Sunday 9/30/01 §
You'll notice this page now comes up a lot faster. In fact, with the server-side script, looking up the comment counts for various comment threads is enough faster (compared to using client-side JavaScript includes) that I'm going to allow a few more posts on the front page, allowing comments to persist a bit longer. (Comment links are not displayed in the archives.)
The mailing list signup form is now fixed. I'm now going to move the ASPcomments script and database to the new host. Since the comments script will now be hosted on the same machine as the site (it wasn't before), I'll be able to use a server-side script to retrieve the comment counts for messages rather than having to use the JavaScript method, which significantly slowed loading of the main page. Hopefully I won't lose any comments in the process, but if I do, my apologies in advance.
This site has been moved to a new host. If you're reading this message, it worked. The only major glitch was a permissions issue that caused the site to give you a login prompt. That's fixed now, obviously. Also, the new host doesn't have the same mail transmission component as the old one, so I have some tweaking to do on the mefi-projects signup script. Should be done today.
Sorry for the lack of posts recently, I've been kind of busy.
Thursday 9/27/01 §
Tonight I picked up myself a Wireless Intellimouse Explorer -- it's the cordless version of Microsoft's big silver optical mouse. So far, I like it a great deal. Cost: $70 plus tax at CompUSA.
Another cool gadget: a pen-sized flashlight that uses a bluish-white LED and puts out just a ton of light for its size. Runs three hundred hours on the included batteries. From Eddie Bauer; can be found in Target's sporting goods department for $17. (Thanks, Warren)
Wednesday 9/26/01 §
Rooby rooby roo! There is no reason anyone on the planet would ever want to see a live-action Scooby Doo movie, but they're making one anyway. The dog will be CGI. The link has pics. (Found at Second Hand Glory)
Yeah, I know this site has been up and down like a yo-yo today, with occasional "No Web site is configured at this address" messages. Gonna find me another Web host tout suite. The management apologizes for any inconvenience.
Excellent article by Clay Shirky explains, in response to a Dan Gillmor column, why cities are actually decentralized, even though the vast majority of people in America live and work near them. "Childbirth is decentralized, but baby's names observe a power law distribution. ... Power law distributions are not only inevitable, they are a sign that decentralization is working, because the freedom that decentralization provides allows for the kind of emergent properties power laws describe." (Found at Boing Boing)
Now spinning: Tweekend by The Crystal Method. It's delicious. (I hit Best Buy last night for some new tunes. You'll be hearing more about my other acquisitions shortly, I am sure.) They also have a clean version of the album, if you happen to prefer your techno trax sans profanity. Fucker.
Tuesday 9/25/01 §
It's been widely linked by other Weblogs already, but the late Douglas Adams gave an absorbing talk at Digital Biota 2 back in 1998, the title of which was "Is there an Artificial God?", and you can and should read it online. (Found at wood s lot, among others)
AppleScript Studio: a full-fledged professional Integrated Development Environment (with GUI builder) for AppleScript under Mac OS X, due by the end of this year from Apple. Pricing and other details not yet announced, but it's about damn time Apple started paying attention to this amazing tool. In other scripting news, Late Night Software has announced Script Debugger 3.0, a Mac OS X version of their script editor and debugger with many new features, which is nearly an AppleScript IDE in its own right. I'm half-wondering if AppleScript Studio is based on Script Debugger plus, perhaps, an as-yet-unannounced Mac OS X version of Facespan -- it wouldn't be the first time Apple had turned to third-party developers for its hot new products (think Final Cut Pro, acquired from Macromedia, and iTunes, based on SoundJam MP).
Monday 9/24/01 §
Since I'm using its title as one of my rotating taglines here at this site, I figure I oughta get around to reviewing the new Ben Folds album here. I've actually been enjoying it for several months (in MP3 form) but, not wanting to be a scumbag, I also bought a retail CD so Ben could get his money.
The other guys in Ben Folds Five were, I'm sure, upstanding and talented guys, but frankly I can't tell much difference between Folds with his erstwhile band and solo, except in a few spots -- such as the drum machine on the opening track, "Annie Waits," which, incidentally, makes it one of the weaker songs on the record. But except for that and one other clunker (the title track, which is of the funny-once variety), Rockin' the Suburbs contains some of Folds's best work ever, in my opinon. Particularly noteworthy are "Zak and Sara" (it's of the funny-more-than-once variety), "Still Fighting It," and "The Luckiest" (both of the serious variety -- I found myself unexpectly tearing up while listening to the former). These songs will really grow on you, and you'll be really glad you let them.
