Quick-load Bike Racks

Joe Kochanowski's Homebuilt Bents

Grunge Fonts New Page

MetaTalk | Community Weblog: "Question for all you writers out there: how do you keep from getting distracted? What's your technique to get into the zone, focus, and let the verbiage just flow? Any and all help would be appreciated.
"

International News Article | Reuters.com: "WE WANT BUSH TO WIN

The statement said it supported President Bush in his reelection campaign, and would prefer him to win in November rather than the Democratic candidate John Kerry, as it was not possible to find a leader 'more foolish than you (Bush), who deals with matters by force rather than with wisdom.'"

Composer Ellsworth Hall's EllsMusicNet

KEYBOARD REPORTS: Korg MS2000: "Bottom Line: The MS2000 is among the most impressive virtual-analog synths that have come along during the past five years. I knew Korg had something special as soon as I laid my hands on it at last February's L.A. NAMM show. It's packed with expressive and inspirational preset patches, it provides a generous complement of knobs, buttons, and LEDs, and its vocoder, mod sequencer, and arpeggiator are ready for musical exploration by the novice as well as the seasoned synthesist. Perhaps most impressive is the fact that Korg brought all these goodies to market at such an affordable price. Altogether it's such a great package that we're honoring it with our Key Buy award."

EyeHome Macintosh PVR | PVRblog: "In my dream world, I would take the iPod user interface, controls and screen and put them on a remote control. That remote would control a box (like the EyeHome), and would allow you to play your music, movies and photos, but the entire control interface would be on the iPod (sans storage) remote. Let's hope Apple or someone makes it for us."

MSNBC - Are you a 'flexitarian?': "Pugh is one of a growing number of part-time vegetarians whose loose adherence to the meat-free diet is transforming a decades-old movement and the industry that feeds it.

'I really like sausage'
These so-called “flexitarians” — a term voted most useful word of 2003 by the American Dialect Society — are motivated less by animal rights than by a growing body of medical data that suggests health benefits from eating more vegetarian foods.

“There’s so many reasons that people are vegetarians ... I find that nobody ever gives me a hard time when I say I usually eat vegetarian. But I really like sausage,” Pugh said."

TECHWR-L Mailing List Archive: "Searching the 'Complete Site' or 'All TECHWR-L Archives' is time-consuming, as it searches through nearly 160,000 documents and messages. Consider a more restrictive search."

HCIRN > Introduction: "The aim of this tutorial is to provide an introduction to typography. Typography is defined as

the art of designing printed matter

the appearance of printed matter

There are many different types of printed matter, books, brochures, newsletters and many more. This tutorial focuses on technical documents.

Typography is relevant for user interface designers from two perspectives. Firstly, user interface design often includes the presentation of text on a display. Although typography is mainly concerned with printed matter, it provides valuable guidance for these situations. Secondly, user interface design involves to a large degree documenting and communicating designs, usually on paper. Knowledge of typography can aid this process."

web zen: "typographic zen
"

Summary: Word vs. Frame: "This summary lists pros and cons for using FrameMaker or Word for creating large documents or books. The general consensus of techwhirlers is that FrameMaker is better-suited than Word for large documents and for creating a single-source documentation set."

Welcome to AJC!: "Jeff rarely speaks in a logical manner, if at all. But his mother recalls one painful moment last fall when he did speak.
The family had piled into their SUV and driven to the Stone Mountain foster home to spend a few hours with Jeff and take him to a nearby Taco Bell for lunch. When they arrived to pick him up, Kathi walked into the house.
'OK, Mommy,' he said when he spotted his mother. 'I'm ready to go home.' "

Ask MetaFilter | Community Weblog

Great thread on Google-Fu!

Ask MetaFilter | Community Weblog: "A friend paid much of his college tuition by buying discounted clothing at Abercrombie outlet and then selling it on eBay. He could usually clear $20/shirt and $30/pair of pants.

I see a lot of stuff that people purchased as overstock/clearance merchandise that they can sell as 'new in box' or 'new with tags.'"

Water Filtration Systems - Health and Fitness - Healthy Water - Shower Water Filtration Systems - Drinking Water Filtration Systems - Shower Filters - Filters vs Purifiers

Dems attack videos promoting Medicare law / Bush administration pays actors to pose as TV journalists: "Washington -- Congressional investigators are scrutinizing television segments in which the Bush administration paid people to pose as journalists praising the benefits of the new Medicare law, intended to help elderly Americans with the costs of their prescription medicines.

The videos, a hybrid of advertising and journalism, are intended for use in local television news programs.

Several of the videos include pictures of President Bush receiving a standing ovation from a crowd cheering as he signed the Medicare drug-benefit law on Dec. 8.

The materials were produced by the Department of Health and Human Services, but the source is not identified. Two videos end with the voice of a woman who says, 'In Washington, I'm Karen Ryan reporting.'

But the production company, Home Front Communications, said it had hired Ryan to read a script prepared by the government."

FrameMaker Tutorial: Graphics: "The following tutorial shows you how to use the drawing tools included with FrameMaker to create simple graphics. You will use different commands such as drawing, selecting, aligning, distributing, and grouping to create the sample illustration shown in samples.exe. (If this self-extracting zip file doesn't work for you, contact the e-mail address at the bottom of this page.) Other tutorials focus on the basics, styles, templates, tables, cross-references, book building, variable text and conversion techniques. These tutorials only get you started; if you have more in-depth needs, see the Adobe FrameMaker User Guide or Adobe FrameMaker Classroom in a Book."

