106 Miles to Chicago

The Zenith Angle

It looks like I'll be adding another book to my reading queue. Bruce Sterling's latest is out. Cory Doctorow has added an interesting back cover blurb. I wonder if he is going to catch any flak since the book deals with post-9/11 life.

... The story rockets along like a hijacked airliner heading straight at you, like a flash-worm compromising every unpatched Windows box on the net at once....

Freeway Craziness

I realize that this is an obvious observation but if you want to cause incredible havoc here in Southern California, you attack the freeways during rush hour. Well, that's just what some truckers did this morning. A handful of tractor trailers stopped on the 5 and the 110, the drivers took the keys and just left. They were protesting the rising costs of diesel fuel.

I'm all for protests and civil disobedience but you generally want to have at least some way of gaining popular support. Unfortunately, messing with someone's morning commute is really not a way to do that. Of course, a few more trucks and it could have been gridlock.

Ch-Check It Out

Coming back from lunch today, I heard the new Beastie Boys song, Ch-Check It Out on KROQ. It definitely put a spring in my step after hearing it.

Festival of Books

I went to the LA Times Festival of Books yesterday. It was hot and crowded yet awesome. I'll have more about it in a bit.

Rest In Peace

Rainout

Rain in the Steel City. Hopefully it won't cool off the Cubs.

The Punisher

The Wife, the Princess and Gonzo went over to another mom's for dinner last night, leaving me to fend for myself. Instead of heading home to an empty house and some sort of fast food for dinner, I decided to have a much healthier dinner consisting of popcorn and soda while watching a movie. Even though Kill Bill Vol. 2 is what I really want to see, I saw The Punisher.

Don't get me wrong though, I definitely wanted to see The Punisher but the cold, hard truth is that I haven't seen Volume 1 of Kill Bill and while I've read that you don't necessarily need to see the first one, I would much rather allow Tarantino to mutate my mind in the correct order. I hope to remedy this obvious defect (the seeing of Volume 1 as opposed to a mutated mind) this weekend. Enough of that, now's let head to the theater.

Before that though, I must address two things. First, to the couple who brought their 5-year-old son to the movie, WTF? How insane are you to bring a child that age to a rated 'R' showing? I'm not one who thinks that watching violence on screen causes violence in the real world but I do know that certain images are almost impossible for children to understand and deal with. Second, SpiderMan 2 looks amazing.

After reading some of the reviews on Rotten Tomatoes, I realize that I would not be a good film critic since I enjoyed this one immensely. Frank Castle does not have super powers or super technology. Instead, he uses his military training as well as the vengeance which flows through him because of the slaughter of his family. His story always reminds me of Mack Bolan, a character in some novels I read when I was in Jr. High.

At any rate, I'd see the movie again and I really need to find a t-shirt with the logo.

At my desk

The fact that you were sitting at my desk, talking on the phone, when I got back from lunch didn't put me over the edge. The fact that you were still there after I set down my book and then left to grab a bottle of water out of the kitchen also didn't cause the rage to grow. No, it was pretty much the fact that I stood at your side for at least 15 seconds while you chatted on the phone, sat in my chair and didn't even acknowledge my presence.

I do not care if you were talking with a customer, working out a problem. Well, I do care but that's beside the point of this current rant. You have a desk with your own phone. These are not community desks. The only way to stay sane in a cubicle environment is to try and make it as personal as possible. That's why I have pictures of The Princess and Gonzo on my desk as well as various action figures. As an aside, those are the names I will now be calling my two kids here just as an additional way of protecting whatever privacy that might have left as they grow up. Continuing with the aside, my son is not called that because of his resemblance to a certain Muppet character but instead because of the writing style his namesake uses. Getting back to the point, the problem was the way you were trying to make yourself at home at my desk and not allowing me to reclaim it even after I had returned.

So next time, be a little more perceptive so that I don't have to figure out ways to embarras you in front of others. Oh, one more thing, please turn down your cell phone. I don't need to hear the William Tell Overture across the office. Thanks.

