The ACLU Pizza Movie

Via Jon Udell: ACLU Pizza memeflow, a link to the ACLU Pizza movie: Ordering Pizza in the near future.

New Kleptones: From Detroit to J.A.

New Kleptones blend: The kleptones invite you to take a journey "From Detroit To J.A.". I've been listening to it off and on for the past day, I like it but like the A Night at the Hip Hopera better.

A Random Act at 30th and Madison

So, this morning I dropped Frisket off at Monstermutt and heading into Manhattan. My goal was to pick up a computer which I'd bought way back in November and which has been in for “repairs” since early December. On the way to the computer place (Madison Ave Computers) I saw a bike messenger riding south on Madsion take a quick turn onto 30th. As he rode through the turn he dropped his phone or walkie-talkie. At the same time, the light changed and traffic rushed across the intersection. I assumed I was going to see what happens when a phone meets a Michelin but no, a delivery truck stopped before riding over the phone. As horns honked, the cyclist ran back and retrieved the phone from under the van.

Tagwebs, Flickr, and the Human Brain

Tagwebs, Flickr, and the Human Brain (by Jakob Lodwick) What if we could tag not just photos, but also other tags? We could start to build a tagweb. When a tagweb is created from your tags, that tagweb works perfectly within the realm of what makes sense to you. The reason nobody came up with this before Flickr was because we didn't have Flickr as a visible reference point. You can't just imagine something out of the blue without first thinking about related things.

The Bush Privatization Tax

Via The Decembrist: Senate Democrats Shine a Bright Light on Bush "Privatization Tax": With the new "privatization tax," the Republicans are going to give with one hand and take away with the other. Their plan will allow individuals to take money from the Social Security Trust Fund and put it into private accounts. But to recoup this money and lost interest for the Trust Fund, the Republicans will issue the new privatization tax, which will eliminate benefits by up to 70 percent or more.

The Gates’ Gate

Lisa and I went to see The Gates twice today. First with Frisket in the morning, and again with Oliver Kamm and Corey this afternoon.

It’s a neat installation and I want to go back again later this week for another, less crowded (I hope) view.

I've posted my pictures at flickr: http://flickr.com/photos/epc/tags/thegates.

No comment

Unfortunately, due to bozos running comment spam and trackback spam tools, I've had to turn off comments and trackbacks entirely here until I have the time to return fire at the losers running these things.

The Gates of Somerville

Waiting for Time Warner Cable

For several weeks we've had no service whatsoever on our HDTV tuner from Time Warner Cable of New York City. I first noticed it, well, lessee...mid-January. I called TWC and spent five minutes wading through voicemail menus only to be put on interminable hold.

TWC does not track (apparently) if you have called and hung up.

Days passed and we made do with the basic cable service. I moved the box to our kitchen nook were we watch TV at most an hour a day, so having basic cable there wasn't a huge loss. I did the standard TWC diagnostics: unplug the box, wait 30 seconds, and plug back in; to no avail.

As part of TWC's "recent update" to their voicemail, you must e-nun-ci-ate each answer because you can no longer simply press the keypad. Twice I ended up in the Spanish menu, which offers no way to switch back to English. My Spanish being lousy I'd again hang up.

Eventually I reached someone at TWC who informed me that there was a known problem with HDTV service and they were working on it. I asked Is there an ETA for restoration and was informed that there wasn't.

So, another week passed. Spending ten-fifteen minutes wading through voice prompts and then being placed on hold do not rank as the best ways of wasting my time, I have many others. But eventually the box or service or something just died entirely. We now receive "PLEASE CALL YOUR OPERATOR" on the LED screen, and "YOUR DIGITAL CABLE SERVICE HAS BEEN TERMINATED PLEASE CALL YOUR OPERATOR" on the screen when I turn on the TV. So, no basic cable even. Finally last week I called again (this would be the fourth time actually, there's a couple I'm not bothering to write about) and they (again) walked me through disconnecting the box, reconnecting the box, and waiting for the reset signal to be sent from TWCland.

Again no change. So they (finally) offered to send out a service technician on Saturday morning. We had plans so I demurred and requested an appointment next week (that is, this week as I write) and got an appointment scheduled for today, the 16^th of February 2005.

Apparently TWC is quite concerned about missed appointments, and determined to verify that someone is actually home because their automated service has now called three times to verify that someone will be home, wasting time, between noon and 4:00 PM. Once last night, and now twice in 30 minutes. I'm betting, just betting, that the service will call again because it doesn't cost TWC anything except one annoyed customer.

Update @ 1:50 EST 2/16/05

So...I hear a thud outside and look out to see a TWC van pulled up on the sidewalk in front of the house. Given the flaky nature of our doorbell, I go ahead downstairs to let the guy in. However, he goes across to 111 instead. I pick up the mail and return upstairs, figuring surely, surely TWC will send the guy across the street on completion of the 111 job.

No, again I am mistaken.

Instead I hear another thud (the van door closing) and the TWC van drives off. At this point I'm just going to cancel the service if they don't return today, another wasted four hours.

