Jarrett House NorthNow with 80% less politics!

Good article on “interactive fiction” (also known as text adventures, Zork-type games, etc.) at 1up.com, pointed to by Slashdot among others.
I think my favorite interactive fiction game of all time is probably still The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, and not just because it’s legally available on line (Java required) through the kind auspices of [...]

Via Tomalak’s Realm: Mark Hurst writes on GoodExperience.com about how users interact with websites by discussing something he calls “The Page Paradigm.” He distills the patterns of user interaction with websites to the following rules (paraphrased):

On any given web page, users will either click something that appears to take them closer to the fulfillment [...]

Great post today by Esta about her first trip to a shooting range (yes, a seminarian with a loaded Armalite. Be afraid. Reminiscent of Gandhi 2: No More Passive Resistance!). I too am coming to the conclusion that one’s faith is too important to just pledge church membership before one is old enough to drive.

Still catching up with my blogging from last week. As reported on BoingBoing, FCC Chairman Michael Powell last week articulated four Internet Freedoms that he believes Americans are entitled to:

Freedom to Access Content. First, consumers should have access to their choice of legal content.
Freedom to Use Applications. Second, consumers should be able to run [...]

So this is our compassionate conservative president. Don’t know how good his grasp of the English language is, but Bush’s proposal to amend the constitution to ban gay marriages strikes me as fairly uncompassionate and surprisingly radical.
Lots of people up in arms about this one, e.g.:

Oliver Willis (and here, and here)
Josh Marshall, who makes the [...]

The New York Times puffs specialty salts as the major new secret ingredient of chefs in the know. What a bunch of hooey. Everyone knows salt is where it’s at. Even a simple home cook like me has four different kinds of salt in the kitchen—regular Morton’s table salt and kosher salt for dishes I [...]

Tonight (the second night after our dogs’ spaying and neutering) neither of us wanted to cook much. On the other hand, there were the remains of an eight-pound ham shank in the fridge, calling out to have something done with it. Something had to be done.
Lisa went to the store and came back with farfalle [...]

Forgot to point to this one. The first Google result for “west lawn” site:virginia.edu leads into a fascinating set of photos by Joel Winstead around University of Virginia and William and Mary landmarks. The cool bit is the Myst-style navigation (e.g. click on the left side of the photo to turn left, click on the [...]

I didn’t point to this year’s Pazz’n’Jop awards when they were published, but thought I should at least give a shout out to fellow ’Hoo Joe Gross, whose ballot is not disharmonious with my Best Of 2003 list.
Wanna get a Cease and Desist letter from EMI? Publishing a link to the Grey Album is probably [...]

Yes, the time has come for our puppies to go get the Big Snip (or in Joy’s case, the Big Incision). And none too soon, in Jefferson’s case. Last week in obedience class he, erm, “marked” two cones that were being used in the training session. The trainer scolded him a little and then asked [...]

Got my hair cut yesterday, and my ego flattened. My stylist and the clerk behind the counter got into a discussion about ideal working music. “I like the place next door,” said the clerk; “they have one of those satellite systems, you can tune in 80s music or whatever.”
My stylist said, “Nah, I hate [...]

Dinner tonight, improvised: lamb chops with rosemary, garlic, and sea salt, in our grill pan, with oven roasted potatoes in olive oil with more garlic, rosemary, and sea salt.
Is garlic a sublimity for everyone or just for me? Is it a cultural thing, a biological thing, or what? I know that for me it’s [...]

Lurking in the back of my fridge tonight, and waiting for me to taste it, was this little Japanese gem. Hitachino Nest is the first beer from Kiuchi Brewery in Japan, which has been making sake since 1823. For a first beer ever, it’s fabulous. In the Belgian white ale style (flavor-wise, if not color—it’s [...]

This is another SmartManila test.

To my surprise, SmartManila eventually did download all the content from my site, back to 2000. I was also impressed that while it was downloading the GUI was responsive and I could do other work.
I wasn’t able to post however; the message just posted in my discussion area rather than a news item. Here’s what [...]