***Dave Does the Blog

Sic Transit Gloria Blogger

I've rebuilt my site in Movable Type, which means two things:

1. I am no longer dependant upon Blogger.com being up and operating (a Good Thing).

2. This is no longer (as of today) my current page.

My new current page is (drumroll, please ...)

http://www.hill-kleerup.org/blog/

So update those links! Click that URL! Check out the all-new, all-different, all- ... well, actually it's got pretty much the same look, but, uh, well, ... the ALL-MOVABLE-TYPE "***Dave Does the Blog"!

(If you still haven't got it, click the link above to go to my new real blog page. And save that page as the link you want to go to, not this one any more. Got it? If not, mail me. I'll try to 'splain.)

(And, no, I don't want to autoforward because some folks haven't read the entries below yet, and I don't want to screw around with importing Blogger stuff to Movable Type, and why don't you just click the link above and be done with it?)

See you on the flip side!

5:59 PM  •  0 comments

Mmm-mmm Good

The Joy of Soup.

Margie's been simmering some turkey soup. I think we're having it tonight. Yum.

10:10 AM  •  2 comments

Next, please?

Downloaded the CityDesk Starter Edition.

Pros

All hail Haengr the Insane!

Get your Viking name. (Unlike the previous version of this one, you actually get asked some questions.)

Also your Cereal Name ("Available in low-brow convenience marts everywhere, it's: Cracklin Choco Crisps!")

Your Hillbilly Name ("Your name is Bobby Joe Winchester but everyone calls you Buster.")

And, of course, your Exotic Dancer Name: ("The stage clears, and all eyes turn to you, The Fantastic Warren Cox.")

(Via Netsloth)

10:01 PM  •  2 comments

The Magically Depopulated Kingdom

The ongoing slump in Florida tourism is forcing major cutbacks at Disneyworld.

Actually, the saddest thing here was the description of the Port Orleans resort, where we stayed in October at the Gartner Group symposium, as "mostly closed." We found Port Orleans to be a fine place, very scenic and quiet, with easy transportation (by land and water) to the various parts of the park. If we were to go back, I'd strongly consider returning there.

Hmmmm. That Port Orleans mug might become a collector's item.

(Via Boing Boing)

9:05 PM  •  0 comments

Bad Dog! Have Another Biscuit!

Evil, evil, naughty Micro$oft! You bad, bad company! You acted monopolistically, leveraged your economic strength to put your competitors out of business -- those you didn't destroy by manipulating your control of the OS. You are a monopoly the likes of which has not been seen since Standard Oil, and you're darned lucky those Bushies decided not to push to break you up.

However shall we punish you, then?

Oh! Well, that Federal settlement is clearly too lax! We several states and various private parties will really hold your feet to the fire! We will! We want you to pay! Pay! Pay!

What's that? Hey ... Bill ... that's a great idea! Rather than making you pay cash, we'll make you do something useful -- like give away a bunch of software! And hardware! Well, it's old hardware -- and fully depreciated -- and it will count as a charitible contribution, so it won't really cost you any money ... but think of all the people it could help!

What's that? Hey, an even better idea! Let M$ contribute it to schools! Schools can always use more computers, right? And M$ can decide which schools, too.

What's that? Oh, just those ingrates from Apple, noting that this is letting Micro$oft flood the educational market, the one market it does not yet dominate, with its own hardware and software, thus creating an established base for future domination of the K-12 world. And noting that M$ will get to choose which schools to contribute to, like, maybe, ones that might buy other peoples' computers. Like Apple's. What a bunch of trouble-makers. What a bunch of spoil-sports!

What a bunch of losers.

(Via LargelyPro)

8:20 PM  •  1 comment

A taxing time

Captain Rooba got screwed over by H&R Block. Find someone else to do your taxes, everyone, assuming that the vagueries of TurboTax, et al., are too much for you.

Pass it on.

6:52 PM  •  1 comment

Decking the halls

Doyce is going all frantic over Christmas decor, since (a) they are in a house finally, (b) they don't have any Christmas decor stuff since they've not been in a house before, and (c) the 'Rents (his) are visiting for the holidays.

