June 30, 2004
Operation Backyard: Day 1
Hol and I finally got tired of waiting to do the backyard. We got destructive this afternoon and started hacking things apart. The current (lack of) plan is to rip up the yard and put in some sod until we actually figure out what we want... of course it may take us so long to machete our way through our tiny jungle that we'll have a plan by then. First pic is just after we started trimming, second pic is of how far we got on day one.
 Posted by ben at 10:30 PM
 Comments (1)
June 29, 2004
Notable URLs on 2004-06-29
Posted by ben at 11:59 PM
June 28, 2004
Notable URLs on 2004-06-28
Posted by ben at 11:59 PM
June 27, 2004
Notable URLs on 2004-06-27
Posted by ben at 11:59 PM
June 26, 2004
Notable URLs on 2004-06-26
Posted by ben at 11:59 PM
San Diego Zoo
Many thanks to the Burley's for taking us down to the San Diego Zoo as guests on Saturday. It was pretty cool and certainly something we'd do again. I'd even look into the yearly passes that Josh and Clare have... Cat Canyon was pretty cool, with a few of big cats coming out for a sniff. The polar bear exhibit was sweet! Check out the photos (click on the thumbnail) of one playing underwater.
We ate dinner at the Shakespeare pub & grille. Pretty decent, but I'm not sure how authentic it was -- Clare agreed. They did have a Euro '04 schedule on the wall, but seemed to have stopped tracking the scores of the matches after Thursday's England vs. Portugal game. 
(It was a pretty good game, despite England dropping out of the tourney.) Saturdays the Pub is supposed to have a Curry Night, but alas not today. Oh well. Another excuse to go down south again.
Posted by ben at 11:59 PM
Comments (0)
June 25, 2004
Notable URLs on 2004-06-25
- buttongadget: Builds buttons and tabs
( Graphics Software WebDev )
- Toshiba develops world's smallest fuel cell for wearable electronics: Yahoo! News - DMFCs, which generate water and carbon dioxide as by-products, could do away with the need for recharging batteries
( Gadgets Science )
- 'Be Good, Smile Pretty': two years ago, an accidental discovery launched Tracy on a project that made the man in the portrait, her father, come alive
( 60Minutes_tv Military Vietnam )
- On The Road With Dad: I always wanted to bring him to the Grand Canyon, so he can enjoy his three greatest passions in life: being with family, being outdoors and complaining about gas prices
( 60Minutes_tv Amusing )
- Active Duty: No Way Out: "The trumpet needs to be sounded pretty loudly that these guys that have sacrificed a lot for America are now being asked to sacrifice even more."
( 60Minutes_tv Iraq Military )
- The uncampaigners: Clinton and Moore: csmonitor.com - flags remain at half-staff for the late President Reagan, TV airtime is now dominated by the images of two other larger-than-life men
( Clinton Moore Op-Ed Politics )
- E.P.A. Energy-Saving Spots Give Cars Short Shrift: The New York Times > Business > Media & Advertising > less than two months after an E.P.A. report emphasized how much more fuel efficient new cars and trucks were in the mid-1980's
( Advertising Environment )
- Is this the Treo 610?: Treo rumors come and go, but this one seems sorta quasi-believable (and even has the usual photo of a Powerpoint slide hastily captured with cameraphone)
( Gadgets News )
- Supremes: Cheney does not have to turn over records: The Sierra Club, a liberal environmental club, and Judicial Watch, a conservative legal group, sued to get the records. They argued the public has a right to information about committees like Cheney's
( Cheney Legal News Politics )
- Proper Propaganda - Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 is unfair and outrageous.: Fahrenheit 9/11 is not a documentary for the ages, it is an act of counterpropaganda that has a boorish, bullying force. It is, all in all, a legitimate abuse of power
( Cinema Moore Op-Ed Politics )
- Ancient Indian Settlement Found in Utah: For more than 50 years, rancher Waldo Wilcox kept most outsiders off his land and the secret under wraps: a string of perfectly preserved ancient Indian settlements
( Archaeology News )
- Cronies: Oil, the Bushes, and the Rise of Texas, America's Superstate: "I'm pleased to see, Dick, from the newspapers, that you're better off than you were eight years ago," the senator said. It was a nice dig at Cheney's immense wealth. Cheney shot back, "I can tell you, Joe, the government had absolutely nothing to do with
( Books Cheney Halliburton Politics )
- The Salon Interview: Bill Clinton: Salon.com News - blasts the Bush-Cheney rush to war, explains why Gore lost and tells how Kerry can win
( Clinton Politics )
- A Supreme Court Dialogue - Ducking the hard questions on Cheney: The core issue in Cheney is buried beneath several layers of the kind of law lawyers love because no one else can understand it.
( Cheney Legal Op-Ed )
- Most see Iraq as mistake: Now, 54% say it was a mistake. In December, 56% had said the war made the U.S. safer.
( Bush Iraq Politics )
- Tony Hawk Takes Off: Hawk sees no end in sight to his days skateboarding. He’s still landing the 900, and still having the time of his life.
( 60Minutes_tv People )
- Exit Strategy - How to leave Iraq in three simple steps: However, it is only fair to note that many more abuses were occurring before we arrived. Plus, if our abusers are abusing over there, they are not abusing over here. So really, it is a win/win
( Amusing Iraq Op-Ed )
Posted by ben at 11:59 PM
June 24, 2004
Notable URLs on 2004-06-24
Posted by ben at 11:59 PM
June 23, 2004
Notable URLs on 2004-06-23
Posted by ben at 11:59 PM
June 22, 2004
Notable URLs on 2004-06-22
- Rare Exports: Father Christmas short
( Amusing Cinema )
- 9/11 panel: New evidence on Iraq-Al-Qaida: documents captured in Iraq "indicate that there is at least one officer of Saddam's Fedayeen, a lieutenant colonel, who was a very prominent member of al Qaida."
