Interesting New Technology

jwz has some interesting ideas about new technology (i think everyone i know who read this agreed with him about the proposed audio-cock technology anyway), but chris blizzard seems to have found some proof that this kind of idea isn't exactly new.

one can only hope that somewhere, a young startup company is working hard to bring us this vital new internet technology, cause we really can't go on much longer without the ability to hurt the truly idiotic people out there who feel the need to burden the rest of the internet with their own stupidity.

Rooney's Law

so i was sitting in a meeting this afternoon, and i made a slightly sarcastic comment to EJ, and he decided it should be called "rooney's law".

since i've never had a law named after myself, i was amused, so i thought i'd share.

"you know it's a bad meeting when the meta-conversation about deciding what you're actually there to discuss takes longer than the actual discussion you're there to have."

Just Playing

with NetNewsWire's category support...

nothing to see here, move along... move along...

Amusing Email Of The Day

this email on the subversion mailing list today amused me greatly.

(for the curious, yes, i told karl i'd work on it, since i'm apparently a sucker for long, drawn out issues that take far too long to fix.)

I *heart* Amazon

got my copy of down and out in the magic kingdom in the mail today.

it's still amusing the second time.

A Revelation

i seriously, without a doubt, absolutely, positively need a date.

that is all.

The ASF and Subversion

according to greg stein, the apache software foundation is starting the process of moving projects from cvs to subversion.

the move is optional at this point, on a per-project basis, but when subversion hits 1.0 it is likely that there will be a formal request to migrate.

the asf subversion repository.

greg's mail on the subversion dev list.

Good and Bad

well, i got my first two rolls of film from the new camera developed today.

first, the good: i did actually manage to take a few cool pictures. not many, but a few.

then, the bad: a large number of them came out too dark, a combination of it being kind of cloudy and me using the wrong speed film (hey, now i know the difference between 200 speed, which i used for the first roll, and 400 speed, which i used for the second). i also had a number that came out slightly blurred, i think from me jolting the camera as i took them. i'll have to work on that. lastly, i managed to take a number of pictures of smaller things (seagulls, squirrels, and so forth) that i really should have been closer for. i'll either have to get better at sneaking up on them, or buy a telephoto lense.

it's a learning experience though, and at least i came out with a few cool looking shots. i'll have to get access to a scanner of some sort so i can put them up online.

Photography Progress

so i did end up getting the nikon N65, along with a nikon 28-80 lense.

so far i like it. i just got back from wandering around cove island park, and aside from it being really cold, i had a lot of fun burning through a few rolls of film. it's weird switching to film from digital, i like the feel of the N65, but it's odd not being able to see the pictures as you take them.

now i just need to see if the pictures look any good...

Finally!

so after almost two months of working on it (i just checked, and my first commit on this was december 4th!), i finally finished converting the subversion header files (well, the public ones anyway) over to doxygen.

you can see the fruits of my labor here, since we don't have them up on subversion.tigris.org yet.

now i can actually get back to writing some code for a change...

The Camera Decision

so i went to the mall after work and looked at cameras. i have to agree with what i've heard about ritz camera, they are a pretty crappy camera shop, but i did get a chance to play around with the models i'd been interested in, which is the important thing.

i think i'm going to go with a nikon n65 (the review at the top of the page is pretty scathing, but the comments give me hope, and jj had good things to say about it), since of the low end cannon and nikon bodies, it seems the nicest mix of features and cost effectiveness. basically, it felt like a real camera, while the cannon rebel was light enough that it felt like a toy. i'd be afraid i'd drop it and it'd fly into a million pieces. i'm sure that the nikon would probably also fly into a million pieces in such a situation, but at least it feels like it won't, which is a plus in my book.

assuming nothing else comes up, i'll probably head into the city this weekend and pick one up at b and h, since everyone tells me they've got the best prices around.

Damn. I Guess They Didn't Get It After All

well, this really ruined my day.

i was hoping that for once, the legal system in this country would come through and do what was right, instead of what a bunch of large corporations with deep pockets tell them to do, but i guess that was too much to hope for.

and yes, i know that the issues involved are not that simple, and that there are good reasons for the court to rule this way even if the justices don't particularly like the law, but it sure as hell feels like they just caved in to disney and time warner and all the other large copyright holders. it tells us that if you've got enough money you can work the system any fucking way you want, and that the little guys opinion just doesn't matter in the long run.

Back To School... Sort Of.

so i just signed up for basic photography at norwalk community college. i've been wanting to get into photography for a while, and today on the way home from work i decided to stop just browsing around on photo.net and do it.

i guess this means i'll have to go out and get a real camera sometime soon. i've already talked to rob about it, and got way more in depth of an answer than i was really looking for, but if any of my other photography geek friends is reading and has some pointers on what to buy, i'd love to hear them.

(oh, at the moment, i'm planning on following the advice in building a 35mm slr system, since philip greenspun, while he can be a bit obnoxious with the 'hey, i made a ton of money writing web sites for people in the dot com boom days' thing, does seem to know what he's talking about an awful lot of the time. i'll probably go with either a low end canon, or a low end nikon, depending on which i like better.)

25th Hour

go see 25th Hour, it rocked.

GeoURL

so after seeing it on jeremy's blog, i decided to add a geourl button to my page.

pretty neat stuff.