Ask MetaFilter | Community Weblog: "It might depend on what sort of documents you're filing. As an academic I use labelled banker's boxes for stuff I know I'm going to need. Everything I file has a good chance of being needed for articles in the future (but I don't know which), so I use a referencing software (Endnote). As I'm entering things into Endnote I put the name on the file into the keywords section. Using other keywords also gives me a fair chance of spotting stuff thats relevant from different boxes. This method does require some discipline.
"

Ask MetaFilter | Community Weblog: "I've got new responsibilities at work, and now I have to [shudder] actually file paper. I'm a visual person, and once I stick stuff in files, I forget about it. But the alternative seems to be piling paper and then watching coworkers gasp in horror when they poke their head in the door. Any tips that work for you? Should I just throw it all away and pretend it got lost? Do I really have to file each piece of paper in 10 seconds or less?
"

NEJM -- Comparison of Intensive and Moderate Lipid Lowering with Statins after Acute Coronary Syndromes

FedEx Express | Tracking | Results Detail

Drew Curtis' FARK.com: "AOL, Yahoo, and Microsoft sue hundreds of spammers for violating new anti-spam law. Spammers promise ISPs a bigger penis, home mortgage and debt consolidation if they drop the charges"

Drew Curtis' FARK.com: "CIA Director Tenet warns Congress that al Qaeda is planning 'spectacular attacks' against the U.S. Donald Rumsfeld is calling it a 'Must see!' Tom Ridge says, 'If you see just one terror attack this year... see this one!'"

Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years: " 'Everyone can be taught to sculpt: Michelangelo would have had to be taught how not to. So it is with the great programmers'."

RNC moves to stop Bush In 30 Seconds Ad Campaign | Metafilter: "Meanwhile, the GOP is also at work harassing other candidates directly.

Why isn't Karl Rove just having everyone killed? Is there a laziness factor involved, or does he need to feel sportsmanlike about all this?
"

Police reports give details of activities at BYU players' home :: The Daily Herald :: Your town. Your neighbors. Your newspaper.: "Police reports give details of activities at BYU players' home
Thursday, February 19, 2004 - 12:00 AM
Dave Allen THE DAILY HERALD |



Sexual activity during a late-night party at a house shared by several BYU football players 'got a little bit out of hand,' a woman involved told Provo police, including group sex with seven or eight men that was witnessed by a number of 'onlookers. '

Two police reports obtained by the Daily Herald through a public records request detailed the woman's initial allegation of rape and her later admission to police that the sexual activity had been consensual.

One report, dated Feb. 9, adds that the mother of one of the players on the football team contacted police with concerns that her son had 'happened into the party,' had 'witnessed several individuals having sex' and that there had been indications of threats from other players."

Police reports give details of activities at BYU players' home :: The Daily Herald :: Your town. Your neighbors. Your newspaper.: "Police reports give details of activities at BYU players' home
Thursday, February 19, 2004 - 12:00 AM
Dave Allen THE DAILY HERALD |



Sexual activity during a late-night party at a house shared by several BYU football players 'got a little bit out of hand,' a woman involved told Provo police, including group sex with seven or eight men that was witnessed by a number of 'onlookers. '

Two police reports obtained by the Daily Herald through a public records request detailed the woman's initial allegation of rape and her later admission to police that the sexual activity had been consensual.

One report, dated Feb. 9, adds that the mother of one of the players on the football team contacted police with concerns that her son had 'happened into the party,' had 'witnessed several individuals having sex' and that there had been indications of threats from other players."

7Online.com: Johhny Depp: Different's Fine with Me: "Depp told the latest edition of Time magazine that in the 1980s he was so desperate to get out of playing heartthrob detective Tom Hanson on Fox's '21 Jump Street' that he purposely wore odd clothes and spoke in tongues on the set.

The producers, though, didn't buy the nutty routine.

'It was a weird thing not to be in control of your own image,' he said. 'I remember saying to myself, Man, when I'm free of this, I'm going to do only the things that I want to do. I'm going to go down whatever road I decide.'"

CNN.com - 3 Doors Down member charged - Mar 8, 2004: "Todd Harrell, 32, was charged with simple assault following the Friday dispute at the Cheap-O-Deep-O in Moss Point, near the band's hometown of Escatawpa on Mississippi's Gulf coast.

The carrier, Ronnie Boulware, 53, told investigators Harrell got out of his vehicle, struck him three times in the face and kicked him in the groin after he and his wife confronted the rocker.

Boulware told police he then got a handgun from his vehicle and threatened Harrell with it. Boulware was charged with exhibiting a weapon during the dispute.

Moss Point police Lt. Chuck Coleman said Boulware told officers that Harrell took three newspapers from the coin-operated newspaper stand, but paid for only one.

However, Harrell's attorney, Paul Benton, said the rocker entered the store to get change and then legally bought the newspapers that Boulware said were stolen."

Gizmodo: "But just when I hate this thing, they have to go and do something ingenious, in two parts: first, by requiring a biometric authorization to use the device (a simple thumbprint scan -- before you get freaked out, think of it as practice for shopping at Satan's grocery store)"

engadget.com - www.engadget.com: "Microsoft’s research lab is tooling around with a prototype of a digital camera you wear around your neck and which snaps up to 2,000 photos thoughout the day. It can even react to bright lights or sudden movements, or take more shots when your heart rate increases by guessing that something you might want to record is going on. Hopefully they’re working on some software that’ll help you make sense of all the thousands of photos you’ll be collecting — otherwise having so much a massive visual record of your life will be pretty much worthless. "

Ask MetaFilter | Community Weblog: "Depending on how much stuff you have to collect, it can be a good idea to use a system of dividing each file in your filing cabinet into years (calendar or financial, whichever suits you best) and then, when the time comes to either archive or clean out your files, you can just take the (for example) folders that are more than 2 years old and archive/toss them. As with filing things straight away, it makes the job of clearing out files much quicker and therefore more likely to be done. An almost anal level of organisation will pay off when it comes to filing.
posted by dg at 2:14 PM PST on March 4



Files don't work for me either -- I have to have things visually accessible to remember them, with few exceptions.