( Bush Iraq Politics )
- Desperation Outsourcing - Leadership Agenda: CIO Magazine Jun 1, 2004 - The desperation play of the IT executive lies in the assumption that current internal resources are substandard and that across-the-board outsourcing is the only solution
( CIO_mag Management Outsourcing )
- IHMC CmapTools - Concept Mapping Software Toolkit: cmaptools software empowers users to construct, navigate, share and criticize knowledge models represented as concept maps
( eLearning Software )
- Libel Suit 9/11 - Michael Moore's hysterical, empty threats: Moore can always punish his critics financially by filing silly lawsuits that require them to spend huge sums to be dismissed as frivolous. But Moore is not likely to want that sort of publicity and heartache—it's as much a drag to sue as it is to be su
( Moore Op-Ed Politics )
- Supremes: If police ask, you must give your name: csmonitor.com - it remains unclear to what extent it may open the door to the issuing of national identification cards or widespread identity operations keyed to terrorist profiling
( CivilRights Legal News )
- Anti-Semitism rising, Jews in France ponder leaving: csmonitor.com - Justice Minister announced that authorities had counted 180 anti-Semitic incidents so far this year, though suspects were arrested in only 35 cases
( FR Jewish Politics )
- VUE - Concept Mapping: there is a need for flexible tools that help faculty and students integrate electronic content into their teaching and learning
( eLearning Software )
- Concept Maps Discover Digital Repositories: A Look at Tufts VUE: Syllabus - graphical representation of ideas uses concept mapping to lay out ideas, processes, and their interconnection around a given problem area.
( eLearning LMS Syllabus_mag )
- From Chaos, Agility: CIO Magazine Jun 1, 2004 - In the merger of Mead and Westvaco, the new CIO rejected the existing IT corporate cultures for a third way
( CIO_mag ITM )
- Encourage Employee Socializing - Management Reports - CIO Magazine Jun 1,2004: How to optimize the other kind of corporate network
( CIO_mag Management )
Posted by ben at 11:59 PM
June 21, 2004
Notable URLs on 2004-06-21
- Bill Clinton: His Life | June 21, 2004: CBS News - “And international affairs, I regret that I didn't succeed in getting Osama bin Laden. And equally, I'm sorry that I wasn't able enough to convince the Israelis and the Palestinians to make peace.”
( 60Minutes_tv Clinton Politics )
- How to make your own Underwater Camera Enclosure: You need a waterproof enclosure to get close to the action without killing your camera. Here's how to make one.
( Inventive Photography Reference )
- Out on the Mojave: space shot for the common man: csmonitor.com - This is the beginning of cheap access to space, and the last gasp of the notion that the heavens are solely the domain of governments
( News Science )
- Privacy Is Your Business - Privacy and Security: CIO Magazine Jun 1, 2004 - he says that he and other JetBlue executives should have been involved in the decision to turn over such sensitive passenger data
( CIO_mag Privacy )
- Why Is Business-IT Alignment So Difficult?: CIO Magazine Jun 1, 2004 - study found that 44 percent of CFOs described the alignment of business and IT as weak, and 4 percent said alignment of IT and business did not exist
( CIO_mag Strategy )
- 100watt Network: The Architectural Lighting Source: 100watt Network is your trade source for contemporary lighting
( Architecture Design Furnishing Home )
- Heavy Betting on Election Domains: Wired News - Bush supporters who have offered to pay as much as $135,000 for the domains. He declined to sell, citing animosity toward the incumbent president
( Amusing Bush Politics )
- TiVo makes Home Media Option standard issue, more: TiVo said Wednesday that home networking features and scheduling recordings online will now come standard with its devices
( Gadgets TiVo )
- IT on the Campaign Trail - Election 2004: CIO Magazine Jun 1, 2004 - Just like corporate marketers, political persuaders want to spend their money most efficiently by targeting people. "Politicos are fond of saying that a campaign is a one-day sale,"
( CIO_mag DataMining Politics )
- Utah Professor Developes Technology That Could Change The Aerospace Industry: "The amount of twist the Twisterons use is determined by altitude, weight and the speed the airplane is traveling," Phillips said. "Those conditions change during flight. The Twisterons adjust to those changes to always produce minimum drag."
( Innovative Science )
- Mozilla - Bookmarks Synchronizer: Bookmarks Synchronizer is a Mozilla Firefox extension that let you connect to an FTP server and synchronize your bookmarks that are stored in an XML file
( Mozilla Software )
- UPS Versus FedEx: Head-to-Head on Wireless: CIO Magazine Jun 1, 2004 - FedEx and UPS are always seeking a competitive edge over one another.
( CIO_mag ITM WiFi )
- Futurismo Zugakousaku: Mac screensavers
( MacOSX Software )
- Teen Auctioning Virginity on eBay: ABCNEWS.com - "Some of them have more money than sense," Vardy said. "I don't want to deal with losers [or] stalkers, so that cuts out about 90 percent of the population.
( Amusing Kids News )
- In a reversal, job growth fades for women workers: csmonitor.com - The bottom line: Most women now work because they have to. And despite the recent up-tick in employment numbers, female jobs are returning at a far slower pace than after any recent recession.
( Economics Jobs News )
- www.sprint.com/business - a CSS mega-relaunch: More Sprint CSS Goodness™ - featuring Inman Flash Replacement
( CSS WaSP WebDev )
- How the FTC Rescued the Dinner Hour - Project Management | Profile: CIO Magazine Jun 1, 2004 - sued telemarketers for calling consumers who had signed up. The FCC has also moved to fine AT&T $780,000 for ignoring the DNC list
( CIO_mag PM )
- Hotmail Blocks Gmail Emails (and Invites): Slashdot - Emails and invitations sent to Hotmail from Gmail accounts do not bounce, but nor do they arrive in the recipient's Inbox - they vanish mysteriously into the ether
( Amusing Google News )
Posted by ben at 11:59 PM
June 20, 2004
Father's day BBQ
Cruised home on Sunday in time to meet up with some of Hol's workmates (Thanks Heather and John!). Very cool BBQ in Nellie Gale (There's horse property in 'the OC'!?). Grabbed this pic of Heather, Beth, and Hol after a few beers/glasses of wine, or in Hol's case, sugar.