KHTML vs. Gecko

david hyatt has an in depth post on his weblog about why the safari team went with KHTML instead of Gecko.

[ weird, it seems to be gone now. anyway, there's a post about it on jwz's livejournal that has some quotes. ]

Publishing Industry, Meet The Internet

the publishing industry needs to get their act together and figure out how to use this newfangled interweb thingy, cause there's so much more they could be doing, but for no adequately explained reason aren't.

i was at the mall today, getting more ram put in my powerbook (the apple store had been out when i bought the machine, and they just called me this week to tell me it had come in), and i wandered into barnes and noble while i was waiting for the guy at the apple store's genius bar (who was very helpful by the way, especially considering that i had forgotten my receipt, so he had to dig around in their database to figure out that i had indeed ordered and paid for this) to put in my ram.

i've been reading down and out in the magic kingdom for the last day or so, since it's author is cool enough to have released it under a really cool license that says as long as you give him credit, don't sell it, and don't make derivative works based on it, you can do pretty much whatever the hell you want with it.

unfortunately, despite the fact that he's got it in eight different formats, several of which i can display on my powerbook, i'd still like to have a hard copy version, both because i want him to get some (frighteningly small, but still) money for writing something this cool, and because i happen to like reading hardcopy rather than staring at a computer screen all the time (i know, those of you who know me are laughing your asses off at the idea of me doing something other than staring at a computer screen).

this shouldn't be a big deal, as he's got a publisher, and his book is being sold in bookstores. well, it would be, but it just came out, so i can't get it yet. not at my local barnes and noble, not at borders, not even at amazon (sure, they have a listing for it, but it's not shipping yet).

but in this day and age, i don't see why this should be an issue. the internet archive bookmobile has already shown us that it's cheap and easy to turn machine readable text into books, so why can't my local bookstore have something set up to do this? they download the content (which is what i really care about), turn it into a bound paperback for me, and i pay them. some money goes to them for materials, to pay for the store, some profit, some goes back to the author/publisher/whoever else needs a kickback, and everyone saves because there's this giant fucking infrastructure that prints books, ships books, stores books, and often destroys books when they are no longer wanted by the bookstores, that can simply go away.

i'm positive i am not the first person to think this is a good idea, so what the hell is taking them so long to get it working? hello! this isn't that hard people!

Freedom (Or Lack Therof) Illustrated

i don't think there's much i can say about this other than that it's nice to see that some people have reasonable opinions about current events.

Java + Tomcat + Ant = Web Apps

ran across a nice little article on oreillynet. it gives a petty good intro to web apps with tomcat and ant.

it's more basic than the stuff about struts i'd been reading, but considering that i've forgotten the majority of my java-fu, a little refresher on the basics isn't a bad thing...

22 Wonderful Episodes of Buffy...

i was going to hold out on buying the third season of buffy until i really had time to watch it all, but my boss forced my hand by showing me part of an episode at work today...

season 3 has my favorite episode lover's walk, so i'm just a little bit excited about them releasing the dvd's ;-)

Heading Out On Safari

so apple released their new web browser, safari today. it's based on KHTML, the html engine the KDE people wrote for their Konqueror browser.

so far, i'm impressed with it. there are quirks, but it's really really fast, and seems well integrated into the os. i'd love to have tabbed browsing again, but other than that i think i like it.

and now some amusing safari links:

• jwz's take on the whole thing. but he's not bitter.
• the safari engineering manager's post to kde mailing lists introducing his team.
• the changelog for apple's work with KHTML.

blo.gs

so i just ran across blo.gs. neat site. don't have much more to say, but i just need a post to make sure MT is pinging it correctly.

Culture, And Random Links

just got back from proof (yes, it's a lame web site), which was a really fantastically geeky and cool play. it's too bad it's ending it's run tomorrow, or i'd suggest everyone go out and see it. anne heche was fantastic as the lead.

and now for some completely unrelated random links i ran across:

ratt vs. ramones - why does our culture lavish commercial success upon people and then later idealize those they were happy to ignore for years and years?

metal bill of rights - i want to fly somewhere just so i can use these...

penn and the airport nazi's - i wish i had the guts to do something like this.

Consumer Electronics Hate Me

so today my replaytv decided to stop cooperating with my cable box, and my dvd player started to give disk errors with every dvd i put in it, even though the disks work fine in other players.

of course, the replaytv and cable box relationship was always a bit flakey, and the dvd player was an open-box special that i got for like 60 bucks, but still, they were both working fine yesterday!

this just isn't my day technology-wise.

*grin*

these are worth reading.

my personal favorite is this one.

i definately need to get some of these apology cards. could have used a few on new years eve...

Cool Toy!

simon rules.

Getopt::Auto has to be the second coolest perl module i've ever seen, second only to his Config::Auto module.

it almost makes me wish i used perl on a regular basis.

#47 In The List Of Songs Single People Should Not Listen To

somebody, by depeche mode.

Happy New Year

well, everyone else posted a 'happy new year' blog entry, so i feel compelled to do the same.

the party at rob and jessica's was fun... at least, the parts i remember were fun, and when we were picking through the wreckage this morning it certainly looked like the remnants of a good party.

anyway, i'm going to go back to being hung over...