During an interminable meeting today, I was playing with the St. Andrews Face Morpher, a tool that lets you take an uploaded face image and apply various transform to it for interesting results. For example, this is an image of my friend Alex that I yanked off his photography site: Now, here is what the Face Morpher says Alex will… Read more →
Year: 2005
I love the Internets
Oh my God. Please go and see “Query Letters I Love”, a blog dedicated to the public mockery of real Hollywood script queries from wannabe screenwriters. Here’s a sample bit: Micro Management is about evil midgets who take over Titan Industries, a United States defense contractor and missile manufacturer, and attempt to use the missiles to blow up Disneyland. The… Read more →
Can I have a little more me in the monitor?
A couple of years ago I found a list of 99 questions on Jonathan Carroll’s site, which he hadn’t answered, in defiance of typical blog-meme style. Unlike most of these lists, I liked this one, and I’ve kept a copy of the questions around as something to look at “when I get time”. Well, today I get time. Also, since… Read more →
Stamping Butterflies
So, about a month ago the Guardian ran a short review of Jon Courtenay Grimwood‘s new novel, Stamping Butterflies. I’m glad they did, because it had somehow escaped my notice that the book was out–sometimes that happens with UK-original hardcovers, as my coverage of what’s new there is weaker than in North America–and I promptly ordered the book. It got… Read more →
Do you know the word ‘crapweasel’, Tom?
So, let’s look at the latest Delay news. First, the other shoe has already started dropping with regards to that little moment of optimism I had the other day. While it is true that “the Delay rule” was revoked, apparently the Republicans still managed to push through ethics changes that will make future probes much more difficult. Here’s a snippet… Read more →
Bill “McCarthy” Gates
So, Bill Gates apparently thinks that people with different notions of intellectual property from him are commies. This kind of bounces off of me, since as a Canadian I am considered a crypto-communist by most Americans anyway, and as a leftist NDP I’m considered a bit of a communist by lots of Canadians too, but it’s a less frivolous matter… Read more →
Loo-seeeee
I literally do not know what to make of this piece from the Washington Post via Gibson: LEXINGTON, Ky. — The Lexington Herald-Leader featured a prominent clarification on its front page yesterday, apologizing for the newspaper’s failures in covering the 1960s civil rights movement. … “It has come to the editor’s attention that the Herald-Leader neglected to cover the civil… Read more →
The Long Tail
If you missed Chris Anderson’s great article The Long Tail, you should definitely take a minute or two to go back and read it. It’s about… well… let’s say it’s about the market effects of massively big potential customer bases for items of niche interest. The examples are drawn from practical retail things like bookstores, but they apply just as… Read more →
The Sherlock Holmes Society of London…
Has a review of the New Annotated Holmes that I just bought, and it’s positively glowing. The most exciting news for me though, is that there is to be a matching edition of the longer works later this year. The website of The Sherlock Holmes Society of London ‘The biggest thing for years’–well, The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes certainly qualifies… Read more →
Good News?
Wow, finally some good news. I’ve been kind of avoid political news since that Black Day in November, because it was just too miserable to face, but here are some stories that show me a little ray of hope. (Of course, the cynic in me says this is just because the crush will be that much worse after a gleam… Read more →
First bookstore splurge of 2005
I had my first slightly ridiculous bookstore trip of the year today, prompted by what amounts to a 40% off sale on in-stock hardcovers at my local megastore, and I thought some of you might be interested by what was in the basket. First up were a couple of really heavy items: The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes – I’ve been… Read more →
Safecracking for the Computer Scientist
This Slashdot story lead me to check out Matt Blaze’s site. (I have geek jealousy of his domain name.) Matt’s a CS prof who specializes in security issues, and in addition to the safecracking paper, there’s lots of other interesting bits on his pages. I suspect I will be reading stuff there for several days at least. Read more →
Start reading the top IP law blogs in less than five minutes
One of the areas of interest to me as a concerned liberal is the area of intellectual property–I am concerned about copyright extension and the erosion of the public domain, I’m concerned about software patents and the stifiling of innovation, and I’m perhaps most generally concerned about the way our various governments seem to put the short term economic good… Read more →
Need a happy
After that last post I need a happy. And here is one. It appears that the same people responsible for that monster Complete Far Side collection that everyone was talking about–did anyone actually buy one?–are also producing another collection that I must own. Details. I have wanted this for years. The pricing is ridiculous, but hey, I have disposable income… Read more →
Ritalin
Look, I have always hated the idea of Ritalin. Hearing Henry Rollins do his spoken word bit about his experiences with Ritalin just confirmed all my uninformed prejudices. But, today I have seen something that I think is the most perfect, and most heart-rending, argument against it ever. Make with the clickie and see for yourself. The convincer. Read more →
