Category: Uncategorized

Via Seth Godin, the The Biggest Web Design Mistakes of 2004 from Vincent Flanders. I was pleased to not find any of the sites I’m affiliated with presented as examples of what can go wrong.

Via Slashdot, I found this Ars Technica review of the radioShark. Solid details over four pages, with ample illustrations. I didn’t learn much, to be honest, but I read the whole thing hoping that maybe there was a workaround for the main issue: no guide. There doesn’t appear to be, although in the Slashdot thread, I learned about RadioTime, which is offering a guide, and will (the Slashdot poster said) work with the radioShark soon.

Reality check: I wasn’t using mine regularly before the iMac issues, and since the iMac returned from its bad RAM trip, I haven’t plugged it back in. Also, of all the crazy typographical conventions… radioShark?? I’ll try it again eventually, but I have no time for listening.

From the bookmarks… The Importance of Being Permanent is a guest post by Simon Waldman on the Press Think blog from Jay Rosen.

What makes great news organizations great is not simply the work they do on a given day, but the accumulated quality of work done over weeks, months and years.

The hardest part of everything living forever, though, is the difficulty in understanding how today’s story will be used in the future. How much is each story worth as part of the thread in time? The short answer is: no one knows. The longer answer is: if it’s not available indefinitely, you’ll never find out.

I think about this at work, and – less often – I think about this here, where I write these words for myself and a few others, most of whom are known to me. Most of what I write is of interest only to me… I think of it as a hedge against my lost brain cells. But I also believe that only by plugging away day after day is anything great accomplished, and it’s refreshing to have a record, however incomplete, of what sparked the fingers to life on that day and place in time.

I bounced into the Sharpe series because my previous “ship” (the Aubrey-Maturin series) had landed. But with Sharpe’s Trafalgar, I find myself afloat with a fictional Napoleonic-era English warrior once more. How does the amry hero conveniently end up in the biggest naval battle of the century? Bernard Cornwell wrote on his website:

Sharpe has to go home from India, and he would have left in 1805 and Cape Trafalgar lies on his way home, so why should he not be there at the right time?

Despite my, ahem, education, I knew surprisingly little about Trafalgar, beyond the basic fact that it was a smashing victory for the English fleet. Neither Hornblower nor Aubrey sailed with Nelson in that action, so even my fictional education lacks. Learning about Trafalgar from Cornwell was like learning about enclosure from O’Brian’s Yellow Admiral. Sharpe’s Trafalgar leads with a diagram of the fleet action, and most of the book is just an excuse to get Sharpe on a warship instead of one of the East Indies ships. What is remarkable in retrospect is how slowly the inevitable occurs: once the English fleet had the weather gage, and the decision to enter into battle was made, it took hours for the battle to start and 20 or more minutes before the English could return fire due to their angle of attack. Ouch. Quite a reminder that technology speeds things up, even if the scale of the slaughter was probably not matched afloat until World War II.

I asked a Lazyweb question a couple of weeks ago, wondering aloud whether multiple iPods worked well together on a single computer. Ryan Ozawa found an affirmative answer on the Apple site, and my cousin confirmed this with another family member. Of course, I still don’t have a single iPod, and don’t see a need, but there you are.

The San Francisco Public Library came through with flying colors, sending me email notice that all three of the Sharpe novels I had requested were awaiting my pickup a couple of weeks ago. The first one I read was Sharpe’s Fortress. This novel inserts Richard Sharpe, our British military hero, into the assault on Gawilghur, a massive fortress perched on a cliff, and a narrow neck of land, too. Bernard Cornwell is helpful enough to provide five photos (three on the first page). Story rolls right along, and — as always — it’s interesting to learn that the majority of the tale is true, though of course Mister Sharpe was, ahem, inserted into the proceedings. Both Dodd and Hakeswill (two of Sharpe’s enemies from earlier books) suffer their just desserts here.

While trying to find a picture of Gawilghur, I learned that you can take in other historic spots on the subcontinent in the Indian Mutiny battlefield tour. Hmmm… not sure that name is inspiring, let alone friendly.

Note: thanks to 43 Folders, I’ve learned that RSS feeds are available for “checked-out and on-request books” via ELF. I’ll try this out when I make my next batch of requests.

Until now, Apple’s Software Updates for Mac OS X have been labeled with a date, such as Security Update 2004-12-02. Yesterday, Apple released Security Update 2005-001, the first with a new numbering scheme. Not sure, but may just be security updates, not all software updates… not that it matters.

I noticed this myself, and then saw that it was part of the announcement to the press, which noted that this follows Microsoft’s practice. Do I get points for noticing, or just further confirmation I’m too aware of distinctions without differences?

Steve Rubel calls me out by name in his prediction that tagging will spread everywhere.

At least one major news outlet – perhaps CNET – will also start use tags to organize their stories and feedback. (John Roberts, you listening? I just gave you a free idea!)

Rest assured that I’m aware of folksonomies, even though I prefer social tagging as a label. CNET News.com has an editorially-assigned taxonomy for its stories. I enjoy the serendipity of user-assigned tagging, but I believe there’s plenty more to be done with the consistent meta-data applied by editors before we run out of steam. We have smart people paid to classify stories as part of their busy days. You can take a look at the taxonomy when you register (free) for CNET News.com alerts… try the “topic” alerts to see what I mean, or check the bottom of stories, like this one.

But I’m always listening for interesting ideas.

OK, the week-plus “outage” is over. Turned out to be a bad third-part RAM module, so I’ll be testing Ramjet on their lifetime warranty for a 512MB module shortly.

Blogging from the Apple Store in Corte Madera, where I’m trying to get an iMac problem diagnosed. Been cursing it all weekend… hope this helps. Having a desktop-based blogging software package (Radio) is a problem when you want to blog from another computer, obviously. I’ve backed up the data, but if this requires a new hard drive, etc., I’ll be forced to finally make the switch to WP I’ve been talking about. While I want to make the switch, prefer to do it on my timing.

Update: this post never made it live on January 16, 2005… computer crashed before post was uploaded.