Cubbyhole-type filing is supposedly best for visually-oriented people. An organizer with little cubbyholes allows you to see the different items while still organizing them into something less messy than piles."

Ask MetaFilter | Community Weblog: "Alternatively, just delete your old mail, since you know you're never going to look at it again anyway.

I have a folder called 'Saved Messages' into which I drag messages I explicitly deem worthy of saving. Most everything else gets automatically deleted no more than 90 days after I receive it -- sooner for some folders (e.g. spam only lasts a week). There are a few folders I prune manually (e.g. folders for particular projects I'm working on). Periodically I even prune the 'Saved Messages'; I probably don't need those registration codes for Mac OS 9 shareware anymore, for instance.

Attachment to things you don't really need is the root cause of suffering. Letting go is the path to contentment."

addictive

Payback on those Nigerian Email Scammers: "Dearest Father Franck:

I would be willing to supply the 30 percent if you can provide me with
the following answers to assuage my fears. I would have to give you access
to our computers here at Yoyodyne, which apart from handling who can
and cannot access our money, also contains plans for such things as the
new and improved Ocsillation Overthruster, so bear with my questions,
even if they seem odd to you:

1. Please tell me the precise date of the tragic accident.
2. Are you now, or have you ever been affiliated with an organization
called the Hong-Kong Cavaliers? "

Yahoo! News - Tall Californians Come Up Short in Airline Lawsuit: "SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Tall people will have to go on feeling a bit cramped while riding on airplanes.




 


A California Court of Appeals panel rejected a lawsuit against several airlines, including American and Southwest, by the Tall Club of Silicon Valley which sought preferential seating in roomier exit rows for men at least 6 foot, 2 inches and women at least 5 foot, 10 inches."

News: "While further evidence has emerged since the paper was published linking the bowel disease with autism, subsequent research has failed to confirm a link with the MMR vaccine.


The move leaves Dr Wakefield, who has pursued his campaign against MMR for at least 10 years, more isolated than ever. He has the support of only one of the original 13 researchers, Peter Harvey, a retired consultant neurologist."

Development Leadership Network: "PRIVATE INVESTMENT

A 1991 Federal Reserve Bank study of 6.4 million home mortgage applications by race and income found that commercial banks rejected black applicants twice as often as white applicants, and three times more often in some cities including Chicago, Minneapolis, Boston and Philadelphia. When taking income into account, the study found that the poorest white applicant was more likely to be get a mortgage loan than a black applicant in the highest income bracket. Bankers argued against the study’s credibility, saying that credit history was not taken into account. The Federal Reserve then went on to study other factors including credit worthiness, and found that minority mortgage applicants had, on average, greater debt burdens and weaker credit histories. When taking these factors into account, black and Hispanic mortgage applicants were about 60% more likely to be denied loans – reducing the disparity but not eliminating it.
"

EMPolitics.com: "A few people have told me over the years that David Lifferth keeps lists and files on people. I usually chuckled at the thought, thinking that not even David would be that anal. I was wrong. In fact, a couple weeks ago someone that recieved one of 'Lifferth's Lists of Wrong-doing' emailed it to me. It's from February of 2003, after the CC meeting where Madsen wanted to hand $25k to Kelvin.

The opening paragraph is a hoot, IMO. To quote Mr. Lifferth:

'Attached is the list you requested during our 40 minute conversation on Friday February 14, 2003. This is not the comprehensive list. And just as the U.S. won't show the Iraqis all of their physical evidence or military intelligence, I am not going to show but a glimpse of what I have. I do want elected officials to know that they will be held accountable for their actions while they should be representing their constituents.' "

Wired News: U.S. Users Give It Up for the Net: "Seeking to confirm the notion that the Internet is a mostly democratic tool, a just-released study says that nearly half of American Internet users have contributed online content in one form or another.


Yet while the report highlights such impressive numbers, it also points out that most people who post content online are highly educated and highly paid, and post infrequently."

New Scientist: "Do you do any special training to keep your nose in shape?




I don't have any nose exercises or anything like that. It's all raw talent. I try to stay away from some of the stinky odours. I've got four grandchildren and when my wife's changing their diapers I try to stay far enough away from her to avoid the smell, because I try not to shock my nose.



What kind of things do you smell?




Anything that goes inside the capsule. We do things like paints, magic markers, ink, fabrics, epoxies. We've done circuit boards, wires, socks, tennis shoes, shaving cream. We used to do a lot of female products. We did deodorised and non-deodorised tampons. We also did adult diapers. The astronauts wear diapers when they are out doing their space walks and that type of thing. We did a guitar and a case. We did toy animals like Chuckie Bear and Barney."

BYU probes sex, liquor activities at players' home :: The Daily Herald :: Your town. Your neighbors. Your newspaper.: "While the police investigation was dropped, any student parties involving sex and alcohol would violate BYU's honor code, which prohibits drinking and premarital sex, among other things.

BYU football coaches held a lengthy team meeting Friday to discuss BYU's honor code. The coaches were described as angry.

Brathwaite, BYU's starting running back, was suspended before BYU's season finale in November for an unspecified honor code violation. Neither he nor Allen, a starting safety, could be reached for comment Tuesday. Watkins, a prized wide receiver who enrolled in January, said, 'I have nothing to say. I didn't have no involvement.'

