3/21/2000; 4:57:23 PMI apologize profusely for the lack of a working site beyond this page. I had expected to have time to finish all the sub pages last night, but something has come up that is huge and so important that it superceeds everything else in my life for the next 24 hours. Perhaps tomorrow night. 10/5/2000; 7:29:59 PMAnywhereYouGo.com is a great wireless technology site for developers and people interested in things like WAP and Bluetooth. 3/22/2000; 3:57:20 PMAn exciting day. Too bad I can't talk about what happened here yet. 3/22/2000; 3:59:15 PMWork on the site continues. I'm struggling with some of the sub-page layouts, so don't hold your breath. 3/22/2000; 4:04:30 PMThis Salon article confirms what I think most of us that subscribe to Fast Company, Business 2.0, and The Industry Standard already knew: the magazines are getting too big. It also mentions Time's new entry into this content area: eCompany Now. Based on what it says on their site, that magazine will be availabel in May. 3/23/2000; 7:21:31 PMI went out to lunch with Doug today and he told me about FreeWheelz.com. I still think it might be an elaborate April Fool's joke, but imagine how many people will opt for a free car if they can. The example car that is pictured in this Esquire Magazine article is branded with Stay Free Maxi Pad advertising.

Can you just imagine talking to a friend you were picking up for the first time? "I'll be in a Stay Free Maxi Pad mini-van that says 'Heavy Flow' on the hood." Methinks this free stuff with advertising thing has gone too far. 10/11/2000; 8:43:22 AMThis commercial has to be the funniest thing I've seen in a while. 10/11/2000; 9:14:36 AMHere's part 3 of The Truth In Advertising. It's absolutely hilarious. Parts one and two were hilarious too, but I can't seem to find them anywhere on the Web. If you know where I can find them, drop me a line.(Warning: This movie contains graphic language.) 10/11/2000; 10:30:39 AMMy Creative Nomad Jukebox arrived yesterday. I've really been looking forward to being able to carry 6 Gb of music with me wherever I go. It is almost exactly the size of the typical portable CD player, and a little heavier. The included software works with both PC's and Mac's and it uses a USB interface to hook to the computer. I was pleasantly surprised that they included a bunch of classical tracks on the device when I received it. 3/24/2000; 5:51:32 AMBrad points me to this press release which proves that Freewheelz.com is indeed an April Fools joke. 3/24/2000; 6:16:47 AMThis Industry Standard metrics report includes recent statistics on a number of things that Web developers need to know about their audience and the general Web audience. 3/24/2000; 7:14:13 AMSilverscreen is a theme manager for Palm OS 3 or higher. 10/12/2000; 7:13:16 AMThis article from today's New York Times pictures(without any sort of credit) the recipe of the day from the Foodvision.com site that my company built. I don't know if they asked for permission from Foodvision to picture it, but it's for that reason that I don't really like services like the ones discussed in this article. They take a small snippet from a Web site and picture it out of the context that the site intended that content to be show. It's sort of involuntary reverse syndication. I guess the argument would be that this gets your site a visitor and exposure, but I would argue that without the context of the site it really doesn't benefit the content provider in a commercial environment very much. 10/12/2000; 7:28:51 AMThe newest issue of the Industry Standard's newish magazine, Grok, is all about wireless. I was impressed with the entertainment issue, but less interested in the education issue that followed it. I like the concept of a vertical magazine that changes vertical's monthly. 3/25/2000; 12:02:51 PMI think I could spend about a month just working on my personal projects and all of the books I want to read right now and still not be completely satisfied. I'm working on the site right now, and by the end of the weekend I hope to have the archive situation figured out, the search engine situation figured out, and the picture and site of the week pages created and updated.

My office is really really cluttered and messy. 3/25/2000; 12:07:36 PMI tried out Userland's new Pike product this afternoon. The idea of a desktop application that updates my Web site is less attractive to me than doing it through a Web browser. Regardless, I couldn't get the app to work properly with my Manila server. Having said that, it is beta software, and I'm sure that it will be interesting when I do get it working. 3/26/2000; 10:09:07 AMInternet Explorer 5.02 for the Macintosh is due to be released Monday, but you can find a link to it on this page right now. [via Scripting News]

I've been using the betas for a couple of months and I like it quite a bit in comparison to any of the existing browsers on the Mac platform. 3/27/2000; 8:21:43 PMI apologize for this, but I will be taking some time off from this site for at least the next few days and maybe longer. Things have happened this week in my life that I cannot log about, but they have sapped me of my strength to express myself here. Please think positive thoughts for me. 10/23/2000; 9:48:15 AMI haven't forgotten about this site or anything, I'm just doing some other things right now. Regular updates should resume any time now, and should be coupled with a new design and archives and other sections of the site that actually work. Stay tuned. 10/23/2000; 11:37:21 AMI keep reading on Dave Winer's site about how great the Mets are, how they have some super philosophy that makes them different, and better, than the average sports franchise. Clearly, this thing is a construct in his mind. I haven't heard any of the announcers for FOX talking about it, nor has it been mentioned on the half dozen episodes of Sportscenter I've watched on ESPN this week. I'm not a Mets expert, however, despite having lived in New York State for seven years, so I leave that to those much more qualified to address it. Something I do know about are the Yankees. He claims "they have no soul". I disagree, no other professional sports team, with the possible exception of the storied Boston Celtics and Canada's Montreal Canadians, has more soul and tradition than the Yankees. I'm the third generation in a long line of Yankee fans. The Yankees franchise has a deeper place in American culture than any other sports franchise. Period. Have you heard of Babe Ruth? Joe Dimaggio? Mickey Mantle? I thought so. Have you heard of Dave Kingman? 10/31/2000; 9:55:13 AMIs there natural law of cell phones that states that the more important the piece of information someone is about to say, the more likely the connection is going to drop out? 11/1/2000; 10:25:33 AMSo the protocol formerly known as 802.11 and Airport is now Wireless Ethernet or WiFi 11/4/2000; 7:07:04 AMGrand Royal Magazine has moved to an online format. 11/4/2000; 7:12:22 AMI finally saw High Fidelity last night, I've been saving the DVD for a weekend night when I felt like staying in by myself and relaxing. A few months ago, I don't think I would have enjoyed it quite as much as I did. If you like Mr. Cusak's previous efforts in Say Anything and Grosse Pointe Blank, you will love this movie. If you have ever worked in a record store, you will also love this movie. It's an accurate portrayal of working at an independently owned store.(I worked in one for about a year.) 11/4/2000; 7:15:53 AMAs a result of watching the movie below, I'm listening to Three Ep's by the Beta band this morning. It's a great piece of music. 11/4/2000; 3:57:15 PMHad a great time today climbing at Atlanta Rocks Intown. It looks like rock climbing will be my new thing.(I'm not a newbie, but haven't been on a wall in about ten years.) 11/5/2000; 8:19:08 PMNintendo Spaceworld 2000 is where you can find out more about Nintendo's Gamecube and Gameboy Advanced. You gotta check out the new Gameboy, which goes on sale in Japan in March 2001, and will play all legacy Gameboy games. 11/7/2000; 5:26:42 AMUp close and personal with Audrey, 3Com's new Internet appliance. I was bemused by the fact that they decided to use the USB route for ethernet connectivity. 11/7/2000; 8:17:28 AMCustomer service is dead. Three weeks ago, I purchased a Compaq iPaq Pocket PC. Looks great, interesting feature set, and some stellar reviews on the Web. I had it for two days, and I was really enjoying it. Then, things took a turn for the worse. The screen started showing everything backwards. I would have returned it in exchange for a new unit, but CompUSA wasn't getting any more for at least a month. So I called Compaq, and they seemed great. They sent me a box and I sent it off to be repaired with the promise of the unit being returned in 3-5 days. I waited 5 days, then I called them again. My unit needed a new main board. As it turns out, there are problems with the main boards in a lot of the units, there is a main board problem. The boards are backordered and I'm in line waiting behind other suckers that bought the defective unit.

So, I've spent $500 on something that I had for three days and won't have back for the foreseeable future. I requested a new unit, but they claim they won't have any until after the first of the year. They are, however, shipping units into the channel. They would rather sell units to new customers than take care of people who are already customers, who have already plunked down their hard earned cash. Shame on you Compaq. I am no longer a customer of yours, and I will tell anyone who will listen how awful you are. 11/7/2000; 1:23:10 PMIf you are in the United States, please get out and vote. Voter.com seems like a great place online to keep track of things. 11/7/2000; 1:25:55 PMExit Poll results posted on Inside.com seem to have things tight, but Gore ahead in a bunch of the key battleground states. It's going to be a long night folks. 11/7/2000; 9:34:53 PMI'm still up watching. It's very interesting that, at this point anyway, the Nader vote could be the difference in this election if Bush is elected. We'll see once they finish with Florida, which will determine this thing in the end. The margin there seems to be less than 50,000 votes now with about 10% left to be counted.(Nader had a strong 87,000+) 11/8/2000; 10:40:01 AMWell here we are the day after, and it looks like we won't know until tomorrow who won Florida and got the electoral votes necessary to win the election. If Bush wins, despite the fact that more Americans voted for Gore, it will be a depressing failure of our system in my opinion. Regardless of your party affiliation or particular viewpoint on this election, I'm of the opinion that, in a representative democracy, the candidate that the majority of the people voted for should win. If this doesn't happen, the person who won did so through a loophole in our system. This is a horrible situation for our country. 11/13/2000; 6:23:59 AMElectoral College Sportswear 11/13/2000; 3:08:24 PMBump: The Sneaky Numbers Game 11/13/2000; 4:40:46 PMBump Products 12/12/1999; 7:02:56 PMI live upstairs from you. Yes I think you've seen me before. 12/12/1999; 7:02:35 PMMy name is Luca, I live on the second floor. 10/7/1999; 10:41:33 AMHere's a second post that I did on October 7th. 8/24/1999; 11:48:28 AMHere's my first Blogger based entry. I'm pretty sure that the FTP settings are going to need tweaking. 11/17/2000; 4:52:05 PMWell, the third anniversary of this site came and went yesterday without a mention due to technical difficulties. Three years my sporadic musings have appeared in this space, and a lot has changed both in my life and on the Web in general. I'd like to thank everyone that has read this site over the last three years. 4/9/2000; 6:19:35 PMThey say that Spring is the time of changes. Well, they don't kid around very much I guess. I returned home from SXSW full of inspiration, and I had no idea how much I had let my life and myself get off of the track I meant for it to be on. I had somehow lost track of who I wanted to be. The wakeup call that it took to get me to realize this was the most bitter pill I have ever swallowed. My girlfriend of almost six years left me. I'm heartbroken, because I'm still very much in love with her.

My life is about to change in some major ways. My priorities are much clearer to me than they were only a few weeks ago, and I recognize that there is much work to do if I'm ever going to be the person I truly want to become. If you are reading this, ask yourself if you are an active participant in your life. Ask yourself if you are telling those around you how you feel about them. Ask yourself what you could do to make things better in your relationships. I sure wish I had been asking myself those questions a few weeks ago. 4/10/2000; 7:25:58 AMTuesdays with Morrie is an amazing book about the final year in the life of a Brandeis professor who contracted Lou Gerhig's Disease. My mother sent me the book last week, and I read it in one sitting on Saturday sitting in a coffee shop. It's a good read, and no matter who you are you will take something valuable away from it. I think it's a book I will probably return to again and again over the course of my life because it breeds perspective. (Thanks so much for everything Mom.) 4/10/2000; 9:35:36 AMI've been using Alphanumeric's Sullivan skin running on my copy of Mozilla M14 today. I'd previously been using IE 5.0 as the main browser on my Macintosh. It really bums me out that some of my favorite sites don't work properly through the rendering engine in these new browsers. Not only that, but they break things in completely different ways. The end result is that people who build Front End interfaces for sites have to do that much more work to create the same experience for everyone coming to the site. Mozilla shows, by far in my opinion, the most promise of any of the currently available browsers. Question though, where is the windows menu, or any menu driven way to change which window is active? 4/11/2000; 6:12:24 AMLong time readers of this site know that I am a sucker for interface elements, icons, and wallpaper. The newest set of 32 bit Macintosh icons from Blue Heart Sky(That's set number seven.) is nothing short of fantastic. 4/12/2000; 6:52:36 AMI am officially addicted to kozmo.com. We've had for a few weeks here in Atlanta, and I find myself using it both at the office and at home. If you are careful about what you order, the prices are very reasonable considering they are bringing you the items.

I should point out that their site doesn't really do a good job of communicating the service to potential customers. 4/12/2000; 9:46:26 AMIt's always the little things. 4/13/2000; 6:46:12 AMI seem to be experiencing technical difficulties this morning. I can't figure out if the problem is a Blogger problem or a bump problem. Stay tuned. 4/13/2000; 7:14:30 AMI have to thank everyone who has been mailing me about my situation and encouraging me over the last three weeks. Your words have meant quite a lot to me. 4/13/2000; 7:46:57 AMI'm pretty excited about UltraDev. It's about time that someone developed a tool that is capable of working with Enterprise level Web databases and dynamic environments that is cross platform. I'm still a code person where I don't want to rely on Wizards or visual environments for this stuff. First, because of the level of control and second because it is much easier to fix things that you wrote instead of having to figure out what the program generated for you. 4/13/2000; 1:05:26 PMYou can now email me encouragement, or just plain bug me at my wireless device wherever I happen to be at the moment. The email address is palm@$bump.net.(remove the dollar sign for correct address, I don't want the spam to get me wherever I happen to be.) 4/13/2000; 1:48:16 PMI would be remiss if I didn't thank dlog for the nice comments about this new design, albeit a little late. Now if I could just finish the rest of it. 4/14/2000; 10:24:27 AMKozmo.com hit with lawsuit. I find this very disturbing. I don't think that kozmo deserves the kind of label this implies. They are available in a few markets, and they should get to choose where they operate their business. Does this mean they should operate in every neighborhood in every town they go to whether or not that neighborhood would be profitable? They aren't a very big company at this point, and I don't think that free enterprise should be messed with like this. 4/14/2000; 12:58:25 PMmmmmmm Deep Leap. It's a new Web app worth checking out. It manages your bookmarks and stuff or something. Congratulations to the Deep Leap team. I could tell they had labored hard on this project when I met them in Austin. 4/15/2000; 11:10:17 AMNumerous people have pointed out the links at the top of the page are broken. I'll try to get to this as soon as possible, but with things the way they are in my life right now, this site can't be any sort of priority for me. One of the problems is that I have archives dating back to November, 1997, and I want to make sure that this is the last time I have to do this as it's quite time consuming and boring. 4/15/2000; 11:12:04 AMI always seem to feel better when I sing. I'm sitting in my office right now, which is completely empty, and singing loudly while I clean up things and do some content management coding for a project. It really seems to help me quite a bit. In fact, I can say that, in the most difficult times of my life, it has been music that has always helped me through. 4/15/2000; 11:17:59 AMMore on Deep Leap from around the Web. First, their feature list, which is quite interesting. Lane posts their vision to the Userland Discussion site. One day into using it(despite literally begging Ben for access at SXSW), and I'm still exploring. The only thing I really wish I had was more screen real estate to work with on my laptop. 4/15/2000; 11:35:41 AMSmall World post number 24: Paul goes to see Ani DiFranco last night, and Hamill on Trial opens up. When I lived in Albany, NY, Ed Hamill worked in the coffee shop that was across the street from my apartment. Ed's a great, friendly, funny, intelligent guy whose company I enjoyed very much. I haven't seen or talked to him in years and have since moved to Atlanta and lost touch with most of my Albany friends. 4/15/2000; 12:19:58 PMJim is doing some interesting things with the data from Weblogs.com. 4/15/2000; 12:35:55 PMThe people at MacSurfer have started a new site named TechNN which is a similar sort of thing for generalized technology news. 12/1/2000; 6:26:22 AMAfter a great Thanksgiving trip to visit family in the NorthEast and a hectic and stressful interim week of work, I'm going down to Florida over the weekend to relax a little. Next week, I'll be attending XML 2000 in Washington DC giving presentations about our company's platform. 12/1/2000; 6:34:04 AMinfoSync is another great mobile device site worth checking out. They have great screenshots and coverage of devices that haven't yet been discussed elsewhere. 4/17/2000; 7:46:52 AMAmount of money in loose change I exchanged for bills this weekend: $124.00 4/17/2000; 9:50:04 AMSome interesting changes coming in my life these next few weeks. I've been making these sad little lists of all the things I will need to buy for my new apartment.(I'll be moving in two weeks.) It's much smaller than the one we are in now, so some things are also going to have to go. I think this is where I'll be making the transition to only laptops. Got ideas for neat furniture or fixtures for a new bachelor's apartment? Send them along. I'm buying all new furniture, so any hints or suggestions of good places to do that in either the real or virtual worlds would be helpful. 4/18/2000; 9:35:25 AMEnough with the meetings already. 4/18/2000; 10:17:04 AMWebVan went preview in Atlanta today. Yeeha I say. 4/19/2000; 6:49:13 AMAnger was a place to hide. 4/19/2000; 1:26:03 PMAlmost everyone who sent me new apartment advice said I should shop at IKEA. Unfortunately, they aren't very Internet friendly, make it very difficult to get a catalog, and don't have a store in the Atlanta area. Fortunately, Sara, one of my fearless co-workers(I guess you would have to be fearless to work with me, just ask Jack why he's really leaving.) brought me in the catalog she had at home. When I whipped out the floor plan for my new apartment, voila no measurements of any kind. That makes no sense whatsoever. 12/11/2000; 6:12:25 AMYou know you've been slacking a little too much on your weblog when you get an email from your mother asking why you haven't been updating:-) 12/11/2000; 6:15:35 AMThis new Nokia is probably the best looking PCS phone I've seen so far. Seems like there are new phones every month from these companies now. 4/20/2000; 1:58:38 PMI went with some friends to see Kids in the Hall last night. I thoroughly enjoyed myself, I think partially because I needed to laugh very badly. 4/20/2000; 2:00:05 PMToday is jack's last day, which is a very sad one for me. I've really enjoyed working with him over the last six months. Nine of us took him out for a Thai lunch and had some fun. 12/11/2000; 8:32:32 PMThe Street has already been cancelled. Oddly, I liked the show quite a bit, and I'm sure it is better than many of the other new shows that premiered this season. My favorite new show, Boston Public, is still going strong.(I hope) Perhaps they should have tried The Street in a time slot where it wasn't going up against The West Wing. 12/12/2000; 10:54:45 AMWithout Willliam Shakespeare, there would be no bump, and therefore no bump.net. 12/12/2000; 12:00:15 PMThe inevitable scooter bashing has begun on the Web.(via k10k) 12/13/2000; 6:50:18 AMThe Delicate Art of (Web) Design Critique is a great overview of this very touchy subject and how anyone can apply these techniques to grow as a Web designer. 12/13/2000; 7:24:17 AMThe Downfall of Internet Consultants takes a look at what went wrong with iXL, Marchfirst and their like. I am feeling more and more that Internet consulting, with the current state of things, is not something that can easily be replicated into a large consulting company. All the best shops, who do the best work, are smaller companies or boutique shops. This is, in part, because quality people who are bright and get the Internet are still quite difficult to find. 12/13/2000; 10:15:34 AMI'm going to the Atlanta Thrashers game tonight. It's my first hockey game of the season. I always seem to have trouble getting excited about hockey and basketball until after football season has ended.(Thanks for the tickets David.) 12/13/2000; 11:18:17 AMIf you use BBEdit(If you use a Mac and do Web stuff you should.), here are some great Tips and Tricks worth reading. 12/13/2000; 8:30:36 PMJunkyard Wars has to be the greatest television program that I have ever watched. Think of it as The Iron Chef in a junkyard. If you have TLC, I highly recommend checking it out. 12/13/2000; 8:33:10 PMThis page has video clips from the show. Apparently, there will be an American version of Junkyard Wars starting in January. 12/17/2000; 2:40:01 PMGood Grief! The Highs and Lows of Usability Testing is an interesting look, not about the merits of usability testing, but about learning to cope with and apply the lessons learned from it. 12/17/2000; 2:45:59 PMI've spent most of my waking hours today, with the exception of a side trip to Doc Chey's for much needed noodle fuel, creating fun(not really) network and software infrastructure diagrams with Visio for a client. I can't say that I really like Visio, especially after having used Inspiration, with it's built in outliner, which makes getting a diagram together far easier. 12/18/2000; 8:21:29 AMMy last Monday in the office this year. A good time for me to mull over the last year of my career and look ahead a little. Tomorrow, I head off on my last business trip of the year, traveling out to our headquarters in California for a couple of days of year end meetings. There's something that is very anti-holiday about business travel this close to Christmas. It's been an interesting year, more from a business experience perspective than a technical one. We sold our company, integrated/are still integrating with the buyers, and are moving ahead with the new company's strategies. This is not a experience without some level of discomfort. Most of the technical experience that I've gotten has to do with project design and architecture, and I spent a lot of time learning XML oriented technology.

