"You Americans all need cheerleaders." Miriam Lacho Miller 224QuotabledanielTue, February 04, 2003publishgolanlevin.comWow. Will have to come back later to check this out. Online art installations and digital art. <a href="http://www.golanlevin.com/">http://www.golanlevin.com/</a> 223ElsewheredanielTue, February 04, 2003publish[<a href="http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.02/code_pr.html">Wired -- Immortal Code</a>] The CEO goes to trial. The programmers hit the street. And yet sometimes a piece of code is so elegant, so evolved, that it outlasts everything else. (again via <a href="http://www.dynamicobjects.com/~diego/weblogs/arf/archives/2003_02_04.html">dynamicobjects</a>) 222ElsewheredanielTue, February 04, 2003publishDatabase vs. XMLI've been struggling since about the beginning of the year with my data format for SWM. I was set on XML, but there are some basic problems with it. There are also basic problems with databases, especially on webservers (hence my original decision to go with XML). I'm still working this out, but <a href="http://www.dynamicobjects.com/~diego/weblogs/arf/archives/2003_02_02.html#000811">this post at dynamicobjects.com</a>, the spaces guy, is very helpful in hashing out these issues. 221DesignDanielTue, February 04, 2003publishin the past 17 years 7 people have died traveling beyond earth's atmosphere. in the united states during the year 2000 alone 41,717 people died in car accidents and 28,663 people died from bullets. nasa has asked for 15 billion dollars for 2003. contrast with the expected military operational budget of 396 billion dollars -- that includes a 46 billion dollar increase from 2002... [<a href="http://consumptive.org/weblog/archive/2003_02_01_archive.html#88453472">consumptive</a>] 220ElsewheredanielTue, February 04, 2003publishUpdateJust updated <a href="http://design.danielsjourney.com">design.danielsjourney.com</a> and added a "principles" page to it. I liked the old design but am slowly bringing everything into a consistent look. The deal is, static pages are getting done a while so I can forget about them. Pages that are going to be dynamic require SWM, which is still not finished. This is why I haven't had any link love for all of you out there with a website. Sorry 'bout that. That will be the first page to go up when all is ready. 219MinutiadanielTue, February 04, 2003publishIntegration Research...would help all these indie record labels and publishers to connect and create virtual distribution networks that rival the big boys. {Just wrote this in a random email to somebody and it put it well so I needed to save it.} 218MinutiadanielTue, February 04, 2003publishinstallation artist...<img src="images/ch920204i.jpg"> 217MinutiadanielTue, February 04, 2003publishfinal peeve post ... long awaited design princ. page forthcomingI have no idea what peeve number I was on, but they all had to do with web design stuff, and I have been meaning to write a little bullet pointer on my personal design principles. So I made this under tech and plan on adding that to the design section of the site sometime in the near future (pending redesign of that section as well). #? Font sizes I can't change. This one is brutal because so many sites have this problem, and the browsers and operating systems all behave differently in this area. This is pretty much anyone using a WYSIWYG HTML editor, or using pt or px as their font size unit. I've played around with em units and no units, and still use %. I am just about to finally release control over the font type and size completely (I've set my browser to ignore fonts anyway). I wish everybody did, so I need to lead by example I guess. 216DesignDanielMon, February 03, 2003publishmisc roundupI'm more sick today than I have been since Thursday when this cold came on, I thought I was going to be better by now; just in a haze, reading some things, hard to concentrate, so I'm just going to quickly spew off the ones I don't have to still chew on later. <a href="http://www.russellbeattie.com/notebook/20030202.html#100251">Russ Beattie</a>: I titled this "The Media Hype Machine" but that's way to broad a stroke. It's the 24 hour news channels and the idiot local stations. I tell my wife when she's watching the news and starts to get a little panicky that armagedden is around the corner that the "evening news" is really the "evening BAD news" where they tell you about all the horrible things people did today. There's 6 BILLION people on the Earth right now, every day a very, very small portion of them are going to do something that is bad or something very tragic is going to happen somewhere. It's just a reality of having so many people. However, the vast majority of the people out there are not psychos, perverts, maniacs, killers and terrorists. This is why on some days, by pure bad luck, there's nothing truly horrible to report, so these stations have no recourse but to invent shit. Like a disaster, "showdown", crisis or incident. <hr> <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/arts/2708651.stm">Protest fears scrap US poetry forum</a> The White House has cancelled a poetry forum over fears it would be taken over by ant-war protests. Damn artists always gittin people to think! <hr> <a href="http://www.mozillazine.org/weblogs/hyatt/archives/2003_01.html#002403">this from a safari developer?</a> This led me to wonder: should RSS capabilities and browsing capabilities be merged into a single "uber-browser" application? No shit! Just hang on, I want/am slowly working on the one app that does literally all of my IM in one, simply and intuitively (because we all gave up on Outlook years ago). Read RSS, email, post to blog, site, calendar, organize life and share it with the world all in one. (No emails saying "Yes we call it an iMac" please.) <hr> <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/online/story/0,3605,884658,00.html">More balanced reading in the OH MY GAWD dept.</a> Weblogs are one of the few things online still capable of generating both media buzz and bucks. Who says the British aren't optimistic people? Of course, according to the article, only Brits ARE making money at blogging (of course they all live over HERE), so there you go...(Note to self: actually just more validation of my working almost exclusively with US-residing Brits.) <hr> <a href="http://www.corante.com/amateur/">AMATEUR HOUR: the "me" in media</a> Still have to read this one, but from the few second glance I took at it, looks superfab: i.e. Very first sentence: Mass media in the last half of the twentieth century turned us all into entertainment consumers; taking away much of our natural, human inclination to creativity as singers, pianists and storytellers. Awesome! Too bad I'm in too much of a sick haze to concentrate on it. Today, the rapid proliferation of cheap professional-quality media-making tools, paired with the drastic decrease in the cost of content distribution is leading to a quiet, but very real revolution in the quantity and quality of 'amateur' content. Yeah yeah. Integration Research in full effect dog. (via the just-in-case-you-ever-think-I-blog-alot <a href="http://werbach.com/blog/">werblog</a>)215ElsewheredanielMon, February 03, 2003publishmore proof that the rapture already happened and we missed it<a href="http://www.goldblogger.com/">oh my gawd</a> 214ElsewheredanielMon, February 03, 2003publishVan Goghs Letters<a href="http://webexhibits.org/vangogh/">Van Gogh's Letters</a> at <a href="http://webexhibits.org">webexhibits.org</a>. <img src="http://webexhibits.org/vangogh/i/letters/200crop/166_V-T_1506.jpg"> 213ElsewheredanielMon, February 03, 2003publisha tale of two languagesToday has been a Cold Fusion day (with a tiny bit of JavaScript thrown in, but that never counts). What stikes me odd and what would make me pull my hair out (if it wasn't already falling out by itself) is that what is SO easy in PHP is SO hard in CF and vice versa! If only I could just combine the best parts of both we would have a great server-side scripting language! (I still prefer PHP; the tag format of CFML is just yuk...I think it was supposed to be easier for peps, but it is really just a mess. BUT I'm get paid for the CF work, which of course makes up for ANYTHING!) 212DesignDanielSun, February 02, 2003publishsimple simple simple i say again simpleIt's nice to be continually validated on this need for a simple CMS for the everyman. I must say, when I started SWM it wasn't to target such a market, it was because I am also such an everyman and the thing in my head happened to be simple to use! (Sadly not so simple to build!) From <a href="http://whitelabel.org/archives/000182.html">whitelabel.org</a> so I was having a conversation with bloody Jones, about how complicated, rather than simple, blogging and the web had become. I said it was because MT and it's ilk are all badly designed shit, filled with obscure terminology, and anti-features. And this is a shame, because after all the hype about publishing for everyone, the geeks have, yet again, fucked the platform so no-one human can use it. I'm an unashamed populist. If my mum can't use it, if a complete web novice doesn't get it straight away, i've failed. And the Trotts, and all these people writing more endlessly self-referentially feedback mechanisms for staring up the arse of your referrers, are failing too. Why do we keep making the web harder instead of easier? best comment to his post: Moveable Type is very much a power application - you'd be extremely lucky to find anyone who could install it, develop a site and play with it perfectly out of the box. If you're looking for something intuitive and fast, then you go for Blogger (which I'm still using after three years) and then migrate to Moveable Type when you need the stunning range of features that it includes... Which is why Blogger, even though it sucks in so many many ways, now has 1,000,000 users and MT...doesn't. 211ElsewheredanielSun, February 02, 2003publishlittle CSS testDorking with my CSS script. <blockquote>blockquote blockquote blockquote blockquote blockquote blockquote blockquote blockquote blockquote </blockquote> /Dorking with my CSS script 210DesignDanielSun, February 02, 2003publishor nonfiction ...whateverintegration theory title page and TOC (31 and 72K imgs respectively): <img src="images/IT1.jpg"> <img src="images/IT2.jpg">209FictiondanielSun, February 02, 2003publishhunkabutta.com<img src="http://www.hunkabutta.com/photos/pagesize/20030125c.jpg"> <a href="http://www.hunkabutta.com/">http://www.hunkabutta.com/</a> ... site of Michael Clarke ... a site after my own heart, tons of great digital pics and a little unrelated expat (except he's canadian--actually better) blurb every post. what put this right into my 'daily reading' favorites: Did you know that in Japan there are special postage stamps for New Year's cards which are used only when there has been a death in your family? Guess who's been using these death stamps for all of their regular mail. Ooooops! I guess now I know why nobody ever writes back. They're called bu shugi no kitte. They're silver, blue and yellow; they cost 50 yen; and they should NOT be used for job applications. via his <a href="http://www.urbanphoto.org/tokyo/main.htm">tokyolife photoessay</a> on <a href="http://www.urbanphoto.org/">urbanphoto.org</a> via <a href="http://consumptive.org/weblog/blog.html">consumptive</a> urbanphoto.org also made it straight into my favorites for later perusal. they have a cul bit on <a href="http://www.urbanphoto.org/#27may">bicycling</a>, an extremely viable alt.transportation method still in predominance in other parts of the world. 