Two women, who asked not to be identified, told the Daily Herald they attended several parties with BYU football players and recruits. They said alcohol flowed freely and football players made sexual advances.

One of the women, speaking of the party police investigated, said she advised other female attendees to 'stay together.'

'I told the girls to stay together,' she said. 'I said 'Don't worry, they're nice guys, but unless you want to do stuff, stay together.' '"

For a History of Technology Education:: "While it may be philosophically sound to do contextualist history of technology education, practically it is difficult because of the time required to assimilate the social context, technology, and educational practice of a given time period. Initially, technology educators might start by writing in-depth articles that focus on specific aspects of the heritage of technology education, but at the same time, include sufficient background material to emphasize relationships between education, technology, and society. This represents a kind of middle ground, that is, internalist studies but presented in context.

Narratives and Systems
The second historiographical issue in this paper concerns narrative versus systems interpretations. This issue was addressed through a debate format in three articles in Technology and Culture on the strengths and weaknesses of narrative versus systems theory as organizing methods in historical writing (Buchanan, 1991; Law, 1991; Scranton, 1991)."

Wired News: Apple Fans, Do You Feel Lucky?: "The Disinfotainment blog has video of a near riot as 16,000 young women storm a popular Tokyo clothes store, a scene described as 'materialism run amok.'


At the Apple store, Johnson failed to explain why anyone who wants an iPod mini would spend the exact purchase price on a grab bag that had a good chance of not containing one.


In Japan, a fukubukuro purchased at the Apple store by shopper Keita Suyama (report here: scroll down) contained six items, including an iSight camera, a Bluetooth USB adaptor, Bluetooth mouse, Apple's Keynote presentation software, a package for the .Mac online services and a 10 percent discount card for the store. The bag cost 27,000 yen (about $250) and Apple claimed the goods were worth 62,000 yen ($570)."

White Mountain Half Marathon Home

Extra-credit: evaluate this website using the online form. Then send me a note (one paragraph) with your impressions of the site.

Thanks!

Player, Attack Thyself - Why Japanese gamers love avenging Pearl Harbor. By Clive Thompson: "It's a great game, but as I frantically emptied my M1911 .45-caliber pistol into the chest of yet another Japanese solider, I began to wonder what the hell Electronic Arts is smoking. They released this game in Tokyo? What do the Japanese think?

As it turns out, they love it. Japanese reviewers gave Medal of Honor: Rising Sun a thumbs-up, praising the 'extremely intense' action. Electronic Arts affirms that the game is selling well in Japan. "

Eagle Mountain council turns to sheriff's officers to help keep a lid on city meetings :: The Daily Herald :: Your town. Your neighbors. Your newspaper.: "After written complaints from four residents and at least one instance of a resident getting too close to Mayor Kelvin Bailey, Sgt.Jo Murphy, who oversees patrol in Eagle Mountain, is adding police protection to the meetings and warning that outbursts won't be tolerated.

After one resident approached the Mayor during a council meeting and they began to slow dance, local law enforcement decided they had seen enough."

KSL News: Deputy to Attend Eagle Mountain Council Meetings: "Some murmuring at public meetings is expected, but things were getting a little too heated, she said.

'It occurs in every city where people with strong feelings express them, but when it is at the possible detriment of the meeting, it's not OK,' she said. 'We have had several city council meetings where individuals have felt assertive enough to actually approach the council. We felt like it was creating a problem.'

Besides police protection, furniture in the council chambers has been reconfigured so that people can't get behind the council members, and chairs have been pushed back to put more distance between council members and the audience.

'I don't believe what people have done has been malicious, but people feeling like they could do these things is inappropriate,' Murphy said.

Bailey said the police presence has already helped disruptions in the back of the room.

'It has made all the difference in the world,' he said. 'There have been no more outbursts and people can actually hear what is going on.'"

NewUtah.com: "Councilwoman Diane Jacob expressed a number of concerns about the speed in which a decision was being forced for the parcel.

'We received incomplete packets that included contracts with no comparables and the agreement called for the city to close within five days of approval,' she said. 'While we could have closed if the council had approved the purchase, I just thought it was too fast. Then there was the issue of an appraisal. An appraisal was done on the GSE building site, but not on the actual five-acre piece we were considering.'

In addition to the incomplete packets, Jacob questioned whether or not the city actually needed five acres, wondering if the city could get the job done with two, three or four acres. Another issue was the air space restrictions and if it would hinder the height of the building."

InDesign adopts orphaned PageMaker users | CNET News.com: "update Adobe Systems unveiled a conversion strategy Monday for customers still using its orphaned PageMaker page design and layout application.

It has been more than two years since Adobe last updated PageMaker, meaning the application has yet to acquire native support for Apple Computer's Mac OS X operating system. Instead, Adobe has focused resources on InDesign, a more robust design and layout application that has slowly been gaining ground against market leader QuarkXPress.

But many PageMaker users have remained loyal to the product, especially people who don't do graphics work full time but occasionally have to produce fliers or other printed material as part of their job, said Jo Ann Buckner, senior product manager for Adobe."

---

Navaho Myths, Prayers, and Songs

New York Daily News - Home - WTC ghoul told cops of his haul: " retired city firefighter accused of stealing items from the wreckage of the World Trade Center bragged to undercover cops that he found a human head, diamonds and gold - but took only 'minor things.'"

Wired News: Bull Session With Professor IPod: "Lecturer Dr. Michael Bull is 'the world's leading -- perhaps only -- expert on the social impact of personal stereo devices,' according to The New York Times.


