October 2003
22 posts
1 tag
People often say “I’m speechless” and then go on to write for a few paragraphs about whatever supposedly took away their ability to speak. So I’ll just say “thank you.” In the past week, Unnofficial TypePad Resources and Everything TypePad! have both mentioned my MT→TypePad Permalinks article, Snowman has flatteringly redesigned, and I’m in the “Featured TypePad...
September 2003
20 posts
1 tag
As of today, it looks like the National Do Not Call Registry is on. Matt Thomas and I had a discussion about it last night. I had been wondering for some time whether I really did think that the registry was a legimate thing for the government to impose. I now think it is.
The Direct Marketing Association argued last week that the registry would restrict their constitutional right to free...
2 tags
Matrix Revolutions Trailer
The trailer for The Matrix Revolutions is up at What Is The Matrix.com. It’s more of the same images that we’ve seen since promotions for The Matrix Reloaded were released. We get lots of fast cuts with Neo flying all over the place, swarming sentinels, and dozens of Agent Smiths being menacing. It doesn’t bother with much story teasing, because mainly we know that it’s continuing right from the...
2 tags
The Apple Music Store has eighty Pearl Jam albums. Most of them are of course live albums, but it shows how great internet distribution can be. If you went to one of those concerts, you can buy it now in a high-quality recording for $9.99. The indie labels’ contracts should start coming in soon, and rumors indicate the Windows version might be out within a month. Bravo!
1 tag
Underwere
Katherine just sent me a link to this Yahoo! News article stating that Underworld director Len Wiseman has been asked to write and direct two sequels to his horror/action directorial debut.
I saw Underworld and I enjoyed it, but I don’t think it was a terribly good movie. Or if it was, it wasn’t the movie I wanted to see. I won’t give it much criticism for not being original,...
1 tag
For the technologically repressed Apple geeks in the house, I found this pictorial of a girl unpacking a PowerMac G5 (SFW). …and then she installs RAM!
2 tags
Compatibility of Weblogs and ISSN
Zeldman is asking everyone to link to “Compatibility of Weblogs and ISSN” by Joe Clark. He very clearly lays out why weblogs should continue to be eligible for ISSNs and why some registrars may be denying or sitting on them. I applied for an ISSN months ago and have not yet gotten mine. Read the article. Many weblogs may be trivial, but they are a free source of information coming...
1 tag
Social Luck
I just got a Friendster message from a girl from high school who was in the saxophone section with me. At first I didn’t remember her. She’s cute in her Friendster pictures, so I told my coworkers about it, saying that you’d think I’d remember a cute girl I went to high school with. One of them said, “well maybe she was a nerd in high school and she’s cool now.” Possible. I replied,...
1 tag
Today’s link spree is about one thing: zombies. Prompted by Chris White and Jon Novak, who recently reminded my why SomethingAwful is so damn great, here are a few zombie reading choices:
Stop vampire and zombie oppression.
Zombie Alert, “a full line of zombie protection products.”
Among other things, Zombie Philosophy. (Seriously.)
1 tag
Antidiluvian
I awoke a bit before five last night to what sounded exactly like a faucet running into a pool of water. My bedroom having a faucet, that seemed wrong. The rainstorm had dropped enough water fast enough that the ground hadn’t soaked anything up, so our basement window wells had filled all the way up — each probably holding well over a dozen gallons of water. Turns out that our windows aren’t...
1 tag
Figment
Dear Peter,
You were right, Uncle Bobby doesn’t exist. Matt and Katherine agree: psychological coping projection.
Old Mike says at the beginning and the end that truth is in the teller and history is how you tell it.
The stepfather going to jail and Bobby leaving happens at the same time, because Mike didn’t need him anymore.
At the end, old Mike says “that’s how I remember...
1 tag
No finance fees if you pay within six months? I couldn’t resist.
Why did I choose the iMac instead of a swanky 15″ PowerBook? Price was the major factor. I got a better-equipped iMac with a bigger screen for a good deal cheaper. Second, after looking at them in the store, Katherine and I agreed that the 12” really is the best one. Its ultra-portability and youngest child charm are just...
1 tag
Since Hurricane Isabel gave me the day off, I happily wasted it watching television and redesigning my site. I’ve decided to switch to TypePad for my hosting and weblogging needs. I’m just in love with the service and how easy it makes it to do stuff. At the moment my page on davextreme.com is still up, but the link to my page on the main davextreme page points here to davextreme.typepad.com, but...
3 tags
File Sharing in Canada
As the RIAA wages war on its own customers in the US, it seems that Canadians have little to worry about. Tech Central Station reports that the Canadian Copyright Act specifically allows “private copying” of music. Their solution to the problem of music theft was to institute a federally mandated tax on blank media. In the five years since the act went into effect, the music industry...
3 tags
On Joining Friendster
I usually try to be on the cusp of trends. I joined eBay in 1998 and Napster in Fall 1999. For some reason, it seemed for a time like too much work to set up Friendster, but last night I got around to doing it. (I was quite overstimulated by a great idea by Kenji and finishing The Goblet of Fire, so my energy level was high.) I’m glad I did, as I do feel occasional pangs of guilt for turning...
3 tags
Optical Illusions
The Hivelogic Narrative is a well-respected weblog. Very bizarrely, it is written in the second person. Today, it links to this set of optical illusions. They play off how odd it is that our brain is able to construct a three dimensional world out of the two dimensional images it gets.
There are a bunch of rules that filmakers have to follow when they’re making a movie for the audience to...
2 tags
200th Post: MxPx and Dashboard Confessional Show
Sunday Katherine and I saw MxPx and Dashboard Confessional. MxPx, tagging along with Dashboard Confessional until their own tour for their upcoming album, was very good. They didn’t play a few songs I would have liked to hear, but in their short set they got in a lot of their good ones and managed to sneak in two good new tunes. Dashboard Confessional played very well, much to the delight of...
2 tags
Bloglines
A lot of website have syndicated feeds built into them in RSS or XML formats. Mine does. Every LiveJournal page does. Most major newspapers’ sites do. But most people don’t know about them and don’t use them. I’ve known about them for a long time, but most news aggregators I’ve found are more complex than I was willing to deal with.
Yesterday I ran accross...
1 tag
Women: putting your handbag in the middle of an aisle or walkway, even if it’s right by your chair, is not okay. If it won’t fit under your chair or in front of the bench on the Metro, it goes in your lap. That’s just the way it is.
1 tag
I love the fall. I love the changing leaves and the coming of cold (as opposed to winter’s lingering cold). I even love the rain. But the impending arrival of autumn has left another season marker in my head, providing an easy check against where I was a year ago and a year before that. I’m not unhappy about where I am right now, but I know it’s not where I want to be for very...