I'm very much looking forward to 2001 from a career perspective, despite the current climate for Internet companies. The industry is being punished for people with questionable business ideas who overhyped the value of those businesses, with the help of the venture capital and investment communities. The inevitable chain reaction through the companies that feed off the failed dot-coms has lead to the demise and devaluation of the service companies that make up the next rung of the food chain. The only thing I have to say/can say to everyone is to not throw the baby out with the bath water, to not follow the hype back in the other direction. There's a middle ground there inhabited by companies with good ideas and value propositions for their customers. There are whole realms where the networked world is going to impact things in our lives in far reaching ways that we haven't seen yet. 12/18/2000; 3:51:43 PMLinks2Go does a pretty solid job of relating other sites to mine. I'm reading along and thinking to myself, yep Weblogs, yep, more Weblogs, then suddenly, "Religous News"???? I don't think I have ever, or will ever discuss religous news on my site. Odd. 12/18/2000; 3:54:44 PMJake has a dotcom Screenshot graveyard going. Great idea. 12/18/2000; 4:27:05 PMThe New York Giants, my team of choice, managed to clinch the NFC East last night. They are, I'll admit, in a pretty weak division in comparison to say, the AFC East, but I'll take it. 12/18/2000; 4:53:43 PMAmerican Airlines | aa.com is generating a nice big fat error message. Gotta love that Broadvision.(It's fixed now, but it was down for over an hour.) 12/18/2000; 8:09:27 PMApple launches an Internet Developer section of it's developer site? 4/24/2000; 5:58:17 PMCrazy weekend. Still trying to recover. Good friends are hard to find, and I'm appreciating mine more every day. 4/24/2000; 5:59:26 PMI'm starting to really pack my stuff for the impending move. Lots of memories keep leaping out of drawers and boxes to make me smile. 4/26/2000; 8:44:09 AMI can't ever remember feeling so drained physically, mentally, and emotionally. The strange thing is that I seem to have huge amounts of untapped energy that is carrying me through this time period in my life. I'm deep in the process of breaking down my half of our apartment, and expect to be in my new apartment completely some time next week. Once I do that, I really think that I'll feel a lot better about things. 4/26/2000; 9:02:13 AMI went to Crate & Barrel yesterday to look at beds, and brought my digital camera so I could easily remember what beds I saw in which store. I found one I thought would be a good candidate for my apartment so I took out the camera and shot a couple of pictures of it. Almost immediately, a snotty salesperson descended on me and informed me that they didn't allow any pictures. When I explained why I needed to take them, he said that I had to have him take Polaroids of the items I was interested in and that I should wait for him to come back and help me. He then went back to helping another customer for almost a half an hour before I finally got angry enough to leave. Guess I won't be buying my bed, or any of my furniture, at Crate & Barrel. 4/26/2000; 9:04:14 AMI have lost 25 lbs since SXSW. 4/26/2000; 12:45:39 PMKudos to Waferbaby on the beautiful redesign. 4/26/2000; 12:58:50 PMDid I mention that I like Dandot's new design quite a bit? 4/26/2000; 1:02:43 PMJim points to this article about Palm moving to ARM processors. It's a natural move for them, and I guess they could license or buy newton technology from Apple if they wanted. This has some potential. 12/24/2000; 8:50:53 AMHere's wishing you a happy holiday. Bumping will resume on Tuesday. 12/26/2000; 8:33:19 AMI had a great holiday. I feel recharged. It's not about gifts, or eating tons of food, but about spending time with people I care about. I wish, very much, that I could have spent the holiday with my family, but I did get to curl up on the couch with my sweetie, and that was the next best thing. 12/26/2000; 9:09:38 AMI've watched a bunch of movies over the last week that I've been meaning to get around to for a while. Virgin Suicides was the one that stands out most from the pack. Somber and intelligently delightful, with an amazing soundtrack, it will stick with me for a while. Also really entertaining was Bring it On. Kirsten Dunst was great in both movies. 12/26/2000; 9:50:49 AMI'm also currently entering the world of sushi chef experimentation with the National 5 Cup Deluxe Fuzzy Rice Cooker I received as a gift. If you have any sushi making tips or tricks, email me. I'll post the best ones here. 12/26/2000; 11:42:05 AMWhen Media One got bought by AT&T Broadband a few months ago, I had hoped that the service would improve, as Media One has been really really bad. Cable service is interrupted on a regular basis. Today, despite a confirming phone call about my appointment last night, they decided to not come out and service my cable. This terrible customer service is the most compelling reason for me to go with some sort of dish solution. They weren't apologetic at all, and wouldn't work with me about the reschedule at all. More evidence about the disturbing decline in customer service in today's corporate world. 12/26/2000; 11:46:36 AMAll of the Pocket PCs Software List is the place to find Pocket PC software. If only finding someone with the accessories for the iPaq was this easy. 12/27/2000; 11:48:09 AMThe Standards Process: Money Talks, Bullshit Walks is a great commentary on the difference between standards theory and real life practice in code.(via Scripting News.) 12/27/2000; 1:40:10 PMI've got some issues. 12/27/2000; 5:09:36 PMFor the head of the company, Jeff Bezos has a remarkably long Wish List. Maybe he's trying to drum up some business. 12/28/2000; 7:13:22 AMMeg and Ev make the New York Times with Invasion of the 'Blog': A Parallel Web of Personal Journals. 4/28/2000; 9:13:15 AMHow scary is this? 12/29/2000; 10:48:33 AMMy copy of The Art of the Matrix arrived this morning. This is a must have book if you are a Matrix fanatic. It includes the storyboards and comic type treatments that were used in making the movie. Really high quality stuff and very interesting to compare to the final products. I've now dug out the DVD and am going to spend this afternoon in a Matrix induced haze. 12/29/2000; 11:04:35 AMClemency for Leonard Peltier Petition 12/30/2000; 12:26:34 PMVia Zeldman, Mappa.Mundi Magazine is back online. A great site that has some incredible content. 12/31/2000; 12:40:09 PMHave a safe New Years Eve. I mean that. I'll be back tomorrow with a year end wrap up. 1/2/2001; 8:01:26 AMJack has posted the Winter version of saturn.org. 1/2/2001; 7:56:48 PMHelp Make Blogger Go Faster! 1/5/2001; 2:59:48 PMSo I am traveling yet again, this time I'm in Northern California for the next week. I'm hoping to catch up with some Bay Area friends and maybe get to spend a day at MacWorld, but work keeps getting in the way of my fun. On Monday, they have me flying down to San Diego for the day to work on a project. 5/2/2000; 1:45:43 PMWell I completed the majority of my move over the last two days. I should be back online now and posting on a regular basis again. My new apartment is, of course, full of boxes that I need to sort through. I still have some furniture to buy, but I got a bed and a neat two person lounge chair for my living room. I'm hoping to be out of the old apartment altogether by this weekend. 1/12/2001; 2:46:39 PMWell, after four straight days in all day meetings, needless to say I'm pretty mentally worn out. I'm looking forward to sleeping in my own bed tomorrow night, and I'm hoping to sneak a day off into my schedule this week so I can get a little rest. I did get to read a pretty good book on this trip named The Game of Thrones. Anyone who enjoyed the Robert Jordan books will surely enjoy this book. I'm reading the second book now, and it seems just as good. An interesting mix of politics, culture, and sword play. 1/12/2001; 2:49:01 PMI guess I should just say now that, I must have one of these. 1/12/2001; 2:56:50 PMMicrosoft's new Sharepoint Server looks like a very interesting combination of their domination in the business document creation space with an indexing and collaboration engine. I'm wondering if it's limited to Microsoft Office documents or if they had the forethought to realize that people use other tools in an office environment too. Even more interesting is that it will also crawl sites for you, and delivers it all to one portal page. I'm going to keep my eye on this.(I don't have a Windows 2000 server to evalute it on.) 1/14/2001; 7:19:14 PMThere's nothing like being home after a long business trip. I've spent the last 24 hours, since I got home, cleaning my apartment and watching my New York Giants crush the Vikings. Feels good. 1/14/2001; 8:16:15 PMI've been using Paytrust for my bills for the last six months. I highly recommend the service, it makes paying everything on time very easy, especially with all of the travel I've been doing. One downside, I don't go to my mailbox as often so it's always full. The postage and convenience is worth the $9 a month. 5/5/2000; 5:54:47 AMThis whole I Love You virus thing has been really annoying for some people and brought other people's networks down. Personally, I received more emails warning me about the virus and trying to inform me of it's dangers than anything else. What do you call these emails? They are almost a mutated strain of the virus itself. 5/5/2000; 6:27:59 AMIt's going to be a fun weekend, my brother is coming into to town from New York, and Atlanta's Spring music festival, Music Midtown is this weekend. There aren't too many bands I want to see, but I need to get out of the house and socialize. 5/5/2000; 6:45:07 AMThe annoying Javascript error messages that everyone was getting should be gone now. I'm hoping to get the last few weeks of archives hooked back up today too. 5/5/2000; 7:16:26 AMI bought a new Television for my new apartment. It's very very nice. 5/5/2000; 7:31:10 AMI finally got the March and April archive pages up. The legacy archives will follow soon. 5/5/2000; 9:11:20 AMAimme Mann's new CD, Bachelor No.2 or the last remains of the dodo, is quite good. Some of the songs are the same as those on the Magnolia soundtrack. 1/16/2001; 1:41:30 PMMacromedia and Allaire merge. Interesting combination of solid software companies who, while they have some overlap, will be very complimentary to each other's product lines. 1/17/2001; 7:53:42 PMRemix the Beastie Boys 1/19/2001; 4:31:48 PMFor fans of the Iron Chef and Legos, It's Lego Chef. (via iconfactory) 5/8/2000; 6:57:32 AMThis weekend was a fantastic reminder of how much I dislike festival style music shows. There is nothing like a bunch of drunk morons looking to start fights and packed into a relatively small space. Oasis proved to be very low energy live Friday night, and we didn't return to the show on Saturday or Sunday because of the nasty crowd. 5/8/2000; 7:36:56 AM"The gem cannot be perfected without friction, nor man perfected without trials."
Confucius
5/8/2000; 8:10:02 AMMatt, who seems to be full of great ideas, is working on this project as a part of The MetaFilter Network. What a great idea. 5/8/2000; 8:33:57 AMAn excellent Salon interview with Eileen Richardson from Napster. 5/8/2000; 8:41:52 AMbrig's redesign is my favorite EatonWeb so far. 5/8/2000; 10:24:17 AMMacromedia has posted more in-depth information about their upcoming Dreamweaver UltraDev, which supports both Cold Fusion and Active Server pages development with a variety of industry standard databases. 5/8/2000; 10:26:09 AMWhat's up with array? 5/8/2000; 10:39:04 AMRIAA claims initial win against Napster. 5/8/2000; 11:45:45 AMThe supermarket down the street from my house now has a self checkout system where you scan the items you are buying, then insert either cash or card based payment into a machine. It works really well, and it's much faster than waiting in line. I was buying beer, so I still had to show my ID to the single employee overseeing the self checkout area. 1/21/2001; 3:42:56 PMHistory of the BASIC language 1/22/2001; 3:33:26 AMThe Onion has moved to New York. Am I right in thinking that this will make The Onion less funny over time as they lose their perspective and start making jokes that will only be funny to New Yorkers? 1/22/2001; 1:24:56 PMmy demo post. 1/22/2001; 5:27:30 PMAtomz Publish. The makers of the best search engine asp launch a content management asp. 5/9/2000; 6:38:56 AMSteven Champeon takes Microsoft and Bill Gates to task for comments made in a Time Magazine article. I couldn't have said it better myself.(via rc3.org) 5/10/2000; 6:20:42 AMSome great Web, dreamweaver, and development tutorials on this site. 5/10/2000; 6:54:30 AMFile under "not surprising to me", my color is Black. 5/10/2000; 6:58:35 AMStrangely, when I log onto Napster now, there are still plenty of Metallica songs up there. 5/10/2000; 7:02:14 AMI just discovered that Aimee Mann is playing in Atlanta in June. Our lucky San Francisco friends get to see her this week. 5/10/2000; 7:38:24 AMI went and played Walleyball with a group of people from work and some others last night. For those not familiar with the sport in question, it is essentially Volleyball in a Racquetball court where you can play off the walls. It was a really fun time, and a nice change of pace from my normal cardio and weights workout. Strangely, I couldn't find many references to Walleyball on the Web beyond purchasing equipment and various places that have the setup to play. 5/10/2000; 8:50:02 AMApparently, the Internet can improve relations with family and friends, which is pretty far from the study that said it created isolation. There's a happy medium to anything you do. 5/10/2000; 10:14:51 AMMy youngest brother, David, is attending Hobart College, and is on their lacrosse team. They made the NCAA Division I tournament and will be playing Duke this weekend in their first round matchup. I'm traveling up to upstate New York to see the game and spend some time with my family. Go Hobart! 1/25/2001; 11:05:44 AMThis site has versions of two of the studio tracks that will appear on Amnesiac, their album due out this spring/summer. 1/26/2001; 1:17:20 PMThis picture of some undocumented Microsoft Office features is both revealing and depressing. Who am I kidding? It's hilarious. 1/26/2001; 1:26:53 PMMy friend Clint and I have been amusing his dog quite a bit over the last couple of months with a handheld laser pointer. Little did I know that this patent existed. 5/11/2000; 6:14:59 AMToday's installment of the Elian saga is happening a block from my office and caused street closings and forced me to take the train to work instead of driving. Now, not only is it annoying, but also inconvenient. I walked over and took a couple of shots, but things seem pretty subdued. 5/11/2000; 11:07:03 AMThis Village Voice article is an excellent explanantion of what is going on in the Corley vs. MPAA case. 5/11/2000; 11:11:13 AM3d.com is giving away Strata3D. Previously, it was a fairly expensive package. 1/30/2001; 6:32:49 AMI used How Stuff Works yesterday to look up some very easy to understand explanations of networking concepts for a class I was involved in teaching. What a great site. Want to know how something works? Check it out. 1/30/2001; 7:27:06 AMIssue 100 over at k10k is amazing. Joshua Davis tells his story. I'm reading it and I'm wondering how many of those of us who are in the Web business have similar stories and paths. That isn't to say that my story is really similar to his. I don't have the happy ending, but I'm working on it. 1/30/2001; 9:00:32 AMThese odd folks took a cube and put it in a Macintosh Color Classic Case. 5/12/2000; 7:07:46 AMDon't take this link the wrong way. I am not researching revenge techniques and I do not endorse using the techniques listed on the site. There is no one in my life that I would do these things to or want to do them to. However, they do make for some comedic reading and some would be a great basis for a movie script. Swift Vengance is a compendium of revenge links. 2/1/2001; 4:24:07 AMCrossgain vs. Microsoft: 'Mooning the Giant' Read this article. Microsoft hasn't changed a bit since the anti-trust trial. 2/1/2001; 4:34:06 AMThink Outside has finally announced a stowaway keyboard for the iPaq. This is great since this is one thing that I have really missed since migrating from my Visor. 2/1/2001; 8:21:13 AMEv mourns. It's so hard to believe that, with the talented group of people that were Pyra, that someone didn't snap them up in a second. That some company out there didn't see the value in their product. It's potential. It's a shame, that's all I can say. Here's wishing Ev the best of luck as he continues on alone, and all the others in finding something to move on to that will make them happy. 2/5/2001; 1:10:22 PMThe lack of posts has one reason behind it. I'm really busy. I worked this weekend, and will be working quite a few hours this week and next. I'm also looking to move bump.net to a more suitable hosting location that is inexpensive and includes database support and at least one major middleware platform. If you have had good experiences with just such a vendor, please email me. 5/15/2000; 7:07:47 AMOf course, I'm sick now. That would be because I have pushed myself to the limits of my stamina for the last month. Also because I was already a little sick when I started doing those tequila shots with my father and brother this weekend. It was a fun weekend, despite the fact that my brothers team lost in the NCAA tournament. I stepped off the plane and right into work. I'm thinking I should cut out early and get to bed early tonight, but there's so much to be done. 2/6/2001; 9:52:20 AMdesktopimage.com is the first site I've been to in quite a while that made me say hmmmm. 5/15/2000; 11:44:00 AMJack launched a new, San Francisco style, saturn.org redesign today. In his new bookmarks section, he talks about what a funny guy I am, but he somehow missed how good looking I am. 5/15/2000; 11:49:44 AMI read Who Moved My Cheese? on the plane on the way back from Rochester yesterday. It's a good, very simple and easy to read book on dealing with change effectively. It's worth a read if you are going through any kind of difficult change in your life, or even if you aren't right now. It is, however, a little simplistic. 5/15/2000; 11:52:25 AMI should mention that I am constantly amazed by my brothers. They are, as a group, some of the most talented and interesting people in my life. Each of them has so much going for them that I am in awe every time we all get together. 5/15/2000; 11:53:25 AMDon't forget that you can email me wherever I happen to be at the time at palm@bump.net 2/8/2001; 8:29:57 AMMatt launches a new phase of his life and a new version of his personal site at a new URL. I just sit here working and listening to The Bends. It's not about me though. 2/8/2001; 8:38:42 AMI've been telling people that I'm platform agnostic for a while now. That I don't care what computer platform I use, and I prefer one over the other just based on particular tasks. For the last two months, I've been using my Macs less and less. First it was all about databases. Then I bought the iPaq, and I had good reason to want all my scheduling, email, and contacts on one Windows machine. My investment in software is now buggin me, I don't want to buy things twice, and I want everything I need on one machine. I'm *gasp* becoming a full time Windows 2000 user. Someone get Mac OS X over here stat. 5/16/2000; 7:51:36 AMThis article uses an interesting analogy between browser market share and the 50 U.S. states. Since I'm from Connecticut originally, I couldn't help but link to it. 5/16/2000; 7:59:27 AMDerek becomes the latest addition to the all-star Pyra team. It's incredible this team they have assembled. 5/16/2000; 8:03:57 AMMeg's post this morning about the sadness of losing her coffee guy made me think about my own similar loss. When I moved, I lost my trusty coffee shop crew that knew me from seeing me every day for two years. I haven't settled into a new coffee shop near my new location because no one seems friendly even when I am. Well, I guess I could start brewing my own. 5/16/2000; 11:46:04 AMYou know what I hate? When my computer crashes. 5/16/2000; 12:51:02 PMEv mentioned this new Web service, OnePage which serves as a sort of content collector and lets you grab content from any site and republish it on a single page. Can anyone explain to me how this is not copyright infringement? This service is taking copy from sites and republishing it without the owner's permission. 5/16/2000; 12:53:48 PMKid Rock starves to death, MP3 piracy blamed 2/9/2001; 6:53:22 PMThis is a test wireless post from my iPaq. 2/11/2001; 7:34:33 PMLike some other people, I've ordered one of these. Please discard any memory of my earlier post about becoming a full time Windows user. 2/11/2001; 7:41:55 PMHeromachine -- The Online Character Generator! Go there!! (via eatonweb) 2/14/2001; 6:18:41 PMWell, there's not much I can say right now except that updates will cease for the next few days. A close family member died last night, and I have much to attend to both inside and out. I want to write more, and probably will, once the dust has settled. 12/15/1999; 7:44:41 PMBump 5/23/2000; 8:21:49 AMWhere have I been? Traveling. Two red eyes in three days with a lot of meetings and important decisions in between. I got to spend about one day in San Francisco last week, and I returned to Atlanta on Saturday. It looks like the big changes in my life haven't ended yet, but I can't talk about the newest developments here yet. 5/23/2000; 10:20:25 AMOne neat thing we did with our very precious and tiny free time in California was go to the IKEA store. I can't understand why IKEA insists on making it so difficult to obtain their merchandise. If you don't live near one of their stores, and you missed the last catalog run, forget about it. They won't ship merchandise you purchase at the store for you, and they don't take orders over the Internet. I need furniture for my apartment. 12/18/1999; 11:52:23 AMCheck out my comparison of Blogger 2.0 and Manila at bump 12/18/1999; 12:18:42 PMHere's a Manila version of this site. 12/18/1999; 12:23:50 PM

Dave asks for a comparison between Manila and Blogger. Not a subject to be taken lightly for me. To start, here are some screenshots of the editing environments(kinda big): Manila Bump Blogger Editorial Interface Existing Desktop Editing Enviroment

First, where I think they are the same. Both provide a Web based editorial environment from which to update your site. Both allow you to do this within an HTML framework of your own choosing. Blogger allows you to edit and upload regardless of where you are and where your site is hosted. Manila, today, is strictly limited to editing pages that are on a Manila server, but you can do that from any Web connection just like Blogger. I'm sure that Userland plans to add the ability to use Manila to update sites served on non-Manila servers from static HTML, or even possibly other types of dynamically served environments. Both editing environments are compelling, but Manila's supports as many pages as you create, where Blogger is focused primarily on pages that contain Weblog entries. This ends up meaning that Manila has much wider reaching applications and can be used for every page of a site rather than just the actual Welog page. The entry interface on blogger is seperate from the actual page of content you are posting(see screen shot above.), and I think that it makes it a more friendly interface for the daily entries that it is focused on. Both environments support multiple author sites.(Which I won't be using, but others might want to know about.)

The editorial environment on Blogger 2.0 is also more mature.(Thus the 2.0 in its name.) It features a search engine that allows you to pull up your entires with certain strings in them. When I have two hundred daily entries in this new site, it would be really useful to have this feature. Manila provides the same functionality, assuming that you have the search engine turned on and indexing your site. Blogger also allows you to preview and then edit your posting before actually publishing it to the site. I would like to see more customization of the editorial environment in both apps. I would like to have one place as a site editor with all of my links to frequently visited sites and the edit interface for the site. This is possible with Manila through some template customization, but I haven't gotten to that stage yet.

My recommendation right now is determined by your situation. If you have an existing Weblog type site and already have a hosting environment and space, you're better off using Blogger. It will take far less reworking to get things up and running, and you won't have to sacrifice any other server side stuff you currently use such as PERL, Cold Fusion etc.. If you don't have these things, the space on Userland's Manila server offers you a chance to set things up from scratch and benefit from Userland's ongoing improvement of their offering. If you have your own server box, you can buy Frontier and set up your own Manila framework for your self and others.(I have a retired desktop machine serving 9 sites) It's worth mentioning that Userland has been improving their software on an almost daily basis. I have my copy of Frontier automatically update itself over the Internet every night, and those new features will appear in the interface seemingly out of nowhere. I love that.

Now, my dilemma. I like both environment's, but I have more content on my site than just the Weblog entries, and I have some plans to add to that content so I like the fact that Manila offers me the full site editing functionality. I'm not currently using anything server side with my site, so that's not an issue. Bump has been hosted by Mindspring since before I even had the domain name, and the hosting includes mail and dns. In order for me to move Bump to Manila, I'll either have to bite the bullet and build that stuff for my Manila server or continue to pay Mindspring for the space without actually using it. Another issue that I haven't touched on are my legacy Weblog entries. There is no easy way to move the two years of entries that I already have into either system's framework. I could do this with Manila by doing it by hand in the Guest Database framework that Manila is built from, but the amount of labor that would take seems pretty monumental. So I remain undecided, but leaning towards using Manila.

Comments, Corrections, rebukes? Email me
3/4/2001; 2:31:46 PMOkay, I'm back, and doing better than I should be. I loved my grandfather very much, he had a much bigger hand in who I turned out to be than even people who have known me for a long time might suspect. When I was really small, and my brother and I lived with he and my grandmother, I can remember getting out of bed at 5:30 am and sneaking to where I could watch him leave for work with his thermos and lunchbox. He was a great person, and though I think I've turned out to be a very different sort of person myself, I aspire to be the type of quality man that he was. If you've met me, you have met him, or at least a little part of him that lives on through me. Wherever you are now Gramps, just know that I am minding my own business.

After my personal absence, I had a business trip and then a busy week of work. This week, I'm traveling again. I'm wishing that I was going to SXSW, but I need a real vacation with beach, sun, and relaxation. I'm hoping this will occur in late March. 3/8/2001; 8:28:30 AMHere's a kungfumaster site that is actually about kung fu 3/12/2001; 1:29:34 PMMy Brother's team wins. He scored two goals. 5/30/2000; 5:16:46 AMI'm so tired of traveling. Thankfully, I won't be doing any more in the near future. Over the Memorial day weekend, I continued my string of 5 straight weeks with a plane trip somewhere for three days or less. I participated as a groomsman in one of my best friends in the world's wedding. It was a great time, and so very nice to see two people who are meant to be together make it official. Deb and JC, I wish both of you the best in your new voyage together. 5/30/2000; 5:18:38 AMI haven't been answering email in a timely manner recently. If you are one of the dozens of people I owe email to, I apologize. 5/30/2000; 5:50:53 AMI'm spending fewer and fewer hours in front of the computer right now, and I think it's really doing me some good. In addition to losing 35 lbs.(I made it to my first goal of 195 lbs. last week), I'm reading more books and spending more time working on myself. This week, however, seems like it will be a little different due to my workload. 3/16/2001; 10:50:40 AMIt shipped.(finally) 5/30/2000; 5:57:57 AMI'm listening to A Perfect Circle, Maynard from Tool's new band. It really has a Tool feel to it because of his voice, and it has the same sort of tribal backbone that Tool has. If you like Tool, you will like this CD. Their site is pretty strong too. 3/19/2001; 5:15:25 AMSo I took Friday off from work thinking that I would get in a weekend of redesigning and fixing this site. While I did have a relaxing weekend, I had no net access all weekend, which crippled my desire to do any work at all on the site. Instead, I spent a lot of time reading Cryptonomicon, which is a suberb book, and an equal amount of time in the park on my skates. The weather in Atlanta has been Springish, and I have been happy. 5/31/2000; 8:03:09 AMTradeUps.com lets you trade in your old computer equipment for new equipment. 5/31/2000; 10:43:46 AMI got a great pair of shoes from this company in the half an hour that I got to shop in New York over the weekend. Looking through the company's Web site, it looks like I might have finally found the replacement for the Simple Shoes that I've been faithful to for years but are a nightmare to find now. 5/31/2000; 12:04:34 PMI can't believe that Photoshop 6 is on the horizon already. I guess Adobe has got to keep their revenues up. Meanwhile, for Web work you could be using a version two or three years old and get the same job done. 5/31/2000; 1:38:04 PMPeople who are deprived(like those of us in Atlanta) can now purchase items from Urban Outfitters online. 6/1/2000; 5:17:38 AMI should qualify this by saying that I use both Internet Explorer and Netscape Communicator on my Macs. I tend to use Internet Explorer a little less, but it depends on what I'm doing at the time. I really really do not like when a site tells me that the browser I'm using isn't the right one, and that I can't access their site unless I go and download the right browser. To top it off, they are a technology and design publication, they should know better. Shame on you. Even worse, you've cut off half of all the Macintosh users that might come to your site. I guess there aren't many Mac users in the design space:-) 6/1/2000; 5:32:19 AMextralucky.com is great. The splash screen is fun, and the actual content and design within the site are great. It's one of those sites I have a feeling that other people have known about all along and I somehow missed the boat. 6/1/2000; 6:01:34 AMIf you've got some time to burn, this links page points to some of the best designed sites on the Web.(Thanks Pepe) 6/1/2000; 6:05:58 AMMy brother's band, Die Laughing, played two songs on yesterday's Trackers show on the Oxygen channel. They were really good. Someone should offer them a record deal. You can check out some of their material over at MP3.com 6/1/2000; 6:24:23 AMAt home treatment for carpal tunnel syndrome 6/1/2000; 6:51:57 AMYou keep using that word? I do not think it means what you think it means... You can find the entire script to The Princess Bride here 6/1/2000; 6:59:05 AMf**kedcompany.com - the dot-com deadpool Perhaps not the nicest domain and site name in the world, but the idea of a deadpool for Internet companies is a thing whose time has come. 6/1/2000; 9:22:24 AMThe new Kaliber 10000 episode is fantastic. 3/27/2001; 9:51:57 AMSo I'm all caught up in Mac OS X. 4/2/2001; 7:25:07 AMDutchWater seems like they might solve the problem currently making it difficult for rural areas to get broadband. 6/5/2000; 12:22:43 PM"I never half step cause I not a half stepper." 4/4/2001; 5:28:42 AMMIT to make nearly all course materials available free on the World Wide Web This is a huge step forward for the free sharing of educational information on the Web. Kudos to MIT for being so forward thinking. 6/6/2000; 5:43:49 AMMetallica releases Napster proof album 4/6/2001; 8:13:41 AMFor my non-metafilter reading friends, (you should read metafilter) Toast 6/7/2000; 4:51:25 AMMailstart lets you check any POP3 email account from a Web based interface. Very handy if you travel or can't check your home email any other way from work. 6/7/2000; 8:05:00 AMI finally am getting high speed Internet access at home. 6/7/2000; 11:29:29 AMA Young Person's Guide to Simple Object Access Protocol cleared a bunch of things up for me about the value of XML over HTTP. 4/10/2001; 7:01:41 AMMoving some stuff around and finally updating the template and links today. 4/10/2001; 10:58:50 AMThe gradientors link on threecolor is sure to provide those of you with the bandwidth to deal with a good deal of amusement. Cool stuff. 4/10/2001; 12:01:10 PMChapter Three of Zeldman's book has been posted by Webreference: Taking Your Talent to the Web 4/11/2001; 7:36:56 AMI switched the layout to one that resizes itself this morning. If it breaks for you, please email me and let me know.(Thanks Nathan) 4/11/2001; 8:00:34 AMWhat is Personal Software Process (PSP)? Seems like a solution to some problems that Web development shops run into on a regular basis. One problem with self trained coders, in my experience, is that they often times do not understand good methodology., 4/11/2001; 9:00:14 AMI'm not feeling that great today. Maybe it's the ridiculous pollen ccount here in Atlanta. Everything in sight is covered with a thin film of green pine pollen. Of course this isn't the pollen that is bothering me, which you can't see at all. Needless to say, I believe that an early exit from my place of employment might be necessary. 6/8/2000; 6:07:28 AMI think I forgot to mention that I bought a new computer a couple of weeks ago in an effort to move to having only one computer and not 5 computers. It's the 500 Mhz jammy, and it is actually fast enough running Windows and Linux via Virtual PC for me to discard any dedicated Intel hardware that I previously owned. In fact, it's faster than the Dell Pentium II machine I have on my desk at the office running Windows 98. I've waited a long time to have a single machine that ran every operating system fast enough, and that time has finally come. Add to that the ability to add 25 Gb portable Firewire drives as I need them and you've got a great single computer solution for anyone who needs to run everything everywhere at anytime. 6/8/2000; 7:09:41 AMShaq was just devastating last night. I don't know what the Pacers can do to stop him from running them right out of the finals. I've been a Laker fan since I was a little kid. I didn't see any real defensive strategy put in place by the Pacers, which is surprising considering they are a pretty solid defensive team. It was also pretty clear that they don't have any way of accounting for Kobe's slashing to the basket. Regardless, they are going to have to limit Kobe and Glenn Rice's effectiveness if they want to make it a decent series. 6/8/2000; 7:29:46 AMThe Sony Palm based device is approaching. 4/12/2001; 2:17:36 PMI'm sitting in perhaps the most boring, pointless meeting of my professional life. It's really great. It's a good thing there is a hub in this room, so I'm catching up on my surfing. Happy that Blogger has returned this afternoon, and I ordered a static IP for my apartment. 4/13/2001; 8:10:55 PMI finally got the static ip for my apartment today, so I've spent a lot of time at the old keyboard setting up one of my machines as a Mac OS X based Web server. I've got a ways to go before that whole thing is done. I'll let you know how it turns out. I was going to post about how much I liked the version of Opera that was released for the Mac, but then I discovered that Blogger doesn't really work when using it. 4/14/2001; 7:58:56 AMThis box is a Blue and White G3 running Mac OS X, Apache, and MySQL at my house. I'm interested in hearing how speedy it is for people. It's a beautiful day here, and I'm going outside to play right now.