208ElsewheredanielSat, February 01, 2003publishSustainabilitySummary of IM Conver Regarding {}, SPchecked, reorged a tad, made more readable. Kept because I actually said some things in a way I'd meant to for a while but hadn't actually before this point: Snider: the key to sustainable living is no debt and a savings backup...once you have those two things you can start to make time over money. the point is that as long as you're on the positive end of debt/hand-to-mouth then there is momentum there that gives you the freedom...it doesn't mean having enough to retire or anything close, just being on the pos side vs. the neg side...people mess both up...they live in debt to get the things they &quot;need&quot; (want) NOW and work-save-work-save so they can someday &quot;retire.&quot; both are flawed. Hedwig: it all comes back to not consuming as much Snider: yeah it does. sustainable. Hedwig: to find other outlets in life to fill the void. free outlets. Snider: not getting brainwashed by marketing Hedwig: creativity reigning Snider: it's not socialism....it's sustainability for all; I'm not anti-capitalism, I'm anti-greed... Hedwig: of course. capitalism is the only economy that holds the possibility of sustainability. where you can make your own choices. it's not the system (it never is) it's the people. Snider: yeah exactly. technically socialism would create more sustainability for all, but greed takes over and that system get completely fubar'd. capitalism has natural checks and balances that (eventually) punishes greed. hard to see that sometimes tho, especially these days. Hedwig: but socialism just forces people into sustainability and that's just as evil as over marketing tricking people into greed, no? Snider: well, not if everyone agreed to be under the socialist system. but that's impossible at a national level Hedwig: exactly Snider: it can only work in communities. communes. Hedwig: hippie style Snider: yeah. voluntary involvement Hedwig: and that's cool with me. i'd do it. small scale. maybe. ok probably not. Snider: well, here's what we've done, we've decided to run our family that way. so we plan on giving generously to our adult children instead of making them wait until we croak and then getting a big pot, after the time when it could be of use to them. Hedwig: right; our families are holding our inheritance until we are too well off to really need it or care that much! Snider: IF one was to go into a commune situation, i would suggest leaving some money outside of it, for in case you ever want to leave it. have an amount that you are comfortable giving to the institution, given the trust that you have in it at the time you join it; and obviously all the work you do while in the commune would go back into it; but if you wanted to leave you'd have something to 'fall back on.' 207CommentdanielSat, February 01, 2003publishMisc. stuffJust read that last post to M and she drew my attention to some stuff she found when she was doing research for the 'briefings' she has to do in language class. I'm pulling this out of a larger document she created, with all kinds of data on social issues in this country, and at the end of the document, an outline in Bosnian for her talk in Bosnian about these issues. She rocks. <s>I have no idea the source for this, so I'm somewhat breaking protocol. If you know the source, please contact me, otherwise be careful how you reproduce or use this material</s> From <a href="http://www.newhumanist.com/statement">http://www.newhumanist.com/statement</a>. (I have not properly researched this source! Just like what they said): <div style="margin-left: 20px;">As a humanist, it is my hope that one day there will be no need for prisons because people will have adapted to new ways of thinking and living together on this planet. I do not believe that humans are born violent, but I do believe we are products of our environment. The care and nurturing we receive as infants, the attention we receive from adults, the treatment we receive from our peers in school, the images we see on television, and so on, all contribute to our sense of self-worth. The better we feel about ourselves, the less likely we will be to engage in unhealthful behavior or criminal activities. Since 1980, thanks primarily to the so-called "war on drugs," the prison population in the United States has quadrupled. Today, there are more than 2 million people in jails or prisons and another 3.6 million on parole. In the states of California and Texas alone, there are more people behind bars than in all of western Europe, Canada, Australia and New Zealand combined. Alvin J. Bronstein, former Executive Director of the National Prison Project, cites a recent British study estimating that there are 8 million people incarcerated worldwide. "You do the math. With less than 5 percent of the world's population, the United States incarcerates nearly 25 percent of the world's prison population." Approximately 87 percent of the U.S. prison population are incarcerated for non-violent offenses such as drug possession, theft, vandalism, disorderly conduct and alcohol-related offenses such as DUI. Of the 13 percent incarcerated for violent offenses, only 3 percent of these cases involved injury or death to others. Overall, the crime rate has been dropping and violent crime is at a 25-year low. The prison system in the United States is a blend of private business and government interests. While politicians say publicly that the "war on drugs" or the "fight against crime" is the rationale behind incarceration, the drive for profit and social control are the real purposes of incarceration. In the 1970s, Chief Justice Warren Burger called for turning prisons into "factories with fences" and this concept has now been widely implemented. Inmates -- mostly people of color and the poor -- represent a cheap labor pool comparable to sweatshops in Mexico, Indonesia, or Southeast Asia. Today, inmates in the U.S. are being paid as little as 23 cents per hour to manufacture goods for corporations like McDonalds, TWA and Starbucks. In the United States alone, approximately &#36;100 billion is spent on the criminal justice system each year. Incarceration costs an average of &#36;25,000 per person annually and each prison cell costs &#36;75,000 to &#36;100,000 to build. I believe this is wasteful spending because prison does nothing to address the fundamental causes of crime or to rehabilitate people. A person who has served a five-year sentence for drug possession might be a greater threat to the community after having experienced life in prison. Why not invest the bulk of this money in programs that prevent crime? With 80 percent of prisoners functionally illiterate, the best crime prevention program of all is education, yet states would rather spend money building new prisons than improving schools. In my view, spending money on new schools, early-childhood development, conflict-resolution, after-school recreation programs, job training and placement, and for therapeutic intervention to treat people with mental illnesses and drug addictions would drastically reduce crime in just a few years if these programs were adequately funded. Communities, too, can help reduce the jail population by seeking alternative sanctions, rather than jail sentences, for individuals who commit non-violent crimes. For example, a person convicted of vandalism might be sentenced to scrub city sidewalks and shovel snow for six months to pay the community back. For those who have committed violent crimes and need to be incarcerated, every effort should be made to treat, counsel, and rehabilitate them. No matter what they have done, they should be treated as human beings, with access to visitation, reading materials and health care. As a first step toward the elimination of control unit prisons, I support a national moratorium on all new prison construction so states can establish community task forces to evaluate drug sentencing laws, explore the cost and effectiveness of alternatives to incarceration, and evaluate treatment strategies. I also support converting all existing private prisons into state prisons.