Bull, a lecturer in media and culture at the University of Sussex in the United Kingdom, is the author of Sounding out the City: Personal Stereos and the Management of Everyday Life, a book Bull calls the 'definitive treatment' of the impact of the Sony Walkman and its descendants."

Bagasch Archiv: "Textz.com believes that an 'intellectual proprietor' of Theodor W. Adorno and Walter Benjamin who claims to advance science and culture by sending people to jail for taking Adorno and Benjamin serious is seriously wrong on a whole number of points. The Hamburg Foundation undererstimates the resistance of their
possessions against their legal protection just as much as their lawyers underestimate the ability of the Internet to route around damage. In the end, they may even be wrong in thinking that they will ever get their property back. "

MY ARCHITECT / ***1/2 (Not rated): "That Kahn was a great architect is clear from the loving photography of his work by his son. His masterpiece, the capitol of Bangladesh in Dhaka, is a building that invites the spirit to soar. His other works included the Kimball Art Museum in Dallas, the Yale Art Gallery, the Salk Institute in California, and, most surprising, a 'music boat' he designed almost like a vessel from a cartoon. The boat sails into a harbor, folds up into a proscenium stage, and presents a concert for the listeners onshore.
Against these achievements the movie sets a lifetime of struggle, secrecy, stubbornness, deception and frequent failure. He was 'short, scarred and ugly, and had a funny voice,' a colleague states flatly. His face badly burned by a fire when he was an infant, Louis moved with his family from Estonia to Philadelphia when he was 6. Called 'Scarface' in school, he buried himself in his studies, won a college scholarship, had grand ideas about architecture, but was supported for 20 years by his first wife and didn't open his own office until he was almost 50."

DVD Shrink: Shrink your DVDs to fit DVDR!

gladwell dot com / Big and Bad: "According to Bradsher, internal industry market research concluded that S.U.V.s tend to be bought by people who are insecure, vain, self-centered, and self-absorbed, who are frequently nervous about their marriages, and who lack confidence in their driving skills. Ford's S.U.V. designers took their cues from seeing 'fashionably dressed women wearing hiking boots or even work boots while walking through expensive malls.' Toyota's top marketing executive in the United States, Bradsher writes, loves to tell the story of how at a focus group in Los Angeles 'an elegant woman in the group said that she needed her full-sized Lexus LX 470 to drive up over the curb and onto lawns to park at large parties in Beverly Hills.' One of Ford's senior marketing executives was even blunter: 'The only time those S.U.V.s are going to be off-road is when they miss the driveway at 3 a.m.'"

The Tragedy of Colin Powell - How the Bush presidency destroyed him. By Fred Kaplan: "At times, Powell has taken his fate with resigned humor. Hendrik Hertzberg wrote in The New Yorker last year of a diplomatic soiree that Powell attended on the eve of war, at which a foreign diplomat recited a news account that Bush was sleeping like a baby. Powell reportedly replied, 'I'm sleeping like a baby, too. Every two hours, I wake up, screaming.'"

EServer TC Library: Search Results>collaboration and technical writing

EServer Technical Communication (and Technical Writing) Library: "The EServer TC Library is an experiment in community libraries--part library index, part web portal--for professional, scientific and technical communicators (including technical writers).

The goal of this website is to provide tech comm practitioners, students, teachers and managers a single location from which to access the best resources available online. "

Now Preening on the Coffee Table: The TiVo Remote Control: "'They did a really good job,' said Jakob Nielsen of the Nielsen Norman Group, a technology consulting firm in Fremont, Calif. Mr. Nielsen called the oversize yellow pause button in the middle of the remote 'the most beautiful pause button I've ever seen.'"

THE DREAMERS / ****(NC-17): "In the spring of 1968, I was on vacation in Paris. Demonstrators had barricaded one end of the street where my cheap Left Bank hotel was located. Police were massed at the other end. I was in the middle, standing outside my hotel, taking it all in. The police charged, I was pushed out in front of them, and rubber truncheons pounded on my legs. 'Tourist!' I shouted, trying to make myself into a neutral. Later I realized they might have thought I was saying tourista, which is slang for diarrhea. Unwise."

The Onion A.V. Club | Arthur C. Clarke: "ACC: Well, I went to Australia to visit the Great Barrier Reef when I got involved in scuba diving, and on the way, I stopped at Colombo and met the local divers. They said, 'Why don't you come back after you've dealt with Australia?' And that's just what I did. I wrote my book on the Great Barrier Reef, and then I came back here with my late partner, Mark Wilson, to do a book on Sri Lanka. He married one of the local beauties, and we just sort of settled down here."

An Arthur C. Clarke interview. The word "partner" sure has changed over time.

Chapter 3: Critical Ethnography: Method and Methodology: "For me this research project was a political action. I saw it as part of my role to construct the data rather than discover 'hidden truths out there'. Throughout the project I tried to make my political option clear to the participants. It was political because the YCW assumes that young workers are able to reflect on their own practices and develop actions to free themselves from oppressive structures and situations.
The nature of my involvement with this group and the nature of the YCW suggested to me that I adopt a participant observer stance. In adopting this stance, I recognised that I could not be objective or politically neutral in my observations and research. In particular, as a result of my role as a collaborator I was involved in challenging the practices and processes of the group. In stating this 'openly ideological' position (Lather, 1986a), I knew that I would need to meet the challenges presented by Gitlin in that it is not enough to state one's bias (Gitlin et al, 1989). A simple statement would not change the dominating social relations that occurred between myself and the research participants. My emancipatory intentions could only be achieved through the use of emancipatory tools. A key tool to emancipatory research is the fostering of a dialogical community (Reid 1985, Hedin 1986); a community where the researcher and the researched are involved 'in the planning, execution and dissemination of [the] social research' (Rowan, 1981:97 cited in Lather, 1986b:73)."

