Wednesday, 30 April 2003
Nothing will keep us together
- The Times reports on Apple's Music Store, forgets to mention that it's only available in the US.
- Some MacRumors.com articles: iTunes 4 DRM summary, Apple looking for Windows iTunes programmers, and music kiosks in Apple stores.
- Via mefi, marginwalker, another mefi.
- Steven Frank merges the concept of iTunes ratings with FOAF-like files for music recommendations, Jeremy Zawodny (rightly) thinks that Apple missed out on mining users' iTunes data.
- More on the iTunes Music Store's use of xml.
- AntiPixel rounds up linking to the iTunes Music Store.
- Wired News starts the hype on BBC's iCan.
- Why you should switch to (the) Mozilla Firebird.
Tuesday, 29 April 2003
Lalalacan'thearyou
- MacNN covers iTunes 4 details including auth/deauth and streaming.
- MacSlash is reasonably sure that iTunes 4 isn't using HTML to render its storefront.
- Panic's Steven Frank on the iTunes music store.
Monday, 28 April 2003
iCan't
So, I downloaded iTunes 4. See, Apple has a new Music Store:
The iTunes Music Store is not available in your country yet. You will be able to browse music and listen to previews, but you won't be able to purchase music unless your billing address is in the United States.
Sigh. I would like to spend money, please. Anyway. What Ben said.
I'm a professional cynic
- Probably fake OS X 10.3 screenshots showing off Piles.
- Today is the day that Apple will be announcing something.
- Engineering company with no prior education experience gets contract to improve struggling schools: BBC, Guardian and Times. Oh. They were also responsible for that Potters Bar crash.
- Times extract on getting kids to do viral marketing for free posters and CDs, from Alissa Quart's Branded. Sounds like a Naomi Klein in the making.
- This one for Arie: Vardy foundation plans to open six new creationist schools in the UK, Guardian trawl on Vardy.
- Somewhat reassuring explanation for the ending to Minority Report (why does Steven do that to films?) via Sore Eyes.
- Dear Mother of God, thank you: The Times is reporting that house prices are finally starting to fall, with properties for sale in East Anglia rising by 12% and buyer numbers rising less than 2%. There's a graphic, as well. Meanwhile, as a first-time buyer, the BBC says I'm paralysed by fear and getting older.
Friday, 25 April 2003
Get shorty
I'm busy with apartment-bidding (for, not 'doing the bidding of') and revision for post-Easter exams. This either means that there will be more (procrastination) or less (actual revision) here.
- Long-term backups on Slashdot.
- Mac OS X speed FAQ.
- Official SARS fatality rate at least 10%, new figure due to stats, not any change in the virus.
- This for 2lmc: Charlie Stross and Cory Doctorow collaborate on unwirer. Take that, Orlowski. "Put another way, he chooses his words carefully, and he chooses the contexts in which they will have most impact." - Orlowski undoubtedly does this (he's a good troll when he wants to be), but the typos in The Register make the Guardian look as if it were drafted by a battery of lawyers from a magic circle firm.
- ... and via 2lmc, blanket wi-fi for Soho. Not jealous at all.
- Some stuff on MSDN: XP Embedded and screen orientation and rotation for Tablet PCs.
Wednesday, 23 April 2003
Moveable Type, TypePad and FOAF
Ben Hammersley writes at the Guardian list of Six Apart's new hosted service, TypePad, that will incorporate FOAF amongst other things. Six Apart also announced investment by Neoteny (Joi Ito's company) and the employment of Anil Dash.
Ben's RDFWeb-dev email has more details:
[TypePad is] going to produce FOAF automatically for every user, and detect the link rel to the FOAF file of anyone who you put in your blogroll...I saw it on Monday, it's very very very sweet.
From Geek to Chic
Okay, so I was bored. I was channel surfing. I was on a superior high after watching Dr. Phil lambast Americans with dreams of overachieving for spending beyond their means. Jenny Jones was on next. They had a programme called From Geek to Chic, a compendium showcasing some of their best examples of formerly bullied geeks who'd tarted themselves up a little to rub their new-found appearance into the faces of those who'd been so caustic in the past.
