This Weblog has purple stuff inside. Purple is a fruit.
{ BIOH was my first "weblog", just a little fun thing that we all got into when Dave ipened up Radio for free; here's some of it that I rescued from the Web Archive. } @@ Froghurt introduction.
"Hey; this is Homer Simpson sayin' howdy to all the girls out there in radio land" - 4F12 [wav]
Free speech is about as free as a prisoner set loose in a prison yard:-
"There is no such thing at this date of the world's history in America as an independent press. You know it, and I know it. There is not one of you who dares to write his honest opinion, and if you did, you know beforehand it would never appear in print. [...] The business of the journalist is to destroy the truth, to lie outright, to pervert, to vilify, to fawn at the feet of Mammon and to sell his country and his race for his daily bread. [...] Our talents, our possibilities and our lives are all the property of other men. We are intellectual prostitutes." - John Swinden, 1953
But whilst it may be improper to toast independent press, in lieu of that I'd like to make a toast to the Internet, the Web, and the upcoming Plex.
9:52:34 PM
I was introduced to a good book by Raph Levien: The Brothers Lionheart. A childeren's story, but recommended.
9:50:26 PM
After Caprice mentioned the "c-word" on T.V., some clever hack commented: "All this talk of the c-word is making me feel nauseous. Mention Caprice again and I'm off."
1:35:09 AM
Muhammad Ali recently turned 60, and the Guardian marked the event by republishing the original coverage of his first title win against Sonny Liston.
1:27:09 AM
Yet another article about antimater fuel systems popped up on CNN. The technology is so far off, I wonder why people keep reporting it? Then again, a huge advance could be just around the corner...
1:12:26 AM
The OED has been updated on the Web.
I feel a sense of mild disgust at the adoption of "high street" as an adjective (as in, "oh, yeah, that's like totally high street"). On the other hand, I'm surprised that the word "frizzy" didn't make its debut sooner - where would we be without it?
12:50:35 AM
The age old debate continues: do video games prompt violence?
When you consider the number of other social factors that influence people throughout their lives, it does seem as if a tirade against video games in particular may be misplaced.
Homer: "Then we figured out we could park them in front of the T.V. That's how I was raised, and I turned out T.V."
12:40:48 AM
By chance, I found an emulator for the C64, and a download for an old game called Exile - one of the greatest games ever written! Ah, nostalgia...
9:45:58 PM
An otherwise mundane article about streams on edge.com contains an interesting note about universities:-
What Yale charges for an education, as you know, is simply incredible. What it delivers is not worth what it charges. [...] And the changes that will happen in this nation's intellectual life when the university as we know it today collapses.
I don't really think that academic life will change all that much - even with the rise of the Internet - but I sure wish it would. As an agoraphobic, it's pretty difficult to do well in a world obsessed with people being normal.
It's shocking that remote-learning hasn't taken off as quickly as it should have done. Academic institutions are so anachronistic, it's unbelievable.
6:37:39 AM
Patrick Stickler is at it again with more URI scheme proposals.
6:14:06 AM
*sigh* 30 days trials really are a trial. I decided to uninstall R8 - I couldn't face getting attached to it and then having it taken away from me after the evaluation period. I managed to uninstall the product without too much bother, but I was left with a stange sensation. Something... strangely missing. The seconds ticked by.... nothing to do... must... blog... news items...
It's too fun having a Weblog, so "Bring It On Home" is back again - not that you noticed it was gone. Damn you, Dave Winer!
Interesting to see that Jeremiah has started work on a Python RSS aggregating thingy. It would be interesting to hook that up as the backend for a Website - if only I had a server that can run Python scripts server side.
6:05:10 AM
I just published the Eep RDF API - just a very small Python hack to handle RDF.
4:18:24 AM
MLaw is holding a Wacky Warning Label contest. They also have photos of this year's winners. My favourite is "Shin pads cannot protect any part of the body they do not cover." cf. How to eat a pretzel (which has a slightly more obvious origin).
