March 2002 Archives

Here's a lovely piece of proposed state legislation that I wish someone would propose here in Missouri. [via TV Barn]

Humorist Harry Shearer has a new movie coming out called Teddy Bear's Picnic, a satire of the secretive "Bohemian Grove" retreats of America's richest and most powerful. Unfortunately, it seems to be playing the art-house circuit, and even though we have a few of those theaters in STL, I'm bad about not getting to them.

There have a lot of signs of heavy pollution in the Gulf of Mexico, but region of black water may be the strangest and most disturbing yet.

Like Daniels, fishermen with decades on the water say they've often seen red tide but they've never seen anything like this — it doesn't have a foul smell, it isn't red tide and it isn't oil. They describe it as viscous and slimy water with what looks like spider webs in it.

Satellite images show the extent of this phenomenon. [via Street Tech]

There's an insurance form I have to fill out for work. One of the blanks is marked "Basic Life/AD&D Class".

It's taking all my strength not to write in "Sorceror".

The new Spider-Man movie trailer I mentioned last week is now online. Frickin' wow. Update: I'm disappointed that they had to drop The Man.

When I asked for a Sony PDA for Christmas, I knew it was inevitable that Sony would introduce an even better product within months. I just didn't expect them to put out a PDA this much cooler, this quickly.

I hate it when I fall for an Urban Legend. [via TV Barn]

Yesterday, I received a CD set I ordered from the UK: The Sirens of Time, the first in a series of Doctor Who Audio Adventures. These are full-cast audio dramas starring a number of the original actors, including the last three BBC-TV Doctors (Peter Davidson, Colin Baker, and Sylvester McCoy) and the TV-movie Doctor (Paul McGann). It's a good translation of the feel of the TV series to an audio-only medium, and a better story than most of the original Doctor Who novels I've read. I'm pretty sure I'll be ordering more of these.

If there's one serious science fiction novel I've always wanted to see made into a movie, it's Arthur C. Clarke's Rendezvous with Rama.

I seem to have properly installed the latest version of Movable Type without any difficulty. Mind you, I haven't found time to delve into all the little nooks and crannies of the system yet. Looks like the only thing I'm missing is the optional Image::Magick module (which will be useful if I ever start posting pictures), and that appears to be on my admin's to-do list.

I don't go out to clubs or concerts very often, but this was an unusual week; two of my all-time favorite bands played a local venue called The Pageant, and I made both shows. I've already mentioned the They Might Be Giants show Wednesday night; they played a fantastic show and got a great reaction (as usual) from the St. Louis crowd. Learning that Concrete Blonde was going to be playing last night (Saturday) was a big surprise, since they had broken up years ago. Turns out that the original members of the band had gotten back together for a new album. Well, sort of.

Back in the office again this weekend. Damn, I hate Sybase SQL.

It doesn't seem that long since I might have tried to defend the Confederate flag as a symbol of the South. I still believe that most of the people who choose to fly the flag do so because they identify it with a distinctly Southern idea of "home" that has nothing to do with racism. In my eyes, however, it has become a symbol more of stagnation and divisiveness than of racism. It only gets worse when some white supremacist dimwit like David Duke starts the latest twisted campaign to promote the flag, in opposition to those who want to be rid of it.

I was just watching the first full trailer for the Spider-Man movie again, and I still get excited about seeing the movie. Next Wednesday, a new internet exclusive trailer will be released on Sony's official site. I can hardly wait. [via Rotten Tomatoes]

Has anybody ever seen Senator Fritz Hollings (D-SC) speak while both Jack Valenti and Hillary Rosen were drinking glasses of water? Schmucko is trying again to get mandatory copy-prevention built into all consumer electronics hardware. Again I point to the Consumer Technology Bill of Rights as a more positive model for what consumers want and reasonably expect.

I've got to find time to install the new version 2.0 of Movable Type (the program I use to maintain this site).

Just in case you needed futher proof that the current Attorney General of the United States is completely nuts:

Shortly after becoming Attorney General, John Ashcroft was headed abroad. An advance team showed up at the American embassy in the Hague to check out the digs, saw cats in residence, and got nervous. They were worried there might be a calico cat. No, they were told, no calicos. Visible relief. Their boss, they explained, believes calico cats are signs of the devil. (The advance team also spied a statue of a naked woman in the courtyard and discussed the possibility of its being covered for the visit, though that request was not ultimately made.)

[via Flutterby]

Just wanted to put in my guess for what Apple will unveil tomorrow at MacWorld Tokyo: Giant transforming robots! OK, probably not. But wouldn't that be cool?

This piece on a housing development based on the art of Thomas Kinkade starts off slow. However, I found it worth reading through for some interesting remarks about different ideas of "community" and suburban development at the end.

It's amazing what some people can do with a machine shop, a big backyard, and way too much time on their hands. This guy built his own personal rollercoaster, complete with a loop. I can't even find time these days to play Rollercoaster Tycoon on my PC. [via WRATB]

They Might Be Giants is one of my favorite bands of all time, and I try to see them whenever they come to town — I'm definitely looking forward to their show tonight! The local paper has a good (if short) Q&A with John Flansburgh to whet my appetite for tonight's show.

The U.S. Supreme Court heard a case yesterday about drug testing in schools. Aside from the case itself, there's one remark that I found especially creepy:

Schools are, to quote Scalia, functionally "prisons. You can keep them after school if they haven't done their homework."