IRC closed down

So the IT department here at work decided to block port 6667 because of virii. Thus, I am no longer able to IRC from work without jumping through a few hoops which I am currently unable to. Hopefully this will change relatively soon. You don't realize how you can get used to conversations flowing in the background throughout the day until you are blocked out.

NHL Game 7

I'm generally not a big fan of Salon's King Kaufman but today's article about the greatness of hockey's Game 7 is something I definitely agree with.

Reading Weekend

Somehow the stars aligned themselves over the weekend and I was able to finish three books, Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, eastern standard tribe and Neverwhere. I have always been able to read quickly but somehow things really were moving.

All three were excellent.

Crazy Day at Wrigley

When you look at the boxscore and see that the Cubs won 11-10, you might miss some of the little things. Both managers were ejected. Back-to-back home runs were hit three times during the game including the bottom of the 9th were the Cubs went from being down 10-9 to winning 11-10.

You just never know what's going to happen when the wind is blowing out.

Swink

Swink is a new literary magazine which is aiming to be bicoastal. Their LA launch party is Saturday night.

The LA Weekly has more info on the magazine and the founder.

The House of Jameson

An amazing look at adult film star Jenna Jameson's house. You can definitely buy nice things when your business is making between $5 and $15 million a year. [ via ]

PulpFiction

Eric gives the scoop about his new Feed aggregator, PulpFiction. The feature list looks good but it'll take quite a bit to get me away from NNW.

The Confusion

Neal Stephenson's latest book is out. Here's the Wired interview and he's also going to be at the LA Times Festival of Books in a couple of weeks.

I'll definitely be there.

Music Metadata

A couple of days ago, there was a summit on how metadata in music can be used to build new applications and processes. Lots of interesting ideas here.

One of the cool things I found while checking out the wiki was Gnomoradio. It's a peer-to-peer app which utilzes the RDF found in the Creative Commons license to look for free music.

Don't forget Jack

As great as Phil Michelson's win at The Masters on Sunday was, to me, it doesn't compare to the '86 win by the Golden Bear. It's cool to see the Sports Guy feeling the same way.

Here's the best way I can describe it. Imagine Dad winning the Masters. And since that can't happen, imagine the next-best thing. Like Ali and McEnroe, Jack belonged to another era, a time when individual athletes resonated with people.

Heroes emerge only from team sports today -- sometimes too soon, as Griffey Jr. and Kobe proved -- with boxers and tennis players unable to inspire any sense of collective attachment. Among current golfers, only Tiger matters, and he's always been more machine than man, as if he emerged from the womb wearing a Nike hat and drilling five-woods. Nobody can identify with him, and nobody seems interested in trying.

OS X apps

Brad Choate has put together a great list of OS X apps. I have some of these but definitely not all. Looks like tonight will be a downloading frenzy. [ via ]

Hot RSS

Mark breaks down the new format CNET is using for their download data.

Dodgeball

Gothamist has an interview with the founder of Dodgeball.

Dodgeball claims to be Friendster for your mobile phone. Basically, you text message your location to a central email address and then Dodgeball alerts your friends who are close-by.

Cellphones and Restrooms

I'm just curious if I missed the memo which allowed the use of cellphones in restrooms to be socially acceptable. The last few times there, a couple of gentlemen have entered yapping away and then left still yapping without missing a beat. This includes flushing. I can't imagine what the person on the other end of the line is thinking or doing. Ugh.

Lenten Law and Order

Mollie Wilson gave up watching Law & Order for Lent. I just don't know if I would have had that much willpower.

Social Network Dynamics and Participatory Politics

Ross Mayfield has posted a draft of his chapter for the up-coming Extreme Democracy O'Reilly book.

Neward vs. Ross

Ted Neward deconstructs a recent email from Rick Ross in regards to the Sun / Microsoft settlement.

Black Swans

Nassim Nicholas Taleb's Op-Ed from last week highlights some interesting thoughts about the current 9/11 commission. It gives an explanation of the black swan concept.

A black swan is an outlier, an event that lies beyond the realm of normal expectations. Most people expect all swans to be white because that's what their experience tells them; a black swan is by definition a surprise. Nevertheless, people tend to concoct explanations for them after the fact, which makes them appear more predictable, and less random, than they are. Our minds are designed to retain, for efficient storage, past information that fits into a compressed narrative. This distortion, called the hindsight bias, prevents us from adequately learning from the past.

