March 11, 2004
DeadMilkmen bassist Dave Blood has past away. -- Life
Dave Blood ended his life this week. I was a huge Dead Milkmen fan. It's horribly sad to these things happen. Here's the link.
What next, Jello Biafra?
February 15, 2004
Joyce fans pissed -- Life
I ran across this reaction to the Joyce estate's stance on Bloomsday
Christ, this makes me angry enough to spit. Note to my literary executor: if you ever dream of doing anything like this after I die, I'll come back from the dead and reach out of the toilet and unspool your guts while dragging you down to hell. Sheesh
But how do you really feel? ;-)
February 11, 2004
Party Confusion -- Politics
I'm confused. Tennessee's Democratic Primary Elections were held last night.
Here's where is gets weird - you didn't have to be a registered democrat to vote.
Is it like this everywhere? I thought that you had to be affiliated with the party to vote in that party's primaries.
Does this mean that republicans can vote for the weakest candidate at the democratic primaries, and vice versa?
February 10, 2004
Sand -- Life
I ran across this link tonight and was struck by the power of the sound track.
It kind of reminds me of the animation shorts that I used to see on public television when I was kid, but music, I think, really makes this piece of performance art stand out.
February 04, 2004
Viral Marketing is Child's Play in Cincinnati -- Business
For the folks in Cincy, this from forbes:
...
Madison Avenue was once known for men in gray flannel suits. Today some of its most credible foot soldiers wear T shirts and sneakers. They are 280,000 strong, ages 13 to 19, all of them enlisted by an arm of Procter & Gamble called Tremor. Their mission is to help companies plant information about their brands in living rooms, schools and other crevices that are difficult for corporate America to infiltrate. These kids deliver endorsements in school cafeterias, at sleepovers, by cell phone and by e-mail. They are being tapped to talk up just about everything, from movies to milk and motor oil--and they do it for free.
...
January 24, 2004
January 22, 2004
Mac Zealots -- Life
There are Mac zealots, and there are anti-Mac-zealots.
Of course, I'm not innocent here.
January 16, 2004
drive click thrus by being honest -- Business
A lot of effort has been put into ways to add value to online advertising for advertisers. But pop-ups, pop-unders,schoskeles, etc were really about abusing readership instead of adding value to both sides of the equation. Let's be honest, pop-ups and pop-unders are the web equivalent of those 4x6 cards and subscription forms inside magazines. THe first thing I do is shake them out, then tear out the rest. I sure don't read them. Lesson: advertising should not be annoying.As a result, a market was born for tools to suppress these forms of advertising. It's a natural and predictable reaction. The internet is known for routing around problems.
So what I'm proposing is that content sites come clean: admit openly that the advertisers are what makes the sites possible, and thus the sites depend upon a readership that patronizes its advertisers. Of course everyone knows this, but I don't think it crosses their mind while they're installing popup blockers or entering bogus registration information to read a story.
Continue reading "drive click thrus by being honest"
January 04, 2004
Note to RIAA -- Business
If by some strange chance someone from the RIAA is reading this, have you noticed that movies are often available for less than the soundtrack? Care to explain?
The Big Easy Movie on DVD -- $5.99 $8.99
The Big Easy Soundtrack on CD -- $15.99 $14.99
The pricing is vendor independant, so I assume it is due to upstream costs. Do the artists get more from soundtrack sales than movie sales perhaps? Do they make more than the actors? WTF?
December 23, 2003
Looking back -- Life
It has been a very fast year. Looking back lots has happened - house fire, replacement of major appliances, Beth went back to school, various work projects, pipe smoking, blogging, wood working, eye surgurey for one of my dogs,etc. It's a lot and I'm sure there's more that doesn't occur to me sitting here.
Any way, I was looking back at some of the pictures I took this month, and it got me thinking about the year. May be I'll start posting more photos.
Continue reading "Looking back"December 19, 2003
The best part of waking up ... -- Cool
Hey, if New Zealanders can have coffee-flavored breakfast ceral, then why can't I? This is long over due.
Linux 2.6 kernel released -- Science
Linus has blessed the new 2.6 version of the Linux kernel. This is probably the best synopsis of the improvements I have seen.
This brings linux to smaller devices ( PDA's, etc ) and much larger machines ( think NUMA - way more than two processor machines - look out solaris ) as well better overall responsiveness and support for filesystem meta data ( Lookout Longhorn, not due out til 2005 ). Support for up to 64 GB of RAM and 16 TerraBytes of storage.
Improved Video4Linux subsystem and the new support for Digital Video Broadcast hardware are exciting. Plus in-kernel IPSec allowing existing programs to be secured transparently. ( secure NFS anyone? )
Hooray!
December 18, 2003
Portal Versus CMS -- Business
After a brief review of all things content management at work today, it got me thinking about how portals are taking over for content management systems and how this migration of features is both inevitable and predicatable.
December 17, 2003
downhill battle promo -- Business
DownhillBattle.org just released this little piece of anti-RIAA propaganda.
My favorite lines: Remember, when you buy major label CDs, you're paying companies to sue families and marginalize independant music.
and : You’re never going to stop your kids from hearing this stuff, but that doesn’t mean you have to pay record companies to make more of it.
The software that I have written makes decisions and performs actions using my thought-processes, like some ghostly echo of my own mind, now embedded in a machine.