Quickly, a number of things became apparent: geeky people have braces and average sized breasts. Chic people have good, straight teeth (amazing what the passage of time can do when combined with braces) and much larger breasts that defy gravity. This only applies to women. For example, there were no men who had straight teeth and bigger breasts (no offence to the male geek community, but...)
"Hello, now I have larger breasts and act dumb, people like me!"
To save future generations from psychological distress, I propose the following:
All unpopoular girls should get counselling from a plastic surgeon at secondary school. If you agree to any subsequent cosmetic surgery resulting from your counselling, you get a discount. In fact, schools could be sponsored by plastic surgeons in much the same way they're sponsored by, say, Pepsi. Instead of drinks machines lining the walls (more accurately, alongside drinks machines lining the walls) you could have a walk-in surgery for your lunchbreak. The availability of botox at the cafeteria can be discussed at a later date.
For those more complex cases, I guess breast reduction could be offered, provided it was made clear that the patient would have popularity issues later in life.
Seriously, there's money (and happy people!) to be made from this.
Small but perfectly linked
- Against my better judgment, this is a link to Andrew Orlowski on Gitta Salomon's piles patent. Oh look, he's capable of writing a reasonable article without frothing at the mouth. Maybe Google was nice to him today.
- PS3 and the Cell--not likely to be together seeing as the Cell's not supposed to be coming out until 2007.
- InfoSync has articles on the new Palm lineup and a review of the Zire Z71. Also from Infosync, control your Nokia 7650/4650 from your PC, as opposed to controlling your Mac with your phone.
- Blogzilla says Firebird 0.6 will be released any day now, here's what needs to be fixed before it can ship.
There's a chair in my head
- MacRumors covers Panther's user-centred design, USB2 and the iPod and an update of the 'communicating device' rumour.
- Apple has a story on Liam Lynch's United States of Whatever.
- Athlete's El Salavador is pretty good--you can see the video online here. Seen on BSkyB's new music channel, The Amp, and followed by The Avalanche's Frontier Psychiatrist (can't remember which version of that video). Not bad.
- Today's Guardian trawl: NUT leaders want to make maths post 14 optional, how the middle classes saw off the graduate tax, that five cups of tea story and 'empirical evidence' that the BBC was pro-war.
- RealAudio: George Galloway on Today refuting the Telegraph story that he was receiving oil earnings from Iraq.
- Get thee to Paul Debevec's site and download every single absolutely stunning CGI movie there is to download from there. Now. Debevec is part of the inspiration for the engineering behind the Matrix Reloaded/Revolutions' special effects (check out the Campanile Movie).
- Chandler 0.1 is out.
- Half-Life 2 will be shown at E3. The original was a great game, though most people raving about it choose to forget about the godawful last act.
Monday, 21 April 2003
OS X stuff
- Great story about the development of Lotus Improv on NeXT.
- Apple have updated the Porting to Mac OS X from Windows Win32 API document.
- If you remove the rather ranting aspects of this AppleCare: Price gouging or just a scam? You decide article, it does bear thinking about. Then again, I expect Applecare to provide me with at least £200 worth of new batteries over the next two years. In spite of my experience with Applecare, I still think it's worth it.
- More Panther news, this time eWeek consolidating what "sources" have said: a user-centric swathe of features including user synchronisation, XP-like fast user switching and piles.
Overly linky log entries return!
- NeXT still stands out in its Mac incarnation, via Ranchero.
- American Bar Association midwinter report on 802.11b, via News.com Random Access.
- Swarm-bots hardware and What are swarm bots, via Smart Mobs.
- Things used to be easy, but now they're getting much harder.
- The spool linked to Tim Bray's One More Key, where it's alleged that Macs are crap at keyboard shortcuts (well, they're certainly not good) and I note that even after upgrading to 10.2.5 there's still an annoying stupid keyboard bug.
- Safari beta 2 keeps forgetting that my homepage isn't that livepage.apple.com monstrosity. I'm reluctantly using the new beta for no reasonable reason that I can discern, because Camino with HTTP pipelining turned on feels much, much faster.
- I bought the DVD of Once More, With Feeling. I hate Fox.
Friday, 18 April 2003
The Honda Accord Cog Advert
Remember that stunning advert for Honda's Accord that was floating around a while back? If you haven't seen it yet, I've still got a mirror up here [4mb Quicktime temporarily unavailable].