Ever have trouble finding more Weblogs that are like the ones you like? A solution is finally at hand. Blogger Twin Powers, Activate! (Found at MetaTalk)
Sunday 9/23/01 §
Anyone out there speak Finnish? This page has my name on it and a link to my September archive, and they're apparently saying something about the "face of Satan" images in the WTC pictures, but the only Finnish-to-English translation service I've been able to find on the Web made what I can only assume is a terrible mess of it. ("[Jerry] [Kindallista] behaved world conversation cannons in but [Suomessa] [Veijosesta]: fellow or ape," it begins helpfully; the last part is probably a reference to one of my daily rotating tag-lines: "Man... or Monkey-Man?") Clues?
New urban legends have been spreading with alacrity since 9/11. As usual, the Mikkelsons' Snopes.com is right on top of things with their Rumors of War page. They've already debunked a photo that I only saw for the first time yesterday. They also (thankfully) debunked a report I linked here last week about bin Laden's gum arabic holdings; you can go back to drinking pop or soda without guilt. (Props to Follow Me Here)
There's no Internet meme so tired that it cannot be made into a lame Palm OS application. (Thanks, Matt)
Saturday 9/22/01 §
Watched Jesus' Son tonight on the TiVo. Some truly excellent performances in that film -- especially by the lead, Billy Crudup, who played an immature drug-addled screwup and came very close to being likable despite all that. The character is a fine illustration of how some people coast through life on charm alone, and much as I generally find those kinds of people repulsive, I couldn't help being won over by Crudup. I was also impressed by him in Almost Famous, where he plays (equally convincingly) a guy who's immature in a completely different way. To be honest, I don't usually watch movies based on who's in them; I'm typically more interested in the director and screenwriter credits, because I find them far more indicative of the quality of the film than the cast list. But I'll be watching for Crudup.
The cinematography was gorgeous and the supporting actors (especially Samantha Morton and Jack Black) were very good as well. I can't say the movie as a whole was a success; it lacked coherence and dramatic tension. Still, it wasn't time wasted by any means.
I also caught Timecode recently and thought it was an interesting experiment (not to mention an impressive logistical feat -- four improvised but intertwined plotlines shot simultaneously in unbroken takes), but the plot was thin and predictable, and the characters were not really all that interesting. And for an R-rated film with two female-female makeout scenes and one male-female "sex" scene, it was surprisingly tame in the skin department. I mean, if you've got nothing else (like in this movie), get some sizzle going! Still, it was stylistically daring; like Jesus' Son, it's worth catching on HBO or something. There's a bit of music in it I quite liked, as well. I hear the DVD's got an alternate version of the film (it was improvised several times) and lots of other good stuff; that might be worth a rental.
ASPcomments should look nicer now. Also improved the way it handles formatting and a number of other things. Enjoy!
Friday 9/21/01 §
Yep, that ASPcomments thing seems to work. Simple to install, too. It runs off your own server, meaning that your comments system isn't at the mercy of someone else's server. I tentatively recommend it. It could stand some improvement in a couple areas -- most notably, it's rather plain-looking. Will fiddle with that some tomorrow. Anyway, now there's no excuse for not leaving snarky comments about stuff I post.
I had not heretofore considered the matter of assigning unique ID numbers to my posts. I've added that to the AppleScript I use for posting to this site. I keep meaning to clean that up and release it, but it now needs a lot of work before it's useful to anyone but me. I keep adding features haphazardly and far too much of the actual markup is fixed in place once I've posted. After I get done with another project I'm working on, then, what I want to do is to develop a server-side content manager of my own. I'll probably do it in ASP first, then use it as a springboard for learning PHP. My current plans for this project include a flexible template system, multi-user and multi-blog capability, an integrated comment system, a traffic monitor -- and a pony. I've been thinking about it for some time now. Comments?
Testing ASPcomments.
Artificial meat. Need I say more? Yes? Okay, how about Animal 57. (Props to the null device)
Thursday 9/20/01 §
Oh yeah, I neglected to mention: Boing Boing is back up. Woohoo! Lots of great links posted there to make up for their downtime.
