• MAS says: OneCore stinks! stupid, funny Catch-22 for online banking for local blogger – I hope this gets sorted out
• Carter weighs in on “Pre-emptive War”
• Bush Sr warning over unilateral action
• Bush to Bush: Son, let’s talk about “diplomacy” — I feel like you’re old enough
• new lab item: Ways to break a lock on an Access Database with Cold Fusion
• I need to get a cellphone. I’m thinking of ditching the regular land-line. What’s the cheapest phone plan? I hear pre-paid is the way to go for “frugal” solutions. With the right plan (I think) I can spend what I’m spending now on a regular phone, but have it be mobile.
• Priceless! 10 years ago, who knew what his code would do: For Andreessen, the thrill faded as Mosaic caught on. NCSA exerted more control over its development, and the existing Internet community lashed out at Mosaic. At a conference, Berners-Lee yelled at Andreessen, telling him that adding images to the Web was going to bring in a flood of new users who would do things like post photos of nude women.

  “He was right,” Andreessen now says with a shrug.

• Who’s Mark Andreessen?
• Who’s Tim Berner’s Lee?
• What’s NCSA?
• What is Mosaic?
• What’s an <IMG> tag?
• Nude women? (mom, don’t follow this link): Kelly Brook (not safe for work)
• New Shirky! Social Software and the Politics of Groups — this is something I know about, as a List Founder
• Previous and Next links demystified
• More interesting San Diego Bloggers Links: 1 2 3
• More about Web Services
• Apple slowly rolling out GUI Scripting

McWiFi — an unannounced California town — let’s hope that means San Diego!

Yikes. Thet OneCore thing I posted was resolved in June 2001. My bad. I sorta like his idea of web revenge though. I think I fell through a timewarp and thought 2003 was 2001. Scary!

I really like this thread from MeFi Here are some of my favorite movie quotes:

• Call off your men.
• Forget it. He’s rolling.
• Game over man! Game over!
• I can verify that.
• Best play ever man!
• Deserve’s got nothing to do with it.

Flying the Caribbean is exactly the kind of long form writing I love on the web, as I said last month.

Philip Greenspun is great. I got to see him give his Web Tech Talk at CalTech in 1999. That was also the first time I got blogged about, by Matt Haughey. I met him then. Philip was a great speaker, and I’m glad to see he’s writing a new book.

There’s a lot of good stuff in Flying the Caribbean. Rants. Musings. Here are some of my favorite excerpts:

On Puerto Rico’s place vis-a-vis the USA

Puerto Rico is interesting politically. The island is home to 4 million American citizens who don’t pay federal income tax, aren’t represented in Congress, and don’t vote for president. Most of the Puerto Ricans whom I encountered were against statehood on pragmatic grounds. They get nearly all of the benefits that any American might get from the federal government, including welfare for mothers and children, defense, flight service, air traffic control, etc., but they don’t have to pay for these benefits.

On racial tensions in the Virgin Islands

There is a fair amount of racial tension in the U.S. Virgin Islands. Basically this is a Third World country where if you’re part of the ruling oligarchy you can make huge bucks through connections and kickbacks. If you’re not born into the right family, however, you must choose between low-paying service jobs and emigration. The ruling oligarchs, like most of the natives, are black. The tourists and the rich expats are mostly white. This leads to occasional conflict. For example, it is actually illegal to walk around “downtown” streets wearing a bathing suit top and the police ticket the cruise ship passengers who aren’t aware of this rule. As one local put it “there is nothing that black policemen like more than giving tickets to white people.”

Tapwater in the Carribean

It is generally unsafe to drink tapwater in the Caribbean. An island may appear to be a pristine desert. How could the well water be unsafe? It isn’t well water. The only water available is probably rainwater that is collected in a cistern and left to stew in its own bacterial soup for a few weeks. Of the places covered in this guide Puerto Rico probably has the safest tapwater and the Dominican Republic the most lethal.