Gallery of network images: "Gallery of network images"

Amazing stuff.

Danny O'Brien's Oblomovka: "Everyone who knows me - and many of their therapists - knows that I am the most disorganised, undisciplined wretch on God's green earth. I have a 159 things to do in my todo list; he oldest ('learn to drive') is 15 years in the todoing. Earlier today I managed to slam the 'snooze' button on my alarm clock twelve times. I don't know where my mobile phone is. The last I saw of it was in a cafe in San Francisco - maybe two weeks ago? I should cancel it. Hold on, let me add that to the todo list. There. It is as good as done."

Google Search: chris lehane kerry : "Certainly some Democrats wondered if the evidence-free item came from
Lehane, who declined public comment this afternoon.

Lehane has a reputation as an often rough operator, and that may
provide a pretext for Drudge to smear him, too.

Following Lehane's dismissal from the Kerry campaign some months ago,
the tone of his remarks about his former employer occasionally sounded
vengeful.

If Clark actually uttered the nasty remark as quoted by Drudge, the
general might have heard such rumors from his sharp-edged consultant.

But then if Clark believed Kerry was about to 'implode,' he might not
have dropped out of the primary race -- or decided to endorse the
Massachusetts senator, as he is expected to do on Friday.

A source close to Lehane vehemently denied to me that Lehane had
peddled any rumors about Kerry -- and turned attention back toward the
White House as Drudge's likely source.

'My assessment is that this is not merely a serendipitous event,' he
said. "

DRUDGE REPORT 2004®: "In an off-the-record conversation with a dozen reporters earlier this week, General Wesley Clark plainly stated: 'Kerry will implode over an intern issue.' [Three reporters in attendance confirm Clark made the startling comments.]

The Kerry commotion is why Howard Dean has turned increasingly aggressive against Kerry in recent days, and is the key reason why Dean reversed his decision to drop out of the race after Wisconsin, top campaign sources tell the DRUDGE REPORT."

Chris Lehane must be cackline with evil glee right now. But Clark has already dropped out. Why are the democrats eating their young?

We're Already Tired of This Story: Kerry's Sex Life: "FROM CONGRESSIONAL QUARTERLY'S CRAIG CRAWFORD: 'Drudge item on Kerry intern issue is something Chris Lehane (Clark press secy) has shopped around for a long time -- it was one reason the Gore vetters in 2000 shied away from Kerry as a running mate choice -- their conclusion that it wasn't bad enough to disqualify him, except for the fact that they couldn't risk it as they were trying so hard to distance themselves from Clinton's personal failings (note: Lehane worked for Gore at the time -- and briefly advised Kerry during this campaign). The Kerry camp has long expected to deal with this, and have assured party leaders they can handle it.'"

Eric D. Snider - Snide Remarks - The Shame Companies: "My proposal (get it?!) is to do away with engagement rings altogether. When a man proposes marriage, he should get down on one knee, take the woman's right hand, and give her ... a check. A check made out to her for the sum of whatever a decent engagement ring costs, but with no signature. The deal? The day she says 'I do,' he signs the check and she can buy whatever the crap she wants with it.

For the next couple months, until they get married -- and they WILL get married, with all that loot on the line -- she can carry the check around and show it to her friends. She can call the zeroes in the dollar amount 'karats,' if she wants to, and the more 'karats' on the check, the more the guy loves her, or however that works.

There, I've solved it. Thank you and good night."

PEPSI'S THREE-MINUTE BRITNEY SPEARS 'GLADIATOR' AD: "Made to be broadcast in Europe only, this is Pepsi's full, three-minute 'Gladiator' spot starring Britney Spears, Beyonce Knowles and Pink. It might as well be called 'We who are about to drink salute you.' Its 'Ben Hur'-meets-MTV story line features three warriors who throw down their weapons and engage the crowd in a rousing rendition of Queen's 'We Will Rock You.'"

Digital Culture - Paul LeBlanc: "However, I harbor no real utopian dreams for an increasingly digital age (the above notwithstanding). We will see our current human ills played out in those arenas, just as our best qualities are accentuated. Pornography, hate groups, and misogynistic advertising already reside a mere mouse click away from educational sites, list-servs for the elderly, and tours of our great museums. It's not so much that it will be better as that it will be different. Examine the claims we have made for other earlier technologies -- even those technologies that have effected so much change -- and you will hear the echoes of many contemporary claims. Indeed, there may be no more hyped age than the one into which we enter. Think of the ad campaigns of Microsoft, MCI, and others. We better use our time shaping and navigating the different rather than conjuring up the imaginary."

: "Life Hacks: Tech Secrets of Overprolific Alpha Geeks Danny O'Brien http://conferences.oreillynet.com/cs/et2004/view/e_sess/4802 at the O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference: http://conferences.oreilly.com/etech/ 11 February, 2004 San Diego, CA by Cory Doctorow doctorow@craphound.com -- This started when I was procrastinating over all the crap I needed to do and reading my pals and seeing how prolific they were, so I wrote to all of them and asked them how they did it."

News: "``I was just telling my buddy that it was very dangerous to be standing here,'' said Ali Hussein, 22. He lay on a bed soaked in his blood at Karkh Hospital, his body shaking as he gasped for air.




