Ruminate

• The New York Times > Magazine > Odd Man In :: Profile of Christopher Walken

• Mekka: Latte art, part two :: Serious art with Latte foam

• How to Make Friends by Telephone :: ca. 1940

• Worth1000.com :: Photoshop yields “Movie Scenes You Didn’t Get to See”

• Keeping Presidents in the Nuclear Dark:The Case of the Missing Permissive Action Links - CDI :: How not to choose a password for launching the nukes…

• Crooked Timber: Heavy Lifting :: When is “Ironic” ironic? And if it isn’t ironic, does that make the title ironic or accurate?

• Smiler’s BitTorrent Site - Links page :: BitTorrent links and resources

• Sharingthegroove.org :: Live, lossless music trading: BitTorrent, FTP, HTTP, vines/trees/loops by mail

• Dictionary of English slang and colloquialisms of the UK :: Dangly-bits to yampy

• SlangSite.com - The Slang Dictionary :: a dictionary of slang, webspeak, made up words, and colloquialisms

• UrbanDictionary.com: Define Your World :: A slang dictionary with your definitions.

It seems that companies are suing Google for their contextual ads because searching for Brand X also brings up various paid advertisements for Brands Y and Z.

One of the named complainants in the article is American Blind and Wallpaper Factory. They whine about the contextual ads because it “dilutes” their brand and then praise Yahoo, who doesn’t allow such ads linked to brand names (until fairly recently, neither did Google).

There’s no meat to these complaints. Because there is no real directory of the web– i.e. no web-wide yellow pages– we have to search for key terms. The analogy on paper would be suing the local telco because when I search for one company in the yellow pages, other companies are listed right there next to them (gasp!). Or when I search through the white pages, there are other people with my last name right there in the same column polluting my brand identity.

Because there is no good way to “browse” the web when looking for specific information, we have a right to see contextual results. Unless we are going to mandate that searching for a brand name (or in this case, part of a brand name) can only bring up a single result, then complaining about contextual advertising is as ridiculous as complaining that there are other search results listed on the page.

At least Google has the good sense to put the ads on the right hand of the search results so that a search for “American Wallpaper” puts the American Blind and Wallpaper Factory in true first (as it should be), whereas Yahoo puts the sponsored links in the same column, something I have never liked.

Dave Winer writes that he finally found good CD Ripping software for Windows and then links to one of the myriad of low-end rippers available. The best method for ripping CDs with rock-solid quality of encoding is EAC in tandem with the Lame encoder. Both are free. Set the programs up, insert a CD, tell EAC to grab information from the CDDB and then rip/encode perfectly, with the best fidelity at whatever bitrate you choose.

Audiophiles everywhere have contributed to these projects for years through real A/B testing, code contributions, and a whole lotta discussion at the number one place to learn everything you need to know about MP3s (and other audio topics, such as lossless encoding, etc.): the HydrogenAudio Forums.

Just to completely contradict myself in the space of five minutes, I present this link to an as-yet-unaired (and never to be, unfortunately) political commercial.

[via Joseph Duemer, fellow disaffected poetry blogger].

One of the few longtime readers of this blog sent me an email recently asking why I was no longer “fired up” about political issues. “Have you reached that point in life where you just don’t care?” She asks.

No. I care more than ever. But I also have less faith than ever before in the people (Americans, Iraqis, Fairbanksans, and world citizens) left to make the right (and hard) choices that are needed now more than they ever have been before. The partial-election of George Bush was the first in many political happenings at the local, state, national, and world levels that have– for the first time in my life– left me feeling almost completely bereft of hope that things can (and will) get better.

Every day, without fail, something stupid is said or and even more stupid decision made that makes me want to rant and rave. The first link I saw after reading my friend’s email was to a story about Dennis Hastert– a 4F deferred former wrestling coach whose biggest struggle appears to be rejecting a second trip to the all-you-can-eat buffet– questioning whether John McCain (who spent five years in captivity, and being tortured– in uniform– during Vietnam) understands the sacrifice made by soldiers in wartime.

I just don’t see a lot of return in talking about it. I’m not promising never to wax belligerently in this weblog about things that irritate me, but the result is always the same: I hear kudos from those who think like me and expend energy on arguments that can never be resolved with those who don’t.

In “real life” I have learned viscerally that well-meaning, intelligent people can be diametrically opposed to me. I may not understand how or why, but some of those I most care about– and who I number among my closest friends– fall on that far side. I have no desire to alienate these good people, much less belittle them or make them uncomfortable in my presence.

In the meantime, I have issues closer to home to deal with: children, work, career, writing (and not), various obsessions, some of which actually can be changed– and even benefit from– my meddling and verbalizing!

Except for the occasional Dilbert and Calvin & Hobbes, the only graphic novel or modern comic books I have ever read are Too Much Coffee Man and Maus. I should have known from the diverse paths that lead me to these two artists (not to mention the incredible diversity of their products) that there was a vast world out there I knew nothing about.

A few days ago I stumbled across Jar of Fools a “novel in pictures” but Jason Lutes. I got hooked reading the introduction by Sherman Alexie, one of my favorite contemporary authors, and I was not disappointed.

