Category: observations

CafePress now has black shirts (about time) and they will give one away to their merchants who use the new black in their products. Some incentive to try my hand at something . . .

I’m trying to figure out what to do: perhaps the tried and true Creative Commonist motif? That’s by far the most popular thing I have offered.

If I was a competent artist, something topical with Dick Cheney the Mighty Hunter, using a shotgun on tame birds and still able to miss, might be fun.

Now playing: A New Career In A New Town by David Bowie from the album “Low”

Interesting, perhaps if there were some other ratings (or codings).

I already read some of these.

a crank’s progress – Top Blog Recommendations from BlogCode.com:

Blog Details BlogCodeMatch

plasticbag.org.uk (Tom Coates) (http://plasticbag.org/) 72.13 %
Aberdeen-ian (http://ikusei.blogspot.com) 68.32 %
Bloggerheads (http://www.bloggerheads.com) 67.56 %
Wonkette (http://www.wonkette.com/) 67.42 %
BigDaddyBlog (http://www.bigdaddymerk.co.uk) 67.26 %
plasticbag.org (Tom Coates) (http://plasticbag.org/) 67.17 %
ckunte.com (http://ckunte.com/) 66.92 %
Chicken Yoghurt (http://chickyog.blogspot.com/) 66.55 %
davblog (http://blog.dave.org.uk/) 66.11 %
DogfightAtBankstown(http://dogfightatbankstown.typepad.com/blog/) 66.02 %
A Philosopher Serf(http://philoserf.blogspot.com/) 65.84 %
pragma::weblog (http://pr.ag.ma/weblog/) 65.63 %
Neil Gaiman`s Journal(http://www.neilgaiman.com/journal/) 65.48 %
strangely roug(http://strangelyrouge.blogspot.com) 65.45 %
Ben Metcalfe Blog (http://benmetcalfe.com/blog/) 65.08 %
Glory of Carniola, The(http://www.carniola.org/theglory) 64.74 %
blog.the-kid.org (http://blog.the-kid.org) 64.59 %
Vinny Carpenter`s blog(http://www.j2eegeek.com/blog) 64.39 %
quinparker.com (http://quinparker.com/) 63.84 %
life at the end of the universe(http://blog.lydiapintscher.de/) 63.72 %
Tim Worstall(http://timworstall.typepad.com/timworstall/) 63.66 %
Undesignatedblog (http://www.undesignatedblog.com) 63.58 %
Balrog (http://gaskinbalrog.blogspot.com/) 63.47 %
Dr Dave (http://unknowngenius.com/blog/) 63.24 %
Boris Johnson (http://www.boris-johnson.com/) 63.17 %
East Ethnia (http://eastethnia.blogspot.com) 63.07 %
Scaryduck (http://scaryduck.blogspot.com/) 63.04 %
Proceed at your own risk(http://rjr10036.typepad.com/proceed_at_your_own_risk/) 62.77 %
D-Notice (http://d-notice.blogspot.com/) 62.63 %
Torbay Life (http://torbaylife.blogspot.com/) 62.60 %
The Daily ACK (http://www.babilim.co.uk/blog/) 62.57 %
Barb`s Blog (http://www.xerraireart.com/blog) 62.46 %
Wap Review (http://wapreview.com) 62.35 %
Balls and Walnuts (http://ballsandwalnuts.com/) 62.27 %
Misadventures of Brendan, The(http://hephaestionaz.livejournal.com) 62.02 %
aworks :: “new” american classical music(http://rgable.typepad.com/aworks) 61.75 %
Me, Myself and Mayvelous(http://www.mayvelous.com) 61.51 %
Mabsterama(http://www.madprops.org/cs/blogs/mabster) 61.38 %
Cynical Bastard (http://www.cynicalbastard.com) 61.35 %
Bowietreks (http://bowietrek.typepad.com) 60.79 %

[via]

Now playing: She Divines Water by Camper Van Beethoven from the album “Our Beloved Revolutionary Sweetheart” | Get it

My old iBook is really hurting for speed, RAM, etc. I think I can hold out til midsummer when they are likely to be released, but I’m curious about what they might be like.

Not that one of the existing PPC models wouldn’t suit me. 800MHz and 640 Mb of RAM is easily overmatched by half a dozen apps, lots of networking, etc. But something over 2GHz with 1.5 Gb RAM or more would make a big difference.

Advertising at puschitz.com:

PUSCHITZ.COM generates a large number of “hits” from people interested in Oracle on Linux and Linux Security.

The total page views on puschitz.com are around 1,300,000 page views per year.

Well, I did somewhat better than that last year, though in all honesty, I suspect a lot of those are mechanized, ie bots and spiders.

[/usr/home/paul]:: gzip -cd httpd-access.log*2005*gz | wc -l
2260626

Though there are no images or css cruft in there: it’s just pages. Just for January 2006, I am at 288k pages.

Even if his approach were working (all I see are Google ads, so I surmise not so well), I can’t claim much of a specialty or focus. Check out the queries that brought people here in the past 30 days. That was a factor in my giving up on Google ads: I make a bad target. Some people are able to make a little — or a lot — from Google’s AdSense.

Not sure what to make of the fact that my name is the most used query term . . . . I suspect they’re looking for the other guy, the one who makes guitars.

A simple crop works for this I think.

The red eye catcher is still in the center (some would argue that’s too conventional) and a lot of the extraneous stuff is gone.

