USS Kearsarge

Posted on January 28, 2006

Originally uploaded by jalefkowit.
Click photo for full size image.

Amphibious assault carrier USS Kearsarge at anchor, Hampton Roads, Virginia.

Too Many Dots

Posted on January 26, 2006

Someone has taken the time to map the hometowns of every soldier who has died in Iraq and Afghanistan in Google Earth.

I didn’t realize until I looked at this that one of those casualties — Marine Lance Corporal Dustin Fitzgerald, died August 18, 2004 — was from my old neighborhood.

Rest in peace, Corporal.

How To See London In One Day

Posted on January 25, 2006

Look, kids! Big Ben! Parliament!

Now that I’m settled back in here in DC, I figured I should take a moment and explain what all the foofah over the last few days has been about.

I spent the second half of last week in the United Kingdom as an attendee of the eCampaigning Forum, organized in Oxford by Oxfam. It was a great chance to meet some of the smart people who are working in online activism in the EU, and to get to know better some of the challenges and opportunities they face that we do not. (It blows my mind, for example, how much more advanced mobile phone use is over there compared to here. We are many years behind the curve on that one.)

Anyway, due to the opaque mysteries of airline fare schedules, it ended up costing $1,000 less for me to go out there if I flew back on Sunday instead of Saturday. That meant I had a day of my own when I could do pretty much whatever I pleased. Guess I owe United Airlines a big thank you for that…

I ended up spending that extra day exploring London. It was my first time in that city (heck, this trip was my first time in the UK), so it was a great experience.

Unfortunately problems with the intercity rail network ate away some of the time I’d planned to spend in the city (don’t ask), but I still got the better part of the day and night, which was good. And I managed to see most of the things I had wanted to see, anyway.

London is too big of a city to take in in one day, so going in I decided I was going to have to have a pretty sparse itinerary. After reading through my guidebook, I decided on two main things I wanted to do with my visit. First, since I’m a theater nut, I wanted to see the reconstructed Globe Theater they built for the millennial celebrations in 2000; and second, I wanted to visit the British Museum, because as a kid in Cairo I’d heard so much about it. (Usually things along the lines of “And here there should be a fascinating example of pharaonic statuary, except that the British stole it and put it in the British Museum.”) Anything else, I figured, would be gravy.

Thankfully I got to do a bit more than I originally thought I would. I started my trip by riding the famous Underground to Leicester Square.

Leicester Square: Home of theatre and cinema

I was there because I hoped to see a show at the Globe that evening, so I wanted to hit the tkts booth to see if any half-price tickets were available. Alas, there were none for the Globe (I would discover why later that evening), so it was time to move on.

I ended up wandering south, and stumbled by accident into Trafalgar Square, with its signature monument, Nelson’s Column, dramatically breaking the skyline.

Trafalgar Square in midafternoon

I spent a little while just sitting in the square, watching the people go by and the pigeons dive-bomb the various statues. There are so many f#@ing pigeons in Trafalgar Square that they probably deserve a statue of their own…

After leaving the square, I saw some of the nearby sights — the Houses of Parliament, No. 10 Downing Street, and Horse Guards — before deciding it was time to get back on the Tube and hit the British Museum, since it was already after noon.

If you’re at all into history — and those of you who know me know that I’m a total history geek — the British Museum is like heaven on earth. It’s a giant building crammed full of what Citizen Kane called “the loot of the world” — priceless archeological treasures the British lifted from their native countries back in the days when they ruled the world and could get away with that sort of thing.

The Nereid Monument, on display at the British Museum

The range of items on display is remarkable — every corner you turn brings you to a new and interesting exhibit. The Rosetta Stone, for example, can be found in their collection of Egyptian antiquities, and their Greek rooms house the “Elgin Marbles” — statues looted from the Parthenon.

A metope from the Parthenon, on display at the British Museum

I spent most of the afternoon exploring the Museum’s various collections.

