posts brought to you by the category
“public spaces”
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.
Hockey and Sex on the Streets of Calgary
Calgary police have prepared for recent home games by towing all cars parked on 17th Avenue after 4 PM. So apparently the main concern is not a city-wide wardrobe malfunction, but making sure the road is clear for fans to harmlessly drive up and down, hanging (their naked chests?) out of their cars.
In Montréal, some of the pan-handlers double as doormen at the Instabroke machines.
Wooster Collective : A Celebration of Street Art
Heather Champ : Market Street Mao
Easy Hotspot
Easy Hotspot is a bootable linux distribution that boots and runs completely from cd. It comes preconfigured to act as a wireless hotspot using the excellent nocat wireless gateway software. Configuration of a hotspot is done though a web interface.
After receiving configuration data for a hotspot our server will create a custom iso file with the specified configuration data. Creating a Hotspot is then as simple as burning the iso to cd and slapping the cd in a box with the proper hardware. If you choose to use the authorization services of your local public wireless internet group you can contribute a hotspot that can be used by anyone, thereby helping to provide Free Public Wireless Internet for all.
Noel Jackson : "PhotoPal is going to be an image organizer featuring Textism style photos."
PhoneBlogger
"allows you to post to a weblog by phone. [It] is written in VoiceXML, Python, and JavaScript."
Stop me, before I read the Op-Ed pages again.
Jean-Michel Hiver : TripleStore.pm
"is a Perl interface for a triple store. Currently a quite naive MySQL implementation is provided. Alternative SQL implementations can be developed by subclassing TripleStore::Driver..."
Me : Log::Dispatch::Jabber.pm 0.1
Antoine Quint : Simple Text Wrapping [in SVG]
The dictified dictionary.com word of the day is : acumen
Acumen \A*cu"men\, n. [L. acumen, fr. acuere to sharpen. Cf.
{Acute}.]
Quickness of perception or discernment; penetration of mind;
the faculty of nice discrimination. --Selden.
Syn: Sharpness; sagacity; keenness; shrewdness; acuteness.
web1913
acumen
n 1: a tapering point
2: shrewdness shown by keen insight [syn: {insightfulness}]
wn
Me : XML::Filter::XML_Directory_2RSS.pm 0.9.02
DJ Murad : "[E]veryone, French and English, has told me the same anecdote.
They would be young, watching Bleu Nuit, which is in French, and they would have the remote control on the last channel so that when their parents would come in, they would quickly flash to Saturday Night Live, which is in English. Language doesn’t matter with porn and with comedy ... There are probably very few phrases in English or French—and this is also so Montreal—that are as widely recognized in this city as
Bleu Nuit."
From the "I didn't need to picture that" department : We were ripping on Sheilagh Rogers again
Simson Garfinkel : "One of the most surprising things we learned from launching our Internet startup
was that providing wireless Internet service is really cheap. What ended up bankrupting the company were all the ancillary services we had to develop—credit card billing, technical support, the corporate Web site and the various security measures we had to put in place to prevent unauthorized use of the network by nonsubscribers. Organizations that aren’t trying to make money providing wireless Internet service can do away with all of these measures and offer the service for free.
"
The Perl Review 0.0
The nice people at ActiveState have added a PHP Cookbook
Mark Howell : Spoofing link clicks with JavaScript events.
The random pseudodictionary.com word of the day is : deceivious
Both deceitful and devious.
ex. I didn't trust him after seeing his deceivious smile.
The dict-ified dictionary.com word of the day is excrescence
| source : web1913 |
Excrescence \Ex*cres"cence\n. [F. excrescence, excroissanse, L.
excrescentia excrescences, neut. pl. of p. pr. of excrescere.
See {Excrescent}.]
An excrescent appendage, as, a wart or tumor; anything
growing out unnaturally from anything else; a preternatural
or morbid development; hence, a troublesome superfluity; an
incumbrance; as, an excrescence on the body, or on a plant.
``Excrescences of joy.'' --Jer. Taylor.
The excrescences of the Spanish monarchy. --Addison.
| source : wn |
excrescence
n 1: something that protrudes [syn: {bulge}, {bump}, {hump}, {gibbosity},
{gibbousness}, {jut}, {prominence}, {protuberance}, {protrusion},
{extrusion}]
2: an abnormal outgrowth or enlargement of some part of the
body
While thinking about YA-Project,
Dubya::PaulCellucci is floating the idea of Canada and U.S. merging immigration policies
in order to prevent terrorists from entering U.S.
