Journal of Post-Ralphaelite Thought

Traditionally songs about Thanksgiving focus on the harvest and gathering of family: "Come Ye Thankful People Come," "We gather together," and so on. Today, families are often far-flung and distant. This is the first year neither of my two sons will be coming home for Thanksgiving. The youngest is spending the holiday with a college friend in upstate New Jersey (the rural, "Garden State" part, not the petrochemical part), and the oldest is in Antarctica. Though not really a Thanksgiving song, I've had the Beatles standard "In My Life," on my mind today; it's a song about looking back on the people we aren't with. There are places I remember All my life, though some have changed Some forever not for better Some have gone and some remain All these places had their moments With lovers and friends I still can recall Some are dead and some are living In my life I've loved them all But of all these friends and lovers There is no o...

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I noticed where the recent production of "Atlas Shrugged, Part 1," will be released on DVD and Blu ray tomorrow. Get ready to relive the excitement of the first third of Ayn Rand's colossal door stop again and again. Since I never saw it, (nor plan to), I'm hardly qualified to offer up any meaningful criticism. I'll leave that to the good reviewers on Amazon's website . Not unsurprisingly, fans are once again using this a forum to accuse the professional critics who panned this epic of all sorts of dastardly liberal bias (imagine that). They've racked up the ratings to an average 4 stars (out of 5). Sample comment: "The movie is well made - the quality is actually quite good. Acting was generally good to excellent. Camera work was good; although the low budget resulted in a missing camera angle here and there. Special effects were consistently well done. The story, of course, is exceptional; and it is well-told in this movie." Hmm...if...

A couple of decades ago I was noodling around on my guitar and remembered a lick from a song my old high school buddy Chuck Niebling used to play. It had a lilting, slightly melancholy sound. The lyrics (I can never remember words) had something to do with leaving home. That's all I could recall about it. I've played that 24 bar phrase on and off ever since; searching through the repertoires of every obscure and not so obscure 60's and 70's folkie I could think of -- to no avail. I've been totally stumped ... until today. I was listening to a new download I'd gotten from Amazon featuring Jorma Kaukonen and David Bromberg (highly recommended, by the way) and was struck by a tune Bromberg sang. I went back to Amazon to check out some of his other CDs, clicked on a selection and --- OMG! MY MYSTERY SONG! It was called " Child's Song, " and was written by Canadian Murray McLaughlin. More research revealed the version my friend Chuck had perform...

I'd gotten an invite for Google Music a month or two ago but hadn't done much with it until recently. The other day I logged in again and started playing with it again. Here's a few notes for those who are interested in that sort of thing. Here's the short version: Google Music is cloud-based music streaming service, which you can use to upload (I hesitate to say "store" for reasons I'll describe later) and playback MP3s. You get to store 20,000 files, apparently regardless of size. Right now it's in Beta with limited availability (get in line and wait for an invite). It's similar to what Amazon recently launched and what Apple seems to hope iCloud will be. I don't want to call this "cloud storage," because, although you can upload music to play back, there's no way to natively download it - so you won't be using it to back up your music collection. So far it's a one-way street. That being said, I've seen a coup...

Woot has a short video editorial on the subject of Martinis, to which I say, as a confirmed Martini drinker, "A - freaking - men." Preach on, brother Beetle!

Dennis Ritchie passed away on October 8, at age 70. Most people will say "huh," upon hearing his name. I'd argue he had a much greater influence on modern computing than the late Steve Jobs. He developed C , the most widely used programming language in the world, while working at Bell Laboratories in the late 60's. He still has a home page at Bell Labs . While originally written to be used to create the Unix operating system (which Ritchie also developed, along with Ken Thompson), C is now used for writing software for computers, embedded devices, smart appliances, cellphones, consumer goods - everything from operating systems to applications to device drivers to...well, you name it. The beauty of C is that it can be compiled for any number of different platforms. C gave rise to an number of variations and spin offs - C+, C++ (I'm not making this up) as well as directly and indirectly influencing the structure and syntax of a host of other modern programm...