Posted by ben at 09:30 PM
Comments (0)
Dad's Day
Headed up to my parent's place Friday night to celebrate (belated Mom's and) Dad's day. It's always nice hanging with 'the parentals'. Makes for a nice relaxing weekend. We did the whole gift exchange thing. Mom is checking out her new copy of Eats, Shoots & Leaves in this pic. Seemed perfect for her. Dad got some electronics and cookware. I got an SD card for my Treo. Tedd got (for surviving his first year of HS) a compact flash card for his Axim. And Amazon got our money.
Posted by ben at 10:00 AM
Comments (0)
June 19, 2004
Notable URLs on 2004-06-19
Posted by ben at 11:59 PM
June 18, 2004
Notable URLs on 2004-06-18
- base26: Built with Processing: this small project is an attempt to give a spacial overview of the entirety of this part of english language heritage, as well as to explore and visualize relations between all those words
( English Eyecandy Grammer Reference )
- 14 points of fascism: In "Fascism Anyone?," Dr. Lawrence Britt, a political scientist, identifies 14 characteristics common to fascist regimes
( Bush Politics )
- Ten Must-Have Tools Every Developer Should Download
( Software SwDev )
- The Plain Truth: The New York Times > Opinion > Bush persuaded Americans to back the invasion of Iraq last year, the most plainly dishonest was his effort to link his war of choice with the battle against terrorists worldwide
( Bush Iraq Op-Ed Politics Terrorism )
- Central Download
( Torrents )
- Best of History Web Sites: portal created for history teachers, students, and general history enthusiasts
( History Reference )
- FCKeditor - The text editor for Internet: WYSIWYG TTW editor
( WebDev )
- The Vanishing IT Department - Peer To Peer: CIO Magazine Jun 1, 2004 - three truths about IT staffing that make outsourcing the dodge of choice for the incompetent and lazy: 1. Turnover is expensive; 2. Retention rate is the most accurate indicator of leadership quality; and 3. Recruiting is the ha
( CIO_mag Jobs Management )
- Stranded at the Airport - Merhan Karimi Nasseri: The 2004 Tom Hanks film The Terminal is loosely based upon the experience of Merhan Karimi Nasseri
( Reference Stories )
- CSS - Fun with forms – customized input elements: article demonstrates how to apply customized backgrounds to HTML forms, while preserving stucturally clean markup and accesibility
( CSS WebDev )
- AniMusic from ATi
( Eyecandy Graphics )
- Retractable mini-stereo headphones
( Gadgets )
- Styling Form Widgets
( Css WebDev )
- What is RSS/XML/Atom/Syndication?: The little orange buttons that are starting to litter the web have no doubt caused mass confusion
( Reference RSS )
- Prom Story III - Bumping and grinding on the dance floor.: The molesters and molestees are hidden from chaperones by an outer ring composed of their shyer, geekier peers. I can't tell if this is a prearranged agreement or mere Darwinian natural selection. It's strikingly effective
( Amusing Kids )
- Interview - Robert Kaplan, embedded in Fallujah: Atlantic Unbound - 2004.06.15 - he argues, the only reason it appeared such an easy victory is because it is so very incomplete and because so much yet remains to be accomplished
( Iraq Op-Ed Politics )
- The Elusive Value of Infrastructure: CIO Magazine Jun 1, 2004 - IT infrastructure is expensive to maintain, and its importance is not always obvious. Here's how to place a value on your infrastructure
( CIO_mag ITM Metrics )
Posted by ben at 11:59 PM
June 17, 2004
Notable URLs on 2004-06-17
- 58 Senators Seek Easing of Rules for Stem Cells: washingtonpost.com - The letter also warns that the United States may be falling behind other countries that are aggressively pursuing stem cell cures
( MedSci Politics StemCell )
- a look back at interviews with the couple, including the former president's thoughts as he left public office: CBS News | Ronald Reagan Remembered | June 7, 2004
( 60Minutes_tv Reagan )
- Stem cell research back in the spotlight w/ Reagan's passing: CBS News | FTN - 6/13/04 | June 13, 2004 - Senator Arlen Specter, (R-PA), Dr. James Dobson, Founder, Focus on the Family, Karen Tumulty of TIME, and Bob Schieffer
( FaceTheNation_tv MedSci Op-Ed Politics StemCell )
- Ratting Out the Anonymice - Offended by anonymous sources?: In other words, Posties read the new memo as an invitation to increase the number of anonymous sources in the paper as long as they were more elaborately identified
( Journalism Op-Ed )
- The Five People You Meet in Heaven (by Mitch Albom): Powell's Books - Review-a-Day - Each provides Eddie with some tidbit of nauseating wisdom to help him understand his life. (eg: "All endings are also beginnings"; "The only time we waste is the time we spend thinking we are alone"; etc)
( Amusing Books )
- Index of /RC/VIDEOS: Collection of RC Plane & Helicopter videos
( Amusing Hobbies Inventive )
- The Easter Egg Archive: Hidden secrets in software, movies, music and more!: Hidden secrets in software, movies, music and more!
( Reference )
- Prom Story II - Countdown to the big night.: The good news was that prom was going to be magical, I could tell. Then came the drama.
