misc

“Mind the noose and fare thee well.” is in my earbuds this morning. Got a lot done so far this morning. Much yet more to do.

TMBG Lyrics for the morning, from Older:

You’re older than you’ve ever been and now you’re even older
And now you’re even older
And now you’re even older
You’re older than you’ve ever been and now you’re even older
And now you’re older still

Go ahead and watch the video:

Seriously though, Leah’s a year older, but still a beacon of awesome.

And also in the vein of awesome, aging, and cool, Professor Sassy Lee “Matt” Sassburton, Esq. and his lovely wife Beth are expecting! I knew Sassy when he was knee high to a pup, or thereabouts, but I’m pleased as punch as I know whatever the sex of the offspring, he or she will be inculcated with a deep knowledge of haberdashery, unit testing, grinding rails, and Simpson’s trivia. Leah and I wish the bun in the oven, as well as the bun’s parents, only the best.

You know, I had planned this to be a short post, but mayhaps it has a need to be longer. Perhaps I shall address some miscellany. What else has been on my mind, you may endeavor to ask?

They say in social situations to avoid discussing politics and religion. So let’s be anti-social and address a bit of both.

Politically, very interesting things are afoot here in these United States. I’m excited to see energy and elevated participation in the Iowa caucuses and in the New Hampshire Primary. Let’s run down my opinion of the candidates, at random off the top of my head. The best part will be at the end when I have to look up whoever I forgot and pretend I have an opinion about them.

1. Barack Obama. I like him. He seems to be a straight shooter with upper management written all over him. I like that I my spidey sense doesn’t tingle with “Plastic Robot!” when I watch him speak. I would like him to be President.

2. Mitt Romney. “Metallic plastic robot!” But seriously, if I were voting for a CEO, I like him, maybe. I did like that the guy was pro-Gay marriage at one time. That’s pretty cool. I nominate him to be manager of my local Fry’s Electronics.

3. Dennis Kucinich. Not a robot, and definitely I could sit down and play some Apples to Apples or Rummy with that guy. I would like him to be my Mayor. He cares about stuff.

4. Hillary Clinton. Oi. TOO. MUCH. BAGGAGE. No offense to the baby boomers, but we need to be rid of their ilk in the Executive. We have a baby boomer in the White House now and it’s been nothing but trouble. Is this ageist? Sure. Tough! I would like Hillary to be my District Attorney. I don’t want her to live in Washington D.C. anymore.

5. Rudy Guiliani. DO NOT WANT. That dude is an opportunistic, xenophobic idiot. Great District Attorney in New York, crappy Mayor. Didn’t screw up things for about a week in September, 2001. Screwed up everything since. The cops and firemen who worked for NYC were screwed. And while sometimes you can tell that somebody’s doing good if their underlings are unhappy, this does not appear to be the case for Rudy. Also, he’s like the Anti-Family man. How many marriages has he screwed up? Who am I to judge, but then, I am not running for President, right? I nominate him for Baseball Commissioner so he can focus on something he can’t screw up too much.

6. Fred Thompson. I nominate him to go back to playing lawyers and Congressmen in TV and Film and please stay the hell away from any government that has any jurisdiction over me.

7. Ron Paul. I like that kid! He or whoever is responsible for his campaign totally get the internet, which is wonderful and terrifying. If It were, say, Ron Paul vs. Hillary Clinton in the general election, I would vote for him. I nominate him as Grand Ombudsman and Constitutional Scholar of the United States. I know the title doesn’t exist—maybe he could work for the Office of Budget Oversight or General Accounting Office. I want this guy checking on the legality of what our crazy stupid government is doing. I also think I’d love to spend an evening drinking beer (or whatever, I’d probably have a shandy so I can keep sharp) with the guy. He’s smart and a little crazy, and I dig that.

8. John Edwards. Kind of plastic, but I like him. He has an emphasis on helping out the little guy that I really like. Unlike everyone else on the planet, I think trial lawyers rock. They’re actually an essential check on idiocy. I wish the court system worked with better speed though. He’s like a character from a Scott Turow—which is apt since he’s a lawyer. I nominate him to represent me personally should I get into legal trouble or become a character in a legal thriller.

Here’s where I’m not sure who I missed. Let’s consult Wikipedia and expose my ignorance to public shame.

9. Mike Gravel. No idea. The fact I’ve not heard of him can’t be good for his campaign though.

10. John McCain. Oh, right, yeah. How could I forget John McCain? I voted for him in the California open primary in what, 2000? I don’t think he’s the President we need. I find his incredible range of views on the current administration, Iraq, and everything else—confusing. I liked him better when he appeared to have principles. I nominate McCain to be my neighbor across the street who tells great stories about Vietnam, Congress, and running for President. I look forward to grilling burgers with the guy.