</div>206CommentdanielSat, February 01, 2003publishIntelligent Consumption: IntroductionThese are notes-to-myself for an article I'm planning to do for the Feb/Activism issue of sevenmagazine.org. I am planning for it to just be the introduction to a larger work destined for the 'activism' page (to be reincarnated) of this site. The basic gist is, I'm slowly learning how to live a simple life of responsibility and true stewardship--what I call Intelligent Consumption: 01. The brand bubble is going to burst, just like the internet bubble burst. Both are/were based on nothing. Nothing can't sustain! All types of clothes can be found that are made in the USA, even more if include western Europe, even more if using what I call a 'sliding scale.' The kicker is they are no more expensive, often times less expensive! You are paying for the brand, the marketing, the Machinery it takes to keep the 'nothing' from imploding! The actual production and distribution costs associated with producing w/o sweatshops is not the issue! There is going to be a resurgence of authenticity in this country. People are going to get sick of being afraid, isolated. Legal drugs and the numbness of blind consumption won't be able to keep up with the overwhelming social metadepression. Politicians won't be able to keep up the fear tactics or create distractions. The media, which caters to both, will become unsatisfying and forced to change by the demand of the people for more authenicity in their cultural consumption. This revolution of The Real will by default break the brand bubble. There is a grand integration of the current Numbness, in the markets, politics, media...it grew from and feeds people's fear, fear of death, fear of suffering. As we as a society begin to realize that the avoidance of suffering and death directly correlates to the loss of true life and living, we will slowly begin to reject those things specifically made to create The Numb. It's The Numb vs. The Real and The Numb has been winning for too long. Natural historic cycles and the pendulum effect dictate that both dramatic events and slow social shifts will begin to move us back to The Real. 01.a. List of clothing brands that are made in the US/not in sweatshops 01.b. List of alt.media outlets and indie political orgs (that aren't socialist either! :S). 02. Living space. Do not live in suburbs. Suburbs represent the embodiment of the cultural and mental apathy that is modern USAmerica. Live in urban or rural areas. It can be as simple as the amount of signage you are exposed to. The predominace of strip malls in suburbia, and the necessity of automobile-based transportation, means a much higher exposure to branded reality vs. true reality. The actual emergence of suburbia is based on a nonreality, an idyllic deamworld with no suffering, a constant--competitive even--economic and social upward mobility, and protection from any real or perceived threat to that illusion. 02.a. Barring the social mobility to move from a suburban area, live in areas of suburbia that, for whatever reason, have avoided the spiritual weight of its surroundings and become true communities. South Florida is a perfect example. The entire area is the epitome of suburbia, however there are small pockets that are the equivilant of its 'urban centers.' The areas near the beach, for example, despite the high tourist concentration, and perhaps because of the also high native/surfer/waterculture concentration, is one such area. Also certain areas, for whatever reason, have not yet succumbed to the ubernonreality of the suburban machine. Large portions of Delray beach and south West Palm Beach are, suprisingly, such areas where you can literally feel the weight lift as you drive into them. 03. Culturally. Integration Research stuff. List of indie record labels, distributers, indie publishers, distributers. The culture industry is as large as, if not a larger culprit, of branded unreality creation than the clothing and food industries. 04. Ah yes, food industry. Another whole can of worms. 05. Paradoxes. The only non-sweatshop lacket is sheepskin ...the same lamb you wouldn't eat because of the way it was industrialized. The money for indie films comes from the success of branded commercial films. Etc.205CommentdanielSat, February 01, 2003publish<a href="http://images.indymedia.org/imc/washingtondc/warning0o4bf9.jpg">imc/washingtondc/warning0o4bf9.jpg</a> "What caused the use of force to occur? Civil disobedience. If there was no civil disobedience, there would have been no injury and there would have been no use of force. If we don't have that civil disobedience, you don't have the use of force by police." Lt. Jeffrey Herold, Metropolitan Police Dept. During the Jan. 19 MLK day actions for peace, Clara Sinclair, 80, from Sandy Springs Retirement Home, was pushed by police and knocked unconscious while she participated in a peaceful sit-down protest against a war in Iraq, in front of the White House. <a href="http://dc.indymedia.org/">http://dc.indymedia.org/</a> 204ActivismdanielSat, February 01, 2003publishone post fits allI never rose from the haze, so one post to get some announcements over with and them I'm off to work and maybe write in a more private place. Fortunately I have lunch with one friend and coffee with another today, so that will distract me from my farce of a life. 01. I had a lot of personal emails in my inbox this morning, and my emotive response to the love tells me two things: I should stay offline for longer than 12 hours at a time more often, and I was wrong when I said this online thing isn't community. It is. Not so much it is as it is another public space, a meeting place, a civil hall that transcends time and distance. And honestly, with all my best friends in other cities scattered all over, I don't know how this globetrotting Foreign Service thing would be possible without it. I guess that's why FSO's in the 50's had, like, 7 kids and very insular families. 02. <a href="http://www.landoverbaptist.org/talkingsnake.html" title="The Talking Snake Theory: Creation Science & History For Christian Children ... excellent new content from Landover Baptist">This is totally hillarious</a> (via scott) i.e.: God Fearing Fundamentalist Baptist Customers who bought this book also bought: * Daddy? Why Did Jesus Kill Grandma? by Pastor Deacon Fred. * Mommy? What's Wrong With Trick-or-Treating? by Sister Taffy Crockett * I've Got A Heart on For Jesus! by Judy O'Christian Christ-Related Auctions, Jesus Shop sellers and our other Christian stores recommend: * Christian Postcards From The Edge Customers who bought titles by Pastor Deacon Fred also bought titles by these authors: * Adolf Hitler * Dr. Rev. Jerry Falwell * President George W. Bush * Rev. Fred Phelps 03. <a href="http://mp3.com">mp3.com</a>, which has hinted at its {not to sound like George W. or anything} evilness in the past with some policy changes and really, really nasty Flash popup ads, finally proved that it has indeed sold its soul to the devil. After tomorrow, mp3.com artists not paying for the "premium" service will be limited to 3 active songs on their mp3.com pages. So today I will be downloading a lot of songs that up until now I've streamed, knowing that I could get the CD's either from mp3.com or from the artists' distributers later. I suggest if you have any fav mp3.com artists that you do the same. (I have to prioritize, my top choices will definately be <a href="http://artists.mp3s.com/artists/19/trancenden.html">trancenden</a>, <a href="http://artists.mp3s.com/artists/433/bill_mallonee_and_vigilant.html">bill mallonee</a>, <a href="http://artists.mp3s.com/artists/258/the_rocking_horse_winner.html">rocking horse winner</a>, and <a href="http://artists.mp3s.com/artists/105/innocence_mission.html">the innocence mission</a>. There are quite a few problems with this ploy of theirs...First, I just saw this, they brag of Register here and get access to over 1,500,000 songs and more! I guess they're looking forward to a more humble {guessing} 100,000-500,000. Second, they are going to lose ad revenue, which is obviously a big part of their budget, now that we have less reason to visit and hunt around their site, knowing that most artists will only have three songs on their page. Third, they will disenfranchise artists, such as myself. I am going to have to move my music page to <a href="http://iuma.com/">IUMA</a> (whom have always been more artist-friendly) (I already have a page there, but I only ever got one song up because I was already entrenched over at mp3.com), and I doubt I'll have a reason to return, for any reason, to mp3.com. Even if they change their policy, I won't know. I'll have long since forgotten about their site. I was going to do my next CD project through them, but now I'll have to move to some other service (cafepress is starting to do print-on-demand CD's, DVD's, and books). I really believed in mp3.com and what they were doing and the services they were providing (doing my CD through them wasn't going to be free, obviously...I'm not saying charging for certain services is bad at all), but this is the straw that has broken the proverbial camel's back. They've betrayed their original audience and clientelle, turned on their mission of helping unsigned, independent musicians. They've let the bastards that sued them a couple years back (I think it was the RIAA, I can't remember off the top of my head, point is it was the industry) not only defeat them, but assimilate them. Finally, I can't see any financial reason to do this, besides to coerce people into signing up for the "premium" service! Surely the tiny bit of bandwidth that artists like myself use up because of our 10 songs isn't more significant than from 3 songs! Storage is cheap, we know that, and in fact they are not removing the songs from their servers, they are just limiting the number on the artists' pages. Even so, I'll be removing my songs from their server before I find the intellectual material itself somehow co-opted by the Machine. Whew. Well, it was fun while it lasted. 04. I'm trying to write better (XHTML) markup in my posts, and I can do &lt;em&gt; instead of &lt;i&gt; but &lt;strong&gt; is just too many more letters than &lt;b&gt;. 05. I decided this morning that if I do a full-length CD for The Americana Project, that I will do my version of <a href="http://overtherhine.com">OtR</a>'s <a href="http://overtherhine.com/words/lyrics/index.html#Anchor-Last-6296">Latter Days</a> (awesome new intro image at their site). I'm also going to start covering their <a href="http://overtherhine.com/words/lyrics/index.html#Anchor-Rhapsodie-23522">Rhapsodie</a>, for reasons obvious to me at this time. Cheers. If you got this far, thanks for listening. I promised myself to not post again today. I'm not even going to go look at my feeds. Time to DO something. 