A Roman bust of the first Emperor, Augustus, on display at the British Museum

At around 5:30 or so I decided to head over to the Globe and see if there were any tickets available for a show that night.

I had a pleasant detour on the way, thanks to my imperfect understanding of the local geography — I ended up getting off the Tube at a station some ways from the Globe, and walking the rest of the way. That took me across the Millennium Bridge, another addition to the city from the 2000 celebrations. The view of the Thames in early evening, as the city began to light up for the night, was dramatic.

Once I arrived at the Globe, I discovered why tkts had not had any tickets on sale: the Globe’s 2006 season doesn’t start until May! Oops. I suppose I could have saved myself a walk by calling ahead, but on the other hand, it was a nice walk and I did get to see the building; so it was hardly that much of a loss.

But now I needed something to do to occupy my evening, since my hope to see a show had been shot. I ended up walking alongside the river towards the Waterloo underground station, keeping an eye open for anything that looked interesting.

After a little walking I stumbled across the National Film Theatre, Britain’s counterpart to our AFI Silver. (Update note, May 2009: after this was written, the National Film Theater changed its name; it’s now called the “BFI Southbank”.) They were showing The Ipcress File, starring a very young Michael Caine; that seemed appropriately English, so I bought a ticket and settled down into the plush seat to enjoy the movie.

By the time the movie let out, it was approaching 9:00 and I had to leave London; my hotel was in Oxford, an hour’s journey by train, and I had an early flight back to the States the next morning. I was sorry I couldn’t spend more time exploring the city. Maybe next time!

So that’s the story of my trip to London and Oxford. If you’re interested, here are a couple of things I brought back to share it with you further:

• I’ve compiled all my photos from the trip into a Flickr photoset, so you can leave comments, download ones you like, or view them as a slideshow; and
• I’ve created a Google Earth file you can download that has all the locations I visited marked on it, with links to more information about each.

Enjoy!

Things I Learned From Three Days in the UK

Posted on January 24, 2006

I’m working on a longer post now that will talk about my experiences on the trip in more detail, but it’s gonna take a while to get everything written up, so I thought I’d give you a quick one outlining some things I learned from my trip.

What to Call Your Host Country

In descending order of preference:

1. “The United Kingdom”
2. “Great Britain”
3. “England”
4. “Funky Town”
5. “Home of the Whopper”

The first of these is by far the most preferred. The English talk about being in “the U.K.” the way people from Orange County talk about being from “the O.C.”.

The difference, of course, is that the English do not have a pathological fear of black people.

An Abomination Against God and Man

Warm beer, OK. Warm Coca-Cola?

Not so much.

How To Get Funny Looks From the Locals

Go to Oxford and try to find something to eat after 11PM. I challenge you.

How To Get Funny Looks From the Locals, Part the Second

Just because they use money that is printed in all sorts of comical colors, it is not considered culturally appropriate when changing money to wave your new British pounds in the air and announce loudly “I’m buying Park Place! I’m buying Park Place!”

Consider yourself warned.

How I Spent My Friday Night

Posted on January 20, 2006

Getting drunk on John Smith’s, swapping stories with a guy named Dancing Sailor John, and listening to a 13-year-old Norwegian kid sing Mississippi blues.

The weird part? The kid was good.

Conspiracy of Fools

Posted on January 19, 2006

I’ve just recently finished reading Kurt Eichenwald’s book on the collapse of Enron, Conspiracy of Fools.

As journalistic history goes, it’s very good. You get a clear picture of the forces that turned one of the biggest companies in America into a bankrupt shell. Of course, it suffers from the flaws of the journalistic history form, too.

Probably the most compelling thing about the book is that it is less of a business case study and more of a character study. The three primary players each emerge as distinct personalities: Enron Chairman Kenneth Lay as a well-meaning executive who spent more time glad-handing politicians and fellow executives than watching the daily operations of his enterprise, CEO Jeffrey Skilling as a hyper-driven leader whose manic search for The Next Big Thing instilled a culture of corner-cutting at the company, and CFO Andrew Fastow as an amoral schemer who concocted financial schemes that simultaneously masked Enron’s structural problems and poured millions of dollars of company money into his own pocket.