Since I worked from home yesterday I ended up deciding it would be a good idea to upgrade my iDevices to iOS 5 the very first day it was available . Remind me to never do that again. Not surprisingly, everybody on this side of the space-time continuum made the same foolish choice. My first attempt to download the upgrade started by helpfully informing me it would take around 23 minute to download...then 29...then 38...  Which was bad enough except when it finished, iTunes gave me a terse little error message that said, "there was a problem downloading" blah, blah. Son of a bitch ! After several failed attempts (each longer than the last) I Googled the error message and speculated my anti-virus software was not playing nice with iTunes. Thank you Kaspersky. After disabling it I started the download process again, (it took about 90 minutes) and finally got my iPad updated. The whole process, with backing up, restoring, etc, took roughly 2 and a half to 3 hours. Note ...

I confess I know very little about the Occupy Wall Street protests that seem to have sprung up of late. What I do know is confined to what I picked up scanning a few headlines - a notoriously dangerous way to look for information. I don't really know what the point is (I have my suspicions), how many people are involved or exactly where the protests are taking place. I gather that, while they may be noisy, they aren't violent - or else I'd have seen lots of headlines. One banker is quoted as saying the protesters are, "a bunch of whiny people who are lazy or incompetent." Given Wall Street's antics over the last several years, having a banker call someone else whiny, lazy and incompetent seems the height of unintended irony. As I was reflecting on all this, I thought of when a bunch of right wing right-to-carry protesters a couple of years back decided they needed to make their point by coming with weapons to a rally in a national park . Let's assume...

I have to hand it to Netflix: they may be witless, but they aren't complete dunderheads. After the tidal wave of criticism from their customers and a free-falling stock price, they've figured out that just maybe they should not split the streaming and DVD-by-mail businesses asunder. CEO Reed Hasting (how much longer will I be able to make that statement?) posted on the company blog today that: It is clear that for many of our members two websites would make things more difficult, so we are going to keep Netflix as one place to go for streaming and DVDs. Bravo - that man must have an MBA. So, again this plays out more and more like the saga of New Coke . By the way, in case you've forgotten how that ended, Coke actually gained market by re-introducing Old Coke, er, Coke Classic. Other than looking clueless by tampering with a classic, the whole "fiasco" solidified Coke's place in the market. So who's to say how ill-advised all this seems in th...

My good friend, guitar-playing buddy and occasional debating partner The Whited Sepulchre posted the NPR Top 100 Science-Fiction and Fantasy Book list with annotations (I guess there is a lot of this going around) and challenged folks to do their version of the list. Despite his occasionally loathsome political opinions, the WS is extremely well-read (and now a published author !) so I found his list fascinating.  I used to read a lot of sci-fi when I was younger; not so much now. A lot of authors I enjoyed when younger I find tiresome now. Anyway, here's my list. 1. The Lord Of The Rings Trilogy, by J.R.R. Tolkien I'm sorry - I've tried to read this probably 2 dozen times and never got any further than the first 30 pages. My first attempt was when I was 13, my last was when I was in my late 40's. Hugo Dyson, one of Tolkien's contemporaries is reported to have exclaimed : " Oh god! Not another fucking elf! "during a reading by Tolkien. I feel his...

Just saw that Apple founder Steve Jobs passed away today. Sad but no shock, given his medical situation these last few years. I was never much of an Apple fanboy, but there's no denying his impact on the world of computing. Facebook is currently awash with comments about his passing. I'll let others argue about his "genius," as well as his failings. Though the Apple II and MacIntosh were groundbreaking devices, we may find that the iPhone (and its various offspring, including the iPod touch and iPad), ends up having a bigger impact on modern life, since it popularized the truly portable, hand-held personal computing device - something that could end up making desktops and laptops niche products. A fascinating life, well-lived. The world will be a less interesting place without him.

So Apple finally announced the iPhone du jour yesterday. Am I the only one out there who feels slightly underwhelmed? Okay - these are the features most prominently displayed on the Apple website: Faster processer - nice, but I never felt my 3GS was cripplingly slow. Meh. Better camera - nice, but it's still a camera in a phone, with all the limitations that come with that. Slightly more compelling but still - meh. Siri - voice commands. I tried Siri before Apple bought it and never found it all that useful. A gimmick. Note to Apple: I'm saying "meh," now - is there a command for that? iOS5 - this is actually the most interesting thing being trumpeted as part of the new phone. Oh wait - I can get it as a free upgrade to my current phone in a few days. More on that below. iCloud - sounds like this is an iOS5 thing. See above comment. So I'm not seeing any reason to rush right out and replace my old 3GS. The biggest complaint I have with it is that battery...