If, on the other hand, you live in the UK, you can get a free copy of the full advert on DVD, including a music video of the track that plays at the end, an illustrated guide to the parts used and a four minute making-of documentary. Oh, did I mention it was for free? I've got mine...
Call the Honda UK Contact Centre on 0845 200 8000 to get your copy. It'll take about two business days for you to receive the DVD in the post.
Note to advertisers: make a good enough advert (this campaign reportedly cost three quarters of a million pounds), and you'll end up with people like me raving about it and telling everyone I know to check it out. Please, make more adverts like this.
Update 26 April 2003: UK residents can order the DVD online, as well.
Update 28 April 2003: The music in the Honda Accord Cog advert is Rapper's Delight, by the Sugarhill Gang. You can buy their greatest hits from Amazon UK or Amazon USA. You also may not have seen the Telegraph article that revealed the advert was completed on its 606th take.
Update 5 May 2003: The Quicktime video mirror of the Honda Accord Cog advert I put up is temporarily available: it looks like the academic account I was hosting it on has been disabled for a while. I'll see if there's somewhere else I can find to mirror it, hopefully it will be back up soon.
Update 6 July 2003: You can now download a zipped copy of the video from Honda's UK website here.
Wednesday, 16 April 2003
And you shall have my axe (I'd rather have a deposit, thank you very much)
The laptop's back, but it's where I'm not: I've been in Cambridge since yesterday (and will be leaving tomorrow), hunting houses. You'd think that hunting for a house would be quite easy (stupid, large, immobile objects hunted by small, intelligent, car-driving objects) but apparently--as I'm quickly learning--it's not easy at all.
For instance: I've come to realise that the universe does not apparently revolve around me and that other people have taken it upon themselves to bid for properties that I'm interested in. Bastards.
Those who a) vaguely know me, b) wish to take part in the house selection process, c) have some sort of trading spaces/changing rooms fetish and d) genuinely have nothing better to do should email me to join in on the fun if they're not playing already - vicariously experience all the thrills, spills and excitement involved with buying property, all without having to speak to an estate agent or mortgage lender!
Monday, 14 April 2003
The kids aren't alright
There were some kids in the street today, riding bikes.
I slowed down and stopped because they were riding around in circles in the middle of the road. It's Easter, so most of the kids are on Easter break. They were around seven to ten years old, and looked like they were having fun.
They got out of the way of the car--we were on the way to the rubbish dump to throw away some junk--and as we drove past, they shouted "Chink!" at us.
I'm glad everything's all right with the world. I suppose I'm glad that I notice when it happens, as opposed to when it doesn't.
How was your day?
Sunday, 13 April 2003
SARS Sequenced
Via the Calgary Sun, Canada's Michael Smith Genome Sciences Centre has the first public SARS Coronovirus draft whole genome assembly available for download: 29,736 base pairs in a gzip file. More information at their SARS page. Slashdot monkeys can celebrate when they spot the phrase "Beowulf cluster" further down the page.
Thursday, 10 April 2003
Why my laptop isn't on my lap
I've become incredibly anal about dealing with customer service just so I could present to you (well, okay, not just you) this epic: Why My Laptop Isn't On My Lap.
26 February
Airport stops working for no apparent reason: won't find the D-Link WAP automatically, if I enter an SSID manually it picks up the WAP's MAC address but refuses to play. Won't even create an ad-hoc network. Reboot lots. Repair permissions lots. Furrow brow. Call Applecare. Applecare closed. Don't feel cared for.
27 February
Call Applecare, on hold for eight minutes, get a case ID. They refuse to believe it's a problem with anything in the laptop, and tell me to go to one of two authorised service centres in my general vicinity, both of which are at least an hour's drive away so I can have it tested with an Apple base station. One of the two authorised service centres isn't, in fact, an authorised service centre and gets quite stroppy, the other is apparently deciding not to answer the phone. Remember that there's a third authorised service centre that I nearly bought my laptop from, and call them, instead.
28 February
Take laptop to authorised service centre. They play with it for about half an hour, ask me for my password (No, you can't have it, I'll create a separate user for you) and pronounce the airport card dead. I ask them if they can give me a replacement. They say they don't have any. I point at the boxes with airport cards in. They say that they can't give me one, I have to call Applecare and they'll sort it out. Still not feeling particularly cared for.