Of the three, the undoubted villain of the piece is Fastow. He is presented in an unremittingly negative light, as someone so obsessed with amassing enough wealth to enter the top tier of Houston society that he is willing to do anything to make it happen. In this telling, Skilling has a role in the company’s failure, too, but it’s not a leading role; his primary sin was fostering a culture at Enron so mercenary, so focused on chasing grandiose visions and pumping up the next quarter’s reported earnings, that double-dealings such as Fastow’s could take root and flourish. Lay is depicted as being responsible more by what he did not do — his instincts are generally laudable ones, reining in some of the uglier aspects of the Skilling culture, but he was so disengaged from the workings of his business that he never knew of Fastow’s financial manipulations or the degree to which Enron’s facade depended on them until the facade collapsed.

When I say that Conspiracy of Fools shares the failings of journalistic history, I’m thinking primarily of its portrait of Fastow. I don’t know the man, so I can’t speak to his character one way or the other. But one thing I’ve learned from reading other books by journalists (see, for example, anything Bob Woodward has written in the last 20 years) is that the story they tell is driven in large part by the people they get to agree to an interview. Those who agree get an opportunity to share their side of the story; those who don’t do not — and moreover, those who agree will often dump blame on the shoulders of the silent ones, seizing the opportunity to pass the buck. The result is usually that the people who don’t talk come across as very bad indeed — sometimes much worse than they actually are.

The book’s depiction of Fastow is so unremittingly negative that I wonder if Eichenwald didn’t fall into this trap. Eichenwald’s Fastow is relentlessly avaricious, constantly grabbing for the quick buck and taking any opportunity to screw over his colleagues. This is in stark contrast to the way the book treats Jeffrey Skilling, which is surprisingly sympathetic. We see Skilling as CEO working so hard that he ruins his home life and health, leading him to walk away; then, when Fastow’s bombshells start going off, he desperately tries to come back to the company to perform damage control. The image of Skilling we get is multifaceted and complicated, like a real person; Fastow is remarkably two-dimensional by comparison.

Now, maybe that’s just how these two guys are, so I don’t want to come down too hard on the book (and I certainly don’t want this to be taken for a defense of Fastow, whose business dealings are repulsive no matter if he had redeeming qualities or not). It’s a good read, easy to follow and lucidly written. The secondary characters tend to blur into the background somewhat, but the main personalities stand out, and you do get some sense of the motivations that led these men to make their Faustian bargain.

It’s not a bad book; it’s just good enough that I wish it was better. (I’m going to have to check out the other big book on Enron, The Smartest Guys in the Room — which was recently adapted into a movie — and see how it stacks up by comparison.)

Mind the Gap

Posted on January 18, 2006

I’m in England

more details soon

First Impressions

Posted on January 12, 2006

I’ve been hearing a lot of good things lately about lighttpd, the very small and simple open source web server. So I decided today to check out its Web site and see what the buzz was about.

Here’s what I found:

Paging Alanis Morissette…

The Best Blonde Joke Ever. Seriously

Posted on January 12, 2006

I give you the best blonde joke ever.

Enjoy!

Thunderbird 1.5

Posted on January 12, 2006

The latest version of Mozilla’s great e-mail program, Thunderbird 1.5, is out and ready for download.

Notable improvements include:

• Thunderbird now has the same automated-update capability as Firefox; this means patches and new versions can be streamed right to your desktop – no more go-to-mozilla-download-the-latest-version-uninstall-the-old-version-install-the-new-version tango required to stay current.
• Thunderbird’s RSS features now include support for podcasts.
• Spam filtering can now be plugged into a server-side spam filter for greater accuracy.
• Google Maps support built into the Address Book.
• “Phishing” (god I hate that word) detector built in, to stop identity theft.
• Spell-check as you type.
• Search folders can now search across more than one account.
• Lots of security fixes.
• And more — full list here.