One thing I find myself wishing, now that I have this home box to play with and work from, is that either Frontier or Radio Userland were available for Mac OS X so I could have them up and running on that box with the fixed IP. 4/15/2001; 8:30:07 AMI did a bit of reading yesterday, a nice combination of computers, fiction, and fun. I read Lone Wolf and Cub Vol. 1, which is the first of twelve graphic novels about a ronin. If you like Japanese history, particularly samurai stories, this graphic novel is great. Really authentic story lines, and well done illustration. 4/15/2001; 8:37:33 AMI also read about half of Cryptography Decrypted. This book is a great, mostly non-technical, introduction to basic encryption, the history of encryption, and the current state of encryption. I've been interested in digging deeper into this subject since I read the Cryptonomicon. 4/15/2001; 8:44:07 AMMatt talks today about the unreasonable Web. I'd take what he says there a step further and express the concern that the unreasonable web people may have ruined several viable business opportunities for everyone who follows them. It's going to be hard to get funding for ideas like another Kozmo with all of these failures and the bad press that has followed them. Having said that, my experience has been that VC firms as a group aren't particularly brilliant at distinguishing between a real business opportunity that meets a market need and is staffed with talented people and folks who haven't got a clue with some lame business plan with no focus. 4/15/2001; 11:31:12 AMBuilding Zope and Python on Mac OS X 6/9/2000; 5:17:29 AMAttempt number one to get my new DSL connection installed this morning failed. They didn't show up, then called to say they were 45 minutes away. Perhaps they will show up for their next scheduled appointment. 4/15/2001; 1:24:33 PMBrent is doing a great job of keeping up with Mac OS X stuff on the web at machagogo.com. 6/9/2000; 6:18:08 AMYou can add this to the list of things I lust after but cannot afford. 6/9/2000; 7:01:34 AMMan, I just have to relax a little. 6/9/2000; 10:42:28 AMI should have done this this morning, but a happy 30th birthday to my brother Chris today. 4/16/2001; 11:13:55 AMBuilding Apache 1.3.19 and PHP 4.0 for Mac OS X 1.0 4/16/2001; 11:15:22 AMMac OS X Apps is a good place to look for apps for Mac OS X, and also has a decent, but not completely exhaustive list of hardware compatibility. 4/16/2001; 11:19:19 AMWhile the link below will talk you through the building of the most recent Apache and PHP versions on Mac OS X, this page actually has a PHP package that works with the version of Apache that ships with Mac OS X. It also contains a MySQL package and the accompanying script to get MySQL to initialize upon system boot. If you are wanting a Apache/PHP/MySQL combo up and running quickly and easily, this one is the way to go. 4/18/2001; 8:37:07 AMClub Med Basics 4/18/2001; 8:55:44 AMListing of What's in the Mac OS X 10.0.1 Update. One thing about this system update, it was the first time I can ever remember a system update being released and applied to so many systems without so much as an inkling from the OS vendor as to what got changed. No documentation whatsoever about the update beyond one paragraph on the Apple Mac OS X page. Since you apply it through their software update system panel, you don't download the update as a separate file. I find it sort of disturbing to not know what got changed, what got improved, and what was new. Here we are four days later, and there still isn't anything to read except articles on third party sites like the one linked above. Not good. 4/18/2001; 9:01:14 AMStartup aims to encrypt all Web traffic. Interesting concept. It's amazing how insecure all of this stuff really is when you start to look at it from a security perspective. I'd pay an extra $10-15 a month premium to be with an ISP that really had their stuff together on the security front. 4/18/2001; 9:07:58 AMNetopia’s Timbuktu Preview for Mac OS X. 6/10/2000; 11:43:25 AMMy first post via my screaming new DSL Internet connection. Badass. 4/19/2001; 8:33:08 AMI'm leaving for a few days at Club Med in the morning. I am so very happy about this that I can't even begin to explain it. 4/24/2001; 3:12:55 PMMac OS X for Web Developers 4/24/2001; 3:14:59 PMJSP for Macs! 4/25/2001; 6:26:39 PMUsing Terminal from MacFixit has some great information for those using Mac OS X who have never been to the command line before. 4/26/2001; 7:56:06 AMTool has posted the lyrics to a few of the songs on their new CD, which will be released on May 15th on their Lateralus Preview page. Tool has to be one of my favorite musical artists of all time. When they were touring for their first CD, Opiate, I saw them open up for Henry Rollins two nights in a row at CBGB's in NYC. I had never heard of them before those shows, but have been hooked ever since. 4/26/2001; 10:26:56 AMMotorola Accompli 009 Personal Interactive Communicator. This seems like the device I've been looking for. I wonder which providers will offer it? 4/26/2001; 10:35:40 AMOthers have linked to Taking Stock of Gen X: It's Fallen Sharply, but I wanted to comment on it too. I don't feel any of the bitterness that I think tinges this article. I don't feel disenfranchised, I don't feel put down. I think that as many of the bad Internet business decisions were made by baby boomers as were made by generation x. Still, it's a good article, but I think that it's written a few years too early. 4/26/2001; 10:57:20 AMThe second Planet of the Apes Trailer is quite good, but reveals some changes in the plot of the story that I'm not too sure I like. 4/26/2001; 12:03:49 PMBowl of Cheese now gone forever. 4/27/2001; 5:11:31 AMI've stayed away from discussing politics on this site since its conception in November of 1997. Having said that, I'm alarmed and concerned about many of the things that the new administration has done in its tenure thus far. Some interesting information, which is of course quite biased by the source it comes from, is available on the 100 Days of Bush site. 4/27/2001; 6:43:08 AMFor those of us in the Web development business How to fail at business without really trying is both funny and sad. 4/27/2001; 9:24:20 AMThe HandEra330 signals the beginning of a new phase for Palm OS devices. They have done some great things here, innovating beyond what the much more hyped Handspring has managed to do. 4/29/2001; 3:45:31 PMAllaire's Practical J2EE 4/30/2001; 9:30:03 AMCringely: Cargo Cult This is another in the ongoing series of media pieces on the Internet bubble brusting and what comes next. I think, pound for pound, that this is the best one I've read so far. It is, however, some level of common sense that the same rules now apply to Internet businesses that have always applied to new businesses. If you aren't going to make money, what is the point of having a business? (via Camworld) 4/30/2001; 9:47:22 AMThe Lakers looked like a different team than the one from just a month ago dispatching Portland. I have to say that, while there are some really strong teams in the West, I now think the Lakers can get back to the finals. 4/30/2001; 10:09:14 AMthe macosxhints.com 'osxguide' 4/30/2001; 10:19:29 AMMacromedia ColdFusion 5 5/1/2001; 5:22:30 AMAOL Time Warner has launched their iPublish site. It's supposed to be an ebook community/publisher. 5/1/2001; 5:24:39 AMMicrosoft to Acquire NCompass Labs. It was only a matter of time before Microsoft recognized the strategic importance of content management and bought or developed a tool. Add this to Office and .Net and you could have a real scary picture for other CMS vendors. 5/1/2001; 8:50:53 AMHow to build a Weblog in Zope (via dangerous meta) 5/1/2001; 10:14:15 AMA new iBook that looks just like my Titanium's little brother or sister. 5/1/2001; 10:23:47 AMHere's a picture of Steve Jobs holding the new iBook open. It's hard to tell from just looking at product shots how small it is. 5/1/2001; 7:16:04 PMLooks like I will have to find another way of getting high speed access in my apartment soon. Grrr. 5/2/2001; 7:37:16 AMO'Reilly Network: The Disaster-Free Upgrade to Mac OS X (Part One) 5/2/2001; 10:49:57 AMWhat is janeBuilder? 5/2/2001; 10:56:54 AMAn X-Ray of the Powerbook G4 Titanium laptop (large) 5/3/2001; 4:15:43 AMNew York Times: Microsoft Is Set to Be Top Foe of Free Code. How shocking that Microsoft is now attempting the same tactics they have against commercial opponents against Open Source software. The GPL is not all of Open Source, and Microsoft is the enemy of innovation, not Open Source software. The real problem here is that the Open Source community doesn't have a PR department and Microsoft does. The amazing thing here is that Microsoft has been driven to improve their software by the existence of Open Source competition and they have actually used Open Source software as a part of some of their products. 5/3/2001; 4:23:14 AMSlashdot | Open Source Is Bad. Some great stuff here. 5/3/2001; 10:34:04 AMStudy: Sushi May Cut Smokers' Lung Cancer Risk. I knew I was eating sushi several times a week for some reason. 5/4/2001; 7:17:38 AMLooking for Quick and Dirty Web Development? This article talks at a non-technical level about where Macromedia is going with Flash and Cold Fusion. As someone who has used Cold Fusion on a large chunk of projects, what's coming down the pike really excites me. 6/16/2000; 5:54:06 AMI'm not missing in action. I was traveling for work again, and had fun things like flight cancellations and unexpected overnight stayover's in cities like Phoenix. I'm tired. 5/5/2001; 3:26:45 PMNot surfing and bloggin today. Instead, I went for a three mile jog and finished reading Watership Down again. I hadn't read it in a few years, and it's one of those books I seem to return to every once in a while. If you haven't read it, even if you don't enjoy the fantasy genre normally, I highly recommend it.

I'm constantly amazed by the imagination of fantasy and science fiction authors. They have the added burden of making up a new world as a stage for their story. If you have never done it, try the exercise of trying to think one up for yourself. It's challenging to come up with something original and compelling.

Finally, I've made a lot of headway over the last year in terms of the whole exercise routine. It's become a regular part of my life now, making it much easier to maintain. Now some stats, I started out weighing around 230-235. Today, I weigh 185, and my waist is 8 inches smaller than it was before. None of my clothes from a year ago fit me now. To be honest, I've weighed 185 since January, and in the months since then, I've been lowering my body fat at an average of 1.5% a month. It feels good, and once you get going, it gets a lot easier. Now if I could just stop being such an idiot all the time.... 5/5/2001; 8:48:47 PMFrom Apple's developer documentation, I present: The Classic Environment and Your Application. I found this while trying to figure out what the problem I have been experiencing with the clipboard between Classic apps and Mac OS X native apps. The answer? It doesn't work and that is how things are supposed to work. It's as if they didn't understand how important the clipboard is to getting work done. I'm still about twenty apps away from ditching Classic, so I'm stuck with the problem for now. 5/5/2001; 8:55:22 PMosx security 5/8/2001; 6:59:45 PMFor those of you learning Mac OS X who want to learn the command line for the first time, I highly recommend Using csh & tcsh by Paul DuBois. It gives you great insight into how to more effectively use tcsh, which is the shell that Apple ships installed. Despite having used Unix OSes in several different flavors over the last five years of my life, I'm learning quite a bit about customizing things and speeding things up. 5/8/2001; 8:27:35 PMO'Reilly Network: An Introduction to Extreme Programming 5/8/2001; 8:28:46 PMXP Meets XML 5/8/2001; 8:29:22 PMExtreme Programming: A Gentle Introduction. 5/8/2001; 8:30:49 PMExtreme Programming and Open Source Software 5/8/2001; 8:42:32 PMWhen did Webmonkey redesign their front page and incorporate one of those new "huge" ads? While I'm sure that a lot of work went into the redesign, I have to say that I'm not a fan. 5/8/2001; 8:46:54 PMTractor beam? 5/9/2001; 11:35:07 AMBush Orders Agencies to Save Power in California. According to this article, Bush has ordered agencies to conserve power by "cutting back on email." I'd love for someone to explain to me how cutting back on email, versus other computer activity, is going to save additional power. I'm constantly confused by our nation's leadership's lack of savvy with basic computer ideas, and the logic behind technology. I don't just mean Mr. Bush, but also our judges, legislators, and local governments. 5/10/2001; 8:04:31 AMPlua is a scripting language that runs on the Palm OS. 5/10/2001; 10:38:42 AMI'm working on a Cold Fusion/ MySQL project right now. Just a little server migration from one hosting provider to another. It was made much much easier by the existence phpMyAdmin, which is a web based administrator for MySQL databases. 6/18/2000; 6:05:29 PMI haven't been updating as much recently because I'm making an effort to spend more of my time away from the computer. I'm also trying really hard to sort out some confusing life stuff that can't be blogged for a variety of reasons. It's been a really rough few months for me, with exciting work stuff tempered by some very difficult personal issues. I finally feel like I'm getting somewhere, that there is a light at the end of the tunnel, and that I'm going to have been much better off for the experience. It's all about perspective and what's important. I went to the pool today, and enjoyed every minute of my time basking in the sun and chatting. I'm a very lucky man. 6/18/2000; 6:08:50 PMA site that reminds me how much I wish I could draw is Loobylu.(via saturn.org) 6/18/2000; 6:15:19 PMSomeone actually bought the FreeWheelz URL used in the Esquire April Fools joke(via Tomalak). 6/18/2000; 6:24:40 PMFrom xml.com, The State of XML, a must read for anyone in the Web development business. 6/18/2000; 6:34:05 PMWhenever I take my next road trip, I'll certainly be using roadside america to plan some interesting diversions along the way. 6/18/2000; 6:37:13 PMDan points out Radio Shack's ongoing annoying procedure of having to give them his address everytime he buys something. I can't believe they are still doing this, I used to be annoyed with this 15 years ago.(This shows how old I am, but I'm okay with that.) I find it to be an intrusion. 6/18/2000; 6:44:46 PMWebReview: Introducing Dreamweaver Ultradev. Tools that do thinking for you are no replacement for a skilled human coder. Having said that, this product is exciting to me because it brings things to the Mac OS platform that I had to use a Microsoft operating system for previously. The more tools on the more platforms, the merrier!! 6/18/2000; 6:53:25 PMDanger self-promotion ahead...I haven't written any magazine articles for over a year, and I'm realizing now that I want to start doing it again. If anyone who reads this runs either a Web site or a magazine that would be interested in having me write on either Internet culture or technology, please drop me an email. 6/19/2000; 7:04:52 AMAs a long time user of great games like Marathon, Myth, and Myth II, I am saddened by the acquisition of Bungie by Microsoft. 5/12/2001; 1:16:11 PM'Hitchhiker' author Adams dies. He was a really nice guy (even to a nobody like me), and he brought some amazing, humorous and inventive books into existence. I wish his family the best in what must be a trying time. 6/19/2000; 9:34:14 AMI want to elaborate on the comments below about the Bungie acquisition. This is not a good thing for consumers. I just read the FAQ that Bungie has posted on their site, and it is quite clear that this means that, in order to get access to future Bungie titles, possibly including the much anticipated HALO, you will have to buy an XBox from Microsoft. It's all about lock in and other ugly things, and I'm sure that the owners of Bungie got the compensation that they deserved in the deal.(They have done some amazing work over the last seven years.) Microsoft is buying them to create a barrier of entry for their new console, and for no other reason. 5/14/2001; 7:10:41 AMThere's a craigslist: atlanta now. 5/14/2001; 1:55:18 PMFrontier for OS X. I hadn't linked to this yet, but I have this up and running on my home server now. There is some really really interesting stuff going on here. The integration with the shell that they have built into this first UNIX version of Frontier opens things up on the interoperability front quite a bit. I've been able to do some interesting things already just calling the shell from some Frontier scripts. 5/14/2001; 2:09:46 PMAT&T Broadband came out and installed my new cable based Internet access this morning. It went surprisingly well(so far), and they came out only three days after I called to place the order. For the time being, that means I have two active high speed connections in my home. Later this week, I expect that the other connection will just disappear, that company won it's case in court last week to shut down. 5/14/2001; 5:58:28 PMI found a link to The Art of the Mix at metafilter, which was interesting because I have a long and interesting history with making mix tapes. The I noticed this XML interface they have built that allows you to access their information with xml based http requests. Even more interesting. 5/16/2001; 5:34:21 PMLinux on Your PDA 5/17/2001; 10:11:44 AMDevShed - MySQL Administration A great overview for someone who has just installed MySQL and wants to know what to do next. 5/17/2001; 10:45:14 AMOS X Links. This is easily the most stuff about Mac OS X linked in one place so far. 5/17/2001; 11:08:15 AMSSH Software list for sundry platforms. 5/18/2001; 10:08:14 AMBrent: "the average Brent and Sheila will feel less in control of their environment, as technology designed to make life easier makes life more and more annoying." 5/19/2001; 12:48:33 PMGo monkeyman Go. 5/22/2001; 7:51:34 AMhouse 5/22/2001; 8:23:56 AMTaleban to mark Afghan Hindus. Okay, I got chills up my spine reading this article. Sounds eerily like something done at one point in Germany. On the heels of blowing up the Buddhas too. Very disturbing. (via rc3.org) 5/24/2001; 8:21:03 AMTowel Day In tribute to Douglas Adams. 5/24/2001; 8:24:42 AMCam's back 5/24/2001; 8:47:20 AMThis O'Reilly Network article is a nice overview of where things are currently standing with Java on Mac OS X. 5/24/2001; 8:51:03 AMI'm interested in learning WebObjects, so I'll pose the question here because I know there are at least a couple of you who develop with WebObjects. Where do you start, what do you need? Where is there documentation? Where are there books? mail me. 5/24/2001; 9:00:06 AMApple: Mac OS X: Introduction for Web Developers 5/24/2001; 9:44:25 AMTranscript: Jeffords statement. Regardless of your political stance, you have to admire this man for his strength of conviction. He is standing up for what he believes in and showing himself to be of independent mind. 6/23/2000; 8:07:12 AMHow did I not know about the fact that there is a Final Fantasy movie coming out next year? Boy, am I slipping. The site has some very short trailer material on it that looks really good even in a tiny Quicktime window. 5/30/2001; 7:15:23 AM'IRON CHEF' TO AMERICA. A few comments about this. First, William Shatner? Second, part of what I have enjoyed so much about the Japanese version of Iron Chef has been the bad dubbing and the asian oriented cuisine. So, the bottom line is that I'm not really looking forward to this whatsoever. I would imagine they are counting on the cult popularity of the Iron Chef on the Food Network would lead to increased viewership, I somehow doubt it. (link via Eatonweb) 5/31/2001; 7:27:16 AMWindows users pay for hacker insurance. This is interesting, because of the way that insurance companies do business, it's hard to refute the fact that NT is, as a matter of fact, a less secure choice than the various unixes. (At least in the case of this particular company's clients.) 5/31/2001; 7:35:09 AMInstalling Bash on Mac OS X 5/31/2001; 7:44:11 AMI usually don't link to new Weblogs anymore. There are too many for me to do that sort of thing any justice. However, Nathan, who I work with and who has good curiousity and interests has started n0d.org. I think you'll find some really good information there. 6/25/2000; 10:28:50 AMDave announced today that Userland is carbonizing Frontier. I'm so very happy to hear this. As I begin to do more and more work with XML, I think Frontier is going to become an essential tool in my toolbox. 6/25/2000; 12:04:47 PMThis is my Web site. Where I can put stuff I want others to see online. You can call it whatever you want as far as I'm concerned because I'm still going to put up whatever I want. 5/31/2001; 8:41:19 PMPocketMac is a to be released tool for synching PocketPC devices with Microsoft Entourage on the Macintosh. As someone who, even today, experienced the pain of not being able to find any way to connect two such devices, I'm happy about it. 6/25/2000; 6:29:28 PMI watched American Movie last night. Entertaining and brilliant. Depressing and pathetic. You take your choice. Worth a viewing either way. 6/1/2001; 5:33:00 PMNokia Contact Sender 6/26/2000; 4:51:43 AMToday's soundtrack courtesy of the Jurrasic 5. Their new cd, Quality Control, is absolutely what I needed in a hip hop record right now. It's truer to the hip hop aesthetic than anything that has come out in a really really long time. I highly recommend it. 6/26/2000; 4:54:49 AMProject Cool's XML Concepts article gives an excellent high level overview of the language and surrounding concepts. WebReview does them one better with their excellent Taming the XML Beast. Read them both. 6/26/2000; 5:18:12 AMThe Real World Blows does a good job of summing up my feelings about the show which features a bunch of disfunctional people living in an MTV constructed fantasyland. Of course, it's like a car wreck and I can't look away. (Found at the ever entertaining weblog wannabe) 6/26/2000; 6:52:11 AMNew to my daily visit list: K I I R O I 6/3/2001; 6:51:02 PMDiscovering WebObjects (Apple) I got a great response to my posting about WebObjects from Jim today, and I am poring through it now. (Thanks Jim) 6/3/2001; 6:55:01 PMMoulin Rouge was incredible. Baz really outdid his earlier efforts with this one. This movie was good on so many levels, I can only describe it as a rich piece of triple chocolate cake. I'll surely be seeing it again. 6/4/2001; 9:21:55 AMLooks like Lawrence is bringing Tomalak's Realm to a close. It's a shame, but here's a big thank you to him for doing such a useful site for so long, and good luck in the future. 6/4/2001; 9:33:46 AMThis New York Times article talks about Goto.com in glowing terms for pioneering a revenue stream that is based on placement in searches. My opinion of them as a second rate player in this space is reinforced by this article. The same way I skip those "special advertising sections" that sort of masquerade as editorial in magazines, I'll go ahead and skip search results that are "enhanced" by commercial placement. here's a quote from the article that I quite enjoyed: "Even Mr. Gross, GoTo's founder, says he does not use the service for all his searches. 'If I want information, I use Google,' he said."

I also much prefer the Google model of providing related but sponsored links in another section of the page. In the end, if I were advertising, I would rather have this sort of placement with a search engine that delivers solid information than an entry that has been slipped in by the site on a second rate engine. 6/26/2000; 6:06:58 PMUserland releases Frontier 6.2 and thanks me in the process! I don't really feel like I deserve their thanks with my crazy life taking me away from being as involved as I would like. 6.2 introduces a bunch of great new features including localization. Congrats to Dave, Brent, Robert and Andre on this accomplishment. 6/26/2000; 6:09:54 PMThere's also a weblog to track the carbonization of Frontier. 6/26/2000; 6:11:28 PMI'm playing beach volleyball in a league every Monday night, except I'm not really getting to play. Last week we were cancelled because they misplaced the nets, and this week they couldn't get the lights to work. Maybe they'll get their act together when we play in two weeks. 6/26/2000; 7:40:28 PMMac Internet Explorer 5.5: The Leaked Details 6/5/2001; 6:31:33 PMStudying up for a Cold Fusion certification exam. Updates to resume tomorrow. 6/27/2000; 10:19:29 AMMacWEEK: Sony to preview Palm handheld at PC Expo. It sounds more and more like Palm has no intention of being anything more than a operating system licenser. They haven't come out with anything that really breaks the mold of the original Palm product. They've added color, more memory, and a faster processor plus wireless access, but the device has remained pretty much the same. I'm real interested in this Sony version, especially if I can stick a 128 Mb Memory Stick in it. 6/27/2000; 11:39:26 AMMy Caffeine Sampler from ThinkGeek.com arrived this afternoon. It's a scary amount of caffeine type beverages. I'm surprised the box didn't explode or slowly vibrate across the floor. 6/7/2001; 6:01:25 PMThe Standard: Time Has Come for Business 2.0. They plan to merge it with eCompany Now. 6/8/2001; 6:33:07 AMMac OS X vs. Windows 2000 Deathmatch. I'd say this is a pretty fair comparison of the two operating systems based on the criteria that was chosen. Since I have one running each of these operating systems in my bag, I'd have to say that I would place a little more weight on the availability of software for the OS than they have in this article. While Mac OS X is fantastic, some of that is potential currently and nothing more. On the other hand, Windows 2000 is like a pair of shoes that have been broken in over the last two years, all the software I need runs on it. Once X gets up a full head of steam, it will be a better operating system than 2000 or even XP, but we're at least 6 months away from that, and possibly as many as 12. Who knows what Microsoft will do with that time? 6/8/2001; 6:49:54 AMInternet World Magazine: A Bold Fusion. This is an article well worth reading for perspective. It talks about the combined resources of Allaire and Macromedia, and the end to end solution that the company will be able to offer once it has integrated its product lines. One very revealing quote from the article: "Macromedia will sell a version of ColdFusion that includes the JRun engine, but the CFML module will also be licensed to run on top of any other Java 2 Enterprise Edition server." 6/10/2001; 6:47:58 PMGreat article about the decline of Web businesses of late. 6/10/2001; 6:52:19 PMI'm not sure what's wrong with me, but I'm definitely in a major funk that I am having a hard time breaking out of. Perhaps it's work, and the industry that I'm in in general, or perhaps it's various emotional strains that I have allowed to fester finally catching up with me. Regardless, I have to find a way to break out of this "slump." Some of the symptoms include laziness beyond my run of the mill kind, a lack of desire to get out of bed in the morning and go to work, and no desire whatsoever to do anything. What helps you break out of a slump? What gets you going again? Let me know. 6/10/2001; 6:54:40 PMThe Lakers regain home court. You have to give Philly props for hanging in there with them for three full games so far. It's sure a lot more interesting to watch than the Spurs series was. 6/11/2001; 7:13:13 AMHappy 5th Birthday CamWorld! 6/28/2000; 12:21:45 PM'HTTP on steroids' headed our way. What is BXXP? I'm going to do some looking around on this right now. 6/28/2000; 12:26:54 PMSticking with the latest trends CNET launches a new Wireless section. 6/13/2001; 8:02:10 AMSoftware Methods and Tools provides a really comprehensive index of useful tools and resources for a variety of different types of development. 6/13/2001; 10:44:45 AMOver the weekend and throughout this week, The Atlanta Film and Video Festival is being held here in Atlanta. It offers some movies that have only been shown at SXSW and Sundance. So far, I have gone to see three movies, and all of them were really solid.