28 Februrary
Call Applecare, get through to an airport specialist who admits that they'll have to ship me a replacement card. They will need the serial number of the card that's in there. I do not have the serial number of the card that's in there. There is no way for me to get the serial number of the card that's in there without opening the machine up. I do not have a Torx T-9 screwdriver. Order a Torx T-9 screwdriver. Wait.
March 7
Torx T-9 screwdriver arrives. Open laptop. Marvel at lots of small things packed inside it. Take down serial number, wonder if I should get the serial number of anything else while I'm at it. Call Applecare. Get put through to an airport specialist. Get put through to an actual airport specialist. Airport specialist fails to read casenotes, so have to explain what's going on again. Airport specialist decides that I should be shipped a replacement card, it should arrive within five business days.
March 13
No replacement card. Call Applecare. Ponder renaming Applecare just "Apple" as care is severely lacking. Get put through to airport specialist. Airport specialist puts me through to some sort of repairs department. Repairs admits that they never actually sent the replacement card because the other airport specialist never asked for my credit card number. Why do they need my credit card number? In case I don't return the broken card. Give them my credit card number. They promise to send a replacement card.
March 18
Replacement card arrives, no note inside apologising from Apple, nor, say, a slice of cake. Have sinking feeling that replacement card will not work, either. Install replacement card. Not surprised at all when replacement card fails to work. Call Applecare. Put through to most knowledgeable airport specialist yet (Thomas is now my favourite), who not only had read casenote when I got put through, but also suggested a whole bunch of stuff that no one else had suggested (but that I had already tried: reseating aerials by pressing inside battery compartment, resetting PMU, etc.). Thomas very sorry that I will have to return the laptop. Asks when will be the most convenient: most convenient will be when this semester ends. Reformat and reinstall 10.2 in the meantime in the hope that this will fix things. Doesn't work. Buy lots of CDRs and learn joys of backing up to iPod instead.
April 4
Call Applecare. First tier puts me through to an airport specialist. Airport specialist has clearly not read casenote as tries to explain to me how it's not their problem because I'm using a D-Link WAP. Patiently explain to airport specialist that no, it's entirely their problem. Am told that they will have to collect the laptop. Ask for it to be collected on April 10. They book the collection and tell me to call back on April 8 to confirm.
April 8
Call Applecare. First tier attempts to put me through to airport specialist, but head him off at the pass. Inform him to read my casenote and he admits that they never actually put through the order to do the pickup on the 10th. Decides to put through the order for the pickup on the 10th, and contacts the third party authorised repair people, since Apple won't actually be repairing it. Speak to third party repair people, they say the laptop will be collected on the 9th in the afternoon. This is good, it's earlier than the 10th.
April 9
Laptop not collected. Call third party repair people. Third party repair people tell me to call local courier depot. Local courier depot never received pickup order. Call third party repair people, they say they sent it at 9am, and decide to call depot. Third party people call back, tell me that they're going to fax through an order to pickup tomorrow (the 10th), and that they will call the depot to confirm, as well.
April 10
1:05pm: Laptop gone.
Update: Other things about Applecare
It was nice in the US. I walked into an Apple store (fine, I was near one at the time), said "Oi, my battery life isn't very good", they thought about it, asked me to try some power saving settings, then gave me a new battery as soon as they were in stock. Unfortunately, the Applecare I bought was the old non-global kind, which means I can't do this again. Also, Apple people in the US are weird: walking around in a mall after buying an iPod some woman came up to me and said "Ah! An Apple user!" and walked off. Weird.
Oh, and my replacement card was shipped from the Netherlands, and my broken card was also shipped back to the Netherlands. My laptop, though, is being sent to London. Where they probably have replacement cards.
Pause
Updates will be light over the next seven days or so: after reporting to Apple that the wireless networking on my laptop was misbehaving in a puzzling manner a couple months ago, the whole thing is finally being collected for repair today.
For the next week--hopfeully shorter--I'll be slightly slower in replying to email, and linklog entries will probably be short or nonexistent.
