Putting food on my family, while trying to make the pie higher. - GW Bush
 
April 29th, 2008

“‘Charlie Rose’ by Samuel Beckett”

Something has happened to PBS favorite “Charlie Rose.” The erudite conversations and sober intellectualism have been replaced by an absurd world where illogic, inane dialogues, and open hostility rule. The one-on-one interview between Charlie and his guest begins as usual but quickly goes awry, so much so that Charlie is warned that, somewhere, a man named “Steve” is “not happy.” Though this seemingly random statement might confuse us, Charlie understands it for what it is — a threat. But who is “Steve” and why is he angry? And why does the mere mention of his name stop Charlie cold? Using appropriated footage from a single episode of “Charlie Rose,” filmmaker Andrew Filippone Jr. creates something both disturbing and farcical in “‘Charlie Rose’ by Samuel Beckett.”


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Posted in Geek | 1 Comment »

April 28th, 2008

Harvard Right To Serve

Birdhouse Hosting welcomes Harvard Right to Serve, a site promoting a student-developed program at Harvard University to put an end to the U.S. military’s “Don’t ask, don’t tell” policy.

“Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” is perhaps the most discriminatory law in our country today. Since President Clinton signed “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” into law in 1993 over 12,000 GLBT men and woman have been kicked out of the Armed forces because of their sexual orientation. The Harvard Right To Serve campaign is a student-led effort that seeks to end this injustice. From May 24-31, 30 students from Harvard University will embark a four city journey across America that will highlight the injustice of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” In each city one openly GLBT Harvard student will attempt to sign up for military service. When their desire to serve is rejected participants on the Harvard Right to Serve tour will sit-in at the recruitment station to highlight the injustice of denying a citizen the right to serve based solely on their sexual orientation.
Music: Jimmy Giuffre :: The Bird

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Posted in Hosting | 1 Comment »

April 27th, 2008

Brain in a Vat

Brainvat Miles (5.5) especially quiet as we were getting back in the car after an afternoon riding rides at the zoo. I asked him what he was thinking about. “Oh, nothing.” Then, two minutes later: “Daddy, did you ever feel like everything in the world is just your dreams and the world never really existed?”

A chill went up my spine. At first because it seemed so philosophical, and kind of precocious. But then I realized the chill was one of recognition – I remember having exactly the same thoughts at the same age, and actually becoming kind of obsessed with the idea that I couldn’t prove the reality of my own existence. Took 20 more years to realize that solipsism was actually a whole field of philosophy… the whole brain in a vat thing.

Another minute later: “Yeah, the world is basically a big ball of nothing.” Oh, great, now we’ve bridged into nihilism. Then, at break-neck speed, we snap back into kid territory: “I can’t make my pinky finger wrap around my other finger and I really want it to! … Can we get a dog?”

Whew.

Music: David Byrne :: (The Gift Of Sound) Where The Sun Never Goes Down

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Posted in Family | 3 Comments »

April 26th, 2008

ALIPR Captchas

Captchas are so 2007. There are enough good captcha-breaking bots in the wild now that they’re pushing 10-15% success rates at decoding images, and can generate a new attempt every six seconds. Mail systems at Yahoo!, GMail and Hotmail all have been cracked in the past year. And Google’s Blogger service is under seige from spambots creating hundreds of thousands of splogs without human interaction — and they’re doing it through automated captcha cracking.

A new visual authentication system called IMAGINATION, from Penn State’s ALIPR (Automatic Linguistic Indexing of Pictures) program, takes a very different approach. Working with random images rather than characters means the pool of possibilities is not finite (image recognition is far more difficult than character recognition). And the two-part process refines the human requirement further: Find a center, then describe.

Imagination

But while traditional captchas have had problems with accessibility, ALIPR is going to be completely off-limits to the blind. Oh, and it takes up a whole screen, rather than a few hundred pixels2. That sounds like a deal-breaker right there. Or at least a deal-breaker until we get so fed up with being cracked that interaction designers are willing to give up an entire page to make it stop.