Scratch, which is a history of turntablism, was the best of the three in my opinion, and it did a really solid job of covering this one angle of the hip hop community. The history of the art of scratching and DJing in general was really solid. All of my favorite DJ's like QBert, Mixmaster Mike, and Cut Chemist were featured in the movie, and DJ Faust and DJ Shortee were actually at the showing. If you have any interest in this sort of thing, and an opportunity to see this movie, go see it.

Next, we went to see Burning Man: The Burning Sensation. Since I haven't been to Burning Man yet, it's hard for me to judge how well this film captures the spirit of Burning Man. The film did contain some very interesting art pieces and happenings at Burning Man, and there was excellent discussion with the film's director afterwards.

Finally, I went to see Revolution OS, a documentary about the Free Software movement and Linux. While I think this film did a great job of capturing the personalities of people like Linus Torvalds and Richard Stallman, I did not think that all of the people that they chose to focus on would have been my first choices. I would have liked to have seen some mention of PERL, and more coverage of Apache in the movie because I think that these two things, more than any other, have contributed to the success of Linux as an operating system. I also would have liked to have seen more coverage of individual distributions rather than the focus on a VA Linux, a hardware vendor. Finally, I think that this documentary went out of its way to position Microsoft as the evil empire. I would rather have been provided with the raw data and then been able to form my own opinion rather than having the situation framed in such a biased manner. Still, this film was well worth seeing no matter how much or little you know abotu the Free Software Movement. Oddly, I was unable to find a live Web site for this movie. 6/13/2001; 11:13:14 AMMoving the PVR from your house to the network? 6/13/2001; 11:23:06 AMAppleScript in a Nutshell. It's about time that someone came out with a book like this for Applescript. I'm looking forward to getting my hands on it. 6/29/2000; 8:22:21 AMMacintouch has a PC Expo 2000: Palm, Handheld and Wireless Computing Special Report. It includes a picture of the early Sony handheld prototype and some interesting notes on Bluetooth. 6/15/2001; 7:15:31 AMI'm working on the information architecture for a large site for a client right now. In working on it, I was reminded by my bookmarks file what an excellent compendium of resources are available at Jesse James Garrett's information architecture resources page is. It's a one stop shop for all your IA needs. 6/16/2001; 4:19:30 PMFor all your hip hop needs : B-Boys.com 6/18/2001; 5:23:45 PMThe word "gangsta" has been added to the Oxford English Dictionary. I'll be using this word a lot more often now. Some other choice terms added: road rage, slacker, homie, lifestyle drug, and zero tolerance. (link via the interesting Currentform.) 7/3/2000; 2:03:11 PMWhat a great long weekend. I'm getting lots of stuff done, and spent three hours yesterday reliving my youth playing Risk with two of my work friends. I saw The Patriot, which I thought was mediocre, and The Perfect Storm, which I thought was mediocre. Both were a little too Hollywood for my tastes, and I thought the first was very much a slightly altered version of Braveheart set in the American colonies during the war for independence. I hope your weekend is going as well as mine. Now I'm off to configrue my home entertainment center(this is a monster job with 9 components). 6/24/2001; 11:34:31 AMOgg Vorbis: Open Free Audio. 6/25/2001; 10:24:38 AM  Free-Lance Beat Media Cos. in Court. This will probably be a big deal for existing articles, but I'm sure all of these firms are now amending their freelance contracts to deal with this issue. 6/25/2001; 12:14:59 PMI have to say that playing Unreal Tournament until 3:30 am on the eve of a workday is not a wise move. 6/25/2001; 12:26:55 PMThis Bluetooth review is very much in need of a few of what I like to call "paragraph breaks." 6/26/2001; 1:03:21 PMThis SV.com Roundtable has some amazing insightful points being made in it. It's interesting to see a sharp mind like Bruce Perens respond to Craig Mundie's points. It seems like the sad thing here is that a well oiled PR machine like Microsoft can continue to operate through disinformation because the general public could care less about this kind of stuff. I mean Bill Gates is the ultimate computer genius, he's much smarter than the average computer user, so whatever he says must be incredibly accurate. 6/26/2001; 2:10:18 PMLiongames is reporting that a Mac OS port of Black & White is in progress. This is good news for you Mac gamers. This game is spectacular and entertaining. I've been playing it on my Win 2000 machine for the last week, and it's engaging. 7/4/2000; 6:12:57 PMI just saw In God We Trust on Cinemax. Unfortunately, the full movie isn't up on Atom's site, but it was really entertaining. 7/4/2000; 6:24:26 PMA good Salon.com article covers how The Patriot skews history and ends up making the British look far more sadistic than anything that actually happened in the American Revolutionary war. In fact, it compares this portrayal to actual war crimes committed by the Germans during World War II. How well will this film fair in Britain? 7/3/2001; 3:17:14 PMI apologize for the lack of updates. When staying in San Francisco over the weekend, someone broke into my hotel room and stole my Titanium Laptop, iPaq, and all of the other various pieces of computer equipment that I had brought on the trip for work. The most disturbing thing in the whole mess is the loss of my data and the invasion of my privacy. If you know someone in the bay area that may have purchased items like this at hot prices, feel free to email me. I, of course, have the police on the case. 7/6/2001; 6:43:29 AMDatabases for Stolen (Mobile) Computers 7/7/2001; 10:51:51 PMOthers have pointed to this book review about the Supreme Court decision on the election last year. It is worth a read, and I will without a doubt be reading the books it covers. 7/9/2000; 1:56:17 PMJoe Jackson: Live In New York: Summer in the City is the result of Joe Jackson and two friends playing small clubs as a trio in New York City last summer. As a long time fan of the man, I'm quite pleased with this cd. 7/9/2000; 2:03:51 PMI'm getting a lot done today on my apartment, which is slowly making the transition from the place where I sleep into a home. I really wish I could spend some time fixing all the problems with the current iteration of Bump and add some of the new content I was planning on adding when I redesigned a few months ago, but I much more focused on the real world right now. I'm still 40 lbs. lighter than I was in March, and I look much much better.(I know this because other people are noticing this fact on a regular basis. It's flattering when someone you barely know stops you outside your building at work to tell you how great you look, but it's even more flattering when an attractive woman you don't know approaches you with obvious interest. This wasn't happening a few months ago, and now it's happening on a regular basis.) I'm still an emotional wreck from what's happened in my life over the last few months, but at least I recognize that fact and am doing something about it. I appreciate my life so much more now than I ever have before, my family, my friends, my job, and myself. 7/9/2000; 2:07:36 PMPIX column :: Zeldman's second site offers an interesting look into how major Interactive agencies are trying to communicate via their own Web sites. Speaking from the experience of a small agency, it's a real struggle to keep the corporate site fresh and interesting when you can barely get all the actual billed work out the door. 7/9/2000; 3:01:44 PMI rented Sweet and Lowdown on DVD this week. I'm a pretty big Woody Allen fan, and I thought this film is among some of his best work. Sean Penn was excellent as Ray Emmett, the guitar genius who suffers from a lack of judgement, among other things. 7/9/2000; 3:08:18 PMThe Apache XML Project 7/10/2001; 11:53:28 AMI am finally recovering from the massive data loss and sheer privacy invasion of my laptop disappearance. It has taken me a while. I bought new equipment, not the same stuff I had because I frankly couldn't afford it. I'm hoping the hotel's insurance will cover the rest. I've written up the whole story, but don't want to publish it yet in case the thief is smart enough to check this site. I must have changed 200 passwords in the last few days, and spent almost a week getting software installed and configured. Now I have to get back on track at work where this has cost me at least one work week. Back up your data every day boys and girls, and encrypt stuff you don't want others to see with PGP and password utilities like Web Confidential (Mac OS, Windows, and Palm). 7/10/2001; 12:01:24 PMI've been watching Major League Lacrosse whenever the games are on here. I played for a couple of seasons in college, and have always loved the sport. It's so much more exciting to watch than some of the other professional sporting events on TV. 7/10/2001; 2:28:04 PMColdFusion FAQ 7/11/2001; 11:23:14 AMEmusic has almost every George Carlin album as MP3's up on their site. I continue to enjoy the unlimited downloads for $9.99 plan at eMusic very much. Especially since I started using Musicmatch Jukebox Pro as my player on my new Windows machine. As some would say, it automagically loads songs I download into my library. 7/12/2001; 6:17:05 AMOsiris G-Bag is a backpack with built in speakers for listening to music. 7/12/2001; 6:22:12 AMLeo from Screen Savers on TechTV has a blog. 7/12/2001; 6:36:43 AMDan Gillmor: Microsoft's desktop `concession' taken from same old bag of tricks

Frankly, this is too little too late for this market segement. Microsoft managed to kill off any real viable alternative to Internet Explorer. Hold on, I know you are thinking "there's Mozilla, iCab, Opera" Well think about it this way, think of all the improvements that could have been made to Netscape if they had been able to charge for their software. Think of the innovations we might have seen had they been able to sink a huge, revenue based, R & D effort behind their browser. Well here we are in 2001, and the browser hasn't really moved very far from 1998-9. This is Microsoft's fault, and we need our government to step up to the plate here and not cave and settle. 7/12/2001; 6:58:25 AMDave Winer's proposal for a browser market restoration. 7/12/2001; 7:15:44 AM"Hello my friend!!!" If you're ever at the corner of Marietta and Cone streets in Atlanta GA, you owe it to yourself to visit this man and pick up a fantastic smoothie. If you're lucky, you may turn out to be his friend. (link, picture and text courtesy of n0d.org) 7/12/2001; 7:21:43 AMOSXGNU Software Archive (via inessential) 7/12/2001; 1:36:28 PMNow, I'm not saying this is in good taste, but IsDickCheneyDeadYet.com ??? Is this something that merits it's own blog? I mean let's take this as seriously as possible. Is this person damaging the whole medium of blogging? Devaluing the very existence of "serious" blogs? In another case of dot com's over staffing, the site claims to have three staffers monitoring Dick Cheney. Do you really need three people for that or are they trying to burn through some VC money? I guess I just don't see a revenue model here. 7/12/2001; 1:46:22 PMSoftware for Information Architects 7/12/2001; 1:58:12 PMO'Reilly Network: Extending the Life Line of the Palm OS I have to say that, as I returned to the Palm platform after the loss of my iPaq, that the connection software seems a bit old fashioned to me now. It doesn't really seem like it has been revamped in a long while. Also, they still rely on third parties for even their integration with Outlook. Sure they bundle the software in the box, but this is an essential part of what their software does. Just from my own outside opinions, it seems like Palm is missing the boat on a lot of things. Each of their licensees has innovated in some way, but it would be nice if they could tie all of those innovations together moving forward. 7/13/2001; 6:16:16 AMBeijing wins 2008 Games Can't say I'm happy about this. China has an awful record of behavior, human rights abuses, and a number of other things that are not quite in the Olympic spirit. 7/13/2001; 6:17:51 AMI'm making an offer on my first house today. I'm very excited about it, and the last few weeks as I dragged my feet making a decision have moved by quite slowly. 7/13/2001; 6:45:43 AMSpider-Man Movie Trailer It looks really really good. 7/13/2001; 6:57:59 AMAKIRA2001.COM A special edition DVD of a restored version of Akira is being released July 24th. 7/17/2001; 7:49:42 AMHalf Keyboard?? 7/17/2001; 8:12:47 AMFlaw in some AirPort Base Stations. I was having this problem a couple of months ago, and had called and gotten nowhere with Apple. I called today, and they are mailing out a replacement. It's nice to know that there is good customer service somewhere. 7/17/2001; 11:41:37 AMDAVE for Mac OS X. Sharity was a one way, confusing and difficult to configure solution. I've always used Dave on my Macs, so I'm curious to see how Dave for X turns out. 7/17/2001; 12:31:51 PMMan am I ticked off at Sony right now. I bought a Sony laptop a couple of weeks ago to have a machine to use until I can replace my Powerbook. I made sure to buy a model that ships with either ME or 2000 for compatibility purposes. Since the store did not have the Windows 2000 version in stock, I went ahead and bought the ME version, knowing that I had an extra Windows 2000 license at home that I could use to upgrade the machine. Since there is a version that ships with Windows 2000 drivers, I figured that I could either download the drivers I would need or have Sony send me the drivers CD for the machine. Turns out that neither are available right now, and they can't give me a date when they will be. I'm stuck with crappy unstable Windows ME, and very unhappy with Sony. I wouldn't buy this machine if I had it to do again, and I may just go ahead and return it. God I sound like a Whiner. 7/17/2001; 4:59:28 PMThe Standard: Broadband Could Add $500 Billion to Economy, Study Says It's this sort of very misleading projecting that caused the dot bomb boom. 7/12/2000; 6:39:40 AMWell, I've got some big news today. We sold our company to a larger pre-IPO Silicon Valley firm with what, I think, is a great future and an interesting strategy based on XML technology. The last couple of months has been pretty crazy as we(the arthouse management team) fielded offers from a couple of companies, made a difficult decision about which one, if any, we wanted to pursue, and then worked our way through the merger process. It's been a great, but a little stressful, experience. I'm a little wealthier on paper today, but that's never been the most important thing to me in the first place. I'll link to the new company as soon as the press releases go out, I don't want to steal any thunder from the PR machine. 7/18/2001; 4:59:32 PMApple Previews Next Version of Mac OS X. If this press release is accurate, and the only way for current Mac OS X users to get the update to 10.1 is for $19.95, I imagine that there will be some angry people in the Mac camp. 7/20/2001; 11:31:26 AMPalm OS Emulator for PocketPC 7/23/2001; 7:48:33 AMPreview 2 of JaneBuilder released 7/23/2001; 8:54:43 AMCOLD FUSION Job Bank (hint hint) 7/23/2001; 10:34:37 AMMicrosoft hopes to create buzz for Stinger. In the article, a Jupiter analyst points out that Microsoft would have had a better chance of getting market penetration by partnering with Nokia, Motorola, or Ericsson. I'll point out right now that, by partnering with a smaller company, Microsoft will have more control, and probably more access to profit. Finally, they will be in a position to actually buy the company outright at some point. They like to be in control of the situation. 7/23/2001; 10:49:55 AMHere's some Stinger screenshots. 7/23/2001; 11:31:32 AMIt's true, it's all true. I do miss Kozmo for the exact reasons that they mention in this article: it was a symbol of an easier to manage life. 7/23/2001; 11:42:16 AMPlanning Your Site With Entity Relationship Diagrams 7/23/2001; 11:47:23 AMOpenSource Directory: OSD / XML dump You can now download the OSD in XML format. This has some very interesting potential. 7/23/2001; 12:51:17 PMAgitprop: All about text styling on the Web (via Web Graphics) 7/23/2001; 6:29:32 PMThings here seem to be getting crazier by the day. I finally got to the contract stage with the house I was offering on for the last two weeks, so that is getting hectic quick. Inspection tomorrow, and then things start to get even more stressful. At the same time, my stolen laptop reared it's head this afternoon in the form of someone who bought the Powerbook G4 at a tag sale for $500, then got suspicious later. I got a call out of the blue asking me about it, and I may be receiving it in the mail on Wednesday. Or maybe not. In related news, California law states that a hotel may only be responsible for a maximum of $250 for each bag stolen from a room. That's a great law for us business travelers huh? 7/24/2001; 6:16:42 AMA new Huey Lewis and the News CD? I thought I would never see the day:-) 7/25/2001; 11:47:53 AMA list of the Starbucks locations that currently offer Wireless Internet access(802.11b). According to this page, Atlanta will soon be joining the list. Will I ever leave Starbucks again? 7/25/2001; 1:19:59 PMGreat article that clearly outlines why Apache ends up being a more secure Web server choice than IIS. At the bottom of the article, courtesy of ZDNet, you can also get the latest prices for Apache:-) 7/26/2001; 6:23:50 AMFault-Tolerant File Storage. An interesting concept, which takes a peer to peer approach to file backup and storage. 7/26/2001; 6:28:21 AMThe CAT User Manual 7/26/2001; 9:35:06 AMToday's laptop update: I received a battered COD package this morning, and after paying the substantial fee, I unpacked a battered and beaten G4 Powerbook that is clearly mine. My data has returned, and I am now much more scared that someone else had access to all of it than I was previously. One twist I hadn't expected was that someone who knew Mac OS X well used the laptop while it was gone. Many settings were changed, things were moved around, and most of my customizations to the system were removed. This incident renews my faith in humans somewhat. 7/15/2000; 8:40:39 AMA very happy birthday to my good friends and co-workers Clint and Sara. 7/27/2001; 5:27:19 AMRadiohead: Creatively Nourished by a Steady Diet of Macintosh (via Exitwound) 7/27/2001; 6:24:50 AMSo I've been testing out Windows XP RC1 on the system at home I like to call "freak". It started out as an HP desktop about two years ago, but it doesn't resemble the machine it once was. In fact, the HP restore disks no longer recognize it as an HP, which has led to ocassional issues in installing software. Prior to installing XP on the system, I had 2000 Professional on the machine. Everything worked, and worked smoothly. So my expectations were that everything device wise would continue to work after the upgrade. Boy was I mistaken.

I should note that I'm something of an idiot. You probably know this if you have read this site on a regular basis or have met me in person, but rest assured that I'm not exaggerating a bit when I say that. I didn't read the install notes, I just burned a CD of RC1 and began my install. If I had read them, I would have noted that installing XP over Windows 2000 is an irreversible process. You can't go back without starting over from scratch.

So I installed. At first, everything seemed normal, then I noticed that my sound card, which is the newest component in my machine, wasn't working. After some surfing and a couple of emails, it was clear that the card wasn't going to work for at least a month. Then, suddenly, the ethernet card, the second newest component, stopped working altogether. Haven't been able to figure that one out yet. So that hampers my use of the machine a little. Then blue screen of death, blue screen of death, blue screen of death. Then constant rebooting without my interference. So now I'm debating whether I should make the huge migration back to Windows 2000 or wait for RC2 and the component vendors to release drivers and see if I can salvage things from where they are. It's a good thing that this machine is more of a test bed for me than a machine I actually do work on.(I was saying the same thing late last year when I installed the Mac OS X beta.) Developing a working operating system is not an easy task. 7/27/2001; 7:00:46 AMReconsidering the Privacy of Office Computers. His logic seems to make good sense. In the work environments where I have been privvy to the inner workings of IT, no one has really had the time or energy to monitor people's email or Web surfing habits. 7/27/2001; 7:51:38 AMDis adding video game, DVD to 'Tron' revival mix Yeah, bring me back some of that Tron!! 7/27/2001; 10:38:54 AMPart I The Background of Matter 7/30/2001; 6:54:48 AMI read Neil Gaiman's American Gods and Chuck Palhniuk's Choke on Saturday. Both books were really good and worth your reading time. American Gods is a more substantial book fraught with nuances that I will go back and re-explore. Choke was amusing, while not nearly as ground breaking as Fight Club, it was certainly amusing and inventive in a twisted way that is in line with Fight Club's general principles. 7/30/2001; 7:47:28 AMAmerican Pie 2 is pirated on net before release. Over the last couple of years, I've wondered several times how Hotline, arguably the first peer to peer file sharing network by a few years, has escaped the attention that some other networks have gotten. Guess that will be coming to an end now. 7/30/2001; 8:06:47 AMColdfusion XML Toolkit 7/17/2000; 5:59:41 AMWow, I have quite the different opinion of the X-Men movie than Jim has. I also was a longtime reader of the comic book, and I actually even worked in a comic book shop for a year or so. I thought that the movie was entertaining, but was somewhat dissapointed with how little some of the characters, notably Jean Grey and Scott Summers(Cyclops) were developed and used. Overall, I thought it was a good movie if you are familiar and already love the characters, but I didn't think it was a good standalone movie. There is a this rich history of stories from the comic that I wish they had tapped into a little more. Sabretooth is Wolverine's father and they didn't even hint that Sabretooth knew who Wolverine even was.

This brings up a bigger issue that I have been wrestling with about movies this summer. It seems like the overall quality of movies is declining to me. It seems like Hollywood is getting even more formulaic than they already were, or maybe there has been some change in me that makes the existing level of predictableness no longer acceptable. I've seen all the big blockbuster movies this summer and I wouldn't describe any of them as good movies with compelling stories. 7/17/2000; 6:20:34 AMI really like what Kurt's done with the new VersionTracker redesign. If you are a Mac OS user, this site is one you should know about. I use it daily. 7/17/2000; 6:22:45 AMA site that I am just loving is CaffeMocha.com. It might be the best entry in the new Webzine category I've seen for over a year. It's also a great jumping off point to a large number of well designed sites that I was unfamiliar with. 7/17/2000; 6:26:30 AMIt's about time one of the major record labels did this. I've thought for a while that the end result of this whole Napster thing was going to be that the labels would be forced to come up with a strategy for electronic distribution. It's good to see that this is starting to happen. 7/17/2000; 7:54:19 AMCNN has an article on ego surfing. I'm amazed they thought this was worthy of an article in the first place. 7/31/2001; 8:50:30 AMPython for the PalmOS 8/1/2001; 10:34:35 AMArrgh. I have some sort of chest infection. Going to the doctor. 8/1/2001; 3:06:26 PMCross-platform Wireless Networking 8/1/2001; 4:04:47 PMTurns out I have bronchitis and a sinus infection. I must rest, take drugs, and recover. 8/2/2001; 11:21:46 AMThis quick article on the effectiveness of the pop under ad got me to really thinking about why they have become so popular so quickly when I know they don't work and are a constant annoyance now. The answer is simple enough, people who generate their revenue from Internet advertising are desperate, grasping at anything that will make them money with no concern for the consequences. It's clear that no one has figured this advertising on the Internet thing properly. It's also clear to me that pop under ads are not the answer, nor are banner ads, or rich media advertising and I can't see clearly what the solution is.

I spend hours a day on the Internet, surfing through content, news and reference materials. I can't ever remember, in the many years I have been doing this, looking at a banner ad and then clicking through to buy a product. To be frank, I don't even see the banner ads anymore, nor has making the ads larger and more intrusive increased my awareness of advertising in a positive way. Even on the page that the article appears on, I didn't acknowledge the ad in the middle of the article until I went back and looked for it. I can't really draw any conclusions beyond the fact that there is very clearly a void here, a business pain that is seeking a solution. 8/2/2001; 3:03:01 PMThis screenshot based listing of Weblogs is an interesting way to start the daily surf. 8/2/2001; 4:01:45 PMHTML TIME Transitions in Internet Explorer 6 8/3/2001; 8:44:09 AMFeeling better, but still coughing up a storm. Man, have I fallen behind this week because of my illness. I'm supposed to close on my house a week from today, so I've got a lot of personal stuff to deal with. Guess I'll be working through the weekend. 8/3/2001; 9:22:47 AMTechTV | Judgment Call: Mac vs. PC My favorite quote from this piece?

"OS X is based on Unix and is probably more stable than Windows. Stability is an important feature that Windows just doesn't have. The average user can counter the instability by saving often."

