Month: August 2003

Now that’s what I call a user interface

I’ve been playing with Clutter, and I think I finally found a way to replicate my physical desk on my virtual one (warning: linked image is quite large):

my god! it's full of album covers!

I know everyone else in the world has already seen this, but if you haven’t: the concept is simple, and cool. Clutter listens in the background while iTunes plays, and downloads the album art for the currently playing song automatically. If you want to keep the album out for reference, just drag it to the desktop…then you can double click it later to play the songs from that album. The end effect is something like Tyler’s CD collection in college.

A few questions about a 12 inch doll

Regarding this little toy, just a few questions:

  1. Was the White House consulted when this toy was being designed?
  2. Or did the White House call BBI with the idea?
  3. Either way, is taxpayer money paying someone in the White House to work on the production details for this doll?
  4. Does the White House get a cut of the $39.99 per doll? Does George?
  5. Does the doll come with a Greg Jenkins doll to make sure it’s only photographed in strong, manly poses?
  6. Does the doll make your car move ten times slower than normal to facilitate said photo ops?
  7. Does the doll go missing from your child’s collection for up to a year at a time?
  8. Will there be a Singin’ John Ashcroft doll? How about a Poindexter? A Rumsfeld?

Thanks to Esta, among others, for the link.

New high water mark @ Weblogs.com

There was a new high water mark at Weblogs.com on Wednesday: 4112 weblogs. My data record of the Weblogs.com high water marks has been updated to reflect the new mark.

This was good timing, coming as it did during the Great Weblogs.com Data Pull. Now I’ll be able to look at traffic trends before and after a high water mark, and see if there is any relationship between high water mark days and mean traffic levels on Weblogs.com.

Happy birthday, Mom

Today is my mother’s birthday! I owe this woman a big debt of thanks, not only for my existence, but for my love of reading, cooking, and (in large part) music, as well as my sense that the world ought to be better than it is.

I can’t hug her in person today, but I’ll get to do that next weekend when I fly to the family reunion. In the meantime, happy birthday, Mom, and many happy returns.

Fetching blog updates from Weblogs.com using Applescript

As I mentioned earlier this week, I’m running an AppleScript once an hour to download data from Weblogs.com. For anyone who may be interested in seeing how it’s done, the code is below and is easily adaptable to other scripting languages, including DOS Batch (I know, I’ve done it). This is first pass code, not optimized, warts and all. Enjoy.

copy getWeblogsChanges() to {success, theFile}
if not success then
	display dialog "Could not get the changes file from Weblogs.com."	
return

end if
processWeblogsChanges(theFile)
on getWeblogsChanges()
	set changesSource to "http://www.weblogs.com/changes.xml"
	set theDate to current date
		set theYear to year of theDate as string
	set theMonth to month of theDate as string
	set theDay to day of theDate as string
	set theTime to time of theDate as string
		-- need to prompt for the user's directory instead
	set theFileName to "~/" & theYear & theMonth & theDay & theTime & "_changes.xml"
		set theShellCommand to "curl " & changesSource & " > " & theFileName
		--need error handling
	do shell script theShellCommand
	return {true, theFileName}
end getWeblogsChanges
on processWeblogsChanges(theFile)
	set theShellCommand to "gzip -c " & theFile & " >>changesxml.gz"
	do shell script theShellCommand
end processWeblogsChanges

Momentary lapse of reason

I was a bit panicked earlier tonight; I came home and the Power and PC Connection lights on the cable modem were blinking in sequence, then stopping, then restarting. Usually a sign that someone somewhere has screwed up my cable modem service. Tonight that would have been a very bad thing. No video chat with Lisa and her folks, potentially a full day of Weblogs.com data missed, no blogging tonight…

After a bit, I stopped hyperventilating, called Lisa the old fashioned way on the phone, watered the garden, ate dinner, and watched a bit of This Old House. When I picked up the computer later, everything was working again. Bliss!

Hanging out
In the street
The same old thing
We did last week
Not a thing to do
But blog and try to parse XML

…er, something like that.…

Different but equal

Here’s a feature that Office 2003 has (and maybe Office XP, too) that Office X for the Mac doesn’t. Somewhat to my chagrin. In Office 2003, you can import an arbitrary XML file, with or without a DTD, into a regular old Excel worksheet.

Why might you want to do such a thing? Think data acquisition and analysis on the cheap, without having to write an XML parser to understand the data. Say, for instance, you’re bringing in about 200K of XML data from Weblogs.com every hour for two weeks and you want to look at, munge, and export it quickly to a format that can be imported by a SQL database. Possible using Excel 2003. Not possible using Excel X for Mac.