Once you solve the captcha, the site invites you to throw your best bot at it. I’m thinking maybe five years before the bots crack this one.

Music: David Byrne :: (The Gift Of Sound) Where The Sun Never Goes Down

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April 23rd, 2008

Super Sprayer

Amazing what a man can do with a can of spray paint and a saucepan lid (and an uncanny gift for seeing possibilities).

Music: Andrew Hill :: Dusk

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Posted in Out there | 3 Comments »

April 22nd, 2008

American Trash

Like many people, I have a relative who sends frequent email forwards of various ill-thought-out, thinly-veiled right-wing propaganda pieces. Today’s dose came in the form of a photo screed against the piles of trash left by Mexican immigrants as they cross through the Arizona desert on their way into the U.S. Here’s the webified version of it.

Sonoran2

Usually I just let these things go without responding, but today being Earth Day, I couldn’t help myself from hitting Cmd-Shift-R, even though I didn’t know most of the people on the cc: list:

Wow, that is truly sad – breaks my heart. Almost as bad as the mess left by “real americans” after a rock concert or sporting event. “About 400 city workers hauled almost 220 tons of trash left behind by the more than 1 million people who attended the concert…”

Even as bad as the local “gully” in many Appalachian regions where the locals dump their trash. Weird thing is, those rock concert go’ers and hillbillies actually have access to trash cans – they just choose not to use them. Must be really tough to try and escape from abject poverty into a hostile nation that used to welcome the tired, the poor, the weary… without access to a trash can. I wish immigrants were more like hippies and hikers (“Pack it in, pack it out!”) or at least would put all their trash in a pile or something.

I will say this though – it’s wonderful to see right-wingers starting to care about the environment! But when you think about it, a pile of trash like that is nothing compared to the Texas-sized gyre of plastic swirling around in the Pacific ocean that all of us have created. Or any of the other seven garbage wonders of the world.

Nothing compared to the environmental impact of a nation full of SUVs and corporations that won’t stop polluting unless there’s either a profit in it or the EPA forces them to. Would be interesting to see side-by-side pictures of patches of earth fouled by, say, a Dow Chemical factory and all Mexican immigrants to have passed into the U.S. in the past decade. Seems like Americans pointing a righteous finger at immigrants for polluting is a bit hypocritical, no?

Hey, I know – let’s all fuggetaboutit and go on a shopping spree – we’ve got three trillion bucks to spend! What’s that? It’s already been spent? Ooops.

./s

Happy Earth Day everyone!

Music: Nick Lowe :: Nutted By Reality

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Posted in Environment | 14 Comments »

April 20th, 2008

Apache, PHP Upgrades

PHP 4 is approaching EOL, and Birdhouse Hosting, like many hosts, has been in “pause” mode on the prospect of a PHP 5 upgrade for a while, cautious of the possibility of breaking customer scripts. We’ve also been running on Apache 1.3.x since forever. But after much research, finally decided it was safe to just go for it. Spent the afternoon and early evening compiling Apache 2.2.8 and PHP 5.2.5, all required modules, tweaking handlers, and taking care of a few post-upgrade burps. Everything seems to be running smoothly, with not a single customer complaint (let us know if you find anything not working!)

Stay tuned for a revamped hosting site and a new pricing structure in the coming months.

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April 19th, 2008

Oak Hymenoptera Redux

Six months ago, a certain unnamed geocache vexed and flummoxed Miles and I, and we ended up marking it DNF (15 minutes later I cut my hand wide open on barbed wire). Felt like we were so close and yet so far on that one (and it was a beautiful area), so returned to Carquinez today for a re-match. This time, we found it within three minutes, and it was a well-done doozy – a micro “Buffalo tube” tucked inside a tumorous growth on the branch of an old oak tree on a solitary hill in the middle of nowhere. Great place for a picnic, too.