You've got to hand it to the Koch Brothers (America's most secretive gazillionaires) - they really do believe in free markets. I guess that's why they see no issue with selling millions of dollars of petrochemical equipment to Iran, a country the U.S. identifies as a sponsor of global terrorism, according to a Bloomberg Markets investigation . Of course, they were careful to do this through various foreign subsidiaries they owned. Is it okay to stab our nation in the back, as long as the Invisible Hand is holding the knife? The Bloomberg article references numerous examples of the Kochs' general disregard for the law, including lying and outright theft of resources from federal lands (which means they are stealing from me and you). These are the people bankrolling numerous Libertarian and Tea Party organizations.Why dirty your hands when  you can outsource the job? By the way, Koch's consumer brands include Lycra fiber and Stainmaster carpet. Georgia- Pacif...

Long before Mr Rogers made the scene, Mr. Peppermint entertained (and educated) the small fry of North Texas. I note with sadness that Jerry Haynes, who created and played that character, passed away yesterday at age 84 of complications from Parkinson's disease. He started the role in 1961 on WFAA (the ABC affiliate for the area), wearing a red and white striped jacket and straw hat, and carrying a candy-striped cane. I was in first grade at the time. As was the fashion at the time, he had a collection of stock characters, mostly puppets; the one I remember best was Mr. Wiggly Worm - performed by Haynes by sticking his finger up through the hole in the bottom of the box in which Mr. Wiggly Worm lived. Simple but amusing to us, his audience. Wikipedia notes that through a quirk of fate and timing, Jerry Haynes was the first person to report the assassination of John F Kennedy on local news. Haynes was born and raised in Dallas, graduating from Woodrow Wilson High School and train...

Okay - update to my unfortunate brush with the Google+ Identity Police . My "old" identity, "Dr Ralph," did not past muster. Having read the reports of how Google+ was cracking down on fictitious identities, it came as no real surprise to discover they'd finally sniffed me out and suspended my Google profile , although the Gmail account associated with the account was untouched. They *did* offer me an opportunity to edit my profile to come up with something less overtly fake. Amazingly, "Post Ralphaelite," was good enough (this is also the ID that Facebook found acceptable). So I'm back.

Well, I suspected this would happen when I started hearing about Google+'s "Identity Policy." Boiled down, it says users must use their real name or a name they use in everyday life on their Google+ profile . Yeah, well that's not going to happen here. Do you think I'm out of my mind? So, for the record "Dr Ralph" did not meet their standard for real names. Am I surprised? Not particularly. To their credit, Google does give you a chance to edit your profile so as to meet their standards. We'll just see if "Post Ralphaelite" passes muster. I have a feeling it may take several passes before I wiggle past their Identity Cop. For the record, Facebook didn't like "Dr Ralph," either. Stay tuned.

For the past 3 months or so, you needed an invitation from an existing member to join Google+. Not that this was much of a problem - there were numerous on-line presences that would extend an invite to anyone who emailed them and asked for one. A few enterprising souls attempted to sell them on eBay. Still, "by invitation only" gave the service the cachet of pseudo-exclusivity, much like Facebook in the early days. No more! Google announced on the Official Google Blog that, among the many other numbered improvements they've added, invitations are no longer required. Take that , Facebook. Most of the other improvements announced centered around the Hangout feature, which I've never used. By the way, my Google+ profile is shown on the right sidebar of the blog (at least until they catch wind of the fuzziness of my actual identity). Update : I've been busted by the Identity Police !

Once upon a time, Netflix was touted as a case study in the emerging world of dot-com startups. Now it's an object lesson. In case you've missed the drama, Netflix, not satisfied with pissing off its customer base by splitting its DVD-by-mail and streaming subscription services (net result: nearly doubling the cost for both services), continues its campaign by announcing the two services will be split into two distinct companies, with separate billing and customer accounts. If you were a Netflix customer and hadn't dropped one or the other service in the wake of the price boost, this will likely do the trick. For those of you out there who were never customers, here's a little background. Netflix launched its original DVD-by-mail service in 1997 using a traditional $4 per rental model. By 1999, they'd moved to a subscription service that featured unlimited rentals without due dates or shipping fees (the different tiers of service revolved around how many disk at a ...