Scooter Libby: What May Be Going on…:

Article II, §2, clause 1: “Section. 2. Clause 1: The President shall… have Power to grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offences against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment.” The president’s power to pardon is unreviewable and uncontrollable. But there is a question I want to ask a real lawyer: What kinds of discussions among whom about the exercise of the presidential pardon power rise to the level of conspiracy to obstruct justice?

Yes, indeed. A quid pro quo pardon agreement — you commit perjury to protect me/my people and I’ll pardon you — is not what the founders had in mind, I suspect.

This time tomorrow, we have our family vet coming over to perform the final kindness to our remaining animal companion. She was diagnosed with chronic renal failure a couple of weeks back and it’s taking its tool very quickly. Poor old thing is down to skin and bone and at 17, she wasn’t overweight.

We realized yesterday she was tipping beyond the care of modern medicine: we could prolong the inevitable with IV fluids but the stress of IV treatment and the trips there and back aren’t worth it for the diminished quality of life she’s left with.

There will be some distraught children to be consoled: they are off school tomorrow, which is one reason to do it then. They should have the option of being here for it, so we’ll have a good family cry afterwards.
<update> We couldn’t make her wait that long.
Continue reading “catless”

CNN.com – Lawsuit: iPods may cause … eh? – Feb 1, 2006:

SAN FRANCISCO, California (AP) — A Louisiana man claims in a lawsuit that Apple’s iPod music player can cause hearing loss in people who use it.Apple has sold more than 42 million of the devices since they went on sale in 2001, including 14 million in the fourth quarter last year. The devices can produce sounds of more than 115 decibels, a volume that can damage the hearing of a person exposed to the sound for more than 28 seconds per day, according to the complaint.
[ . . . ]
Patterson’s suit said he bought an iPod last year, but does not specify whether he suffered hearing loss from the device.

Patterson does not know if the device has damaged his hearing, said his attorney, Steve W. Berman, of Seattle. But that’s beside the point of the lawsuit, which takes issue with the potential the iPod has to cause irreparable hearing loss, Berman said.

Whatever happened to taking some responsibility for your actions? As the mother of my children pointed out when she showed me this, our at-the-time Six Year Old would tell us if the iPod volume was too loud when she would use it. Am I to deduce from this that she’s wiser than an adult Louisianian? We report, you decide.
Now playing: Rock ‘n’ Roll by Lou Reed from the album “Rock ‘n’ Roll Animal” | Get it

Current Watches, Warnings and Advisories for Washington Issued by the National Weather Service:

A STRONG FRONTAL SYSTEM MAY BRING HIGH WINDS TO PARTS OF
WESTERN WASHINGTON FRIDAY NIGHT AND SATURDAY MORNING…
COMPUTER MODELS INDICATE THAT A STRONG FRONTAL SYSTEM SHOULD
BEGIN DEVELOPING OVER THE NORTHEAST PACIFIC ON THURSDAY…THEN
TRACK NORTHEAST TOWARD NORTHERN VANCOUVER ISLAND FRIDAY NIGHT. A
STRONG COLD FRONT IS EXPECTED TO CROSS WESTERN WASHINGTON FRIDAY
NIGHT AND THE MAIN LOW WILL MOVE INLAND OVER SOUTHERN BRITISH
COLUMBIA SATURDAY MORNING.
THE FORECAST FOR THIS SYSTEM IS STILL UNCERTAIN…SINCE SMALL
CHANGES IN THE TRACK AND CHANGES IN STRENGTH CAN HAVE A BIG IMPACT
ON THE STRENGTH OF WINDS ACROSS WESTERN WASHINGTON.
BASED ON THE LATEST MODELS THOUGH…THE WASHINGTON COAST AND THE
NORTH INTERIOR COULD POSSIBLY HAVE HIGH WINDS AHEAD OF THE COLD
FRONT FRIDAY NIGHT…AS WELL AS SATURDAY MORNING WHEN THE MAIN LOW
MOVES INLAND.
PARTS OF THE SOUTHWEST INTERIOR COULD POSSIBLY RECEIVE LOCALIZED HIGH
WINDS FRIDAY NIGHT AHEAD OF THE COLD FRONT.
THE STRAIT OF JUAN DE FUCA COULD POSSIBLY RECEIVE HIGH WINDS
SATURDAY MORNING AS THE MAIN LOW MOVES INLAND.
HIGH WINDS ARE SUSTAINED WINDS (LASTING AROUND A MINUTE) OF 40 MPH
OR WIND GUSTS TO 58 MPH.
OVER THE REMAINDER OF WESTERN WASHINGTON THE WINDS MAY NOT REACH
40 MPH WITH GUSTS TO 58 MPH…BUT THEY MAY BE STILL STRONG ENOUGH
TO CAUSE SOME TREE AND POWER LINE DAMAGE. WITH THE SOIL STILL
RATHER WET AROUND WESTERN WASHINGTON…TREES MAY STILL BE A LITTLE
EASIER TO TOPPLE IN VERY WINDY WEATHER.

should be an interesting couple of days.

Now playing: Oddfellows Local 151 by R.E.M. from the album “Document”

Web 2.0 Innovation Map:

The Web 2.0 Innovation Map grew out of an interest in how Web 2.0 development is distributed geographically.
Using the lists of Web 2.0 applications from various sources (see listings) and a bit of elbow grease to locate addresses, the Innovation Map was born. The locations listed here have come either from a WHOIS lookup or the contact information from the web site itself. Locations are not guaranteed to be accurate.

Interesting to see how many of these Web 2.0 shops are local.

Now playing: Mr Kennedy by The Soft Boys from the album “Nextdoorland”