Sunday 6/23/02 §
JerryKindall.com went live on June 22, 2001 -- one year ago yesterday. And so now seems like a good time to take a break. I'm going to be very busy the next couple of weeks on a project at work anyway, and in any case I've been doing some thinking about what I want to accomplish with this site. Most of the links I post here I get from other weblogs. I like to think I pick only the most interesting and underappreciated of those links for my own site, but it's strangely unsatisfying to post them sometimes. I'd like to post more original content, but I don't really have the time to put into it, and I'm not talented in the same way someone like Paul Ford or Noah Grey is anyway.
A lot of bloggers seem similarly affected by a summer malaise. I see it in the juvenile pissing contests that plague MetaFilter these days, and even Boing Boing seems shrill lately. Perhaps it's all in my head, in which case I definitely need a break.
So, I'll be away from blogging until early August. I don't intend to read any blogs during that time, nor post here or anywhere else. But I will be back. Take that as a threat or as a promise, according to your preference. With luck, I'll return recharged and refreshed, with good stuff to share. Have a great July.
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Saturday 6/22/02 §
I've posted Dvorak and QWERTY keyboard mapping files for the X Window System (i.e. XDarwin/Xfree86) under Mac OS X.
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Good bokeh.
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Best banner ad ever?
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Friday 6/21/02 §
Spitting Image is a weblog about images. (lightningfield)
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Wash Me. (danelope)
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Thursday 6/20/02 §
Search for tall buildings based on a number of criteria, and get a way-cool "bar graph" with scale illustrations of each of the buildings you find, sorted by height (by several different measures) or year built. Yes, the World Trade Center buildings are still in there. In fact, you can even search for a status of "destroyed" to find all the skyscrapers that have ever been demolished for any reason -- unsurprisingly, many of the biggest were in New York. (Boing Boing)
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Wednesday 6/19/02 §
Your tax dollars at work: some Federal agencies make their photographs available on the Web -- and since you (assuming you're a citizen of the United States) already paid for it, they're in the public domain. The US Fish and Wildlife Service offers downloadable pictures of, well, fish, wildlife, and nature. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has pics of, um, oceans and skies and wildlife and stuff. (MetaFilter)
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You know the work of painter C. M. Coolidge -- especially his most famous work, titled "A Friend in Need" -- even if you think that you don't. (randomWalks)
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Tuesday 6/18/02 §
Harper's has a most excellent article about a Michigan teenager who attempted to build a breeder reactor in a backyard shed -- in order to make Eagle Scout. It's from 1998; anyone want to hazard a guess on what would have happened to this kid post-9/11? (Boing Boing Guestbar)
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Monday 6/17/02 §
The Cleveland Plain Dealer has a very nice article on the Jerry Kindall Series. (Thanks, Eureka/Aaaugh)
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Sunday 6/16/02 §
As I was getting out of my car at the grocery store last night, a woman who was returning to her car, which was parked next to mine, suddenly said, "Hey, I saw that!"
"What?" As in, what did I do wrong now -- and who the heck are you, anyway?
"The care with which you opened your door to avoid hitting my car. I appreciate it."
I'm not sure whether I should be pleased that she noticed, or dismayed that my simple courtesy was something uncommon enough to be worth remarking on. I'm feeling optimistic about humankind today, so I guess I'll take door #1, Monty.
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Saturday 6/15/02 §
Larry Wall explains how he's changing regular expressions in Perl 6. The article is long enough that Perl.com has helpfully broken it up into 24 separate pages. I link this not because I expect anyone to actually read all of it (I read the first few pages and skimmed the rest) but to point out that starting to learn Perl at this point seems to me a lot like trying to start watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer without having seen any of the previous episodes. (BrainLog)
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Thursday 6/13/02 §
Amusing driving lessons in Flash. (FixOurTraffic, a Seattle traffic blog)
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Wednesday 6/12/02 §
On the Mac, a character that isn't defined in a particular font is traditionally replaced with a little box. In Mac OS X's Unicode fonts, these placeholders get significantly fancier to indicate the purpose of each range of missing characters. Read a bit more about it at Grotto 11 (after an entertaining anecdote about Mac OS X's multilingual capabilities).
