L33tMail™ HotBrown™ Approved!

||Monday, June 30, 2003||

After a lot of good times with family and exasperation with same, the room is done. Julia was suitablely impressed. Although someone leaked the story to her so she was not surprised. GRRRR! I'm trying to get pictures up, but I can't seem to get InfraRed to work on my laptop.

There's all kinds of politics and buzz and buzz in the world of Weblogging Tools and Technology right now, but none of you are geek enough to care. Even if you don't care about the technology its interesting to see a full on G33k argument over tools and The Right Way To Do It occur publicly across several 'blogs, comments, forums, and at least one wiki. It is every bit as vituperative and spiteful as any discussion I have ever had behind closed doors with another tech that involved a disagreement over How To Do It Right. Yes, capitols are VERY necessary in these discussion, you can hear them enunciated when you're having these arguments. A certain diminutive Indian (dots, not feathers) comes to mind as I write this. Great guy, but a technological bumbler with whom I had many many many Capitol Letter Arguments.

The heart of this weblogging discussion revolves around trying to ditch the tools already in place because they are under the (semi) control of a man with great ideas and a strong personality. None other than Dave Winer, the man behind RSS, XML-RPC, and the Meta Weblog API. He has evangelized these products and quite a few weblogging tools use them. Almost everyone syndicates vis-a-vis RSS, but now, suddenly people have decided (somewhat illogically in my opinion) that RSS isn't good enough and new standard is needed. Right now the tentative name is Echo. You can read more about it here and here.

By the way, the direct tie in here is where I said earlier this month that Weblog software makers and the community surrounding them cannot afford to dick around. Tearing up the pavement and starting over definitely qualifies as dicking around. Watch, while the community argues about RSS vs ECHO and wastes time implementing a new spec, and an API built around that spec Microsoft will do something like release a new version of FrontPage that has a weblog module that creates an RSS page, and possibly has an RSS aggregator in it that works best with MS styled RSS, and/or Outlook Express will have an update to it that functions as an Aggregator and again works best with MS styled RSS.

Meanwhile in Weblog Tool Land there will be the massive sound of ships crashing onto the shore of Useless Technology as Microsoft sails past them in classic Embrace Extend Extinguish style.


Posted by: Pat Rock on 6/30/2003 12:36:52 PM PermaLink
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||Thursday, June 26, 2003||

Synchopath, its funny. I promise. Please be careful while surfing at work.


Posted by: Pat Rock on 6/26/2003 10:44:12 AM PermaLink
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Installing the new Google Toolbar also forces you to migrate your blog to the new version of blogger, which, *gasp* appears to fix the permalink problem. JOY!


Posted by: Turgon S. on 6/26/2003 09:43:02 AM PermaLink
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Blogger and Google start to integrate with a new Google Toolbar that integrates "Blog This" functionality, also includes a nifty pop up blocker. Over all pretty cool. Just made it that much harder for me to leave Blogger in favor of another weblog tool.


Posted by: Turgon S. on 6/26/2003 09:40:59 AM PermaLink
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||Tuesday, June 24, 2003||

via Brad, I'd like to present you with Clown Camp. Those of you who know me in real life should get a pretty good kick out of that. Those of you that don't. Well, just be amazed at some of the weirdness that drifts around in the Christian sub-culture.


Posted by: Turgon S. on 6/24/2003 11:14:39 AM PermaLink
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Posting may be sporadic (not a big change there), as I am totally gutting and re-doing our master bedroom this week. Drywall, new floors, and paint.


Posted by: Turgon S. on 6/24/2003 10:16:15 AM PermaLink
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||Friday, June 20, 2003||

Brad is criticising my idea for the Human Solidarity Movement. He's got some good points. I wasn't really out to set the world on fire, I was just posting an idea. A sort of ethical stance. Brad seems to want to see something a little more practical, like an actual twelve step plan for living a more Human Solidarity centered life of less consumerism. Brad seems to think that I should back up my words a little bit.

Little does he know my commitment to apathy.


