“Japanese Inbetweeners”
[ This phrase was developed by Chris Greazel ]
September 2001 Forty-two posts
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After moving, you end up throwing a lot of stuff away.
But here are some URLs from business cards and flyers acquired at Comic-Con 2001 — I must have picked them up for a reason, right?
And they are —
BijouCollectables.com | TrendyAnime.com | ImpactGraphicsPosters.com | CoolStuffVideos.com | PosterSuperShop.com.Really though, I intend to sell lots of my comics. It’s a down comics market, but I figure some of these someone could get some joy out of, and Jenny and I could certainly use the space.
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While situating the new computer room, I find myself compulsively listening to two radio shows online (in RA)– Air Sculpture pt.1 pt.2, and Anthropology pt.1 pt.2 — from FZFAN.
Frank Zappa’s insights into the Award Shows, the Music Business, and MTV are as apropos as ever. He talks specifically about MTV as the point where bands began to be signed for how they look, and not for how they sound. I like where he says that MTV was what the music business deserved.
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New Lab item. How to make .php files masquerade as .php3. It’s a bit of magic which requires the very cool mod_rewrite for apache. Good mod_rewrite tutorials here and here.
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I’ve had these Star Wars Songbook songs on my site — in the smorgasborg — for a long time. I had always assumed they emerged from the collective unconscious somehow. But the other day I got a nice note from the original author asking me for attribution, and said it would be fine if I left them up. How cool is that? So you should all visit his site — www.theforce.net/songbook. Nifty!
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Yesterday was my Paternal Grandfather’s birthday. He’s a WWII veteran – he was a Chief aboard several ships in the Pacific Fleet. He had joined the navy a few years before the war broke out. Anyway, one story retold last night was that when he visited the Arizona Memorial, he saw a buddy’s name — and was heard to exclaim — “That guy owes me ten bucks!”
He did not deny the story, so I take it to be true.
In any case, it’s a very funny story, and fits my Grandfather to a T.
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David McLean of evolt.org got something I wrote onto Yahoo! Canada‘s Quotation of the day — today.
“So how do those who would protest get smart? They need to organize in such 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.
Think: McLuhan meets Gandhi.”
I don’t write much about activism, but I believe in justice, and in the ability of people to subvert the status quo by avoiding complacency, and being smarter. We have so many tools available to us, we should use them. If we don’t use them for ourselves, they’ll end up being used on us.
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Great busy weekend. Went to a lovely party @ Kynn and Liz‘s Place up in Lake Elsinore on Saturday. It’s another county over – in Riverside County. Jenny and I had a great time.
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airshare.org is a collective | co-op | science club experimenting with 802.11b wireless networking. I’m a fan of airport and have for more than a year. Airport is no different than 802.11b, but is easy to install for someone like me. Anyway, on Saturday I hung out while some very cool demonstrations and experiments of technology happened. Free (or cheap) ubiquitous internet is a helluva good thing I think. I’m eager to keep experiment with this stuff – which is cheap, and easy to use. So check out airshare.org and see what’s happening here in San Diego.
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Watched parts 1 and 2 of Band of Brothers [ based on the book of the same name ] last night. My father is in town from Virginia, and he was a veteran of Vietnam and served in the 101st Airborne Division. My father is a history buff, and has read on the history of the 101st extensively. He has attended some of the reunions of the Screaming Eagle Association. The series is good, and worth a look.
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Additionally, my mother is in town from Virginia. And last week, Jenny’s mom was in town from Miami.
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Shocking attack this morning in New York and Washington D.C.. My heart goes out to all who lost their lives today. I fear for my nation, and for the world.
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24 hours on and there’s still no return to normalcy. So much bitter news. Such a horror. The events of yesterday may be the most heavily documented single tragedy in the history. Instantly we have hundreds of people with personal stories, video, and especially the grisly pictures. So much news.
The sheer volume of what’s out there to look at to read is amazing. First person accounts. Photographs of attack, collapse, aftermath. Emails about those final cell phones. Reports from terrorism experts about our lack of human intelligence about this. Complaints about the shortcomings of security for air travel. Comments from structural engineers about the world trade center. The history of the world trade center. Clipart of the skyline of new york whose profile is forever altered. Calls from religious leaders to show tolerance. Cries for vengeance. Acts of incredible heroism. Words of terrible vitriol.
I feel like I’ve been reading about a 400 page magazine – chock full of data. Hard to turn off the spigot for an information junkie like myself.
Here are some urls with links to interesting content:
camworld.com…, metafilter.com/, interesting-people.org…, kottke.org…, docsearls.com…, scriptingnews.userland.com…, commons.somewhere.com/rre.
And of course news sites: cnn/, guardian.co.uk, bbc.co.uk/, msnbc, npr.org, washingtonpost.com, nytimes.com, signonsandiego.com, latimes.com.
And the tragic death of an Akamai co-founder, Daniel Lewin on board Flight 11 gave me an odd twinge of irony. Akamai is a caching outsourcing technology – especially designed to keep up with heavy server loads such as we saw yesterday. Odd sensation to see Akamai urls float into news sites with news about the events yesterday.
Kudos to google.com/ , cnn.com/ , paypal.com/ , amazon.com/ , and many other online stalwarts who leapt to action to make news and information available to the public, and provide an outlet for donations.
Best wishes to you all, and may we begin to recover.
I was going to say that we can return to normal, but we can’t. The road ahead is hard.
(and as Kelly Abbott says) – Peace.
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Note: previous post originally posted to websandiego.org mailing list this morning.
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Ben Curtis has posted a great debunking message about many of the post September 11th memes, messages, and FWD’s that have been making the rounds. Bookmark the URL and the next time you get Nostradamus crap send them to it.
