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silly fun
March 2007 Thirty-three posts
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Daily Links
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crap. I have two copies of this i need to replace.
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XNAtutorial.com provides video instructions for beginners wanting to get into game programming.
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found via Greg’s Cool [Inset Clever Name] of the Day
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Daily Links
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still one of my favorite sites. it has herbie the love bug, lots of star wars ships, ringworld, and more.
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I was once an obsessive listener to Bryan Ferry and Roxy Music. It seems he has aged interestingly.
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Browser Wars II
I so wanted to go to this – folks from Internet Explorer, Mozilla, and Opera PLUS my JavaScript hero Douglas Crockford getting together to talk browsers: YUI Theater — “Browser Wars Episode II: Attack of the DOMs” [Yahoo! User Interface Blog]
I will be watching this.
Hi, I’m Joe, and I’m a browser nerd. Hi Joe.
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Bruce Sterling OpEd in the Washington Post
And another of my heroes, Bruce Sterling:
My Dot-Green Future Is Finally Arriving – washingtonpost.com
In 1998, I had it figured that the dot-com boom would become a dot-green boom. It took a while for others to get it. Some still dont. They think Im joking. They are still used to thinking of greenness as being “counter” and “alternative” — they dont understand that 21st-century green is and must be about everything — the works. Sustainability is comprehensive. That which is not sustainable doesnt go on. Glamorous green. I preached that stuff for years. I dont have to preach it anymore, because it couldnt be any louder. Green will never get any sexier than it is in 2007. Because, after this, brown will start going away. -
Experience in Web Master
Recruiting Email Sentence of the Day (emphasis added):
My name is XXX XXXXX and I’m an IT recruiter at XXX. Our records show that you are an experienced IT professional with experience in Web Master. This experience is relevant to one of my current openings.
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HA! HA! I get my news from Fark.com
As Leah and I laze around the house, not putting away clothes in the bedroom, I will fire up Google Reader and read blogs the way nature never intended, in a newsreader. One of the not-really-blogs I read this way is FARK. FARK is the apotheosis of what a nonsense everything/nothing site is on the web. One of the best things about it is the headlines, at least 10% of which make me laugh out loud, or at least chuckle. They also keep me up to date in the quickest way possible what’s happening in pop culture.
Let’s take a completely random sample from just now:
Travel news:
Thanks to Borat, tourists are flocking to KazakhstanDumb criminals:
Bus driver peeps in woman’s apartment, meets golf driverTransportation news:
U.S. Airways “new” computer system just did what most “new” computer systems doWar news:
AP photographers claim U.S. soldiers deleted their photos and videos, and warned them not to publish images of scene where Afghan civilians were shot to deathIt’s faster than watching the actual news, and just about as in depth. If I want to pursue these in more depth, I can chug over to news.google.com and do a search and read what I want when I want it. Fark is also great because it’s so silly at times. I really like their PhotoShop contests. For example: HA HA Guy.
Read more about news in a recent article by the founder of Fark, Drew Curtis: Why the media passes off bunk as news
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Daily Links
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This article has the ring of truth
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“overflowing with meatz.”
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Record Receivables Outstanding… Now where are they?
So much happening. My contract in Brentwood is ending soon, and I have beaucoup bucks in receivables outstanding — that is, people owe me money for work already done — more than ever, across many clients. The problem is, for about 7 days, no checks! What’s the deal people, baby needs a new pair of shoes! Where are the checks? It’s very frustrating to be so “ahead” on paper and not have the dollars in the bank account, we’re perilously low. It would be one thing if Leah and I had any credit, but we really don’t. If everything came in today, man, we’d actually be in a situation where we could have some savings! Well, almost. Anyway, it’s nice to theoretically be on a more secure financial footing, but it’s dragging out. The suspense is pretty hard to take.
So — Hey! Universe! Pay up! We need it! Thanks for the consideration.
– Joe
Update Tuesday Afternoon: Thanks Universe! We’re two thirds there! And I now have my next gig lined up. Thanks a bunch!
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Daily Links
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intriguing cover of a great smiths song.
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meh dee ah bee straw
So Leah and I went to the mediabistro blogger meet thing tonight down in Los Angeles. It was jazzy fun. It was very loud at Bar Lubitsch. And nine bucks for a (not very tall) Jack Daniels and Coke? ¡Qué horror!
It was good to see Heather again, and I even got to shake Tony Pierce‘s hand. though it was on the way out the door. Some other nice folks too, but I don’t have links for all of them, at least not close at hand. But people were friendly and it seemed to be a nice mix of novices, honest-to-goodness bloggers, and newspaper and magazine types. Though I did not mingle very aggressively. Scratch that, I hardly mingled at all, but I talked to a bit under a dozen people. Felt like there were maybe 100 people total for the event in and out of there while we were there.
It was worth it. And Leah and I caught late supper at Mel’s Diner on the Sunset Strip. A little underwhelming, though there were the usual visually interesting hipsters, models, and wannabes. I had a hankering for one of their shakes, but demurred.
I’m thinking about Python. And other things as well of course.
G’night y’all.
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Daily Links
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I want to visit this
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Some great stuff in here
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New Theory of Technology Work
Quoting myself from an email to a colleague:
Why I stayed so long at *****, where the primary thing I was working on was traditional ASP, I have no idea. I’m coming to think if a job isn’t making you smarter, it’s making you dumber. And *** man, every line of VBScript I code makes me dumber.