PHP Oddity

Discovered a little oddity with PHP and Firefox. In my root .htaccess file I have:

php_flag zlib.output_compression On
php_value zlib.output_compression_level 9

This causes all PHP files to be compressed, if the user agent accepts compression.

My error page is also a PHP script, mostly to trap the referring URL and include that in the page. Entirely by accident tonight I discovered that the error page was being returned as complete gibberish to Firefox. My guess is that Firefox was receiving the error page as a compressed page, but was not uncompressing it.

A little investigation with the Live HTTP Headers extension revealed that the page was being served with Transfer-encoding: chunked instead of Content-encoding: gzip. I don't know where to look to debug further, but did manage to override the behaviour on the server side by adding:

php_flag zlib.output_compression Off

to the .htaccess for the directory containing my error pages.

Wikiphilia

I was just discussing with a friend yesterday about the rise of wikis, especially in corporations. My cynical take is that, at least in the context of his company, they were little more than easier to use Lotus Notes databases. Where he works, the I/T side of the house has made it so painful and difficult to set up a Notes database, that wikis are taking over as the place where people can have informal discussions and store informal documentation. Anyway, via the del.icio.us/popular feed, I found: Wikiphilia - The New Illness

Wikiphilia: A mental illness characterized by the irrational conviction that any problem faced by a group can be rendered solvable through installation and use of a Wiki. This delusional ailment has been occurring in increasing numbers ever since it was first identified in 1995. Wikiphilia usually manifests in two distinct phases - the rapturous anticipation of the Wiki's potential in the short post-installation phase; slowly giving way to denial of the Wiki's failure to fulfill that potential in the second phase.

Flickr + Tivo

Via Jeremy Zawodny: Flickr/TiVo: a Tivo HME application which connects to Flickr for photos.

How to Sell Your Book, CD, or DVD on Amazon

How to Sell Your Book, CD, or DVD on Amazon: By having my stuff pop up among the big publisher's offerings for "similar books" or even in reader's lists and guides, my titles gain a greater chance to be seen and ordered. In a certain way, unless your stuff is available on Amazon, it ain't available. In fact for better or worse, the only way you can purchase my books is via Amazon. As a side benefit, by focusing all my sales via Amazon, tiny advances in sales are magnified by Amazon's sales rank, which garner it more attention, more links via recommendations, which increases sales in the hoped for virtuous circle. This is not a way to make money; this is a way to distribute your message.

Turbo under the knife

Friend and fellow member of the ibm.com diaspora, Todd Watson is going in for sinus / sleep apnea surgery tomorrow (24/2/05).

More on XMLHttpRequest

Some more links on XMLHttpRequest, which I wrote about here:

• At Adaptive Path, Jesse James Garrett writes Ajax: A New Approach to Web Applications. JJG defines Ajax as:
  • standards-based presentation using XHTML and CSS;
  • dynamic display and interaction using the Document Object Model;
  • data interchange and manipulation using XML and XSLT;
  • asynchronous data retrieval using XMLHttpRequest;
  • and JavaScript binding everything together.

  The article continues to break down the differences between traditional web applications and Ajax applications.

• XMLHttpRequest, Ajax, and the customer experience cautions that Ajax is a new technology and that its benefits come from the application of the technology to existing or new user interfaces. If someone's used to one way of doing things on the web (check off form items for example and then search for the Submit button) and we change the underpinnings to use XMLHttpRequest, we need to consider the impact on the user experience.
• Very Dynamic Web Interfaces is a walkthrough and demo of using XMLHttpRequest and Javascript.
• Guide to Using XMLHttpRequest (with Baby Steps) is a nice tutorial on implementing XMLHttpRequest
• XMLHttpRequest Introduction is an introduction to XMLHttpRequest and a number of tutorials, examples, and tools to implement it.
• Movable Type な Blog の全エントリを JavaScript with XMLHttpRequest でインクリメンタル検. My Japanese is poor but I think this is an entry about using Ajax/XMLHttpRequest to perform incremental searches of MovableType entries.

My own work with XMLHttpRequest was on hold for awhile but I've started playing with it again and once I finish my !*@&#^! web site redesign (much easier when you have a team of smart people to work with. Frisket is not so good with PHP or HTML).

I noticed a minor irritating problem with the Forbes.com RSS feeds, at least in their interaction with Bloglines. The feeds are RSS 2.0 format and include a <link> element. Bloglines uses the URI in the <link> element as though it were a <base> URI for all other URIs in the feed, so you end up with links like http://www.forbes.com/news/http://www.forbes.com/technology/2005/02/24/cz_dl_ibm.html?partner=rss for IBM's Growth Engine Sputters. Now, the feed doesn't validate, but the feed validator only marks the <author> tag as being in error. Digging around for RSS 2.0 examples, it appears that the <link> element simply defines the link for the channel or an item, but isn't intended to be a base element, so it appears that Bloglines is in error.

Straits-Times Interactive goes fee-only

I just started reading the Straits-Times online site several months ago but will be dropping it from my reading list after March 15th: ST website to charge for access from Mar 15 - Feb 24, 2005.