Oak Hymenoptera (before) Oak Hymenoptera (after)

Miles was on a mission to photograph his Bionicles in natural settings, so spent half the day shooting macros of various Phantoka (and their off-spring) hanging from trees. If that sentence means anything to you, you have a 5-10 year-old-boy.

Snake

Also encountered a 4′ bull snake in the middle of the path, soaking up the sun, completely content to be petted and photographed. After a minute, it slid calmly off into the weeds.

Music: Joe Dassin :: Les Champs-Élysées

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Posted in Geo | 6 Comments »

April 18th, 2008

Three Trillion

Well, I got close, but no cigar. It’s painfully hard to spend three trillion dollars. Even with the Hope Diamond and the Hannah Montana Anti-static Pink Hair Brush in my cart, I was only able to spend around 80% of what the Iraq war will cost us (with veteran care costs included) by 2017. Not much info on the site on where the cost estimates for items below come from; I’m presuming they come from Stiglitz’ book:

“Just counting the zeroes on the $3 trillion price tag of the Iraq War is enough to induce hyperventilation. But what does $3 trillion really mean? It’s difficult even to comprehend a number that big. Well, try filling your shopping cart with what the cost of the Iraq War could buy: healthcare for every American? A new home for every subprime borrower now facing foreclosure? An Ivy League university? You haven’t even gotten started.”

-Nobel prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz
co-author of The Three Trillion Dollar War

Here were the contents of my shopping cart, before I grew tired of making world dreams come true and stopped shopping:

 Switch to Solar

1 purchased for $420,000,000,000.00 each

Universal Health Care

1 purchased for $3,067.00 each

finish repairing the damage done by Katrina

1 purchased for $200,000,000,000.00 each

End hunger and poverty related diseases

2 purchased for $195,000,000,000.00 each

Full Funding of Amtrak Passenger Service & Expansion

1 purchased for $2,500,000,000.00 each

Achieve Universal Literacy

1 purchased for $5,000,000,000.00 each

Broadband To Every U.S. Home

1 purchased for $100,000,000,000.00 each

100 New Libraries

1 purchased for $5,000,000,000.00 each

New Clothing, Shoes, Coats, and School Supplies for Ten Million Children

1 purchased for $10,000,000,000.00 each

The Hope Diamond

1 purchased for $250,000,000.00 each

Hannah Montana Anti-static Pink Hair Brush

1 purchased for $10.99 each

Plant 1,000,000 trees

1 purchased for $10,000,000.00 each

End our Dependence on Foreign Oil

1 purchased for $500,000,000,000.00 each

Kyoto Protocol Worldwide Compliance

1 purchased for $400,000,000,000.00 each

Help Rebuild Iraq

1 purchased for $20,900,000,000.00 each

Universal Preschool

1 purchased for $35,000,000,000.00 each

revamp the u.s. education system

1 purchased for $100,000,000.00 each

Build a National High Speed Rail System

1 purchased for $300,000,000,000.00 each

Fight AIDS in Developing Nations

1 purchased for $15,000,000,000.00 each
Music: Rolling Stones :: Yesterday’s Papers

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April 16th, 2008

Twitter Found My Phone

Amazing… just took a break from the all-day Journalism and Databases session we’re running, checked for recent Tweets, and there was one apparently from myself:

Hi.i found this phone.could you tell me how to find the owner..

A few Tweets later, messages from Xian Crumlish, Michael Fitzhugh, and Dylan Tweney, pointing me to the source. A block walk and I had the phone again (which I hadn’t even realized was missing until Twitter told me). Thanks so much Good Samaritan Silje for having the brilliance to check my address book and send an SMS Tweet as me, and to alla y’all for helping to track it down.

Xian’s book title is spot on: The Power of Many.

Update: Whoa! This little  dance just got covered on Wired.com’s blog (by Tweney).