Steve Gibson : Denial of Service with Windows XP
The dict-ified dictionary.com word of the day is slaver
| source : web1913 |
Slabber \Slab"ber\, v. i. [imp. & p. p. {Slabbered}; p. pr. &
vb. n. {Slabbering}.] [OE. slaberen; akin to LG. & D.
slabbern, G. schlabbern, LG. & D. slabben, G. schlabben,
Icel. slafra. Cf. {Slaver}, {Slobber}, {Slubber}.]
To let saliva or some liquid fall from the mouth carelessly,
like a child or an idiot; to drivel; to drool. [Written also
{slaver}, and {slobber}.]
| source : web1913 |
Slaver \Slav"er\, n.
Saliva driveling from the mouth.
Of all mad creatures, if the learned are right, It is
the slaver kills, and not the bite. --Pope.
| source : web1913 |
Slaver \Slav"er\, n.
1. A vessel engaged in the slave trade; a slave ship.
2. A person engaged in the purchase and sale of slaves; a
slave merchant, or slave trader.
The slaver's hand was on the latch, He seemed in
haste to go. --Longfellow.
| source : web1913 |
Slaver \Slav"er\, v. i. [imp. & p. p. {Slavered}; p. pr. & vb.
n. {Slavering}.] [Cf. Icel. slafra. See {Slabber}.]
1. To suffer spittle, etc., to run from the mouth.
2. To be besmeared with saliva. --Shak.
| source : web1913 |
Slaver \Slav"er\, v. t.
To smear with saliva issuing from the mouth; to defile with
drivel; to slabber.
| source : wn |
slaver
n 1: a person engaged in slave trade [syn: {slave dealer}, {slave
trader}]
2: someone who owns slaves [syn: {slaveholder}]
v : let saliva drivel from the mouth; "The baby drooled" [syn: {drivel},
{drool}, {slabber}, {slobber}, {dribble}]
Dan Connolly : Palmagent
"is (intended to be) a Semantic Web Service, providing paper-trail style synchronization."
The dict-ified dictionary.com word of the day is solicitous
| source : web1913 |
Solicitous \So*lic"it*ous\, a.[L. sollicitus, solicitus. See
{Solicit}, v. t.]
Disposed to solicit; eager to obtain something desirable, or
to avoid anything evil; concerned; anxious; careful.
``Solicitous of my reputation.'' --Dryden. ``He was
solicitous for his advice.'' --Calerendon.
Enjoy the present, whatsoever it be, and be not
solicitous about the future. --Jer. Taylor.
The colonel had been intent upon other things, and not
enough solicitous to finish the fortifications.
--Clarendon.
-- {So*lic"it*ous*ly}, adv. -- {So*lic"it*ous*ness}, n.
| source : wn |
solicitous
adj 1: full of anxiety and concern; "solicitous parents";
"solicitous about the future"
2: showing hovering attentiveness; "solicitous about about her
health"; "made solicitous inquiries about our family"
I wonder how difficult it would be to write an interactive weblog client
brian d. foy : Profiling in Perl
Michael A. Fischer : The Worthless Word for the Day
"This week: words you likely won't find in your desk dictionary (no matter how big)"
Lawrence Lessig : Free Code, Free Culture
There are dots for everyone.
Russell Standish : ange-ftp-over-ssh
"GNU emacs has a wonderful remote file editing facility called
Ange ftp. However, because it uses ftp as its file transport agent,
passwords are transmitted as plain text which can be snooped by
the unscrupulous ``bad guys'' out there in cyberspace. This
package is a ``drop in replacement'' for the ftp client that instead
redirects the file transfers over ssh, which allows for connections
without the need for plain text passwords to be transmitted."
The Forest of Rhetoric
"is intended to help beginners, as well as experts, make sense of rhetoric, both on the small scale (definitions and examples of specific terms) and on the large scale (the purposes of rhetoric, the patterns into which it has fallen historically as it has been taught and practiced for 2000+ years)."
mmmmm...topic maps
Simson Garfinkel : "The real privacy issue,
I realized, has less to do with the selling of the information, and more to do with what is done with the information after it is sold." This is true but, as a practical matter, controlling what is done with that information may prove so burdensome and ineffective that we get right back to the issue of whether or not we allow it to be sold in the first place. see also
James M. Rosenbaum : Should there be a statute of limitations on being a jerk?
