Lisa and I spent the

Lisa and I spent the evening last night in Manhattan, staying at the W Union Square, ate dinner at Union Pacific and caught up with Alex and Jennifer at the Magic Box (which is hard enough to find in person, I'm not going to try to find it online).

It's raining. A lot. And

It's raining. A lot. And cold. And, in case I wasn't clear, it's raining.

So...I'm toying with writing my

So...I'm toying with writing my own weblog software. It's the new fad, I have tons of time, and am getting more and more frustrated with "Radio Userland" (perhaps also because this post about this patent irked me since I know the guys who wrote the patent and, well, you can blame IBM for many foul things but this isn't one of them).

Anyone out there interested in yet-another-weblog tool?

I think a site redesign

I think a site redesign is in order here as well...hmm, write a weblog tool or redesign the site, which should I do first?

Not much to report today...most

Not much to report today...most of the construction is completed on the third floor, they finish up tomorrow and start on my office on Thursday.

A final accounting

The Chicago Tribune is running a good series of articles on the fall of Andersen.

Spending the morning at Paragon

Spending the morning at Paragon Acura while the car gets oiled & greased and whatever else they do.

USAF NYC

Argh. I guess I should be glad and feel safe, but the fighter jets are driving me nuts. Every now and then one circles over Brooklyn Heights just low enough to be heard rumbling along (it's a very distinctly different sound than your typical airliner).

My office and the Lisa

My office and the Lisa office - den combo are near complete. Lot of finishing up work to do still. Unfortunately our TiVo-DirecTv combo seems hosed again, a side effect of being powered down for three weeks :-(

IBM in Trouble -- Again!

I found this article by Will Zachmann about IBM's prospects (it's from June...I just discovered it). I think he raises some valid points...personally I thought that IBM was getting (is getting) top-heavy in process and bureaucracy. Starting around 1998 it became very important to waste countless hours in process meetings. From what I can tell it has gotten only worse.

Past is prologue

I've put together a collection of photos of the World Trade Center towers from my time in Battery Park City.

I lived on Battery Place from 1997-2000. I likely would have stayed, however due to a series of unfortunate events in the Spring of 2000, I ended up putting what I owned into storage while I worked in Sydney on the Olympic Games. On returning I moved in to a short term place on the Upper West Side, and then to Brooklyn Heights.

It was a neat place to live...quiet, close to trains (and work...ibm.com was based out of 55 Broad St from December 1996 through September 2001). I did a lot of work from the balcony of my apartment (this was pre-wireless, pre-DSL days, ah the adventure of running www.ibm.com over a 33k dialup line). The balcony was not a quiet place to work...I was directly opposite the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel exit.

Today

A post I came across by Teresa Nielsen Hayden.

Yet another moon for the third rock

The BBC reports the discovery of a third moon around Earth. Third? Raise your hand if you too missed the news of the second moon.

Fundraiser for The Infinite Matrix.

Fundraiser for The Infinite Matrix. [ via the Pope Emperor ] Do you like finding new SF by great writers online? Want a tote bag hand embroidered by World Cultural Treasure Ursula K. Le Guin? Then the Infinite Matrix would like your aid. Elieen and company need to raise $60,000 to keep the site -- that features short stories by the best writers in the business, as well as Bruce Sterling's weblog, and N-time Hugo winner Dave Langford's gossip column -- operating. They've got cool things to give to donors.It's like donating to KPFA, but without Dennis Bernstein. That's probably a good thing. [More Like This WebLog]

Crashing, and Saving, the Old Lads' Front Office

Profile of Karren Brady, first woman to manage an English soccer club.

Baltic Soil Yields Evidence of a Bitter End to Napoleon's Army

This NYTimes article relates the story of an archaeological dig in Vilnius, Lithuania. What was initially thought to be a mass grave from a Stalinist purge turned out to be a mass grave of Napoleon's army.

High-Fat Diet: Count Calories and Think Twice

In this NY Times report about the Atkins diet, Jane Brody writes: The debate over high-fat versus low-fat as a means of weight control flared up again this summer, leaving many weight-conscious Americans thoroughly confused and most nutrition experts up in arms.

Though billed as a "diet revolution," the high-protein, high-fat, extremely low carbohydrate diet championed by Dr. Robert C. Atkins is hardly revolutionary. It was first promoted in the late 1800's by an English coffin maker and has reappeared periodically in various incarnations, most successfully since the early 1970's by Dr. Atkins, who promoted it with a series of books and a clinic that bear his name.

Does it help people lose weight? Of course it does. [...] Any diet will result in weight loss if it eliminates calories that previously were overconsumed. [...] But in a major report last week, the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies emphasized the importance of balance of nutrients, with carbohydrates — starches and sugars — making up 45 percent to and 65 percent of daily calories and fats, 20 percent to 35 percent. The panel of 21 scientists also urged Americans to keep as low as possible their consumption of saturated fats, the foods Dr. Atkins recommends as his diet's main components.

This is a new subsection

This is a new subsection of my site for postings about coding, hacks, toys, etc.