( Amusing Kids )
- Prom Story - Countdown to the big night.: My date is a 17-year-old high-school senior who could easily pass for 12, a young woman for whom the recent past means middle school
( Amusing Kids )
- NPR : 'American Taboo: A Murder in the Peace Corps': new book tells the true story of a Peace Corps volunteer who was murdered in 1976
( Books NPR_radio PeaceCorp )
Posted by ben at 11:59 PM
June 16, 2004
Notable URLs on 2004-06-16
- A School Grows in Brooklyn - IT EDUCATION: CIO Magazine Apr 1, 2001 - a daring experiment to reinvent George Westinghouse as the nation's first IT high school
( Charity CIO_mag Innovative Kids )
- How Websites Learn: Acts of Volition - The true architect builds with a clear understanding of the limitations of his current vantage point, before a building exists, rather then blindly ignoring them.
( Design Innovative Programming SwDev WebDev )
- Kameleon URC-9960 Review: RC: One For All Kameleon 8 URC-9960 Remote Control Review
( Gadgets Reference )
- Why open distribution is the real promise of open source: IT Manager's Journal - customers benefit because vendors must focus on solving business problems rather than creating lock-in to keep customers from escaping shoddy software and service
( Business ITM OpenSource )
- 'F*CKING' villagers vote against name change: SantaBanta Newsmaker - Residents of an Austrian village called F*cking, have voted against changing the name
( Amusing News )
- Another IT High in San Diego: CIO Magazine Apr 1, 2001 - at least one other community reaching for the IT High label besides George Westinghouse HS in N.Y. The Gary and Jerri-Ann Jacobs High Tech HS in San Diego
( Charity CIO_mag Innovative Kids )
- Various Cutaway Technical Illustrations
( Autos Graphics Reference )
- Gmail Gems: Gmail Gems or Secrets of the Gmail Wizard
( Google Reference )
- Treo 600 + Kodak Pic Station: Treo 600's camera and the new Kodak Picture Station service which supports camera phones
( Gadgets Photography )
- qmail Anti-Spam HOWTO: Chris Hardie - discusses anti-spam philosophies from a variety of perspectives and provides information about available options
( NetOps qmail Reference )
- On the Move: CIO Magazine Jun 1, 2004 - Three Questions for Would-Be CIOs-for-Hire
( CIO_mag Jobs )
- New Technologies Hit Mainstream - Wireless Standards: CIO Magazine Jun 1, 2004 - FedEx and UPS are the pioneers of wireless systems implementations, and the rivals continue to pursue
( CIO_mag WiFi )
- IT High School Expands Program - Follow-Up: CIO Magazine Jun 1, 2004 - Four years ago, Brooklyn's "IT High" dropped its traditional vocational classes and adopted a technology-only curriculum, including Cisco certification and C programming classes
( CIO_mag Innovative Kids )
- SynergyOSX: Synergy lets you share a single mouse/keyboard between multiple computers with different operating systems, each with its own display, without special hardware
( MacOSX Software )
- On Eve of IPO, Google Gets Earful on Gmail Plan: CIO Magazine - Jun 1,2004 - howls of protest from consumer privacy and civil liberties groups in Europe and the United States
( CIO_mag Google Privacy )
- PowerAdmin for PowerDNS
( NetOps Software )
- 9/11 staff: No al Qaeda cooperation with Iraq: CNN.com - Jun 16, 2004 - It found that Saudi Arabia was a rich fund-raising ground for al Qaeda, but that it had found no evidence that the Saudi government funded al Qaeda
( Politics Terrorism )
- PowerDNS: PowerDNS is an advanced, open source, & authoritative-only nameserver. written from scratch and conforms to all the relevant DNS standards
( NetOps Software )
- Buying a mattress, from an ex-mattress salesperson: Epinions.com - even before I explain how to choose a mattress, I should tell you that the system is designed to confuse you
( Consumers House Reference )
Posted by ben at 11:59 PM
June 15, 2004
Notable URLs on 2004-06-15
- The Speed Trap Exchange: Contribute to the Speed Trap Exchange, or read about other Speed Traps
( Reference )
- Duran Duran Regrouping for a New Album: Yahoo! News - LeBon says the band is not trying to copy the Europop sound that sold them millions of records.
( Music News )
- 2 Letter Country Codes: This list states the country names (official short names in English) as given in ISO 3166-1
( Reference )
- Thirty-eight dishonest tricks: Thirty-eight dishonest tricks which are commonly used in argument, with the methods of overcoming them
( Reference [ToRead] )
- Kite Aerial Photography: by Scott Haefner
( Photography )
- Cacheability Engine: Cacheability Engine will look at a URL, giving both specific cache-related data about it, and a general commentary on how cacheable the object is
( Reference Software WebDev )
- Apple and BMW team up to produce car audio device: Apple & BMW to codevelop an audio adapter that will soon allow owners of recent BMW models to connect their iPods to their car audio system
( Apple BMW Gadgets Music )
- When the zombies take over, how long till the electricity fails?: Straight Dope Staff Report: I'll ignore the side issues of whether the zombies would want to try to run the power plant themselves, or if they would be a union or non-union shop.
( Amusing Reference )
- overshadowed: Images by Keith Kin Yan, Animator/VFX compositor, New York - NY
( Photography )
- Iraq Contractors' Testimony Debated: washingtonpost.com - awarded $4.5 billion so far to provide supplies, such as fuel, and services, such as meals, the Waxman letter noted. Halliburton, which also has a contract to restore Iraq's oil fields, has been granted a total of $8.2 billion in busi
( Halliburton Iraq Politics )
- The real reason you should care about web standards: Design by Fire: Maybe Bill Gates really is just Hari Seldon from Asimov’s Foundation universe?
( Op-Ed W3C WaSP )
- AWStats Statistics: Jogin.com - So what I had to do was to isolate the requests of the XML feeds from the page downloads, because otherwise the page downloads statistics just didn't make any sense at all.
( NetOps Software )
- Pantone to RGB: Conversion from Pantone to RGB and Hex HTML
( Color WebDev )
- Will Mainframes Serve Your Future?: Mainframes are supposedly old school, but some companies are interested in using them to host thousands of virtual Linux servers
( Baseline_mag ITM Linux )
- The Business Benefits of Web Standards: This article discusses how adhering to web standards, can contribute to a company's business goals.
