thu 03 may 01
blogger's down, not much action elsewhere. i'll call it a night.
the wind's calmed a bit now. more tomorrow, unfortunately. it's blown semi-trucks over on the interstate ... and churned up *dust storms* in downtown albuquerque.
zeldman looks at 'circle jerks' ...
we're having a little upper and lower case war here at dangerousmeta tonight, folks. "my pants have spoken ..."
nytimes: review of "the mummy returns." obviously, a saturday night macho 'blow the evening' flick ...
cnn: our atmosphere is losing the ability to cleanse itself.
sonique mantis tech demo is up.
antioffline doesn't like blogger.
gumbel's a lightweight. i wanna know; was jerri intentionally lying about the beef jerky and kel?
and it's tina. big parties in volunteer country tonight. knoxville's excited, i'm sure.
this is a fun fish site. nice design, too ...
and, i've put 'text-transform: lowercase;' into the css for the discussion group, so certain miscreants can't use capital letters ... [grin] ...
got some fun pix of a friend with long hair. gotta do some alterations in photoshop. even better, setup a good background. lotsa room for experimentation with this little digital beastie here ... [btw, it counts total shots. i'm up to 500 already, after just a coupla weeks.]
getting ready for 'survivor'. got the teton toasters on, the pint of guinness, and wait ... some idiot is playing with the flash and shutter speeds on the camera ...
the register: boffins make real-life tractor beam. now yer talkin' ...
feel like i'm beating a dead horse. kuro5hin has a thread on the abm.
php-nuke 5.0 beta 4.
i am not eager to witness the 'fallout' from this 'risky missile scheme.' bad pun, bad pun ... enough. on to other things.
the guardian.uk looked closer at cheney's energy claims yesterday. "... compulsory fuel efficiency measures for cars would save almost three times as much energy a day as could be obtained from drilling for oil in alaska." [my emphasis.]
the hidden costs of our nuclear arsenal.
hmmm. interesting. we've apparently been trying to 'hit a bullet with a bullet' since the nike hercules missile in 1958. all those millions of taxpayer dollars, forty-three years, and how successful have we been?
nuclear weapons faq.
urgently needed steps to control warheads and fissile materials. a long read, but gives good perspective. our huge stockpiles are an unbelievable risk.
nytimes op-ed: safire gets me crazy. personally, i fear the space nuclear-nonproliferation agreement [ptbt] is next on the chopping block ...
nytimes letters to the editor, re: missile shield. "... a 'latter-day maginot line'." [sitzkrieg!] reassuring to see my perceptions of yesterday echoed by others.
cnn: the united states has been ousted from the united nations human rights commission. a signal of disapproval of current policies?
the spectator.uk: cliche ridden language of the modern business world. 'empathic disengagement' ... yag.
utne reader: the coming age of ecological medicine. to stay healthy, we have to keep our environment in good shape. glad i'm not back east; malathion is nasty stuff. then again, so is west nile virus.
macnn: forkswitcher allows os x fonts to be used under older os 9.
xml c library for gnome.
here's a must-have: pop-up stopper. freeware, windows. haven't tried it yet; download and use with caution.
it's funny. since moving here three years ago, i haven't seen hide nor hair of howard stern or rush limbaugh. no billboards, no diatribes on the radio. i know rush is on a.m. somewhere, and howard is probably on some f.m. station from albuquerque, but for the most part, they've completely dropped off my radar. why am i mentioning this? cnn's website has rush's ugly mug
on the front page as a guest on 'larry king live'. made me realize how wonderful life is, out here in the southwest ... 'shock radio' is mostly absent.
forbes: cheney is misleading; there is no 'energy crisis'. why? because of conservation. interesting that a big-business mag would print this.
nytimes: unemployment is up, particularly in new york state.
reuters: i see india likes the missile defense shield idea.
a moment of silence, please, for big fat fish. i've placed a post-it in the appropriate place to show my support and sympathy.
yes, hal, we've got those winds too. higher gusts, however. i think the aspens may survive. had to prop them and tie them last night, but one's loose at the roots. may lose it. the problem with this wind, is that it pushes like a bully in the schoolyard. it gusts once, then at the end of that gust, it pushes even harder ... then, when you think it won't dare go any harder than that, that it won't cross the line and push *really* hard, it does. lawn chairs go flying. hats are *gone*. garbage cans roll around the neighborhood. give up on driving straight. it lights up anger in me. i can't help it. it just pushes that button. the wind is a living thing here today. it's a good thing those psychologists at the high school aren't reading this. man gets mad about his trees, shouts at wind ...
santa fe new mexican: don't know if this ever hit the national papers. some kids put dry ice in soda bottles, filled 'em with water, sealed them, and put them in trash cans around santa fe high school on the anniversary of columbine. of course, they popped. but the school is freaked out, and has the kids in jail. they're being tested psychologically to see if they 'pose a threat'. the d.a. wants to sentence them
as adults, for a possible 20 years in prison. personally, i'm impressed that they listened in chemistry class. but it makes me curious ... when does a practical joke cross the line and become a crime?
reuters: china calls bush 'weak.' this is only the beginning, i fear.
panicmongers. cnn reports 'summer breaks dangerous for children.' sheesh. i got glorious cuts and scrapes and bruises all summer, and loved every minute of it. kids are anarchists; it builds character.
guardian.uk: pavarotti faces tax evasion charges. o sole mio!
the times.uk: suddenly, everyone's nervous about art.
nytimes: if you're an artist, london is the place to be.
newsforge: zope training in washington d.c.
security portal: securing cgi.
linux focus: build a linux-controlled walking robot.
the register: panda software linked to the church of scientology.
the register: palm sales fell 20% in april. pda's are not showing up in meetings as frequently anymore; my take is that the 'exclusiveness' has worn off. everyone has one. maybe palm needs to focus on the top of the market, not the bottom. slashdot is discussing other issues with pdas. i never could work the newton into my work day, hard as
i tried. it could never keep up so i could take notes during a meeting ...
news.com: dell is recalling 284,000 batteries from the inspiron 5000 series, for overheating. so far, 'none have caught fire.' but it's a concern.
the nytimes picks up on the microsoft-against-open-source story that eric raymond posted yesterday (see yesterday's links). open-source needs to come back with a coordinated, strong response ... but ... i think any individual will buy into the system that runs the fastest, is the most secure, and is simplest to administrate. the 'free' nature of the software is far piece down the curve, imho. another idea: in an article i read
yesterday, it was mentioned that most people use only 20 percent of microsoft office's features. the rest are never even explored. this points up a great problem for microsoft; open source programs only have to implement that core 20 percent, with a bit of spit and polish, to compete effectively. microsoft's the animal backed in the corner, lashing out.
kuro5hin: what qualifies as art? a discussion that gets kicked around rather often. many things may be 'art', but are they worthy of critical acclaim? many times, the answer is no. very few creations soar these days ...
geeknews: lavasoft has a little item to remove spyware from your computer.
ever hear of ngoid? 'next generation open internet directory news network'? they have an add-on for phpnuke.
i promise, less links today.
caught me. well, i'm getting there.