Bob Greene resigns from Chicago Tribune

According to the Chicago Tribune: Chicago Tribune columnist Bob Greene has resigned and will no longer appear in the pages of the newspaper. [...] Greene's resignation was sought after he acknowledged engaging in inappropriate sexual conduct some years ago with a girl in her late teens whom he met in connection with his newspaper column.

This notice is very surprising and saddening...I used to read Greene's columns often when I grew up. They were held up as a model of a newspaper column (as were Royko's).

Tonight's adventures revolve around completing

Tonight's adventures revolve around completing work for Monster Mutt and backing up Lisa's G4 (prior to converting it to EPC's Mac OS/X G4).

Learning as much as I

Learning as much as I can about RSS as I debate (with myself) writing a Java based blogger.

A Battle Over Software Licensing

This NY Times article discusses a new update to the Uniform Commercial Code (UCC) called UCITA: One of the proposed law's main effects would be to make binding contracts of the consumer licenses that come with shrink-wrapped software — despite the fact the buyer often cannot read the licensing agreement before buying and opening the package. … One of the proposed law's main effects would be to make binding contracts of the consumer licenses that come with shrink-wrapped software — despite the fact the buyer often cannot read the licensing agreement before buying and opening the package. … Insurers are opposing the legislation because they say it would make their heavily regulated businesses too vulnerable to the software companies. Under the proposed law, critics contend that software companies could disable a customer's software for perceived violations to the licensing agreement, or suspected piracy — essentially bringing business to a halt. [...]The original version of the proposed code went so far as to let software companies electronically disable a program that was being used in violation of its license agreement.

Reinstalled "Radio Userland" ...yet again.

Reinstalled "Radio Userland" ...yet again.

Congratulations to "pdf" on the

Congratulations to "pdf" on the birth of their 8 1/2 pound (3.9 kg for the Aussies) baby girl Tuesday night.

Catching up

so....the weblog software crashed on me again last week, right after doing a lot of cleanup (was trying to be "good" and restored all the default settings). The only event of any consequence was that I started an LLC called "Artific Consulting". Since the job market continues to underwhelm I'm going to try to do some consulting work and needed an entity to bill against.

The painters have returned to the house...the theory was that the construction would be completed at the end of August and that we could have Toshi come back and patch the various holes and finish painting the hallway. The construction however continues apace (most of it is complete except for minor fixes and the installation of a bench on the top floor).

Otherwise...I've set up my office, still need to get a filing cabinet. We are holding off on the final telecom work until the construction is completed (hah hah hah hah hah), but seriously...once that phone and network stuff is done then we can unhook all of the temporary network cable strewn throughout the house.

Frisket continues to be...frisky. She met her cousins Dante and Mina of Poughkeepsie over the weekend, pictures should appear any day now (ok, there's one picture, and it's blurry, the digital camera died on the second shot).

Miscellany

"pdf" wrote with the name of the new Fiorese: Isabella Claire. Happy b-day (belated) to "dss".

Yes, I'm experimenting with the

Yes, I'm experimenting with the layout (at least on the Earthlink mirror. To the left is the list of weblogs I subscribe to ...I'm not too wild about the format and will play with it, or remove it entirely. Opinions?

The construction guys were here

The construction guys were here agin yesterday, finishing up the combination bench/file cabinet in the den. The only catch is that, yet again, they didn't cover anything in the room so there's dust all over everything. Again. Argh.

Information Visualization Journal

This looks interesting: Information Visualization Journal. First issue of this new journal is available for free online.

Information Visualization (IVS) is a peer-reviewed international journal, launched in March 2002. The journal is published quarterly by Palgrave-Macmillan. The journal has an ambitious goal to serve as a dedicated forum for researchers and practitioners throughout the world on all topics related to information visualization. The journal publishes articles on fundamental research and applications of information visualization, including theories, methodologies, techniques [ia/ - news for information architects]

I still don't take Tylenol

Twenty years ago this week I was starting my sophomore year of high school. The trib's Tylenol murders linger in shadows reminded me about that period where we stopped taking any aspirin, vitamins, basically any store bought meds that you didn't absolutely have to take that hadn't been packaged up.

My past life as a dog

My past life as a dog: For 12 years, Buddhist nun Tenzin Palmo meditated alone in a tiny cave in Tibet. Now she wants to elevate the status of other Buddhist women, believed to be reincarnated as females as punishment for past mistakes.. That's hard core yoga.

So, I've been experimenting with

So, I've been experimenting with CSS on my weblogs (as well as the work I'm doing for MonsterMutt). CSS stands for Cascading Style Sheets and was supposed to be the be-all end-all in formatting for the web. Unfortunately each browser still picks and chooses what to implement. I'd thought Opera was the best of the lot (and generally recommend Opera as the best alternative to MSIE), however I've found that the new version of Netscape does quite well (that is, what you see is what you expect from the definitions at the W3 CSS site. That said, Netscape (the new one) has a funky feel to text entry (y o u c a n s e e e a c h c haracter as it is entered) and I'll stick to Opera for now.