Wednesday, 09 April 2003
I'm your late-night headrush
- O'Reilly: Virtual hosts, mod_rendezvous_apple and Apache on Mac OS X
- Whip and stub external 802.11b antennae for TiBooks.
- Via Bronwen: "You're only supposed to blow the bloody doors off"
- Jeremy Zawodny: "Inktomi's search system knows, uhm... "stuff" about blogs"
- Via Kottke's remaindered links: wgets and curls and typo tracking with Google.
- Via Smart Mobs: WiFi for Developing Nations.
- At Waffle, an interview with Jeremy Hedley of antipixel.
- Mobile Burn has a details of Samsung's SGH-D700 Symbian phone. The keypad looks terrible.
- Via Gizmodo: beta-test Philips' new mp3 player. It looks iPod like.
Tuesday, 08 April 2003
It's only in your head you feel left out
- Absolutely amazing Honda ad (4mb Quicktime local mov mirrored from torrez.org)--the one with the stuff that hits the stuff that hits the stuff--and related DVD. There's a MeFi discussion, too.
- TidBITS on choosing a CMS.
- Daring Fireball translation of Quark press release.DriveGauge 2.0 adds gauges to drive icons.
- Tom has a review of Hydra.
- Via Whedonesque, AICN has news of the 16x9 Firefly DVD release in Region 1.
- Are we leaving Afghanistan in the same way that we left Iraq over a decade ago?
- Via The Copydesk, Dave Gorman's new show is about googlewhacking. I saw Dave Gorman's Better World at the Edinburgh festival a few years back, the guy's a genius.
- Via Sore Eyes, satisfy your inner geek: Starship Dimensions lets you compare scale models of fictional starships.
- Jeremy Zawodny brings news of Yahoo! Search Easter eggs, revealing more gratuitous use of punctuation.
- Slashdot: My RSS headline reader tells me I was banned!
- Via Blogzilla, Using Mozilla in testing and debugging web sites.
- Via Gizmodo, the first (possibly?) sub $1k Tablet PC.
- So AOL had interop requirements imposed upon it as a condition of the AOL/TW merger that would kick in when it offered services like streaming video with IM: well, AOL's applied for relief from that requirement.
Monday, 07 April 2003
This bed is on fire with passionate love
Update 6 August 2003 00:16 BST: If you got here from Google, you're probably looking for the lyrics to Laid by James. You can find them on this page.
- Apple announced DVD Studio Pro 2, Final Cut Pro 4, and Shake 3.
- Hyatt tells of more Safari bugfixes.
- Apparently there's a 0.1 build of Minotaur for OS X.
- Via Mac Rumors, iBook speed bumps at Think Secret.
- Stuff I should've done ages ago: learned how to use screen and ssh-keygen, use pbpaste to paste from the clipboard to the shell.
- Oi, Apple. Please fix this bug. That'd be bug #2692867, thank you very much.
- Mobile Burn was at Microsoft's Mobile Mobius 2003 Paris.
- Via Gizmodo, the first Centrino-powered Tablet PC from RM.
- It was so close.
- sorehead is pretty cool.
- Via Arie, war veteran criticised for not being patriotic enough by Republicans.
- Philip Pullman in the Sunday Times: "Something has gone wrong with education."
- RealAudio link: BBC Radio 4's Today interviews The White Stripes.
- Noel Jackson: The CSS font-family Mini Pep-talk, or Why is my stylesheet a whore?
- ROBOT BLOOD FROM OUTER SPACE!!!, via Boing Boing.
Sunday, 06 April 2003
I see you baby
- Most useless Mac rumour ever at Loop Rumors: Panther to be "unlike anything else out there", will "end comparisons" and "will have Amazon's one-click technology built right in so shopping becomes part of the OS", everything will "just work". Not a joke site, just stupid.
- New Scientist reports what could be the closest gammay ray burster yet.
- Ben Hammersley and the coolness that is John Simpson.
- New unofficial build of Phoenix for OS X. Not Phoenix, more like "Phoenix and stuff".
- Everyone at #evanchan, please take the metric quiz. Stick your results in the comments so I can ritually humiliate you when you visit.
- Compare and contrast the US version of Faking It with Channel 4's original.
- Keeping up with all things Avril: Chretien admits that he likes Sk8er Boi and Complicated and that he was "very complicated" at school. He's possibly as down with the kids as Tom Watson.