A true patriot. (Props to I Really Must Insist You Leave)
Everyone who's ever worked retail has horror stories about it, because some people are idiots or just plain rude, and they seem to be attracted to the cool fluorescent lighting of a retail establishment like moths to a flame. I worked at Sears during high school and college, and I have some doozies myself. Few, however, go so far as to post their most dumbfounding retail experiences (and the retribution thereof) on the Web under a vaguely blasphemous title, like, say, Acts of Gord. (Props to Sore Eyes)
I've posted ASPulse 0.2, a quick-and-dirty realtime Web traffic monitor I developed for this site because of the deficiencies of free stats services like SiteMeter, to the Download page. It requires a Web server that can use Active Server Pages.
Useful Favelets for Web designers include the usual validation shortcuts, plus the ability to completely turn off style sheets while viewing a page and the ability to choose an alternate style sheet if you're looking at a Web page that specifies more than one (for browsers that don't let you select alternate style sheets natively). You can see that in action at CSS guru Eric Meyer's Complexspiral Demo, which demonstrates a slick psuedo-transparency effect you can do with CSS.
Wednesday 9/19/01 §
About a week ago I mentioned an IRC chat I attended. I was intending to describe my mental state at the time, and I certainly did not mean to cast aspersions on anyone who participated in the chat. They're all good people. Also, some readers might have been misled by the list of people on the page I linked to; not all of these people were actually there. At least one person was upset by what I said here, and I do apologize for not being clearer and for any offense I might have caused. I swear it was not intentional. I've edited the post in my archives so it won't cause any further confusion.
"My name is Hello Kitty, and I'm here to fuck you up." In the grim future of Hello Kitty, there is only war. (Thanks, Warren)
In the wake of bogus Nostradamus quotes about last week's tragedy, I think it's important to remember these words from the notorious 16th-century seer:
When great birds fall from the sky,
And the twins no longer stand,
Idiots will make up quotes from me,
And distribute them across the land.
(Stolen without remorse from Dan Stipp, props to Fry)
The MetaFilter Projects mailing list has gone three weeks without a single announcement. One of these was a holiday weekend, and last week I'm sure everyone was otherwise occupied. Still, if it doesn't get some traffic soon, I'm liable to think it's not needed anymore.
More than 15% of the hits I'm getting today are coming from Web searches in which people are looking for the face of Satan picture from the World Trade Center disaster. This is about twice the number of people that are reaching this site looking for "world's longest penis" today (8%). If you're looking for a drawn picture of a monkey, this site is, according to Yahoo/Google, your #1 source, although I don't actually have any drawn pictures of monkeys. Maybe you, gentle reader, should send me some monkey art so people who reach this site looking for such won't leave disappointed.
Tuesday 9/18/01 §
Every time you drink a Coke (or a Pepsi), you might be making Osama bin Laden just a little wealthier. Chilling, to think that he might have used our own money to fund terrorist operations against us. (Props to Davezilla)
You can use surplus Primestar satellite dishes (cheap! cheap!) to make highly directional 802.11 (WiFi/Airport) wireless networking antennas that can transmit a signal ten miles. (Props to Haddock.org)
Canadian singer/songwriter Jane Siberry has released MP3s of some of her songs as a sort of tribute to, and prayer for, those affected by last week's WTC attacks. I have most of her albums; when she's good, people, she's good. And these are some of her best. (Props to Robot Wisdom)
Make paper darts that can be fired from a copper-tubing blowgun using nothing more than the power of your lungs -- at speeds up to 70 MPH, with enough force to pierce a styrofoam cup, or to fly 90 feet straight up in the air. No kiddin'. (Props to The BradLands)
I just noticed that someone ordered something for me from my Amazon wish list, for which I thank them, whoever they might be. However, I stupidly neglected to change my wish list shipping address when I got laid off from Widevine, so it's going to the wrong place. (I wrote to Amazon and they confirmed that it will be sent to the wishlist address in effect when the order was placed, and they can't change that because it's not actually my order.) Fortunately, it looks like the item in question won't be released until next month, so there's still time to cancel the order. Which is probably what you, generous and anonymous giver, should do.
