Jenny and I will be moving! Just an FYI. We’re moving to North Park – still here in San Diego / CA / USA. So it’s the usual – looking for boxes, utilities startup, changes of address.

Anybody want to help us move?

I now have a list of links – not all blogs – on my blog archive page. It’s more for my own convenience than anything.

If ever there was an example of the problem with Dead Media – ( Bruce Sterling’s essay about DM ) – it’s this one – where the original Viking data was in a data format which apparently nobody remembers anymore. That’s crazy!

via Nettime. Archives here.

Initially this site had a search powered by a script from Matt’s Script Archive. Based on the timestamps on files I think I installed it in March of 1999. Last month I replaced it with another service. Problem is, a few weeks later, based on testing it now and again – it didn’t work more than it did work.

So what’s the answer?

Google! of course. Google comes around and indexes roughly monthly. What that means is that the blog will not always be instantly searchable. And day-to-day changes will only be searchable with a lag. But Google is good, and predictable.

If I can find a PHP solution that’s painless I may change again.

I learned a great deal on that first perl-based search though. Installing, configuring, testing.

Over at markmartin.net, I have an entry in his Come Draw With Me section. Just some Photoshop silliness. Mark Martin is a great character.

Clarification: Mark Martin is a cartoonist.

Lab time! Why the form action mailto: stinks. Includes screengrabs.

288 Days until US Release of Star Wars: Episode II: Attack of the Clones.

We’re playing with the software from summary.net right now – it does analysis of web server hit logs It is cool fast. Just crunched the raw numbers (without DNS lookups) for 4.5 gigs ( 6 months worth — 23,334,050 hits ) of client logfiles in about 13 minutes time. this is on a PIII/Win2k box.

Thanks to Dennis W. for pointing this out over on the Web405 list.

Can’t stop listening to The Mothers of Invention’s Oh No Some lyrics:

Oh no
I don’t believe it
You say that you think you know
The meaning of love
You say love is all we need
You say
With your love you can change
All of the fools
All of the hate
I think you’re probably
Out to lunch

Oh no
I don’t believe it
You say that you think you know
The meaning of love
Do you really think it can be told?
You say that you really know
I think
You should check it again
How can you say
What you believe
Will be the key to a
World of love?

It’s a beautiful, cynical song.

I think Jenny and I missed The Perseids. We’re in the midst of moving. Hard heavy work.

Back online at our new home – using Cox@Home now and not RoadRunner.

We are nearly settled, and almost done moving.

Even “almost” feels good.

Censorship in action: why I don’t publish my HDCP results by Niels Ferguson really sickens me.

Learn more about why we the people should secure our rights against the DMCA at the EFF web site.

This is definitely on the spectrum with the Dmitry case – Read more here

Recent thought:
Some things are worth dying for. I say this as a married, comfortable person who wants to bring children into the world.

In the face of oppression, lunacy can indistinguishable from bravery. When people goaded into not speaking their minds in protest out of fear of repression or reprisals by “the authorities” — one could argue that that is evidence of “oppression.”

Now, agreement or disagreement with their goals and ideology is a separate issue.

My tendency is to be disappointed by two things – the quickness with which police forces resort to violence, and the quickness with which many protesting people resort to violence. I’m further disappointed by the way popular media tend to lump nonviolent protesters with violent ones. In this way all anti-globalization protesters get viewed as violent and “deserve what they get” and indeed, those who would protest abortion here in the US all get branded as people who desire to see Doctors killed. I’m in favor of people getting a hearing for their ideas.

So how do those who would protest get smart? They need to organize in such a a way that they can beat the police, and the media, at their own game. Every protester in my mind needs a video camera, and an online journal. Eyes wide open, direct to the world – Media savvy. Documenting abuses by the police in realtime. I truly believe, all evidence to the contrary, that the truth will out. This is my manifesto – for those with real causes — that is, causes worth fighting for — media-savvy, nonviolent, hyper-protest.

And we have the tools – compact microphones, video cameras, cellphones, the web. So why haven’t we seen this on a global scale? I don’t know. But the means is available. Think: McLuhan meets Gandhi.