Saturday, 05 April 2003
Sentiment
- The Salina Journal: "Ah, the French. They are like the schoolyard coward who won't stand up to a bully, yet readily pick his pockets once others have him subdued."
- La Cross Tribune: "So we've gotten rid of some french fries. Big goony deal. When was the last time you ordered anything except fries and a Coke anyway?"
- Lewisville Leader: "Calls for boycotts of products and tourism, renaming french fries as freedom fries -- even though they didn't come from France -- and other silly forms of pouting show just how childish and immature even the most senior of humans can be."
- AP Wire: "'Freedom fries' follow long tradition of patriotic bashing"
- Concord Online Monitor: "[W]ith the American-French political divide opened by the debate over the Iraq war, what used to be camaraderie has suddenly grown a sharper edge."
- Aurora Sentinel Online: "I was one of the lucky few to be an American in Paris a couple weeks ago. After packing myself into Parisian buses, stores and elevators, I discovered quickly that there's nothing as French as an American, and the other way round."
- The Washington Times: "A congressman from Colorado is asking the Department of Veterans Affairs to immediately sever ties with a French-owned marble company that is the main supplier of headstones for national cemeteries in the United States."
- Herald Tribune/AP: "Republican U.S. Rep. Billy Tauzin yanked the French version of his Web site this week in protest of France's stance against the war in Iraq."
She gave you everything she had
- New O'Reilly MacDevCenter articles: Rendezvous: Coming to an app near you! and Apache serving with Jaguar.
- Updates of those Bluetooth remote control apps: Sony Ericsson Clicker (shareware, $9.95) and Romeo 0.9 (freeware, made by a guy I went to college with).
- BBC reports that UK Tornadoes will be dropping precision guided concrete bombs.
- New Scientist reports that a £20m UK stealth fighter programme has been declassified with a single photo of an upside-down plane on a stick.
- CNet has an entirely uninteresting story about OLEDs.
- Via The Culture, Jane Austen meets Ahnult and Cameron in Terminators of Endearment.
Friday, 04 April 2003
I'll be forever blue
- SARS infographic.
- The Star on other western news sources: "Watch BBC World for a couple of hours, then switch on MSNBC. The sensory experience is not dissimilar to leaving a university lecture and then jumping on a roller coaster."
- Steven Frank on a docked iPod. Yeah, I think I'd have to buy one. I hate Apple.
- Proposed (and unlikely to pass) Oregon law would jail war protesters as terrorists. I know a few people who'd love to see this happen.
- Boy marries forty-two year old on fourteenth birthday.
- Movable Type's UI is slowly getting better, first it was the comments form, now it's search and replace.
- Tabbed browsers on Windows using IE as a rendering engine. IE still sucks, though, sorry!
- Three articles from Gizmodo today: ZDNet guide to OLEDs, a roundup of Clie rumours and suggestions on making the Tablet PC better.
- Christian Science Monitor: How Iraqi democracy might look and Mall of an American torn.
- Guardian: cancer rates could rise by 50%.
Thursday, 03 April 2003
Stopgap
- At RAILhead Design, news of a new seed of iTunes.
- At News.com, Amazon signs search deal with Google.
- Slashdot: Can your PC become neurotic? I recommend Jeanine Salla's services.
Replacing OS X's Finder
2lmc discuss OS X's Finder and, amongst other things, ask how it can be replaced. There's a slightly less hacky Apple's Tech Note 2062 - Guide to Creating Kiosks on Mac OS X has a section entitled Replacing the Finder. The hacky method is featured in Apple's System Overview documentation.
Go insane and out of your mind
- eWeek is reporting that OS X 10.3 Panther will arrive in September.
- Ken Bereskin is going to resume blogging (cough-Panther-coming-soon-cough).
- Rumors resurface of Apple's music service, launching this month?
- Meanwhile, Brent Simmons has interesting referers.
- Reuters reports that Microsoft is starting to view Google as a competitor, via Jeremy Zawodny.
- Register take on the new Mozilla roadmap.
- CNet reports that some people still think that TIA is a good idea.
- Jeff Jarvis has possible news on the whereabouts of Salam Pax.
- The Guardian launched a new weekly science section today, Life, which means that I now have to read Online backwards.
