Back in the BeOS days, I created a public database of tips and how-to information for BeOS users, called the BeOS Tip Server (betips.net). The site had grown to around 700 tips when Be, Inc. finally went under and I went looking for another career. At that time, I handed ownership of the Tip Server over to a still-avid BeOS user, and didn’t think about it much again.

Late last year, I discovered that links to betips.net were dead. I contacted the owner, only to learn that the database and the site templates had been lost in a data disaster. I combed through my backups and archives and couldn’t find any sign of the templates. However, amazingly, I still had a copy of the mysql database. Dug my old x86 laptop out of the closet, booted BeOS for the first time in eons, and found the original site templates tucked away in a buried folder. Eureka! But ewww… all table-based and mid-90s looking… just fugly.

Even though I have almost no interest in BeOS these days, I was once proud of the site, both for the content it had amassed and for the method I had used to serve it (TrackerBase).

Couldn’t stand the thought of the whole thing being lost to history, so decided to resurrect the site. Took a fair bit of grunt work to clean up the data and get the tables into shape as a WordPress back-end, but the work is finally done, I’ve got control of the domain again, and intend to leave the site up for posterity. There’s a standing offer for any current BeOS/Haiku users to help clean up old content and start adding new.

BeOS has an open source descendant called Haiku. I’ve never run Haiku, but expect that most of the content on the site will apply for that OS as well. I’m also interested in having new Haiku-specific content added to the repository.

Happy endings.

The screen sharing feature in Leopard and in the new version of iChat already partially mitigates the need for Apple Remote Desktop in some environments, but this hack turns screen sharing into something very close to ARD by adding a bunch of additional features and controls. In other words, the screen sharing feature apparently is ARD with features stripped out - this hack lets you pop ‘em back in. I can imagine this hack being disabled in the next software update….

What to do on a rainy weekend? Hey, I haven’t built a model for 30 years! None to be found at the local five and dime (OK, Target, Longs, etc.) Models just aren’t a “thing” anymore. Made some phone calls and found one of Berkeley’s well-kept secrets - the Ace Hardware on University has an entire huge basement downstairs packed to the gills with models and hobbyist stuff. Dusty boxes stacked floor to ceiling, some of them dating back to when I remember building models as a boy (though I couldn’t find the lunar lander or Banana Splits Banana Buggy models I remember building). But we did find Dr. Zira of Planet of the Apes. No, Miles has never seen Planet of the Apes, but it did give us a good opp. to talk about reverse evolution. Model glue is hard to come by these days, but we did find a box of the incredibly stinky enamel paints. Ooooo oooo, that smell! Came out pretty well, but I think he thinks Legos are more challenging.

Miles wanted to know what a walrus mustache was. So I pulled out the razor and showed him. Chin feels cold - hasn’t felt cool air on it for years. Not sure if I’ll keep it, but change is good.

I love this. c|net: Carbon Sciences says it has come up with a relatively efficient way to turn carbon dioxide from smokestacks into chalk, which can then be used to make drywall or other products. The process still requires a fair bit of energy, but then so does sequestering. And re-purposing carbon is better than hiding it.

Utne Reader, on a Creationist Science Fair that recently took place inside a shopping mall in Roseville, Minnesota, including a diorama explaining how a broken motor disproves evolution, plus fossil evidence that people lived at the same time as dinosaurs.

The projects all used classic high school science language: Start with a hypothesis, move on to testing, and then draw a conclusion. The problem was that much of the science was backwards. In good science, you start with a piece of evidence and try to find a truth. With creationist science, you start with a truth (the Bible), and try to find the evidence.

Humans like to keep all options open. Even when we know some of the options aren’t frutitful. Even when it costs money to keep unfruitful options open (i.e. even when keeping options open is irrational). Interesting summary at nytimes.com of tests conducted on M.I.T. students designed to see just how far we’re willing to go to prevent a door from closing. “Closing a door on an option is experienced as a loss, and people are willing to pay a price to avoid the emotion of loss,” Dr. Ariely says.

Life lesson: Let options go. Simplify. Declutter. Know what’s worth your while, go for it, and don’t sweat the decisions that have already been made. Don’t kid yourself that you can follow every path, investigate every avenue. Know small potatoes when you see them. Keep your eyes on the prize. Obvious stuff maybe, but interesting to see it documented in this way.

Since conducting the door experiments, Dr. Ariely says, he has made a conscious effort to cancel projects and give away his ideas to colleagues. He urges the rest of us to resign from committees, prune holiday card lists, rethink hobbies…

Righteous CD cover meme image pool happening on Flickr these-a-days.

1. First, you’ll need a name for your band. This will be the first article title on WikiPedia’s random page selector.

2. Now for the all-important album title. Grab the last four words of the very last quote on the quotationspage’s random quote selector.

