Saturday, 8 June, 2002
Children's TV Catches Up With How Kids Watch. Interesting article. We've not shown Jack Sesame Street yet precisely because it was too frenetic. The new format of longer, complete stories is worth checking out. 11:45:43 PM
Some random notes as I sit here waiting for Jack to wake up from his nap.
- The Farscape season premiere last night was excellent. It truly is one of the oddest and best shows on TV. TV guide describes Ben Browder and Claudia Black as two people who should be nominated for an emmy but aren't. They also say Angel is one of the best shows on TV and they are right.
- We kind of stopped watching Six Feet Under. I screwed up the VCR one time too many and we decided to bag it until reruns. Turns out, HBO is rerunning the entire first two seasons starting in a few weeks. Excellent.
- Sex and the City starts its next season soon too. Very excellent. How they will hide Sarah Jessica Parker's pregnancy will be amusing to see.
- Turning away from TV, I'm annoyed by some of the parents in our neighborhood. See, in the evenings, all of the kids are out and playing. They range in age from Jack, the youngest at 26 months (and Nimra, his girlfriend who is two months older) to a group of 6-10 year olds and a few 12-13 year old kids. On any given night, Ann and/or myself and our neighbor Nanette are usually the only adults outside watching the kids. This is usually not that big of a deal except some of the kids get out of control and need someone to reign them back in. Especially this one kid who clearly has some kind of behavioral problem. Maybe it's because we are out there they don't feel they need to be. But I can't imagine letting my kids play out side in this day and age without at least sitting on my front stoop where I can periodically see where they are and what they are doing. The neglect is maddening and I'm tired of defending Jack from unsupervised older kids when they go too far. I'm also sick of being asked to mediate inter-child disputes. Our standard line is "I'm not your Mommy/Daddy. Go ask them." I know it takes a village, but that works only when the rest of the village pitches in too.
- I put my bike back together. All I need is air in the tires (where is the damn pump anyway?) and I'm ready to roll!
- Photoshop 7 for MacOS X. It's pretty much heaven to me. If you see a completely new look and feel for this site soon, you know why.
Jack's awake. I'll have to babble on later. 5:46:09 PM
Text Sizing.
[The Shifted Librarian] 5:24:13 PM"Finding a consistent way to render text on web browsers without forcing fixed sizes in pixels is no cake walk. So Owen of Noodle Incident created an incredible collection of screen captures (264 of them!) to show how text is rendered in different browsers on different platforms and using different methods in order to try to figure out the best method for achieving consistency." [ia/]
CNN.com - FindLaw Forum: Could terrorism result in a constitutional dictator? - June 7, 2002 5:22:35 PM
Paul Robinson, The Philosophy of Punctuation: "if the undergraduate essays I see are representative, we are in the midst of an epidemic of semicolons. I suspect that the semicolon is so popular because it is the first fancy punctuation mark students learn of, and they assume that its frequent appearance will lend their writing a properly scholarly cast."
This is wonderful. The author claims that parentheses are a sign of laziness or, at least, a lack of discipline on the part of the writer (a sentiment with which I disagree). :) 5:10:25 PM
Major League Baseball News "But Interleague consequences cut both ways. When it comes around eventually to the Yankees-Mets, White Sox-Cubs, these are cheeseburgers and fries, no need for interference. But it's a potluck dinner in the Land of Interleague. Some dishes will please the palate. Others will impede the digestion"
My wife sent that to me with the following commentary: "This is too much. I think he wrote this when he was hungry. He should have just eaten a candy bar, let it pass, then write." 10:58:00 AM
Last update: 2002/06/30; 19:04:37 .
