March 2008 Archives

I listened to the new "Counting Crows" album almost all day Friday and Saturday. It's a good solid album. I was looking for more from them. This album didn't really break any new ground. I was hoping for a bigger reinvigoration of their sound. I didn't get it, but there are still some great songs on the album. I think I like them because of the upbeat melancholia they manage to emit; it's a good approximation for my normal mood.

"I left a lot of ghosts in San Francisco
and now you wanna say you see through me
but what you wanna see ain't your memories of me"
-- Los Angeles, Counting Crows

Fitna the movie is out on YouTube now. I watched it. As a movie it wasn't that great. it cherry picks some hateful speech and juxtaposes it with violent images. I'm not sure it deserves the press it is getting. I suppose the editing is ok and it's always nice to see ideas "hoisted by their own petard."

The reaction it is getting in certain parts of the world is the predictable condemnation, followed by governments wringing their hands wishing their citizens wouldn't get the thin-skinned folks hopped up again. I've seen this news cycle before, I'm sure I'll see it again.

Kudos to google/youtube for keeping the video up all weekend. I'm sure it's been up on the servers long enough for them to have received numerous threats.

Since I tried out the new on-line photoshop offering I thought I would check out what people say about the alternatives.

• Biased Comparision from soon to launch site a.viary.com
• Older matrix style review

I'm still in the process of checking them out. I've always been fond of picnik because they make it so easy to work with flickr. Maybe some of the upstarts will be better, I'l let you know.

Wow, there are so many worlds I know so little about. The science fiction folk singing world was hitherto fore unknown to me.

I never thought I would see the photoshop franchise on the web. Check out Photoshop Express. Includes 2 gigs of space.

Yet-Another-Google-Api was announced. This one is an ajax api for language detection and translation.

Check out this collection of last supper parodies at culturepopped.blogspot.com. I especially like the Soprano's and the Simpson's version.

Arthur C. Clarke departed this world at the age of 90.

I love his quote about "real globalization" at about 6:00 minutes into this interview. He speaks convincingly of our need to leave our tribal divisions behind. I couldn't agree more.

I have been waiting for a "new Counting Crows" album for a long time. Just a few more days to wait.

According to wikipedia there is a system for classifying human feces called "The Bristol Stoll Scale". I think this need to be integrated with my latest tech software gadget, Bullfighter than anti-bull, anto jargon fighter.

Masquerading as an indie-hipster I saw the band "Last Days of April" last night.

I think it's time for me to switch back to tea -- I've been drinking far too much coffee in the last six months.

When I was in Darjeeling last month I ended up in a tea shop called Nathmulls. The staff at Nathmulls did a really fantastic job at helping me pick some teas that were really superb.

I usually have trouble when I buy tea because there are simply too many choices. My favorite local tea shop in Minnesota is great about letting you smell tea, but it's very hard to correlate a smell and the taste of a tea. Nathmulls helpful staff helped me narrow down my choices to a few basic varieties and then let me try a range of teas for each variety. For instance, I knew wanted a white tea. They made four or five cups of white tea and let me sample them. The samples were expertly made, hot and steeped for exactly the right amount of time. I still had difficulty picking my favorite, since each batch had at least two great teas in it. In the end I bought a lot more tea than I expected. It doesn't matter how you measure it -- dollars, rupees, grams or ounces -- it was more than I expected. When I got back to my room I actually wondered if it was going to fit in my backpack for the journey home.

Since I've gotten home, I have still been drinking mostly coffee even though I bought all this amazing tea. It's not because I love coffee more or because I need the heavier stimulant dose of coffee. I've been drinking coffee for the immediate gratification that I can get by walking down the hallway and pressing a button. With tea, I walk down the hallway, press a button and then wait for the tea to steep.

The waiting is the real problem.

Lately I imagine I'm too busy to wait for tea. I'm too busy to watch the clock and make sure I steep the tea the correct amount of time. I'm too busy to sit and smell the tea as it develops that sweet scent.

This is why I need to switch back to tea. Waiting is an important discipline. Taking a minute or two to engage in a brief ritual, like brewing tea, is the kind of mental practice that actually makes you capable of accomplishing more. It's tempting to think that staying busy is the best way to accomplish more, but real accomplishment may require avoiding the urgent in favor of the important. Making time for your ideas to brew and ferment can only lead to more clarity and purpose.

So is it coffee, tea or me? I think the answer is switching to tea means a better me.

The U.S. Congress would never consider a proposal to add a “7 day love vacation” where everyone is encouraged to “devote themselves to each other “both at an erotic and emotional level”“. A member of the Finnish parliament, Tommy Tabermann, proposed this recently to the Eduskunta. The proposal was debated and sent to committee for study.

Being married to a Finn I can say I find this worthy of study as well.

This looks like a pretty neat idea. Not only can I create a comic strip sans talent, I can share it, let people comment, let them edit it - this seems like fun to me. This seems like a lot more fun than "super-poking" someone or sending them a virtual banana for a real dollar.

If you don't recognize this man you probably have not been watching enough TV lately. This is Nick Arrojo, who is famous due to his role as supporting cast on Jeannie's favorite TV show "What Not to Wear". If you aren't familiar with this show it is a one of those reality make over shows. Basically a victim participates in the show has all their clothes thrown out and they get to spend $5,000 on a new wardrobe. The show features everything you might expect including the stars, Stacy & Clinton, who mock the victim's previous clothing choices and provide guidance for spending the $5,000.

Nick visited the Mall of America recently as part of a store opening event. Jeannie stood in line for an autograph as well as a mini hair consultation.

