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December 25 2000
December 23 2000Well, i hope ya'll had a happy christmas/holiday/day/whatever today! I managed to not totally over stuff myself (for once), and really enjoyed dinner. Got some new snow-boarding gloves and goggles, a book and other loot. The day was great, with some light snowfall overnight, and a crisp clear day, tho quite cold. Anyway, again, happy day and all that. An interesting online book link - Information Liberation. Havent read it yet (its a whole book man!), but i sounds like something i'd like. Go figure. I don't know if you know Scott McCloud or his comic Zot, but he has done a new version of it online. Very great.
Hey ya'll, i may nor may not be updating this page for the next week or so, so, if i dont, Merry Christmas, Happy Holiday's and all that!
Happy Solstice! Shortest day of the year! First day of Winter! Ah, yes, and a lovely new blanket of snow has, and is, falling. Just go out side today for a bit, stand in the falling snow, let it melt as it hits your upturned face, relax, take deep breaths. I will be gone over the holiday's so updates will, well, continue on like they have been, with long lag's between them. Has the web lost its spark? Is html going sour for me? Don't know. Just finished "Reinventing Comics" by Scott McCloud. What a great book. His site is quite great too. If you are into comics, art or design, you should pick up both this book and his earlier one, "Understanding comics". Oh ya, i've a quick request - did anybody tape lastnight's "West Wing"? If they did, could you lend me the tape? We were out and missed it. Drop me an email, thanks!
Off to see the Dentist, the wonderful dentist of Oz. More snow last night, so now all the snow that melted over the weekend, has frozen, and now been covered with more snow. Humm, i wonder what the traffic will be like today...
Son of a Bitch. Well, we got the 60 hour work week, tho "...the proposed changes are apparently not as radical as unions feared". On the plus side, th ey did increase the length of maternity leave. Ok, so i'm like dangerously addicted to Unreal Tournament and the Tac Op's Mod. Anybody want to play?
Ok, i know, i've got adcritic crazy now, but this ad "bear fight" is damn funny too. Thanks to Mark Q for this link to some interesting ad's from Fox Sports. I really don't know what to say. UPDATE: the rest of them are really... wel l, kind of more of the same. Whew - just went through a long series of articles on government deregulation and how the market reacts to that. It all started from this article at Technocrat.net, and led first to this article at Salon about gas prices, then on to a paper called 'Progress And Its Sustainability' by John McCarthy, then another scholarly research paper about NAFTA and its effects on the trucking industry, finally an op-ed (i think) from the New York Times about the disaster of California's de-regulated power industry. Wh at i managed to glean from all this, is that there are some industries in which the 'free market' works, and are self regulating. However, industries which have larger capital investments, such as the power industry, airlines, etc, require some kind of go vernment intervention to prevent monopolistic tendencies. Or something like that. Here is a story i've managed to miss - A nuclear sub has suffered a failure to its primary cooling system, dumping radioactive water into the ocean ar ound Gibraltar. They (the British gov.) want to fix it in Gibraltar, even tho the sub docks there are not properly equipped and it goes against navy policy. the captain even announced that they would be shipping the sub back to Britain for repairs, but th at decision has now been changed. sounds like a big fuck up on somebody's part. Just wanted to say 'hello' to a new UnrealTournament player i met last night - "deathMaiden". Word up. Directly rip'ed from Slashdot, but its about encryption and privacy, so i had to put it up here - an interview with Eben Moglen, general counsel of the Free Software Foundation. Long, but a very interesting read. It looks like there will be a plethora of new 'internet application devices' at CES this January. Here is one that looks pretty cool, e specially if its cheap.
1:11:04 AM - ah, early morning.. You know what that means? Yes, its rambling time again! Click away quickly, and you may not be too damaged, proceed with caution! Ok, ok, its not really that bad (i hope) as i'm not in too evil a mood. More thought ful really. I've never seen myself as an entrepreneur. I don't really have the drive for it. But my thoughts have been focusing on an idea that some of you have already been subjected to. Lord, setting up a 'real' business, rather then just doing freelanc e computer shit is pretty risky, 'specially in the food services industry, which is what i'm looking at. Fortunately there is a fair amount of info online about starting up your own business. The other thing i've realized is, how much all my friends and c olleagues would help out. Its quite amazing really - tony made a cogent point last night when we were together chatting, something along the lines that more and more business's, small ones, will do work for trade and barter of services in lieu (thank you to Mark Q for the spelling) of hard cash. Humm. I was also taken back by the positive response i've received from folks about the idea. They range from "...just add topless waitresses then I think we'd have a winner" to "location, location, location". Of course, like most of my idea's, this one is in the 'way cool' phase, soon to be replaced by the 'this is really a lot of work' phase, then the 'i've got to be out of my fucking mind' phase (tho, i'm pretty sure i'm in that phase most of the time) and fina lly the 'oh ya, i was going to do that' phase. Really, only time will tell if this has any legs. I'm sure you all will be subjected to more rambling about this subject at a later (or earlier) time.
Ah ha! Found a digital camera i want! I've been leery about buying a digital camera as i can be less then delicate with my equipment. Luckily for me, Kodak has released the DC5000, a weatherproof digital camera. The review of it is great, and its based on the DC280, which also sounds great. Now, i just need to find $1100 around someplace... I've added a link above to my public PGP key. Take your security seriously! Encrypt your email! No, really. Cool little tool for IE on the PC - Everything2 search 'plug-in'. It allows you to hilight a word, right click and it takes you to the everything2 dictionary site. Pretty dam n cool. Nice looking landscape generator. It was compared against Bryce and was given a higher mark. Check it out. Crazy UK prof working to become first Cyborg. EA announces support for Xbox. Free sound loops.
So, what the hell has been going on, you ask? Lots of work, lots of uninspired days, lots of Unreal Tournament and Deus Ex playing. Not much desire to work on the website. But all that has changed. Maybe. Probably not, actually. But the radio is b ack up, mostly so i'll have something to listen to from work. Back from the Dead.
Crap, slipped right into December and i didn't even notice! I must be working or something... I did find time to updade my video card to a VooDoo3 3000 - Deus Ex really looks great now, which, really, was the whole point. November has been archived.