Posted in Misc | 1 Comment »

April 15th, 2008

Winky Dink and You

Winky-Tv Great talk by futurist Paul Saffo tonight (sorry, he declined to be webcast at the last minute). Covered a lot of ground, with both inspiring and depressing intersections for journalists, but I especially enjoyed his romp through early “new media” technologies, including what must have been the first interactive television program, Winky Dink and You. Kids hung a piece of clear acetate with a connect-the-dots or other puzzle over the TV screen, and got to “rescue” Winky Dink by drawing a ladder, rope, or other device right on the screen at the right moment (subversive 50s kids apparently drew anvils or bombs to sabotage him instead). Clues given through the show led to the spelling out of a secret message.

Of course, it goes without saying that scores of kids without the kits drew on the television screen itself, ruining many a family’s first television set. “I remember that my Mother didn’t want to buy me a Winky Dink screen,” Charlie Jamison writes, “That was not going to stop me from helping my old pal Winky Dink, I just used a permanent marker! The next week, I had a Winky Dink screen.”

Also enjoyed Saffo’s collection of early remote controls (everyone still has a relative alive who calls it “the clicker,” right?

Also could relate to his “Bakelite” metaphor – when plastics first hit the scene, they worked hard to make new products look like wood or tortoise shell – the new tech was using itself to emulate the old. Since I’ve been dealing with two separate faculty members who want to put up web publications in a Flash “page turning” interface because they “just like the feel of print,” the Bakelite analogy resonated perfectly.

Other examples: The Gutenberg Bible looked just like an illuminated manuscript – print was introduced and the first thing it did was emulate the old hand-styled presentation method. And when TV was introduced, for years it just did stand-up radio shows, but with a camera on the hosts.

Music: Thelonious Monk :: Monk’s Point (Take 1)

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April 14th, 2008

Tech Training for Reporters

Another big week of podcasting coming up as we (the Knight Digital Media Center at UC Berkeley) launch a week of training for working journalists in “new media / digital media” internet technologies. This week will be a variant of last month’s workshop – we’ll be working with reporters rather than editors this time around, and tuning the training to suit. As always, the workshop will be peppered with panels and conversations with fascinating experts, and those sessions are open to the public.

Can’t make it to the J-School? Tune in to the podcast series live, or catch archived versions the following week. I’m especially interested in “100 Megabits across the Digital Divide,” with Brewster Kahle of the Internet Archive, but all of the sessions are bound to be worthwhile.

Knight Digital Media Center April 2008 Lecture Series

Music: Thomas Chapin :: Golgotham

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April 13th, 2008

WP-Create

My WP-Mass-Upgrade script has saved me countless hours over the past year. Making sure all Birdhouse and J-School WordPress installations are managed via subversion has meant I’ve been able to wrap them all in a single shell script. When new releases emerge, I’m able to upgrade 50+ installs in a few minutes. The most time consuming part remaining was creating new installations when customers needed them. I had the process down to around five minutes, but knew the repetitive steps could be distilled into a script, so recently wrote WP-Create:

Super fast (~30 second) way to install WordPress for clients, via subversion. Yes, users can often self-install via Fantastico or similar programs, but what guarantee do you have that they’ll upgrade as soon as new releases become available? Letting users run old versions of web software is a great way to get hacked. Take control of users’ installations by checking them out via svn (with this script) and managing them with wp-mass-upgrade.

This script performs the following tasks:

  • Gather installation info
  • Create install dir and check out a copy of WordPress
  • Create database, db user, set db privs via external .sql file
  • Create WP config file
  • Create upload dir and set filesystem permissions
  • Generate array line for wp-mass-upgrade.sh

Final setup is done via browser.

Added these tools to the WordPress codex section on managing WordPress via subversion.