Dan Brickley : XHTML-to-RSS Extractor service [trial-release]
"Specifically, we provide a Web form that you can use to turn certain kinds of HTML document into the proposed RSS 1.0 channel / syndication format. This approach is designed to free content authors from the technical detail of evolving formats such as RSS, WAP/WML, RDF etc. Instead of learning dozens of new acronyms, content creators can produce XHTML documents, and have software tools do the rest."
CBC : Guggenheim may open on Las Vegas strip
Gary Dahl
"The heather-encrusted headlands, veiled in fog as thick as smoke in a crowded pub, hunched precariously over the moors, their rocky elbows slipping off land's end, their bulbous, craggy noses thrust into the thick foam of the North Sea like bearded old men falling asleep in their pints."
Spider Robinson on the Microsoft/Slashdot dust-up
Not much new here; it's just fun read authors when they go hyperbolic. "No, really! If you use BillCo's operating system -- let's call it OpenWindow -- and run LookOut!, your computer's no longer merely user-friendly: It's now a user-slut; one too dumb to carry condoms, or even take names."
Best of Montreal : Best Local Website(s)
All I can say is : this is fucking depressing. It's not quite as bad as a past
Best of Toronto survey where (apparently) the best place to pick up straight single men was the local
Canadian Tire, but it's pretty close. Visit at your own risk.
The Hundertwasserhaus Webcam
The Matrix IQ
"The graphs represent average Internet performance. The dark, bold line represents the Internet as a whole. The lighter ones represent subsets of the Internet - the WWW, and the DNS TLD servers." Note the sharp rise in
packet loss and the corresponding dip in overall
reachability. Jim the Paranoiac
thinks he can explain them.
This isn't just a tie-clip, buddy
David Chess : Visual Mantras, take one
mmmmm ... sooooothing shapes. I want one that's full screen and refreshes by itself.
Washington Post : OSHA Covers At-home Workers
"If an employee is allowing it to happen, it is covered." Does it cover workers outside of the States?
Stéphane Baillargeon : Le baroque en 3D
"Dans le fond, le baroque, c'est l'émergence de la ville moderne, avec l'hôpital, l'orphelinat, la caserne, le palais du gouvernement, résume Guy Cogeval. Le baroque, c'est l'intrusion du mouvement dans la ville..."
Groove Collective, live in Hogtown
requires the evil g2 player.
The Internet for Assholes : Voting Fraud for Assholes
"As the meaningless dollops of demagoguery fall time and time again to whichever autocratic asshole wields the best vote-busting program, the obvious question arises as to why corporations still cling to this stupid feature. Do they blunder on despite the fact that online polls have been proven worthless, or because of it? Some suspect corporate Webmasters are secretly grateful for the notoriety of their unreliable results. News stories gloating about the meaninglessness of their surveys still generate traffic."
I had no idea that
Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals
"In short, [the club] presented evidence that there is a class of people with serious medical conditions for whom the use of cannabis is necessary in order to treat or alleviate those conditions or their symptoms; who will suffer serious harm if they are denied cannabis; and for whom there is no legal alternative to cannabis for the effective treatment of their medical conditions because they have tried other alternatives and have found that they are ineffective, or that they result in intolerable side effects."
Bored?
Advanced Book Exchange
27 countries, 51 independent book stores, 14 million titles.
Jeffrey Zeldman : Looking into the Web Crystal
"There are two ways forward. (1.) We can begin building alternative networks of worthwhile content, repositioning ourselves as authors, rather than service providers. (2.) We can hire on as consultants and directors to help the Money People avoid mediocrity. Whichever direction we choose - and many of us will do both - charting a survival strategy must be our first order of business, lest the Web's future look like television's past."
Jeff Howe : Artistic License, Creating a Space for Net-art
"[He] likens the obstacles net-art faces in finding a museum audience to those faced by artists exploring issues of cultural diversity 20 years ago. 'It's outside [some curators'] value structure, so they don't have the impetus to take it seriously. I don't know what it's going to take for [Net-based artists] to overcome the barriers we face.' "
The Rant-Line
at the Montreal Mirror makes the threads at slashdot look a scholar's debate.
As a rule I try to be sympathetic although it's a feeling that's tempered by memories of my own less than sincere endeavours bumming for change as a teenager. But the whole opening the bank door for me has always seemed wrong on more levels than I am usually comfortable thinking about.