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Daily Links
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xhtml was not the be-all end all.
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Daily Links
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Closed Captioning for Flash. Nifty.
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I’ve heard good things about them
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Good stuff for Windows
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Todd Fahrner is the CSS guru who gave it all up for bikes. Awesome fellow, moving tale.
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I always thought it was “Come into my bland soul” — which for a droning dance track is perfect.
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fascinating stuff from Raph Koster. Hero of game thinking.
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craigslist changes url for web jobs and rss feeds thereto
the url for “web/HTML/info design jobs” on craigslist used to be http://losangeles.craigslist.org/art/ . I know this because until this morning I was subscribed to the RSS feed for those kind of jobs. That changed when the url for those web jobs changed to http://losangeles.craigslist.org/web/ , which of course means that the RSS feed also changed.
Points off, Craigslist, for changing the urls of something people have bookmarked and subscribed to without any kind of notice or even notification. But bonus points for for choosing a better url for things artistic. I can only think you changed urls because you found that people were “guessing” the url “/art/” and getting confused. URLs are user interface.
If you look at Google right now for this search, you can see Google still thinks the old url applies. It’ll catch up soon I bet.
If I had built any Yahoo Pipes or other applications or mashups based on that RSS feed, I’d have some changes to make.
Given that Craig Newmark is a web guy, I always looked at the /art/ url as a kind of nod to the “artistic” aspect of making web pages. A tiny appreciation of HTML geeks like me. I suppose that’s a bit of wishful thinking on my part.
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Daily Links
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i laughed out loud.
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coordinated donations to gay-friendly candidates in smaller races. genius politicking.
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CS 61A The Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs
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Psych 107 Buddhist Psychology
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InfoSys 290A-1 XML Foundations (Five Weeks Only)
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Reconstituted Headers
On March 1st I made the first new header for this site in almost two years. This morning I made another one. It has a Blade Runner theme. I quite like Gaff’s character. He’s blue eyed and semi-hispanic with a bizarre sartorial flair. I definitely identify with him. I have saved all of the headers I’ve made for the site over the years.
Why did I stop making headers? I think I simplified the blog theme, and I could never find the time. I still can’t find the time, really, there’s always new work to do; but I catch 30 minutes here and there, which is enough to noodle in Photoshop and make a header. I admit that I have made some nice ones over the years.
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Daily Links
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Date and Time on the Internet: Timestamps
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Daily Links
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James Randi from the 1970s.
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fascinating.
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Apparently smoking near your game system can make it disgusting. Funky.
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Stupid.
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DRM sucks part jillion.
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Daily Links
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The Secret Origin of Larry “Bud” Melman
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lots of free books
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MSIE’s answer to the several-years-old Web Developer Toolbar for Firefox.
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This thread, with gobs of useless idiot internet idiots, shows why places like the well (paid communities) will ALWAYS exist. I made the best comment.
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post-it table.
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ross campbell — comics illustrator and artist
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this looks useful
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Freedom is Road Seldom Traveled by the Multitude
A bike was freedom to me when I was a kid. Above is a picture of the bike I got not too long ago. It represents freedom. It’s hard to get out on the bike, and I don’t do it as often as might like to, but I do it when I can and I have the motivation. I’m finding it easier to see ways to have it fold into my life in a way that’s seamless, and I like that a lot.
I’ve not blogged this week, actually in the past two weeks. I ended up my last contract, and I’m on to my next one, I started on Wednesday last week. I’m on for a six month engagement with the online game maker Vivendi Games, Sierra Online. So far, I like it a lot. They have a nice work environment and everyone’s been awesome so far.
Fun datapoint: I updated my linkedin profile with where I’m working, and the minute I got a phone extension at Sierra I had a message on that phone trying to recruit me away. I got another call on Friday. Dude, too soon! So I’m delighted to tell people that I’ll be occupied till the autumn at least.
I had a nice birthday last week. Leah wrote a little bit about me last week. Yesterday her sad broken camera came back from the shop and I’m adopting it. It’s easier to use than her behemoth digital SLR.
Yesterday I had a blast looking at all of the entries in the Supergirl meme. I made comments on the ones I liked. I think this one is my favorite overall. Seeing all the variations on Supergirl was inspirational to me. Perhaps it’s time to do some drawing when I get some clear time. Last year I remember the Batgirl meme.
On the agenda today is looking for places to live in Moorpark. We had a good time driving the streets yesterday. We saw some signs. Sometimes Craigslist is not enough. Wish us luck! and if you know of 3 bedroom places less than $2000/month right in Moorpark, drop us a line.
Onward!
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Daily Links
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Interesting neoclassical political artist
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Nice science fiction themed event at ArtCenter in May
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Pragmatic Programmer’s advice on tech writing
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Wreck Right In Front of Me
Last night I was driving home and witnessed an accident. Oh man, what a mess! I was driving north on Sepulveda and blammo! I narrowly missed being involved in it — I had to slam on my brakes or I’d have been right in it. I hung around late to give my statement to the LAFD and LAPD. The folks involved were pretty shaken up. I was too.
Much more I could write about that, but for now, no.
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Daily Links
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Very slick, very smart, inspirational.
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Wonderful post about writing code. memo to self: look up “cyclomatic”