3:57:16 AM
Scientists have found a new state of matter, like a solid but with the atoms much further apart. It could have good ramifications in the field of quantum computing.
3:49:28 AM
Aaron: "Why does it take two days for a package to get from Austin to Illinois?" That's like asking why there are more Windows users than there are Mac users - it's just one of those things that are impossible to explain...
3:30:03 AM
"Programming in C++ feels very different in my head than programming in Python, Java, C, and bash [...] It's sort of like the way that I feel different in my head when listening to different kinds of music." - Zooko
I've heard a lot about the E programming language, but it's another one of those things on my huge TODO list. I want to write a Befunge interpreter in Python.
3:13:36 AM
XML.com: Extending the Web. It's an article about XHTML Modularization (m12n). Murray Altheim spent years working on m12n, and the detail is incredible... but it's certainly not aimed at the average hacker. It's comparable to XML Schema in specification density terms.
However, validation is good (q.v. Why Validate?), and companies do seem to be interesting in implementing XHTML m12n. A related technology to watch out for: XHTML 2.0.
3:05:32 AM
People have been talking about the Plex a lot, recently. The Plex is another P2P decentralized information space project, but focussing on metadata structures. So - the PR goes - not only will you be able to store data on it, but it'll be searchable too. It will also be able to supersume common Internet protocols such as FTP, HTTP, and IRC.
What does this add up to? Well, let's hope it's information management on a scale beyond our wildest dreams. Publishing should be made easy - like over Freenet, but with much improved success rates and stability. Weblogs will become available to anyone with an internet connection, not just those with a server, or R8. One to watch out for.
2:45:43 AM
Robin Cook plans to make Britain the first country to allow voting over the Internet. I remember the olden days when we had to walk to the polling booths...
Seriously, this is good news. Quoth the article, "Mr Cook is scathing about the culture of parliament, describing its procedures as antique, ludicrous, Dickensian and as ritualised as 18th-century duelling."
2:31:13 AM
We all know that the Moon is roughly 240,000 miles away from the Earth (you did know that, didn't you?), but now Tom Murphy of Washington University wants to measure the distance to within a millimetre. Good luck to him!
2:19:50 AM
The bittern's back. This bird hasn't been seen in the center of London for over 100 years, but now it seems as if it may be back for good.
2:08:53 AM
New Scientist ran an interview with Ashot Chilingarian on working as a scientist in Armenia. He has a cheery approach to problems that Western scientists rarely have to worry about.
"I am afraid the roof on our main laboratory may blow off this winter."
Q: "What will you do if it does blow off?"
"Oh, that's easy. We'll go and get it back again."
1:58:38 AM
Aaron Swartz found my weblog rather quickly (ahem). It would have been even quicker had it not taken me so long to come up with a better tagline than his.
1:49:25 AM
Could perfect compression algorithms finally be upon us? Probably not - but 'twould be fine if the legend came true.
1:39:52 AM
Usually, patents are filed as mere lawsuit fodder for huge multinational corporations... but occasionally - just occasionally - someone files a patent for an invention that will truly change the world. Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you: the haggis launcher.
All for charity; I can't wait until they test it out. Only inAmerica! Well... Canada...
1:27:51 AM
I came to UserLand. I saw the HTML. I could not be bothered to conquer the tables.
1:14:19 AM
At the risk of becoming one of those sad old folks that just ramble on and on about how they got a wonderful new Radio 8 weblog and are rather pleased about it, I just got a new Radio 8 weblog, and am rather pleased about it.
Well, with Aaron and tav setting up such popular sites, I thought it was time to jump on the bandwagon.
And yes, I still want a Radio mug.
1:02:19 AM
Phoebe: I can't say croissant. [realises] Oh my God!
12:48:58 AM
© Copyright 2002 Sean B. Palmer.