203ElsewheredanielThu, January 30, 2003publish100 XML AcronymsThis is why XML sucks (notice my tone changing--ha ha): <a href="http://www.perfectxml.com/XMLAcronyms.asp">http://www.perfectxml.com/XMLAcronyms.asp</a> via <a href="http://diveintomark.org/archives/2003/01/28/in_brief_28_jan_2003.html">diveintomark</a>, who comments, Irony is apparently in short supply these days. He also recently made the entirety of his posts available through his RSS feed. Thank you Mark!! 202DesignDanielWed, January 29, 2003publishdave barry blog<a href="http://davebarry.blogspot.com/">http://davebarry.blogspot.com/</a> 201ElsewheredanielWed, January 29, 2003publishopensourcecms.com<a href="http://www.opensourcecms.com">http://www.opensourcecms.com</a> oh yeah. u can preview all the open source CMS's here. definately cul. definately too many out there already! but i have an abundance mentality dmmit! (via kungfugrippe) 200ElsewheredanielTue, January 28, 2003publishadvertgot this in my yahoo mail inbox. this is the kind of advert that adbusters doesn't have to modify when they run it in their mag as satire: <table border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0"><tr><td colspan="2"><img border="0" src="images/advert/Img1.gif" width="450" height="71"></td></tr><tr><td><img border="0" src="images/advert/Img2.gif" width="277" height="166"> <img border="0" src="images/advert/Img5.gif" width="100" height="69"><img border="0" src="images/advert/4.gif" width="177" height="69"></td><td><img border="0" src="images/advert/Img3.gif" width="173" height="235"></td></tr></table>199CommentdanielTue, January 28, 2003publishbush coverupMade in China? A Bush Tableau Demurs By THE NEW YORK TIMES ST. LOUIS, Jan. 22 &#45;&#45; George W. Bush may extol the virtues of free trade, but today that did not extend to a Made in America presidential appearance in the heart of the Midwest. In an incident that reporters instantly called Boxgate, Mr. Bush gave a speech on his economic plan at a trucking company warehouse while surrounded by cardboard boxes &#45;&#45; a tableau meant to project the image of a president at the epicenter of small-business America. The only problem was the cardboard boxes were stamped with "Made in China," a mark of globalization that was evidently not consistent with the Bush administration message of the day. But no matter. Workers preparing for the event industriously taped over every "Made in China" with a white sticker or packing tape, a literal cover-up that reporters discovered when they peeled off the tape. Mr. Bush himself spoke in front of a printed canvas backdrop of faux cardboard boxes, which featured "Made in America" in large black letters. Claire Buchan, a White House spokeswoman, said the cover-up was the work of volunteers for the White House. <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/23/politics/23BOXE.html?ex=1044075600&en=e55737e40b89b970&ei=5062&partner=GOOGLE">link</a> 198ElsewheredanielTue, January 28, 2003publisheye surgeryI'm contemplating getting my eyes done. Anyone done it? Good or bad? Worth it? I'm undecided right now. I kinda like wearing glasses every now and again. My eyes are starting to not like contacts...many mornings are multiple tries. Grr. 197MinutiadanielTue, January 28, 2003publishI also forget to mention that my hair is falling out like crazy. Might have to cut it. Too bad I've really liked having longer hair. My sister told me yesterday to try vit. B, so I'm trying that. Scott said it's the SJW! The evil herb! Ha ha. Oh I'm coming out of the haze. I think the very top of my head might be above it now. 196MinutiadanielTue, January 28, 2003publishgood html numbered listsaha. i mentioned this as a peeve of mine <a href="index.php?archive=blog_2003_01_06.xml&id_pass=107">a while back</a>. well, <a href="http://diveintomark.org/archives/2003/01/27/autonumbered_nested_lists.html">opera has been doing it right for a while now.</a> 195DesignDanielTue, January 28, 2003publishditto<a href="http://www.zoneedit.com/">http://www.zoneedit.com/</a> 194DesignDanielTue, January 28, 2003publishA heart that's full up like a landfill, a job that slowly kills you, bruises that won't heal You were so tired, happy, bring down the government, they don't, they don't speak for her I'll take the quiet life, a handshake of carbon monoxide No alarms and no surprises, no alarms and no surprises No alarms and no surprises Silent, silent This is my final fit, my final bellyache with No alarms and no surprises, no alarms and no surprises No alarms and no surprises, please Such a pretty house, such a pretty garden No alarms and no surprises, no alarms and no surprises No alarms and no surprises, please 193MinutiadanielTue, January 28, 2003publishxmleuropeOnly blogging this because my favorites are too a mess to find anything anymore. Might want/be able to make this one: <a href="http://www.xmleurope.com/">http://www.xmleurope.com/</a> 192DesignDanielTue, January 28, 2003publishTekkaJust found <a href="http://www.tekka.net/">Tekka.net</a> via <a href="http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/000826">aaron swartz's blog</a> (he's going to write for it; btw, if you ever need a shot of humility just go to his site...he's a genius). Anyway, it's an <a href="http://www.eastgate.com">Eastgate</a> thing. Eastgate is very close in many areas to what I want to do/what I'm interested in. I've always struggled getting really into their stuff, though. For example I can't tell <a href="http://www.eastgate.com/catalog/Tekka.html">by the description of Tekka on the subscription page</a> whether it's worth the money. Sounds like maybe, and if it were 20-25 clams, I'd do it already. But for 50 I need more than a promise that it's {eddiemurphy}"what a bah-gin!"{/eddiemurphy} 191ElsewheredanielMon, January 27, 2003publish I'm pretty depressed today. No reason at all. Definately clinical. <a href="index.php?archive=blog_2003_01_06.xml&id_pass=134">Last time</a> this happened a bit of St. John's Wort knocked it right out; but I have a feeling that it has returned with more frequency and severity because of the St. Johns. It's like when I had a sure-fire cure for the hiccups for a while, except I would keep getting hiccups all the time. Once I started letting them run their course, I stopped getting them so often. I also have a feeling that St. Johns contributes to my <a href="index.php?archive=2002_05_12_new_archive.xml&id_pass=76523364">TMJ</a> (see why we have blogs? here is <a href="index.php?archive=2002_05_05_new_archive.xml&id_pass=76432090">a mention</a> of taking St. Johns in the same time period {total aside: the most fun I've ever had, ever, was writing Micha as a daily serial on the site. <a href="index.php?archive=2002_04_28_new_archive.xml&id_pass=76047461">see</a>? how do i sustain through that work? is it possible? i also had fun with Rob and the Dancer, but lost pretty much everyone on that one. no one got the puzzles in Micha either. too much work? sorry, all that just came to be while browsing the archives a bit.} see also <a href="index.php?archive=2002_04_21_new_archive.xml&id_pass=75682329">my first mention of my TMJ</a>. don't know if i had started taking St. Johns at that point yet.) Anyway, I just slept for 4 hours. I've almost never slept like that simply because I was depressed before. I've abused many bad substances, but never slept. I guess sleeping is better health-wise; but it is definately a classic symptom of clinical depression. So I'm not feeling too good about it. I know I had <a href="http://www.google.com/search?q=seasonal+affective+disorder">SAD</a> circa 1991-1993; and I haven't experienced a full winter since (I moved to Arizona in 93 and then Florida in 98). Might have to look into that one. Still, we went to Florida over Christmas, and it's not like it's always dark here...I'm actually enjoying the seasons and overcast days, at least cognitively.190MinutiadanielMon, January 27, 2003publishrehashingThis just came to me while I was doing yoga this morning. It is just rehash of a lot of pop psych/management bullshit, but it works for me, and helps me mentally manage my life right now. I guess all pop psych started as something that worked really well for one individual, then less and less well as it diluted across the mainstream. Oh wait, that applies to church forms as well. Oh wait that applies to... [images only beyond]: <img src="images/project_present/01.jpg"> <img src="images/project_present/02.jpg"> <img src="images/project_present/03.jpg"> <img src="images/project_present/04.jpg"> <img src="images/project_present/05.jpg">189CommentdanielMon, January 27, 2003publishSimilarities to texism continueSounds about right: She (efficient, on the case) woke me up at 9:30 to say she'd been on the phone, and I could get in to see a dentist in town in fifteen minutes. I (infantile, self-absorbed) snapped that I couldn't possibly get ready in fifteen minutes, and what was she thinking. [<a href="http://www.textism.com/article/671/">more</a>] 188ElsewheredanielMon, January 27, 2003publishthe wormIf you were wondering why this site has been flaky latey (and I was wondering why I couldn't get cash out the ATM yesterday): <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/technology/AP-Internet-Attack.html?pagewanted=print&position=top">Internet Attack Exposes Security Flaws</a> (requires v quick free signup) some sample text: ...U: <a href="http://www.hyperorg.com/blogger/mtarchive/001121.html">JOHO has some cul info about it too</a>... By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Filed at 5:42 a.m. ET NEW YORK (AP) -- This weekend's Internet attack has security experts worried that too many system managers are only fixing problems as they occur, rather than keeping their defenses up to date. The worm that crippled tens of thousands of computers worldwide, congested the network for countless others and even disabled Bank of America cash machines took advantage of a vulnerability in some Microsoft Corp. software that had been discovered in July. Microsoft had made software updates available to patch the vulnerability in its SQL Server 2000 software -- used mostly by businesses and governments -- but many system administrators had yet to install them when the attack hit Saturday. ``There was a lot that could have been done between July and now,'' said Howard A. Schmidt, President Bush's No. 2 cybersecurity adviser. ``We make sure we have air in our tires and brakes get checked. We also need to make sure we keep computers up-to-date.'' Network technicians worked Sunday to complete repairs to damage caused by Saturday's fast-spreading worm. The problem was declared largely under control Sunday, though some experts were worrying about the possibility of lingering infections appearing Monday. The FBI said Sunday that the attack's origin was still unknown. As the worm infected one computer, it was programmed to seek other victims by sending out thousands of probes a second, saturating many Internet data pipelines. 