I don't mind registering for newspaper sites, I don't mind the various marketing bits of information they ask for and generally supply valid information (not necessarily correct, but close enough). I only pay for two sites now: The Wall St. Journal and the South China Morning Post, and I may end up dropping either or both (oddly, although I've been a WSJ online subscriber for years, I restarted a paper subscription a couple years ago specifically to read the ads).

My readership of sites is driven almost entirely by RSS feeds these days,a dn that was one thing which attracted me to the STI site. While this means I don't spend a lot of time wading throuhg a site looking for articles to read, it does mean I read far more articles (and thus see far more advertisements which are in theory relevant to me and/or the article I'm reading). Now, if STI's costs are out of line they can do one of three things: cease their online operations (unlikely), charge for subscriptions (what they are doing) or raise their advertising rates. I'm assuming they've done a cost-benefit analysis and decided that fewer readers will generate enough revenue to offset the drop in advertising rates, as well that their advertisers refused to pony up more money.

The WSJ online model works (I assume they at least break even, a differing opinio is here) because they have an interested, specific audience. I suspect STI's switch will not bring the benefits they're seeking; mark me as a former reader come March 15^th, 2005.

Anesthesized Turbot

Todd claims to have come through his surgery fine, however clearly he's addled since he posted his email address to his blog. I predict 10,000 variations on offers for Cialis, Viagra, and Paris Hilton's phone numbers in his inbox within the hour.

As well as the occasional Get well Todd!.

I know someone in Playboy!

Ok, perhaps that's misleading. Fellow echoid and friend Jodi Shapiro has had one of her photos of Chris Moneymaker published on playboy.com in playboy.comversation: Chris Moneymaker.

Backstory:

A couple years' back, Jodi flew herself out to Las Vegas and took photos at one of the poker tournaments. As a result of that work she sold one of her photos of one of the players to be used on a poker chip. That in turn led to a gig at the Atlantis resort in January photographing players in a PokerStars.com tournament, which is where she took the shot shown on playboy.com.

No, I don't plan to make x-rated links nor poker links a regular item here, that's what comment and trackback spam is for.

Taxonomies and Tags

Taxonomies and Tags: When it comes to innovation on the Internet, metadata is becoming the new content.

Tags have become the meme of the year, at least so far, writing another chapter in the history of classification systems. Tagging is an old idea, but it seems to be taking off now because some applications provide end-users with immediate benefits. For example, at del.icio.us, users enter bookmarks (URLs) they want to remember, adding a word or two – tags – so they can sort them later. Del.icio.us users can see not only everyone else’s bookmarks, but also all the bookmarks tagged with a particular word. For example, if you care about Emily Dickinson, you can see all the Web pages del.icio.us users have tagged with “Dickinson” or “Emily Dickinson,” a great tool for researchers.

Laurie Anderson @ BAM

We caught Laurie Anderson tonight at BAM. Her show The End of the Moon is based on her two year stint as the first (and apparently last) Artist in Residence at NASA. I liked it, though listening to a monologue for close to two hours can be a bit of a challenge for me (really, honestly I only close my eyes, I was truly awake for the first half hour. Honest.).

Now, thanks to Misha, I am watching Lisa play Katamari Damacy, which I honestly can't describe but this timely writeup at timely writeup at kottke.org does some justice to the game. I mean, basically you roll a ball around the screen trying to make it bigger by picking up items. It's like something I would have played on an Apple // when I was a kid, but with better graphics and an insane Japanese pop music soundtrack. All I can say is this: it's lasting longer in the house than The SIMS did.

Needed: Speaker mounts for Acoustic Research "The Edge" Speakers

When we moved into the house in 2002 we had a little over a week to prepare for Seder. In the hustle to prepare I managed to break the speaker mount for one of two speakers mounted in the dining room. Now, three years later, I'd like to either fix it or remove the speakers entirely.

So, I started hunting for Acoustic Research The Edge speakers. They're all over the place, but generally in outlets or last chance sales.

Hmmm...

Can't find an Acoustic Research home page.

Finally after massaging the search terms I was using I discovered Recoton apparently bought Acoustic Research. Check the Recoton homepage. Not very helpful.

Now, the three of you might be wondering why I don't just get generic speaker brackets. However, after digging around and comparing the back of the existing speakers with what I've found to be standard brackets, I realized that they're not going to work, not with these speakers.

I think, just maybe, I'll junk the speakers (well, remove from the wall and place somewhere not requiring a pretty mount).

But (and, this is for Todd to think about while he recovers), it reminded me of the problem inherent with many corporate web sites: they're run by the sales or marketing arm and are geared almost entirely to attracting new customers. Old customers? Could care less about them. Customers of a subsidiary you've assimilated? Could care even less.

Thing is, these are nice speakers. If I had even a remote clue about how to service them I'd consider buying more. But the only information you can find online is how to buy the closeout versions of the speakers (which I guess is a strong hint that they're not longer manufactured).