Using Windows ME on my laptop currently, I watch in horror as my 384 Mb of RAM dwindles throughout my use. As the day goes on, the amount of free memory gets smaller and smaller regardless of what I am doing. Finally, I either blue screen or reboot. Since I switched to Mac OS X on my other laptop, the only time I ever reboot is when I have installed software. My Windows XP (now RC2) machine is a little better in the memory usage department. In fact, now that I have gotten past the hiccups I had, it has been downright stable. 8/3/2001; 9:34:08 AMWith everything going on with IIS and the Code Red worm, I was very surprised to see a measurable jump in IIS usage in this month's Netcraft Survey at the expense of Apache. 8/3/2001; 9:37:55 AMAl Gore has grown a beard. 8/3/2001; 9:48:08 AMI'm now taking part in the maintenance of the blog section of webgraphics. 8/3/2001; 10:11:39 AMBetaNews: Internet Explorer 6 in Final Stretches. The build they are talking about in the article is only four builds later than the one shipping with Windows XP RC2. 8/3/2001; 10:14:15 AMWorkitecht: Workitecht: FAQ 8/3/2001; 11:02:18 AMWhen great magazines have god awful Web sites: The Oxford American 8/3/2001; 1:32:29 PMI've done some of the much needed housekeeping this site required. There are now permalinks from every entry, and I added archives for all of the content that is stored with Blogger. For the years of content before that, I haven't decided what to do yet. 8/3/2001; 2:17:31 PMIntroducing the Mac Open Source Software Directory 8/4/2001; 12:06:54 PMI love the design feel of Fischler.org. 8/4/2001; 12:15:50 PMI took a couple of hours this morning when I woke up and read How to Be Good by Nick Hornby (High Fidelity). I really liked this book. It's full of witty observational humor, some of which I'm sure was lost on me as it is set in Britain, and I don't pretend to be familiar with the nuances of British life. It also asks some tough questions through the wit, and I will be thinking about those for the next few days. I'd say, without reservation, that it's worth picking up and reading.

The narrator in the book is a woman, and I've always been amazed by authors who can switch sexes in narration believably. Her husband is sort of the main character, however, and he begins the book as a consumate angry guy, something I can relate to quite easily. I'll leave the plot of the book to your reading of it, but the transitions that he goes through struck a very personal chord with me. 8/4/2001; 1:13:35 PMBob Patterson helped me, and maybe he can help you too. Bob Patterson Online 8/6/2001; 7:43:19 AMPeople who have been reading Bump for a while might remember my trying to quit smoking at least twice. One time, I even made it a whole year without smoking before regressing. Well, this time I am calling in the heavy artillery. I started taking ZYBAN this morning, which means I will be quitting ten days from now. Wish me luck. 2/6/2000; 9:26:05 PMI'm not sure why anyone would be reading this page, but if you are, I want you to know that I am just using it to test my current redesign's compatibility with Blogger. Since I can't really move the site easily right now without dealing with a few hassles, I can't use Manila. 8/7/2001; 6:56:33 AMStar Wars: Episode II to be named "Attack of the Clones" 8/8/2001; 6:53:24 AMHolding up the rear is a Salon piece that equates dot-com failure with the amount of Aeron chairs a company owned. This may be a symptom of a larger problem: cash management. 8/8/2001; 11:25:52 AMO'Reilly Network: Building a Simple Java Application in Mac OS X 8/9/2001; 7:25:31 AMSo I finally close on my house tomorrow. I don't think I had any conception prior to this how tedious buying a house is. There's this feeling in the pit of my stomach that something is going to go wrong at the last minute, so I keep checking and rechecking things to make sure that nothing goes wrong. It's not the house I linked to from here a few weeks ago, but another house that I discovered later. 8/9/2001; 7:51:07 AMI think I would like this shirt. (via Elegant Hack) 8/9/2001; 11:14:02 AMTop Ten ColdFusion Programming Tips 8/9/2001; 12:22:53 PMWas Gates - forced out - of top job? If you are interested in all these doings with MSFT, this is a must read article. (via Scripting News) 8/9/2001; 12:47:51 PMThis Convergence thing from Stardock looks like it has a lot of potential to make things in the skinning department easier on all flavors of Windows. 8/9/2001; 12:49:24 PMArrrrgh. Last minute complications with homeowners insurance have me scratching my head and crossing my fingers. 8/10/2001; 3:10:44 PMThings ended up working out quite smoothly today. I closed in about an hour and a half, and then went over to the house and changed the locks myself, which is quite a bit easier than I thought it would be. In the process, I mastered the art of locking myself out of my new house and was forced to break into it. The closing itself was sort of anticlimatic after all of the hard work it took to get there. Just a lot of paper signing and some joking around, nothing more. What's up next? Lots of work, and then moving. 8/10/2001; 3:47:45 PMshhh I should add that a server on our network at work, which was not being used for anything at the moment this was discovered, managed to get infected, and it caused more havoc(it was strain 2) than I expected. 8/10/2001; 3:51:34 PMBad start for internet bench Ummm, they forgot to turn the long distance off? 8/10/2001; 4:00:42 PMMicrosoft MechCommander 2 is really well done. Now if I could just find some cheats for the single player levels, anyone know of any? 7/21/2000; 4:23:43 AMMacWEEK: Inside the Cube confirms many things that I have thought since the Cube's introduction by Steve Jobs on Wednesday. First, it's not technically a cube at all. Second, it's really not any kind of innovation. It's the innards of a notebook computer with a full size hard drive jammed into a small form factor. It is not technologically unique in any real way from the other desktop computers that Apple sells. Steve, however, knows that he will sell a lot of these cubes and that is what this is all about. I would rather see Cupertino coming out with something innovative, take a couple of chances, and do something that makes me say wow. 8/13/2001; 9:29:45 AMThe Granddaddy of App Servers Returns 7/21/2000; 4:13:35 PMThis BBC article, Stopping the cybersquatters, makes me nervous and happy at the same time. When they start grabbing generic names because large companies want them, I'll be quite unhappy. 7/21/2000; 4:20:46 PMDetails on Kid A, the new Radiohead album from someone who has heard it. It's due for release on October 3rd. 7/22/2000; 7:06:18 AMLion meat is on the menu? I usually don't use this site as a platform to discuss this sort of thing, but I think this is a disgrace. 8/15/2001; 5:31:18 AMThe new crystal method cd is a total next level effort, which is saying something considering how good their last effort was. With the purchase of the cd, you also get access to a special area of their site with additional audio, wallpaper, and photos. 8/16/2001; 2:13:22 AMNY Times: Bellinger Helps Clemens Gain 16-1 Record. 8/16/2001; 7:42:50 AMPalm seeks software boost with Be buy. Palm was not one of the suitors I expected for Be at all. On the other hand, this might give Palm the foothold in the appliance market they need to counter Windows CE's range from set tops to handhelds. I've been reading Breaking Windows, and one thing that it impressed upon me is the success of the Windows Everywhere strategy. It's tough to fight against an opponent that helps it's developers leverage a wider range of devices. When reading this section of the book, the first thing that popped into my mind was Palm's eroding market share. In this case, however, it's not a question of Microsoft leveraging the desktop monopoly. They have actually out innovated Palm and it's partners in the last year. Palm's lack of innovation is something I was commenting on last month. 8/17/2001; 4:41:21 AMSo I stopped smoking as of midnight last night. I opted to just go with the Zyban and see how things go rather than add the nicotine patch to the mix. I'm of the opinion that the patch will just make the pain last longer. The flip side of that is that my first couple of days are going to be worse. The Zyban, however, seems to do a decent job of taking the edge off of the craving. 8/17/2001; 10:00:55 AMBetter Living Through Software "Computer people are disproportionately INTJ on Meyers-Briggs Personality type, and are disproportionately likely to consider themselves smarter than everyone else. In a company of 40,000 computer people, you don't have two poles of debate; you have approximately 40,000." Hehe so true. 8/17/2001; 10:45:49 AMMy name is Robert. This is a test post to Blogger from Frontier on Mac OS X. 8/17/2001; 11:46:40 AMI have been downloading wallpaper from dead dreamer. Excellent stuff. 8/17/2001; 5:27:12 PMOdd that in the first picture on this page they don't show the very long line that I experience, along with great soft tacos, at least once a week. 8/17/2001; 7:16:20 PMMan Macscripter.net is all over Applescript. How do I not know about this site? 8/18/2001; 3:03:43 PMDaveNet : Google upgrades the Web. Apparently, Bump is one of the sites they are indexing regularly. If you do a search on any of my posts from August 16th, August 15th, or August 13th, I come up as the first result. This is excellent progress for tracking news. 8/19/2001; 8:01:26 PMBoy am I bleary eyed. It's been a while since I had this much code to create for my employer. It feels quite good to visit this brain encapsulated world again. This weekend, in addition to coding about 45 of the 80 or so scripts I wanted to get done, I spent about four hours cleaning the pool at my new house and trying to get the chemical balance in the water right. It's going to be very rewarding having a pool, and I mean to include the hard work of maintaining the pool in that. If only I could already be moved into the new house without the hard work of packing and unpacking. Now, time for bed. See you in the morning. 8/20/2001; 5:23:11 AMThere's not much else on static5 right now, but something about this Flash animation made me say hmmmm. 8/20/2001; 5:40:30 AMcodephobia: programming tutorials to cure your fear of code. 8/20/2001; 6:14:24 AMLotsofskins.com. It looks like there are err lots of skins here. 8/20/2001; 11:55:21 AMinfoSync has the scoop on the new Jornada 560 series. They also have a "screenshot" of the Pocket PC 2002 Operating System. (It looks like Windows XP, and isn't genuine.) PocketPC Devices continue to roll along. 8/20/2001; 5:56:23 PMStill looking for desktop wallpaper that suits your taste? Looroll Wallpapers 8/21/2001; 6:11:42 AMHaving a hard time getting started this morning. This is surprising, because I finished the first leg of development yesterday, and all I have to do this morning is clean up presentation and some QA on the code I wrote over the last five days. Should be a fun breezy morning after the last few days I've had. Can't get going though. 8/21/2001; 9:01:43 AMComet :: ColdFusion & COM 8/21/2001; 12:23:11 PMI released the software I've been working on to the end users today. I'm now in that pause. You know the one. When something is done, but you really know that something, at least one big thing, will come up that needs to be fixed. At the same time, the next set of tools need to be released shortly, so I better get back to work. 8/22/2001; 10:35:40 AMSequel to Trainspotting being written 8/22/2001; 10:42:52 AMObscure Law Used to Jail Day Laborers in Georgia. Man there's some nasty stuff here, I could pull out any one of a number of ugly racist comments made by my neighbors to the North. I'm embarassed to live in a State where this is going on. I'm moving into a neighborhood where I am a minority, and I would never want to be treated the way these people are being treated. It's shameful. (via Rebecca's Pocket) 8/22/2001; 7:46:34 PMDot-Com Builder: Web Services There's a ton of stuff here that is of interest. 8/23/2001; 5:27:15 AMHappy Birthday Dad!!! 8/23/2001; 5:28:19 AMHappy Birthday Blogger!!. Now, would you please let me pay for an enhanced service? In all seriousness, tomorrow is my second anniversary of having a blogger account, and while Bump is almost 4 years old, the last two years have been much easier to maintain and keep up with due to my use of Blogger. 8/23/2001; 5:31:03 AMI've come to the conclusion that I am an American League guy trapped in a National League city. 8/23/2001; 10:58:04 AMI have to take issue with today's post over at n0d.org. I do not believe that the wrist is the waist of the arm. I instead, believe that the elbow is the waist of the arm. Sure we wear watches on our wrists like we do belts on our waist, but the wrist is nowhere near the middle of the arm. This would cause a massive balance problem, and therefore the wrist cannot be the waist of the arm. Could you imagine if our waist was at chest level? How ridiculous. Care to support the cause? Email me your reasons why the wrist is not the waist of the arm. (contact link above.) 8/23/2001; 11:12:10 AMMicrosoft lobbying campaign backfires; even dead people write in support of firm. I can't believe how unethical this is. If they are doing stuff like this here, what would lead you to believe that they were above the board in the other parts of their business practices? 8/26/2001; 8:21:37 PMximian's evolution pim looks exactly like Outlook? I'm sort of surprised by this. Not from the perspective that Outlook isn't software worth cloning, I use it every day and I think it's fine. Also, not from the perspective that cloning is unusual, cloning is a fact of life in the software business. I'm surprised that Open Source programmers at Ximian don't have some radical new way of doing this sort of app. I want innovation, not status quo. I should say that I have not used this app and I am basing my opinion on the screen shots. There could be plumbing there that I am unaware of. This, I assure you, will not be the value add that gets people to migrate from Windows to Linux. In fact, it sort of plays into MSFT's hands. 8/27/2001; 9:10:50 AMI had a great weekend in Connecticut with my family. It always does me a lot of good to go home. Every time I do, I re-discover myself. I, however, am having a rough time getting back into work mode today. 8/27/2001; 9:18:55 AMusefulinc.com: XML-RPC: PHP An XML-RPC client and server written in PHP. This is the 1.0 release. 8/27/2001; 9:26:23 AMAdvenio SQLGrinder is a native Mac OS X SQL editor and developer tool that makes your database development easier. 8/27/2001; 10:18:49 AMToday is day ten. Quitting is much easier with both the patch and Zyban. It's almost unnoticable at times, there's not the gnawing sense of loss that normally seeks to overwhelm you when you are trying to quit. Not that there haven't been cravings, and not that I haven't eaten an entire canister of Twizzlers in the last week, but things are getting easier, and I think I'm going to make it this time. 8/27/2001; 11:44:33 AMBarkley: 'Nothing positive' about a Jordan comeback. For once, I agree with Sir Charles. I want to remember Michael Jordan as the dominant player that he was in the nineties. A comeback now is bound to diminish his legacy, especially returning to a mediocre team like the Washington Wizards. There is no possible way that the Wizards will be able to compete with the likes of the Shaq and Kobe Lakers. The supporting cast, and coach, that he had in Chicago made his incredible run possible. He should stay retired as the most dominant player in the nineties and a Chicago Bull. 8/27/2001; 12:09:45 PMXML for Data: Four tips for smart architecture "However, like C++ and client-server architecture, XML isn't an answer in and of itself; it's simply a tool you can use to help build your technical solution." (via Dangerous Meta) 8/27/2001; 12:26:07 PMVR3. I'm interested in this, but do not want to spend the money to check it out without knowing more about it. Anyone got any experience with it? I'm looking for something that I can't seem to find so far, a legitimate computer in a handheld form factor. My long gone Compaq iPaq was most of the way there, but had some interface clumsiness that I really disliked. I think it still had vestiges of the whole Windows Everywhere strategy in it. My Sony Clie 710, the current contender, is decent but is limited to 128 Mb of memory and has no other expansion capabilities. Palm has really dropped the ball in innovating the OS, but you already knew that I thought that. So, I'm interested in the VR3. 8/27/2001; 12:49:33 PMThe Fink F.A.Q. 8/27/2001; 1:02:23 PMInternet World Magazine: Peering Into Sun Microsystems "Sun would like the computer industry to believe that it is the one true champion of open Web services." 8/27/2001; 7:03:33 PMFBI keeps its bugging secrets "...the Bureau argues the key logger does not fall under the terms of current legislation on bugging." Umm, then what is it? 8/28/2001; 6:53:38 AMOccam's Razor 8/28/2001; 10:13:34 AMThere's great J2EE news and information at TheServerSide.com. I'll be adding that one to the daily surf list. 8/28/2001; 1:01:02 PMIf you are running a Windows based Operating System, I recommend that you go to Lavasoft's Web site and download Ad-aware 5.5. It's eye opening how many spyware type things I found in my machine with it. It identifies processes, registry keys, and cookies that are being used to spy on you without your knowledge. It then gives you the option of deleting the offending items. If you are concerned about things like Gator and Cydoor, this is a great place to start. 8/29/2001; 7:38:39 AMFile under fundamentals: DOCTYPE Explained 8/29/2001; 10:15:38 AMAmazon.com Computers Uhh when did Amazon start selling computers? 8/29/2001; 11:00:58 AMColdFusion XML Parsers and Parsing Resource Center 8/29/2001; 11:47:49 AMMicrosoft.Net--a new monopoly? "Microsoft.Net can be summarized in one simple statement: Microsoft is building an Internet monopoly." 8/29/2001; 11:48:38 AMNew judge sets dates in Microsoft case 8/29/2001; 11:49:46 AMThis new Handspring device looks really interesting. 8/29/2001; 11:55:08 AMSlashdot | Breaking Windows. This review of Breaking Windows is very good. If you have not read this book, you should. 8/29/2001; 11:57:34 AMI was unaware that Crossgain had been purchased by BEA. It makes sense, considering that Crossgain's whole original mission, before Microsoft practically destroyed the company by enforcing non-compete agreements with it's former employees there, was to create the same sort of Internet platform that .NET represents. 8/29/2001; 8:28:29 PMDebugging Server-side Software 8/30/2001; 7:13:10 AMThis Quicken '02 for OS X review asks a very relevant question: What is Apple doing about .NET? 8/30/2001; 10:50:28 AMwhat is the purpose of this page? Is it somehow related to this page? (update: there is an explanation of the second site's purpose.) 8/30/2001; 10:54:38 AMOkay, this whole Web Services thing is starting to make my head hurt. It's tiring to constantly be trying to figure out who is trying to trick you and who is trying to lock you in. This confusion I feel right now is exactly what some companies want me to feel. Then I will rush into their safe mothering arms. eeessh 8/30/2001; 11:13:53 AMSony axes eVilla Web-surfing appliance. I'm sure this has got to make Palm feel great about their recent purchase of Be, the company that provided the OS for the device. (File under yet another failed network appliance.) When PC's are a cheap commodity, you have to provide consumers with something that competes not only on price, but also in feature set. More than likely, the entrance of a successful device in this category will come from the game console space. People buy them already, so there is no need to convince them to buy a new class of device that they are unfamiliar with. 8/30/2001; 11:20:05 AMDid I mention that the house I bought is a bungalow and that I'm moving in next week? So I'll be packing this weekend and reading American Bungalow Magazine. Lately, it's felt wierd to go to sleep in my apartment knowing that I own a house. 8/30/2001; 12:59:00 PMThis is really neat AgentBaseballlets you get up to date MLB info via AIM. (from Metafilter) 8/31/2001; 6:00:54 AMI went to see Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back last night. I really enjoyed it. Apparently, Kevin Smith's next project is a new Fletch movie named Fletch Won. 8/31/2001; 7:41:36 AMXSLTDoc "This tool is itself an XSLT stylesheet that analyzes another stylesheet and builds a clean documentation on it." (via iboy/aaronland) 8/31/2001; 11:47:24 AMI think the fact that I can relieve stress by abusing helpless chatbots might be an indication that I am a bad person. 9/2/2001; 11:44:32 AMVia Ev's site I discover that Grand Royal is going out of business. The record business is very difficult for indies, I have difficult first hand knowledge of this fact. It's ironic that I bought the most recent release from the label this afternoon. 7/28/2000; 7:59:42 PMI made some additions to the link box tonight, and I plan on actually doing some work on this site over the next two weeks. I've neglected it since my personal crisis a few months ago, and I'm ready to continue now. 7/28/2000; 8:08:51 PMI'm a huge music consumer. I mean really huge. I buy at least two cd's a week, sometimes more. I have a huge CD and record collection, and music has always played an important role in my life. I look around my apartment and realize that I am the record label's idea of a best customer. I use Napster every single day at work. Rarely is it to check out music that I have never heard of, and almost never is it to download music I don't already own. Ocassionally I'll use it to check out some songs by a group somone has recommended to me directly or via a Web site, but if I like it, I always buy the cd. Part of the reason for my use of Napster is convenience. I don't have a 100 Gb hard drive to carry all of my CD's around with me, and I can rarely predict what I'm going to be in the mood to listen to. The other part is laziness. I don't have the free time to rip my thousands of CD's to MP3 to make my collection portable. In the end, it's good news they got the stay, but I think that the labels are being incredibly short sighted and I think everyone knows it but them. 7/29/2000; 10:02:42 AMHere's a step in the right direction: eMusic has a new plan where you can pay $9.99 a month and have download access to every MP3 on their site. They have lots of good indy and major label stuff. That's less than the cost of one CD. If the major labels were smart, they'd each start a service like this. (via usr/bin/girl)