( CSS WaSP WebDev )
- Nation Builders and Low Bidders in Iraq: The New York Times > Opinion > The strength of systems of democracy and capitalism are that they are supposed to be self-correcting and self-improving. When mistakes are made, lessons are learned so that the errors are not repeated. When it comes to priva
( Govt Iraq Op-Ed Politics )
- GOP refusing to allow testimony on Halliburton spending: KR Washington Bureau | 06/14/2004 | Statements by the whistleblowers - five of whom were identified - and the government's audit report "portray a company and a contracting environment that has run amok"
( Halliburton Iraq Politics )
- Angola: Account for Missing Oil Revenues: Human Rights Watch, 12-1-2004 - While ordinary Angolans suffered through a profound humanitarian crisis, their government oversaw the suspicious disappearance of a truly colossal sum of money.
( AO Energy HumanRights Soros )
- BugMeNot.com: Bypass Compulsory Web Registration
( Reference Software )
- I would RTFM if there was an FM to FR: Design by Fire: I feel better now
( Op-Ed W3C WaSP )
- AIGA - Symbol signs: complete set of 50 passenger/pedestrian symbols developed by AIGA is now available on the web, free of charge
( Graphics Typography )
- Drilling Into Web Bedrock: Java application servers have matured into reliable -- but complex -- engines for efficiently delivering services over the Web
( AppServers Baseline_mag Java )
- Somali Is Accused of Planning a Terror Attack at a Shopping Center in Ohio: The New York Times > National > Law enforcement officials cautioned that it appeared not to have advanced beyond the discussion stage. They expressed doubt that Mr. Abdi had the financial, organizational or technical skills to carry out an attack.
( dept_Justice News Terrorism US )
- For Freed Iraqis, Mixed Emotions: washingtonpost.com - With new regulations in place and new soldiers on guard, many of the detainees said Abu Ghraib was not the same prison it was when reports of abuse by U.S. guards surfaced
( Iraq Politics )
- XStandard - WYSIWYG Editor: advanced, standards-based (XHTML 1.1) WYSIWYG editor on the market. Requires ActiveX
( Software WaSP WebDev )
- Angola's Elusive Oil Riches: The New York Times > Opinion > Angola is the second-largest oil producer in sub-Saharan Africa, after Nigeria. Yet its people are by some measures the world's most miserable
( AO Energy Op-Ed Politics )
- Travesty of Justice: The New York Times > Opinion > We can't tell directly whether Ashcroft's post-9/11 policies are protecting the US from terrorist attacks. But a number of pieces of evidence suggest otherwise
( Ashcroft dept_Justice Op-Ed Politics Terrorism )
Posted by ben at 11:59 PM
June 14, 2004
Notable URLs on 2004-06-14
- Of the world's 100 largest economic entities: , 51 are now corporations and 49 are countries (2000)
( Reference )
- JpGraph - An OO Graph library for PHP4: JpGraph is an OO class library for PHP >=4.2.0. Requires the GD library.
( PHP Scripts )
- Ever since the 1920s revolution, the Shiites have angrily wondered what happened.: ABCNEWS.com: They ask themselves how they could have started and won a revolution, and then lost power. One lesson they took from 1920-21 was: "Don't trust the foreigner."
( Iraq Politics UK )
- The Journals of 2 Ex-Slaves Draw Vivid Portraits: New York Times > National > They speak to a debate in recent slavery studies: to what degree did Lincoln emancipate the slaves, and to what degree were they already emancipating themselves as the war ravaged the South?
( CivilWar History US )
- Appointee's Role in Halliburton Pact Told: Pentagon officials have acknowledged that a political appointee was behind the ]decision to have Halliburton plan for the postwar recovery. $1.9B contract led to $7B more.
( Cheney Iraq Politics )
- QuickColor
( Color WebDev )
- code | color shift: experiment creates a number of DIV elements and an array of hex colors, then changes the background color of each DIV
( CSS WebDev XHTML )
- SZADO Design: Avant Garde Furniture
( Design Furnishing Home )
- Rosetta Stone for Unix
( Reference )
- War at Home: Recruiters Try New Tactics to Sell Wartime Army: The New York Times > National > Recruiters are pitching a broad range of options: a shorter enlistment, of 15 months instead of 24; a buddy option, which lets enlistees serve alongside a friend; and a reminder that there are 211 Army jobs
( Jobs Politics )
- Unit Says It Gave Earlier Warning of Abuse in Iraq: The New York Times > International > Middle East > "We were reporting it long before this mess came out," said one of several military intelligence soldiers interviewed
( Iraq Politics )
- folding chair history poster
( Amusing Design Furnishing )
- How to Make a Complete Map of Every Thought you Think
( Reference [ToRead] )
- Something Wiki This Way Comes: BW Online | June 7, 2004 | at least 35,000 people have downloaded TWiki since 2001. Two-thirds of his programs are going into businesses -- Walt Disney, SAP, and Motorola among them.
( system:unfiled )
- Educational Bloggers' Network :
( Blogs eLearning )
Posted by ben at 11:59 PM
June 13, 2004
Notable URLs on 2004-06-13
Posted by ben at 11:59 PM
Del.icio.us Link Log
Since I found Jeff's and Matthew's posts on their Del.icio.us link log script so helpful, I thought I'd post my modifications for others as well. My version does the link log you see to the right (if you're on /). I had slightly different designs on how I wanted to use my Del.icio.us links:
- I wanted to post a days worth of my 'noted' URLs (automatically) everyday.
- I did not want a separate blog, with a single post per link (and matching category-to-tag mapping)
- I decided to just have a single post per day, with each link as a formatted bullet point (w/ tags) in the body of the post.
- If available, I wanted the extended information from my link posted as well.