3. And of course, the album art. Yours will be the third picture, no matter what it is, on Flickr’s most interesting page.

Run your elements through the Photoshop sausage grinder, emulating the style of an album you already own (if you like), and out comes an album cover that looks like it could be at home in the Indie or Alt.Whatever section of your local record store.

To get yours into the pool, you’ll need to join the pool, then go to your uploaded image and click the “Add to pool” link right above it (I’ve always thought Flickr made the process of playing in photo pools unnecessarily complicated).

I made one.

Last of the Incas. This old Canon PowerShot G1 from the J-School was dysfunctional beyond repair (not to mention antiquated to the point of unusable), so I brought it home for Miles. Took us 45 minutes to remove nearly every screw, pry apart nearly every surface, snip every wire. Turned out the inverting lens barrel made a very good hat for R2D2. Even when something has no remaining value, feels wrong to tear it apart. Wrong but fun.

Robert Scoble came up with the idea to make a list of obsolete skills - things we used to be good at but no longer need to be, including:

• Dialing a rotary phone
• Putting a needle on a vinyl record
• Shorthand
• Using a slide rule
• Optimizing 640K-worth of memory
• Refilling a fountain pen
• Operating a dictaphone
• Using the eraser ribbon on a typewriter

A wiki sprung up to flesh out the list, and there are now hundreds listed (I added “Cleaning ball bearings in skateboard wheels without losing them”).

Herbie Hancock’s tribute to Joni Mitchell “River” is gorgeous in every way, and wholly deserving of its recent grammy (one of only two jazz records to have won Album of the Year in the past 50 years, yeesh). Tina Turner, Leonard Cohen, Norah Jones, Joni herself, Hancock’s lush keyboards, horns by Wayne Shorter… what more could an old Joni head want? The kindling power of the album inspired Salon’s Gary Kamiya to write a moving muse on the duality of rock and jazz in his life

Luckily, around this time the rest of the high-culture spinach on my plate started to taste better, which encouraged me to stick with jazz. I had known, in a dutiful art-history way, that Cézanne’s landscapes were better than pretty ones by some officially accredited hack; now I started to actually see them and like them. As a sophomore in high school I had bought an old 78 rpm set of Debussy’s “Iberia” because I thought it was an antiquarian ticket to cultural gravitas; now I realized that you got an incredible rush out of the end of the first movement. The kicks started getting easier to find. The same thing happened with jazz. The dusty old high-culture drugs kicked in there too. I might have started out listening to jazz because it was good for me, but the more I did, the more I realized that I liked it. Those schmaltzy tunes turned out to conceal beautiful modulations — quieter, less obvious than those in rock, but with a complex logic that grew on you. As I learned to follow the mathematics of jazz, I started to be able to listen without so much interior strain.

Worth a read.

Took a couple days off to enjoy a long weekend with friends on the west side of Lake Tahoe, in Homewood CA. Spent four days snowboarding and snowshoeing in spectacular shirt-sleeve sunshine, cooking, drinking wine, hiking around, and just enjoying one another. Had a fun session with The Ungame (1973 version), had a few failed geocaching attempts (everything buried under six feet of snow!), Miles and his little friend took their first ski lessons (and did great!)… Returned recharged and ready for anything.

Images from the trip.

J-School professor and Birdhouse Hosting customer Michael Pollan, author of The Omnivore’s Dilemma, has a new book titled In Defense of Food - a common-sense manifesto for eaters. Fittingly, Pollan is blogging this month at omnivoracious.com. Don’t have time to read the book? Pollan gives away the kernel:

• Don’t eat anything your great-grandmother wouldn’t recognize as food.
• Avoid food products with more than five ingredients; with ingredients you can’t pronounce.
• Don’t eat anything that won’t eventually rot.
• Shop the perimeter of the supermarket, where the food is least processed.
• Avoid food products that make health claims.
• Eat meals and eat them only at tables. (And no, a desk is not a table.)
• Eat only until you’re 4/5 full. (An ancient Japanese injunction.)
• Pay more, eat less.
• Diversify your diet and eat wild foods when you can.
• Eat slowly, with other people whenever possible, and always with pleasure.

Proof of what a good UI can do: Web-enabled phones have been able to use search engines forever. But Apple Insider reports that “Google has seen 50 times more search requests coming from Apple iPhones than any other mobile handset. They were so shocked, in fact, that they suspected that they had made an error tabulating their data.” ZDNet blog:

According to the Financial Times Vic Gundotra, head of Google’s mobile operations, said that if other handset manufacturers follow in Apple’s footsteps and make Web access easier on their handsets the number of mobile searches could outpace fixed internet search “within the next several years.”

And:

In related news René Obermann, CEO of Deutsche Telekom AG, says iPhone is driving up average wireless data usage as much as 30 times higher than on other phones.