Music: The Staple Singers :: For What It’s Worth

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April 13th, 2008

Cal Day 2008

Miles and I had a great time yesterday at Cal Day, UC Berkeley’s campus-wide open house. Miles got to play with a 15 foot python, had cockroaches and stick bugs walking all over him, went fishing for lizards (I remember when my brother and I used to make lizard fishing poles out of car antennas and fishing line), watched his own voice dance on the screen of an oscilloscope, experimented with the Bernoulli principle (a ball floating on a column of air), experienced his first drinking bird, created a miniature earthquake, built an Indian boli, and almost got conked by the physics experiment below – I turned around to get my camera out of its bag and heard a clunk and some gasps – he had been pulling on the steel balls and the whole thing came off the table and wound up around his neck! Fast reactions – he caught the frame with his hands.

Momentum

Afterwards, went to a musical performance of The Emperor Has No Clothes at the historic Julia Morgan Theater.

Flickr set

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Posted in Misc | 6 Comments »

April 13th, 2008

Audio Post from Misty Mountain Hop

Went for a hike, but ended up mountain biking up Schmidt Lane with slick tires.

Posted in Misc | 2 Comments »

April 11th, 2008

Scripts and Utils

Over time, I’ve built up a handful of shell and PHP scripts, written to satisfy various itches with WordPress, Movable Type, QuickTime Streaming Server, hosting performance, etc. I’ve been tossing them into a dorky static site in case they prove useful to anyone else.

I’ve been meaning for a while to drop them into a WordPress installation – a little software library, open for discussion. Finally got around to doing that: scot hacker’s scripts and utils. Not much different from the old site, but now includes commenting, categories, search, RSS, etc. Using the badly named but very clean WP-Candy theme.

One of these days I’ll have to dig up all my old BeOS scripts and utils and give them a permanent home.

Music: Essential Logic :: World Friction

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April 10th, 2008

Windows Is ‘Collapsing’

A few days ago, I had the, um, pleasure of having to install some lock-programming software on a Windows laptop — a process that should have taken five minutes but instead took upwards of an hour. Endless DLL conflicts, an uninstallation fiasco, an installer caught in a circular loop, literally hundreds of entries being written to the registry… The whole farce would have been hilarious if it hadn’t wasted so much of my time. I run Windows so seldom these days, I forget how bad it can be.

Sounding a lot like the BeOS founders and evangelists from a decade ago, who used to talk about Windows being held together with bailing wire, chewing gum and twine, a pair of Gartner analysts recently came out and said it: Windows is ‘collapsing’ (Computerworld):

Calling the situation “untenable” and describing Windows as “collapsing,” a pair of Gartner analysts yesterday said Microsoft Corp. must make radical changes to its operating system or risk becoming a has-been … Analysts said Microsoft has not responded to the market, is overburdened by nearly two decades of legacy code and decisions, and faces serious competition on a whole host of fronts that will make Windows moot unless the software developer acts. “For Microsoft, its ecosystem and its customers, the situation is untenable,” said Silver and MacDonald in their prepared presentation, titled “Windows Is Collapsing: How What Comes Next Will Improve.” Among Microsoft’s problems, the pair said, is Windows’ rapidly-expanding code base, which makes it virtually impossible to quickly craft a new version with meaningful changes. That was proved by Vista, they said, when Microsoft — frustrated by lack of progress during the five-year development effort on the new operating — hit the “reset” button and dropped back to the more stable code of Windows Server 2003 as the foundation of Vista … “Windows as we know it must be replaced,” they said in their presentation.

It’s one thing for the userbase to talk like this, but analysts like Gartner are serious about what they do, and don’t make heavy-handed proclamations lightly. Something is in the wind, and it smells like carrion. You can only put so much lipstick on a pig.

Music: Ivan Boogaloo Joe Jones :: You’ve Got It Bad, Girl

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Posted in Geek | 4 Comments »

April 10th, 2008

Wishful Drinking

Fisher About a year ago, we won a pair of tickets to the Berkeley Rep at an auction. Suddenly realizing they were about to expire, Amy announced a few days ago that we were going to see Carrie Fisher’s one-woman show, Wishful Drinking. The fact that our house has been filled with Star Wars talk for three months running did not exactly have me enthused about the prospect, but I had heard she’s had an interesting life, and what the hey – why not open up a few new circuits?

Prepared to be underwhelmed, but both of us were blown away by how good the performance was. It would be hard for anyone to spend two hours talking about their own life – no matter how surreal – without it coming off self-indulgent or egocentric. But somehow, Fisher managed to be both hilarious and humble about… everything: Her marriage to Paul Simon, her plunge into mental illness, her substance abuse, her relationship with Hollywood (her mother is Debbie Reynolds, her father was the singer Eddie Fisher, who left his mother for Liz Taylor (she did a great extended segment called “Hollywood Inbreeding 101″)), her magical ability to turn men bald and gay, the comic book collectors and sci-fi fans, who stalk her from the wings, the strange grandmother who locked her in the closet, yelling “Go ahead, cry all you want – you’ll pee less!” The whole thing was endearing and charming and full of silly wisdom that somehow seemed life affirming, despite all the tragedy.

Somehow we missed “the juicy stuff about making out with the actor Harrison Ford” (New York Times), but she did get 10 minutes of good Star Wars gossip into the mix, e.g. remembering George Lucas telling her she wouldn’t be allowed to wear a bra under her white robes in Star Wars. “Umm… OK… why not?” “Because there is no underwear in space,” Lucas deadpanned back, with that face that knows only one expression. “Ah, right. Lucas has been to space, looked all around, and didn’t see any underwear. He knows!”

Kind of tough to get across just how compelling the show was. If it comes to your area, just go.

If, on the other hand, you’re in the mood to throw up a little bit in your mouth, re-live the saccharine, Hallmark-y 1978 Star Wars Holiday Special: Happy Life Day (warning: includes cute baby wookies). Glutton for punishment? This 5-minute condensation of the two-hour boondoggle includes Bea Arthur and The Jefferson Starship, together at last on one stage! Looking at these now, it’s amazing she didn’t spend half the show talking about the shame this one TV special must have caused.

Thanks grahams for the Holiday Special links.

Posted in Culture | 1 Comment »

April 8th, 2008

Boys’ Weekend

Just returned from an extended weekend with Miles at Grandpa’s house in the mountains outside Tahoe, on the cusp of spring. For the first time, just the three of us boys; Amy sat this one out. Spent the first day sledding and playing in the snow; the next visiting Daffodil Hill, geocaching, and journeying into the bowels of Black Chasm cavern in Volcano, CA. Miles: “Whoooaaa! Is this really what it’s like in the center of the earth?” Later, asked if he remembered what kind of rock the caves were made of, responded “Marbles!”

Daffodil Hill 1

On the return trip, Miles and I ventured into deeper woodlands to find our 200th geocache (hard to believe we started just under a year ago; we’ve found all but ~30 of these together). It’s become a centerpiece of our bond, and he’s still surprised when he realizes that most kids have never been. Phoned our milestone into the Podcacher podcast, and Miles did the talking; hopefully we’ll get to hear his proud little voice on next week’s show.

Black Chasm was an amazing experience; years since I’ve been in a real cave, being stunned by mineral drapery, 200,000-year-old crystal extrusion, a pool of earth’s purest water 200 feet below glowing blue and green, inhabited only by sea monkeys. Got to Daffodil hill just as it entered it was entering waning stage, flowers just starting to think about drooping, but still beautiful. And catching a large male peacock in full strut, on a corrugated tin roof no less, was just stunning.

Flickr set

Music: The Mountain Goats :: San Bernardino

Posted in Family, Geo | 1 Comment »

April 4th, 2008

Moon-Walking Bear

Awesome U.K. ad promoting bicycle awareness:

Sad truth: No amount of psych tricks will raise driver awareness. Not when those drivers are on cell phones. Bluetooth won’t help.

