August 2003 – Page 5 – a crank's progress

get yours

With over 60,000 Weblogs in publication today — almost 10% of all the periodicals ever registered — loggers have an unusual opportunity to make their presence known in the only arena that librarians respect: Official enumeration. Remember, as far as librarians are concerned, if it doesn’t have some kind of number, it doesn’t exist.

So get one, already!
I strongly recommend that everyone sign up for an ISSN. In most cases, it’s free, and in many cases, you can apply online and have a number within 48 hours.

My application is filled out and ready to go.

more reasons not to use Windows

Someone asked me for some information I keep in a small FileMaker database, so I exported it as tab-delimited text and sent it over . . . . .

The reply was full of hand-wringing about how they would cope with a file sent as an attachment from a Mac. My reply was perhaps more curt than necessary (“files are files” was the gist of it), but I explained that using File -> Open . . . . as a tab-delimited file would be all that was necessary. (The filename used .tab as the extension, just to be as unambiguous as possible.)

I had forgotten that Windows *still* won’t let you “drag and drop” a file to an application icon for quick access or to get around opening a file that isn’t currently associated with any application. And to make matters worse, once you make an association, correctly or not, you can’t undo it.

I’m trying to recall when this *wasn’t* a feature in Mac OS: I seem to recall it in System 7 which came out in the early to mid 90s. Even if it wasn’t til System 8, that’s a long time . . . .

stop me if you’ve heard this one before

BBC NEWS | Entertainment | Music | I am a ‘net pirate’

[ . . . . ] what happens if I hear a song on the radio and I want to own that one song?
Let’s say the song is five years old and was never a chart hit and my local record store does not have a copy, or even an album on which it appeared.
The music industry makes it virtually impossible for me to buy that one song, although it is more than happy to charge me £15 for a Beatles album released more than 30 years ago.
[ . . . ] The technology to let me buy one song from the internet has been around for the last 10 years but still the record industry is dragging its feet.
Back catalogues of millions of songs remain under lock and key in dusty archives rather than being offered as potentially lucrative choices to music lovers.

Interestingly, the Beatles are notably absent from the iTunes Music Store, by far the most well-known “per track” outlet. And of course, it’s not like those 30+ year old recordings, which recouped their costs shortly after release, are any cheaper than the latest over-produced dreck.

Just imagine all the rarities collecting dust in record company vaults . . . . who knows if we’ll ever hear them, at any price?

leatherman

No, not the tool. I have found myself learning how to make fruit leather for my kids these past couple of days. The serendipitous combination of lots of ripe fruit and a rarely used food dehydrator has kept me busy making concoctions ranging from wild blackberry, complete with seeds, to strawberry/banana and a medley of blackberry, raspberry and blueberry.

It’s easy and gives good results, which is all I ask of any new task. As with most things kids like, it takes more time to prepare than to eat, so I need to find more/cheaper suppliers of ingredients.

making the case

While I’m sitting here encoding LPs to iPod-ready tracks, I decided to do a little research into the various offenses my “person of interest” might be charged with.

First, we have “Theft in the second degree — Other than firearm”, reserved for goods valued at between two hundred fifty and one thousand five hundred dollars.

Next we have Possessing stolen property in the second degree — Other than firearm. I’m not sure if this applies, but I can’t find the section about sales of stolen property. But to sell a physical item, it stands to reason someone has possession of it. So we’ll leave that in.

By certifying that they were the owner, the person of interest has run afoul of Revised Code of Washington 9.38.020 false representation concerning title.

RCW 9A.82.050, Trafficking in stolen property, would seem to cover the sale of a stolen item.

My father was convinced on hearing the details that this was all about getting money for drugs (living in Florida these last 30 years would give him some insight there, unfortunately): all in all, it looks to be an expensive buzz.

subverting bureaucracy through weblogs

McGee’s Musings

How would activities at the [Transportation Security Administration] change if they published a daily weblog with real stories of the best and worst of what they had encountered that day? Not likely to happen, but worth thinking about.

This is painful but valuable read: as we seem to slip closer to a universally paranoid society of informers and snoops, Jim McGee raises the idea that if we could see how trivial and mundane the bulk of the work of these new agencies is, it might put the real risks in perspective.

bike swapping

So I returned my 2003 Fuju Finest today for store credit to PerformanceBike and got en earful about the reputation and ethics of the shop that currently has my 2002 Finest. Apparently, in addition to having loads of attitude — plainly everyone would rather be riding than waiting on pesky customers — there were a lot of comments on RecycledCycles taking in a hot bike and paying out so quickly.

There’s a lot of backstory there that has nothing to do with me, so I’m not putting a lot of stock in it. I keep coming back to what would be the outcome if they *hadn’t* bought my bike. Who know if I’d get it back?

Interesting that the person of interest had to walk or ride by the University Police Department with a hot bike: with the new law taking effect requiring helmets, your savvy bike thief will need to carry a helmet along with his lock breaking tools.

ecotopian wedding rites

Parish-Larios wedding
My former workmate and current fellow UW employee and the love of his life [photos] are Making It Official in a few days.

I’m most impressed with the registry, divided into three categories: Intangibles, Charitables, and Tangibles. Naturally, the first category displayed is the Charitables — gifts for others, ranging from the local, like the Seattle Public Library, to the global, like EFF. But even the Tangibles and Intangibles are solid, practical things, consistent with people who are going about building a life together in a generous and inclusive way.

Thoughtful, individual, and unique, just like the celebrants themselves.

collage/montage

Most Emailed Photos

The challenge was to take the top 3 most emailed photos on yahoo and create a hopefully amusing story about the sequence. I reserve the right to refuse a disturbing picture, this includes any pictures of celine dion.
Please feel free to add alternative captions if you can or comments if you can’t.

historical revisionism or perspective?

Ben Hammersley’s Dangerous Precedent: A sorry excuse to see if the object tag will work

The revolution may not be televised, but for the first time in human history, we could if we wanted to. All by ourselves.

Choice and master spirit of the age Ben Hammersley riffs on the idea of cultural change and co-option, with the observation that the culture that participates in the internet is beholden to no one for its direction or development. Where the previous cultural “revolutions” — rock and roll, punk, hip-hop — were immediately taken up by marketeers and purveyors of lifestyle products, weblogging and its related phenomena are owned by their participants.
Continue reading “historical revisionism or perspective?”