Update: I signed up for the plan and I'm finding all sorts of good stuff on their site. I'm listening to the Herbaliser's first album right now. This is the way this should be done, no micropayments, freedom to get the music I want and only keep the stuff I'm actually going to listen to. I'm cleaning up one of my extra computers and I'm going to stick it in the back of my walk in closet and store all my music on it. Perhaps I can move the bulk of my CD collection into storage in a couple of months after I've ripped them all to one of the four drives in this machine. 9/4/2001; 9:04:08 AMTomorrow is d-day for moving into the house. Needless to say I am tired, have not been using the net, and probably will not be posting much for the next couple of days as a result. Packing has gone well, but I can't say enough how much I am not a fan of moving. I've never done it well. There are stories there, but why bore you with the details of previous idiocy when there is plenty current idiocy to report? 9/4/2001; 10:49:33 AMOne more note. Choosing a satellite TV programming provider is a confusing process. It's difficult to compare DirectTV and DISH Network side by side. In the end, I went with DISH Network because it seemed to offer more programming for less money. Both are cheaper for the same amount of channels than my current digital cable AT & T setup. 9/4/2001; 11:23:59 AMAmerican Head Charge(Produced by Rick Rubin) File under industrial metal. Real good. 9/4/2001; 11:35:02 AMI see a lot of links to the HP/Compaq merger. I wonder what Microsoft thinks of the two makers, who control something like 68% of the consumer PC market, becoming one company. Suddenly, Microsoft is almost beholden to a single vendor in that one space. For the record, I think that this is a bad merger, and unless it is executed in a very very careful manner, it could prove to be the death of both companies. 9/4/2001; 11:55:01 AMNathan's new feature article on Web Graphics: A Review of Web Based Color Pickers , is a ridiculously thorough review of 32 color pickers. 9/6/2001; 10:10:55 AMI slept in a house which I own by myself for the first time in my life last night. I woke up this morning to birds chirping, and Loofa, my cat, attempting to get to the birds through the bedroom window. I guess she hasn't had too much bird experience living in apartments. It felt great to wake up in my house. Of course, when I got out of bed and saw the hundred or so cardboard boxes full of my life, reality set in. One thing I should say is that moving into a new house in the middle of the week, then returning to work, is not a good idea. I can't concentrate at all. Finally, I had pool school this morning. I learned about Ph and Chlorine, and filters and cleaning. A pool is a lot of work, but of course I knew that. I'm just hoping to get three of four weeks of swimming in before I have to close it. Well, back to work. 9/7/2001; 1:12:04 PMWorking with Javascript - Windows/Mac IE Scripting 9/10/2001; 7:31:58 AMWell, I've been working on getting unpacked, and shopping for the immediate items of furniture that I think I should have. There is a huge difference between a one bedroom apartment and a two bedroom house in terms of room. Since I have only dialup access at home currently and was quite busy, I didn't sign on all weekend. I've become quite spoiled with high speed everywhere. Since Earthlink and Bell South can't get to my Static IP DSL install for at least another week, I'm going to have to either spend more time in the office to do my personal stuff or deal with the slow dialup. On Friday night, I got the pool completely cleaned out and got the chemical balance where it was supposed to be. This led to two days of swimming in the pool. I'm really going to enjoy having it. 9/10/2001; 7:32:56 AMThe Ultimate Guide to Anamorphic Widescreen DVD. I got curious after seeing this listed as a feature on discs I was looking at buying. 9/10/2001; 8:12:29 AMMixing Java and Titanium: Part 1 9/10/2001; 10:29:36 AMIf I ever had the time, which it feels like I won't, and I was going to make the perfect home portal page to start my browsing with, it would be Superbe. 9/10/2001; 10:51:44 AMCryptonomicon cypher-FAQ . Among the things I learned by reading this document was the fact that he is writing additional novels on cryptology. These will form a series, and "certain family names keep popping up" 9/10/2001; 11:57:26 AMAccording to the Dischord News page, there will be a new full length and a mini-cd single from Fugazi released on my birthday. 9/10/2001; 11:59:27 AMMathowie talks about shower based brainstorms. I couldn't agree more. Almost every difficult programming problem that I have solved in the last few years has been solved with an idea that came to me while in the shower. 9/10/2001; 12:04:04 PMIf articles like this and this are any indication, this prediction that I made during MacWorld in July is unfortunately proving accurate. 9/12/2001; 5:50:54 AMThe horror and immensity of it all. I find myself struggling with comprehension, and somehow wishing that I could see the Pentagon or Manhattan first hand. Of course, after talking to folks in Manhattan yesterday (everyone I know is ok), there are things to be seen there now that no one should ever have to see. You can donate to the Red Cross Disaster fund here. I wish somehow that there was more I could do, something I could lift or carry, anything. I know that I have to wait, like everyone else that isn't in these two cities, for our government to figure things out and then take care of these people. My thoughts are with those who have lost someone they were close to today, and will be forever. 9/12/2001; 6:05:22 AMThis Boston Herald article has additional investigation details from this morning. 9/12/2001; 6:53:02 AMTerror groups hide behind Web encryption (USA Today) 9/12/2001; 1:35:54 PMUS Attacked: How You Can Help 9/13/2001; 5:57:39 AMTechTV New York Red Cross Needs Tech 9/13/2001; 6:11:49 AMUnited States Department of State: Patterns of Global Terrorism (1999 but still a good read.) 9/13/2001; 10:00:58 AMWorld Trade Center Survivor Database 9/13/2001; 10:18:04 AMPowell Confirms bin Laden Suspect in Attacks 9/13/2001; 10:34:20 AMBin Laden moved minutes after attacks 9/13/2001; 8:32:41 PMABCNEWS.com : 10 Cops Discovered in the Rubble. There's still hope here. 9/14/2001; 5:08:53 AMWhen I went to bed last night, they were reporting the story below. I guess it did not turn out to be true. I'm surprised that these news organizations are so very comfortable reporting unconfirmed stories then retracting them. People's lives are involved here. I can only imagine how the loved ones of the missing police officers might feel in this situation. Shame on you ABC. 9/14/2001; 5:19:35 AMTaliban anticipating massive US attack, vows revenge. Well, now this is a new stance from them in this incident. If you are so worried about our attack, why don't you give us enough access to your country to hunt down the coward that hides there, but sends others to kill innocents in our country? I can only imagine how much this will anger other Americans once it is distributed by the major media outlets. 9/14/2001; 6:28:54 AMBin Laden: Child of Privilege Who Champions Holy War. Elsewhere, I've seen references to the fact that he was trained in many of the tactics he uses by the CIA. This article, which is sort of a biographical piece, seems to ignore that fact. 9/14/2001; 9:49:52 AMI find this FOXNews story to be very inappropriate. I do not think that this is the time or the place for this sort of journalism. Not only that, as a New York State certified environmental asbestos licensee (I worked for two different environmental engineering companies in the early nineties.), I can tell you for a fact that asbestos is most definitely dangerous, and that it should not be used in any form in which it can become friable. 9/16/2001; 3:13:43 PMThe only thing I can say to you, the cowardly, weak person that sent me the very disturbing email that we "got what we deserved" from the University of Wisconsin Library is that you should at least have the decency to engage me in conversation in a way in which I can respond to you directly. I feel sorry for you. Not that your opinion about the US and this incident is different than mine, in this country we accept those opinions. That you have no regard for the completely 100% innocent people whose lives were taken and the loved ones of those same people. In turn, more lives will be lost as a result of this incident in other countries. Some of these people will not be innocent, but some will and that is a shame. I doubt you fully understand the situation because your email didn't show that understanding. I'm sure you are getting what you wanted, a public response to your email, a rise out of me. I, however, have no other way to respond. 8/3/2000; 6:42:49 AMThis has got to be the strangest Windows bug ever. 9/17/2001; 10:11:15 AMFilling the Void. I like the idea of this, and I'd even advocate it as a permanent replacement. I'm going to start posting on non-WTC related topics again to day. Not that I have forgotten, not that it's crept away from the front of my consciousness, but that it's getting unhealthy in my head. As it should be, it's virtually all I have thought about and dreamed about for the last week. I find myself at the end of this week resolved. First resolved to help in any way I can to heal the damage done to our country, to New York and to Washington, to the families and friends that lost people, and to our financial straits. Second resolved to work towards a solution to the problem of terrorism on this planet. We can clearly no longer treat our involvement with the rest of the nations and peoples on this planet as a trivial matter that will not have a direct effect on us each personally. Nor should we turn the other cheek in this matter, but use a combination of all the means at our disposal including diplomacy, financial, technology, and, where necessary, devastating violence, to put an end to this threat to the planet. 9/17/2001; 10:26:11 AMSharon puts Arab support for US at risk. WHAT is the deal with this? Israel has been acting in a manner which I do not think our government finds helpful this week. If they aren't going to be outright helpful, by taking part in talks, they should, right now, be chilling out and letting us pursue this situation. Do we have so little influence with them? 9/17/2001; 10:36:16 AMmissing pieces over at {fray} has some amazing first hand accounts by New Yorkers posted. 9/17/2001; 12:21:32 PMeBay: Auction for America 9/19/2001; 6:26:11 PMI haven't been able to get to this site since Monday, and I assumed that it was down. Others, however, can see this site without issue, so I will attempt to update it blindly until such a time as I can see it again. I assume that this is somehow Nimda related, and that is what my hosting provider has told me is crippling my access to the site. 9/19/2001; 7:33:07 PMOne thing that I have noticed, with the lack of my site, is just how much I use the link box to navigate through my daily surf. I miss it so much, in fact, that I have now built a local copy on my Titanium. 9/19/2001; 7:35:51 PMcflib.org, the Cold Fusion common function library project. 9/19/2001; 7:36:35 PMAnother Reason the Compaq-HP Merger Is a Bad Idea. The more I think about it, the less I like the idea of this merger. 8/4/2000; 9:18:35 AMI really like my TIVO a lot, and now I can hack it to add more drive space. 8/4/2000; 9:19:36 AMA few people have pointed out that my Windows bug post from yesterday isn't a Windows bug at all but a bios feature. It's still stupid:-) 8/4/2000; 9:22:55 AMLots of travel on my horizon. In the next three weeks I'll be seeing San Diego, San Francisco, Houston, and then San Francisco again. 8/4/2000; 10:08:21 AMEvery day I wake up and hope that today will be the day I will stop being such an idiot. 9/20/2001; 1:00:27 PMA Postmodern Analysis of Beastie Boys' "Shadrach" 8/4/2000; 6:16:27 PMPeople who were reading a couple of months ago will remember my rant about IKEA'a lack of a Web store. Well, it looks like things are about to change. The article implies that this new store will only serve Sweden, so I still might be waiting until they finish their Atlanta location. (via the excellent Stuffed Dog.) 9/21/2001; 7:33:35 AMFor the first time this week, I can actually see this site. Wierd. 8/4/2000; 7:47:42 PMThis has got to be a joke right? A 1200 Mhz Mac? Would Apple even allow this to happen? The case design is much cooler looking than Apple's cube. It can't be real, can it? 9/21/2001; 9:58:23 AMWow, this article is a really good critique of six different tacts our country could take in the face of the current situation. (Via a jaundiced eye) 9/21/2001; 10:40:27 AMPrepare for Casualties, Bush Says, While Asking Support of Nation "We are in a fight for our principles, and our first responsibility is to live by them. No one should be singled out for unfair treatment or unkind words because of their ethnic background or religious faith." WORD. 9/21/2001; 10:46:03 AMPowell battles Pentagon over terrorism strategy This just underlines for me, again, how complex an issue this situation is when looked at as a whole and taking into account the world's economy. 9/21/2001; 11:35:01 AMFrom Brent, ways to spend money to help the economy. 9/21/2001; 11:42:02 AMFighting Terrorism on a Global Front By Kofi A. Annan "Of this solidarity, let no one be in doubt." 9/21/2001; 12:09:11 PMMixmaster Mike's new dj compilation, spin psycle is the type of high quality stufff we have come to expect from him. For those unfamiliar with Mixmaster Mike, he has djed for the Beastie Boys for the last four years. 9/21/2001; 1:23:02 PMWindows Me has to be the worst operating system ever released. After weeks of rebooting my computer several times a day just trying to do basic work, I finally managed to damage some component of the start up/logon process. Now, I cannot log onto the machine as myself. During the same several week long time frame, I have also been using my Powerbook G4 every day. It has crashed twice. Of course, I can't get database work done right now, which is what needs to get done. So I'm angry that Microsoft's product, which I paid for like an idiot, is of substandard quality. The answer, of course, is to spend more money upgrading to Windows XP, throwing good money after bad. I wish we could demand that they improve the products we already have purchased so that they are usable before we buy a new version. I'm also angry that Microsoft's Database Client Tools only work on their operating system platform. If it weren't for that one simple app, I would be using the Mac full time. It's a spin cycle of lock in. 9/24/2001; 4:37:34 AMApple - Mac OS X 10.1 "AppleScript also uses the Internet standard SOAP and XML protocols to enable communication across your network so you can send AppleScript events from one Mac OS X system to another." 9/24/2001; 4:48:14 AMAnguish for Vast Toll of Children Left Behind I've cried a couple of times since this whole awful situation came about, but this article really struck me where it counts. These kids will never be the same because of this, and there was nothing that they could do about it. Losing a parent is the single most life altering event that a child could possibly experience. It matters not whether they have adequate care from loving people, the kids will always be missing something. How uncompassionate are the people who would do such a thing, rob children of their parents? My anger does not fade, in fact it is enhanced with each day that goes by, with each heartbreaking story that I hear. I will not forget. 9/24/2001; 5:53:56 AMCommentary: Another worm, more patches "Gartner recommends that businesses hit by both Code Red and Nimda immediately investigate alternatives to IIS, including moving Web applications to Web server software from other vendors such as iPlanet and Apache." 9/24/2001; 6:13:39 AMOracle boss urges national ID cards, offers free software Every time I hear this idea, I see people whose political stances I normally agree with immediately and vehemently disagreeing. Maybe I do not understand something about this issue, but it seems to me that we already have a somewhat national id system in our driver's licenses. Because these vary on a state to state basis, they are much more difficult to track on a national level. In many cases, including here in Georgia, fingerprint data is included in the existing ID. So what's the big deal here? I think this idea provides additional security, and would not necessarily cause any issues for law abiding citizens. Please educate me as to why this is a bad idea. 9/24/2001; 7:13:31 AMI read The Free Lunch by Spider Robinson on Saturday while waiting for the cable guy that never showed. A nice diversion from my current state of mind. 9/24/2001; 7:47:17 AMDave says, "The point behind that is that people are saying our strategy is stupid, and missing that our strategy might not be what you think it is. In other words, you might be the stupid one."

I've been thinking along exactly these same lines. I hear people making all sorts of statements about what we are doing, how it is wrong, how we should be doing this or that instead. I hate to say this, but I find that it's mostly people in the pacifist camp making these sort of statements. We haven't done anything visible yet, which I think is very telling. I give this administration, which I disagree with on almost every domestic issue, all the credit in the world in this situation. Are you mad because they haven't released their proof about who is involved/culpable in the act? Well, do you really have enough information about the investigation and our strategy to be mad? 9/25/2001; 5:27:00 AMarstechnica: Mac OS X 10.1 hits the street 9/25/2001; 5:28:05 AMApple to harvest OS X upgrade 9/25/2001; 5:40:00 AMApple's - Mac OS X 10.1 page 9/25/2001; 5:40:45 AMJobs to announce OS X 10.1 at Seybold 9/25/2001; 5:46:02 AMMac OS X 10.1 Installer Music "Sources running final build of the new OS say that that the new installer plays Viennese electronica/dance band Kruder and Dorfmeister's "Sofa Rocker-Sofa Surfer" off their double album The K&D Sessions." 9/25/2001; 6:23:14 AMDamien has been dealing with "a fairly nasty attack on my name, email adress, character, and domain". This is worth a read. 9/25/2001; 10:38:56 AMAppleScript - Mac OS X v. 10.1 The Applescript Studio link doesn't work yet. 9/25/2001; 10:40:05 AMScript Menu Oh yeah, baby, oh yeah. 9/26/2001; 4:37:12 AMRival Schools, a band formed out of the ashes of NYC bands like Quicksand, just released United by Fate, their debut CD. If you liked Quicksand, you'll love this record. It is quickly becoming my favorite CD released this year. Like so many times in my life, I had a chance to see them a couple of weeks ago, but hadn't heard them yet, and so didn't know if I should go or not. I went to a dinner party and out afterwards instead. I am regretting not going to see them after the dinner party now. 9/26/2001; 7:25:53 AMThe Onion | 26 September 2001. I can't believe some of the stuff they came up with. This is some really funny stuff right when I needed it, Thanks. 9/26/2001; 10:50:20 AMBush urges religious tolerance. I am so happy that he is hammering this issue over and over because it is so important. I've got a longish write up about how I feel currently about what we have done so far and how I think we should be following up going forward with the rest of the world and inside the US. I'm hoping to have time to post it tonight. I'm quite tired, at the end of an 8 month project. Quite literally the end. 9/28/2001; 7:49:21 AMU.S. official: Special forces in Afghan operations We have already been on the ground in Asia. 9/28/2001; 8:08:42 AMMicrosoft stands by IIS, despite Gartner recommendation "Microsoft says its Internet Information Server (IIS) is as secure as comparable products from other vendors." Well, in that case, Microsoft lies. It's not as secure. 9/28/2001; 11:15:40 AMRecently, perhaps as a result of the giant emotional upheaval that I, and the rest of our country have been through, I have a real visual focus kicking in. Perhaps also spurred by photographs over at exitwound and harrumph. I have a sudden urge to make beautiful interesting things that some might call inspiration. 9/30/2001; 8:57:00 AMWeekends too short, repeat weekends too short. 9/30/2001; 9:01:24 AMI have upgraded to Mac OS X 10.1 this morning. Real smooth, and many of the changes made were obviously based primarily on end user feedback. Many things that bothered me have been changed or enhanced in ways that make them more better. I like it when things are more better. 10/1/2001; 11:34:30 AMConflict on the horizon. "...they were holding the Saudi-born millionaire and hiding him in secret for his own safety." I'm having a hard time understanding the tactical position that the Taliban, and even Bin Laden himself, are taking here. It's clear, despite the difficulty of waging a conventional land war in Afghanistan, that the deck is so completely stacked against them that there is only one way in which they can even stay in power. So, wouldn't it be better to hand over this person, and maintain power in the country? I'm sure they could then talk the US into economic aid. It seems that, regardless of their current position, they are choosing to try and win this one very small battle rather than looking long term. Knowing this, there is only one explanantion that makes any sense, which is that Bin Laden is the one really running things there. By not having an official position in the government he manipulates our current system of world nation state relations and poses a sort of Catch 22 situation. From a PR perspective, it is necessary for our country to eliminate the confusion about his role in Afghanistan. 10/1/2001; 11:40:50 AMSubversion Project Home Page "The goal of the Subversion project is to build a version control system that is a compelling replacement for CVS in the open source community." 10/1/2001; 11:42:51 AMEasy Web Content Management with XMLcmNOW "XMLcmNOW is a content management system based on XML and XSLT technology." (via dangerous meta) 10/1/2001; 11:53:22 AMOS X 10.1 includes support for Java WebStart I noticed this last night, but wasn't quite sure what it meant and if it was really something I would find interesting. Now, I think it is. This page has some interesting demos. 10/1/2001; 12:07:56 PMThey Might Be Giants new CD, Mink Car, delights as they always seem to. "You're older than you've ever been, and now you're even older." 10/1/2001; 1:47:55 PMPotential Mac OS X 10.1 Gotchas 10/2/2001; 8:40:27 AMtweaker is Nine Inch Nails founding member Chris Vrenna. Quirky and rewarding, in my opinion, the song with David Sylvian, which you can download, is really good. 10/3/2001; 7:21:54 AMSalman Rushdie: Fighting the Forces of Invisibility. To be fair, I've seen this article linked on a variety of sites, but I think it's important enough to point to it from here as well. I think this quote says it all: "To excuse such an atrocity by blaming U.S. government policies is to deny the basic idea of all morality: that individuals are responsible for their actions." 10/3/2001; 8:00:03 AMWhy Compaq's iPaq won't dominate new Pocket PCs "The seeming domination of Compaq's iPAQ over all things Pocket PC probably comes to an end this week." 10/3/2001; 8:29:33 AMMaking XML-RPC and SOAP Requests With AppleScript 10/4/2001; 11:05:00 AMwww.5inch.com custom designed cdr's and cases. ( I do, however, doubt that many American men will be buying the shirts they are selling that have a huge 5" on the chest.) 10/4/2001; 12:12:56 PMPocket PC 2002 10/5/2001; 5:57:50 AMWired: Onion's Bitter Tears of Irony "There is no upside to this, except in making people think about how far up their asses their heads have been." 10/5/2001; 6:46:51 AMMy gym has moved into the Internet era and I can finally look to see what classes are being offered each day online. Not very exciting for anyone else, I would guess, but exciting for me. 10/5/2001; 10:12:22 AMThe Weblogger User Group : Announcing the Weblogger User Group I'm going to try and organize whatever Atlanta chapter there is going to be. If you are an Atlanta blogger and interested in meeting other Atlanta bloggers, email me. Please also know what nights are best for you and where you live in Atlanta. 10/5/2001; 10:48:37 AMStudent Suspended Over Suspected Use of PHP "A teacher overheard him say that he was using PHP, and as part of our Zero-Tolerance policy against drug use, he was immediately suspended." 10/5/2001; 10:57:25 AMWriteTheWeb: Introducing MovableType Of course, if you haven't heard of movabletype, you should go here first. 10/5/2001; 12:50:26 PMI forgot to mention how floored and excited I was by the Fellowship of The Ring Trailer. Is it sad, in fact, that I knew the exact moment of each of the pieces within the context of the book upon seeing them? Can you name the one reallly obvious plot difference shown in the trailer? 8/10/2000; 8:08:51 AMI'm in San Diego now, well actually Rancho Bernardo which is North of San Diego. I'm taking a training class in some new software that my company is using that implements content management and an application framework using XML, XSL, And XSLT. It's a pretty interesting set of technology. Tonight I begin my travels again, heading North to San Francisco to prepare for a few days of development work at our corporate office. I'll definitely get into some XSLT stuff in the next few days. 10/6/2001; 4:08:22 PMCoding a search engine that allows the user to search several databases of Web content as well as binary data stored in the file system is not as much fun as it looks, I'm afraid. I've been working through the weekend, and I'm not too happy about it. However, I did manage to sneak in some yard work "fun" this afternoon. I'll be happy when it's all over. 10/6/2001; 4:19:21 PMThe Halloween Dock App. "An animated hallo-weenie pumpkin for your dock." (Mac OS X only) 10/7/2001; 11:26:34 AMAnd so it begins. We are attacking. 10/8/2001; 6:56:49 AMDespite the lack of opinion in yesterday's post, my dear old Unamerican friend from September sent me another gem of an email yesterday, saying (and I am quoting directly here) that "America will pay dearly for this." and "Fuck America" I'm trying to decide if this is something I should be forwarding to the FBI. The first is most certainly something that could be construed as a threat against our country. Finally, I am confused by people who condemn this nation, but take advantage of it's freedoms as a guest. You don't like it? I think you might have a good idea where our borders are, go across them. One of the freedoms you have in this country is the freedom to leave. 10/8/2001; 7:56:35 AMCF_XMLRPC is a set of tags that implements the Remote Procedure Call over XML (XML-RPC) specification in ColdFusion. (via Scripting News) 10/8/2001; 8:07:45 AMDave says: "Of course the American League is not a "real" league."

hehe. Why don't you come talk to me about your "league" when your team has won half the World Series that mine has? Oh, perhaps it is difficult to get a good perspective when your team has only been around since 1959? When your team has been around for another 56 years you might have the perspective to understand what a real league is. Heh. 10/8/2001; 9:50:30 AMphpGroupWare is a multi-user web-based groupware suite written in PHP. 10/8/2001; 6:14:13 PMApple: Perl on Mac OS X 10/9/2001; 10:09:36 AMFBI Page Detailing Hijackers activities before attack. I had missed this, as I'm sure I've missed a lot of things in the sea of information we are all swimming in. 10/10/2001; 7:36:45 AMIs That So? 10/10/2001; 10:49:23 AMSo I just went out to lunch with some people who thought, for some reason, that it would be neat if I could mention the fact that we had lunch on my Web site. Can you imagine that? 10/10/2001; 11:04:00 AMNY Times: Interactive Map of the targets hit in Afghanistan on October 7th and 8th. 10/10/2001; 11:30:03 AMDan Bricklin: Copy Protection Robs The Future 10/15/2001; 7:07:11 AMI had a great weekend away from my keyboard. It's incredible how many leaves the Pecan tree in my backyard is dropping. I think it may be having a contest with the Pecan tree in my front yard to see who can drop the most leaves in the shortest amount of time. I received, as an early birthday present, a George Foreman Lean Mean Grilling Machine. I'm going to fire that baby up tonight. Well, back to workish activities. 10/15/2001; 11:44:01 AMAlways a few months behind the curve, I joined the ranks of the laid off this morning. I am now considering my options and checking my financial situation. This is not an amicable situation, but I'll get into that later. The entire Atlanta office of my company is now kaput. 10/16/2001; 7:54:25 AMContest: If I were a Hobbit, I would be an adult today. How old am I? The prize is yet to be determined, but will be something good. (The two people who I tried this out on are not eligible to win, so Nathan and Sara please do not respond.) 10/17/2001; 10:00:57 AMI have a winner in the contest. The answer was 33. 10/17/2001; 12:02:35 PMI'm waiting for AT&T Broadband to come and install cable. Conveniently, I didn't have to take time off to wait due to my lack of a job. Needless to say, this whole waiting thing is getting a little old. I'm about two minutes away from the end of my "window", and there is no sign of them yet. Of course, this is somewhat less frustrating than my current home Internet access situation. Bellsouth came out and turned my Earthlink DSL connection on over a month ago, but Earthlink has failed to deliver the equipment for that connection. So it sits there and I am constrained to a dialup connection. What in the world happened to customer service? 10/17/2001; 5:34:01 PMMmmm cable. I haven't had television for over a month. I mostly wanted to get it again now because of the baseball post-season. I was so happy that the Yankees won their first series against Oakland. Unlike many other Yankee fans these days it seems, I don't take the post-season for granted. I was a Yankee fan through the very challenging eighties. Say what you will, there is no franchise in the history of organized sports that has a larger commitment to excellence than the Bronx Bombers. While other franchises may flirt with success, the Yanks have returned to the well over and over again. Now, in my opinion, that's a philosphy. That's one I've believed in for the twenty five years I have been a Yankee fan now, all my baseball life. 10/17/2001; 5:59:29 PMYankees beat Mariners in Game One 4-2.. There is no doubt in my mind that this is going to be a great series. Two great teams with character. That's something that the National League lacks these days. It's certainly not that there aren't players with character on the two National League clubs that remain, but just that it doesn't seem like the teams themselves have character. 10/18/2001; 9:45:03 AMBrent's really kicking butt over at mac.scripting.com. This is more interesting to me than it would have been a month ago. Mac OS x 10.1 has really brought me back over to the Mac platform full time. Still wishing for a few more apps though. 10/18/2001; 9:59:27 AMThis article reports on some interesting developments in the whole title 9 debate that has raged seemingly forever. Seems that, by and large, the women who run these programs seem to not be very happy that men are invading their sport. If these women were men running, say men's football programs at these schools, they would be looked down upon for trying to exclude an athlete based on their sex. I say to these people, you can't have it both ways. You have to apply these rules equally, and if an athlete is better than another athlete, you must play them. 10/18/2001; 7:58:07 PMESPN.com has become "msn.espn.go.com" over the years. What's next? "yahoo.msn.aol.cnn.time.espn.go.com"? Come on now people. 10/18/2001; 8:26:45 PMYankees edge Mariners to take 2-0 ALCS lead. Works for me. Don't believe the media's attempts to now convince you that this series is all but over. The Mariners are a strong franchise, just like the Yankees, with character. It won't be over until the last out. 8/15/2000; 1:44:27 PMI'm now very tired of traveling. I've had lost luggage, and am now in my third city on this trip.(I leave for my fourth tomorrow morning.) Here's a great article on TIVO that I ripped off from Ev. 8/15/2000; 1:48:45 PMI've been through a lot of changes in the past six months, and spending a lot of time by myself on this trip has made me realize many of them that I somehow hadn't noticed before. Spending time by yourself can be good. I think the biggest change in me is that I appreciate everything in my life much more than I did a few months ago when I was on autopilot. Not to give the impression that everything is rosy in Robertland. Far from it. I'm dealing with very difficult emotions every day, but I appreciate the opportunity to deal with them and make progress. 8/15/2000; 1:58:54 PMNow some XSLT pointers and dialogue. I've got really mixed feelings about XSLT, and I'm going to be using it every day for the foreseeable future. It has some great stuff in it, but I feel like it is somewhat incomplete, and that it could have been taken a couple of steps further and made far more useful. The best general resource I've found so far is XSLT.com. Their "What is XSLT?" page is an excellent overview of what it is and what it is used for. The updated Chapter 14 from The XML Bible has a good overview section as well. Basically, XSLT provides the tools to transform XML documents from one format to another. 10/21/2001; 7:45:46 PMYankees win 3-1 by a walkoff home run. Man, great baseball by both teams tonight. On a separate note, I can't believe how humble these players are. Think about this, they have basically dominated the sport of baseball for the last five years. I don't hear any of them, not a one, making any claims about how great their team is. They basically let their playing do the talking. Some others seem to feel like they can assign any negative emotion they want to the Yankees, but I haven't seen anything that resembles what he describes in the dugout or in print. I haven't missed a game yet. Get a grip ya sore loser. The Yankees have character, more than you are giving them credit for. 10/21/2001; 8:00:33 PMWhen did blogdex redesign? The summaries are very helpful. 10/22/2001; 7:47:02 PMThey are playing "New York, New York" in the Bronx right now because the Yankees are going to their fourth straight World Series. Looking back, three weeks ago, no one expected them to be here, but they came through. That's character. 10/22/2001; 7:53:58 PMJoe Torre: "To me, the NY on our caps means more than baseball this year." 10/23/2001; 10:13:31 AMApple - iPod 10/28/2001; 5:55:58 PMNot much updating going on here the last few days. I've been doing a bunch of things, but mainly coming to grips with where I'm at in my life right now and trying to decide which way I want to go now. I'm sure this whole process is something that everyone who gets laid off goes through after their layoff. I'll be more active here this week as I ramp myself back up and begin looking into both contract work and full time jobs. First things first though, a revamped resume is job one for the early part of this week. 10/28/2001; 6:25:39 PMI spent five hours yesterday as part of a group of volunteers planting trees at Bessie Brahnam Park near my new house. Boy am I sore today. The Georgia clay we were planting into was severly compressed and seemed like rock at times. 10/28/2001; 6:49:48 PMD-backs go up 2-0 in series. What can you say? Randy Johnson was incredible tonight. Now it goes back to New York. We'll see... 10/30/2001; 4:46:21 PMMacworld: First Look: iPod I've kept my mouth shut while listening to other's criticisms of this device. Let me say now, however, that I have owned a Creative Nomad Jukebox, and the differences are huge. The Nomad Jukebox eats batteries very quickly, and I got about two hours of playback at the most out of it. The interface on it for navigating music is sometimes maddening, other times barely usable. Finally, transferring music takes forever. Sure it has huge capacity, but it has all sorts of things wrong with it. I look forward to using something that tranfers the music more quickly, lasts longer, and has a better interface. (I had a RioVolt for a few weeks before it got stolen, and it had the same interface issue when there was a lot of music to navigate.) 10/31/2001; 8:40:52 PMFINAL: Yankees 4, Diamondbacks 3. What a game. I can't remember a game through this whole stretch since 1996 as a Yankees fan where I was more on the edge of my seat. Talk about character, talk about never giving up, talk about finding a way to get it done. Still a long three game series to go, but it would have been quite a different story without a win tonight. 11/1/2001; 10:25:02 PMI'm speechless after tonight's Yankee win. Two nights in a row? wow. 11/2/2001; 1:14:17 PMI AM 43% PUNK.
(via Dansays)
11/2/2001; 1:21:24 PMAs an aside about the below, boy was I yelled at by Hank once. He was doing two night's worth of shows with the Beastie Boys at Roseland in New York. A friend hooked me up with backstage passes to both shows, and the first night, Ice Cube made an appearance with the opening band, whose name I can't remember right now, but they were proteges of his somehow. While the Beasties were on stage that night, Hank was standing next to me watching the show. The Beasties were really kicking it, and I turned to Hank to say something about how great they were. Hank interrupted me saying, "Don't talk to me, I watching the fucking show." Then he walked away. 11/2/2001; 2:38:42 PMThe song "Chop Suey" off of System of a Down's newest cd is set on repeat in my kitchen right now. It's got this really interesting vibe to it that, for some reason, reminds me of an opera.(mixed with some very heavy instruments)