11. Mike Huckabee. I got a soft spot for this guy. He’s likeable, funny, and makes terribly funny quips on nearly any TV show he appears on. He’s a serious Christian Evangelical, and he’s got a sincere streak of feeling for those who are in need. He doesn’t think the government should be abolished, a switch from most of the rest of the field. If he were running against, oh, Joe Biden, maybe I’d vote for him. But he’s so good on TV. I nominate him to be guest host of the Tonight Show, or perhaps Letterman. I could also see him as School Board Commissioner (but keep him away from the science textbooks!), or, more likely, Governor.

12. Duncan Hunter. Isn’t this guy one of those crook Republicans? Oh, no, I’m thinking of Duke Cunningham. I don’t know anything about Duncan I can’t read on Wikipedia, so I’ll abstain from nominating him for anything.

13. Alan Keyes. I nominate Crazy Alan Keyes to make me giggle at his asinine principled positions. I liked him better when he was harmlessly pundit-ing on political talk shows.

Aaaand… That’s my election wrap up! I get to vote in the February 5th Election here in the State of California. I encourage all twenty of my readers to vote in this election, even if you don’t really think it makes a difference. I think this democracy thing might catch on if more people did it.

This morning I made muffins. This afternoon I had leftover Cobb Salad from Roxy’s Deli. Today’s a pretty good day by food metrics.

Oh, right religion. Nah, not today. Go enjoy your day. More blogging next week.

Back at work, kids will go back soon-ish. A new year has begun in full force. Jobs to be done: get Wii fixed, get out of debt, get a handle on taxes, figure out where Leah and I will live next. I’ll ship the Wii today. The rest are nontrivial, but can be managed.

Random image, for a not bad year. Lovely mellow night here with the kids, in and out at parties.

HAPPY NEW YEAR Y’ALL

I’m up relatively early this morning. I can hear rain outside the window of the office. Leah acquired some of the lovely All Natural Cola by Whole Foods and I’m having one of those. I feel a tickle in my nose and I think I might be getting a cold. That’s not optimal.

I have a backlog of Misc and here it goes, helpfully organized by vague category!

Programming

I’m very impressed by DateJS—it provides functionality like PHP’s function strtotime() but in JavaScript. This is a tool I’ll be using. I found this via the excellent Ajaxian blog.

The Amazon Kindle has been getting nothing but hate on the net, but it feels like a different class of product to me. These two reviews in particular make me wonder if this device might be something I’d use: Andy Ihnatko and Don MacAskill.

Douglas Crockford wants to fix HTML. I think Crockford is the smartest programmer in JavaScript-land, but I think he’s late to that party. I do like some of his ideas though. Crockford also points out how crazy the expectations are on programming for the web, when talking about Unobtrusive JavaScript he says:

It also calls for Graceful Degradation, which means that a page should do something useful even if the JavaScript assets fail to run. This is bizarre. No other programming environment threatens to pull the rug out from under the programmer the way the web does. If you are writing applications in Java, you do not have to be prepared for having Java turned off. But because of the browser’s long and tragic history of security screwups, JavaScript does get turned off. It is ultimately the only security control given to users that works. So not only does the programmer have to be prepared for failure, the program is expected to fail gracefully.

And he adds: Madness.

Yup.

Speaking of madness, The Web Standards Project points to the Email Standards Project. I end up with responsibility to debug and test HTML mail sometimes and it’s a mess dealing with the various email clients. This a good development. As one of the original members of what would become the WSP, I am all for this. I’m glad to see momentum here.

I’d like to see JavaScript Beautify added to either/both of Firebug and the Web Developer Toolbar.

Comics and Animation

This image of a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle toy posted by Slashfilm reminds me of two of my cousins. I got into (back) into comics at age 13 and while I didn’t get into TMNT, the art style was cool. This figure really seems to hit the aesthetic of those black and white indie comics well.

One of the funnier blogs about comics Again With The Comics, did a series called Thanksgiving Turkeys, featuring terrible supervillains from comics past that made me laugh.

Not funny, but aesthetically beautiful is the work of illustrator Julienne Hsu, on startdrawing.org. Spare, impressionistic, but a turns precise. I find it very inspiring. Her website is www.juliennehsu.com

Marlo Meekins is a cartoonist from the John K. posse who has a way with markers I envy. She says of her work, anticipating the question, this about marker choice: “To answer a super common question about marker brand: I use most brands of markers and only a few select shades. But, all and even the best brands make gross colors and plenty of them. Never buy marker sets. It’s decisions about color combinations, line and application not brand.”

Also from the John K. posse is Uncle Eddy, on Underlight.