Mozilla (who produces, among other things, the open source Firefox web browser) is running a promotion for " 4 Tools for Back to School. " Among them is the browser extension Zotero , which is used to collect, manage and cite on-line research resources.  It is a product of the Center for History and New Media at George Mason University, where Youngest Son is a Junior Computer Science major. Kudos to the team that produced it and congratulations for the deserved recognition - it is a very slick tool. Read more about Zotero at the Zotero site . If you've never visited the Center for History and New Media website, check it out - Zotero is but one of many useful tools to be found there for historians, educators and scholars.

The word "anniversary" doesn't feel right - anniversaries are something I associate with joy. I don't feel qualified to make any profound observations or pontificate on the significance of today. I'll leave that to others. Instead, let me point you to a piece in the New York Times entitled " Mom's Last Lesson, " written by a friend who lost his brother at the Pentagon that day. Today's Doonesbury pretty much nailed it, too. For the record, I'm leaving my TV off today, too. I rewatched that horrible footage way more than was healthy when it first aired.

If you know British actor Hugh Laurie primarily from his hit TV show House, you may be unaware of his previous role on the BBC production of "Jeeves and Wooster," based on the stories of P. G. Wodehouse (both the TV series and the books they were based on are hilarious). Laurie was a comic genius in these, but he also displayed his musical talents, performing (in character as Bertie Wooster) novelty songs of the era. I was always left wanting just a little more. I want no more! The multi-talented Mr Laurie has released a CD entitled Let Them Talk inspired by his love of New Orleans blues. It is great stuff!!! I downloaded it from the Amazon MP3 store (my favorite source of downloaded music these days) and am marveling at the goodness of it all. He sings, plays guitar and piano, and is joined by a number of outstanding guests, such as Dr. John and Tom Jones. Hit his website for more info and some downloads. Here's a sampling to give you a taste (I own a mahogany...

My libertarian friends are fond of trumpeting all of the alleged failures of the Obama administration. For the record I find myself becoming disillusioned as well for his less than sterling performance in a few specific areas. "Obamacare:" this was not healthcare reform - this was insurance re-form. What we needed was a single-payer system, like Canada. What we got was bullshit. I don't care what they say, this was a giant french-kiss to the leviathan that is the insurance industry in this country. FAIL. Copyright and Intellectual Property issues : the Music and Movie industries (RIAA and MPAA) have lots of money and absolutely no shame.These are the people who have attempted to argue that the musicians who record albums produced " work for hire ," who use their ratings system to lock out independent filmmakers , who use their army of attorneys to shut down websites without any sort of due process, who work to erode *your* rights under copyright law. Obama ...

As previously noted, I've been re-watching the entire six season run of LOST. My soul-mate has patiently watched along side of me, though I know she'd rather be watching West Wing (or What Not To Wear). In honor of my birthday last weekend we finished off the last season in a burst of weekend-consuming marathon viewing. I have to say it: Blu Ray is worth the money. Sunday we watched the 2+ hour final episode, where the writers wrap up things as much as they are ever going to be wrapped up. By the time it's over, I'm in my weepy mode, from all the emotional twists of fate. The credits roll. I wipe my eyes. "So what did you think?" I ask. Long thoughtful pause on her side. "It was good ," she says, choosing her words carefully. "There certainly was a lot of it to watch." I guess I'll be watching the special features alone.

I've convinced my long-suffering wife to watch all six seasons of LOST (I preordered the gonzo boxed set as soon as it appeared on Amazon). We are now half-way through the final season and are still married. The ABC website has the following little bonus clip they released at Comic Con this year, which will only make sense if you are a total fanboy like me and have seen the entire LOST run: If it makes no sense, go back and review at ABC.com .

What to do about Ron Paul? Sometimes he makes absolute sense, other times it's like listening to your crazy uncle rant - you know, the one who goes off after a few drinks at Thanksgiving about how the Holocaust never really happened.  With Hurricane Irene heading up the Eastern Seaboard, he chose to spout off about how FEMA was just a drain on the economy and not necessary. "We should be like 1900," he said, referring to the great Galveston hurricane of that year. For those of you unfamiliar with the 1900 Galveston hurricane , here's a little context which Dr. Paul conveniently failed to supply us with. The storm, estimated to be a Category 4 hurricane, hit Galveston on September 8, 1900, with a resulting loss of life estimated at between 8,000 and 12,000. Over 3,600 homes were destroyed. Survivors lived in tents and shelters constructed from debris, and were without water service for 4 days. The suggestion here is: why get the government involved? Let th...