11/4/2001; 7:36:24 PMLet me be among the first to congratulate Arizona for their win against the Yankees tonight. Both teams played their hearts out during this series, and although I didn't get the results I wanted, it was great baseball to watch as a fan. To the Yankees, you've been great for us the last five years, and no one even expected you to get by Oakland this year. You beat Oakland and Seattle, and played a great World Series, Thanks. 11/6/2001; 2:19:24 PMArs Technica: The State of Transmeta. I think that it's interesting, or at least worth noting, that there has been a shift in this industry due to the dominance of some key players in each market segment. Emerging companies, to some extent, can at best get the big players to take notice of what they are doing and get the big players to shift their strategy to encompass what the emerging company is doing. We heard so much about Transmeta, partly because of Linus Torvalds' involvement, and how it was going to cause innovation in the portable space. We saw Intel have to up their pace of innovation briefly in order to head this off. So, in effect, they did cause innovation in the portable space. 11/6/2001; 2:34:57 PMI have been using Mac OS X on my Mac laptop since August when it returned from its magical journey into the netherworld.(I really need to write up the whole saga of my hotel theft and how it ended up getting resolved.) Today, for the first time in ages, I booted the machine into Mac OS 9 to use a USB device that has no OS X drivers. Mac OS 9 now feels old fashioned to me. It's slower, by far, on the same hardware. Things crash, something that just doesn't happen to me on X. Networking is not really as robust or as fast. It's interesting how accustomed to a new technology you can become in two plus months. 11/6/2001; 2:38:19 PMOn a similar subject. I ordered DSL on August 24th. Bellsouth turned on the line on September 10th. Today is November 6th. I still don't have the equipment from Earthlink. The last time I called (last week), they said that September 11th had screwed up their ordering system and that it should ship out immediately. Yeah right. Did I mention that it's November 6th? 11/6/2001; 2:41:34 PMNew Fugazi album good. (Still only $10.) 11/7/2001; 4:42:19 AMAtlanta Elections 2001 results. In my local city council district (Post 5), we managed to vote in a new city councilwoman. I'm very happy about this, as our incumbent was not very in tune with what is going on in our neighborhood. 11/7/2001; 4:44:58 AMSmall Step for iPod, Giant Leap for Apple "What Apple needs is Windows compatibility for the iPod." 11/7/2001; 4:50:52 AMMLB Owners OK Eliminating 2 Teams. The fallout from over-expansion in professional sports has begun. These leagues have been expanding willy nilly over the last ten years especially. I firmly believe that a storied franchise like the Twins, which was competitive even this season (they came in second place), shouldn't be considered for contraction. Instead, they should be looking at the teams who were the most recently added, and they should look at long term viability rather than attendance from this year. It would be a shame to get rid of the Minnesota franchise when both Florida franchises are a joke. 11/7/2001; 4:56:21 AMA Cartoonist's Venture Into the World of E-Books Scott Adams, of Dilbert fame, makes some really great points about ebooks. 11/7/2001; 5:03:44 AMDespite loss, Yanks sure made mark on history. That's what teams with real character do. 11/7/2001; 5:09:31 AMNine states balk at Microsoft deal "Microsoft's attorney, however, said the company was finished negotiating." What? Finished negotiating? Does no one in our government have a problem with this continued arrogance in the face of their being found guilty by the courts? 11/8/2001; 3:12:35 PMHands on with the Handspring Treo 11/8/2001; 4:14:23 PMiPod Free File Access. This lets you access the music stored on the device in the "hidden" folder, making, I assume, it possible for you to two way transfer music that is on the device against Apple's wishes. (Mac OS 9) 11/13/2001; 7:38:36 AMApple releases an updated Airport base station that supports 128 bit encryption and can act as a firewall. 8/26/2000; 12:08:13 PMAlien Skin has a free Eye Candy 4000 beta for ya. 8/26/2000; 12:09:10 PMThe new Charlie Hunter CD is really really good stuff. I'm grooving to it right now. 11/14/2001; 6:42:21 PMXpod Windows software for the iPod. 11/19/2001; 7:59:35 AM I've had my iPod for almost a week now, and here's a few observations about it. First, it's small, just slightly bigger than the rio 600 that I use when I go to the gym. The size difference when compared to the Archos Jukebox or the Nomad Jukebox makes a huge difference when I use it in my car, or when traveling. It's not noticeably heavy either. While I wish that it came with some sort of case, it fits without issue in my Incase MD/MP3 Music Belt which also has a pocket for the earbud style headphones it shipped with. (I highly recommend Incase's product line, as I use their bags for my laptops as well.)

As far as design and interface goes, this is, without a doubt, the best MP3 product I have used to date. The integrated scroll wheel makes it quite easy to navigate through the large amount of music that the device holds, and the simplicity of having only five buttons and a hold switch made learning to use the device a snap. The only thing really lacking from the device management interface is the ability to construct playlists on the fly. You are expected to do this using the iTunes 2 application that manages the music stored on the device. The use of the Chicago font has made the interface really easy to read, and the "now playing" information screen scrolls to allow you to see beyond the limits of the screen size when song or artist names are very long. No such option exists in the song list view, and I wish that they had done something to allow you to see the full title of the highlighted song scroll. The backlight is bright and makes the screen very readable in low light conditions. In comparison to the Nomad Jukebox, and the RioVolt, two other devices I have owned which need to navigate through similar amounts of music and settings, the iPod is much more readable and usable. The back of the device is a chromed stainless steel that is so shiny that it can be used as a shaving mirror. The downside to that is that it smudges really easily. The front of the device is incased in a quarter inch thick plexiglass shield that protects the LCD screen. Again, this will scratch really easily, which will lead to my being more protective of the device than most of my portable audio devices. The top of the device, which contains the Firewire port, headphone jack, and hold switch is easily accessible, and the device will stand vertically. I do wonder why they didn't include a cover or bumper for the exposed Firewire port. It seems that someone who is careless with their iPod could unintentionally damage this very important connector.

The device charges when attached to the computer via the same firewire connection it uses to synch the mp3 files. Additionally, the device comes with a dedicated charger that plugs into an electrical socket for charging without a computer. I haven't used the device for longer than two hours thus far, but the battery still showed a full charge after the two hour listening session. Charging seems very rapid via the firewire connection, but I have not, as yet, doen any tests to see just how long it takes to charge an empty or close to empty battery.

The iPod comes with no user manual, but a quick start guide is provided. The iPod help file, which installs with iTunes 2, is pretty comprehensive. Again, the device is so straightforward that the only thing I have actually had to look up was the location of the iPod options within iTunes 2. The CD included contains only the installers for the Mac OS 9 and Mac OS X versions of iTunes 2. I was surprised by this because Apple ships all of their machines with a bunch of MP3's pre-installed now. In addition, the device had no MP3's on it out of the box. They missed an opportunity to push some stuff on us there, which is not something I would expect from Apple.

The earbud heaphones that ship with the device are very nice, and they sound great. They are slightly larger than most earbud style headphones I have used previously. They are comfortable in my ears, so much so that I managed to fall asleep on a plane yesterday with them in my ears. I would imagine that the level of comfort with them will vary with the size and shape of an individual's ears, and people with smaller ears may find them a bit large. They ship with a straight "stem" rather than the L-shaped most audio devices ship with now, and this makes fitting the device into either a vertical or horizontal case with the headphones plugged in more difficult. The device, in general, sounds very good, as I would expect it to. I don't feel that there is a large difference between any of the devices I have used in terms of sound quality. The iPod doesn't have controls that allow you to adjust the bass and treble of music you are listening to while you are listening to it. Again, this is something that you are expected to do with the iTunes application. This is one case where I really think it would be helpful to have the feature built into the device. It's quite difficult to judge how things are going to sound through headphones without going through them using the headphones on the computer first.

Setting the device up with my computer, a first generation Powerbook G4/500 running MacOS X 10.1.1, took only a few minutes. I had already installed iTunes 2 when it was released by Apple the previous week, and no additional software was required. Upon attaching the Firewire cable to the iPod, iTunes launched and asked me what name I wanted to assign to the device automatically. The initial synch of my music, which at that point was only about 300 songs, took about three minutes. In comparison, my initial synch of my Nomad Jukebox took well over an hour. The difference makes the addition of new music to the device much less of an ordeal. Since the initial synch, I have ripped and added about 300 additional songs to the device, with the synching part of the process being neglible in comparison to the time it takes to rip from the CD's. Aside from the interface and size, this is, to me, the hugest selling point of this device. While listening to music, the device buffers a large chunk of music to it's RAM, so that it is unusual to feel the hard drive spinning. Another huge upside to this is that there is not a huge pause in between songs like the other hard drive based players I have used. iTunes allows the user to either synch their entire library, specific playlists within their library, or manually manage the transfer of files without iTunes doing the transfers automatically. I find iTunes 2 to be clean sounding and easy to use as a desktop player, and the integration with the device is flawless.

Finally, a quick tweak of the iPod settings in iTunes (accessed by clicking on the iPod options button) allows you to mount the device as an external hard drive. This does not give you access to the music on the device, probably to keep the RIAA happy, but there are already hacks out there that allow the user to see and transfer the music. (See the free file access link below for one.) I have not, as of yet, used the hard drive feature beyond just mounting it and testing a file transfer, but I can imagine that it will come in handy in the future, and makes the device that much more flexible and useful. Personally, I think Apple has differentiated this device from its competition enough to justify the price. If you have questions about the above, or are curious about something I failed to mention, please feel free to email me, and I will update this posting with additional details in response to your questions. 11/19/2001; 8:54:33 AMZope for Mac OS X (binary distribution) 11/19/2001; 9:12:32 AMI obviously haven't been updating here much in the last couple of weeks. Since I was laid off in October, I have been taking stock in things and trying to decide what I want to do next. I was in New York visiting family last week, and my return to Atlanta was delayed by the sad plane crash on Monday. I'm now actively seeking new employment, but I'm betting that I won't find something that I'm excited about until after January 1st. This is the worst time of year to look for new employment, with the holidays and the end of budget cycles interfering. I'm happy that I've been smart with my money over the last couple of years because it has given me a lot more flexibility. If, for some reason, I don't get to another update in the next couple of days, Happy Thanksgiving. In the face of everything that has happened in the last couple of months, I feel, more than ever, that I have a real lot to be thankful for. I have great people in my life, an amazing family, and my health. These things are more important to me than anything as temporary as a job. 11/19/2001; 9:15:40 AMiPodHacks.com: Your source for the latest hacks, mods, tips and tricks. (via Mr. Barrett) 11/19/2001; 10:00:57 AMCrypt "Crypt is a native MacOSX application for encrypting and decrypting files with a password of your choice." 11/19/2001; 2:54:33 PMPhotoshop: It's All the Rage 11/20/2001; 8:12:36 AMI've updated yesterday's iPod review with additional details about synchronization, documentation, and power consumption. 11/20/2001; 9:07:44 AMSecret Santa. Great idea. If you have a Web site and an Amazon wish list, check it out. I signed up. (via kottke) 9/1/2000; 7:47:34 AMFrom the new set of articles up on WebReview XML Tutorial 3: XSL Transformations. THey also have a really good overview of Cold Fusion for people who want to learn more about it, and where it stands in relation to other middleware technologies. 9/1/2000; 7:49:48 AMIKEA has a preview of their 2001 catalog online 9/1/2000; 7:55:12 AMI'm going to XML World 2000 in Boston next week. If you are going. or are in Boston and would like to get together, let me know. 9/1/2000; 9:38:52 AMSimon St.Laurent has started an XML/XHTML tips mailing list. 9/1/2000; 9:42:11 AM::: caffemocha ::: continues to refine and redesign. It's really good stuff. 9/1/2000; 9:49:23 AMI should have pointed to this excellent article when I originally read it, but somehow it slipped my mind. Check out Style vs. Design by Grandmaster Zeldman. 9/4/2000; 10:52:06 AMThis is a demonstration post. 9/4/2000; 2:36:09 PMAn Excellent Bookmarklets tutorial. 9/4/2000; 4:25:00 PMHere's a review of Compaq's iPAQ PocketPC found via Scripting News. Could it be that this is the end of my love affair with the Palm OS? Probably not, as there is no Mac support for the iPaq. I don't like lock in. 12/9/2001; 12:33:11 PMO'Reilly Network: Apache Web-Serving with Mac OS X 12/9/2001; 1:16:37 PMMac OS X Metadata Proposal (and petition). As someone using Mac OS X, I can say that Apple really needs to rethink this one area, which has really been a differentiating feature of the Classic Mac OS for years. I haven't had time to read this proposal to comment on it's merit yet, but this is a necessary discussion. 12/12/2001; 12:48:24 PMMegway Transporting Human (presented by 0sil8) 9/8/2000; 10:05:51 AMRebecca's newest essay effort weblogs: a history and perspective is a fantastic overview of the form with some great perspective and analysis. 9/8/2000; 10:11:46 AMI'm still in Boston, and will be returning to Atlanta tomorrow. The XML World show was pretty good, despite my getting sick on the second day and being kind of laid up for 24 hours as a result. There is so much happening with XML so rapidly right now that I don't think anyone can easily have a handle on everything. I was a little dissapointed to find that some of the major players weren't at this show, but IBM and some of the other big players that were here didn't dissapoint. The one SOAP session today was canceled at the last moment, which was a huge dissapointment. Tonight, I'm going to make my second trip to Fenway Park this week to try and see the Yankees, with the Rocket on the mound, play the Red Sox. 12/17/2001; 7:56:35 AMApparently, I'm not the only one having problems with getting DSL equipment from Earthlink. Ordered in August, I might add. 12/17/2001; 2:07:46 PMAs you can tell, the lack of a high speed Internet connection at home is reall hampering the amount of posting that gets done here. I guess I got spoiled over the last couple of years, and going to back to using dialup has been dreadful. I'm hoping to get more posting done over the next couple of weeks and into the new year. 12/18/2001; 12:34:57 PMI was planning on seeing The Lord of the Rings : The Fellowship Of The Ring this week at some point, but I was going to avoid the madness of seeing one of the midnight showings. This morning, however, I found myself surfing for tickets, and I will be going to see it at 12:01 am. Since the movie runs almost three hours long, that makes for a late night for Robert. 12/18/2001; 1:42:04 PMNote to self: do more research on the support and repair policies of companies you buy equipment from. I bought a Nikon Coolpix 885 a month ago. Great camera, I was really enjoying it, especially the enhanced macro ability. This afternoon, it just decided that it wasn't going to work anymore. It's on strike or something. Well, I have Christmas with my family next week and a wedding to go to after that, so I need my camera. Nikon's support policies dictate that there is no way for me to have a working camera by that time. Worse yet, they seem to have no sympathy to my plight whatsoever. I don't care if they make the best camera on the planet that costs half what the other guys does, I've made my last purchase with them. A camera is no good to me if I can't use it when it really counts. 12/18/2001; 2:01:33 PMAdCritic.com is offline until further notice. Damn. This one was one of my regular stops. 12/18/2001; 4:20:12 PMO'Reilly Network: Apache Web-Serving with Mac OS X: Part 2 Part 2 is where he gets to things that will be of more interest to Mac folks who might not be so familiar with Apache and the Command Line. If you don't have a copy of Mac OS X in front of you to play with, you might wany yo hold off. 12/19/2001; 12:19:09 AMThe Lord of the Rings : The Fellowship Of The Ring. It was great. Worth seeing regardless of whether you have read the book/are a fan of the book. The scenery and effects were stellar. I also have very few issues with the way they handled the abridgement of the story to fit it into the three hours. I am quite tired now, but will either edit this post to add to it or add additional posts with new thoughts when I wake up this morning. 9/9/2000; 6:42:34 PMI did manage to get into the Red Sox/Yankees game last night, and got to see Roger Clemens, and my Yankees, beat Boston handily. Here's the ESPN recap of the game, which features a picture of the results of the scariest moment of the night, when Boston pitcher Bryce Florie was drilled in the face by a comebacker line drive. The entire stadium went from loud and crazy to silent in that moment. The Yanks beat them again today.