He said he saw a white Oldsmobile approaching the crowd. ``Then I felt nothing but fire around me.'' His legs were covered in bandages and he had broken bones.
"

Bush Aides Testify in Leak Probe (washingtonpost.com): "The logs indicate that several White House officials talked to columnist Robert D. Novak shortly before July 14, when he published a column quoting 'two senior administration officials' saying that Plame, 'an agency operative on weapons of mass destruction,' had suggested her husband for a mission to Niger to investigate whether Iraq tried to acquire uranium there as part of an effort to develop nuclear weapons.
White House witnesses have been asked about cell phone calls and have been shown handwritten, diary-style notes from colleagues, as well as e-mails from reporters to administration officials. In at least a few cases, the FBI questioning was portrayed as very aggressive, with agents homing in on specific conversations with journalists. 'Even witnesses that they describe as being potentially helpful are being treated as adversaries,' a source close to the investigation said. "

Moab, Utah Winter Wandering: "The next morning, falling snow made the day look like what it was, the third day of February, although down in the red canyons it remained the threshold of summer. After fueling up on homemade waffles, I headed to the Needles District, Canyonlands’ southern sector, named for its countless sandstone spires and pinnacles. Near the visitor center I embarked on the Colorado River Overlook Road, an easy dirt track for the first six miles. After that it became very rough, so I parked and pedaled the remaining mile or so, arriving at a dizzying drop-off near the confluence of the Colorado and the Green."

Moab, Utah Winter Wandering: "The next morning, falling snow made the day look like what it was, the third day of February, although down in the red canyons it remained the threshold of summer. After fueling up on homemade waffles, I headed to the Needles District, Canyonlands’ southern sector, named for its countless sandstone spires and pinnacles. Near the visitor center I embarked on the Colorado River Overlook Road, an easy dirt track for the first six miles. After that it became very rough, so I parked and pedaled the remaining mile or so, arriving at a dizzying drop-off near the confluence of the Colorado and the Green."

GORP - Canyonlands National Park - Winter in Utah's Red Rock Country: "The park service does patrol the more popular areas fairly regularly in the winter, so it might be wise to stay on the beaten path, especially if you're unfamiliar with this vast, remote area."

Ramada Inn - Moab, UT - Hotel Discounts at Ramada Inn - Hotel Information: "Ramada Inn
182 S Main St
Moab UT 84532 "

Desert Chalet Bed & Breakfast - Moab Utah: "Desert Chalet Bed & Breakfast
1275 East San Juan Drive
Moab, Utah 84532
Toll Free 866.269.5793
Local 435.259.5793
Email info@desertchalet.com"

Drew Curtis' FARK.com: "Ad opposing online music piracy to debut on Grammy award show. To be aired after outrageously rich musician credits God with success of his song about bangin' hos"

McSweeney's Internet Tendency: PHILIP COLAVITO, MOB ACCOUNTANT: "The guys like to give me a hard time on account of how I am not Mr. Tough Guy running around in a fancy car and breaking somebody's kneecaps but when it's payroll time all of the sudden I'm the most popular guy in the joint. The thing that makes me particularly irritated is that they will offer to whack a guy for nothing but if you ask them to hold on to their receipts it is like you want them to cut off a finger or something. What is the big deal? It is just a receipt. But try talking to some people."

ALA | Locating public domain images: "Locating public domain images"

yoyodyne.jpg (JPEG Image, 267x200 pixels)

TOUCHING THE VOID / **** (Not rated): "I didn't take a single note during this film. I simply sat there before the screen, enthralled, fascinated and terrified. Not for me the discussions about the utility of the 'pseudo-documentary format,' or questions about how the camera happened to be waiting at the bottom of the crevice when Simpson fell in. 'Touching the Void' was, for me, more of a horror film than any actual horror film could ever be."

Entrez-PubMed: "ALC participates in cellular energy production, a process especially important in neurons, and in removal of toxic accumulation of fatty acids. Animal studies show that ALC reverses the age-related decline in the number of neuron membrane receptors. Studies of patients with probable Alzheimer's disease have reported nominal advantages over a range of memory tests for ALC-treated patients relative to placebo groups. Significant differences have been reported rarely, however. Whether ALC would have mnemonic benefits for aging adults without brain disease is untested as far as we know. Antioxidants help neutralize tissue-damaging free radicals, which become more prevalent as organisms age. It is hypothesized that increasing antioxidant levels in the organism might retard or reverse the damaging effects of free radicals on neurons. "

United Press International: CIA never called Iraq immediate threat: "CIA Director George Tenet -- in a quickly scheduled speech at Georgetown University -- said that there was never consensus among CIA analysts that Iraq posed a short-term threat to the security of the United States and never faced political pressure to imply it was.

'They never said there was an 'imminent' threat,' he told the audience. 'Rather, they painted an objective assessment for our policymakers of a brutal dictator who was continuing his efforts to deceive and build programs that might constantly surprise us and threaten our interests.'

'No one told us what to say or how to say it,' he added."

X 9 6

Roof racks on cars…they’re everywhere. It’s the new fad, the new status symbol for automobiles; you must have a roof rack on your vehicle. Bill guesses that most people only use them a little bit. Kerry admits to having a rack on the Subaru he used to drive just so that it wouldn’t look so much like a common station wagon.

SuperDeluxo4.2 wgets and curls: Industrial Art Gallery: "Check out the extended entry for this post for a ton of interesting mechanical drawing art cURLed from binginit.com."