I used Jeffery's script as a base and with some helpful hints on using MT::Placement from Matthew's script, I came up with this 'lightly modified' version of Veen's. Not even worth a copyright, really, but may be helpful to others.
I use cron to run this script just after midnight everyday (the script calculates 'yesterday', and grabs those links only). My MT index template is setup to a) grab posts that are NOT in the 'links' category for the main column and recent posts sections (using MTSQLEntries) and b) only grab entries from the 'links' category for the link log column (using <MTEntries category="links">). MT and its development community certainly makes this stuff simple.
Posted by ben at 10:41 PM
Comments (0)
France 2, England 1
First round match pitting England versus France and teammates against teammates could have been explosive. Not surprisingly, both teams played it safe. England handed the win to France in injury time with an incredibly poor ball back from Gerrard of all people. The game overall was very 50-50, and 1-1 would have been a very fair result. It's too bad both teams played "not to lose".
Joe invited the whole P.F.B.crew over for a Euro 2004 BBQ at his beautiful home. Kids and wives made the outing a very nice day which hopefully we can arrange again in the future. Tedd and I rounded the day off with a little soccer of our own down at Uni Park. Very nice day indeed.
Posted by ben at 09:31 PM
Comments (0)
June 12, 2004
Notable URLs on 2004-06-12
Posted by ben at 11:59 PM
June 11, 2004
Notable URLs on 2004-06-11
- The 46 Best-ever Freeware Utilities
( Software )
- Gorby had the lead role, not Gipper: The Globe and Mail - In the collapse of communism he deserves credit not as an instigator, but an abettor. Best Supporting Actor.
( Gorbachev Politics Reagan )
- Email Address Encoder: encode your e-mail address through the use of Character Entities
( eMail Scripts Spam )
- MS Expression
( Graphics Software )
- Keep your Email Address Hidden from Spambot Spiders: You can try and obscure your email address by doing something like:
( eMail Scripts Spam )
- Five Lessons You Should Learn from Extreme Programming: [Jul. 31, 2003] 1. Code for Maintainability, 2. Know Your Status, 3. Communicate Early and Often, 4. Do Things That Matter, 5. Fix Your Most Important Problem First
( SwDev XP )
- Jason Lees Design
( Design Furnishing )
- 3Ds of Process Improvement - Part III - The Team Process: SW Crosstalk: Apr 1998 - How to improve the quality and efficiency of team-based projects.
( CMM Programming SwDev [ToRead] )
- TTW WYSIWYG Editors: The List: To be listed below the editor must be TTW and WYSIWYG
( Software WebDev )
- Double CD Paper Case
( Music Reference )
- jodrell.net : projects : mailto : a php library to reclaim mailto: links from e-mail address harvesters: Using JavaScript, it creates a link to an e-mail address while keeping the actual address obfuscated.
( eMail Scripts Spam )
- Interference: The Stroop Effect: If you're like most people, your first inclination was to read the words, 'red, yellow, green...,' rather than the colors they're printed in, 'blue, green, red...'
( Cognative Reference )
- Obfuscate Email Addresses: use the numeric value of each character in the address
( eMail Scripts Spam )
- Death by UML Fever - Are you (or your developers) sick?: ACM Queue - Self-diagnosis and early treatment are crucial in the fight against UML Fever.
( SwDev UML [ToRead] )
- 3Ds of Process Improvement - Part II - The Personal Process: SW Crosstalk: Mar 1998 - Solid data on the effectiveness of the Personal Software Process.
( CMM Programming SwDev [ToRead] )
- Improving Software Productivity via Neurofeedback (A proposal): Brain Waves - "Our primary emotions, love and fear, sadness and joy-emerge from this region, coloring incoming stimuli with emotional valences we have associated with past events stored in the hyppocampus or the amygdala."
( Cognative SwDev )
- SeatGuru.com: Your Enlightened Guide to Airplane Seating
( Reference Travel )
- Reagan's Osama Connection - How he turned a jihadist into a terrorist kingpin.: Ronald Reagan played a major role in ending the Cold War. Reagan also played a major role in bringing on the terrorist war that followed—specifically, in abetting the rise of Osama Bin Laden.
( Gorbachev Politics Reagan )
- SilkWare.com: SilkBlogs is a powerful, hosted enterprise Weblog application, built on a robust, award-winning CMS
( Blogs CMS Hosted )
- Ultimate Boot CD
( NetOps Software )
- The Irresponsible Investor: The New York Times > Magazine > Google the words ''investors'' and ''corporate corruption'' and read about the many ways in which the former have been abused by the latter. Plug the same words into the company Google and you'll get a strikingly different
( Birkenstock Ethics Google Haas Investors SRI )
- 3Ds of Process Improvement - Part I - Process Maturity: SW Crosstalk: Feb 1998 - The first of a three-part series explains the rationale behind the CMM, PSP, and TSP.
( CMM Programming SwDev [ToRead] )
- VimOutliner.org :: Work fast. Think well.
( Software )
- Ron and Mikhail's Excellent Adventure - How Reagan won the Cold War.: Reagan's vision of SDI—a shield that would render nuclear weapons obsolete—was scientifically preposterous but, by all accounts, genuine. Many of his hawkish aides scoffed at it; they liked SDI because it would scare the Russians and, if it worked, mi
( Gorbachev Politics Reagan )
- Organtizational Patterns: official repository for the editorial effort to build a CommonPatternLanguage of OrganizationalPatterns
( Management OrgSci Reference )
- MTPhotoGallery: A Movable Type Plugin: Brandon Fuller | a new set of Movable Type template tags. These tags will allow you to display a list of image files
( MT Software )
- Pathways to Process Maturity: The Personal and Team Software Processes: Condensed version of Crosstalk's 3 part series (1998)
( CMM Programming SwDev )
- The Two Things: I told him I was an economist, he said, “Ah. So… what are the Two Things about economics?”