187DesignDanielMon, January 27, 2003publishRSS and Semantic WebTwo historical links for myself: <a href="http://xml.com/pub/a/2003/01/22/dive-into-xml.html">The new Dive into XML article</a> says On average, at any given time, about 10% of all RSS feeds are not well-formed XML. Some errors are systemic, due to bugs in publishing software. It took Movable Type a year to properly escape ampersands and entities...Other errors are transient, due to rough edges in authored content that the publishing tools are unable or unwilling to fix on the fly. As I write this, the Scripting News site's RSS has an illegal high-bit character, a curly apostrophe. Probably just a cut-and-paste error -- I've done the same thing myself many times -- but I don't know of any publishing tool that corrects it on the fly, and that one bad character is enough to trip up any XML parser. Well, I guess I have it one up on all those, because my <a href="http://www.danielsjourney.com/rss.php">RSS-building app</a> does catch all those at the moment, and anytime I notice my feed doesn't validate I just add the fix to my "cleaner" function which replaces all these characters. Note: right now I still allow relative links in my RSS. Not sure if I'm going to fix for that, since it doesn't break any parsers. U: Aha he is just teaching the world how to do in Python what I figured out already in PHP, and he is talking about the feed consumer (reader) not the producer (where I do all this): data = data.replace('&lt;', '<') data = data.replace('&gt;', '>') data = data.replace('&quot;', '"') #" data = data.replace('&apos;', "'") data = data.replace('&amp;', '&') U.ii: For some reason my <a href="http://www.danielsjourney.com/syndicates.php">news reader thingie</a>, which uses the PRAX XML parser, has never had a problem with bad RSS_XML. Dunno why but it's been good. :) Second is from mpt, who doesn't have a link in his RSS feed so I'm too lazy to go find the post on his site and am just going to assume it is ok to mirror it here: Ben Hammersley's LazyWeb is quite a simple idea. For any small digital job you want done, it's quite likely that someone, somewhere, will find the task intrinsically rewarding -- so they'll do it for free. This is the volunteer power behind Free Software, expanded to electronic work in general. It's the extreme end of the economic supply curve -- given enough suppliers, one of them (and for a digital work, you only need one) will be offering a price of zero. Recently I've been finding the LazyWeb has struck when I wasn't, um, necessarily wanting it to. Every so often, I've been meaning to write something, only to find that someone else has written it already. For example, I was going to write about how the Semantic Web (as currently conceived) is doomed. Doomed because it requires average humans, when writing documents, to be more far-sighted -- in spending time entering invisible metadata now, in return for greater searchability and analyzability later -- than average humans have ever been. Even if that metadata investment would have a positive return in the long run, it's not obviously positive enough, so the investment problem strikes again. Serendipitously, however, I discovered that Cory Doctorow had explained this already -- along with several other reasons why the Semantic Web's metadata-filled world is "a pipe-dream, founded on self-delusion, nerd hubris and hysterically inflated market opportunities". Quite. As another example, I was going to write about how XHTML (as currently conceived) is doomed. Doomed because it requires average humans, when writing documents, to be more altruistic -- in ensuring their documents are valid XML, so that other people may more easily produce software which parses those documents -- than average humans have ever been. Serendipitously, however, I found that Mark Pilgrim wrote the same thing first. He wasn't actually talking about XHTML, but substitute "XHTML" for "RSS" in his article and you'll see the point is exactly the same. Authors save time and money, right now, if they don't worry about the validity of the documents they produce. Therefore, readers demand browsers that can read invalid documents. Therefore, browser vendors (assuming a competitive browser market, which admittedly isn't the case at the moment) face a prisoner's dilemma -- the first one to render invalid documents gets a competitive advantage over the rest, who have litle choice but to follow. Therefore, invalid documents proliferate. Therefore, people producing software to parse those documents have to put in all the error-correcting code which XHTML was trying to save them from in the first place. I'm not a doom and gloom merchant, really I'm not. My interest is in seeing how the Web can be made more useful, without expecting humans to do things which -- thanks to a variety of social dilemmas -- they Just Won't Do. So, without constant coercion or persuasion, what will humans do? Well, for starters, they'll make Google work. When it comes to making the Web more useful over the past ten years, Google takes the biscuit. The amount of time saved by that single site's existence must be truly enormous, compared to the best search engines of the early- and mid-'90s. ("Back in my day, we walked back and forth through pages and pages of AltaVista or Hotbot results ... In the rain ... And it was uphill both ways ...") But here's the kicker: Google only works by accident. Most people put links in a Web page because they add value to that particular page, not because they contribute to Google's database of authority. (Blogrolls are a notable exception.) The links just happen to work extremely well for measuring authority as well, and the rest is history. This isn't the Semantic Web, it's the Serendipitous Web. And I think in the long run, in a world full of lazy humans, serendipity is the only kind of semantic information gathering that will work.186DesignDanielMon, January 27, 2003publishLessig smilingAh see he does look <a href="http://www.aaronsw.com/photos/etcon2002/IMG_1659.JPG/view?display=medium">good smiling</a>. :) 185ElsewheredanielMon, January 27, 2003publishProtest Pics 3 of 3Some samples from the 36 b/w roll I shot, including some famous faces: <img src="images/jan18_protests/punks_web.jpg"> I think I saw these guys at the Misfits show. :) In case you can't see it, the guy on the right's mask says "Hello My Name Is: Civilian Casualty." <img src="images/jan18_protests/admin1_web.jpg"> These guys had huge masks of our heads-of-state, and were walking through the crowd going "don't be afraid," "everything is going to be alright," "don't think, it's all ok" and stuff like that. They were being interviewed on TV and I was able to get some good shots of them. Rumsfeld was trying to put his toy fighter jet up Cheney's nose in this shot. Cheney would have none of it. However, He did later dry-hump Bush, doggie-style. <img src="images/jan18_protests/admin2_web.jpg"> <img src="images/jan18_protests/jesse1_web.jpg"> Jesse Jackson. It's a long story, but Jesse walked right by me and my camera malfunctioned right at that moment, causing me to miss the perfect shot of the day. I managed to squeeze up next to the stage and get this concelation shot of him afterwards. <img src="images/jan18_protests/sharpton1_web.jpg"> <img src="images/jan18_protests/sharpton3_web.jpg"> Rev. Al Sharpton was in full effect. <img src="images/jan18_protests/dove_web.jpg"> Ok, so this one isn't b/w, but I thought it was a fitting end to my humble photodocumentary. Peace.184ActivismdanielSun, January 26, 2003publishLast nights musical extravaganzaLast night's gig with the Hsu Sisters, aka <a href="http://exitclov.com">Exit Clov</a>, was a rousing success. The sound was good, the crowd was good (thank you to the 8 who came just to see me play drums and on my recommendation of the music!), and my mostly borrowed minimalist drum kit was in full effect! Be sure to check out their song, <a href="http://exitclov.com/audiophile/audiophile.htm">Renegade</a>, definately one of my favorite songs of 2002 (I was priveledged to get their demo last fall and have been wanting to share that tune ever since!). <img src="images/hsu_gig.jpg"> Immediately after our set, a friend of mine convinced me to go to the Camper Van Beethoven show at the famous 9:30 club in DC. Camper Van is a band I was introduced to in high school, but hadn't kept up with. I knew this was going to be my only chance ever to catch them live, and then at the 9:30 club. It was totally worth it. Walking back to the car at 1:00 or so, I semi-joked about how hungry I was after seeing a open restaurant. Well, we spun right around and marched into that establishment, a very authentic Ethiopian place, practically chanting "spongy bread." There was this duo, a keyboardist with a drum sampler and a singer, playing (I assume) Ethiopian music (very similar to Indian kino music). There was a small group of people, not speaking any english, hanging out and dancing. We got a vegetarian platter and enjoyed eating with our hands while soaking in the local culture and being two out of only three white people in the place (there was one woman, very eastern european looking, who was apparently on a date with one of the african guys). Quite the musical night all and all. 183MusicdanielSun, January 26, 2003publishbrian eno on america...America was an act of faith &#45;&#45; the faith that "otherness" was not threatening but nourishing, the faith that there could be a country big enough in spirit to welcome and nurture all the diversity the world could throw at it. But since Sept. 11, that vision has been eclipsed by a suspicious, introverted America, a country-sized version of that peculiarly American form of ghetto: the gated community. A gated community is defensive. Designed to keep the "others" out, it dissolves the rich web of society into a random clustering of disconnected individuals. It turns paranoia and isolation into a lifestyle. Surely this isn't the America that anyone dreamed of; it's a last resort, nobody's choice... President Bush recently declared that the U.S. was "the