A success story

Waypath Related Weblog Entries

So I have been testing the Waypath engine from ThinkTank23 (you can see the results at bottom right: I think I’ll move ’em up higher on the page) and I have to say I really like the stuff it finds.

The idea is a simple one to understand though not so easy to make happen. Rather than make a user supply keywords to drive a search, Waypath uses the contextual content of the current page and delivers results based on that. Call it keywordless search, whatever you like, it just works.

I need to add it to my individual entries which means some template redesign.

Go here and tell ’em you want to use this on your site.

<UPDATE> I removed Waypath results from the main page and added it to all the individual entries. Browsing the archives is quite interesting now (not just my stale guff, but the incisive observations of others are on display).

decoctions, tinctures, and teas, oh my

So while Frank works his way through the Atkins Diet, I am exploring the world of herbal medicine.

Since the evidence of what causes/prevents kidney stones seems inconclusive or contradictory, I am passing up traditional Western allopathic medicine for stuff that seems to be solidly, if not widely, endorsed. I want to the Herbalist today and bought half a cup each of dried gravel root, hydrangea root, and marshmallow root. The person in the shop seemed to know what I was after: I mentioned gravel root and she asked if I needed the others by name. A good sign. She told me about a few other cures/treatments, mostly labelled as ‘cleanses’ but I had what I came for.

I followed her directions on my first batch of this brew, but I found a page that gave me more details. The first batch was palatable, though not what I would call appealing. I made a second batch this evening with the more complete instructions, boiling it from cold water, which brought out a lot more flavor (bleacgh). A liberal drop of honey helped . . . . .

The same page had instructions on tinctures which take longer to make (2 weeks) but last up to two years and use smaller doses. I’m looking for something I can take forever since I don’t have a lot of hope I’ll find any other solution.

David Pogue explains it all for you

MSFT and Innovation

Beyond Windows and Office, when has Microsoft become the dominant player in a market it covets? It’s either a distant second-place player or a complete loser in palmtops, digital music formats, online services, set top boxes, game consoles, phones, and other areas it’s set out to conquer, no matter how many hundreds of millions of dollars it spends. If Microsoft were truly the quality-driven innovator it claims to be, surely it would have claimed the #1 spot in some of these other categories.

Instead, according to an article this week in The Financial Times, the numbers tell the real story: Microsoft’s Xbox game division lost $177 million last quarter, its MSN online service lost $97 million, its application-software division lost $68 million, and its palmtop division lost $33 million. The only profits at Microsoft, in fact, came form its Windows monopoly money: $2.84 billion. (If there’s any doubt that Microsoft is abusing its monopoly, that’s an 85 percent profit margin.)

There’s more good stuff in this one column. Many people have questioned MSFT’s claim to innovation, but no one has laid out all the pieces for me as clearly as this. This of course underscores why breaking the company into Baby Bills is so frightening: most of them would die quickly.

MSFT annual report: Made with a Mac

Was the Microsoft 1999 Annual report produced on a Macintosh?

Microsoft Word documents are notorious for containing private information in file headers that people would sometimes rather not see get out. An interesting example is the 1999 Microsoft annual report which was released on the Web last week as a Word document. The file headers indicate that the annual report was created on a Macintosh and not Windows!

Hey, at least they used Word: how would it look if they used AppleWorks?

imagine the possibilities

Serious Internet Explorer Defect

A simple way to exploit an unfixed defect in Internet Explorer has been discovered that allows malicious web sites, and possibly malicious email messages read with Outlook or Outlook Express, to take control of a computer. All you would need to do is click a web link and the owner of the web site could take almost any action they desired on your computer.

Simple, working exploit software was recently published to a public mailing list.

There is no patch to fix the problem. Anti-virus and personal firewall software will not prevent an exploit. It is hoped that Microsoft will provide a patch to fix this defect in the near future.

So anyone wth access to content on public webserver could integrate this code into some other page and reformat hard drives, conduct a DDOS attack, whathaveyou.

And will this affect MSFT’s stock valuation, sales, or public image outside the Usual Suspects who never have anything good to say about them?

where are we going? and why are we in this handbasket?

Windows XP Shows the Direction Microsoft is Going.

If you protest effectively against Microsoft abuse, you are not against Microsoft; you are more pro-Microsoft than Bill Gates.

Interesting article. I’d like to see the claims corroborated.

If the points raised are valid, I would have to question the judgment of any IT executive who chose software like “Windows XP [that] makes your computer dependent on Microsoft computers.”

As Mr Gates himself said, “New versions aren’t there to fix bugs. I have never heard of such a twisted reason to bring a new version onto the market.”

the pain of childbirth with none of the rewards

At 1 AM this morning I awoke in severe abdominal pain, located just behind and above my navel. My first thought was food poisoning (I had made ravioli for dinner and both fillings I used had eggs: did they cook through?), but I had no nausea or any symptoms. I tried Aleve to mitigate the pain and PeptoBismol to counter what I thought was stomach pain, to no avail.

Finally at 5 AM I went the ER and was diagnosed with gastritis or dyspepia: a cocktail of Mylanta and lidocaine had produced some results, so I was discharged.

I made it as far as my car when I threw up the cocktail and went straight back in the ER. This time, the testing was more rigorous: I had ultrasounds, CT scans, bloodwork, and morphine (that helped a lot).

Turns out I have my third kidney stone, and the staff seemed to think it was a large-ish one. I was sent off with a prescription for percocet and the hopes and wishes of my attending physician that the thing will pass by itself.

Three of these is three too many, so I have been doing a little research on why they form and what to do about them.
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