Little known not-secret: Excel X for Mac is a completely separate code base from the Windows versions of Excel, produced by a different team in a different division. Good news: this means it acts more like a Mac product (remember Word 6?). Bad news: sometimes major features go missing.

BloggerCon, and you’re invited

Have I commented yet on the terrible irony that I left Boston and its environs just as Dave Winer, the Blogfather, was moving there? Yes? Ok, moving on to the main topic: BloggerCon, the first convention specifically for bloggers, is October 4 at Harvard Law. Registration online. The conference is invitation only, which may explain why I can’t find all the details on the main site, but here’s some goodies from the invitation:

4. Presenters include Glenn Reynolds, Joshua Marshall, Doc Searls, Scott Rosenberg, Adam Curry, Elizabeth Spiers, Jim Moore, Susan Mernit and more. Moderators: Lance Knobel, Ed Cone, Christopher Lydon and myself. And new discoveries, people we hadn’t heard about until we set out to find the most interesting and eclectic blogs and bloggers.

5. We’re going to talk about how weblogs are used in politics, business, journalism, the law, medicine, engineering and education. And it’s Harvard so you know it tastes good and is good for you too. ;->…8. Our local host committee of Boston-based bloggers includes Cluetrain author David Weinberger, InfoWorld’s Jon Udell, author Halley Suitt, MIT’s Andrew Grumet and Tracey Adams, Harvard librarian Jessica Baumgart and Larry Bouthillier from Harvard Business School.

Maybe I can talk Lisa into a trip back East for a four or five day weekend…

Grilling lamb, and singeing the blogger

Four months after Julie Powell finished her lamb feast, I’m trying my own. Here it’s just me eating, but it’s a whole butterflied leg of lamb, rubbed with fresh rosemary, parsley, basil, and oregano from my garden, and done on the grill for (so claims The Joy of Cooking twelve minutes on a side. So for twenty-four minutes of non-rainy Seattle suburban bliss, I’m blogging from the patio on the new PowerBook, mint julep by my side…

…Sorry, I’m back. The fat on the back of the lamb had dripped down into the grill, which is a bit scary already, and so the grill was doing a reasonable imitation of The Towering Inferno. It was time to flip the lamb anyway, which I managed with something close to aplomb and something like 60% of the hairs on my hand intact. Mind, this is after the handy little spray bottle put out most of the flames. Man, it’s tough out here tonight.

(Twelve minutes later) The smaller portion of the lamb finished cooking in the prescribed 12 minutes a side, but the major part of the leg was about 15 degrees too cool. Hope this finishes in time to catch Alton Brown.

(After) Not bad, but would have been better with garlic. Still, it gives me hope that, through the magic of butterflying, everything can be grilled! Next up: wildebeest!

Question for the next year

Paul Krugman in the New York Times: “how can Congress or the public make informed votes if both are fed distorted information?” He’s writing about the trend of government agencies under this administration, in this instance the Treasury Department, to release incomplete information in a way that suppresses information that could put the Administration’s tax policies in a bad light.

The original article, by Martin Sullivan in Tax Notes, sounds like it would be a good read, except of course Tax Notes is behind a pay-wall. Another analysis by Robert Greenstein at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities is good reading.

Once around the block

From the keiretsu:

  • Esta writes about the Episcopalian decision to ordain a gay bishop, and some subsequent fallout in that community: “The greater public sees a large proportion of believers being hateful, and the church wonders why its numbers are dwindling?” The interesting part of that process, in my opinion, is the way the allegations of child abuse and pornography sprung up in the eleventh hour, but were quickly defused. Makes you wonder…
  • Got an IM from Greg this morning confirming the arrival of my birthday gift, the first CD I burned using this machine. If anyone else is curious, I posted the play order over at Art of the Mix.
  • Flangy points out the one thing I didn’t in my update marathon last night: it rained here. Shortly after I put the sprinkler on our tomatoes. He also wishes for categorized RSS feeds. Unfortunately Manila doesn’t provide those out of the box, but there’s an RSS plugin available that I use to roll mine.

Novoselic says “Seeya”

Krist Novoselic, nee Chris Novoselic (but Nevermind), has laid down his bass for the last time, according to Rolling Stone and a news post on the Eyes Adrift website. After a disappointing start for his band Eyes Adrift (with Curt Kirkwood from the Meat Puppets), he’s decided to get out of music entirely, citing his unhappiness with the business side of the business.

And he wants to get into politics. Hey, Krist, Gary Locke is stepping down. Wanna start close to home? If Minnesota can have a pro wrestler, the least Washington can do is one-up with a kick-ass bassist.

(Incidentally, Eyes Adrift’s album is available on eMusic. And with that note, I really need to go grocery shopping before I fall over.)