Terminus is a short film that spans animation and culture. It’s a disturbing but perfectly executed short film about a man and a looming concrete figure. via jwz.

Culture

Ads from the past might have been demeaning to women.

The estimable ze frank has two Christmas songs out: Listen and Buy, if you want! I particularly like Santa Ain’t Fat.

This interview with the Coen Brothers on Charlie Rose makes me want to see No Country For Old Men more. Open Culture has a few more links.

Anil Dash points out what’s interesting about memes and net culture, and points out ROFLcon, which looks seriously fascinating, bizarre, and potentially educational and entertaining.

Undercover Black Man points out some silliness by one Tay Zonday—a Dr. Pepper promotional song called Cherry Chocolate Rain. It’s fun, it’s silly, it’s a, well, I suppose it’s a parody of hip-hop videos, sort of, but it also uses the conventions of the genre, but funny. So fine, it’s cute, it’s funny—but this feels like a “forced” viral meme, and the production values are way too high to be homegrown. Then I zipped over to the young man’s YouTube Page and check out Internet Dream and I found myself inexplicably laughing. Well, maybe explicable. The dude is funny and talented. Sort of They Might Be Giants meet Biz Markie. Just watch Internet Dream:

And to complete this series of Misc items, I’ll make this a loop—this post on O’ Reilly Radar is about the confusion between Bill O’Reilly (right wing windbag) and O’Reilly (the publisher, mostly known for programming books).

And with that, I’ll start my day.

Blurbomat points to the review of MacOS 10.5, “Leopard” on Ars Technica. Anil Dash has no sense of humor about one icon.

I wish Windows had included Mac networking by default years ago. Sadly, no. Maybe something based on:

I upgraded this blog to WordPress 2.3.1. Bugfixes and an easy transition from 2.3. I’m so glad I chose WP so long ago, and not MovableType. WP is the open source winner. Speaking of WP, they moved Gravatar to their infrastructure which has gone well, the blog High Scalability pointed out Making Gravatar Fast Again. Cool stuff, and will help them avoid “crashing hard” moments. The Gravatar article pointed to Varnish, a tool I had not looked at but which might be appropriate for some projects I’m part of.

Thomas Barnett points out that Bush said he’s relevant. If you have to declare you’re relevant, you’re not. I just wish he wasn’t commander-in-chief. Can we fast forward to the next administration? This one is making me tired.

Philip Greenspun has some new original thoughts on non-profit donations. I wish he did more writing like this. In 2003 I said of him: 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. Still true.

I dug the drawings, I laughed. How can I feel like a flying squirrel? The answer: Sleep Sack!

Heaven and Here is still around. And they are blogging about the best television show ever, The Wire. It’s coming again in January. Yes, I said EVER.

Binary Wolf points to InciWeb and an amazing map of the Witch Fire.

Greg’s Cool Thing points out a post on a Windows utility to check and see what processes are using a DLL. Potentially very useful.

Robot writing out Bible nonstop – this sounds a lot like the The Nine Billion Names of God for some reason. Are you there God? it’s Me, R2-D2.

Japan Probe points out the world’s most dangerous hiking trail. Yikes!

Lines and Colors points to the work of Allan R Banks, Classical painter. http://allanbanks.com/ is a slow site, but worth the load times. I’ve also been meaning to point to this post on the Pre-Raphaelites, also from LaC. Also pointed to there is this very in-depth study of one painting: Millais’ Ophelia.

Slashfilm says “See Blade Runner: The Final Cut on The Big Screen.” I’ve decided to do it. Thursday night at The Landmark. Hit me on email ((( joe at artlung.com ))) if you want in.

Some of you have asked more about my Mom—really, the latest info I have is pretty much contained in this post over here. And for more background on my Mom, check out the magazine article.

Have a great week and be well. I hope all of you affected by the fires are getting back to normal.

I’ve been reading and listening to lots about animation, and one of the more fun things has been Spline Cast, a podcast about 3-D animation.

My favorite podcast right now is Dave Ramsey’s 1 hour version of his show. Don’t bother with the 3-hour version, it’s not really free.

My previous favorite podcast is Harry Shearer’s amazingly witty, terribly dry podcast “Le Show.” Supremely funny stuff to me.

The coming Scriptaculous 1.8 library looks like it has some new and powerful stuff in it.

Douglas Crockford’s latest comments about worrying about the security of JavaScript where many sites are pulling JavaScript from several tom-dick-and-harry websites (for ads, maps, calendars, photos, etc.) are interesting: Making JavaScript Safe. His concept is AdSafe. If you want to see him talk about the need for the tool prior to the announcement of AdSafe, check out this Google Talk on Gears and the Mashup Problem (Incidentally, this is the kind of thing I watch while I do the dishes):