American influence leads to crime

Property and violent crime against tourists does exist, however, and as usual the United States is the leader. Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands of St. Thomas and St. Croix are renowned for crime. Barred windows and private security guards are common throughout Puerto Rico but you probably won’t feel unsafe because there are always a lot of (very helpful) police around the tourist areas. “Crime got a lot worse in the 1950s when the U.S. government started handing out food stamps,” a local explained. “People on farms in the countryside weren’t stupid and they figured out that they could make more by not working. So they stopped working, we began to import all of our food from Florida, and the kids grew up without ever seeing a working adult. Now a lot of them are criminals.”

Alcohol and Expatriates

You’ll meet a lot of Americans and Europeans who spend 6-12 months per year in the Caribbean and want you to agree with them that a slow-paced rum-soaked life in the islands is superior to life in the city. If you’re drinking Diet Coke they take this as an implicit criticism of their lifestyle and get offended enough to fairly demand that you consume.

Island Life vs. City Life

In theory the cities of North America offer the opportunity to socialize a lot of fascinating people, to learn new ideas and skills, to appreciate art and entertainment, and to have challenging and rewarding work. In practice it seems that crowding and high real estate prices force most citizens into working 60-hour weeks so that they can meet their mortgage and SUV payments. In theory it should be possible for Joe Wornout to back down to a shabby apartment and a used Honda Civic and change to a lower pressure job. In practice it does not seem to be socially sanctioned among the high-achievers of New York or Toronto or wherever. So Joe Wornout opens a restaurant on a small island and works moderately hard during tourist season but not at all the rest of the year. Joe is relaxed and constantly exposed to natural beauty and the sea but he is now missing out on everything good that the city had to offer.

I’ve quoted quite a lot of this stuff. It’s definitely at the upper bounds of “fair use” – but I feel like I really want to encourage you, dear reader, to go read some Phil Greenspun. Go read it all. Then go to explore Greenspun’s whole site. If anyone can be considered a model for my own experimentation and thoughts on how to put together a personal site, it’s Greenspun. Greenspun has been accused of being an egoiste and of being insensitive in his use of metaphors, and more. Bottom line: he thinks deeply, and I admire him.

I’m going to the WebDesign Meetup tomorrow. Be there or be square!

Links…

• XML Inventor Tim Bray has a blog — so cool!
• Funny: Freedom Fries from the Soda Jerks
• Have you heard of The Plaster Casters? You just can’t make up stuff like that.
• Two for writers: TWG Interview: Nick Mamatas, and an oldie: A Workshop Lexicon
• New site from GoWestDesign: My Ethereal Image
• ‘Do Not Call’ is now a federal law
• How a War Became a Crusade, troubling article on the rhetoric of Providence, of Divine Mandates, with respects to the President
• I use htdig, but I’d like to take mnoGoSearch for a spin
• 32nd Critical Care Congress of the Society of Critical Care Medicine Mechanical Ventilation CME via vfth
• New Website: Nansy Phleger!
• FBI, Customs secretly seize Associated Press package — not the actions of a government of which I’m proud — NO WARRANT! — SHAME!
• ware: Airlines lowering bag weight limits to rake in fees — and more outrages
• George W Bush demands a standing ovation and controlled audiences
• blog-network – interesting
• Everything with ethernet, everything with a web server — Controller pushes Ethernet into everyday equipment — if everything (fridges, lightbulbs, books, cars, anything) is serving web pages, then I’ll never be out of work! Huzzah!

And personally…

• My mailing list has been wonky lately. Bad vibes. I hope it will improve. I’m working to speak my mind about what is civil and what is uncivil discourse. Challenging.
• Work is going well. I learned about the RequestTimeout variable in ColdFusion. Essentially, if an action is going to take a long time, ColdFusion may time out and show an ugly error before it finishes. To obviate that happening, you can append to your url (in the case of a GET request, ?RequestTimeout=500 — which will give CF 500 seconds to finish. I need to learn more about these kind of situations – performance tuning of web applications in CF is a new part of my job. I like it.
• I think I have this: a tooth abscess — I’m seeing a dentist tomorrow — a short notice appointment
• There’s a party this weekend — Leah and her roommates are throwing a thing. I hope I’m up to it after the dentist.
• Still in a holding pattern on the car.
• Bill collectors have STOPPED CALLING. They love me again. How much you wanna bet they start sending me new cards again. VULTURES. *sigh* Of course, I got myself into this. So fun.
• I’ve finished 3 books in the past week. I’m not telling which ones, ’cause I have a few more to finish, and then I hope to write some book reviews.
• Birthday next week. 33 years old to be.
• Anti-climactic?