I pay most of my bills online, so I rarely write checks. However, the state of Missouri doesn't take electronic tax payments, so I've had to dig out my checkbook this month. Much to my surprise, I seem to be down to the last book from my most recent check order (apparently over two years ago). While I'll probably end up ordering through my bank, I figured I'd search the web to sample the variety of check designs available. The variety turned out to be wide indeed — wide enough to include a company that produces a line of anti-capitalist (or at least anti-consumerist) checks. Tempting, if only in the hope of inducing cognitive dissonance in billing-department drones.

News of a remake of the outstandingly awful movie Barbarella raises one truly disturbing question: How soon does the remake of Plan 9 from Outer Space begin production?

Just wish I could do something about it, instead of coming into work to wrestle with my database again...

Never tell a Sybase database to allocate itself more physical memory than you actually have on the server. In theory, I could have been out of here by now.

One of the annoying aspects of a career in IT is that no matter how regular your usual hours, every now and then you have to put in some after-hours time while all the users are out of your hair. That's why I'm sitting in my cube on a Saturday afternoon, transferring a database from an unreliable old server to a shiny new rack-mont model. Bleah.

DigitalConsumer.org has written up a Consumer Technology Bill of Rights. At first glance, this appears to perfectly sum up the principles of Fair Use which most of us take for granted, but which the various media distribution industries seem determined to destroy. [via Plastic]

Over at Fury, Kevin puts his finger on one of the main flaws of Star Wars: Episode I:

Ep One wasn't about a personal struggle or a quest. It was an ensemble action flick with pretty CGI. Who am I supposed to bond with, to put myself behind and see their own troubles as my own? Who am I really supposed to get close to?

With ever-more-caffienated "energy drinks" being marketed to young consumers, some scientists are expressing concern about the possible effects of caffiene on child development.

Does anyone want to talk me into trying to make it to BlogCon2002 this August?

The latest Trailer for Star Wars: Episode II is out, and available for download if you haven't already seen it. While it's a big improvement over the previous teasers, I'm just not that excited about it. Back when the hype for Episode I was building, I remember when some geek snuck into a theater and videotaped the trailer; I got goosebumps watching the clip that was circulating on the net the next day. Now, my biggest reaction is, "looks pretty good." I'm sure I'll see a good move this summer; I've just given up hope for a great one. And in the meantime, there'll be Spider-Man.

Maybe I'm just trying to write too much in the new format. There are lots of links that I see that I don't post simply because I don't think I have enough to say about them. So I think I'm just going to pile a bunch of them together.

• If The Man likes the new Spider-Man movie, then it relly must have been done right.
• I think I liked the universe better when it was turquoise.
• With friends like... No, I can't go there. But if you can cope with excessive details of the contents of people's digestive tracts, there are a few laughs to be had.

Back in St. Louis, much to my relief. There's something about the rigamarole you have to go through to cross international boundaries that makes it seem so much further than longer trips within the country.

I went to the CN Tower last night with a couple of cow-orkers. Didn't go up to the upper "pod" — visibility made it less than worthwhile — but I walked around the outside deck, stood on the glass floor and looked down, etc. It was a little bit scary, but not too bad.

But damned if I'm going to be able to lean over a balcony for the next week.

This proposed scheme for electronic voting looks like one of the most sensible methods to me. The voting booth computer is used only as an aid to filling out a physical ballot, which can either be counted by an OCR computer or verified by any available Mk. I Eyeball.

There was an incident at New Orleans International Airport last week when bomb-sniffing dogs came across a mysterious package left in a bathroom. Only after the airport was evacuated did authorities discover it was a care package of homemade seafood gumbo. What I really enjoy about this story is the way people have been reacting to this story; more people seem offended at the waste of good Creole food than at the evacuation of the airport. I love New Orleans. (I could tell a story about another gumbo that caused an evacuation, but I don't think my mother would appreciate it.)

I swear I wasn't specifically trying for this result.

I'm Logan
What X-Men Character are You?

[via Pete]

I can believe that Internet Explorer is so fully integrated into Microsoft's current operating systems that removing it would cripple the system. What I can't believe is that there was any real technical reason to program it that way.

Well, I've made it safely up to Canada, for some definition of the word "safe", probably as defined by those who enjoy extreme cold. I'm helping to install some new servers in our Bradford, Ontario office this week, and maybe doing a little sightseeing around the greater Toronto area as time permits.

I'm going out of town for a week, so things may be fairly quiet here. Of course, given my recent low levels of postage, and actual net access where I'm going, there may not be a noticable difference.

Unfortunately, I'm off to our company's office in Hell Canada. Before any Canadians out there get too worked up about it, I'm sure it's a nice enough place for those who live there. And if I were going at the height of summer, I'm sure I'd enjoy it. But I'm a Southern boy at heart, travelling to the What's-so-great-about-it White North during winter. I detest snow, and have been almost enjoying this unusually mild (at least until this week) St. Louis winter. But now I have to go to the frozen wastes of Ontario. Yuck.

Every time I see a series of photos as interesting as these on the web, it turns out to have been some kind of Photoshop job. Oh well, go take a look while the fun lasts. [via David Tic-Tac-Toe] Update: Apparently, these pictures were so popular the guy was hit by massive bandwidth charges. Link changed to a discussion thread. In case you never got to see them, this was a series of pictures of a tugboat running into a bridge, knocking itself over with its momentum, passing under the bridge while knocked over, and resurfacing on the other side.

When you work in IT, you know you're going to have an ugly day when the first thing in your inbox is a forwarded error message which appears to be written in Enochian.