|
Tuesday, July 30, 2002 |
|
It's worse than you think, Joe. There have been 30 issues of Time so far this year. At the end of April we get Yoda on the cover. End of May is Spider Man. End of June? Tom Cruise. The Boss at the end of July just maintains the pattern. But take a look for yourself. There's a fairly high percentage of "and now, a very special Blossom" covers (including three out of the past four), scattered amongst timely media reporting. More to the point of why these are the cover stories instead of much of the actual news that can be found inside: which issue do you think sold more copies at the newsstand? June 17 or February 18?
I'm not saying. I'm just saying. |
|
Question to self: "has James Cameron done any movies since Titanic, that way overbudget, way highest grossing film of all time?"
The answer, courtesy of Rotten Tomatoes: nope. |
|
Moving it's way up daypop is this prescient article from The Onion, way back in January of 2001. What's that they say about the truth being stranger than fiction? During the 40-minute speech, Bush also promised to bring an end to the severe war drought that plagued the nation under Clinton, assuring citizens that the U.S. will engage in at least one Gulf War-level armed conflict in the next four years. "You better believe we're going to mix it up with somebody at some point during my administration," said Bush, who plans a 250 percent boost in military spending. "Unlike my predecessor, I am fully committed to putting soldiers in battle situations. Otherwise, what is the point of even having a military?" On the economic side, Bush vowed to bring back economic
stagnation by implementing substantial tax cuts, which would lead to a
recession, which would necessitate a tax hike, which would lead to a drop in
consumer spending, which would lead to layoffs, which would deepen the
recession even further. |
|
Anybody else find it odd that there has been so much recent discussion about the upcoming war against Iraq? As if it's a foregone conclusion that it will take place. Phase Whatever on the War Against Terrorism. Or is it simply Daddy and Me protecting our interests? Y'all don't mess with Texas, y'hear? I thought there was supposed to be a series of checks and balances that prevented the president from declaring war willy-nilly (also see FDR, hands tied, WW II). Umm. Maybe that last one is a bad example. |
|
Jon Oltsik writes about the balance between business and technology, and the necessity for a fundamental change in the way technology organizations are structured. What's more, the relationship between business and legacy IT personnel often borders on the dysfunctional. Meetings between the two groups are long and often end in frustration--if not outright anger. You might think that they spoke different languages and shared a mutual mistrust. In a way, they do. While the business side wants to focus on what's needed and why, IT can't get beyond the question of how: how to create a technology strategy, how to qualify vendors, and how to go about implementation The relationship is sometimes so fraught that I've seen situations where the business side decided to outsource technology to escape from this perpetual quagmire. I don't necessarily agree with
everything in this article: the 3 year timeline for disaster, as well as the
implication that by not doing the things he talks about, companies
(or at least their CIO's) are doomed to failure. I've seen way too many
businesses that succeed in spite of themselves, and this should be no
different. I do, however, think he hits the nail on the head when he writes
that business solutions, not technology widgets, create revenue and cut
costs. Companies need responsive, business-focused IT organizations that can
create and then manage these solutions. Good stuff. |
|
I'd noticed the same thing that Joe Gregorio points out regarding Amazon URLs (link courtesy of Sam Ruby). I find myself routinely lopping off what seems like the last half of the URL before copying and pasting to include in a link. This seems to most consistently happen when you search for something, but it seems to pop up whenever you follow a link from within Amazon to another product. Seems like referrer information gets embedded within the URL, and can get pretty lengthy if you follow one product to another to another. The actual product ID is made up of the ten alphanumeric characters following /ASIN/. If you remove anything after that number, Amazon always adds another lengthy numeric sequence. Even more interesting: delete or replace a bunch of those numbers, and Amazon keeps the changes you've made, but appends that last, much longer number. Upon further review, any product I viewed had this number at the end: 102-7239491-0232932. Hmm. Wonder if that's related to my IP address, to today's date, a session variable, a cookie, or some combination. This link to the next thing I'm probably going to buy at Amazon is the shortest version possible. When I follow it, though, I get the same digits (102-7239491-0232932) at the end. I bet it's a machine-specific number.
Update. Here's what I get at home: 102-9557139-9658555. |
|
My experience with MovableType sounds like it started off somewhat like what Mark Pilgrim describes happened to your favorite sucky web-site finder, Vincent Flanders: He has a particular gripe with Movable Type, which he failed to install. That there are detailed MT installation instructions does not console him. That the Movable Type authors offer professional installation for the low low price of $20 only adds insult to injury in Vincent's mind. He would prefer to pay for software that installs out of the box, even if the long-term experience is inferior. But he's left feeling that it's his own fault that he's stuck with a sub-optimal system, since obviously, if he only knew a little more, he could have had this other system that so many people rave about... I'd say it took me maybe an hour, all told, to get MT up and running on Cornerhost. I had a couple of difficulties that were host related, but almost immediately after I'd mentioned them, they were fixed (and I was credited the use of a mySQL database for my trouble). After that, I had to live with the fact that I know next to nothing about life on a UNIX box. Yes, Radio installs out of the box. Very nice, very simple. But Movable Type's instructions were straight-forward, and I was able to pretty drastically modify my templates immediately after getting everything up and running. I like that I can
work with MT anywhere. I like that it's easy to set up a multi-user blog,
with different levels of user-specific security. I think adding images is
way easier in MT than Radio. There are many, many things to like about it.
Next up will be a conversation with Ben & Mena to figure out how to move
A Work In Progress with a minimum of hassle. |
Last update: 8/17/2002; 5:07:09 PM .
