Duh
I still have not learned to fight scope-creep.
Google Actually Works. Other Search Technologies, Don’t.
Someone on the WebSanDiego.org List said something very like what this article — City Ogles Google Impact: The city of San Diego’s search appliance left employees and citizens hanging. Then it turned to Google has to say. The essence was this — “Why bother with site architecture and information design? All you have to do is put all your documents up and then let Google search them and bam, there’s your navigational scheme.” With a technology like google, information design becomes secondary. People only want to find what they’re looking for. Google is proven in this regard. A quote:
“The city had been running an older original-equipment-manufacturer version of Verity Inc.’s information-retrieval software, and it wasn’t getting the results it needed, either for its citizens or its employees. For instance, the public would get no results when it entered the word “maps” when looking for directions to city facilities, and employees had little success with terms such as “GroupWise” (the Novell E-mail software used by city workers) and “E-Pay” (a tool that provides intranet access to direct-deposit check stubs). When the city asked Verity how to solve the problem, the vendor suggested an upgrade to its K2 knowledge-management suite, as well as a taxonomy engine.”
(via http://boingboing.net )
Songwriters I want to Investigate:
Jimmy Webb and Jimmy Dale Gilmore.
Ronny Vardy Art Show
Just got this email from Ronny Vardy…
GALAXY GALLERY
Is proud to present paintings and new illustrations by Ronny.Saturday, Feb 1st. From 8 p.m. till whenever.
Galaxy Gallery known as the smokers universe and also home the the Chronic cafe, has a real Amsterdam coffee house feel to it. Other than their amazing atmosphere and “bitchen” coffee, you can also enjoy smoking a hooka in different flavors like: apple, pineapple, cherry, mint and so on.
The galaxy is located at 7224 Melrose Ave. 3 blocks West of La Brea in Hollywood. Tel # is 323 938 6500, To reach me my # is 323 630 2387.
Booze and D.J’s
Hope to see you there.
See also my Ronny Vardy Fansite
Sundance Review
Caleb Clark, a very nice fellow, has written up a Sundance Film Festival Report that’s worth your time.
Article about San Diego blogs in the Union Tribune Upcoming
Matt Pitcher notified me that the Union-Tribune will run an article about San Diego bloggers this Monday. Nobody asked me. Though the San Diego Bloggers page will be 1 year on Saturday. I wonder why I didn’t get an email? Maybe I’m “tired” and no longer “wired.”
Viridian Note: Venezuela’s Curse
A good one. Read it:
Far from an anomaly, Venezuela is a classic example of that economists call the ‘natural resource curse.’ A 1995 analysis of developing countries by Jeffrey Sachs and Andrew Warner found that the more an economy relies on mineral wealth, the lower its growth rate. Venezuela isn’t poor despite its oil riches — it’s poor because of them.”
(((Read it ‘n’ weep. This Sachs-Warner thing is 8 years old. Ever heard of it before? Me neither.)))
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=225459“How could that be? For the same reason so many entertainers go bankrupt. (((Hey, at least we make people laugh, fella.))) Showered with sudden windfalls, governments start spending like rock stars, creating programs that are hard to undo when oil prices fall. And because nobody wants to pay taxes to a government that’s swimming in petrodollars — ‘In Venezuela only the stupid pay taxes,’ a former President once said — the state finds itself living beyond its means. (((Boy, irresponsible deficits like that would never happen in America. Rich people get no tax breaks, either.)))
Ouch.
New Header… and I Got A New Job
I just made a new header out of some of my old Amiga images – the Katakana script says “Crawford” more or less. Back when Japan was my obsession. The sheep I found in some old Amiga clip art. I added the jet pack myself.
The font that says “ARTLUNG” is based on a typography sample I did in DPaint when I was 18 years old.
So you’re seeing a 14 year old pixel font from my Amiga days.
You could say I’m kicking it old school.
But maybe you shouldn’t.
It was really fun to do, moving all those individual pixels around. I love the colors too.
Oh yeah, the other headline.
Got a new job. Something full time. Something to help get my cashflow on a stable basis. I start Monday at 8am. Whoosh!
I’m giddy with joy, which is probably why I made a header today.
on.ward
MAS on Slammer, The SQL Server Worm
MAS says, in his great curmudgeonly journal:
You can lead a database administrator to a security patch , but you can not make him install.
Between my job, INeedCoffee, and home I’ve got nine SQL Server 2000 installations. All of them have the latest Service Packs installed. Staying current with service packs for licensed programs isn’t rocket science.
