, learning how to
deal with our the future is now syndrome by reading William Gibson books.
They are good books, for sure, but I do *not* want to live in
the world he writes about
.
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Leah Lazariuk : Virtual Squat
"Virtual Squat is intended to be a forum for
experience and exploration about alternative living solutions." I went to
school with Leah, and had no idea she was working on the web until I saw
her name in an overview of
Quebecois web artists
.
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MacWeek on Photoshop 5.5
Call me bitter if you want, but I can't help but
feel Adobe is just trying to raise capital to finish PS6. There was never
any question that people would pay whatever it cost for multiple undos in
PS5 when it was released, so where was the impetus to add web features
when they can just call them an "upgrade" a year later? Grrrrr. via
scripting news
.
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Sutton vs. United Airlines
[U.S.] Supreme Court Decision
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wtf?
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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.
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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
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it's the software, stupid