ONWARD!

*groan*

(…my tooth aches)

Dental Update
Briefly: I’m scheduled for oral surgery on Wednesday. Kids, please remember to floss, so you’re not like your Uncle ArtLung. Really. I have much much much much more to write about all of this, but probably not today. Leave it at the fact that I have mega-mouthwash, antibiotics for my abscess, and Vicodin PRN (PNR is something every medical person knows, but not many of my regular readers will know – a google search reveals it as Latin, and is stands for Pro Re Nata, meaning Whenever Necessary, or “as needed”). So far I’ve only needed it twice. I accidentally took some Saturday, to comic effect, and have labeled my meds better now.

Love,

Joe

So I had my appointment with the oral surgeon. It’s going to be a short week. Wednesday morning at 8am pacific time I’m going under the knife. It’ll be the first time I’ll ever wear a pulse-oximeter so it matters for my healthcare. I like the Doc. Have a good thought, or a prayer, whilst I’m getting teeth forcibly extracted from my head.

The new job is very understanding about the whole thing, and I’ll be taking it way easy starting Wednesday and through the end of the weekend.

Onward.

Chocolate Muffin. Questionable Soy Milk.

And so are a lot of the protesters. “Violence never solved anything.” Really? Violence solved the Holocaust. “Bombs just make more terrorists.” Really? We dropped more bombs on Vietnam than we dropped on Europe during World War II. Where are all the Vietnamese terrorists? “Innocent people will die.” True enough–but innocent people are dying right now in Iraq. The left’s selective empathy is shocking. My lefty pals feel the pain of Iraqi civilians–but only the pain that the U.S. inflicts or might inflict. You don’t hear much from the left about the pain that Saddam Hussein inflicts. “War kills the innocent.” No, the status quo in the Middle East kills the innocent–and as we’ve seen in Manhattan and Bali, not just the innocent in the Middle East. War at times is the only hope for an oppressed people–as each Iraqi refugee quickly informs the first Western reporter he can find.

But, whatever, I’m against the war on Iraq now. Why? Because George W. Bush blew it. George W. Bush failed to make the case. George W. Bush wasn’t able to convince NATO–NATO!–or the United Nations of the necessity of this necessary war. Now the Bush administration seems set on a course that may destroy NATO and the UN. I don’t know about the Bushies, but I think a world without NATO and the UN will be more dangerous in the long run than a world without Saddam Hussein will be in the short run. So I’m against the war. Hey, when’s the next peace march?

More at: AGAINST THE WAR–FOR NOW by Dan Savage

In 10 hours or so I’ll have 4 teeth — wisdom teeth — removed. I can hardly wait. I intend to take it VERY easy. Thanks for all the well-wishes.

In 26 hours I’ll be 33 years old.

The idea here is that I’ll be back to functional in maybe 3 days.

Kynn says I had that done years ago. It’s not pleasant. Hope you like the taste of your own blood. — he actually means this in a good way. You have to know him.

Many others have offered words of support and commiseration. And I appreciate all the good thoughts. So wish me luck.

Not really certain when I’ll be blogging again. But I intend to have a computer at my bedside. “Adventures in Tooth Drama” or something. Writing. Reading. The Doc says to take it very easy, and I intend to do that.

In the meantime, go visit some of the sites in my sidebar over on the left. Some real good stuff there.

I’m Alive. Math Problem: Joe-4 Teeth+Rest = Yet Another New Version of Joe
The surgery went well.

I’m gonna write all about it – but it went great. My lower jaw still has no feeling; and I sound, “funny”; my mouth is full o’ blood, but I feel pretty good considering a nice man in a mask ripped a bunch of original equipment out of my jaw.

I have a comfy bed, 7up, juices, tv and some fresh comics at my bedside.

Chilling out now. Or trying to. Lots of sleep and vicodin.

Thanks for the commiseration, y’all.

And don’t expect lots of interaction with me this week.

In other news, WebSanDiego.org turns 4 years old today.

Onward.

Good so far. Pain bad after lengths of sleep of 4 hours. Vicodin is my body’s best friend, outside the natural healing process. Clotting ROCKS.