It's true: of late I've taken to hanging out in a bar on Sunday afternoons. Wait, I'll explain: my friend and occasional debating partner, The Whited Sepulchre , has organized an acoustic guitar circle that meets on Sunday afternoons in The Corporate Image , a rather unpretentious watering hole over on the east side of Fort Worth. I'm not sure if the name of this place is supposed to be ironic or not, but the bartender is friendly and more than appreciative of our musical musings. We've done this about 4 Sundays now. It's great fun. There's four of us who could be called regulars and there's enough overlap in repertoire and musical taste that we all manage to play along, no matter who actually starts any given song. I borrowed a collection of harmonicas from youngest son and add a little harp when appropriate (or I can't figure out anything else to do). The Whited Sepulchre, by the way, is a natural for this -- he's quite a guitar player...

For those of you who know me in the real world (or what passes for it), you may find the following link of some interest . The rest of you, who've come here in search of technical advice or whining about politics, keep moving; nothing more to see. Update: I fixed the link so it actually works now.

Lately I've heard a number of people (friends, acquaintances and strangers) toss out the line " an armed society is a polite society. " I wonder how many of them are aware this is a quote from the Robert Heinlein novel, Beyond This Horizon , first published as a two-part serial in 1942, and in novel form in 1948. Some context: in the novel, openly carrying weapons and dueling are the social norm; one can wear special clothing to opt out of this practice but to do so is to be relegated to second class status (you chickenshit bastard). Some other things in the novel my gun-toting friends may not be aware of: in it the world has become such an economic utopia that working has become optional, and projects with no possibility of any economic return are favored above all else.  So, in other words: a fantasy. The reality of the situation is that carrying a weapon doesn't make you more polite, it only serves to make other people more polite to you . That's not bei...

I admit it: I think the Isaiah Mustafa commercials for Old Spice are really funny and clever (can't escape those years in advertising). Wired had a link to a Sesame Street Parody that's pretty funny -- see below. Just in case you've been living under a rock for the last year, the original is here:

When the city told me the sycamore in front of the house needed to be cut down I had mixed feelings. In my mind, sycamores are sort of junk trees -- about one step above hackberrys. They're prone to disease and messy, and will occasionally decide to drop limbs, and not just small ones. The one in question had been planted overly close to the driveway -- which was the issue: a street project meant new curbs and driveways. Not a good thing. Honestly, I'd mused on the possibility of getting rid of it myself. Still, the sight of the big spray-painted X's on the trunk was a little dismaying. Friday morning I got a message from the spouse that a tree service was truck parked in front of the house. Duh duh duuuhhh. By the time I got home... The front yard, formerly shady, was now open and sunny. Very open. Very sunny. It was a little jarring. The tree men reported the tree was about 60 years old. At one point there were lots of sycamores on our block but they had all ...

The great circus sideshow that is our political process continues to be about the "debt ceiling." It's like the cliff-hanger ending at the end of a mediocre reality show. The self-aggrandizing and self-righteous Tea Party wing of the Republican party is hell-bent on driving the school bus off the cliff to make a point. Stephen Colbert sums it up nicely: Meanwhile, not a peep from much of anyone about such things as the tracking of American citizens via cell phones , warrantless wiretapping , or other Bush era shenanigans now taken over by the present administration ( Wired has more on this ).   I guess the Tea Party is okay with this sort of thing as long as it doesn't raise anyone's taxes. The Romans learned a long time ago the best way to distract the citizenry from the signs of their crumbling republic was with circuses. I'd say that lesson was not lost on our present elected officials.

I got a Google Plus invite a little while ago. In case you ignore some of the chatter in Geek Land, it's Google's latest attempt at Social Media. After trying it for a couple of weeks. my verdict: thumbs up. It's still in "Field Testing," which means you can't just go and sign up - you need an invite from someone who's already in. Which is easier than it sounds. There are numerous sites that will send you an invite just for asking (just Google " Google Plus Invites ."). Heck - even I will. Why would you want to get Google Plus (or G+ as it is sometimes referred to)? Let me list a few reasons I see. Biggest reason you'll like Google+ : "Circles." Circles are how you organize the subtle balance that exists within your relationships. They allow a high degree of granularity in what you choose to show. By putting someone in a Circle, you define what you want to share with them. When you post something you choose who to ...