( Amusing Inventive )
Posted by ben at 11:59 PM
June 10, 2004
Notable URLs on 2004-06-10
- Knowledge Sharing: KS at the World Bank has evolved over time. From an early emphasis on capturing and organizing knowledge, its focus now is on adopting,
( KM Reference )
- kunal.org: OutlookMT and SharePoint: kunal.org: OutlookMT hooks into MS Sharepoint
( Blogs MS_Sharepoint Software )
- MediaSavvy: Top 10 free and cheap content management systems: here are what I think are the top ten free and cheap content management systems
( CMS Webdev )
- Shirky: A Group Is Its Own Worst Enemy: keynote on Social Software at the O'Reilly Emerging Technology conf on April 24, 2003
( Cognative Groups SwDev )
- CSS Panic Guide: These are the sites that I refer to first, and that I tell people to read.
( CSS WebDev )
- WorldBack OED: Sharing Knowledge: Innovations and Remaining Challenges. KM Cases and Whitepapers.
( KM [ToRead] )
- True Grid - Grid Technology: Which applications can be grid-enabled; How to prepare users for grid environment - CIO Magazine May 15, 2004
( CIO_mag NetOps )
- Invalid techniques of proof: "1.2 Proof by intimidation: Trivial"
( Amusing Reference )
- DNA identifies African roots for black Americans: CNS: April 05, 2004 - "As a person of color, there is only so much you can do with government records," said Gina Paige, "During slavery, Africans were not recorded as people, with last names and dates of births; they were recorded as property."
( Genetics )
- OutlookMT: OutlookMT is a utility that monitors a designated Outlook 2k3 folder. An item placed in the "magic folder" will be blogged
( Blogs MT Software )
- Weird science: Bush administration accused of data distortion: panel of 60 influential scientists, including 20 Nobel laureates, said i that the Bush administration had systematically censored and suppressed reports by its own scientists, stacked advisory committees with unqualified political appointees and disbanded
( Bush Politics Science )
- Ten evangelism and IT lessons from one of America's biggest churches: Scobleizer - CTO Storch has the answer: IT investments designed to attract a new kind of churchgoer that other churches were ignoring.
( ITM Marketing )
- Rules of Success. #1: Sweat Equity is the best equity!: Blog Maverick - Mark's rules for successful businesses
( Business Management )
- FavIcon from Pics: Build a favicon.ico from an image
( Icons WebDev )
- Start with the Logic - Pundit: CIO Magazine May 15, 2004 - perfect middle ground between build and buy. Increasingly, you hear about Web services and service-oriented architecture (SOA)
( CIO_mag Op-Ed SOA WebServices )
- MIT Builds Its Dream House: MIT's new workspace facilitates collaboration; Stata Center suggests new engineering paradigm - CIO Magazine May 15, 2004
( CIO_mag Design )
- Instant Networks - Under Development: CIO Magazine May 15, 2004 - flexibility and ease has made them both the joy and the bane of network administrators.
( CIO_mag NetOps PARC WiFi )
- on social software: (28 April 2004, Interconnected) Social software's purpose is dealing with with groups, or interactions between people.
( Groups SwDev [ToRead] )
- Taxonomies, Classification, Categorization - SearchTools.com Report: These terms are often confused and used interchangeably. These are all ways of organizing information (or things) into categories.
( IA [ToRead] )
- Faster Pussycat, Wax! Wax!: Salon.com - Health -- named for seven Brazilian-born sisters: Jocely, Jonice, Joyce, Janea, Jussara, Juracy and Judseia Padilha, whose claim to fame is introducing Americans to their hometown phenomenon of "Brazilian bikini waxing."
( Amusing )
- 8 Minutes in the Morning: "By using these exercises for just 8 minutes each morning you can see results in just 28 days!" - Uh huh.
( Fitness )
- The Inevitability of Blade: CIO Magazine May 15, 2004 - Blade servers helped the Mars rover land safely while saving NASA money. That combo of high power and low cost is driving blade technology mainstream.
( CIO_mag NASA NetOps )
Posted by ben at 11:59 PM
June 09, 2004
Notable URLs on 2004-06-09
- MythPhone: MythPhone is a plugin for MythTV that provides for phone and video calls to be made using a standard SIP protocol.
( MythTV Software )
- Juicy Studio: WCAG and the Myth of Accessibility: WCAG are designed to cater almost exclusively for those with a physical disability such as a visual impairment
( Accessibility Op-Ed [ToRead] )
- Windows Server 2003 Add-Ons, Part 3: available for download is the IIS 6.0 Deployment Guide,
( NetOps Win32 )
- First quantum cryptography network unveiled: New Scientist - It is encrypted using keys determined by the exchange of a series of single, polarised photons
( Cryptography )
- Valerie Plame - Disinfopedia: Timeline and Articles regarding the Valerie Plame investigation
( Bush Plame_Wilson Politics )
- All Things Distributed: On the Scalability of Feeds & Aggregators: with the explosive growth of the use of desktop based aggregators is similar to the scalability problems that many other distributed systems and applications have faced
( Blogs Feeds XML )
- Windows Server 2003 Add-Ons, Part 1: right-click on a computer and choose Remote Control to open a RDP connection to the selected computer
( NetOps Win32 )
- Mars rovers prepare for a dramatic last act: csmonitor.com - "Two of the biggest events of the mission are happening almost at the same time," says Steve Squyres, lead scientist for the rovers
( Mars NASA )
- Windows Server 2003 Add-Ons, Part 2: WSRM is an add-on that lets you allocate CPU and memory resources for server processes
( NetOps Win32 )
- SUV Nirvana | May 31, 2004: 60 Minutes - "I'm not gonna interrupt my lifestyle because of a few extra bucks on gas mileage ... I understand the oil situation and everything like that. But we're America, I guess, you know?" *sigh*
( Autos Op-Ed Politics )
- The Green Side (one soliders account in/around Falluja): The clerics who once were whipping these idiots (Falluja militias) into a suicidal frenzy are now having to issue Fatwas (holy decrees) admonishing the muj for extortion, rape, murder and kidnapping.
