Month: August 2007

I just keep getting angrier:

One of the most striking signs of our government’s complete immorality and incompetence is that they have turned the architect of 9/11 into a victim of human rights abuses. In a saner country, right now we would be gloating over his lawful trial and conviction, patting ourselves on the back for being a country that can bring even the worst of the worst to justice. We would be pointing to his imprisonment as proof that our system works, and pointing to his trial as evidence of our superiority, that we have nothing to hide and nothing to fear from an open airing of the facts.

• My Meraki XML
  “If you’re keen to know the current status of the 100 Prince Street wireless network, tune in to the live XML file with network status information on all the nodes in the network.” I wish FON did this.
  (tags: networking wireless internet)
• Radio Control Toy Batteries
  and some other oddities: a 300v battery? Put your tongue across those terminals, Bunky. These NiCD packs are much cheaper than the specialty ones. Surprise, surprise . . .
  (tags: batteries diy engineering energy)

I get tired of running jobs that I forget to nohup and background: if my laptop goes to sleep, the jobs exit and I have to restart them. Or perhaps I just want to keep en eye on something without cluttering up another window.

So I decided to take another look at screen(1). I didn’t realize it was in the base system on OS X, assuming it was a MacPorts or other open source add-on. But I know I’ll forget about starting it if I don’t make it a habit. Turns out someone else has figured out how to handle that.

This handy tip means I’ll either start up a new instance of screen and re-attach to any existing terminals or simply re-attach with an existing instance. Sounds like a winner.

So we see these signs around different public buildings. I read this one for the umpteenth time and the number 40,000 jumped out at me.

40,000 gallons? OK, that’s 109 gallons per day, based on a full 365 days. Seems kinda high to me. If it’s a gallon per use, that’s 109 uses. Given that I could take a cameraphone picture without attracting undue attention, this facility doesn’t see that much use.

Makes me wonder how many other public statistics are similarly goofed up.

Wow:

Interesting when you consider that the Loyalists/Tories, the ancestors of today’s conservatives, fled to Canada rather than submit to a democracy of their peers.

But I really hope this is hanging up in a lot of the border checkpoints: maybe the Mounties can look at voter registration cards as part of their diligent work.

• 160 – The United Countries of Baseball « strange maps
  so where do you live?
  (tags: baseball culture media entertainment)
• INSTAPUTZ: Dodd takes down O’Reilly.
  Beaten like a rented mule, as we used to say in the South. Advantage: Dodd. No idea how he stays so composed.
  (tags: media culture value hypocrisy)
• Taskpaper
  keep an eye on this. if it’s anything like his other stuff, it will be solid and useful. His design philosophy of “less is more” (fewer needless features can make for a more useful app) is well worth supporting.
  (tags: gtd software design osx tools)
• Lay Down Tracks on Your iPod / Wired How To’s
  iPod as recorder? It can be done, but lookit the perfessionals getting their overalls in a bunch. The iPod was used as part of the process, with the limitations forcing creative decisions. Disappointing that so-called experts don’t get that: maybe that’s
  (tags: music ipod creativity)

The Sketchbook Project | 500 sketchbooks sent around the world | One gallery show:

We’re sending out 500 sketchbooks. You fill them and send them back. Then we throw a show with all of the books plastered across our wall, free for people to flip through.

My old hometown of Decatur is host to this innovative fundraiser. You send them $13, they send you a Moleskine to fill with depictions of your fears, drawings, sketches, words, photos; you send it back and they display it.

I’m tempted just to have a goal/assignment to work on. I feel the energy but no direction and a lot of other distractions that make it easy to put things off.

Whaddaya think? 9 books left: are you in? Is your fear having to fill a book with art? (Hmm, there’s a powerful idea there: what scares people more than a blank page that they have to fill?) Wanna spot me the $13?

Hmm, they’re just a mile and a half from where we lived when my children were born.

apatheism:

n. the attitude of not caring about religion or whether there is a God. [apa(th)y + -theism] Categories: English, Religion. Citations, subject labels, comments, and more information about apatheism are available at Double-Tongued Dictionary.

Point and Click Gmail Hacking at Black Hat:

Gmail username and password authentication takes place over HTTPS, but then you get a session cookie and the rest of your session takes place over unencrypted HTTP. Robert Graham’s demo at Black Hat showed that by sniffing the cookie over an open network, the Gmail session can be hijacked.

Gmail supports HTTPS, but the only way to get it is to specify ‘https:’ in the URL when you load the site. Google should redirect all HTTP Gmail traffic to HTTPS by default.

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