Thursday, January 1, 2004

Did Steve and Hanna know that they are about to be submerged by a cult? The Groniad is funny even (especially?) when it shows its left-cultural-critic prejudices. Where else could you find Posy? 8:45:50 PM

Flying tomorrow morning to Reno to meet Terry, skiing around Tahoe and acclimating to higher elevation for a couple of days, then driving to Lee Vining and skinning up to the Tioga Pass Resort for four days of backcountry skiing. Lots of snow forecast between now and Monday. Then it warms up a bit, but I hope that Tioga Pass, at 9945 ft, will stay well above the dreaded rain. I'm not taking the PowerBook (no blogging) or much reading material. Traveling light is important since we'll get to and from the resort at 9641 ft under our own power. Now trying to decide which one book to take for the trip. John Muir's The Mountains of California ranks high. 7:48:30 PM

For the Ex-Buccaneer, a Pillage-Free Playlist. How do you wean a teenager from file-sharing onto a diet of legally downloaded music? A reporter offers one parents experience. By John Schwartz. [New York Times: Technology] The best article on online music that I have read in the general press. Slightly confusing in its discussion of the costs of iTMS ($20/month is just what the author decided his son could spend, not a subscription), but overall it explains well the complications and potential benefits of music services, and in particular the two competing models, streaming and downloading. It seems clear that the best service would allow unlimited streaming (maybe at somewhat lower quality) to explore new music and paid downloading to various media for frequent listening. Streamning alone won't do it because of its thethered nature and lack of scalability, but the short clips on iTMS are inadequate for exploration. 3:53:50 PM

Paul Boutin: 101 Ways to Save the Internet. [Scripting News] Mildly entertaining, but why do pundits keep implying that the net needs some kind of saving? Since the New Year fireworks blasted my sleep, here are a few personal reasons I am thankful for the net even as is: On the net, I find much of the new research material that I need, as well as citations of old material. Thanks, CiteSeer and Google. Friends I used to work with at different locations, now dispersed all over the world, continue to chat, collaborate, and track each other On the net, I've met and become friends with skiers all over North America and also in Europe, with whom I've had more memorable ski trips in a few years that I could ever had on my own. We arrange trips, exchange tips, and just hang out all virtually. ... and I can track skiing weather and conditions all the time. The OS X Mail spam filter does a remarkable job of keeping most spam from my inbox. Learning text classifiers work! RSS feeds, Radio Userland, and NetNewsWire allow me to scan efficiently a wide range of news, and comment on them. Thanks to Dave Winer and Brent Simmons for software that just works. ... now if everyone and every organization I track for my work had a RSS feed of their papers and news, 2004 would be even better. 1:44:59 AM