( Iraq Terrorism )
- Life Hacks - pre-Alpha: I'm slowly building the site for Life Hacks
( Amusing Innovative )
- Supreme's Ruling Lets In Mexican Trucks: Siding with Bush in their 9-0 ruling, the justices threw out a court order that had blocked the free flow of Mexican trucks on the grounds that the often older diesel vehicles would further pollute areas of Ca and the Southwest. ~34,000 Mexican trucks wil
( Bush Environment Politics )
- Semantic Blogging: by adding additional semantic structure to items shared over the blog channels we add significant value allowing navigation and search along semantic rather than simply chronological or serendipitous connections.
( Blogs ITM [ToRead] )
- Memo Offered Justification for Use of Torture: washingtonpost.com - DoD spokesman said that the Mar 2003 memo represented "a scholarly effort to define the perimeters of the law" but added: "What is legal and what is put into practice is a different story." The group examined at least 35 interrogation
( Bush Rumsfeld )
- Ex-Dean aide gets new life in valley: MercuryNews.com | 05/16/2004 -- ``We're not looking for our money back,'' Rappaport says. ``We're funding projects we think are interesting on a social level, but are not interesting on financial terms.''
( CMS Drupal Opensource Politics )
- Democracy...ummm - sometime ?: MeFi - "The head of Florida's elections division resigned Monday amid reports he was feeling political heat over a push to purge thousands of suspected felons from the state's voter rolls."
( Elections Politics [ToRead] )
- Democrats strike back on faith issue: csmonitor.com - "Within the Democratic Party, there is an increasingly aggressive secular left that has driven people of faith, especially conservative Catholics and evangelical Christians, into the Republican Party."
( Politics )
- IT morale drops to all-time low, study says: CNET News.com - Companies are continuing to turn to offshore outsourcing, because of substantial savings, with average salaries up to 60 percent less. But hurdles such as language barriers and cultural and political differences will prevent a major increa
( Management Outsourcing )
- The Semantic Web: 1-2-3: not intended to teach you RDF via my own words, but rather to hand-hold you through the "good" parts of the same journey I took
( WebDev XML [ToRead] )
- Greenspan Says Inflation May Force Fed to Raise Rates Sharply: The New York Times > Business > "the F.O.M.C. is prepared to do what is required to fulfill our obligations to achieve the maintenance of price stability so as to ensure maximum sustainable economic growth."
( Economics Greenspan News )
- Life After Outsourcing - How to prepare staff for an outsourcing initiative: CIO Magazine May 15, 2004 - CIO. VP. Manager. Outsourced Employee. We get up close with four players of an outsourcing company
( CIO_mag ITM Outsourcing )
- eBay Hops Aboard The RSS Train: eBay has now rolled out two RSS feeds. They are designed to shuttle general announcements and system status messages to users
( eBay Feeds News RSS )
- Teaching OO: Putting the Object back into OOD: Almost everyone who teaches OO uses the class as a fundamental building block. This misses the point of OO: the objects themselves. This weblog is a case study in teaching object orientation.
( OOD Programming )
- Web Testing with HTTP::Recorder: HTTP::Recorder is a browser-independent recorder that records interactions with web sites and produces scripts for automated playback
( PERL WebDev )
- Bush's Erratic Behavior Worries White House Aides: “It reminds me of the Nixon days,” says a longtime GOP consultant. "Everybody is an enemy; everybody is out to get him. That’s the mood over there.”
( Ashcroft Bush Politics Tenet )
- Vim: Seven habits of effective text editing: If you spend a lot of time typing plain text, writing programs or HTML, you can save much of that time by using a good editor and using it effectively
( Programming Reference )
Posted by ben at 11:59 PM
June 08, 2004
Notable URLs on 2004-06-08
Posted by ben at 11:59 PM
June 07, 2004
Notable URLs on 2004-06-07
- Spain and U.S. at Odds on Mistaken Terror Arrest: The New York Times > National > The F.B.I. "can't afford too many more of these," Mr. Baker said. "You start losing your credibility, and then judges start losing their confidence."
( FBI Terrorism )
- Finally, a sustained surge in US job growth: csmonitor.com - benefits of the growing economy are still not being broadly shared, they're still flowing more to profits than they are to wages
( Economics News )
- Investigation: Report Blames Agencies Over Prewar Intelligence: The New York Times > Washington > "This is not what you'd call a balanced, analytical document, it's very, very harsh."
( Bush CIA Politics Tenet )
- The Her Home Silent, Nancy Reagan Found a Voice: New York Times > Washington > as Ronald Reagan weakened over the years and he saw almost no one except a live-in nurse and his wife, Mrs. Reagan seemed to grow stronger.
( People Reagan )
- A quick look at serial ATA (SATA) disk performance: MS Research on SATA replacement for Terraserver
( Benchmarks Disk )
- 9 Militias to Disband in Iraq, but Not Rebel Cleric's Force: The New York Times > International > Middle East > PM Iyad Allawi stated that ~100,000 paramilitary would demobilize and re-enter civilian life or join the country's forces. The deal was an initiative of the US authorities.
( Iraq )
Posted by ben at 11:59 PM
June 06, 2004
Notable URLs on 2004-06-06
Posted by ben at 11:59 PM
June 05, 2004
Notable URLs on 2004-06-05
Posted by ben at 11:59 PM
June 04, 2004
Notable URLs on 2004-06-04
|
We'll miss his spirit and energy around the house for the next six weeks, for sure. We plan to head out today to keep our minds off of things, but snapped one last pic of Tedd and his Mom. Next time we see him, he will have grown another 6 inches -- and I don't just mean his hair! 
He'll be back in August just in time for Hawaii. We'll try to keep busy around the house, in the mean time.