I knew from reading Maus that a graphic novel could tell a powerful story, but I didn’t realize there was real literature happening in this form. Jar of Fools is a good story wonderfully told through sparse text and a somewhat old-fashioned visual style (well, it’s not manga or anime). Like the best song lyrics and the music that goes with them, the story told in Jar of Fools can’t be considered properly without the art that goes with it– to do so is to risk making the work sound trite. I’ll just say that the plot involves a burned-out magician (Ernie Weiss), his former mentor (who is slowly growing senile), his ex-girlfriend, a brother who died trying to perform an underwater escape (or suicide), and a con-man.

While looking for more information about the novel, I learned that Lutes also possesses a level-headed clarity about his art (see his interview with SBC) that gives me hope there is more work of this quality to be found. I love the elation of discovering the outlines of something new, like taking the first step on a long-awaited vacation.

• Internet Relay Chat (IRC) Help :: Over a thousand helpful files including FAQs, primers, guides, downloadable clients, scripts, server lists, etc.

• irc.netsplit.de :: Info (channels, resources, etc) on most IRC networks

• Writing Clean and Efficient PHP Code :: Good article (and discussion) on basic best practices

• FART :: Find And Replace Text utility (like grep) for Windows

• Automachron 5.001 :: Network time synchronization app for windows

• The Doors of the 21st Century :: Oh no…

• Blog Software Breakdown :: Comparison matrix of popular blogging software

• flashrocket news :: A variety of Textpattern plugins, articles, and ideas… not all of them likely to be taken up by Dean.

• TextDrive: An Offer :: Textdrive VC200 Offer… I got in early!

• TextDrive :: Dean Allen’s (Textpattern author) new hosting service. Join the VC200!

• Textpattern Presentation Model :: Multipart Tutorial

• Textpattern Tags :: A Manual for Impatient Users

• txp_diagram.png :: Diagram of Textpattern content and presentation elements

• JDueck.Net : Textpattern Semantics :: This article is here to explain the elements in the Textpattern structure of design, and their relationship to one another.

• Kazaa Lite : Kaza Music & kazza mp3 :: Kazaa Lite, Dave, never Kazaa

• Ultra-Flex, Inc. :: 110dpi, 1600×1024, 24bit color LCD flat panel displays

In order to raise some funds for his business without giving in to the strings that came attached to true venture capital funds (he had an offer on the order of 1.5 million if he wanted it), Dean Allen– author of Textpattern had a good idea. He offered up 200 spots (the VC200) to those who wanted to pony up $199 for lifetime hosting on his new TextDrive hosting service (and a free t-shirt). He sold all the spots in around 80 hours. I am happy to be one of those early adopters.

This is getting a lot of notice in blogging circles, with much of the focus being on how effective this rather simple idea was. It’s certainly a financial no-brainer. I can ill afford to waste extra cash, but if the service were to last only two years I would have saved double my investment in hosting fees while supporting a developer, service, and software that I enjoy.

That last clause is the important aspect of all of this. Dean didn’t raise 40k in three days. Dean was rewarded with a 40k investment after years in the weblog community, creation of the Textile markup system and then the elegan Textpattern software, and a consistent record of good-natured, excellent, responsive interaction with those who use his software.

Dean (and his partner, Jason) continue to hit the right notes. Interested in the service but using the other popular blogging tool WordPress? No problem, sign up and he donates 10% to the WordPress development fund. Have a question about a feature or specs? They’ll not only give you a straight answer, but the answer might contain a useful look at the personal philosophy driving their business

That’s what caused me to make the investment (and stick with TextPattern through my growing pains). I don’t always agree with Dean, but I respect that he has a passion for what he does and a direction he wants to go. Some things I might like to see in Textpattern aren’t going to appear there just because I want it– or even because it is considered “popular”– if it doesn’t fit in with the elegant and productive Textpattern model of content management.

I look forward to TextDrive following the same path and offering a focused, powerful, and useful suite of tools that make sense for users like us (”us” being Dean, Jason, and the Textpattern community) rather than a poorly maintained batch of “features” that exist solely to populate a matrix comparing competing services. What makes Textpattern special– and what will set TextDrive apart– isn’t captured by such crude assessments.

• Amazon.com: Books: Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim :: New David Sedaris book on the way!

• Cold Turkey — In These Times :: Kurt Vonnegut rants about modern times

• Overheard at the Free Clinic… :: These are actual statements made to the doctor by patients at a Free Health Clinic for STDs

• Crazy-Ass Sex Toys :: We’ve collected the most bizarre sex toys ever. What do they do? Who the hell would use them?

• Down Syndrome Dolls :: Downs Syndrome Dolls and Anatomical Teddy

• LostFocus :: Check out the “Safe for Work” style

• Andy Kaufman Returns :: It’s not easy being bigger than Jesus right now.

• Google’s Blogger Boss Focuses on the User :: Blogger creator and Google Program Manager Evan Williams joins eWEEK’s Steve Gillmor in a conversation about the revamped Weblog creation tool and its controversial support of a new syndication technology.

• The New Yorker: The Talk of the Town :: Kate Lee: “agent to the blogosphere”