Will be interesting to see whether Google’s own Android will be able to match the iPhone’s search numbers. The gauntlet has been thrown.

Think you can tell a fine artist from a fake? Or an artist from an ape, for that matter? Actual Faulkner from a machine translation from German text? Reverent quizzes let you try your hand. Kinda funny, kinda pointed. (n.b. I only got 100% on Pollock or Birds, though Amy did get close on Fine Art or Fake). The bell curve shows the bulk of the population batting around 70-80%.

Birdhouse Hosting welcomes the Chauncey Bailey Project, investigating the death of, and continuing the work of, journalist Chauncey Bailey, who was recently murdered in the course of his reporting:

Bailey, the editor of the weekly Oakland Post, was murdered on Aug. 2 while reporting on a story regarding the suspicious activities of the Your Black Muslim Bakery. In an unusual collaboration, more than two dozen reporters, photographers and editors from print, broadcast and electronic media, and journalism students are launching the Chauncey Bailey Project - an investigative unit that will continue and expand on the reporting Bailey was pursuing when he was gunned down. Devaughndre Broussard, 19, a handyman for Your Black Muslim Bakery, has confessed to the crime, according to police, but many questions about the possible motive for the killing have yet to be answered.

What to do with this information? Christians and atheists really aren’t all that different. But is a list an argument? Perhaps this is just a variant on the Flying Spaghetti Monster approach. But just because we might agree that Angus Og doesn’t exist as a god doesn’t mean that “our” God doesn’t exist. Why have I just capitalized God? Is that a tacit acknowledgement that “God” deserves as much respect as all of these other gods? Is the Christian god as provable as all of the other gods?

I’ve never used one, but Amazon recommends I give it a shot. Were it not for the “Six Feet Under” marathon Amy and I undertook around this time last year, digesting the entire series in a couple of months, I’d have absolutely no idea what this ad was referring to. What I’m trying to figure out is why this ad came up while purchasing Robyn Hitchcock back-catalog from the Amazon MP3 store. There’s got to be a connection there somewhere… “Heavenly nightshade. It’s where you came from.”

At the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism, we use WordPress heavily as a content management system for student and organization publications, knowledge bases, student handbooks, podcast publishing systems, online magazines, etc. Over the past couple of years, I’ve found again and again that WP is not only up to the task of serving as far more than a blogging platform, it’s a great content management system for many types of sites, once you learn a few tricks.

Just wrapped up a marathon coding session, converting one of the J-School’s most popular sites, China Digital Times (CDT), from Movable Type to WordPress. We launched the new site (with a new design by Devigal) a few days ago. This was by far the most complex WordPress installation I’ve worked on, involving around 16,000 posts and 6,000 tags. As with every site launch, I learned a few things in the process. Thought I’d post some notes here for the sake of others going through a similar process.

Nutshell version: Though SixApart (who make Movable Type) claim that their static page generation approach is great for high-performance sites, we’ve reduced the time it takes to publish a new article from almost 15 minutes to a few seconds by moving from Movable Type to WordPress.
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This week at Stuck Between Stations, Roger Moore finally gets around to releasing his best-of-year list… for 2006.

I can’t complain about multiple poll winner LCD Soundsystem, the brainy dance band that tossed off the best rip I’ve heard on New York’s Michael Bloomberg (“your mild billionaire mayor’s now convinced he’s a king”). I’m also thrilled at the top-ten consensus for M.I.A.’s Kala, which gave a trans-global boom-boom-boom to those of us who have, like the National, spent too long feeling half-awake in a fake empire. Still, there’s a problem in treating lists like these as canons of coolness. They call to mind my favorite 2007 music review, which was so fake it’s real. The Onion reported that Pitchfork gave a rating of 6.8 to “music”—not any one recording or genre, but its entire history. It seems music, while brilliant at times, is weighed down with too many “mid-tempo ballads,” and worse, “the whole medium comes off as derivative of Pavement.”

Was going to rant about the Super Bowl, but decided this was more interesting:

Birdhouse Hosting welcomes crestmontschool.org - the web site for Miles’ K-5 cooperative in Richmond, CA. I inherited the site a few months ago, and bid for the opportunity to host it at Birdhouse. Converted the site from Joomla to WordPress a month ago, then got started on a new design. The new look is based on the excellent Mimbo theme (though the end result barely looks related). Even had the opportunity to contribute a few tidbits to the WordPress Codex in the process.

A bit unclear on the concept… or is he?

Anger leads to hate
Hate leads to dumb
Dumb leads to stupid
Stupid leads to dead
Dead leads to nothing
Nothing leads to nothing
Nothing leads to nothing
Nothing leads to nothing
Nothing leads to nothing…

And then…

Love leads to sorrow
Sorrow leads to pain
Pain leads to friends forever