single surviving model of human progress." Maybe some Americans think this self-evident, but the rest of us see it as a clumsy arrogance born of ignorance... Too often, the U.S. presents the "American way" as the only way, insisting on its kind of free-market Darwinism as the only acceptable "model of human progress." But isn't civilization what happens when people stop behaving as if they're trapped in a ruthless Darwinian struggle and start thinking about communities and shared futures? America as a gated community won't work... Perhaps it's asking a lot to expect America to act differently from all the other empires in history, but wasn't that the original idea? via <a href="http://www.time.com/time/europe/magazine/2003/0120/cover/view_eno.html">time.com</a> via <a href="http://www.theyblinked.com/blog/">TBd</a> 182ElsewheredanielSat, January 25, 2003publishTIA to hopefully go away<a href="http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,57386,00.html">Senate Rebuffs Domestic Spy Plan</a> from Wired (via boing boing) U: <a href="http://www.kungfugrippe.com/archives/2003/01/24/index.php">kungfugrippe had some good things to say</a> about how it would've never worked. That was my gut feeling on the whole thing too. 181ElsewheredanielSat, January 25, 2003publishstop motion studies installation<a href="http://turbulence.org/Works/sms4/">turbulence.org--Stop Motion Studies--Series 4</a> (via Anil's daily links) Very cul Flash installation using stop motion. Not what I expected from the intro but I liked it. ...could definately qualify for a JonnyBaker "worship trick." <a href="http://turbulence.org/">turbulence.org</a> is a very cul org I might have mentioned on this site, maybe a year ago, when I first started thinking about nonprofit art orgs. They have been doing a lot of v good stuff; wish I had stopped by their site more often in the last 12 mos. 180ElsewheredanielSat, January 25, 2003publishNon-conformist Russian Art<a href="http://leverandfulcrum.com/Darsalia%20Collection/Intro.html">leverandfulcrum.com--collection of Russian Nonconformist art</a> <img src="http://leverandfulcrum.com/Darsalia%20Collection/Bogomolov/BogomPhotos/4)%20Bogomolov%20Chalice%20465%20web.JPG"> Gleb Bogomolov Via <a href="http://www.kirasir.com/Journeys/Current/Daily.htm">a Russian friend of mine who is motorcycling through Mexico</a>. 179ElsewheredanielSat, January 25, 2003publishspeaking of ...my new church part 10^10In a related vein, I continue to find unbelievably spiritual experiences in ...maybe for u unexpected... places... <img src="images/guitara1.jpg" alt="let me tell you how much this dude can play the fucking guitar. it is unbelievable. really." align="left"> Tonight we hung out at a medium sized Bosnian gathering in a private home. We were immediately received with great warmth. Food, spirits, and music were all in ample supply. The atmosphere was unmatched. It is really hard to do the night justice in words. I had the thought...this is the kind of experience that Americans find maybe 10% of in church meetings, and then in programmed, sterilized formats. Tonight was a spontaneous, authentic experience with real people who have experienced true hardship and still give all of themselves to you. Miriam had the kickers on the drive home: People who have suffered the most are the warmest. There's something to be said about the way suffering shapes a person. And people in this country (America), in general, are just...selfish. This in response to my ruminating about what I had seen, and my confusion about how this culture (frmr. Yugoslavia) could have produced the kind of war that they did...and then you realize that the culture producers were the victims, and yet were the most victorious. Victorious in their desire for peace and their constant choice to Live in the face and constant threat of death. 178CommentdanielSat, January 25, 2003publishah yes more reasonsIt's no secret that I do not call myself a Christian {even though I have what I would consider an (increasingly quirky) ...grr, no other words coming to mind... relationship ...there, i said it. crap... with g-o-d, and of course am still totally facinated with Jesus (and I'm <a href="http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1101030127-409570,00.html">not alone</a>, as I find through <a href="http://www.theyblinked.com/blog/">TBd</a>)}. But still, every once and while, the ongoing series "...if we needed more reasons" rears its ugly head, and this is one of those moments: <a href="http://www.lifeway.com/lwc/">lifeway</a> (via <a href="http://ftrain.com">ftrain</a> links of all people {can't find his links on the web anymore, good thing i subscribed to the <a href="http://www.ftrain.com/xml/rdf/links.rss">xml feed</a> when i did}) and Terry Clan, posting comments to <a href="http://www.jordoncooper.sk.ca/2003_01_01_archives.html#90224572">this post by Jordon</a> Both of these exist together in, personify even, western Christendom. These could be the same person. Lifeway could be Terry's favorite site on the Web. Any questions? 177CommentdanielFri, January 24, 2003publishnew Bill Carter chapter online<a href="http://www.billcarter.cc/Jan2003.html">WHERE WATER COMES TOGETHER, Book Two, Chapter 25</a> ...for those of you who have been <a href="http://www.danielsjourney.com/index.php?archive=blog_2003_01_06.xml&id_pass=122">keeping up</a>. This chapter covers the first via-satellite broadcast from Sarajevo to a U2 show in Bologna. One of the two Sarajevans to speak was named Darko. How about them apples? 176ElsewheredanielFri, January 24, 2003publishlittle bit of everything<img src="images/calvin_brain.gif" alt="calvin" align="left"> 01. Got my diplomatic "black" passport yesterday. Oh yeah. 02. This one has been around the blogosphere already, but Anil's blog was <a href="http://www.dashes.com/anil/index.php?archives/004858.php">hillarious yesterday</a>. The comments are also funny. 03. If another person in Florida writes me about how "cold" it is there, I am going to fly down there just to beat them upside the head. {That statement of course assures me a few emails, "Hey Daniel it's so cold here, I had to wear pants, heh heh!" No, the email is pants, so don't. Just don't.} It has been really <a href="http://www.weather.com/weather/local/22201">cold here</a>. Today the sun came out and it has been nice, above freezing w/o the wind chill (of course it is the wind that gets you every time). Still, it is really cold in <a href="http://www.jordoncooper.sk.ca/2003_01_01_archives.html#90219562">Saskatchewan</a>. 04. Just as I was flopping into bed last night, I realized there is a major bug in SWM. Not just in the code, but in my architecture. So sorry if a permalink doesn't work. I'm really bummed about this, because I've been in a coding slump lately anyway, i.e. not wanting to, but now this new revelation really makes me just want to bail on the project. I am thinking about starting work on the desktop piece on my own, in Visual Basic, because that is the really critical piece, the real innovation. This trying-to-piece-together-a-web-based-blogging-system part of it is first nothing new, then a pain in the ass. From my perspective, that of building a content management system and not just a blogging tool, the blog is a special case that I should be less concerned about. But. Have to support it. 05. I think that's it for now. Oh, I liked <a href="http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20021021&c=1&s=rorty">this link</a> provided by theyblinked as well as <a href="http://www.theyblinked.com/blog/2003_01_19_theyblinked_archive.html#87801189">his</a>: Organizations empowered with massive patronage of time and money want nothing to do with genuine public debate. Those with power want to wield it not discuss how to. The Church has been lavished with just such patronage making debate over moral scandal, doctrinal idiocy, spiritual malpractice, administrative hubris, historical faux pas and the like not only improbable, but possibly impossible as it would endanger the conviction that such an organization wishes to encourage--that somehow it is or possesses an incarnate divine authority. Whether infallible in book or man this don't-ask-questions-accept-the-authority-of-the-Church posture worked well while the majority of people in its gravitational field were under the control of a carefully groomed spiritual and economic class system that ensured literacy, wealth and power to the few. When access to these "upper class" ways became generalized across a larger population the overbearing self-aggrandizement of entrenched institutional ways began to be seen for what they were: an exclusive club of power brokers dominating and profiting from those who came to them for spiritual solace in organizations presumptuous enough to declare themselves the embodied mediation of the way of Jesus. Acting as if the way of Jesus is a trust fund of sorts these, the &quot;heirs&quot; of this way, set themselves as the gatekeepers and toll takers for a kingdom that was never theirs in the first place; never even that of Jesus. The Kingdom is God's and is never co-opted intact. 175MinutiadanielFri, January 24, 2003publishPowazek blog chapter...among others, <a href="http://designforcommunity.com/display.cgi/200202182129">avail online</a>. It is the last chapter of the book but the one I read second. Now I'll go back to chapter 2 and read straight through. :) 174ElsewheredanielThu, January 23, 2003publishProtest Pics no2signs: <img src="images/jan18_protests/sign_dove.jpg"> <img src="images/jan18_protests/sign_fubush.jpg"> <img src="images/jan18_protests/sign_repent.jpg"> <img src="images/jan18_protests/sign_think.jpg"> <img src="images/jan18_protests/sign_thou.jpg"> <img src="images/jan18_protests/sign_wwjb.jpg">173ActivismdanielThu, January 23, 2003publish9:03and everything's ok. :) 172MinutiadanielThu, January 23, 2003publishand a little closer to home...there is a bomb threat on the building right across from our window for exactly 27 minutes from now. The building is the Arlington County courthouse and the threat was scribbled on a bathroom wall yesterday afternoon. Not sure whether I'm going to just chill here at my desk or maybe go outside and see if there is any commotion... 