Monday 9/17/01 §
So the Maternal Unit calls and says, "My printer's broken, it won't draw in paper." Now, if I weren't 2200 miles away, I might take a look; it's probably something I could fix. Or, hmm, maybe I should just buy her a replacement printer on eBay for $1 (plus $6 shipping and handling).
Callers to a "national mental health hotline" (1-800-FOR-TRUTH) publicized on Fox News last Friday reached the Church of Scientology. (Thanks, Matt and props to Media News)
How are military operations named? (Props to memepool)
Saturday 9/15/01 §
The Chicago Tribune has collected comments about 9/11 from a selection of notable and not so notable Americans ranging from Ray Bradbury to a Chicago cabbie of Indian descent to a fifth-grade girl. Orson Scott Card, Charlton Heston, Studs Terkel, asd Ken Kesey also contribute. Worth reading. (Props to MetaFilter)
Friday 9/14/01 §
A suggestion: Replace the World Trade Center with a building that generates some of its own electricity via gigantic integrated wind turbines. This is so cool, it'll probably never be built. (Thanks, Warren)
There is something terribly wrong about destruction being this beautiful.
Debunking the myths of 9/11. (Props to wholelotta)
Thursday 9/13/01 §
The phenomenon of pareidolia explains why people are seeing the face of Satan in pictures of the World Trade Center disaster. (Props to MetaFilter)
A deep depression fell over me last night as I thought about what had happened. I don't know why, but the black fog lifted as I read this meta-editorial about the tragedy just after lunch. I'm feeling better now. We'll survive.
Much to my shame, I lived in the Detroit area for more than ten years and yet was surprised by some of these facts, published by a local paper, about Arab Americans. Detroit is home to one of America's largest populations of Arab Americans, so I have only my misanthropic self to blame that I knew so little about my own neighbors. (Props to Boing Boing)
Wednesday 9/12/01 §
Thanks for the link, Eric.
Sleeping has helped me find a little perspective on yesterday's tragedy. There are already plenty of sites linking to Amazon's Red Cross Disaster Relief page, which has, at this writing, raised about $630,000 from nearly 24,000 individual payments (an average contribution of about $25 each). Go and give what you can. Amazon is, naturally, waiving the normal processing fees they deduct from Honor System payments -- all of your contributions go directly to the Red Cross.
Call your local blood bank and make an appointment to donate blood. It's always needed; it's needed now more than ever. Yahoo! has other emergency relief information.
With those essentials out of the way, I've decided to focus for now on finding worthwhile links again, but I'm going to try to avoid linking stories directly about the tragedy. Rather, I want to approach it from a more oblique angle, through stories that affirm our fundamental humanity. Not the kind of treacly-sweet stories that end up as filler on TV news broadcasts, but stories of substance and human scale that can help put this disaster in perspective. The story about the Christians who went to Burning Man that I posted this morning is an example. I don't know what I'll be able to find, but what I can, I'll post here.
Peace be with you.
A group of Christians journeyed to the hotbed of debauchery known as Burning Man to hand out free bottled water to participants as part of a ministry. Here's what they learned. If all men and women, of all religions, were as willing to have their faith continually challenged and enlarged by the world around them, rather than blindly lashing out against anything that dares to threaten their rigid fundamentalist dogma, this world would be a far, far better place. (Props to Flutterby)
Tuesday 9/11/01 §
You know, I didn't intend to post anything else today, but I just got some spam. It's a stupid, trivial thing to get upset by, I know. But what kind of a sick, heartless bastard decides that what people need today, of all days, is more unwanted junk mail? Thousands dead in New York City, and it's sleazy business as usual for these diarrhetic rectums, exactly as if they're not touched at all by tragedy. Unbelievable. Are these people even human?
I suppose I'm being a self-centered ugly American to suggest that every trivial annoyance should cease when I am personally distressed. Thousands of deaths occur daily from hunger, disease, and war all over the world, but I don't call for an end to spam -- of all things! -- in their names, do I? Why should my countrymen's deaths be any more or less of a reason, logically speaking? I understand all that, and I'm sure I'll agree when i have some distance on this. However, I am not entirely rational right now, so I don't really give a flying fuck, all right?
If you are a spammer or otherwise annoy people for a living, I advise you to take the day off. Hell, take a whole week or even a month off. Few enough ever wanted your crapulent enticements to begin with; I think I can say with some assurance that nobody at all is interested in them right now.