George W Bush (arguably) stole the 2000 election thanks to that festering pustule of corruption known as the state of Florida. It was only the horror of 9-11 and our country's need to unite that he got away with such a blatant bit of thievery. Well, say this for Dubya - he figured out he'd never get away with the same trick twice.  Why leave physical evidence (like actual ballots) when it's so much easier to steal the high-tech way. With the introduction of electronic voting and a dedicated group of criminal supporters, a person can swing a lost election and leave nary a hanging chad. Read about how the 2004 election was stolen electronically by hacking voting machines in Ohio . Court filings are just now starting to reveal how it was done.

I've been writing HTML for about 17 years now, hard as that is to believe. I'm not a fan of WYSIWYG editors - I prefer to use text-based editors. It's how I learned, and as far as I'm concerned, usually easier. After graduating from Notepad, the first editor I bought was something called WebEdit Pro, by Luckman. It had a clean, well-organized interface and I used it for several years before I discovered HomeSite. HomeSite , originally developed by Nick Bradbury (who later went on to create TopStyle, still my favorite CSS editor) was acquired by Allaire, who sold it as a standalone editor, and as a repackaged editor for their flagship ColdFusion software. Incidently, the original freeware version, Homesite 1.2 (written for Windows 95), is still out there on the web, though it's gotten harder to find. Its feature set is pretty basic, but it's still usable, and still has fans. Google it if you're curious. I used various versions of HomeSite for a perio...

It's hard to speak in absolute terms about the Libertarians, since they come in so many flavors -- mostly bitter. They all claim to stand for individual liberty (duh), a goal which, like mom, apple pie, and the flag, is hard to argue with. In the past they proudly pointed to their support of social rights -- as manifested by such hot-button issues as abortion rights and gay rights. Lately, as a result of in-breeding with Tea Partiers (why cousins shouldn't marry) they seem to have forgotten about all that. Rand Paul, scion of Ron Paul, and darling of the TeaLibertarians states, " I believe life begins at conception and it is the duty of our government to protect this life ," and came out against same-sex marriage during his 2011 Senate campaign. Hardly the stuff of individual liberty. So, what's left after social rights are gone? Property rights. Yes, the Libertarians are all about property rights. Property rights apparently trump civil rights. Said Paul , "...

Today's Google Doodle (on the main search page) commemorates guitar giant Les Paul (he would have been 96) with a playable online guitar -- that will record your musical stylings!  That's right -- hit the red record button, strum around, then copy the Google shortened URL to rehear your master piece. Simply amazing! Here's my brief experiment:  http://goo.gl/doodle/iwP3 The master has nothing to fear from me. More on Les Paul from the archive (written when he passed away) : http://postralphaelite.blogspot.com/2009/08/while-my-guitar-gently-weeps.html http://postralphaelite.blogspot.com/2009/08/while-my-guitar-gently-weeps-part-2.html

Well, tomorrow is my sister's birthday. It's also supposed to be the end of the world. That being the case, I've decided to put off doing my timesheets until Monday. Just in case. To be a bit more specific, tomorrow is Judgement Day (according to those in the know), a.k.a, the Rapture, when around 3 million of the Elect will be taken up to heaven, leaving the rest of us behind...just like in those "Left Behind" novels. It's always struck me as a bit presumptuous to assume one is part of the Elect. I'm actually sort of looking forward to seeing someone with one of those " In Case of the Rapture, This Car Will Be Unmanned ," bumper stickers driving around on the day after, so I can say, "Hey, asshole, what happened? Soul Train pull out of the station without you?" Now, I'll be the first to admit I won't be on that first flight out. No doubt I'll be undergoing some torment of the damned, but at least I'll be rid of ...

Not to yet again brand myself as an ancient, but when I got my first computer (a Tandy Color Computer) the connected world was a much simpler place. I had a 300 baud modem and a CompuServe account which cost me an arm and a leg. This was around 1981. I soon discovered BBS's and saved a bunch of money. This thing called the internet ran on leased 56K phone lines and one had to be at a research or defense facility or employed by the government or military to gain access to it. The "world wide web" wouldn't appear for another 10 years. If you knew someone, you might have access to something a bit more connected than just a BBS. Around the time my oldest was born I had a sibling who worked at a local university and he gave me the dial in number for the library computer. With a little judicious poking around all sorts of interesting things could be found. Telehack.com has put together a blast from the past - a javascript based emulator for that yesteryear of comput...