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Tuesday 6/11/02 §
Follow-up: Here are some excellent photos of yesterday's eclipse, which occurred close to sunset at many points across America. (MetaFilter)
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Monday 6/10/02 §
Excellent article in the Guardian explaining why sometimes it's "Usama" and sometimes it's "Osama," why sometimes it's "Moslem" and sometimes "Muslim," not to mention the incredible variety of approximations of "Qadhdhaafiy." I even learned something -- "Mecca" is a misleading transliteration; a better one, preferred by most Muslims, is "Makkah" (not to be confused with Macca). (randomWalks)
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Last week my TiVo picked up a Trio network broadcast of The Last Temptation of Christ, and I settled in (appropriately) on Sunday to watch it. I'd been interested in this film ever since it had been loudly condemned from the pulpit of the church I once attended; after I heard Peter Gabriel's gorgeous soundtrack, I knew I wanted to see it eventually. So, thanks to TiVo's Wish List, I finally got around to it.
I was just starting to get into the film when suddenly, a mosaic pattern and two bright red dots appeared on the screen to cover a pair of breasts! Yes, Trio has removed the nudity from this film, and in a most annoying and ugly fashion -- while at the same time having the gall to call June its uncensored month and claiming to run the film unedited. To add insult to injury, a bright red "Uncensored Month" banner ran at the bottom of the screen during the entire film. This is beyond ironic -- it's just plain stupid.
Knew I should have just rented it. Sheesh.
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Friday 6/7/02 §
Whoa. Apparently, an Austrian court has ruled that Sony's trademark for its portable stereos, "Walkman," has become generic. Of course, that doesn't mean it's generic in other countries, but it's still a bit of a shocker. Sony has always assiduously protected its trademarks, even the ones which, like this one, are really pretty lousy when you think about them.
Readers outside of the U.K. will likely be baffled by the article's list of product names that became so familiar that they lost their brand status, which includes "Tippex" and "Portakabin." Don't look at me -- I have no idea what they are. I guess familiarity is relative, eh? (The Copydesk)
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Some dude with way too much time on his hands has made a fake New York City skyline to improve the view from his kitchen window. (Boing Boing)
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I noticed one underreported benefit of the Mac OS 10.1.5 update last night -- the Open and Save dialogs now act like the Desktop is the root of the file system, containing not only your mounted volumes but also all the items actually on your Finder desktop. In other words, it finally works like it should. It's worth the download just for that. Now if I could just get a plain old single-column view in those dialogs. Oops.
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Thursday 6/6/02 §
If you were a DOS jockey back in the pre-Windows days, you may remember an enhanced command line utility called 4DOS. If so, you'll be pleasantly surprised to hear that not only does the company still make 4DOS, they also have similar enhanced command shells for Windows NT/2000/XP and OS/2 Warp, as well as GUI-enhanced command shells. (Flutterby thread)
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Wednesday 6/5/02 §
Zen stories to tell your neighbors. On the whole, these are more parable than koan, and there are some Taoist offerings mixed in so it's not strictly Zen. Still worth a look. (abuddhas memes)
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Cool Neon is electroluminescent wire that can be powered by a battery. (More LIke This)
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Don't forget, Chank has free fonts. Nine so far this year. Some of them are pretty cool. I hadn't been by this site for a while so many of these are new to me. (Thanks to Elegant Hack for reminding me)
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The best of craigslist is by turns funny and moving. Read it. (CamWorld)
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I don't use Movable Type for this site, but I've been hosting a couple of weblogs for friends on my Mac using it. A flurry of recent IP address changes on my DSL line spurred me to suggest these sites be moved elsewhere. All I can say is, if you use Movable Type, you should fervently pray that you never need to move your site. It may well go smoothly. Or it could end up being a gigantic pain in the ass. Guess which type of experience I just had? (I'll spare you the sordid details; you can read them here if you're really interested.)
Not to say Ben & Mena's creation isn't a wonderful thing. It's quite powerful and when it's working well, it's slickernsnot. I'm still considering using it for this site. But when things go wrong, they can go really, really wrong. I suppose that's true of any reasonably complex piece of software, but it's no less frustrating for all that.
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A partial solar eclipse will make the sunset crescent-shaped on June 10. Of course, here on the west coast, it looks like it'll actually happen at 4-6PM, which means it won't be as visible. Those on the east coast should have a better chance. (Follow Me Here)
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This is somewhat politically incorrect, but it seems I've got very little street cred to lose after that last link, so what the hell: Origami Boulder Company. YOU BUY WADDED UP PAPER NOW!!!! Don't miss the letters from dumb dumbs. (#!/usr/bin/girl)
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