links for 2008-03-31
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Doc points how some businesses need to stop treating Internet access like having to pay to go to the restroom. An argument against him would be bolstered if we actually got what we paid for when traveling.
Two immature little kids
"Engadget & Gizmodo are just two immature little kids attempting to reap the benefits of a journalistic profession neither truly understands." I couldn't agree more. And yet I still subscribe to their RSS feeds...
links for 2008-03-25
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What makes this so funny is this past Saturday night, at our minichurch meeting, I did indeed use my iPhone to pull up information from Wikipedia and IMDB.
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The movie version of Snake-Eyes looks pretty...bad-ass. Perhaps the movie won't be that bad. Then again, Snake-Eyes was always the best thing about the comic, so as long as he's the same, I likely won't care about the rest.
I'm starting to think they had crystal balls
Once again, one of the Founding Fathers sounds rather prescient:
"[D]emocracy will soon degenerate into an anarchy, such an anarchy that every man will do what is right in his own eyes and no man's life or property or reputation or liberty will be secure, and every one of these will soon mould itself into a system of subordination of all the moral virtues and intellectual abilities, all the powers of wealth, beauty, wit and science, to the wanton pleasures, the capricious will, and the execrable cruelty of one or a very few." -- John Adams (An Essay on Man's Lust for Power, 29 August 1763)
links for 2008-03-18
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"Three 48-page memo books. 3-1/2" x 5-1/2" with rugged three-staple saddle-stitch binding. Perfect 1-pica graphed paper." One of these has ridden in my back pocket for months, and has held up very well, better than the Moleskine Cahier I used to use.
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Say what you will about Charlie Rose, but you have to admire his sacrificing his face to keep his newly-purchased MacBook Air from sustaining damage.
links for 2008-03-17
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"Have you ever received a link from a friend, but weren't sure why? The Awesome Highlighter allows you to highlight text in a webpage so that when you send a link you can be certain the recipient will know why."
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Controlled from the wrist, this jacket has LEDs on the back to signal which way you're turning.
links for 2008-03-15
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Think about protecting yourself when you're sitting in Starbucks, working on your laptop.
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Ever have trouble getting to a web site? Do you ping your friends on IM, or give a shout over the cubicle wall, asking if they can get to that site? Now you don't have to bother your friends and co-workers anymore...
links for 2008-03-12
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Bill Thompson on the connectedness of Twitter: "After a certain point Twitter becomes part of the background to life. [...] I feel connected to a community of people, feel that we share a space that none of the social network sites can conjure up..."
Retrophisch v4.0. Or something.
So I got off my duff and finally got around to putting in to place the redesign (realignment?) of the blog that I've sat on for the better part of two years. Those of you who normally read the blog from the RSS feed can click over to see the new look. (If you care, that is.) Those of you who read the blog by actually going to it may have noticed the new look over the past couple of days. (Or maybe not, and if that's the case, I'm left to wonder whether or not that's a good thing or a bad thing.) One thing you might notice on the main page is the Twitter section at the top, marked "Recently". If you are a regular reader of the blog, you may have noticed that my blogging has taken a huge dive in recent months, with most posts consisting of the daily links posting from my del.icio.us account. The reason for that is I'm doing a lot of micro-blogging over on my Twitter account. I say micro-blogging, because Twitter limits each post to 140 characters. (This is largely due to the number of character one can put in to a SMS message, and Twitter has excellent SMS compatibility.) So now you when you visit this blog, you can also see my latest on Twitter. There's further tweaking ahead. I likely won't leave all of those links in the sidebar. They'll get spun off to a separate page, like the reading list and photos. I'd like to integrate a linkblog in to the main page, a la John Gruber and other bloggers, instead of relying on my del.icio.us account to automatically spit them out each morning. The linkblog would allow more immediate posting, and any comments about the link wouldn't be limited to del.icio.us's text field. The biggest tweak, however, will be under the hood, as I upgrade to Movable Type 4. Hopefully, this will be transparent to you, dear reader, but will empower me and make my blogging life easier in the long run. Let's hope it doesn't take another two years for these various tweaks to be made reality. I have quite a few people to thank for their input and help over the past two years. So many, in fact, that I dare not name them all here out of fear of leaving someone out. Needless to say, those of you who fall in to this category know who are. You occupy prime positions in my instant-messaging buddy list and e-mail address book. You are my friends, and for putting up with my endless questions of "How does this look?" and "What do you think of this?", or the myriad times when I failed to even ask a question and just IMed you a link with no backgrounding of any sort on my part, you have my sincerest thanks. If you absolutely hate the new look of the blog, well, that's your opinion, and you should place any blame for your dislike firmly at my feet. If you absolutely love the new look, it's because of the wonderful people, mentioned above, who took time out of their lives to share part of mine with me. Oh, and if you happen to be nostalgic for the old look, you can still find it here, for a little while.
links for 2008-03-11
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Apple's product. Google's product. Your company's product.
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These guys are insane...
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"'Parents do not have a constitutional right to home school their children,' Justice H. Walter Croskey wrote in a Feb. 28 opinion..." Funny, I can't find anything in the Constitution expressly prohibiting parents from homeschooling their children.
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What it all boils down to is that none of us outside of the military will be prepared when the robot overlords take over.
links for 2008-03-10
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"Every election period the media mention, usually in ominous terms, Evangelicals. This year is no exception. And just as frequently, Evangelicals are identified with Fundamentalists and the Religious Right. This identification is false and harmful..."
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My only quibble with Schneier's strategy, as it pertains to the Mac, is that PGP's Whole Disk Encryption specs state it only works on the Mac's non-boot drive. Which, if I'm understanding correctly, rules out every Mac.
links for 2008-03-08
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Jason Calacanis, Mahalo's CEO, with some bootstrapping tips. My favorites: Buy Macs (shocker, I know); Buy 2d monitors (I miss having a 2d monitor since mine died); Chairs matter, tables don't; Don't buy a phone system; outsource to middle America
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The "sex, drugs, helvetica bold" shirt is funny.
Twitter in Plain English
Whenever I bring up Twitter, I always get asked what it is. The best description I've mustered to date is "It's a microblog", which doesn't fully do Twitter justice. Lee LeFever of the Commoncraft Show, has a easy-to-follow explanation:
So if you're intrigued enough to check out Twitter, look me up, and feel free to follow my updates.
The Snows of March
On Sunday, March 2d, here in the Dallas/Fort Worth metroplex, one would have been able to wear shorts, if one were so inclined, due to the warm weather. By 8:30 PM CST on March 3d, however, one still would have been able to wear shorts if one were so inclined, but one would have gotten very cold and very wet from the snow falling. Just after taking out the garbage last night (earlier tonight?), I snapped a few quick shots:



