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Here’s kind of a weird one: SF writer Wil McCarthy has a web
page with the audio of his new
book The Wellstone, sequel to The
Collapsium. The catch: it was generated by computer. It
sounds OK, I found it listenable. It’s an interesting experiment. He
says on the page he made it for a friend who is visually impaired [...]
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In my interactions with the citizens of my neighborhood in Atlanta, I
am continuously surprised. Today someone on the neighborhood mailing
list (which I set up when I was secretary) reported getting unwanted
commercial e-mail from someone on the list and then porn when she
complained to that person. One suggestion was to go to the cops. I
sure hope [...]
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Turns out my entry from yesterday wasn’t showing up because I violated
the rules: I typoed the filename and called it “020226.txt”, which
made BlogMax think it wasn’t current and thus not show up anywhere or
get reposted. This is a fragile web I weave.
I’ve been doing more work with Cayenne both at the day
job and at home. [...]
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I’m a telecommuter again, at least in the way I register my dissent
with the current government policies. I made my virtual march phone
calls about 10 minutes late, and never did get through to the White
House, which makes sense. It would be getting 50 times the volume as
any individual senator. Both of the ladies answering the [...]
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I’m going to participate in the MoveOn.org Virtual March on
Washington tomorrow. My times are from 3:31 PM with Zell Miller’s
office to the White House at 3:40 PM. I’m not a peacenik. I understand
there are times to go to war. This is not the time, nor the
reason. Not only on a moral level but on an [...]
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Monday is Monday and Friday is Friday, Wednesday is “hump day” and
Thursday is “Must See TV”. I think of Tuesday pretty much exclusively
as “trash day” - at least since I’ve been in this neighborhood.
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I watched the Grammies with one eye and one ear last night. I kept
having the same reaction over and over as musicians performed - “This
is the best there is?” The Norah Jones song that was such a big winner
struck me as somewhere between pleasantly inconsequential and
inconsequentially pleasant. The only moment I enjoyed was when Bruce
Springsteen, [...]
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Cafe Press, the purveyors of
much merchandise via many websites, are making the logical jump into
POD publishing. Read about it in
this posting. Interestingly enough, they are also doing POD style
“retail ready” CDs, complete with booklets and jewel cases. I think
this kind of stuff is positive. As I’ve written over and over, the
vast majority of music I’ve [...]
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While out walking the dog just now, I saw one of my neighbors had a
“War is not the answer” yard sign. On it was a reference to http://www.fcnl.org, which I see is a
web page for the Friends Committe on National Legislation, ie, the
Quaker lobby. I never thought of myself as Quakerlike, but when I see
their [...]
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Here’s an article from HardwareExtreme.com about
the next
group of PalmOS devices. I’m not an early adopter and am fine with my
current Handspring Prism until it gives out. While I kind of like the
form factor and all the goodies of the Sony Clie, there ain’t no way
I’m paying $700 for a handheld. I think it is [...]
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I just had a sneezing fit that lasted 5 minutes, I swear. A few days ago
I was marvelling that I had remained so healthy all winter and
wondered if the flu shot had anything to do with that. Today, I feel
snotty and sneezy. Guess that answers my question.
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The news about this club fire in Rhode Island is really
depressing. That 90+ people died, a number of them from trampling, is
bad enough. That they died because they really wanted to see Great
White is just so surreal as to not seem as if it really
happened. That’s like people dying at a Vanilla Ice show. This [...]
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Nothing like getting up 5 AM during a thunderstorm to unplug all the
computers. It really leaves a mark on the rest of the day.
Here’s a funny link, another from my friend Jonny X. I don’t even know what the
hell it is, but it is weird and funny and involves
soy sauce. I can’t tell if this [...]
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It’s Friday and I feel like I have barely limped through this week. I
have no energy, little to show for it and a general feeling of
imminent doom.
I had uninstalled Eudora from my Handspring a while back because it
was so time prohibitive for me to try to write e-mail via
Grafitti. Now that I have the [...]
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The Flaming Lips will be on Letterman tonight, which I think I’ll
tape. I’ve been listening to their album obsessively for nearly two
months. “Do You Realize” makes me cry it’s so freaking good.
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They have released SpamAssassin 2.50 in the last few days, you can download it
here. This is the first blessed release that includes the Bayesian
training algorithms to set the scores. I
installed it today and trained it on the nearly 4000 spams that I’ve
been saving for just this reason. The combination of CRM114 (which
also uses Bayesian learning) [...]
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Here’s an interesting article on Salon by John Snyder, president of
Artist House Records, a board member of the National Association of
Recording Arts and Sciences (NARAS), and a 32-time Grammy nominee (bio
cut and pasted off of Salon). He argues that file
sharing does not hurt record companies and points out the odd
disconnect that they will pay millions [...]
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I stand by my belief that West Wing has jumped the
shark and I think its fall is accelerating. The formula is wearing
thin, the writing is wearing thin and I hate both the Will Bailey
character and the way they write his dialogue. The whole “The staff
doesn’t like me” stuff is neither funny nor interesting. The only
thing [...]
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A little experimentation with the keyboard and my verdict so far is
“That was worth $30.” It’s not a fullsize keyboard and it doesn’t have
all the keys. The worst aspect is that some punctuation is in new and
different places which will be hard to get used to, like the question
mark on the “G”. The wireless link [...]
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My friend Rob pointed out to me that there is a megasale on this
wireless PDA folding keyboard at
CompUSA - normally $99.99 it is now $29.99 with sales and
rebates. I looked up the review
he sent me, and it looks pretty good. For $29.99 (really $59.99 out of
pocket but with $30 mail-in rebate) it’s worth a risk [...]