I put this in the lab because I don’t know where else to put it — HTML 2.0 – An exploration!. The idea here is an exercise in web authoring, 1996-style. Just some pointers to the original specs, and brief ruminations on how it’s a little different.

The Onion – brilliant satire – sometimes gets serious. Here’s a great Interview with Berkeley Breathed.

At one point I wanted to be a cartoonist, and Breathed is certainly one of my heroes in that area. His insights into how the modern age is scarcely worth satirizing are worth the price of admission, and there’s much more.

Here’s what he has to say about that::
It’s like doing a parody of The National Enquirer. Can’t be done. We’re over-saturated with commentary and with absurdity, and we’re numb because of it. Nothing shocks, so what’s the fun? And irony, oh, the goddamned irony, that courses through the popular culture like a cancer. If nothing is serious anymore, then there’s nothing to satirize. Look at George W. Bush. He knows the game. He knows he’s a maroon, as Daffy Duck would say, and refuses to take himself seriously. … The game’s changed forever.

Go read it now!

Comparative Anatomy for Server Side Scripting – two small, trivial examples of the same thing, done different ways – in Perl, in Cold Fusion, in PHP, and ASP.

Up too late again fooling with the blogger template and archives. Trying to tune this up. I’ve been doing this for seven months. I’ve decided I enjoy this writing. I think not many people read it, but that’s okay – I think of it as a public diary. If you haven’t tried it yourself, you really do owe it to yourself to try blogger.

New header for the main artlung.com page! And in glorious bright colors!

Old headers here.

I wrote this to web405 in response to a thread on the job market and resumes, here’s a replay, with minor edits:

A college degree does not make a person able. And lack of a degree does not make one incapable. If you have “mad skillz” then by all means show them off — and show what a great person you are to work with. The quality of resumes that I see (yes, sometimes I’m in a position to judge resumes) is generally mediocre – they all look like grocery lists: (ASP Programmer, SQL Server, IIS, SourceSafe, BS in Computer Science, Pound of sugar, Stick of Butter).

Doesn’t every darn resume book say to use action verbs on resumes to actually try and *communicate* what you do? Like “wrote a kick ass banner management system for dot com which subsequently went belly up.” or “Managed team of 15 while fighting off clueless Due Diligence Nazis from our funders” or “fought to put proper software development cycle in place before getting canned.”

There’s a lot of great job experience out there. I think that the resumes people use to display their talents, though, are filtered, deboned, and whitewashed in such a way as to hide the experience and personality of the author.

In my opinion, resumes should strike a balance between simple communication and letting some real mojo shine through.

Made an acquisition today — L.A. Confidential — [amazon] — went to Tower Records, didn’t have any taste for music, but L.A. Confidential is an amazing movie that never fails to delight. I’m a sucker for all things Los Angeles, and that’s a big part of my pleasure at the movie. The meat of the movie is compelling characters – Bud White’s obsession with justice and defending women, Jack Vincennes’ seeming to be on top of the world, but knowing in his heart he has lost himself; and the do-gooding political animal Ed Exley. I was surprised at how much of what appears in the film has real historical antecedents. One in particular is the LAPD atrocity “Bloody Christmas” – which opens the film – and it based on a real event.

Is there an equivalent word to anglophilia for people who love Los Angeles?

My wife has an online diary! voz37.diaryland.com is the address. Somehow, despite being married to me, she has show little serious interest in blogging or keeping a diary – but I think she may be hooked after seeing and enjoying other peoples’ journals.

Also, after having had no interest in anything to do with code for several years, now she’s asking me things like “so how do I make the links blue.” And of course I answer that I can think of at least 4 ways to make a link blue. I will try to limit my comments as she is learning to clear and concise, and not go on ranty raves about how she should assure to markup structurally, and style with css. If I can keep my trap shut our marriage should survive her foray into HTML just fine.

Question from Dori.

Some possible answers: I enjoy toiling in obscurity. I started blogging too late to be an A-List Blogger. People are not interested in the ramblings of a former Respiratory Therapist. I don’t pass along memes like all your base quickly enough.

Just spitballing there. Thanks for asking!

Now I have a reason to watch the Latin Grammys!

Seriously though, the Grammy’s are a sham — as are most awards shows.