171MinutiadanielThu, January 23, 2003publishwe will save you; your wife is another storyLast night I went to a panel on evacuations put on for foreign service spouses. There are two types of evactuations for State Dept. peps: authorized (you're allowed to go) and ordered (you have to go). In ordered evacs, there are embassy employees considered vital who must stay behind. So here's the kicker: if there is an ordered evac and M is considered an "essential" person, then I have to leave and she has to stay. To stay I would have to turn in my diplomatic passport and I would no longer be under the diplomatic cloud (as it were); meaning if it then came down to a Vietnam-style airlift from the courtyard of the embassy, M would then get out first and I would either be in line or on my own. Once we have kids this won't be an issue anymore, I will of course want to get them out of any such situation. But call me old fashioned, but until that time, I would have a really hard time leaving my wife in harm's way while I'm taken away from it. Let's just pray that that never happens. 170MinutiadanielThu, January 23, 2003publishPowazek on the Super Friends Well, sort of. {You must read on for the connection.} I'm reading <a href="http://designforcommunity.com/">Design for Community</a> right now (among many others)... ...and I'm acutally just borrowing it from <a href="http://www.boboroshi.com/log/">a friend</a>, so I'll probably be making a lot of notes to myself in this space. Although now I see it's only <a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0735710759/qid=1043194523/sr=1-2/ref=sr_1_2/002-5752715-5202429?v=glance&s=books">9 clams used on Amazon</a> I might just pick it up for future reference. Anyway, it's really good, and I'm saying that already and I'm not out of the introduction yet. He says some really good things about community in the intro that a lot of the christian online pundits could listen to, especially the "postmodern" ones. I'll get to that quote in a minute, first a good one about the web that I will have to use in my forthcoming argument for blogs. pg xxi The web was revolutionary (and still is) because it does one thing that no other media has been able to do, ever. The web grows communities, almost without trying, because the web is the only media that allows its users to communicate with each other directly, publicly, and instantly. Other media have glimmers of that connection, but none so successful or meaningful. Newspapers publish letters to the editor. Radio has call-in shows. Television has, well, Jerry Springer. All of these contain a hint of what is possible when you let users of your media communicate directly with each other. But the web makes direct user-to-user communication a reality. Because, on the web, the device you usually use to view it is the same device you need to create it. {Notes to meself re: blogging: 1. it is for yourself 1a. processing 1b. practice writing 1c. diary, personal history 2. public nature of it 2a. does not mean you need to pundicize at all times 2b. just means it is a public record 2c. helps hone 2d. helps microcommunication between friends and aquaintences 2e. builds community within the same.} Ok, sorry anyone hooked by the Super Friends title and still reading. Here it is. Powazek on Community: Members of a community will identify themselves with the community when they feel strongly connected to it. But slapping a community label on an unwitting individual will usually be met with annoyance or worse. When I want to sell my old camera or buy a new book, I'll visit sites such as eBay or Amazon. In these cases, I'm just there for a transaction, not a conversation. Yet both these sites have generous community features, and both brag about their communities to their stockholders and the press. And while it's true that some of eBay's users feel strongly connected to the site, simply going there to sell my old stuff doesn't really make me a community member, any more than using a can opener makes me a member of the exclusive can-opening community. That was it. Sorry if it was anti-climatic, but I found it both illuminating and funny and I immediately thought of <a href="http://monkhouse.blogspot.com/2003_01_01_monkhouse_archive.html#87484741">the Super Friends</a>. {More to meself re blogging: It therefore doesn't matter if you have 5, 50, 500 or 5000 visitors a week. Such a numbers mentality is really missing the point (and not just to blogging, either). It is actually better to be small. (Like Powazek said somewhere; can't find it right now.) Big blows community. And that is what irks me so much about Andrew Sullivan's pledge drive. He is capitalizing unnecessarily. He has a job as a writer. He simply sees this thing as another &#36;&#36; opp. He's no better and often worse than all the bloggers I read, and yet many of them continue without asking for money, many of them jobless on top of that. And they are doing it for the right reasons. Eventually, hopefully, the pure, the authentic, will win, and the pundicizing pledge drivers will be ignored into oblivion.}169CommentdanielTue, January 21, 2003publishAnil on the Diamond Industry...they're selling, along with war and market dominance, dysfunction. Want your materialistic, easily-misled wife to stop being such a frigid bitch? Buy her a diamond! Did your husband decide to increase your consumer debt in order to buy you a pair of earrings that were mined at gunpoint by children in Africa? Reward him with grudging sex and a temporary cessation of your relentless nagging! {<a href="http://www.dashes.com/anil/index.php?archives/004817.php">seriously read the whole thing</a>} {The rest here is mostly notes-to-self.} Really good stuff. {Also recently read all the stuff about Santa (or was it Rudolph) being an invention of the coca-cola company.} How much of our culture these days was created by marketers? {It's more than just a last decade thing (although it has admittedly been worse in the last couple).} I think one of the major problems with our modern society/culture is that so much of it is originally comes from an inauthentic place. Marketing is not just "getting the word out," it is manipulation; and anything that uses manipulation is inauthentic at its root. But now many of those things are entrenched in our culture, and even new, authentic culture is being created re-using that old, inauthentic culture. Redemption through authenicity? This from some of the comments I read (didn't read them all): When my intelligent and beautiful fiancee and I decided on an engagement ring, we explicitly chose a non-diamond ring due to the conflict diamond fiasco. That and DeBeers, which are mostly one in the same. But did you know that diamonds weren't considered "standard issue" for engaged women until the 1950s? DeBeers sent representatives, smartly, into public schools and 'educated' the idea into kids. That meant that every generation from then on would associate diamonds with love and "forever", even though there are many many stones that will outlast diamonds. I hate their ad campaigns, too. Targeting brainless, uncreative men. Swell - there's certainly not enough targeted at that demographic. Posted by: Paul on January 20, 2003 05:21 PM about ten years ago there was a fascinating 6 hour frontline series on diamonds. the debeers family is pretty evil. at the time i viewed the documentary, they couldn't travel to the united states because of all of the warrants out for them. the debeers were even trying to stop/regulate the production of synthetic diamonds! also, remember the tennis bracelet? the debeers had just purchased a newly found source of russian diamonds. the problem was, the diamonds were too small, so they had to invent a way to market them. diamond engagement rings were never a tradition. the debeers paid movie producers to start including scenes with a man on one knee proposing with a diamond ring. diamonds are the original product placement. we are such pawns, heh. i understand what you mean by "conflict free" diamonds, but if you know the history of debeers in south africa, there really aren't any conflict free diamonds unless they were never owned or distributed by that family/corporation. that pretty much leaves you with novelty american diamonds found on the ground in arkansas. Posted by: denise on January 20, 2003 05:57168ElsewheredanielTue, January 21, 2003publishUpdated SWM pageI just updated the <a href="./swm/">SWM page</a> under the less is more/<a href="http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/MouthWideShut.html">talk is cheap</a> philosophy. I will still hash out details on this blog though. {More on blogs and why to blog later, in response to <a href="http://diveintomark.org/archives/2003/01/19/influences.html">some recent memes</a>.} 167DesignDanielTue, January 21, 2003publishSF protest picspics from the SF protest last sat from <a href="http://www.kungfugrippe.com/archives/2003/01/18/index.php">kungfugrippe</a> 166ActivismdanielTue, January 21, 2003publishI made it into a Grace install<a href="http://www.btinternet.com/~smallritual/graceimages/ten/ten9.html">small ritual</a>. tnx adam and steve! 165ElsewheredanielTue, January 21, 2003publishProtest PicturesI think I'm just going to let the images speak for themselves. {This is the first of 3-4 posts...this is my first batch of color, I have another color roll and a black and white roll yet...those will have to wait for another day as my Real Life is out of control busy right now.} <img src="images/jan18_protests/dancers02.web.jpg" height="300" width="400"> <img src="images/jan18_protests/jews01.web.jpg" height="237" width="400"> <img src="images/jan18_protests/stiltman01.web.jpg" height="400" width="277"> <img src="images/jan18_protests/stoic01.web.jpg" height="400" width="254"> {I wish this one had come out better; as it is I photoshopped it a lot. But the sun was not cooperating, as is the case most of the winter...if only he had been holding the sign on his other side...