- Via Whedonesque, sound format (2.0, not 5.1) and menus for the region two release of Once More, With Feeling.
- Via Giles, Reader's Digest on Google.
- Metafilter discussion on daylight savings time.
- Brad has (spoilery) notes on Vinge's A Deepness in the Sky.
- Sure to be a Smart Mobs story by the end of the day: HK govt sends 6m SMS messages to avoid SARS panic.
Wednesday, 02 April 2003
He was a boy, she was a girl
The linklog entries seem to be quite popular: is there anything you'd like more of? Less of? Anything I'm not covering at all that I should be? Comments appreciated.
- Anti-mega looks at a new map of London: "south is at the top"
- Object seen floating away from Columbia while in orbit was most likely a panel from near the leading edge of the left wing (SpaceToday.net).
- The Register says that BT will be cutting wholesale ADSL prices.
- Understanding the Psychology of Programming, via Brilliant Corners.
- The Risks List on social risks in friendly-fire cases.
- China the winner of the war in Iraq, via Joi Ito.
- Amazon.com in XHTML + CSS.
- Gizmodo is at Mobius Europe 2003.
- Canada.com rounds up the SARS conspiracy theories.
- Nature reports a superformula that can be used to generate a vast diversity of natural shapes.
- Gruber writes about that Siracusa Finder article.
- Via Mac Net Journal, 12 PowerBook battery tips and Karelia Software now has a weblog.
- Matt continues to make my head churn: Slices of the ongoing conversation on social software.
- New Mozilla roadmap, Slashdot monkeys are all over it, better analysis at Mozillazine.
- NYT: Smoking ban cuts heart attacks.
- Check out http://org.org.org/.
Your reminders for tonight
I sound like some sort of continuity announcer:
BBC Radio 4 starts two interesting series tonight: the first of the Reith Lectures is on tonight at 8pm BST and at 9pm, Living in the City explores social engineering in the design and layout of towns and cities.
I wanna get you some good frequencies
- Painfully Serious Dell Rumors Site: Vice President Dick Cheney Not Named To Dell Board
- Via LMG, a self-aware DC universe.
- New Ars Technica article: About the Finder.
- Hydra is a collaborative text editor that works over Rendezvous.
- Red Hat 9 Technical Changes.
- Microsoft won't be bundling OneNote and InfoPath (the two most exciting bits in the new Office suite) at retail or preinstalled.
Google Broken (again?)
09:23 BST This doesn't feel right at all. http://www.google.com/ is resolving, but impossible--or just very, very slow, but I haven't succeeded yet--to get to. Anyone having any better luck? No one I know in the UK can get to them yet.
09:27 BST Ah. There are other search engines. This list of Google links. http://news.google.com seems to be working, as do URLs like http://www.google.com/press/. Matt says he can do a GET request fine from the commandline...
09:32 BST Some people say that the localised Googles are working: http://www.google.co.uk/, http://www.google.ca/, http://www.google.com.au/, but I can't get them to work.
09:50 BST Yay! http://www.google.com/
Tuesday, 01 April 2003
Pity the foo'
- From Prol, Metafilter and screenshot.
- Ben has a collection, Best so far: http://www.cpan.org/.
- TidBITS-674.
- More later, no doubt.
I'm not the milk and cheerios in your spoon
- QuickTime 6.1.1 for OS X is out. It fixes MPEG-4 streaming issues, apparently, go get it from Software Update.
- End of the Google Blog (cough-date-cough)
- Via Gizmodo, a USB drum set to go with your ethernet guitar.
- Those wacky kids at Durham have come up with a whitespace programming language. File with Ook#.
- New Eclipse stuff.
- Microsoft releasing a Wi-fi WPA upgrade for Windows XP in SP2.
- Bronwen has seen Phone Booth. The at/with rating method for films breaks down.
- From Ben, the first 2,000 words from Cory Doctorow's next novel.
- Jwz has put up a new a DNA Lounge update.
- Kottke's first day at work: Apple laptops too slow.Steven Frank brings the shocking news (no, really, it is) that there are no RSS readers for Palm OS.
- BitTorrent stats for that RH9 distro are impressive.
- Smart people at Microsoft, smart people in the US DOD.