I finally got around to switching my timbu.org email to be managed by google apps. It’s a much nicer interface than the cPanel front end I use now. Having google manage my email server doesn’t really give me anything new, rather it means that I stop worrying about the size of email on my web server - which has been a problem in the past. At the moment, they don’t really advertise themselves like an ISP, but you could easily cobble together something exactly like a hosting account by putting all their services together.

I still love my ISP and wouldn’t be willing to switch … yet.

Ethen Zuckerman posted some great notes on his talk, "The Cute Cat Theory Talk" at Etech. On the days when I let my cynicism subscription lapse I like the idea that unfettered access to publications and publishing tools will really turn this world around for the better.

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I never played D&D growing up, but probably should have. One of the inventors, Gary Gygax passed away recently. This cartoon from xkcd.com seemed a fitting memorial.

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I've been looking through the papers posted by James Hamilton at Microsoft Research. Lot's of really good data especially as it relates to the systems they have to to support, like Microsoft Live.

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Speaking of Live, I've been using Live Writer quite a bit lately. It's really quite good, although for reasons I can't quite figure out the backspace is really slow. While I'm super happy about google doc's and the simplicity of use, Live Writer is a pretty good blogging client.

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Speaking of google ... Google Calendar sync is now available. It sort of worked for me, although recurring meetings didn't get synced. Now if my wife's appointment book automatically appeared in my calendar I would know what is going on from day-to-day.

I had been in Darjeeling for days and hadn't seen any sign of the mountains surrounding the village. The next morning I was going to Tiger Hill to see the sunrise. I had been told I had a 20% chance of seeing Kanchenjunga, the third highest peak in the world from the vantage point on the hill. I had to leave the hotel around 5:00 so I slept fitfully. When I finally fell asleep the wild dogs started having a territorial dispute nearby. The dogs were so loud, it may have well been in my bathroom. I drifted back off to sleep, afraid I would miss my alarm. At 4:30 the absurdly loud phone in the hotel started ringing. No one answered it. It would stop for a minute or two and then start again. There was no going back to sleep at this point. I padded upstairs and downstairs to see if I could find the staff. There was no one to be found, at least not without barging in to their private living quarters. I went back to my room and got ready for my excursion ignoring both the phone and the banging on the front door. By the time I was ready to go the night man at the hotel was shuffling around. He led me out through an auxiliary door that led through an alley barely big enough for me to walk through. My taxi driver, the source of the phone calls and insistent banging was ready to go.

We made our way to Tiger Hill. It was still pitch black when we arrived. He asked me which ticket I wanted. There was both "Deluxe" and "Super-Deluxe" to choose from as well as the no frill just park your car ticket. "Super-Deluxe" was the third story view of the sunrise, which meant you were higher than other guests and you had comfortable couches and heaters. At approximately $2 it seemed like a bargain to me. I climbed the icy stairs to "Super-Deluxe". It was disconcerting. I had never been in a room with 20+ saffron couches. It reminded me of a modern art exhibit. The room was cold, but it was out of the wind and there was an array of electric heaters on one end. I found a seat and waited for other to arrive. Other tourists started to shuffle in and each of them seems to bring a backpack full of complaints with them. "Why was it so cold." "The windows aren't optically pure enough." "The couches are run down." After a few minutes of chatting with a couple and noticing someone had taken my couch for their own, I decided I was in the wrong place. If I went to the parking lot level the view was exactly the same and I probably wouldn't have to listen to people complain.

I went to the parking lot and I didn't regret the choice. The people were friendlier, the view was the same and I didn't have to listen to people complain about the heaters.

In life as well as on Tiger Hill, I have learned more about truth, beauty, sacrifice and hospitality from the people in the "parking lot" than I have from the people in "Super-Deluxe."

I came to the conclusion that my people are generally not in "Super Deluxe" -- although thankfully some of us get to visit it once in a while.

Three years later you run into the same movie on an unexpected night and you wonder will it be the same — will you love it as much as the first time. The movie, “Lost in Translation” still works for me. I’m not sure I’ll feel the same way when I see Juno three years from now.

I installed the latest version of Movable Type which has now gone open source. I think it is working.

Whenever I sail I've wanted take a photograph that captures the sense of being moved by the wind and pitched by the waves. None of my pictures have ever come close. If you want to see big waves check out the Coast Guard Motor Lifeboat vs. big wave photo gallery. I found that page from Dark Roasted Blend, who also featured some youtube wave videos.

I've had some time to think about sailing in gale force winds last year. In hindsight it probably wasn't that smart to be out there in the rough stuff, but we had a plan if things went sour. That is as long as "sour" didn't include turning the boat upside down. I think I'll restrict sailing to lower wind speeds, at least when operating a built for comfort cruising boat.

I was doing some overdue blog house-keeping today and headed over to the google code page to see what new widgets were available. It saw a link to a chart api. It's pretty good stuff. You can make all the usual charts like pie, bar,scatter and line charts plus venn diagrams.

Here is an example. This image you see below is being generated on the fly, look at the source for yourself if you don't believe me. You can even plug it into your browser and start playing with the parameters for yourself if you are skeptical.

The "code" for that little diagram is amazingly simple.

<img src="http://chart.apis.google.com/chart?chs=400x300&chd=s:Chart Preferences&chdl=People Who Blog|People who Like Charts|People who read my blog&chf=efefef&cht=v&chd=t:1000,250,10,50,7,6,10" />

It might look like goobledy-gook to you, but if you head over to the documentation it's pretty simple.