Chaos Magnet

Cult of prsnlty

Apparently I wasn't the only one who's a little annoyed at the naming game that started with Flickr. What's interesting is that if you try, you actually read all of Chris Pirillo's take on it.

Technorati tags: Flickr | Pirillo | Web 2.0

Sci-Fi TV schedule

Back when I was really serious about The Vanguard Science Fiction Report (which, by the way, I have once again began to update) I always wanted to do a listing of all of the television shows now airing, even in repeats and syndication. Now About.com has done it.

Technorati tags: TV | television | science fiction | fantasy

Dilbert behind the scenes

Scott Adams, the creator of Dilbert, has started a blog. Now, I'm one of those people who loves to see what's going on behind the scenes. I watch all of the "making of" documentary site and get my hands on, even if I haven't seen whatever it is they're showing the making of. So it was with extreme pleasure that I read Dangerous Doughnuts, the first post in the category Dilbert Stuff That Got Me in Trouble. A cop, a gun, a doughnut, and an editorial board. Gotta love it.

[Update: This one is even funnier.]

Technorati tags: Dilbert | Scott Adams | comics | humor | humour

Border security -- which direction?

Am I the only one who hears Bush talk about "border security" and wonders how long it will be before it's as hard to get out as it is to get in?

zero to Web application in 10 minutes

Well, after spending days trying to get Ruby on Rails installed and working on my machine I was beginning to be a little bit suspicious about all these claims about how it was such a wonderful language, easy-to-use, and so on. Going through the Ruby stuff itself didn't convince me either. Finally, I found How to make a todo list program with Rails 0.9 and after doing a clean install based on its directions, was astounded that I was able to install, configure, and create an entire to-do list application in all of 10 minutes. Seriously. I still can't believe it. It is a little convoluted, don't get me wrong. But man is it fast. (I have no idea what the production speed a running the application would be, but I mean it was very fast to create it.)

Now if I could just get my web host to support Rails...

Technorati tags: Ruby | Rails | Ruby on Rails | programming | Web development

Study Reveals Pittsburgh Unprepared For Full-Scale Zombie Attack

From the Onion, via Bruce Schneier: Study Reveals Pittsburgh Unprepared For Full-Scale Zombie Attack, including this quote from the mayor:

If zombies were to arrive in the city tomorrow, we'd all be roaming the earth in search of human brains by Friday.

On a related note, should I be concerned that the book most often purchased under my Amazon Associates account (after XML Primer Plus) is the e-book version of The Zombie Survival Guide?

Technorati tags: humor | humour | zombie | zombies | Pittsburgh | onion |

How to carve a pumpkin

Ever wonder how they come up with those great designs you see on pumpkins every year at Halloween? Better yet, have you ever wondered about the best way to put those designs on the pumpkin? Check out this flash movie: How To Carve A Pumpkin.

He he he.

Technorati tags: pumpkin | Halloween | humor | jack-o-lantern |

Secret Code in Color Printers Lets Government Track You

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has broken the code that printer companies have put in, causing printers to include a tiny invisible pattern that indicates when the document was printed and the serial number of the printer that printed it. Ostensibly to foil (or at least track) counterfeiters, this deal is troubling for several reasons, perhaps put best by EFF Seniorspace Staff Attorney Lee Tien:

Underground democracy movements that produce political or religious pamphlets and flyers, like the Russian samizdat of the 1980s, will always need the anonymity of simple paper documents, but this technology makes it easier for governments to find dissenters. Even worse, it shows how the government and private industry make backroom deals to weaken our privacy by compromising everyday equipment like printers. The logical next question is: what other deals have been or are being made to ensure that our technology rats on us?

Supposedly, the codes are only able to be read by the Secret Service, but the EFF has an automated program that lets you to code your own documents.

Technorati tags: privacy | government | EFF | printers | secret codes

Brave U.S. Army recruiters hide from grandmothers

Despite my antiwar stance, I've always had a great deal of respect for the US Armed Forces. They do very difficult job under less than ideal circumstances that were not of their making.

Recruiters on the other hand, I have no use for. Yes, there are certainly exceptions, recruiters who do have more morals than a cockroach, and I have even met one or two. On the other hand, the recruiter who suckered my son into signing up for the Army before he even graduated from high school was eventually fired because he'd gone too far for even by recruiters' standards. (Of course, that doesn't change the fact that my son is currently in basic training.)

So it was with little surprise and great amusement that I read about Grandmothers arrested at an Iraq War protest. Apparently the grandmothers, members of the Anti-War Grandmothers, a coalition of Grandmothers Against the War, the Gray Panthers, and the New York City Raging Grannies, had gathered outside the recruiting station and claimed to want to enlist. But that's not the best part. The best part, in my view, is the reaction of the recruiters inside the booth:

"We tried to ring the bell at the booth, but no one answered," [Joan Wile, 74,] said. "I saw a head poke up from behind the counter every once in a while and then duck back down. I don't know what they were afraid of. Maybe they don't know how to deal with a bunch of grannies."

The women were arrested for disorderly conduct.