Bush to McCain and Congress: Blow Me

Posted on January 8, 2006

Last year, members of Congress, led by Sen. John McCain (who has some first-hand knowledge of the ineffectiveness of torture as an interrogation tactic), passed a bill to ban torture of suspected terrorists and insurgents by U.S. personnel. On December 15, President Bush signed the bill into law.

Specifically, the McCain Amendment says the following:

No person in the custody or under the effective control of the Department of Defense or under detention in a Department of Defense facility shall be subject to any treatment or technique of interrogation not authorized by and listed in the United States Army Field Manual on Intelligence Interrogation.

The Army Field Manual in question is FM 34-52, “Intelligence Interrogation”, last updated in 1992. Pages 1-7 through 1-9 of this document lay out a prohibition on torture very clearly:

US policy expressly prohibit[s] acts of violence or intimidation, including physical or mental torture, threats, insults, or exposure to inhumane treatment as a means of or aid to interrogation.
Such illegal acts are not authorized and will not be condoned by the US Army. Acts in violation of these prohibitions are criminal acts punishable under the [Uniform Code of Military Justice]. If there is doubt as to the legality of a proposed form of interrogation not specifically authorized in this manual, the advice of the command judge advocate should be sought before using the method in question…
In attempting to determine if a contemplated approach or technique would be considered unlawful, consider these two tests:

• Given all the surrounding facts and circumstances, would a reasonable person in the place of the person being interrogated believe that his rights, as guaranteed under both international and US law, are being violated or withheld, or will be violated or withheld if he fails to cooperate.
• If your contemplated actions were perpetrated by the enemy against US [Prisoners of War], you would believe such actions violate international or US law.

If you answer yes to either of these tests, do not engage in the contemplated action.

Like I said, pretty clear.

Now that it has signed the bill, the Administration has apparently decided to show us all just how seriously they take preventing torture in the field. How? By perverting the Army Field Manual:

It’s reported that the Army is forwarding a classified addendum to the new Army Field Manual on interrogation operations. According to these reports, the 10-page addendum provides dozens of examples of what procedures may and may not be used by interrogators, and it informs commanders on the circumstances for their employment…
An addendum to the Field Manual that details secret techniques and sets out secret rules for their employment undermines this entire effort. A secret list such as this contradicts our efforts to demonstrate that we are an open society governed by the rule of law and that the U.S. military respects human rights.

Let me make this clear: the McCain Amendment made the rules outlined in FM 34-52 the governing rules of military interrogation. So the Administration, in response, is changing FM 34-52 — and doing so in such a way that nobody knows what the changes are, except for Administration officials and interrogators in the field.

Why? So they can look Congress in the eye and say “Yes, we comply with FM 34-52” without having to give up torture as a tool of interrogation.

If they truly believe that torture is an indispensable tool, the President should not have signed the bill to which the McCain Amendment was attached; or they should make their changes to the Field Manual out in the open where Congress and the rest of the public can review them. By sneaking them into a classified addendum, the Administration thumbs its nose at Congress’ oversight authority — and, indeed, at the elementary concept of the rule of law.

All so that they can continue to use interrogation methods that are widely agreed to be ineffective at best and counterproductive at worst. As a correspondent of Andrew Sullivan’s memorably put it:

The only observation I felt your essay lacked is this: Torture is the tool of the slothful. The main attraction to those who defend the use of torture is how easily and quickly a suspect can be broken. Unlike other forms of interrogation, torture requires only a small amount of training, no particular understanding of the suspect, and scant concern for the veracity of what is revealed. It requires only the willingness to do to another human being what one would not do to an animal. Understanding torture as the lazy person’s tool makes it a bit more comprehensible why the Bush Administration would be the first in American history to defend the practice.

The lengths to which the lazy will go to avoid having to work are astounding indeed.

