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December 31, 2002

Back in NY

Well, back in NY from RI. Even though it'd been a few days since the snowstorm, it was obvious from the drifts and piles that a LOT more snow had fallen than in RI.

We had our usual late Christmas. I got L a TempurPedic pillow; I received a Griffin PowerMate, which is proving to be pretty nice for scrolling round in web pages and replacing the back/forward buttons, among other things. I have it hooked up to Cee Pee You and now the brightness tracks the CPU load. Nice. Maybe not the front panel of a BeBox, but nice.

December 25, 2002

Now it's snowing

It's finally been snowing here in Providence for about an hour; it's quiet and pretty. We got the White Christmas we wanted, and I guess this wraps up the exciting weather-related stories for the day. Happy holidays again.

Wet Christmas

While it appears to be snowing back in NY, it's still just raining hard here. It was supposed to start snowing late this afternoon, but it's still just raining. It'll probably start snowing hard when we're cross town at dinner.

Merry Xmas

We're safely ensconced in the Providence Marriott, waiting for the big nor'easter to hit ("Buy milk! Buy bread! We could be trapped in the hotel for hours!") D. is playing with the huge Playmobil pirate ship his grandpa and aunt got him for Xmas, L is sleeping on the hotel bed, I am about to watch A Christmas Story after I finish writing this. Life is good. Hope your day is as pleasant.

December 16, 2002

New stuff

I've added a Creative Commons License down there under the blogroll. You might want to too.

December 11, 2002

Retraction

It's since come to my attention that Supernova was not an invite-only conference; I made a mistake. Sorry.

December 10, 2002

It's the freshiest

Good Lord. Not only poetic postmodern spam, but PGP-signed poetic postmodern spam (I've removed the porn site URLs):

From: Nikolas Grimin

Subject: People have transformed beauty into the usual goods which can be sold or bought(5532)

Date: Tue, 10 Dec 2002 16:08:27 -0500 (EST)

People have transformed beauty into the usual goods

which can be sold or bought. For the majority of them

it has taken place imperceptibly. And only ingenious units

still do not search for benefit in this clean and light concept.

To our happiness, photographers of our site - such rare samples

of disinterested service to beauty.

You'll be unable to resist. You'll want to get closer,

to smell that scent of freshness, to feel the softness of skin, to look in eyes...

We have thousands of new freshiest photos in

action you never seen and much more!

The Teeming Millions reply

OK, can I shut up now?

The Readership: We wish you would.

(With apologies to Myles na Gopaleen)

When all you have is an Algol-like OO language...

And what exactly is it with converts to Java? Don't get me wrong. I like Java. Fine language. But I have found that people seem to get it like they get religion. Think they should use it for everything. Full-on object discovery to do global search and replace in a directory. One line and 2 minutes of Perl, with backups. One guy I know, doing Perl apps. Hates Perl. Says he doesn't really know it well. Does everything in the OO Dialect of Perl, complaining the whole time. Yes, OO in Perl is kind of a bag on the side of the language, but hell, what are you doing in a Perl job if you hate it so much? Java Java Java.

There are purposes and programs for which Java is not the best choice. There. I said it.

Like a BigBlog does

Also, I seem to have attracted the notice (relatively minor) of a BigBlog. No offense meant; I just call 'em like I see 'em. I can get a little hotheaded doing so sometimes. Someone's gotta be the Rah-Rah Throttle.

(Like I'm ever getting read again.)

Can you blog me?

Got my first comment spam yesterday, which seems to be a scam much like the "Get your poem published" dodge of print days. Who says the Internet isn't infinitely adaptable? I'll keep it there for a while, until it really annoys me, then I'll delete it.

I'm also attempting self-trackbacking on this. Whee.

UPDATE: Which did not seem to work (the self-trackbacking). I'm trying again. If it doesn't work this time, I'm giving it up. Otherwise it'd get recursive all over your ass.

December 9, 2002

More of the same

That ol's sycophant Doc is also at Supernova (emphasis mine):

Kevin is introducing the Supernova conference. Decentralization is the theme. The energy in the room is fun, attentive... nice. So many people I really dig here. Can't begin to name them all (follow the link above). He's talking about What's Happening Now as something akin to a star exploding. It's that big a deal. Makes me think of a bomb going off in space; hence the subhead above. Anyway, rather than cover what speakers are saying (others will, I'm sure), I'll just gurge a few thoughts as they come along.

This is what "realtime blogging" has come to. Imagine if you opened the Times tomorrow and the lead graf of a story said:

Since this has probably already been covered by the Washington Post, we'll just talk about some random stuff in this space.

This sort of thing - along with the goodly amount of blogdropping going on - make me suspect that this is not so much about the conference as it is about exclusivity - i.e. I'm here, you're not. Which ties in interestingly to the brouhaha surrounding Shelley's astute call of the same on Clay Shirky's Social Software Summit. Shelley annoys all the right people in my book, which always happens when someone speaks truth to power.

I know you are, but what am I?

Dave Winer offers intelligent commentary at the Supernova conference:

These guys lie. Why they're speaking at this conference is a mystery to me. They make it complicated to justify their pricetags. The IBM guy is speaking right now.

This is journalism? This is valuable? Where's the disclaimers on this? Where's the context, even? This is not a revolution in journalism, this is a hissy fit with a Post button.

December 7, 2002

Better late than never

Well, weeks after everyone else has, I imagine, I have finally upgraded this site to version 2.51 of Movable Type. Go thou and do likewise if you're even more procrastinated than I am.

Really, I intend to write more real soon. Honest.