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“They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.”
— Ben Franklin, 1784 -
Why I still love Legos:
Why, that makes me want to go spend lots of money on the Mindstorms Product!
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Know what the Reichstag Fire is? You should.
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The original culture jammer: Frank Zappa: On up & away & afar & a go-go
Escape from the weight of your corporate logo! -
Over the weekend I added a new header. Something slightly patriotic for this Month of madness. Old headers here.
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Played racquetball over the weekend. Man, am I ever out of shape. But it was fun. Need to get a new racquet though – mine is about 10 years old. The newer racquets seem to have grown in a decade. Presumably some change in the rules of racquetball, or something.
Anyone want to play some racquetball? I’m out of practice and (very) out of shape.
I’m like one of those greyhounds at the dog track. I need an electric rabbit I can chase as motivation. For intellectual things (reading, art, web development) I am self-driven. But for things physical I don’t care. Racquetball may serve as electric rabbit for me.
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At at Comic-Con 2000 panel entitled “Online Comics,” Kyle Baker’s “Letitia Lerner, Superman’s Babysitter” was mentioned as a great online comic. Truth of it was, it was simply a comic that DC would not publish, but that leaked onto the net. It has subsequently been published in a collection called Bizarro Comics. You can also find it out there on the web, but the collection is worth the pricey price.
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Quote from another panel from Comic-Con 2000: “Are you making a high tech comic book, or a low-tech cartoon?”
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An effort to standardize the methods for comics grading: ComicGrader.com
Fun Fact: existing comics grading standards (Mint, Near Mint, etc) are derived from the coin collecting market. After all, you don’t mint a comic book, you print it. Coins are minted.
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Re: Blade Runner – one possible for title was Dangerous Days – this I got from the presentation at Comic-Con 2000 given by Paul M. Sammon (author of Future Noir: The Making of Blade Runner.
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Quote from a Digital Coast 2000 panel on Venture Funding: “Have more than a powerpoint and some people — have an executive summary and a business plan”
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Quote from Mark Cuban @ DC2000:
The minute you think you’re smart — you’re toast.
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Another quote from DC2000: “The user is the content. There is is a total transformation of the user by the interface.“
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Any worthwhile thought I’ve had about web applications came from exposure to Philip Greenspun. Read this, and then check out his new textbook in progress, and visit his home page.
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If the intelligence services of the USA were so surprised by the events of 11 September, how can they so quickly draw conclusions about who is responsible? Is this a rush to judgement? No doubt Bin Laden is a bad fellow, but what if we destroy him and his network and are still left with a terrible world security problem? Reading the link below will make you think.
–Benjamin Zycher ;Senior Fellow;
Pacific Research Institute for Public Policy ( via IP ) -
Amazing — from the Microsoft Frontpage 2002 User Agreement:
You may not use the Software in connection with any site that disparages Microsoft, MSN, MSNBC, Expedia or their products of services, infringe any intellectual property or other rights of these parties, violate any state, federal, or international law, or promote racism, hatred or pornography.
source: mspur.pdf found via google by way of ev and infoworld.
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What a lovely weekend. I’m really liking this playing racquetball thing. And Sunday was a small get together with some friends which rocked hard. We watched “Tin Toy” and “Raising Arizona” — and Jenny put together an amazing spread. Nice to get our minds around something lite and less heavy for a change. The new apartment is small, but it fits a medium size party pretty well. Looks like it would be hard to have a big blow-out type party.
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I did some editing on wikipedia – in the Health Sciences section. I added Respiratory Therapy. My handle there is artlung, of course. The concept of an Open Encyclopedia is pure egalitarian academian utopia, it just might work. It even manages to self-correct. More about it on kuro5hin.org. It’s a wonderful example of open source in action.
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Brilliance from the onion. Laughter is important, even when everything seems to be serious.
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The web accessibility angle on current events and the media. Some nice quotes from Mr. Kynn as well.
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So I finally bought some new shoes — athletic shoes (though I’m not athletic) aka tennis shoes (though I play no tennis). They’re comfortable. For some reason I’m incapable of buying anything but all white athletic shoes. I look at the colors and they look silly to me. So I went to the local Just for Feet (who apparently own feet.com), made my choice, got in, got out. My bias towards zapatos blancos probably comes out of my medical background – for clinical in Respiratory Therapy school they demanded we have all-white shoes. More professional, I suppose.
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Last night I watched the premiere episode of Enterprise – the new series based on the Trek franchise. I’m a fan, and I dug it. My friend Chris and I used to discuss at length things like how warp drive works, and the history of the Trek universe. Chris had a book which was published in the early-to-mid 80’s called something like A History of the Future which detailed all this history of the trek universe. Star Trek First Contact handled this early history nicely. I like where this latest series puts us – essentially halfway between now, and the initial Trek series. Whoa. Check this timeline out.
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Court configuration of Racquetball, from the Official Rules from the USRA. See also the Rules for Everyday Racquetball Play.
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I hate advertising. One exception are the bus stop posters and magazine ads from bebe. They have a wonderful sense of style. They are featured at bebe advertisements. This site only has a small slice of the advertisements. Perhaps bebe should do a book, or at least show these wonderful ads off on their website.
Which ones do I like in particular? Well, how about these three which feature Adriana Lima, Nina Brosh, and Alice Dodd.
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Especially Nina Brosh. These Nina Brosh photos sort of remind me of Blade Runner – evoking early 20th Century, but also spun in a peculiar, futuristic manner.
Blade Runner is supposedly set in Los Angeles, 2019
So how close are we to the bleak world of Blade Runner?
We’re in a dystopia already. Just not the one in Blade Runner.