I'm of two minds when it comes to the commission. I think it is good to have a public inquiry as to what seemingly happened but it should also have a focus on the future as opposed to the current gotcha proceedings.

The greatest flaw in the commission's mandate, regrettably, mirrors one of the greatest flaws in modern society: it does not understand risk. The focus of the investigation should not be on how to avoid any specific black swan, for we don't know where the next one is coming from. The focus should be on what general lessons can be learned from them. And the most important lesson may be that we should reward people, not ridicule them, for thinking the impossible. After a black swan like 9/11, we must look ahead, not in the rear-view mirror.

[ via ]

Alexandria

Alexandria is an interesting looking GNOME application which can help manage your book collection. I'll have to try this out next time I boot up my Linux box.

Hmm... I wonder if there is something similar for OS X...

Perhaps someone will write an app based on Kendall's latest columns. That would be cool.

Matt's Gmail review

Matt has posted a review of Google's new email venture, Gmail. From the sounds of it, Gmail will be one of the most sophisticated web applications built.

I'd love to try it out so if anyone who can make it happen is listening... well, you get the idea...

Update: Mark takes Gmail to task for its total lack of accessibility so perhaps it's not sophisticated at all. Disappointing..

Nick and Jessica

Ok, I admit it. I watched the Nick and Jessica Variety show. It honestly wasn't awful, mainly because we had Tivo'd it so we could fast-forward various parts.

Geek Ideal

Adina posts about creating an IRC bot as well as giving her reasons for not living up to the macho geek ideal. Whether or not she is not living up to a stereotype is irrelevant because I think her list is something that I strive for and I would think most other geeks do as well.

I like assembling things from piece parts. The ubergeek ideal is building a system from the ground up; reuse is a pragmatic necessity, but a fall from the ideal.

In my opinion, true mastery comes from realizing that someone else has already created something which you can use. This is why you can do so many cools things with stuff like the Google API, Amazon API, del.icio.us and Technorati. Building on top of someone else's work saves you time and energy plus allows you to focus on the itch you want to scratch.

Candy Obligations

So in the break room today, a box filled with candy bars appeared. A note above it said the candy was for a fund raiser for one of our VP's son's baseball teams. I for one think that candy in the workplace is great but I chuckled at the note since it specifically mentioned that you shouldn't feel obligated to buy something. I'm thinking that the combination of putting the VP's name on the note with that little snippet indicates that one should really think about purchasing a candy bar or two. It seems it will definitely be good for the career path.

Champions League Craziness

If you would have said yesterday morning that both Arsenal and Real Madrid would be knocked out of the Champions League by the end of the day, I would have laughed. Of course, that's why the matches are played on the pitch though. You just never know what might happen.

Napkin Look and Feel

The Napkin Look and Feel looks to be something for useful when prototyping a GUI.

The idea is to try to develop a look and feel that can be used in Java applications that looks informal and provisional, yet be fully functional for development. Often when people see a GUI mock-up, or a complete GUI without full functionality, they assume that the code behind it is working.

The code isn't working yet but hopefully something will be ready soon.

First Pitch

In all my years as a Cubs fan, I have never gone into the season as optimistic as I do today. Believe me, I'm scared because of that. Add the fact that Sports Illustrated has picked them to win the World Series and you can see my worry.

At any rate, the game starts in about 3 hours so the roller coaster of the season begins.

10 Years

Ten years ago, the world lost one of its genius'.

The Fall of SportsCenter

Slate has an interesting take on decline of SportsCenter. I agree with pretty much the entire article.

During the Keith and Dan years, I wouldn't miss a Sunday night. I could give you their various catchphrases without any effort. Things like:

• From way downtown... BANG!


• And the whiff..


• Dare I say it, he's en fuego

Veepylicious

Electablog has one of the best ideas I've ever heard. Beyonce to be the running mate for John Kerry.

I don't know for sure that I'm going to vote for Kerry but having her on the ticket would be the ultimate.