“I wish that I could go”

Posted on January 5, 2006

    I LOOK at the swaling sunset
    And wish I could go also
Through the red doors beyond the black-purple bar.
    I wish that I could go
Through the red doors where I could put off
    My shame like shoes in the porch,
    My pain like garments,
And leave my flesh discarded lying
Like luggage of some departed traveller
    Gone one knows not where.
    Then I would turn round,
And seeing my cast-off body lying like lumber,
    I would laugh with joy.

— D.H. Lawrence, “In Trouble and Shame“

Flock of Dodos

Posted on January 4, 2006

My friend Randy Olsen has launched the trailer and the new site for his upcoming documentary on the intelligent design controversy, “Flock of Dodos“. Check it out.

Evil

Posted on January 1, 2006

Have you perchance installed Google Earth lately?

I just downloaded the most recent update and was a little surprised to see this at the end of the installation process (I’ve circled the interesting bit in orange):

Note how “Set Google as my default search engine in Internet Explorer” has been pre-checked for your convenience, so that if you install Google Earth you have to take affirmative action to keep them from switching your search engine too. Nice.

I wonder how long it will be before the GE installer includes options (checked by default, of course) to change your default e-mail service to Gmail and your default IM platform to Google Talk, too?

2005: Good Riddance

Posted on December 29, 2005

So this year’s just about done, and to be completely frank, I can’t put a fork in it fast enough.

2005 has been a pretty depressing year. We’re now coming up to the third year of the war in Iraq, which continues to play out just as badly as I thought it would back in 2002. Osama bin Laden is still at large, four years after 9/11. The January tsunami claimed tens of thousands of lives and displaced entire populations. Genocide and starvation raged in Darfur while the West watched “reality” TV.

Closer to home, the news was no better. Hurricane Katrina wiped away a vibrant American city, maybe forever. Our government embraced torture and degradation as tools of policy. The President claimed sweeping, intrusive powers to surveil us all, with barely a peep of opposition. Deficits continue to mount; incompetence continues to reign.

For me personally, it’s been a long year too. I worked on a variety of projects that mostly turned out less successfully than I’d hoped. I fell for an amazing woman who, for a variety of reasons too tedious to recount here, I can never be with.

And then, of course, there was this, and this.

So yeah. I can’t say I will miss 2005 all that much.

But it wasn’t all gloom and doom; and one of the things I did in 2005 gives me hope for the future. This year was the first time I served as a volunteer teacher for Alexandria’s Computer CORE. This great organization helps recent immigrants and low-income Alexandrians bootstrap their lives by giving them the basic computer skills they need to move from dead-end jobs into careers with a real future. The cost to them is only their time and a negligible administrative fee — and CORE gives them a refurbished computer loaded with office software to take home, to boot.

I spent the second half of the year teaching these skills to a great group of students from around the world. It was an honor and a privilege to do so. Each time our class met — twice a week for five months — I was amazed by the commitment and courage of each individual student. Working with them, getting to know them, would recharge my batteries even on the grayest of days.

A couple of weeks ago, my students graduated. It was truly moving to hear them recount how they had grown since joining the program — and it brought home to me what a special thing it was that I could help them make that happen.

So as I look back on 2005, over all the bad news and missed opportunities, I take some hope for 2006 and beyond from looking at my students. They remind me that within us all is a potential for something great — something that defies expectations — if only we can be brave enough to reach out and grasp it.

If there is hope, it lies in more of us finding that courage within ourselves.

And the Pig-Fucking Continues

Posted on December 29, 2005

Two years ago in this space, I wrote the following:

[F]rom now on, I’m in the market for a new carrier. I’m not picky. Hell, I’ll fly Baron von Richtofen’s Open-Cockpit Bugs-in-the-Teeth Express before I give business to US Airways again. I’ll drive before I fly US Airways again. We are done. US Airways, you are dead to me!

That was a promise I managed to keep until this month. I now have a fresh reminder of why I made the promise in the first place.

(more…)

Where Is America?