First Amazon, now Blogger. What's the world coming to? I've been busy and almost missed it, but apparently Blogger has had some some "issues" over the last couple of days. For the unenlightened,  "issues" is service provider code for "major fuck-ups." I first became aware when my friend and debating partner the Whited Sepulchre posted something the other day about losing a post and noticed he'd posted something today about losing a bunch of comments (it had removed the snarky remark I made in response to the first post). I won't go into whether this is a good thing or not, but it did pique my curiosity. According to Blogger , the issue was (as with Amazon) some sort of screw up during "routine" maintenance. Result: an avalanche of lost posts and comments. After 2 days they are working to restore these as quickly as possible. Speaking as a web professional, I can vouch for the fact it's those "routine" things that...

The punditocracy seems to agree that although the recent take-down of Osama bin Laden has bumped President Obama's poll numbers, this bump is likely to be short-lived because of lingering concerns over the state of the economy. At the same time there has been, since the previously-mentioned take-down, a low rumbling from some quarters about the lack of photographic or video documentation - not all of it from the frothing-at-the-mouth classes. Even people I consider reasonable want to see pictures, dammit. While enjoying a mint julep with one of my Republican friends yesterday (we were watching the Kentucky Derby), the pair of us came up with what I consider a brilliant idea that addresses both of Obama's issues. Pay-per-view of the bin Laden raid! There have been hints that videos and photos do exist, but that they are gruesome -- too gruesome for the public at large. So why not let people pay to see the carnage? Use the profits to pay for the War on Terror. The adult US popul...

About 10:25 last night, my friend Lee called with some stunning news: President Barack Obama was about to address the nation to inform us that US forces had killed Osama bin Laden. I ran and turned on the TV to confirm. NBC had broken into normal programming with a special report and was awaiting the president's arrival. I went into the bedroom and told my wife, "They've killed bin Laden." My voice cracked as I said it. We watched Obama in silence. There was video of celebration in New York and in Washington, DC. "USA! USA!" chanted the crowds. It felt a little odd - like cheering a football victory instead of the death of a mass murderer. But I'm not going to judge anyone's reaction -- least of all people living in the epicenter of those horrific attacks almost 10 years ago. My own response was less of joy, and more of satisfaction that at least a small measure of justice had been meted out. The death of this one evil monster can never outweigh th...

I got an email from Google the other day that describes a change in terms for users of their Google Apps service . Previously the "free" tier let you have up to 50 users accounts for your domain. As of May 10, that will be dropped to 10 for new accounts. Says Google, " As of May 10, any organization that signs up for a new account will be required to use the paid Google Apps for Business product in order to create more than 10 users ." Although I can see the reasoning (small businesses were probably using the free personal account) but it's still sounds grasping. This will not affect existing accounts, so if you were planning to use Google Apps for your vanity domain, I'd get in there and do it now. That being said, even with only 10 accounts, Google Apps are pretty cool.

Amazon has finally released a detailed post-mortem that describes what happened during last week's outage at their Northern Virginia data center (US-EAST) and why it took so long to fix (short version: we screwed up and things snowballed out of control ). It makes for a long, technical, but interesting read. Complex systems make for complex failures.

Microsoft filed a suite against Barnes & Noble for alleged patent violations in their Nook reader - they take exception to the open-source Android OS that powers the Nook. Rather than humbly submitting, B&N has fired back a blistering response ( PDF ). You can read more about it on Groklaw . Most outstanding move was B&N's steadfast refusal to sign a NDA (non-disclosure agreement), which Microsoft insisted on before outlining the specifics of their complaint against them. Huh? Here's a sample from B&N's response: On information and belief, to perpetuate this scheme, Microsoft and its agents, including spokesman and chief executive officer Mr. Steven Ballmer, have publicly stated that through its patents Microsoft can dominate, control, and exclude from the market the AndroidTM Operating System, other open source operating systems, and open source applications such as Google Chrome. These statements are unjustified in view of the scope of Microsoft...