} This guy looked like he had been in many a civil rights march back in the day. He was just standing totally still, listening to the speakers, holding his sign. He seemed like one of the most experienced, purposeful people there that day. One thing I hope to show through my pictures was the amount of diversity at the protest. It was really incredible. <img src="images/jan18_protests/loveconq.web.jpg" height="253" width="300"> <img src="images/jan18_protests/kids.web.jpg" height="231" width="300">164ActivismdanielTue, January 21, 2003publishconcert next Saturday!! I'm playing drums for the Hsu sisters (known in these parts as just "the sisters") next Saturday at the Rhodeside Grill !! We're supposed to go on sometime in the 9 hour. Check out the <a href="http://meticulous.com/clients/cannonball/cannonball_rhodeside_2003_01_25.jpg">concert poster</a> for more info. 163MusicdanielMon, January 20, 2003publishMocking Creative CommonsI like these labels better actually: <a href="http://www.intertwingly.net/blog/1134.html">interwingly.net</a>: Truth in Advertising In order to help people label their content appropriately, I humbly offer the following icons... 162ElsewheredanielSun, January 19, 2003publishv cul book sitefound this site today and am very impressed: <a href="http://allconsuming.net">allconsuming.net</a> (via <a href="http://weblog.infoworld.com/udell/2003/01/18.html#a577">jon udell</a>) 161ElsewheredanielSun, January 19, 2003publishElsewhere re: protestsThis is interesting info regarding the organizing group behind yesterday's protests: <a href="http://www.authoritarianopportunistswhocozyuptogenocidaldictators-forpeace.org/">really long URL but an interesting page</a>...again via anil, who links to it saying "how ANSWER betrays the legitimate anti-war movement: look past the sarcasm and you'll see that the biggest threat to the peace movement is one of its organizers." I'm not going to spend my afternoon following every link, I can figure it out pretty quick. I wondered yesterday when I saw one of the organizers with a russian hat with the red star on it. I was like "what the fuck?" Also a lot of "socialist worker" newspapers being handed out. I have no problem with that, but the org itself obviously supports twisted, oppressive governments just because they are communist. Yuck. Really glad I never dropped any money into their numerous red (oh gawd) buckets. Still, the diversity of people at the protest, and the main message of the speakers and of the march itself, speaks more loudly for the real issues here than the radical political views of the organizers. Again, more on all that later. 160ActivismdanielSun, January 19, 2003publishUUI<a href="http://maddog.weblogs.com/stories/storyReader&#36;68">Fly UI</a>. Layers of bad puns there. This article is about intelligent urinal design. It's interesting, believe it or not. (via <a href="http://www.dashes.com/anil/index.php">anil</a>) 159ElsewheredanielSun, January 19, 2003publishYesterday was a wash between the protest and practicing for a duo I'm playing drums for next weekend (more on both later). Today I'm getting very, very, very frustrated with our second laptop, which has never worked, just spent 2 weeks in the shop and supposedly got a new hard drive; I say supposedly because it is having the exact same problem as before. I've spent probably a total of 8 hours since I got it back from the shop trying to get a stable system installed on it, and now it is hanging the same way as it was before. 2 weeks and all I get for my trouble is 8 less hours of my life and a cracked case! So the machine is fucked. I'm unsure whether to follow up with the service center that just worked on it or just send it back to my brother-in-law, who I bought it off of, and say either "send me back a stable machine" or just "forget it, can I have me money back." Then shell out more than twice as much for a new one...or just work out some arrangement with M over this one. Oh, for the conflict-over-computer-free two weeks we had when we first got this second machine and it actually worked... 158MinutiadanielSun, January 19, 2003publishwriters are tre cul but most always poor as shitWhen <a href="http://theyblinked.com">dan</a> <a href="http://www.theyblinked.com/blog/2003_01_12_theyblinked_archive.html#87572994">linked</a> to <a href="http://deepdirt.blogspot.com/2003_01_01_deepdirt_archive.html#90186758">karen's rant</a> yesterday, the main thing that stuck out at me was ...pre-postmodern born boomers or silents with multiple book contracts and we are not, and don't, so a tiny part of us is jealous... If I remember correctly, my thought was "Jealous of what?" Almost blogged about it but didn't feel it worth it until via <a href="http://jordoncooper.com">JordOn</a> I came upon <a href="http://bloggedyblog.blogspot.com/2003_01_12_bloggedyblog_archive.html#90195505">Andrew's rant</a> about trying to get paid from one of his publishers. I can relate! I have no idea if I'm ever going to get paid for <a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0971457603/qid%3D1042852198/sr%3D11-1/ref%3Dsr%5F11%5F1/102-0133524-5768152">I am Relevant</a>; but since it's a 1/7th share of a low-distribution (only in "specialty stores" as <a href="http://www.michaelknott.com/">Michael Knott</a> once put it) book, I'm not going to sweat it too much, probly. You like what Andrew was owed after, what, a year or two? &#36;200?!?! Yeah, sounds about right. (I did notice andrew blogged all that right after also linking to karen's rant. I'm assuming that's no coinkidink.) So yeah, be jealous, go right ahead. 157ElsewheredanielFri, January 17, 2003publishLessigEver notice that <a href="http://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/lessig/contact/pictures/">the pictures</a> of Lessig on his site suggest three things: 1. he's constantly reading (supreme court decisions?) from his computer screen. 2. yeah, must be supreme court decisions, because he's always frowning. 3. <a href="http://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/lessig/contact/pictures/lessig_thinking_thumb.jpg">the</a> <a href="http://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/lessig/contact/pictures/lessig_forehead_thumb.jpg">pictures</a> with his hand somewhere on his face are used most frequenty on his site since they distract from the fact that his face is exceptionally small in relation to his head. :) 156ElsewheredanielFri, January 17, 2003publishRIAA On Supreme Court Decision<a href="http://www.riaa.org/PR_story.cfm?id=596">RIAA On Supreme Court's Decision In Copyright Term Extension Act Case</a> Comment By Cary Sherman, President of the RIAA On The Supreme Court's Decision In Copyright Term Extension Act Case: "This is a decisive and important victory for creators and consumers......" Yeah. :P Uh-huh. Ok. 155ElsewheredanielFri, January 17, 2003publishPostmodernism and Computer Science<a href="http://ftrain.com/archive_ftraintwo_15.html#p28">Early Notes on Postmodernism and Computer Science</a> by Paul Ford <a href="http://ftrain.com/">ftrain.com</a> part of <a href="http://ftrain.com/archive_ftraintwo_15.html">this article</a> The hazard of being a generalist is you stay stupid longer. mentions <a href="http://www.mheim.com/">m.heim</a> mentions <a href="http://kiev.wall.org/~larry/pm.html">Perl, the first postmodern computer language</a>, which I have no intention of reading part of <a href="http://ftrain.com/theory.html">ftrain:theory</a>, which I am making my way through, slowly article maintained here for my sake: Early Notes on Postmodernism and Computer Science by Paul Ford, ftrain.com Many computer types seem fascinated by Postmodernism. The first example of this I found online was computer scientist Andrew C. Bulhak's Postmodern Essay Generator (link broken; new links don't work), based on his &quot;Dada Engine.&quot; This produced random text from sets of words. I found the Dada Engine about 4 years ago. (In a strange recursion, after I wrote a draft of this Ftrain, but before I posted it, Andrew linked to Ftrain via a &quot;weblog&quot; site. Connections between knowledge online are fractal in subtle ways, but more on that later.) In the four years since, I've seen essays ranging from How To Deconstruct Almost Anything, &quot;the story of one computer professional's explorations in the world of postmodern literary criticism&quot; to Larry Wall's lengthy explanation of Perl as a Postmodern programming language. On the other side, the Theory crowd digs science, usually without a lick of understanding, writing about chaos theory and &quot;quantum gravity as the roots of the other&quot; in a seamless, cheerful stream of babble. There's an amusing book out there called Fashionable Nonsense where scientists take on Pomo Critics. Me, I understand neither the science nor the Postmodernism very well, at least during this decade of my life. The hazard of being a generalist is you stay stupid longer. More on this later. To hypothesize from a ridiculously tiny experimental base: do code wonks and Theory wonks have the same fascinations? Postmodernists are extremely curious about the deep structures of our culture, and they'll go so far as to say that our culture is what defines our atoms, not the other way around. Computer scientists interested in non-traditional domains (say, algorithmic video and sound composition, as opposed to efficient search algorithms) and especially those interested in the Internet are also arguing against the atoms. They won't always talk about it, but they're into re-arranging the creative and cultural universe into manageable structures; they're implementing the structures the PoMo critics are exploring, actually hard-coding &quot;units of meaning&quot; into their software, or to take it up a metalevel, they're implementing tools which have built-in assumptions about the structures the PoMo critics are exploring, like with VRML, or CSound, or MSWord. I think it all emerges from data instinct, that weird ability humans have to simply absorb ideas after enough time online, rather than knowledge (more on data instinct later.) In any case, that's the real promise of Virtual Reality. VR is not just a jackoff fantasyland; it's a tool for modeling all the wacked-out nonsense and relationships, for playing out the differences in our minds and our situations. More on this later. It'll all out when quantum computers show up, mark my words. More on this later. 154ElsewheredanielFri, January 17, 2003publishthis is why writers are so culJenny's dead, but that won't be a problem. --a <a href="http://monkhouse.blogspot.com">friend</a> "If writers were good businessmen, they'd have too much sense to be writers." -Irvin S. Cobb "If you want to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe." -Carl Sagan 153QuotabledanielFri, January 17, 2003publish