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Posted in Culture | 7 Comments »

April 2nd, 2008

Fold-In Bliss

Foldin My attempt to sell off boxes of 30-year-old+ comics was an abject failure. The market is flooded, the internet is taking over the comic space, etc. etc. Especially disheartening was that I couldn’t find a good home for all my old Mad magazines. Thumbing through the boxes a few months ago, had to take time out to do a bunch of Mad Fold-Ins — the back page was always a treat, and every issue has vertical creases at the 1/3 points. Creator Al Jaffe (now 86) has been creating the fold-ins by hand almost non-stop since 1964.

The New York Times is featuring an excellent collection of fold-ins, with interactivity expertly re-created in Flash.

Music: Holy Modal Rounders :: Down the Old Plank Road

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Posted in Media, Out there | 3 Comments »

April 2nd, 2008

Spam J-Curve

Weblog comment spam rates continue to surge. This chart is from one installation of anti-blog-spam tool Defensio, showing an insane uptick through the last part of March, 2008:

(Thanks ViperBond). Akismet’s charts show more than 5 billion blog spams identified in the past two years. I’ve personally noticed a dramatic increase in hand-written blog spam recently. Knowing that tools like Defensio and Akismet are going to get spammers banned from blogs net-wide within minutes, the method is now one of social engineering – getting bloggers to consciously allow spammy comments to go live by making them highly relevant to the post they’re attached to, and plausibly written. All that distinguishes this latest form are the author URLs — which no longer point to cialis and poker sites, but to tile shops, beauty parlors, commercial art galleries, pool-cleaning supply houses, etc. Human blog spammers have been around almost as long as bots (to defeat captchas, etc.) but this latest form amazes me because it’s written so carefully. I really have to puzzle over some of these recent ones to decide whether to push them through or not.

Because Akismet is less likely to have identified these as spammy, the moderation burden falls back onto blog authors. It’s no longer possible to identify spam at a glance – we now have to study each message carefully to ascertain sincerity.

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April 1st, 2008

BeOS Journal Lives

I’ve fallen out of like with the web’s usual April Fool’s day shenanigans (on account of being an old humorless curmudgeon), but this one hits joyously close to home.

Toward the end of the BeOS era, I was working with the publishers of the Linux Journal to create a sister publication, the BeOS Journal (this is true – not making this up). I was the senior editor, and had commissioned and packaged all of the content. We had the first issue in the bag and had already gone to layout when Be made the formal announcement that it was folding their cards. Of course, the BeOS Journal went down along with it, and issue #1 never saw the light of day.

But today is a great day. Seven years later, the publishers of Linux Journal have finally come to their senses, and have decided to drop Linux coverage in favor of full-time BeOS content. The introductory video speaks for itself.

The day we’ve anticipated for so long has finally arrived. I’m thrilled to see the technology world finally sitting up and taking notice of the greatest OS ever developed. Though I unfortunately can no longer promise to be a substantial contributor to the project, I’ll be reading BeOS Journal regularly and cheering from the sidelines. Hup hup!

Also excellent today: ThinkGeek is running a special on the Super Pii Pii Brothers video game for Wii controllers (see video). Now that’s compelling game content!

Thanks Bret Chou.

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Posted in Geek | 5 Comments »

April 1st, 2008

Don’t Walk Away in Silence

Note: Despite the date, this is not an April Fool’s post. Can’t believe I have to say that.

“Don’t walk away in silence,” someone spray spraypainted on the wall of a girls school on the lower east side, New York. The school painted over it, of course, and left this note in its place:

Graffitiwall

The school turned the episode into a teachable moment. “It really gave us a chance to engage in a dialogue with our students.”

via GammaBlog

Music: X :: The Once Over Twice

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