There were many more Yankee hats and shirts in Boston than vice versa.(I saw the two teams play in the Bronx in May.) It seemed a lot safer for those people than the people I saw in New York with Red Sox hats etc... The game was a great time. 9/9/2000; 6:47:21 PMWaiting for that new k10k to be launched tomorrow. 9/9/2000; 6:49:41 PM/caffemocha put up a new version of their site while I was out of town. 9/9/2000; 7:05:04 PMI'm watching BattleBots. They destroy each other. For some reason, I love it. 9/10/2000; 11:22:28 AMDave hangin out with Chuck D? So weird to me to have two people that have had so much influence on me communicating. Public Enemy's music had a profound effect on me, but I haven't listened to any of the new stuff. 9/10/2000; 11:31:24 AM3 days to the Mac OS X beta. 9/10/2000; 11:33:50 AMDamn, Kozmo is out of everything I want. Must have been a long weekend for them. 9/10/2000; 11:45:29 AMI went shopping in Boston yesterday and bought some neat looking Gravis shoes. Pretty good Flash site too. The shoes are really comfortable. It's not, for you gamers, the same company that made your joystick. 9/10/2000; 11:53:57 AMI'm re-reading Lord Foul's Bane, which I hadn't read since I was in high school. It's different from most Fantasy books in that there is a rich and deep sub-text about the main character's battle with leprosy that is inextricably linked to his behavior in the book. If you like Fantasy and haven't read this series, you should get on it. I love re-reading books at different times in my life. It leads to picking out different things, and learning different things from the same book. How my imagination drew the characters ten years ago and how it draws them now are different. 9/10/2000; 2:23:38 PMDavezilla is funny and well designed. 9/10/2000; 4:17:01 PMFrom the "always taking it to the next level" category, the Beastie Boys are releasing a 2 DISC DVD Video Anthology on October 10th which allows you to watch 18 of their videos with different angles and mixes. It's on order, of course. 9/10/2000; 4:54:21 PMSomehow, I had forgotten about Everything. 9/10/2000; 8:06:38 PMI had a chance to check out the new Sony Palm OS handheld. I wasn't all that impressed. It didn't feel very natural in my hand. The lack of Mac OS support is surprising considering that every other Palm based device offers it. 9/10/2000; 8:21:03 PMIn an effort to get everything in my home hooked up to my high speed Internet connection, I picked up this Linksys router. I agree with the review, dead simple and it works great. 9/11/2000; 10:44:06 AMBBEdit 6.0 was released this afternoon. 9/11/2000; 10:50:36 AMSalon has an interview with the head dude at TiVO. 9/11/2000; 8:02:36 PMwaferbaby corners matt haughey and heather. 9/12/2000; 2:22:11 PMWhere Hobbits Live Virtually. They're using Red Hat to render the effects for The Fellowship of the Ring. 9/12/2000; 2:26:05 PMToday's cool link stolen from Zeldman: **fontomas*** 12/31/2001; 2:58:12 PMWalter Mossberg: "Our government and courts shouldn't try to destroy, or run, Microsoft. But they should require the software monopoly to expand consumer choice in its dominant operating system. Unfortunately, in 2001, that's not what happened." 1/2/2002; 5:31:27 PMIt's snowing here in Atlanta. More than it has since I've lived here. Happy New Year! 1/2/2002; 9:21:40 PMYou might want to read this if you are using grokster or Limewire. 1/2/2002; 9:23:30 PMMacworld Interview with Trent from Nine Inch Nails. 9/13/2000; 5:46:07 PMI just spent some time downloading the entire new Smashing Pumpkins album from www.billy-corgan.net. I think it's interesting that I don't know if this is legal or not. Is it? 1/3/2002; 6:35:57 AMZingg! for Mac OS X adds an "open with" contextual menu to allow you to choose what app you open a file with. Really useful stuff for freeware. 1/3/2002; 6:41:57 AMSeems like just about everything in Atlanta is closed or opening late today. It's actually still snowing here too. This city is just not really used to snow, because this amount wouldn't close anything in Albany, New York where I lived previously. My backyard looks very cute with everything covered in snow. 1/3/2002; 7:42:02 AMArs Technica: Wizardry 8 Jeez, it has come a long way since I was playing it on my Mac SE/20 1/3/2002; 7:49:53 AMhit-or-miss.org : Matt's TiVo There's some stuff here to dig through. (via kottke.org) 1/3/2002; 8:05:27 AMSpymac has images and videos of Apple's iWalk PDA that they are claiming will be released at MacWorld. It looks convincing enough to check out. 1/3/2002; 8:20:06 AMPalm Be Apple / Could a triple merger be in the works? Yet another article speculating about a merger that I doubt will ever happen. I think that the value of Palm is rapidly becoming marginalized by PocketPC and other technology. It is far more likely that Apple would develop their own PDA tech than merge with Palm. Lest we forget, there are egos involved on both sides of this idea. Finally, I wish journalists would deliver some value and facts to indicate something like this rather than pure speculation. 1/3/2002; 4:38:59 PMApple: NIN DVD 9/14/2000; 7:27:55 AMDr. Dobb's MacintoshDeveloper.com is a new Mac developer site with some great content already. 9/14/2000; 1:48:53 PMOuch, just had a deep teeth cleaning done. 9/15/2000; 6:52:17 AMI'm taking part in Behind the Curtain 1/10/2002; 11:41:07 AMGood news, my DSL modem shipped!! Finally, I mean really finally, I will get back to a normal update schedule. I do not recommend Earthlink DSL, I had nothing but problems with them. I ordered the service in August, and they shipped the modem today, you do the math. 1/10/2002; 11:44:46 AMRadio UserLand : Radio and Mac OS X (shipping tomorrow?) 1/10/2002; 11:51:34 AMI honestly don't have much to say about the MacWorld keynote stuff. I like the way the new iMac looks, but I have ceased to use desktop computers for the most part. Laptops are more useful. iPhoto, I downloaded and checked it out, it's really neat to have the easy output options for my digital photos. I'm much more interested in the progression of Mac OS X and digging into it. I'm on it full time now, and I have abandoned all of my classic apps for the time being. The release of the Palm Desktop beta brings me to a point where I am only waiting on Photoshop/Fireworks/Flash. Also, I still love my iPod. 1/10/2002; 12:12:12 PMThe next generation TiVo seems pretty uninspired to me. I suspect that the game consoles are going to be what wins this whole digital media center battle. I bought an Xbox a couple fo weeks ago, and it is only like three steps away from having the features that the TiVo has. It has the necessary hardware now. Having said that, I remain skeptical of the whole media center idea. Unlike a better PDA, I do not find myself waiting with expectation for this stuff. 1/11/2002; 10:15:53 AMRadio UserLand for Webloggers 1/11/2002; 3:11:39 PMA List Apart: CMS & the Single Web Designer 1/11/2002; 3:16:14 PMAfter getting laid off in October, I have spent the ensuing months getting my act together and evaluating my life. I also spent a real lot of time with my family, and a smaller amount of time fighting with my previous employer over my severance and accrued vacation. (That matter is now in the hands of the courts.) I'm turning a corner now though, ready to return to the working world, ready for the structure of work. Next week I will begin my job search. 1/12/2002; 6:43:00 AMRadio UserLand 8 has shipped. It's available for Windows, Classic Mac OS and Mac OS X. You owe it to yourself to check it out. 1/13/2002; 8:05:55 PMI've been spending most of my computer time this weekend playing with Radio. 1/13/2002; 9:23:41 PMTechTV | Supergeek Challenge: Mac OS X 9/18/2000; 8:22:48 AMI finally sent Heather a picture which is now posted on Jezebel's Mirror. 1/14/2002; 7:38:17 AMNo More Popup Ads This site gives a listing of links that will allow you to opt out of pop up ads from a variety of ad networks. Very useful. Just posting it here in case you haven't seen it the other hundred places it is posted. 1/14/2002; 9:02:45 AMORANGE COUNTY is the early frontrunner for the worst movie of 2002. Jack Black was the only thing that makes this movie worth seeing, but there isn't nearly enough of him to justify his billing. 9/18/2000; 9:37:45 AMYou should read Beyond the Browser on the newly redirected alistapart.zeldman.com 1/14/2002; 10:17:00 AMBTW, there is also Radio Bump right now. I am updating both. At some point, the new backend and all of the posts will return here. In the meantime, there will be construction debris over there. Also, I finally have high speed Internet at my home. 1/15/2002; 6:04:07 PMXbox may spawn entertainment hub It doesn't take an industry analyst to connect the dots on this one. 1/15/2002; 7:10:46 PMI am now using Dave's new tool to mirror posts between regular Bump(currently powered by Blogger) and Radio Bump (currently powered by Radio Userland). So you can choose to visit either and you will get all of the content for the time being. It just worked on the first try. That's Cool. Really. 1/15/2002; 7:22:20 PMTechTV: 'Tron' Turns 20 1/15/2002; 8:32:10 PM"css/edge is intended, first and foremost, to be as relentlessly creative with CSS as we have been practical all these years. It does not exist to present or explain safe cross-browser techniques; in fact, almost the opposite. The goal here is to find ways to make CSS live up to its fullest potential, with only minimal regard to browser limitations." 1/15/2002; 8:43:35 PMLord of the Rings in 2 Hours It contains some hilarious lines like this one from Saruman: "See, all I had to do was cross out "Good" on my business cards and write "Bad," and I'm all set. " 1/16/2002; 5:49:45 AMAccording to this article, Earthlink has been building a high speed wireless network here in Atlanta to test this new service out. 1/16/2002; 11:13:06 AMDigital Web Magazine: Building the Business Game Plan "Process: either you love it or you hate it." Amen to that. Constantly evolving a process while getting work done is tough work for everyone. 1/16/2002; 11:19:48 AMApple posts AirPort Admin Utility for Windows [MacCentral] I find this surprising in a way. If MSFT came out with something like the Airport, they would probably lock you into administering it with their platform. Then again, they can afford to do that. 1/16/2002; 11:38:49 AMCNN: Atlanta test-drives the 'Segway' transporter Damn I wish I had known about this. 1/16/2002; 11:39:52 AMWell, I'm off to the gym. The combination of new broadband and Radio Userland has made me want to get much more active posting wise. One of my neighbors just fixed a loose board in the fence in my backyard just because he had his tools out. Nice people these neighbors. 1/16/2002; 3:48:59 PMThe Allaire Website no longer exists. 1/16/2002; 4:38:42 PMDan hits the nail on the head today with his evaluation of the state of the music industry. I think what the music industry doesn't seem to understand, probably because they are out of touch, is that by continuing to retrench without offering a better alternative, they are are just making the problem worse. They are making me want to download music. 1/16/2002; 4:45:56 PMRadio UserLand : New App Release: 8.0.1 1/16/2002; 6:08:47 PMWe Knew There'd Be Scandals (via Boing Boing) 1/17/2002; 9:00:02 AMThe Register covers the Be Auction "Cruelly the only assets of real value - BeOS itself and the staff - now belong to Palm, possibly the stupidest technology company on Earth." 1/17/2002; 2:11:56 PMCarriers Aim to Kill Number Portability I have been wanting this for a long time. I have been stuck with my current provider due to the fact that I don't want to lose the number I've had for the last four years. (via metafilter) 1/17/2002; 2:16:58 PMMusic services want easy licensing, death to pirates [MacCentral] Nowhere in this article do the label people mention cost and the fact that consumers are fed up with rising CD prices. 1/17/2002; 2:26:06 PMGo2Mac.com: Palm OS 5 on Tap for PalmSource 2002 1/17/2002; 6:39:59 PMTest post. Having trouble getting this thing to properly publish in both places because my ISP changed the ftp server setup without sending out an email first to warn me. So Blogger was not publishing at all. Combine that with intermittent publishing issues with Radio due to the Mac OS X/upstreaming problem and you've got one confused kiddie here. 1/18/2002; 9:14:41 AMThe Register: Distributed computing case ends with probation. God I'm am so glad that this guy didn't do any time. 1/18/2002; 11:30:17 AMNews.com: CD creator burns copy-protection efforts "We worry (the labels) don't know what they're doing." Ummm, I think he's onto something. (via rc3.org) 1/19/2002; 3:40:23 PMEnjoying the rainy day. 1/20/2002; 9:12:03 PMRadio UserLand : RadioExpress (now Mac OS X compatible) 1/21/2002; 6:40:21 AMThe Royal Tenenbaums was the funniest movie released in 2001. Somehow I forgot to mention that fact here. I thought it was brilliant and hilarious. 1/21/2002; 12:36:46 PMBugzilla: Mac OS X Installation Notes 1/21/2002; 12:42:27 PMPropellerhead Announces OS X Support This is great news for those of us that noodle around with music creation. I have been constrained to using the Classic Mac OS when trying out music stuff, but with apps like these finally coming, things are beginnning to turn that corner. Now if they would just get Photoshop and Flash out the door...... 1/21/2002; 4:37:45 PMThis is the first phone I've seen in a while that made me want to go out and buy a new cellphone. 1/21/2002; 8:51:09 PMTechTV | Set Up a Macintosh Music System 1/22/2002; 7:18:09 AMNY Times: Amazon Surprises Wall St. With First Quarterly Profit This is fantastic news. 1/23/2002; 1:30:18 PMI'm working on a short term freelance project with a friend of mine, so my updates might be sparser than normal. It's sort of a neat device we are doing QA on, but I , of course, am not allowed to talk about that here. 1/23/2002; 1:43:56 PMComputer News: Putting the Mac in Macromedia This is sort of an update, with some excuses, for why Macromedia hasn't delivered their apps on Mac OS X. As someone who has used their software for years, and almost always on the Mac, I think we should be a little insulted that they spurned developing apps for our platform for several months while they were working on their Windows XP compatible products. No wonder they lost so much money this quarter. 1/23/2002; 1:55:26 PM'Mac OS X Unleashed' book available I picked up a copy of this book this afternoon. It looks very good, the best book I've seen so far in terms of its coverage of the BSD stuff underneath Mac OS X. 1/23/2002; 3:27:26 PMOkay, I admit it, I'm really stressed out today. 1/23/2002; 5:59:28 PMMcSweeney's Internet Tendency: On the Implausibility of the Death Star's Trash Compactor (Via Pigs and Fishes) 1/23/2002; 6:29:13 PMTrying to update Radio Bump with one of Beowulf's new themes. Assuming you are at "regular" Bump, go check it out. 1/23/2002; 6:39:35 PMI can't get a fix for this upstreaming problem soon enough. (not a complaint mind you, I know how hard this stuff really is.) just another publishing attempt:-) 1/23/2002; 7:18:48 PMStress makes me tired. 9/22/2000; 6:26:38 AMA randomly generated Internet company 1/24/2002; 6:38:54 AMThe Register: Antitrust legal beagles suing MS and DoJ I'm guessing that eventually, even people out of the loop are getting this picture. This settlement is not good for our Industry, for consumers, and was not come to in a proper legal manner based on all of the suits that are being brought as a result of it. 9/22/2000; 6:34:43 AMI've, of course, obtained a copy of the new Radiohead album, Kid A. It's brilliant. It's a fitting follow up to OK Computer. You should be at the music store on October 3rd to buy it. I will be. You can find more information at Follow Me Around too. 9/22/2000; 6:36:17 AMI've been ripping all of my CD's to MP3 over the last few weeks. When you have as many CD's as I have, this isn't a trivial task. I estimate that I will have ripped everything by this time next year, when other, higher quality formats start stealing MP3's thunder. 9/22/2000; 6:41:14 AMMy copy of the Mac OS X beta arrived yesterday. While I'm sure I'll end up writing a much longer piece with overall impressions and some detailed information for you techies, my first impressions were powerful ones. I installed it on my G3 Powerbook and on a Blue and White G3 tower yesterday. Installation is easy as pie. The Aqua interface didn't annoy me as much as I thought. I had a little bit of a hard time getting the Classic(read legacy) Mac OS environment to work properly, but it was the fault of extensions that communicate directly with hardware. It's seems very powerful, and it works. By the time this thing gets to market, it's going to be a juggernaut. 1/24/2002; 12:04:14 PMOne of the more popular records here in "The ATL" over the last few months has been PREFUSE73. I absolutely love it. Take regular DJ induced jazz drenched hip hop beats and throw them in a blender, and you have this group. 1/24/2002; 12:39:41 PMThe Unofficial Green Lantern Corps Web Page They have a listing of all known Green Lantern's and their appearance history on this site. Talk about doing a thorough job at something that is very labor intensive. I don't talk about comics much here because I haven't bought a book in probably three years, but I have an extensive comic book collection, much of which I obtained while working at a comic shop. 1/24/2002; 12:45:53 PMI have to agree with Mr. Barrett, who I am lifting this link from, but whose site you should be reading every day anyway. Macintosh Tech Tips has some really solid information and tips for the Mac OS X user. 1/24/2002; 1:44:03 PMOne CD that I missed out on somehow until this week is the new one from Sigur Ros. I would say that they are in the same musical family as Radiohead, but from the Icelandic branch of the family. It certainly evokes emotion as well as Radiohead does for me. 1/24/2002; 2:04:19 PMIt's raining here again. Of course, it was seventy degrees here today, so I don't have too much room for complaints. It does seem, however, that the rain is conspiring against my getting any yard work done around the house. Not that this place doesn't have plenty of stuff that needs to be done inside. I am very much in need of stuff to hang on the walls in most of my house. I have apartment quality wall hangings that I want to phase out, and so I haven't hung any of them. I did hang some of my animation cels. (I have a particularly good Scooby Doo and Shaggy cel with the actual production background.) These, however, give the house a certain childish vibe that I do not want to foster. Patience, I guess, is a virtue. 1/24/2002; 2:11:31 PMThis Apple Article talks about audio software and hardware that was announced for Mac OS X. It's a pretty solid list of players, which makes me quite happy, even as a hobbyist. 1/24/2002; 5:41:15 PMStanton Final Scratch looks like the next killer app in the DJ game. 1/25/2002; 7:53:35 AMA .NET primer for Mac users 1/25/2002; 8:12:33 AMiPod Central 1/25/2002; 8:18:39 AMPanorama iPod Organizer This is a desktop app that writes phones numbers etc. as files with ID3 tags that the iPod will recognize. It's an interesting idea, but I would so much rather see this capability built into the OS. I have to say, again, that the number one thing I would like my iPod to be able to do that it does not currently have is a clock. I would like to be able to see what time it is on the device. Adding an alarm clock feature would also be nice, so you could have a travel alarm clock with the purchase of some small portable speakers. Speaking of which, does anyone have experience with any of the small portable speakers on the market? I'd love to get a recommendation for a set that sound reasonably good, but are small enough to carry with me places. 1/25/2002; 10:09:53 AMNorton Utilities for Macintosh (Beta Version for Mac OS X.) I would use this with great caution, and not on machines that have data that is worth anything to you. I've had so few problems with 10.1.2 thus far that I wonder if I really need Norton for X. 1/25/2002; 11:50:38 AMJeez, I'm exhausted from all this upstreaming:-) 9/22/2000; 5:31:03 PMNeed a copy of Henry David Thoreau's Walden for your Palm OS device? 1/25/2002; 1:04:31 PMIt was a gorgeous day here today. 1/25/2002; 1:05:41 PMOK, is it correct to place one or two spaces after the period at the end of a sentence. I learned to put two spaces as a kid, but now I am told that it is correct to put one space in the era of computer typography. 1/25/2002; 9:06:35 PMEphPod Homepage: "EphPod is a program designed to make your iPod work with Windows." 1/25/2002; 9:25:21 PMThere's a new iCab Beta for Mac OS X available. 1/26/2002; 7:22:14 AMPalm rolls out wireless i705 With only 8 Mb of RAM in the device? Sounds a little low to me. 1/26/2002; 4:52:36 PMBlogger Pro is now available. 1/27/2002; 7:43:18 PMApple Poised for FireWire Jump. "Having secured a position on the 1394 Trade Association board for one of its product developers and buoyed by the introduction of a bevy of new compliant devices, Apple now is preparing to move the FireWire I/O standard to higher speeds and higher exposure." [osOpinion] 1/28/2002; 6:20:38 AMApple Unveils Dual 1-GHz Power Mac G4 1/28/2002; 6:28:31 AMMac OS X Hints: Search Google from any services-aware app 1/28/2002; 7:16:30 AMSo Patriots and The Rams survived yesterday and will be squaring off in the Super Bowl next Sunday. I doubt that the Patriots have much of a chance, so I'll be in their corner. The Rams are incredible. 1/28/2002; 8:19:18 AMI read Harry Turtledove's The Guns of the South over the weekend. It's based on the premise that the South actually wins the Civil War due to the intervention of some time traveling folks who give them AK-47's. I actually liked it, and I think that it was very different in it's portrayal of folks like Robert E. Lee than I originally expected. I'm ashamed to say that I have stayed away from Mr. Turtledove's books in the past because I thought that the covers looked hokey, but now I'm going to read some of his other works. So I guess I do judge books by their covers. 1/28/2002; 12:42:18 PMSlashdot | PowerPC Open Platform Motherboards Finally Here: "Finally, we can buy PowerPC motherboards without dealing with Apple." 1/28/2002; 12:48:08 PMThe New York Times give an excellent review to Harold Bloom's "How and Why to Read." I read the first hundred or so pages of this book, realized that I would need to read a whole bunch of additional books from the "canon" of literature to continue, and have begun, based on a list I made from those first hundred pages, reading them all. I found myself wishing that Bloom had given the reader a list of books that he thought they should read or that he mentioned in the book. Having said that, I really enjoyed the first hundred pages of this book, and I look forward to reading the rest eventually. 1/28/2002; 12:57:17 PMThose of you that have been tuned into this site have probably noticed that I have been publishing with a lot more vigor than normal the last couple of weeks. I originally thought that it was the return on my broadband connection that was making me post more, but I'm thinking along different lines now. I think that my interest in Radio Userland, it's desktop news aggregator, and RadioExpress have been responsible for my renewed interest in my site. I do not mean this as a universal endorsement of Radio over the other tools available out there, but that it is more Mac oriented than the other blog publishing tools despite being cross platform. It runs on Mac OS X perfectly. It is a platform for futher development if I ever have the time to do it. Finally, I like that my publishing data is right here locally and that I can publish in two places with a single tool. 1/28/2002; 12:58:00 PMTime to do some yard work. 1/28/2002; 1:05:47 PMPogo This is available in Britain now. Forget what I said about that cell phone last week, I want one of these.(Until I find something I lust after more.) Now I am really going to do yard work. 1/28/2002; 6:21:29 PMSome people insist on teaching people to do things that the rest of us will be really annoyed by. I hate getting html email, let alone html email with multimedia files embedded in it. 1/28/2002; 8:22:49 PMJeffrey Zeldman Presents: FAQ: "What is the golden rule of web design?Get half the money up front." Amen brother, AMEN. 9/24/2000; 2:44:36 PMThe gallery for Behind the Curtain has been posted. Unfortunately, my attempt at recording my day was blasted out of the water by circumstances beyond my control. 1/29/2002; 9:12:08 AMThings that go blog in the night. 1/29/2002; 9:14:16 AMSo I've been thinking about this site, and what makes me post. I have come to the conclusion that I am a fair weathered blogger. That is that I tend to post more when things in my life are going well than when things aren't going that well. I'm certain that there are others who post more when things aren't going well. 1/29/2002; 9:30:25 AMosOpinion: How I Managed To Can the Spam This a one very clever, non-traditional way to fight spam. 1/30/2002; 6:54:31 AMSony to sell Linux kit for Playstation 2 Interesting, but $299? That seems a little steep for Linux and a 40 Gb hard drive to me. I mean that's how much the Playstation 2 hardware costs. (via Ars Technica) 9/25/2000; 6:59:47 AMHere's an article on hacking the Mac OS X dock 1/30/2002; 5:32:35 PMlOggy! The Inbox Experience! I am way too amused by this. (via Evhead) 1/31/2002; 6:32:04 AMMac Net Journal: The state of OS X Web browsers 1/31/2002; 7:04:30 AMNY Times: For Mail, a Palm That Gets It 1/31/2002; 7:44:52 AMI did a little work last night on a new design, that will probably end up being a theme once it's complete, over at Radio Bump. I'm also using Sam Devore's iTunes scripts to pull the song playing at the time of publish. I'm looking forward to building hooks into some of the other Applescript aware apps I use. 1/31/2002; 7:53:34 AMMan, my mortgage seems to be changing hands once a month right now. 1/31/2002; 8:24:06 AMI re-installed Windows XP on my Sony Vaio yesterday. I have say that I'm very impressed with the speed of the new OS so far. I originally did an install right over Windows ME, which was a mistake. A clean install, as painful as that can be, seems to be the way to go with it. At times, especially when Web surfing, it makes my Mac OS X machine, which is comparable in speed and configuration, look sluggish. Having said that, I suspect that this is because Internet Explorer for Mac OS X isn't the fastest app on the planet. 1/31/2002; 12:29:56 PMBBEdit 6.5.2 is released. Lots of bug fixes. 1/31/2002; 12:50:49 PMStrange thing this afternoon. I'm more of a dog person really than a cat person.(Don't tell Loofa that please.) Normally dogs love me, and even dogs that are generally unfriendly to other people seem to warm up to me right away. I was walking acrosss a parking lot this afternoon, and this woman was talking to someone and holding her two dogs on leashes. As I walked by, one of them strained to the end of its leash wagging it's tail. I took this to mean that he/she wanted to say hello, so I took a step closer. The dog immediately took a mouthful of my shirt and began trying to bite me. I was stunned, and the dogs owner also seem stunned. Anyway, the dog put two little teeth holes in my shirt. I'm now doubting that dogs like me. 1/31/2002; 1:53:09 PMonfocus.com : snapGallery! "snapGallery is a fast, easy way to create a quick web gallery of pictures." (Windows Only.) 1/31/2002; 3:21:44 PMkung fu re-mixer found via web graphics from The Study of Design. Make sure you try using your keyboard to control it. 1/31/2002; 4:50:58 PMMacCentral: Apple sued over G3 support in OS X What a lawsuit happy country this has become. 1/31/2002; 7:04:23 PMThe Onion: Judge Orders God To Break Up Into Smaller Deities: "Calling the theological giant's stranglehold on the religion industry "blatantly anti-competitive," a U.S. district judge ruled Monday that God is in violation of anti-monopoly laws and ordered Him to be broken up into several less powerful deities." 1/31/2002; 7:12:17 PMMacromedia - Flash Player 6 : Public Beta 2/1/2002; 5:45:48 AMArstechnica Cookbook of Bachelor Chow I don't cook for myself nearly enough, but I do actually know how to cook. 2/1/2002; 5:48:58 AMA happy third birthday to Axodys. 2/1/2002; 5:58:29 AMVoting for the Anti-Bloggies has begun. 2/1/2002; 6:14:07 AMIs it a coincidence that the Scripting News post Dave mentions me in today is titled "hit a bump"? 2/1/2002; 6:33:24 AMA List Apart: Web Services 2/1/2002; 8:15:48 AMSpec for Frontier tables in XML 9/28/2000; 9:55:57 AMWell, I've spent quite a bit of time with Mac OS X this week, and I can tell you that I'm fairly impressed. I've been looking around the net for good resources, and I haven't found nearly the amount of material I would like to. There also isn't too much software to run natively. One surprise was that my copy of Quicken 2001 was already carbonized so that it ran directly in the X environment rather than in the Classic environment. 9/29/2000; 7:07:45 AMThis springboard module makes your Handspring Visor into a cell phone. How about this idea: A device that is both a handheld computer and a cellphone out of the box that is a reasonable size and doesn't run out of battery life in one hour. Everyone seems to be making phones into organizers and organizers into phones. Someone please think outside of your current product line. Please. 9/29/2000; 7:15:07 AMGraphic Designer's Judgment Clouded By Desire To Use New Photoshop Plug-In 9/29/2000; 7:55:16 AMWith Autumn basically here now, I'm contemplating the summer that just passed, which was the largest time of change in my adult life to date. I can't help thinking how different my attitude towards adversity is than it was several months ago. Adversity is an opportunity to change things in yourself that you don't like, to learn something new about you. Sure I've got a few new gray hairs that I didn't have before, but I also am lighter, leaner, and have much better perspective about where I am and where I want to go.

Three weeks ago, I went to the doctor complaining about some pain I've been having in my side. The doctor took some X-Rays, and informed me that I had something in one of my lungs. I would have to get a CAT scan of my chest to see what it was. God I was scared. I was a smoker, I worked for an environmental engineering company that oversaw asbestos removal projects for a year, it could be anything the doctor said, it could be scar tissue, it could be a shadow in the xray, he didn't mention the other thing it could be because he didn't have to. I had to wait a whole week for the appointment. One of the longest weeks of my life.

They put me in this machine and ran this solution through my body that made me fell warm all over. it was over in about fifteen minutes, then I had to wait two days for the results. Two very long days. Finally, the doctor told me that it was nothing, a shadow in the xray perhaps. If you smoke cigarettes, think for a minute about what could happen to you as a result. 3/19/2000; 10:29:22 AMHere we go, new design in effect. A few hours of testing this thing out, and I'll be ready to go live. 3/19/2000; 10:58:02 AMI'm a huge Lakers fan. It comes out of growing up in a time when Magic, James Worthy and Kareem were a dominant team. Today they are playing my other favorite team, the Knicks. Is it wrong to be a fan of two teams? 3/19/2000; 11:17:31 AMVia harrumph!, Brix Builder Demo.(do not follow this link unless you have a few hours to play) 3/19/2000; 11:20:55 AMbrig dares to cross the 3000 word barrier with brig.nu 3/19/2000; 11:33:00 AMI haven't forgoteen about my SXSW pictures. I just got pulled away by the need to redesign here. 3/19/2000; 11:35:57 AMI can already tell after just using it on a live site for about an hour that Blogger is only going to feed my blogging addiction. I can pound away and not worry about uploading and editing the raw HTML every time I want to add something to my site. I can tell that they have lots of other features to deploy that they haven't yet. 3/19/2000; 12:56:26 PMSo I bought a Palm VII yesterday. I know what you are thinking: "But that has the same amount of RAM as your Palm V." I know, but I couldn't help myself. I charged up the transmitter last night and activated it. There are a lot more apps for it than I had originally thought, and there are ways to view live Web content despite the constricting "Web clipping" setup.I'll let you know how I make out. 3/19/2000; 2:25:22 PMLearning from Napster

"I am not here to argue for or against the use of Napster, but I will say that since getting on board the MP3 revolution I have purchased more music in the last seven months than in the past two decades, and maybe my entire life"
- David Strom

3/19/2000; 4:28:35 PMI absolutely respect Lane. Great site, great writing, and he seemed like a really nice intelligent guy in my too limited contact with him at SXSW.(Truth be known I was a little intimidated by the Deep Leap posse. They are a really talented bunch.) I do not, however, think that this site could be quantified as "the bare minimum of creativity." I, however, have been wrong about these things before. 3/19/2000; 6:40:16 PMA powerful rain and thunder storm will no doubt interrupt my work at any moment now with a power failure. 3/19/2000; 8:43:27 PMOkay, its early Monday morning. I'm far from finished with this site, but I got sick of looking at the blue design, and wanted to share this new space age thing I made. Most everything that is an internal link does not work. Sorry. I'll try to get to those pages as soon as I can.(Read: all my spare time will be dedicated to this task until it is complete.)

Some of the people and sites that influenced me in this design were Derek, Matt, Jack, Heather, and Jason. Big thanks to all of them.(Especially since I met all of them in person last week, aside from Jack who I already worked with.) 3/19/2000; 8:44:11 PMComments on the new design? 3/20/2000; 7:52:22 AMBrad and Derek have both posted their SXSW photos and memoirs. Brad's had me laughing out loud. 3/20/2000; 8:07:21 AMThe reviews are starting to come in. riothero says, "Bump's new design is less bumpy." (What does that mean?) Heather says, "Ooooo la la. Bump rocks!" Thanks to both of you. 3/20/2000; 8:13:52 AMFor the record, and since it's been the number one source of feedback, there will be a duck up here at some point. Until then see Ben Brown and Weblog Wannabe for your duck needs. 3/20/2000; 9:40:25 AMApparently, redesigns are rampant again. iBoy has redesigned, Keith Brown has redesigned. Is is something in the air? 10/2/2000; 7:02:39 AMA slideshow on AppleScript and Mac OS X from Apple. 10/2/2000; 8:10:17 AMHoly Shit. The new caffe mocha redesign and splash page by ABC is incredible work. The new beats on the site aren't bad either. 10/2/2000; 10:46:40 AMHow-To Install Samba on Mac OS X. 10/2/2000; 11:22:14 AMTim Burton's Stainboy(Shockwave required) 3/20/2000; 5:17:17 PMROTORtype has some fantastic fonts for Web use. For free that is.(via kaliber10000) 3/20/2000; 6:18:30 PMYou knew it was going to happen sooner or later: Wetlog's SXSW album. 3/21/2000; 10:02:22 AMIt's going to be a really light day for posts. I've got tons of meetings and several things that need to get finished and practiced.