Sunday 01/23/05
If you look at my posting frequency, I've obviously become less and less interested in this blog over the last year or so. The fact is, like most small-time bloggers, I don't have anything unique to offer. I don't have the time or the inclination to write long pieces -- I write for a living, so writing more after I get home just doesn't appeal to me. Worse, I've lately been kicking myself about not writing any fiction, and spending my leftover writing "juice" on blogging isn't helping. Most depressing of all, I've spent so long writing stuff in which an authorial voice is a negative, I'm not sure I even have a voice of my own anymore, so I don't really have that going for me, either.
Topic-wise, I'm not interested in stirring controversy, I feel like a naif at politics, and I don't want to post slices of my life because frankly my life is as boring as yours, and it's none of your business anyway. As a white male nerd in his mid-thirties, I don't have a point of view that isn't shared by at least a million other guys. Despite my longtime Apple neepery, I'm not even much good as a Mac analyst compared to guys like Gruber. But posting other people's warmed-over links, regardless of how cool they are, has definitely lost its charm. I realized recently that if I started posting links at del.icio.us instead of here, they'd vanish without a trace because they're just like everyone else's links. I add nothing to what you'd find at Boing Boing or similar link-oriented sites.
So, that's where I am. Expect extremely sporadic posting until I figure out what I want to do with this site. It'll probably involve photography, since that's one way I do have to generate new, original content.
Wednesday 01/19/05
A too-clever-for-its-own-good CNN poll reveals that on the issue of whether Bush is a uniter or a divider, America is divided. My head hurts.
This is not art. But what is?
Sunday 01/16/05
My sister placed first in the Paranormal/Futuristic/Time Travel category of the Oklahoma Romance Writers of America's "Finally a Bride" contest with her as-yet-unpublished novel Angels of Light. This after placing second in the Paranormal category of the 2003 GOTCHA contest of the Silicon Valley Romance Writers of America with the same novel.
Traditional solar cells are lucky to capture six percent of the sun's energy in the form of electricity. But now, researchers at the University of Toronto have invented a method that's five times more efficient. That's pretty damn impressive, really.
Thursday 01/13/05
Yeah. I'm back from San Francisco and Macworld Expo. Didn't really see much that excited me -- even the new Apple products were not particularly innovative, although I'm considering a 1 GB iPod Shuffle. I was there basically for two days, and on the second day I played hooky from the Expo and went for a walk down the Embarcadero. San Francisco's a beautiful city, and the weather was sunny and clear. Unfortunately I neglected to bring my good camera, but I did bring my new little Casio, so you may see a few photos from that trip soon.
Was good seeing folks I hadn't seen in a long time... shout-outs to Rich and Patrick from Bare Bones (it was my first time meeting Patrick in person) and also Victor Siegle from Management Software. Used to do documentation for both those companies. And of course, all the SmartFriends.
A bit of wisdom from the trip: Don't let coins, such as dimes, fall into the CompactFlash slot of your PDA. It probably won't care much for that.
Hyperlinked at last after 20 years: the Church of the SubGenius's High Weirdness by Mail
Friday 01/07/05
Expedia.com just made the mistake of inviting me to take a survey about my most recent travel experience. Bwahahaha.
Thursday 01/06/05
Doh the Humanity: typos and other errors from all over the Web. Sometimes very amusing, sometimes not so much.
A moron, Thomas Slattery, is suing Apple because the songs he bought on iTunes won't play on anything but an iPod. He can play the files on a Windows box using VLC, and if he is clever about it, he can get the decryption keys back to the Mac and strip the protection using hymn. Or he can burn a CD of the music that will play on any CD player, and he can then re-rip the music from that CD into MP3 or AAC format, using the same iTunes software that allowed him to obtain the songs in the first place, and play it on any device that supports these formats.
He is a moron because he expects the courts not to notice this. Justice is blind, but it ain't that blind.
Tuesday 01/04/05
Gödel and Einstein: Friendship and relativitiy.
Saturday 01/01/05
Eye of Science. Amazing microphotographs.
