Accept no substitutes

Month: February 2005 (Page 4 of 4)

Blink – the tag, the book

Of Blink.

Back in the day when Netscape was Mozilla or even before, the most annoying HTML tag known was blink. ESR put Blink as the number one way that you knew you were in HTML Hell. Blink has few supporters.

I blame Jamie Zawinski because he has spent so much time denying that he had anything to do with the annoying tag.

Blink (as I have mentioned here before) is the name of a new book by Malcolm Gladwell which has been widely reviewed and advertized — most recently on SlashDot where the comments are more interesting than the review itself (the purpose of a good Slashdot review is to generate comments ;->). Blink, the book, which I have only flipped through but have read as it appeared in the form of articles in the New Yorker as Gladwell’s Tipping Point had appeared before it. To cut to the obvious, the book is a collection of well-written, easy-to-read New Yorker articles with some glue added. The result is another highly anecdotal strongly narative book that draws on research that is not footnoted or cited well. Like a blink, the book is fast, subtle, alluring to the right person, but mostly on the shiny unchallenging surface and without links to what is beneath it.

Note: Microsoft managed to invent something even more annoying than blink, the infamous MARQUEE tag. Talk about something really annoying, distracting and obnoxious. You can see what’s wrong with MARQUEE in a blink.

Triangle Bloggers Update – Feb 12

Please come to any or all events and please repost as appropriate. Also if you or folks you know would like to help out, please contact me, Paul Jones (jones at unc.edu) and/or Anton Zuiker (anton at zuiker.com)

The Triangle Bloggers Conference has grown to nearly 100 registered participants including representatives from local and regional presses.

Three Blogger Events are coming your way in the next week. Triangle Bloggers Conference in Murphey Hall (Saturday 2/12), Dan Gillmor talk in Carroll Hall (Monday 2/14) and in Greensboro Dave Winer at the News and Record (Wednesday 2/9). Details and links below.

Triangle Bloggers Conference
Saturday, February 12
9 a.m. – noon:30 (and beyond) Murphey Hall 116
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Learn more

Dan Gillmor public talk
We the Media: Grassroots Journalism for the People, by the People
Monday February 14, 3:30
Freedom Forum Conference Center
Carroll Hall, UNC
Learn more

Dave Winer, community journalism discussion
Wednesday February 9, 7 p.m.
200 East Market St., Greensboro
Learn more

Jumpin in the Garden of Eden

One of the joys of working with the Folkstreams Project, in which we are digitizing nearly 40 documentaries shot mostly in the mid to late 20th century, is that I get to watch and listen to a lot of wonderful music and stories that I have managed to mostly miss out on or only pay scant attention to.
Right now, as I’ve cleaning up some smaller tasks and getting ready for a doctor’s appointment, I’m listening and watching “Jumpin’ in the Garden of Eden” about the rebirth of klezmer music in the USA. Shot in 1987, the film focuses on two bands major to the klezmer revival, Kapelye and Boston’s Klezmer Conservatory Band.

Chris Abani at NCSU March 27th

South African friend, Andie Miller, writes to say that one of her favorite poets, Nigerian Chris Abani author of “Graceland” (a new novel which has just been shortlisted for the Africa region Best Book Award of The Commonwealth Writer’s Prize) and others, will be the keynote speaker at NCSU’s Human Rights Week on March 27th. Nothing yet on the NCSU website, but it’s listed at Abani’s site.
You can hear Abani on the March 22, 2004 show at the Cat Radio Cafe, which has a number of other really interesting shows with great writers.

M$googleKiller released

Microsoft announced their long anticipated Google Killer today. Announced as Beta, the search’s has several small innovations — you get to search your desktop and Encarta from the same bar the way on Google you can search for text, images and news (which you can also do on MSN Search).
I ran a little search, singing of myself as Walt would, for paul jones (no quotes). Below are the results.

Paul Jones MSN Search Google Yahoo
web 14,288,684 (0.19 seconds) 14,700,000 (0.21 seconds) 9,510,000 (0.08 sec)
news 1,982 (0.10 seconds) 8,010 (0.34 seconds) 6,822
images 840 (0.68 seconds) 16,000 (0.08 seconds) 13,069 (0.08 sec)
encarta 150 (0.01 seconds)
n/a
n/a
groups
n/a
677,000 (0.23 seconds)
n/a
froogle/products
n/a
7,590 confirmed / 223,000 total results (0.19 seconds) 1,424
video (test)
n/a
110 (0.02 seconds) 44 (0.32 sec)

Let’s Trim Our Hair According to Socialist Lifestyle

Proof that I am not a Communist:
North Korea’s formerly pompadoured leader Kim Jong Il declares war on long hair (on men only). An AP article on Salon reports:

Among the campaign’s hairdos and don’ts: Hair must be kept no longer than two inches. The only exception is for older men, who are given an extra four-fifths of an inch to hide baldness.

The dictum claims that long hair hampers brain activity by taking oxygen away from nerves in the head.

North Korea’s campaign does not mention any rules for women and gives no explanation as to why their long hair would not result in reduced brain activity.

The last Korean opponent of long hair, the South’s Park Chung-hee, managed to hold the hair down for a few years in the 70s, but as the AP story tells us:

Park was murdered by his own spy chief in 1979, and long hair — dyed in a variety of colors — is now widely accepted in South Korea.

So hands off the hair there, “Dear Leader”

Boing Boing beat AP to the story having a long piece on Jan 10.

I am not a Communist, but I am a member for the Luxuriant Flowing Hair Club for Scientists. Brain oxygen must be overrated.

Why I will never play poker

I blocked all the Texas Hold’em and Poker comment spam with AuthImage a while back, but starting early this morning I’ve been hit by Traceback spam! Grrrrrr.
Easy to delete, but like comment spam, a real pain and it bypasses AuthImage somehow.
Lots about this on the WordPress site. Hope to be reading through this and this and this later today.

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