Don't waste your energy trying to make sense of today's events. There is none to be made. Turn off the computer; turn off the television. Go be with those you love and show them how you feel. There are thousands who will never have that opportunity again. Do not succumb to the creeping numbness and the fear -- that is a kind of death, too. Accept and, eventually, when you can, release the pain, but do not let it possess you.
The news will not get any better, and the horrifying details of the tragedy will still be there tomorrow or next week to satisfy your morbid curiosity. Stop reading this and go.
Monday 9/10/01 §
The Universal Church Triumphant of the Apathetic Agnostic: "We Don't Know and We Don't Care." (Props to The BradLands)
Someone here in the beautiful Republic of Cascadia has way too much free time. (Props to MetaFilter)
Sunday 9/9/01 §
Apparently it's not possible to paint the moon using a large number of laser pointers after all. (Props to Boing Boing)
Scientists have genetically engineered a new strain of corn that stops sperm in its tracks. The antibodies don't actually destroy sperm, they just weigh it down so it can't swim up the fallopian tubes. We're this close to being able to buy Contracept-Os from Frito-Lay™! (Oh, and they also have a possible cure for herpes.) (Props to Davezilla)
Slate's "Sell Me a Story" is an interesting exploration of the economic issues affecting building height. In particular, the author wonders why, all other things being equal (same year, same general area, etc.), all skyscrapers aren't the same height.
Saturday 9/8/01 §
The identity of the Phantom Editor, the guy who cut 20 minutes out of Star Wars Episode I to create what many fans believe is a much stronger film, has been revealed. His name is Mike Nichols and he did the job on a 400Mhz Power Macintosh G4. (Props to MacNN)
What, Slashdot doesn't post new stories frequently enough for you? Now you can satisfy your Slashdot jones on demand, thanks to a PHP script that makes up stories just as good as the real ones, even going so far as to include eerily authentic typos. (Props to Flutterby)
Friday 9/7/01 §
At last, E-Sheep has published the second episode of the delightfully twisted Apocamon. For those who haven't seen it, it's a depiction of the Apocalypse, as described in the Biblical book of Revelation... in the form of a Pokémon cartoon. Favorite line from the first episode: "That was the biggest sheep I've ever seen in my life!" (Close second: the Lion of Judah saying "Snortle!") Fellow infidels, click that link now.
As you can see, the date headers on this site now have a permalink. Bookmark or copy the URL of the § icon for a link to the given day that won't break when an item falls off the front page.
Right now, only new postings will have permalinks. If I have time soon, I'll go through and make the archives happy, too.
Disappointed as I might have been by Sawyer's Calculating God, I was equally pleased by Bruce Sterling's Zeitgeist. In order to grok fully the glory that is the book, it helps to have read one or two of Sterling's short stories which include Zeitgeist's lead character (I hesitate to call him a "protagonist," as he's almost gleefully opportunistic) Leggy, or Lehki, or Lech (it depends on who's addressing him) Starlitz. Two such shorts can be found in Sterling's collection Globalhead, and one other is in A Good Old-Fashioned Future.
Unlike many of Sterling's novels, which might be categorized as "near-future," Zeitgeist is set in the near past -- toward the end of 1999, to be precise, with Y2K hoopla at its height. The novel cheerfully slashes through the seedy undergrowth of the pre-millennial landscape, with Leggy managing an all-girl pop-group called G-7 on a European tour as the book opens. (There's a girl from each of the G-7 countries in the group, said girls being referred to simply as the American One, the British One, the French One, etc. None of them have any talent, which is of course irrelevant to, or perhaps even the cause of, their phenomenal success.) This isn't the kind of scam Leggy has run in the past, but hell, anything for a bet, right?
There are obligatory plot complications: one of Leggy's Turkish partners wrests management of G-7 from him and subsequently loses him the bet, and he has to pay up. The lesbian with whom he fathered a child many years ago shows up, daughter in tow, and leaves the girl in his care. Leggy contacts his father for the last time, performs a magical ritual, and repairs a fractured narrative. Some of these events are related. And, eventually, it ends, and you're left half-wondering what the point of it all was, and half-uncaring if there even was a point. Because Sterling's all about the details, and this novel drips with the kind of authenticity that makes you feel like you're there in the meta-meta-funhouse right beside Leggy. One hell of an enjoyable acid trip, sans acid.
Thursday 9/6/01
The Download page now includes a couple of AppleScripts that let you easily burn randomly-selected bunches of tunes from your MP3 collection to data CDs, for use with a portable MP3 CD player such as my new TDK Mojo (which by the way I highly recommend).
Here's your chance to get a complete set of programming manuals for the Apple IIGS. Go on, you know you want it.
Robert J. Sawyer's Calculating God has an interesting premise: an alien paleontologist comes to Earth and reveals that his planet (and others) had major extinction events at almost exactly the same time as Earth's. To the aliens, this is yet more proof that God exists. In fact, the aliens have been convinced that the universe is the result of creation for a long, long time and are surprised that human scientists haven't reached the same conclusion. Together, Earth and alien scientists study the history of their worlds in an attempt to unravel the mystery of the simultaneous extinction events, the question of why alien biology is based on chemistry identical to Earth's, and other prickly conundra.
Calculating God gets off to a promising start, with lots of interesting ideas that aren't often explored in science fiction. Unfortunately, the exploration is ultimately rather shallow. (I should have guessed when I saw one review that called Sawyer Canada's answer to Michael Crichton.) The aliens rely upon Occam's Razor to support their contention that the universe has a creator, but every scientist knows that Occam's Razor is a rule of thumb, not a scientific law. There are plenty of natural phenomena which don't follow it -- ask any biologist. The anthropic principle -- the misunderstanding of which often confuses cause and effect in the matter of why our corner of the universe just happens to be so perfect for our form of life -- is brushed aside by some handwaving. A shame, as it could have been an opportunity for some meaty philosophical thinking.
There are a pair of stereotypical religious fundamentalists thrown into the plot more or less at random for what I assume was intended to be dramatic interest, characters so flimsy that even I was offended by them -- and I count myself neither religious nor a fundamentalist. More than once, Sawyer's protagonist pulls startling conclusions out of his hat with little supporting evidence, and of course they turn out to be exactly right. And the ending is one of the worst I've ever read in a generally-well-regarded SF novel -- it's more or less 2001, except compressed into about forty pages. Instead of gasping in awe, you snort and go "yeah, right." Sawyer is no Arthur C. Clarke, although he does have the cojones to actually have his protagonist quote Clarke at one point: "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." The alien tells him that's very well put and he should write it down. Ho, ho.
Calculating God was nominated for a Hugo this year. I haven't read any of the other nominees, but if this disappointment is one of the five best SF novels of the past year, it must have been a simply dismal year for science fiction.
Wednesday 9/5/01
Here's a true story about Melinda and her cousin Jessica, two young ladies from Toronto who got to be extras on a new TV series Billy Ray Cyrus is starring in when Cyrus himself noticed them walking down the street. This is worth reading if you've ever wondered what it's like to sorta be in show business, but even more so for the way Melinda's personality comes shining through even the most mundane details of her experience. Clearly this woman is a force to be reckoned with. I'll be stopping in to check out her blog from time to time, you can be sure. (Props to MetaFilter)
Some guy used Lego Mindstorms to build a robot that can solve Rubik's Cube, usually in 30 moves or less, from any configuration. We're not talking about on on-screen representation of the puzzle, it solves a real life Cube, which it turns with robotic hands -- it even uses a camera to figure out the starting point. This is just a scarily cool hack. (Props to memepool)
The first time I saw the word "pleather," about a month ago, I assumed it was a typographical error. The second time, I thought "boy, a lot of people aren't using their spelling checkers these days." The third time, I said, "what the hell?"
Apparently, it's plastic leather. It's also what you end up saying if you try to say "pleasure" while holding your tongue, which can hardly be a coincidence.
Pleather is also a 1997 album by the Toadies. Which just goes to show, fashion is not my forte.
Tuesday 9/4/01
User style sheets let you customize your surfing experience in interesting ways by overriding some of the choices the Web designer made. (Internet Explorer for Mac has a place in the Preferences where you pick which file you want to use for the user style sheet. Other CSS-compatible browsers have similar functionality.)