Posted on December 22, 2005

By now you’ve probably heard that President Bush authorized the use of the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on American citizens, despite laws clearly prohibiting that.  Not to mention its obvious contravention of the 4th Amendment to the Constitution.

The President justified it thus:

To fight the war on terror, I am using authority vested in me by Congress, including the Joint Authorization for Use of Military Force, which passed overwhelmingly in the first week after September the 11th. I’m also using constitutional authority vested in me as commander in chief.

In the weeks following the terrorist attacks on our nation, I authorized the National Security Agency, consistent with U.S. law and the Constitution, to intercept the international communications of people with known links to al-Qaida and related terrorist organizations…

The activities I authorized are reviewed approximately every 45 days. Each review is based on a fresh intelligence assessment of terrorist threats to the continuity of our government and the threat of catastrophic damage to our homeland.

During each assessment, previous activities under the authorization are reviewed. The review includes approval by our nation’s top legal officials, including the attorney general and the counsel to the president. I have reauthorized this program more than 30 times since the September the 11th attacks, and I intend to do so for as long as our nation faces a continuing threat from al-Qaida and related groups.

In other words, when Congress voted permission for the President to act against al Qaeda, they were giving him permission to do anything he felt would aid that effort — legal or not.

I won’t waste time explaining how the “reviewed every 45 days” argument is a canard — since the reviewers are the President’s men, its silliness should be obvious — but I did want to share the question that has gnawed at me since I learned of this:

Where is America?

The President’s argument is essentially that for the duration of the conflict, he is Caesar — holder of power unbounded by the laws of men.

In the face of this naked assertion of power, I wonder: where is America? Why do we not hear cries for impeachment? Where is the spirit that animated the greatest days of our national life?

Where is the nation whose fathers pledged “our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor” in opposition to unlimited executive authority?

Where is the nation that bred Thomas Jefferson, who said “the Tree of Liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants“?

Where is the nation that endured years of bloody civil war so that all Americans might enjoy the blessings of liberty?

Where is the nation that sent its sons to die at Normandy and Anzio and Iwo Jima so that the world could be free of the jackboot of Fascism?

Are we the same nation as that? Do we have the same spirit as they did? Can we rouse ourselves from our satellite TV and XBox 360 long enough to reaffirm the most basic tenet of the American creed: that unrestrained power is incompatible with the maintenance of a free republic?

Where is America?

In the weeks to come, as we see if the President’s brazen actions bring down any consequences upon him, we will discover the answer to that question.

Great, More Bad News

Posted on December 22, 2005

Oh, this is really encouraging.

The Great Depression. Now In Color

Posted on December 13, 2005

“Negro boy near Cincinnati, Ohio.” Photo 1944 by John Vachon.
Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, FSA-OWI Collection, LC-DIG-fsac-1a34281 DLC.

Over at the Library of Congress they’ve posted a fascinating collection of photos from the Great Depression-World War 2 era.

What makes these photos so interesting is that they’re in color. How many color pictures have you seen from this era before? Almost every picture I’ve ever seen from Depression days was black and white.

It’s amazing how much more of a connection you get with the subjects of the photos — since the photographers were from the Farm Security Administration, they document vividly the stark conditions of the era when the Dust Bowl threatened to swallow middle America whole.

The photos are also currently on display at the Library. I’m gonna have to stop by there sometime and see the exhibit. But thanks to the magic of the Web you can experience it even if you live on the other side of the world from Washington, DC.

World of Warcraft == Spyware

Posted on December 13, 2005

Are you one of the four million players of the popular online game World of Warcraft?

Did you know that it is watching you?

According to Greg Hoglund, co-author of “Exploiting Software, How to Break Code,” this hidden program [installed by WoW] opens every process on a gamer’s computer, from email programs to privacy managers, and sniffs email addresses, website URLs open at the time of the scan, and the names of all running programs—whether or not those programs, emails, or websites could conceivably have anything to do with hacking.