Meanwhile, over at the Consortium ... relative laziness reigns.

We're, once again, going off to visit our families miles away this season. (And it looks like we're driving, which will be a post or twelve on its own.) So there's no specific need to do boughs of holly festoonage. Especially since (a) Katherine is too small to appreciate Christmas decor, and (b) Katherine is too small to be around Christmas decor.

Next year will be different. Thanksgiving weekend -- decoration and an artificial tree. (Yes, we're doing the artificial thing. Colorado is just too dry for cut trees, and live trees fare badly after being inside for over 48 hours and then being thrown into the winter again.) Break out two families-worth of decor, and let it snow, let it snow, let it etc.

But this year -- laziness. At least about cleaning and decorating.

About cards and gifts and travel arrangements and work and a zillion other things ... that's a different matter.

5:49 PM  •  0 comments

Searches a-plenty

Searches that found me:

Ironwood+comic
Maxfield+Parish
the+Helena+Standard+dress+form
gorilla+racks
fantasy+art+mage
book+cover+illustration+copyright+infringement

Eclectic 'R' Us.

5:39 PM  •  0 comments

Iraq plays the Israel card

Iraq, definitely feeling that "little red dot" pointing its way, is once again rattling sabers and threatening to destroy Israel if the US attacks it.

Oddly enough, you'd think that would only encourage the rest of the Arab world to support a US attack on Iraq ...

(Via LGF)

3:35 PM  •  0 comments

Actions, meet consequences

You could almost predict the headline. "He’s a really good boy."

That was the reaction by the parents of John Phillip Walker Lindh, 20, who is among the captured Taliban after the prison uprising.

But Walker [his mother] says she was shocked by her son’s statements of support for the Taliban and Osama Bin Laden. She says he had never expressed any interest in the Taliban or a any other militant version of Islam. “If he got involved with the Taliban, he must have been brainwashed,” she says. “He was isolated. He didn’t know a soul in Pakistan. When you’re young and impressionable, it’s easy to be led by charismatic people.”

“I’m proud of John,” [his father] says. “He’s a really good boy. A really sweet boy.”

(Via NextDraft)

9:29 AM  •  0 comments

Flag-waving

Asian Bastard provides a fine rant about mindless flag-waving -- inspired by some doofus in a van, proudly festooned, who showed all-too-common disregard for approaching emergency vehicles, even though everyone else was pulling over.

I could never quite articulate just why all this flag flying bothered me, but now I know: when the display of the American flag becomes a fad, a mindless display, a pompous badge, it turns that act from something noble and purposeful to something as vacuous as wearing a t-shirt with a Nike swoosh. I have more respect for those who burn the flag in protest than guys like Minivan Man; the flag-burners at least recognize the importance of the flag, even if they reject what it stands for.

No one should display the American flag, or any other symbol, unless they mean it; and if they mean it, they should live by it. If we don't, that flag might as well be a Jack in the Box antenna head.

Of course, valor in the face of defending the homeland doesn't necessarily imply intelligence, or even politeness. But it does, on a higher level, imply a moral virtue -- which is, in turn, squandered when you act like a frickin' doofus.

This is certainly not the first rant I've read on this general topic -- how there seems to be an inverse relationship between driving consideration/quality and the likelihood of the vehicle being decorated with a flag, a Jesus-fish, a "Baby On Board" placard, or something similarly implying special status. I don't know if it's true, or if it's simply that such folks are more visible targets of ire. But in either case, it's certainly rant-worthy.

If you're going to make a point of declaring your civic, moral, or paternal virtue -- then follow up your "words" with deeds. Otherwise, you not only deny your beliefs, but you do so in a very public (and therefore damaging to those beliefs) fashion.

Hmmm. Sort of a mini-rant from me, too.

(Via Xkot)

7:31 AM  •  3 comments

Thank God

(Via Scattered Thoughts)

9:27 PM  •  0 comments

Happy Birthday

Today is my Dad's birthday. Happy Birthday, Dad!