There's one site I go to every day that changes the cursor to crosshairs when I point to a link. A valid artistic choice, of course, but the pointing hand is just plain easier to see, and I found myself inexplicably bothered by the crosshairs. So I added this line to my user style sheet:
A:hover {cursor: pointer;}
The Web designer can override this by attaching an !important tag to his cursor: definition, but I can still have the last word by adding !important to mine, like so:
A:hover {cursor: pointer !important;}
There are lots of cute tricks you can pull with user style sheets. Eric Meyer, author of O'Reilly's excellent Cascading Style Sheets: The Definitive Guide, has a few examples (and a few more too).
Music is important to my health and happiness. At home, I have a nice sound system in the living room and adequate ones in both the office and the bedroom. At the office, though, we're all in cubicles right next to each other, so headphones are in order. I have a pair of Koss TNT-77 'phones (a model no longer made) that I like a lot, but unfortunately the foam they use on the earpads is dissolved by sweat, which means i get "headphone droppings" all over my neck and on my desk where I lay the 'phones. And eventually, of course, I have to buy new earpads for it. I've already gone through two sets of these over the years, and this pace will only accelerate when I'm wearing them every day. Time to retire the TNT-77s.
A desire to be free of cords led to the purchase of the Sennheiser RS60 wireless headphones as I reported last week. Unfortunately, even when they worked right, the sound quality just wasn't what I'd hoped for, and in any case I'd have to deal with batteries constantly, so they're on their way back to Buy.com today for a refund.
It's shockingly easy to drop a lot of bucks on headphones. The sweet spot seems to be about $200; for that price, you can get a pair of Grado SR225s or Sennheiser HD580s. Above that price point, you seem to start running into diminishing returns. I'd dropped $150 on the wireless Sennheisers, so $200 wasn't out of the question. Of course, I could get the Grado SR125s and save $50, but really, wouldn't I be happier with the better cans? On the other hand, the higher-end headphones really need a separate headphone amp to sound their best... there goes another $200 or so... well, over a period of a year that's still really not all that much for enjoyable music, is it? See how easy it is?
Tempting though it is, I'm not going to spend that much money on headphones without a chance to listen to them first. I'd bought the wireless headphones based on the Sennheiser reputation and some positive word of mouth, and that had clearly been a mistake. A local hi-fi store had the Sennheiser HD580s, but I was frankly not very impressed by them (they were most likely not properly amplified). I couldn't find anyone locally who carries Grado -- Magnolia's Web site said they do, but they didn't have any on display -- and Grado didn't answer my e-mail requesting the names of Seattle area dealers. Besides, the Grados just don't look very comfortable (and in fact comfort is an issue you'll find mentioned in every review of Grado headphones). I need something I can wear pretty much constantly.
Superstores like Best Buy and Circuit City only stock cheap headphones in blister packs and wouldn't let me open the packaging to have a listen, not that I'd be able to tell what they actually sounded like in that kind of noisy environment anyway. Good Guys had a few Sony 'phones in boxes they were willing to let me listen to, but I'd prefer to avoid buying Sony if at all possible (because of my own experience with their stuff being crap half the time). Still, their $80 MDR-CD580 was the closest thing I'd found to what I was looking for: open (or at least vented, as I don't like the claustrophobic sound of "sealed" headphones), plenty of bass but not boomy, well balanced and detailed overall, and last but not least, extremely comfortable.
Then I ran across the Panasonic RP-HT1000 on the Web. A review at IGN (not exactly where one usually goes for audio expertise, but what the hell) piqued my interest; they seemed to be just what I was looking for in terms of features, and the reviewer's description of the sound was promising. An Amazon reviewer seemed to back up IGN's opinion. While retail is $70, these phones are available on the Web for around $40, and at that price I was willing to take a gamble. Yeah, I'm sure they're not going to sound as good as a $200 set of cans, but I can put the money I've saved toward another SRS Labs WOW Thing, one of the few 3D sound enhancement boxes that actually sounds good and dramatically broadens the soundstage of any headphones. (I've already got two of these little miracles.) We'll see how well the Panasonics stack up when they arrive in a few days.
Saturday 9/1/01
And that's probably the last post until Monday evening or maybe even Tuesday. I'm going to take the holiday off. There will be no mefi-projects mailing this weekend, either.
Adjust your TV to correct geometry errors and other problems. Most modern TVs let you adjust all that stuff in software instead of requiring you to tweak little knobs inside the set and possibly electrocute yourself, and the FAQ has the "secret codes" for getting into service mode with the remote for most major brands. Keen.