Technorati tags: war | antiwar | anti-war | Iraq | grandmothers | antiwar grannies | Antiwar Grandmothers | Anti-war Grandmothers | military | humor | recruiters

Open source publishing

SourceBeat looks interesting. You buy a subscription to a book, and you get 12 months of access to that book. During that time, and there may be additions, corrections, and so on. They also have an early release program in which you can start reading the book before it's actually "finished" without impacting your 12 months. SourceBeat covers open source topics.

Technorati tags: open source

Free web stuff

Everybody knows there's lots of free stuff available on the Web, but somebody finally got the idea to put it all together in one place. Check out Zeroweb.org. links to all kinds of things that are useful for webmasters, such as layouts, clipart, other graphics, redirection services, bulletin boards, all kinds of stuff.

Technorati tags: free | HTML

Weblog Usability: The Top Ten Design Mistakes

Jacob Neilsen made his name telling everyone about the importance of usability. He still publishes his annual list of the worst mistakes web designers make, and his weekly "alert box" column usually has an interesting nugget or two. Now he's taken on Weblog Usability: The Top Ten Design Mistakes.

Apparently I'm making some of these mistakes, but then, I'm not in this for fame and fortune. :-)

Technorati tags: usability

Organizing your office

As the title of this blog implies, I am not the most organized individual on the face of the earth. Making things more difficult is the fact that my office here in the new house is somewhere between the size of a small walk-in closet and a large bathroom. I have to walk outside to change my mind or stretch my imagination. So I'm quite interested in organizing the space as effectively as possible. It won't be available until Friday, but while I've got a link to it, make a note to check out Organize Your Office in No Time by Creating Your Office Framework, which shows you all of those really obvious things that you would do if you just gave it some thought. (Of course, if you could give it some thought, your office would probably already be organized.) It's from the book Organize Your Office In No Time, which looks pretty interesting. The only thing that bothers me is that I don't like to work with my back to the wall, which seems to be the only "acceptable" configuration.

Technorati tags: books | organization

Ruby on the Web

while were on the subject, as a reference for Ruby on the Web.

Technorati tags: Ruby | programming | Web

Getting started with Ruby

My editor over at InformIT has asked me to produce some ruby content, which is nice, because I'd been planning to learn that anyway. It's just always nice to have an excuse. :-) what's also nicest having a place where you can go to get started without having to figure out where to find everything. Thankfully, Loud Thinking has provided a page for Getting started with Ruby that provides links to everything from the language itself to documentation to tutorials and such. Very nice job.

Technorati tags: Ruby | programming

Fear and Loathing in the Mystery Machine

There's really not much I can say about Fear and Loathing in the Mystery Machine, "Excerpts from the never-aired 1973 Scooby Doo episode with guest star Hunter S. Thompson". (Via A Small Victory.)

Technorati tags: Hunter S. Thompson | Scooby Doo

Long Way Round, Revenge of the Sith on DVD

I'm excited to report that today I received an e-mail from Amazon that a US version of the Long Way Round DVD is finally going to be released on December 13, and you can order it now. For those who don't remember my ranting about it before, this is a series that follows Ewan MacGregor (yes, that Ewan MacGregor) and Charlie Boorman as they ride their motorcycles around the world, from London to New York. It's fascinating because you not only get to see all of these remote places and see how people really live, but also because you get to see how real people react in a situation in which they attempt something more difficult than most of us would ever consider.

Also, for you Ewan MacGregor fans, don't forget that Star Wars, Episode III - Revenge of the Sith comes out on DVD November 1. (At which point I'm sure there will be dozens, or even hundreds of viewing parties, in which people watch all six films in order. I just wish Return of the Jedi wasn't such a wimpy finish. Although, now that I think about it, it might not be so bad at the end of the entire saga.)

Technorati tags: Long Way Around | Star Wars | Ewan McGregor | motorcycles | travel | DVD | movies | science-fiction | Revenge of the Sith

Language Exchange

I took German and high school, Russian in college, and tried to learn French because my wife wanted me to. I've got a CD learning Spanish, and somewhere along the line I really should learn Chinese.

Can I actually carry on a conversation in any of these languages? No.

So the Language Exchange absolutely fascinates me. Members sign up to learn a particular language, and they're paired with native speakers, so they can actually have conversations in their chosen language. The list is actually quite extensive. It includes not only the languages you'd expect, such as English, Spanish, and so on, but also some you might not, such as Native American, Gaelic, Yiddish, and lots of languages you've probably never heard of.

This would be perfect for me, if I can still type. Unfortunately, I have enough trouble getting this dictation system to recognize what I say in English. There is an option to do voice chat but I don't think I'm up to that challenge.

Technorati tags: language | speech | foreign-language |learning

Everyone's a grammarian

I've been doing a lot of editing lately, which has made me very aware of personal biases that I have. For example, I always use "for example" instead of "for instance", because I was taken to task on it by an editor who said that it would cause confusion based on the use of the word "instance", as this was a tutorial for people who would think of that word as having to do with an instance of a particular object. So now, I correct everybody else.

I'm also somewhat fanatic about eliminating the use of the passive voice. It's not "a list of items will be displayed by the cart", it's "the cart displays a list of items". (And not, by the way, "the cart will display a list of items" unless there's a very good reason.)

But then, these things were drilled into my head, and they stuck. At least they're not as arbitrary as some of these gems from the American Journalism Review.

Technorati tags: humor | humour | writing | grammar | journalism