9:22 PM  •  0 comments

Because my life is not full of enough projects at the moment

Never mind that, with NaNoWriMo over, my time is only booked about 150%.

Fog Software has released CityDesk, which looks to be a PC-based blogging tool (actually, it can be used for any sort of article publishing, like running a newsletter, a paper, whatever). I've been intermittently unhappy with Blogger's service (and occasional quirks), but haven't been willing to invest in learning a web/CGI-based tool like Movable Type. (And, yes, I know, it's not all that difficult. Still ...).

CityDesk looks like it will have the advantages of (a) being highly WYSIWYG, and (b) letting me do stuff offline and publish later. Both of which are Good Things, IMO.

So I'm gonna check out the free personal edition, to see if it's usable. And, if so ... well, that might make a few things easier than they have been. And, if not ... c'est la vie. In either case, I'll let y'all know.

UPDATE: "The free starter edition is not yet ready for download as of November 29, 2001. Please check this page again in a few days." *Sigh*

9:13 PM  •  2 comments

PunditWatch's Quote of the Week

"In Europe they call it socialism, here we call it a stimulus package."
              --David Brooks

8:52 PM  •  0 comments

A case for wartime censorship?

I am a huge proponent of the First Amendment.

But this story -- about US government policy to quash news about the Japanese "balloon bombs" gives one cause to think. The Japanese, in WWII, launched some 9000 balloons, with various explosives, into the wind currents that would carry them over the US. The idea was to (a) cause massive forest fires in the West, diverting US manpower, and (b) cause mass hysteria among the US population.

About 300 of the balloons are recorded in government records as having actually made it. But the government quashed the story at the time, both to avoid the panic that the Japanese were looking for, and to deny the Japanese the intelligence that the balloons were actually making it (and where they were landing, and what was or wasn't working when they got here).

If it were happening today, I've little doubt folks would be screaming about censorship, about government cover-ups, about the public's right to know. We're more cynical about the government's motivations these days -- with more than a little reason, to be sure. Still ...

Of course, if it were happening today, would we know? And would that be a good thing?

(Via InstaPundit)

8:45 PM  •  0 comments

"It"

Through both intentional and unintentional hype, Dean Kamen's under-wraps invention (initially called "It," and then, "Ginger") because a subject of intense speculation as to what it acutally was earlier in the year. Now it comes out from under wraps.

It's a seriously-cool, one-man, self-balancing, energy-efficient scooter called Segway.

("It won't beam you to Mars or turn lead into gold," shrugs Kamen. "So sue me.")

How cool is it? Check it out.

Developed at a cost of more than $100 million, Kamen's vehicle is a complex bundle of hardware and software that mimics the human body's ability to maintain its balance. Not only does it have no brakes, it also has no engine, no throttle, no gearshift and no steering wheel. And it can carry the average rider for a full day, nonstop, on only five cents' worth of electricity.

[...] Kamen's aspirations are even grander than that. He believes the Segway "will be to the car what the car was to the horse and buggy." He imagines them everywhere: in parks and at Disneyland, on battlefields and factory floors, but especially on downtown sidewalks from Seattle to Shanghai. "Cars are great for going long distances," Kamen says, "but it makes no sense at all for people in cities to use a 4,000-lb. piece of metal to haul their 150-lb. asses around town." In the future he envisions, cars will be banished from urban centers to make room for millions of "empowered pedestrians"--empowered, naturally, by Kamen's brainchild.

Kamen's dream of a Segway-saturated world won't come true overnight. In fact, ordinary folks won't be able to buy the machines for at least a year, when a consumer model is expected to go on sale for about $3,000. For now, the first customers to test the Segway will be deep-pocketed institutions such as the U.S. Postal Service and General Electric, the National Parks Service and Amazon.com--institutions capable of shelling out about $8,000 apiece for industrial-strength models. And Kamen's dreamworld won't arrive at all unless he and his team can navigate the array of obstacles that are sure to be thrown up by competitors and ever cautious regulators.