So we’re at war now. Feh.

Lots of good thoughts on WebSanDiego.org’s birthday on the list. What a dynamic and wonderful group that is. Proud to have lit the fuse on that.

In a few hours, a birthday for me.

For now, I’m worn out from about 40 minutes of email and pudding.

Took it pretty easy for yesterday.

But now I have other discomforts.

Turns out when they list “constipation” as a side-effect of vicodin, you should believe them.

Metamucil is a new friend.

I probably will switch to just ibuprofen for pain relief pretty soon. This shouldn’t have this side effect.

All I can think of is that hit Avril Lavigne song — but with the word “constipated” replacing the word “complicated”

Now, I will continue to do as little as possible.

Rest. Relaxation. Good day. And take pity on we, the uncomfortable.

(onward)

So now I’ve been on the radio twice, once on KPBS’s The Lounge, and last month, talking about current issues in web design, on These Days. Here’s the RealAudio of that show, also added as a link on the ever growing Writing & Citations page.

• Media giant’s rally sponsorship raises questions
• Myths and misconceptions about Iraq
• Learn Object Oriented Programming (OOP) the simple way!
• Clinton: Trust Tony (Blair’s) Judgement
• AWStats – an open source stats package
• Just the Beginning: Is Iraq the opening salvo in a war to remake the world?
• A Long, Winding Road to a Diplomatic Dead End
• CDC: Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) (Current news on SARS)
• Perl and Java – lesson – use the right tool for the right job; also, when coding, it’s not just about building it, it’s about maintaining it too
• New “Official” Chistina Aguilera fansite: xtinaxposed.com
• A Fish Talks on the War
• Robin Cook’s 11 1/2 minute speech resigning from thegovernment over the Iraq War
• Legislature of New Mexico voices displeasure with USA Patriot Act – interesting development
• Great Iraq Conflict Coverage Gallery from CyberJournalist.net
• ActionScript Module for BBEdit
• News analysis: France and Germany wondering if matters have gone too far (note: From 19 March)
• Against the War – For Now
• So far I’ve not seen this kind of “hypersecurity”
• An alternative to MacStumbler is iStumbler for OS X
• The Cyberterrorism Big Lie
• New Section 508 Checker
• The president’s real goal in Iraq
• Sad: Ethics in Technology
• christinaaguilera.to/ has relaunched. finally.
• Unauthorized Entry: The Bush Doctrine: War without anyone’s permission
• The guy who hacked the gameshow Press Your Luck
• David Hartwell, a senior editor at Tor (on the science fiction publishing game)
• Marvel (Comics) Movie Doomsday Theory

• blogdex
• popdex
• popdex: “War on Iraq”
• popdex: “Anti-war”
• popdex: “Protesting the protesters”
• technorati
• technorati: last 3 hours
• technorati: top 100 recent interesting blogs
• daypop
• daypop: top 40
• daypop: top news bursts

and some inside-baseball links, about who’s linking to whom

• blogrolling: top 100
• blo.gs: most watched blogs
• myelin: blogging ecosystem
• truth laid bear blogging ecosytem

posted to nettime

• “In the Arab world today, we get a more informed perspective than you do”
• Yellow Times Suspended Again
• Tim O’Reilly and Mitch Kapor at PC Forum 2003
• Al Jazeera in English Launches
• Kynn with background on Al Jazeera Online
• New York Times Online Readers React to Michael Moore @ Oscars
• PHP function I’d never heard of: fgetcsv()
• The Philosopher of Islamic Terror
• Fascinating Sound invention
• phpDocumentor (via Sassy)
• The European Central Bank offers an XML feed of current Euro exchange rates
• My political compass is apparently:
  Economic Left/Right: -3.25
  Authoritarian/Libertarian: -4.87 — what’s yours?
• I was a naive fool to be a human shield for Saddam
• ‘W’ is a hottie?
• Making Bush tell the truth: The media have to be tougher on the Bush administration’s tendency to dissemble — especially when it comes to war (from 2002)
• Son of Saddam: As Iraq’s top Olympic official, Uday Hussein is accused of the torture and murder of athletes who fail to win
• Articulate Defense of Antiwar Protesters
• Todd B’s NYC Protest Pictures
• Ranty! Mailman considered Harmful

Hope is not a plan!