Hoglund disassembled WoW’s spyware component, called “The Warden”, and

… watched the warden sniff down the email addresses of people I was communicating with on MSN, the URL of several websites that I had open at the time, and the names of all my running programs, including those that were minimized or in the toolbar. These strings can easily contain social security numbers or credit card numbers, for example, if I have Microsoft Excel or Quickbooks open w/ my personal finances at the time.

Hoglund has made a utility program he calls “The Governor” available for free download that lets you log the behavior of The Warden.

Blizzard Entertainment, the makers of the game, does not deny that WoW incorporates this code. Their defense? It’s not illegal.

Whether it’s illegal or not, Blizzard should be ashamed of themselves. Lots of other publishers (EA and Valve jump to mind) manage to prevent cheating in their games without resorting to such gross and indiscriminate violations of privacy. There’s no reason why they can’t do the same for WoW.

A Compliment, Of Sorts

Posted on December 9, 2005

Looks like Yahoo! just launched a new service, Yahoo! Answers.

Yahoo! Answers is a place where people ask each other questions on any topic, and get answers by sharing facts, opinions, and personal experiences.

This is actually pretty funny. Back in 1998-99 when the dot.com boom was in full swing, I had an idea for a service that would connect people with questions to people with answers – in other words, this exact thing. (But mine was more sophisticated in that it would allow people to attach micropayments to their questions — i.e. “I’ll pay you $1 to answer this.” Yahoo! Answers looks like it just depends on volunteers.)

I told the idea to my employer at the time and we proceeded to spend a year hacking away on and off at developing it. In the end it never went anywhere, mostly because we were a consulting company and there was no commitment to take hours away from client service to dedicate to this fledgling product. So nobody ever had dedicated time to work on it consistently — which means it was effectively dead in the water. (A lesson that I was too young to have learned before the experience.)

Because I described the service as “Usenet meets Ebay”, we ended up internally referring to it as “JBay” — with the J short for Jason, of course, because I was the one harping away on it all the time.

So now it’s nearly seven years later, I never made a penny off JBay, and I’m sure that God will have Yahoo make a freaking mint off the concept, just to piss me off. Oh well. I suppose I should just be happy to see one of my ideas getting traction somewhere.

Yeah right! Screw that, I want the money.

Yuck

Posted on December 8, 2005

Does anyone else think this product sounds as unappetizing as I do?

Coca-Cola Blak will debut this January in France and then in several other countries, including the U.S., later in the year.
The company described the carbonated beverage as a mix of Coca-Cola and real coffee designed to appeal to adult consumers.

And that name. “Coke Blak”? Ick.

And Now We Scale To New Heights of Ridiculousness

Posted on December 2, 2005

“President Bush has articulated his policy vision more consistently and more eloquently than any President since Lincoln.” — John Hinderaker, Power Line, Nov. 30, 2005

Cloud

Posted on December 2, 2005

Cloud (aka That Cloud Game) is a fascinating free game developed and distributed by students at USC majoring in multimedia production. It takes the inspiration for its gameplay mechanics from the maddeningly addictive Katamari Damacy, but replaces the madcap strangeness of Katamari with a more calm, contemplative aesthetic.

If you like the music in Cloud, you can download it in MP3 format, too. How cool is that?

Highly recommended.

(Also — if you enjoyed Katamari Damacy, the sequel, We ♥ Katamari, has just been released. And if you never played Katamari Damacy… well then, goddammit, you need to play Katamari Damacy already. Yes, it’s that good.)

Firefox 1.5 Is Here

Posted on November 29, 2005

The latest and greatest version of Firefox is hot off the grill and ready for you to download.

There’s lots of nice improvements in 1.5, but the biggest one from my perspective is the new automatic patching system. Once you’ve got 1.5 set up, you won’t ever have to run to mozilla.org to download new versions again — when those new versions come out Firefox will automatically update itself. I’ve used this to upgrade from the betas of 1.5 straight on through to the final release and it’s solid.

So what are you waiting for? Go get it already!