Posted by: Turgon S. on 6/20/2003 12:50:53 PM PermaLink
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Hmm the permalinks function is broken for some reason. I never paid attention to it before so I don't know how or if worked, but after scanning google it appears that it started in April. The problem is that it only understands permalinks as links in your archive page. So if you haven't republished your archive lately then later permalinks will default to the last published archived post.

There are several workarounds, the most common one being to just simply re-publish your Blogger archives after every time you post. Other fixes include little bits of javascript, and/or php, asp, cfm etc... Either way.


Posted by: Turgon S. on 6/20/2003 09:54:41 AM PermaLink
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||Wednesday, June 18, 2003||

The Human Solidarity Movement

You know what hit me this week as I was driving to work? The fact that I am squarely middle class, driving to work, and living in America means that I effectively hit the NBA draft in terms of being born. I imagine the percentages must be at least somewhat similar. Being born into relative prosperity in America/Western Europe or being born in, well, the rest of the world. Some parts of Asia are excepted from this. I take all this for granted, and yet its only by complete chance that I'm not waking up right now staring into the eyes of homicidal maniac from the next tribe over who is intent on killing me for obscure trival rivalries!

How do we even start to fix this? Obviously all of the good intentions of the UN and the West combined are not enough to even begin the process of massive wealth re-distribution that needs to occur in this world just to keep people from starving. And even if by some amazing miracle we could get the process of levelling the economic playing field started we are still faced with the problem that for some of these people hate is such a part of them that no amount of wealth or economic security in the world would take away their need to avenge themselves, to impose themselves on others, to find someone to kill.

I toyed with an idea for a while that I was calling The Human Solidarity Movement, and it was based around the idea that those of us in living in wealthy countries would attempt to live life in solidarity with what most of humanity lives with. We would stop pursuing materialistic goals, live below our means, and re-direct our excess resources into channels that could help the worlds poor.

I'm not talking about communism. I am simply talking about expressing our commonality with the rest of humanity through choosing a lifestyle of sympathy and solidarity with what the vast majority of the world endures on a daily basis. Its a work in progress.


Posted by: Turgon S. on 6/18/2003 11:16:10 PM PermaLink
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||Tuesday, June 17, 2003||

Thousands of Harry Potter books stole. HA!


Posted by: Turgon S. on 6/17/2003 11:15:39 AM PermaLink
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Well, I certainly wasn't expecting that. Yesterdays link from Dave certainly boosted the traffic. It was the single highest day in Aquadoodiloop's life. Easily ten times my daily average. Heh. I almost fell out of my seat at work when I saw my little weblog linked on Scripting News.

What I had to say was in earnest though. I truly think that weblog software has the potential to put the web back where it belongs. In the hands of users as a means of disseminating information. Weblogs and the info they contain daily recreate for me my first Aha! web surfing experience. The experience that made me fall in love with the web. Let me tell you about it:

In 1995 our small college had one PC in the computer with a working modem. I was one of only two in the entire college that really understood what it was and how it worked. I sat down and signed up for a free account with a local dial-up co-op thing called TriState Online. You got your free account, and then you could dial up and check email and surf their message boards. You could also telnet out from their server to a server at Cornell University that would then give you access to the WWW through Lynx a text only browser. That was ok, there wasn't much to see on the Web then besides text information.

I had been using TriState Online for quite a while to email friends at real universities, but I hadn't used it for much more. Then one day at work a co-worker and I got into an argument about the origins of Ska music. That night after emailing a couple of friends I got online with Lynx and typed in lynx yahoo.com. I entered my search query: ska music origins. And in a single heave of green screen there it was! An entire screen of links to information about ska. I found all of my questions answered at a page with a timeline detailing ska record releases all the way back to Desmond Dekker's Isrealites. They even had a page detailing Jimmy Cliff's Rude Boy film, The Harder They Come.

It was all revealed to me in a single gestalten flash That This Was The Future. And I never looked back. The web is my dictionary, my encyclopedia, my programming reference guide, my network support and administration guide, my newspaper, my hotshot mainline of information being sucked down and gobbled up by my greedy eyes at 3000kbps.

Over the last two years as weblogs have emerged as a major player they have become the main thing I read. They frequently reproduce me for that Aha! feeling as a I crawl their links, discussions, and comments learning more about things in a way I never thought possible. A sort of collaborative link fest with running commentary.