…via Sustainable Fort Bragg, via Talking Points Memo

• http://atrios.blogspot.com
• http://www.thismodernworld.com/
• http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/
• http://www.talkleft.com/
• http://calpundit.blogspot.com/
• http://www.liberaloasis.com/
• http://econ161.berkeley.edu/TotW/Daily_Journal.html
• http://dailykos.com/
• http://www.nathannewman.org/log/
• http://tedbarlow.blogspot.com/
• http://www.sideshow.idps.co.uk/
• http://slacktivist.blogspot.com/
• http://www.prospect.org/weblog/
• http://bodyandsoul.blogspot.com/
• http://offthekuff.com/mt/
• http://www.matthewyglesias.com/
• http://d-squareddigest.blogspot.com/
• http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/
• http://thelookingglass.blogspot.com/
• http://counterspin.blogspot.com/
• http://skyedreams.blogspot.com/
• http://dneiwert.blogspot.com/
• http://johnquiggin.blogspot.com/
• http://maxspeak.org/gm/index.htm
• http://hnn.us/articles/900.html
• http://www.thetalkingdog.com/
• http://junius.blogspot.com/
• http://www.jeffcoop.com/blog/
• http://www.felbers.net/blogger.html
• http://sheldman.blogspot.com/

for Doc Searls, who posted the text but didn’t linkify them…

Gosh, that Kynn is busy. He’s fact-checking the North County Times (NCTimes.com) / KOGO / Pro-troops misinformation (Kynn paints it as malpheasance, I’d say it sounds more like lazy reporters who should know better). Also check his Local War News Roundup.

Other Obligatory War Links

• Cheney is still paid by Pentagon contractor
• Risks of Iraqi war emerging
• How To Take Back America
• Ari, yesterday the U.S. decided to grant one of Haliburton’s subsidiaries the contract to put out the oil well fires. And I’m wondering, given that you’ve known that for months and months in advance that there could be the possibility of oil well fires, why was there not a bid put out to bid on contracts, and was this given without any bidding?
• Grange: Iraqis fight with ‘economy of force’
• Who Lied To Whom: Why did the Administration endorse a forgery about Iraq’s nuclear program?
• Rumsfeld strategy may hit US opinion
• “Too many videogames, I think”

That’s enough of that.

Soldier ‘bloggers’ report from war: There’s a new breed of combat personnel at the war front: soldier “bloggers.”

Internet contact a blessing, but potential risk, for troops

It’s a strange time. Everywhere I go I overhear people talking about the war and not a lot else. The SSQ talk last night on QA risk management also couldn’t help it – speaking about GPS equipment software failures and jamming and how it relates to risk.

Whatever your stance on the Invasion and Operations in Iraq, I know that those of us who are US Citizens hope that our military people come home in one piece, and that the people of Iraq don’t suffer overmuch.

The intersection of the current conflict and internet (journalism, blogging, news alerts, news aggregators, email, etc) is an interesting one – and *this* topic (as opposed to more general talk positive/negative on the war) seems ripe for discussion.

One thing in particular caught my eye:

“The Army even gives soldiers accounts to set up password-protected sites.”

(from the pilotonline link above).

The level of communication is really stunning when you think about it.

Billy the Mountain If I listen to it 17 times, at the end of it my workday will be done. I’ll also be slightly insane from the surreal madness of the darn thing.

Oh, great.

Mohammed Sayed Tantawi, a reformist who, as the grand sheik of Al Azhar University, was one of the first clerics to condemn the September 11 attacks and to dismiss Osama bin Laden’s jihadi credentials as fraudulent, ruled that attempts to resist an American attack are a “binding Islamic duty”, and he asked Arab leaders to block any aggression against Iraq.

Maligned previously as a pro-Western reformer, despite his support for Palestinian suicide bombers, Tantawi’s new stance shows the extent of the realignment. Moderates and radicals now appear to be united and determined to oppose the American war.

…

The big questions now are: how will the new calls to arms be translated in operational terms, and will the battlefield be limited to the Iraqi theatre?

…from Osama must be laughing, in Melbourne’s newspaper, The Age