Chinatown: "This crime is eventually revealed as an attempt to buy up the San Fernando Valley cheaply by diverting water so that its orange growers go broke. Then that water and more water, obtained through bribery and corruption, will turn the valley green and create wealth. The valley has long been seen as a key to California fortunes: I remember Joel McCrea telling me that on his first day as a movie actor, Will Rogers offered two words of advice: 'Buy land.' McCrea bought in the valley and died a rich man, but he was in the second wave of speculation.
The original valley grab was the Owne River Valley scandal of 1908, mirrored in the 1930s by Towne. In the preface to his Oscar-winning screenplay, he recalls: 'My wife, Julie, returned to the hotel one afternoon with two quilts and a public library copy of Carey McWilliams' Southern California Country, an Island on the Land--and with it the crime that formed the basis of Chinatown.' McWilliams, for decades the editor of the Nation, presented Towne not only with information about the original land and water grab, but also evoked the old Los Angeles, a city born in a desert where no city logically should be found. The screenplay explains, 'Either you bring the water to L.A. or you bring L.A. to the water.'"

Long and short of it: A Eugene writer creates a Web site to deliver his shortest stories - The Register-Guard, Eugene, Oregon, USA: "Attention 'deficit' and the writer

As a boy, Rogers had so much trouble paying attention in school that his father devised a mechanical remedy for what today would be called Attention Deficit Disorder.

'He took apart a kitchen timer and stuffed the bell full of cotton, so that it just made a little `tink!' instead of ringing,' recalls the 45-year-old writer, who works in a book-filled house near Maury Jacobs Park."

Atari Arcade Hits: "Atari Arcade Hits Volume 1 includes authentic versions of 6 of the most popular ground-breaking titles created.

Relive the fun and excitement of playing your favorite Atari arcade games of yesteryear; or discover these addictive games for the first time.

Deceptively easy to play, Atari Arcade Hits Volume 1 will challenge players of all ages and skills for years to come.
"

macosxhints - 10.3: Patching and fixing Perl, PostFix and BerkeleyDB: "postfix-2.0.16:
reference URL: postfix home Downloads: postfix-2.0.16.tar.gz # keep the configs around for reference ...


% mv /etc/postfix /etc/postfixPANTHER
% gnutar zxf postfix-2.0.16.tar.gz
% cd /usr/ports/postfix-2.0.16"

Shop Talk: "Christmas Wrapping - The Waitresses.mp3
Happy Xmas (War Is Over) - Cr?xshadows.mp3
Silent Night - Bad Religion.mp3
Christmas With the Devil - Spinal Tap.mp3
Krampusnacht (For Krampus, The Christmas Demon) - Unto Ashes.mp3
We Three Kings - Rhea's Obsession with Athan Maroulis.mp3
Chanukkah, Oh Chanukkah - Black tape for a blue girl.mp3
A Winter Wassail - Faith & the Muse.mp3
Carol of the Bells - This Ascension.mp3
Coventry Carol - Machine in the Garden.mp3
Lord of the Dance - Unto Ashes.mp3
Nerotai Hazaruriam [Little Candles] - Run, Sofia.mp3
You're A Mean One Mr. Grinch - Dr. Seuss.mp3
Welcome Christmas {From Dr. Seuss's How the Grinch Stole Christmas} - Love Spirals Downwards.mp3
Let the Reindeer Live on My Roof - Audra.mp3
Xmas Song - Jill Sobule.mp3
Aspen Glow - Love Spirals.mp3
Blue Christmas - Lowsunday.mp3
Jingle Bells (Snowblower) - Lovesliescrushing.mp3 "

Yahoo! News - Marvel Sues Sony Over 'Men in Black' Royalties: "The suit claims that Sony has breached a licensing agreement by failing to properly report revenue, especially for merchandising, showing in statements that the two 'Men in Black' films have lost money despite hundreds of millions of dollars in box-office and ancillary sales."

Wow, who would have guessed that MIB lost money? A shame.

sunspot.net - movies & video: "Tanner starts out as a likable, hollow figure mouthing liberal bromides about a better tomorrow for America, then fitfully matures as a politician. The turning point comes when Tanner sits with inner-city Detroit mothers whose children died in the streets. He's been mouthing a chic platform that includes the legalization of drugs; now he comes face to face with a constituency horrified by the free flow of pharmaceuticals. The confrontation is galvanizing, for him and for the audience.
'We went to see those women who all had children murdered,' Altman recalls, 'and then we decided to do a session there.' The production sent out the word that they wanted rappers and verse-slingers to perform at 'a jamboree' for S.O.S.A.D. -- 'Save Our Sons and Daughters.' A man named Earl Henderson recited a poem called 'So Sad' with the hair-raising, heartbreaking refrain, 'I never held ill feelings to anyone/Till I found my child was dead/Till I found my child was dead/Till I found my child was dead.'
Directing Trudeau's new lead-ins made Altman himself see 'the arc of the piece much more strongly. At first, Tanner's kind of a sappy candidate. ... But that afternoon in Detroit changes the campaign. As Tanner says in one of the new introductions, 'It meant that social justice above all else would be our central message, would inform everything we did. It also meant, of course, that we'd lose.' ' "

[TechTalk] Enabling Postfix in OS X: "From Mac OS X Hints, for people who might enable and run the Postfix
MTA included in OS X Panther:

1. Edit the MAILSERVER=-NO- line in /etc/hostconfig. Change it to
read MAILSERVER=-YES-. Save and exit the file.
2. Open up /etc/postfix/main.cf, and edit these lines to reflect
your setup. These are examples from my setup; yours might be different.
? LINE 67: myhostname = hostname.domain.org
? LINE 75: mydomain = domain.org
? LINE 91: myorigin = $mydomain
? LINE 105: inet_interfaces = all
? LINE 152: mydestination = $myhostname, localhost.$mydomain
? LINE 239: mynetworks_style = subnet
? LINE 253: mynetworks = 192.168.0.0/23, 127.0.0.0/8"