Words for the wise from the mouth of a fool.
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The weblog of Seth Johnson -------------- INKSLINGER.ORG -------------- OD ARCHIVES -------------- FEEDS Posts:  Shared Items:
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Saturday, January 25, 2003
I thought I had linked to this before, but when it came in conversation with Bezzy this evening, I couldn't find it in the archives: a great piece by Kevin Kelly on the hive mind, giving control of Pong and flight simulators to the mob.
Rounding up the important magazines: New Republic, Economist, NYT Sunday, Time, Newsweek, New Yorker, Weekly Standard...PC Gamer?
Friday, January 24, 2003
In the category of "You learn something every day, even if other folks might have known it for years":
Wandering through a display of clocks in the museum yesterday, I saw a pair of nocturnals--not sundials or even moondials, but stardials. Pretty neat. I'll have to see if I can either lay my hands on one or make one, and then learn how to use it (or, maybe, the other way around.)
While waiting to go into the U-505 exhibit at the Museum of Science and Industry yesterday, one of the kids among a touring elementary school class ahead in line peered over at me and said, "You're that guy from movies and TV."
"I don't think so," I said.
"Yeah, you are," she said. "You look just like that guy."
"Which guy?"
"You know--that guy."
To the right I've posted a picture of me, also taken at the museum. Who am I supposed to be?
Via Metafilter, the Newseum has a page where each day they present the front pages of 169 papers from around the US and the world, an online parallel to their outdoor display in Washington. Well worth checking out.
Jon passes along the news that you can vote for the Inquest fan awards online if you want to do such a thing. I'm sure Jon wouldn't complain if you voted for HeroClix while you were there.
"Combat forces consume large amounts of bandwidth as the military shifts toward more network-centric operations. In the first months of Operation Enduring Freedom, a relatively thin force used seven times more bandwidth that was used by 500,000 troops deployed during the Persian Gulf War. Individual troops in Afghanistan had access to 322 times the bandwidth available to those in the Gulf War."
An interesting article on battlefield bandwidth consumption by the US Military. (via Defense Tech, now added to the Sources column on the left)
The good news is that Robert Pelton has been freed. The bad news is that two more reporters from the LA Times have been "retained". The worst news is that kidnapped Americans are just the tip of the iceberg.
Thursday, January 23, 2003
Sorry to be so quiet today. I took the day off from everything--work, writing, blogging, everything--and went down to Chicago for the day. Expect some cool new photos in the sidebar soon.
Wednesday, January 22, 2003
My nomination for quote of the day, from a Metafilter comment thread:
"Jimmy Kimmel. What he lacks in humor, he makes up for in reprehensibility."
Robert Young Pelton, editor of the World's Most Dangerous Places, has been kidnapped in Colombia. Of course, he likely knew the risks going in better than anyone, and his website is comebackalive.com, so I have every faith that unless the guerillas do something very stupid, we'll be seeing him again soon.
Ground zero for more info on this story is the ongoing discussion of Pelton's situation in CBA's Black Flag Cafe.
What if one of the SA Goons got married...and the superheroes attended? My vote for best costume goes to the Adam West vintage Batman, who turns out to be voice actor Wally Wingert--the voice of Herman Toothrot and characters on the Transformers and Invader Zim. As it turns out, he made the costume, too.
(In only tangentially-related news, The Challenge of the Superfriends comes out on DVD in April.)
Tuesday, January 21, 2003
Online investigators are beginning to suspect that Bush supporters are astroturfing ("trying to artificially create the appearance of a grassroots movement ") letter-to-the-editor pages in support of the White House. I can handle stupidity in politics, but dishonesty just gets me riled... (via agunn)
Poking through his referral logs, mathowie has discovered that a business school in France has assigned students to study Metafilter. Or FARK, or any of a few other sites. But I know which one I'd pick.
Added to my list of things I will someday buy online in a fit of weakness: a ceramic Ramen mug, found on J-List's shirt page, of all places--just underneath the clothes that suddenly lose any kitsch value they had when the slogans are translated into English ("Respect men, women are lowly"?)
Well, after a lot of good suggestions, multiple installations, and a fair share of playing around, I have found my new search tool: Dave's QuickSearch Deskbar is everything I was looking for and so much more that I barely know where to begin.
Start with a search interface that can not only reach out to Google and Dictionary.com as I hoped, but also more than 200 other sources. Throw in a multitude of tools including an alarm clock, a calculator, a calendar, currency converters, password generators, an email handler. Make it amazingly (and relatively easily) customizable. As icing on the cake, make it open source freeware and give it a community of folks adding new functionality all the time. That's DQSD. I can even think of a few searches I might try writing myself, if I can wade through the Javascript--though I might not need to.
It may have a slightly arcane syntax that takes a bit of getting used to, but it makes up for it with an easily accessible and terrifically useful help system. I've only had it installed for four days and I've already added it to the package of software that will get installed on any machine I use. I give it my heartiest recommendation.
Monday, January 20, 2003
Tonight Glenn told me about Nasubi.
Nasubi was a Japanese man who auditioned for a "show-business related job", and then suddenly found himself stripped nude and thrown into a small apartment. He was told that he would need to win anything he needed to live by entering magazine contests. He was told that he wouldn't be released until he had won more than a million yen in prizes. What he wasn't told is that he would be televised the whole time.
Nasubi was put through the wringer by the Japanese television show Denpa Shonen, where media hijinx bordering on cruelty seem to be the routine. Other series of programs by the show have included a man forced to live in the wilderness for three months posing as the mythical Japanese kappa, two men transported from Tokyo to the southern tip of Africa and then told to hitchhike to northern Norway, and a comedian from whom the show withheld food if he didn't learn to perform his routine in Swahili.
Though I'm horrified by most of what I read about the show, there's enough fascination to drive me on a Googlehunt for more--and to tell you everything I find. Of course, I suppose that's exactly what the producers intend...
(A quote I can't help but reprint that I found on another page while looking for Denpa Shonen links: "The two-hour murder mystery is a genre Japanese TV does exceptionally well. The crime is seldom allowed to overshadow the personalities of a wide array of cheerful sleuths who use their cases as an excuse to check out regional cuisine, crafts and scenery.")
Sunday, January 19, 2003
A roundup of good links from the usual sources:
- Portable 5GB hard drive for $15 (plus $100 reader) (MeFi)
- Urinal user interface (MeFi)
- An excellent Open Spectrum FAQ (bOing)
- Fantastic new Johnny Cash video where the Man in Black covers NIN (MeFi)
- The SAAB sauna (MeFi)
- Declaring the Rights of Players in MUDs and MMORPGs (bOing)
- Play Virtual Journalist (PCJM)
- The Lupin books, a Jeeves story, and (check it out, Rob!) a Peck's Bad Boy novel as etext (via robotwisdom and the new online books page)
- A media ownership chart (multiple sources)
- Interview with the creator of Get Your War On (Bookslut)
- The mysterious visitor to Poe's gravesite. I love that everyone has allowed the tradition to remain undisturbed for more than half a century. (Bookslut)
- Following up Medianews' link to a story about the NYT training reporters for war zones, the website of Centurion Risk Services, the company training them. Interesting to read the two and then read some of the posts on the Black Flag Cafe.
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