That's why I am a believer in weblogs. That's why I run a weblog (as pathetic and infrequently updated as it might be). Because I believe. And so I whole heartedly oppose domination of the weblog space by MS or anyone else, and wholeheartedly embrace standards that will allow us to write weblog software with interop baked in. It seems so clear to me that this is important because Interop is just another level synergy linked into the synergy of community already inherent in weblogging.

I'll say it like this: Interop will allow us to push weblogging into a space of usefullness and capability that will roll your local libraries, civic centers, and town halls into a single unified whole that will be so much greater than the sum of its parts that we will forget the old way of doing things as readily as our parents left behind mules and horses for tractors and cars.

It will only be possible if we push now for some basic standards baked into products to create and foster an environment in which Interop is simply second nature to the way we design and write our tools.


Posted by: Turgon S. on 6/17/2003 10:25:54 AM PermaLink
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||Monday, June 16, 2003||

Open Letter to Weblog Developers:

[Dave Winer , the developer of Userland Software asked me to post this. It grew out of a short email discussion about his comment on Microsoft RSS not being funky.]

Dave [Or any developer/user/consumer of weblogging software],

I was the hardware operations side of rolling out software written by our developers onto our servers for our customers for a long time. Its given me a unique perspective on the nature of client-server apps, developers, and users.

I love working with the hardware, but I am fascinated with the theory, practices, methods of software design and deployment.

I can't say that I totally understand all that you and your competitors/cohorts discuss, but one thing I understand completely is that Microsoft, and Bill Gates, has the heart of an assasin. They will smile at you and cut your heart out while you shake their hand and sign the contract giving them permission to do it.

I don't villify MS for doing this, btw, its the nature of business.

What this adds up to is that anyone in a space that MS wants to occupy, which is to say every space that involves a user and technology, does not have time to dick around. They do not have time to dick around in regards to their own business, and they do not have time to dick around with others in their space.

As weblogs and the software that drives them is a community, then there is no doubt that the best thing to do is help each other in order to drive the space in the direction that the community wants. This can only happen by locking MS out by creating 500 Pound gorillas in the weblog space. Because none of you, MT, Blogger, Userland, has the financial backing that MS has, the only way you can achieve this is to use synergy to create a family of communities and software that is the defacto STANDARD for the weblogging space. And then vigilantly guarding and innovating for that space.

Unfortunately the very nature of programmers stands in the way. I admire your attempts to accomplish this. I wish you guys (in the collective sense of MT, Blogger, Userland) the best of luck.

Sincerely,
Pat Rock


Posted by: Turgon S. on 6/16/2003 12:03:34 PM PermaLink
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||Friday, June 06, 2003||

There's something about trying to move your house while you have a sprained ankle. And when I say sprained ankle I don't mean, "Ouch I twisted my ankle." I'm talking, "Tony Boggan just sprained his ankle and won't be able to play in the next game of the NCAA championship thus causing the Kentucky Wildcats to lose miserably to a Conference USA Team." That's the kind of sprained ankle I have. My toes are BRUISED! My entire foot was black and blue and swollen.

But I got a neat air cast thingy.

I had a strange experience with the whole sprained ankle thing. I am reluctant to talk about it, a voice inside my head is telling me treasure the moment and keep it to myself, but another part of me wants to speak about it. So here goes.

My parents came up the day after we moved to help with some stuff. After we had finished I was in the living room talking to my dad, and I was taking off the air cast to adjust it. When Dad saw my foot he leaned over and touched it gently with his hand. His touch was so gentle. Those of you who know Dad don't often associate him with gentle. Certainly my stories don't bring out that side of him. But its there. And I was reminded by that touch, that my Dad is not always Mr. Badass, and that he is gentle, a man with boundless love and affection, and gentleness for his family. And also that he's not afraid to show it.

He's a bundle of paradoxes no doubt, but he's my dad and I love him. He'll never read this, because he doesn't even know this site exists, but I feel better about writing this memory down.


Posted by: Turgon S. on 6/6/2003 12:54:31 PM PermaLink
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