[...] Exactly how the Segway achieves this effect isn't easy to explain; Kamen's first stab at it involves a blizzard of equations. Eventually, though, he offers this: "When you walk, you're really in what's called a controlled fall. You off-balance yourself, putting one foot in front of the other and falling onto them over and over again. In the same way, when you use a Segway, there's a gyroscope that acts like your inner ear, a computer that acts like your brain, motors that act like your muscles, wheels that act like your feet. Suddenly, you feel like you have on a pair of magic sneakers, and instead of falling forward, you go sailing across the room."

(Via Boing Boing)

3:30 PM  •  1 comment

Geeks and spooks

Here's a transcript of Bruce Sterling's speech at "Global Challenges, Trends and Best Practices in Cryptography," the Information System Security and Education Center, Washington, DC, on 20 November. It's a fascinating story about where we are on cryptography, thus computer privacy.

So: flame on. Here's the story as I see it. The big story about crypto is a power struggle between two American tribes: geeks and spooks. Occasionally innocent people blunder into this situation, but they get lost, either because they don't understand the technology (that's what geeks say) or they're not to pry any further into stuff beyond the reach of mere civilians (that's what the spooks say).

[...] The truer and sadder story of crypto was that the spooks and the geeks both beat the hell out of our democratic process, rendering lawyers, consumers, the Congress, the industry, and the Administration totally irrelevant, and leaving crypto as a blasted technical wasteland, in a kind of Afghan-style feud, where every single party was necessarily a crook, or a scofflaw, or a deceiver, or weirdly suspect, and there was no legitimacy, and no common ground, and still, today, no good method to assemble any.

(Via Boing Boing)

3:10 PM  •  0 comments

"Eat them up, yum!"

Potted Swan

Bone and skin your swan, and beat the flesh in a mortar, taking out the strings as you beat it.

Then take some clear fat bacon and beat with the swan, and when it is of a light flesh-colour, there is bacon enough in it; when it is beaten till it is like dough, it is enough.

Then season it with pepper, salt, cloves, mace and nutmeg, all beaten fine; mix it well with your flesh, and give it a beat or two altogether.

Then put it in an earthen pot with a little clart and fair water, and at the top, two pounds of fresh butter spread over it. Cover it with coarse paste and bake it with bread; then turn it out into a dish. Squeeze it gently to get out the moisture ... and when it is cold, cover it with clarified butter.

"Swan. It's what's for dinner."

2:20 PM  •  0 comments

Big Brother Does the Blog

One unexpected side benefit of switching to a new hit-stats provider (yes, this is another one of those posts ... scroll ahead if you're tired of hearing about it) is that I can put the counter on all my pages, which I've done (hence the hilarity regarding FrontPage).

That lets me see, among other things, what sorts of searches are hitting my other pages. Today's amusement:

What to do, what to do ...

Scientists are looking for ways to take reminder software and move it into the real world.

Such absent-mindedness may be frustrating to you, but to researchers and technology companies, it presents a potential market for memory aids, devices that will deliver reminders based not on calendar entries but where the user is at any given time. Unlike time-based alarms, like the ones used with a digital organizer or an e-mail program, these devices will sound off when you walk by the refrigerator, for example, or the file cabinet, reminding you of the frozen lunch or the printouts you need to carry to work.

To the scientists who are developing them, memory aids are much-needed appliances, the fruit of advances in computing that could improve the lives of many. But to critics, memory aids could well be an example of innovation driving need, an overkill of sensors and sophistication to do the work of Post-its.

11:28 AM  •  1 comment

But without the embarrassing scandals

11:01 AM  •  4 comments

Mutter mutter mutter ...

"Oh, darn, look at that -- my home page still has the Stats4All link on it, not the SiteMeter link. I'd better fix that."

"Oh, my, look at that -- FrontPage has wiped out my comments and archive directories again. Golly."

"Oh, drat, I seem to have burst a blood vessel. Hmmm."

9:14 AM  •  2 comments