July 21, 2003
bots in your pants?
file under: thoughts about things
dockers has made the leap to using nanotechnology in their pants.
or wait...no...we're sorry!!! heh. we're just corporate bozos using scientific terminology as a smokescreen to make it look like we're releasing new and innovative products.
[note: their web site doesn't contain any references to nanotechnology, which means either they removed their "unintentional" gaffe, or CNN.com fabricated the whole story.]
Posted: 07.21.03 at 2:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)
July 17, 2003
into the fires
file under: technology
from "Dynamic HTML: The Definitive Reference (2nd Edition)" by Danny Goodman:
"...[Netscape] Navigator 4 has become a dead-end development platform, whose installed base will only decrease over time.
Despite the fact that some organizations have continued to standardize on Navigator 4 while waiting to migrate to a more modern browser platform, this edition of 'Dynamic HTML: The Definitive Reference' cuts the cord with the Navigator 4 past. If you need assistance and examples of scripting Navigator 4 DHTML, consult the first edition of this title."
and so Navigator 4, despite its well-intentioned efforts, was cast into the fires of perdition and forgetfulness. and a wave of joy spread across the land of web developers, as they rejoiced at the decline and eventual fall of their nemesis. and it was good.
Posted: 07.17.03 at 12:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
July 16, 2003
really old gas
file under: thoughts about things
rubber ducks. gas giants. it's all good for the geek.
anal-retentive geek note: in the headline of the NASA article, they indicate that the planet is "still there, according to Hubble space telescope." just to be precise, all we know is that it was there 5600 years ago (since M4 is 5600 light years away). thanks for your attention.
Posted: 07.16.03 at 2:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
July 10, 2003
upgrade and die
file under: about this blog
a few weeks ago, i upgraded this blog to use Movable Type 2.64. or so i thought. after digging around and doing some other work with 2.64 (entry coming soon), i realized that things were completely fubared.
and so i did the obligatory rtfm. i read the manual. i waded through hundreds of support threads and web sites and Movable Type help forums. and then i gave up. i scrapped it all and re-installed everything from scratch. sometimes this seems to be the only way to kill the boojums.
of course, it also means i stay up until 1:30am fussing with my stupid blog. but hey, now it's syndicated in XML! [the crowd yawns]
Posted: 07.10.03 at 1:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
July 9, 2003
flotsametrics
file under: thoughts about things
on january 10, 1992, a great tragedy occurred on the high seas. a cargo ship going from hong kong to seattle was swallowed by a terrible storm. when it emerged from the maelstrom after a long, dark night, several 30-ft cargo containers had been washed overboard. one of them contained a shipment of toys; not your garden-variety toys, mind you, but 29,000 yellow rubber duckies, blue turtles, red beavers, and green frogs.
all were presumed lost at sea, never to be cherished by small children in bathtubs across america, never to be chewed lovingly by the family dog. a brief memorial service was held by the captain to mark their passing.
but wait! ten months later, our intrepid little friends began washing up on the shores of sitka, alaska, and have been circling the oceans of the globe ever since. nations rejoiced, and 11 years of oceanographic research was spawned (a science now referred to as 'flotsametrics', its practitioners calling themselves 'driftologists').
when asked why they engineered these little toys to be so tough, the chinese engineers replied, 'well, we didn't want some poor child to cry because his rubber ducky sank in the bathtub.'
Posted: 07.09.03 at 10:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)
July 2, 2003
segs away!
file under: design
as i was walking home from the corner store this morning, what should i see rolling down the street, but a Segway.
i was beginning to think these things were a massive hoax perpetrated by Amazon and dean kamen, but it turns out that my conspiracy theory had a flat tire. yes, folks, for the small price of $4950, you too can buy your piece of transportation history.
or is it just a bunch of marketing hype?
...
i'm not sure...the thing that struck me most when i looked at the Segway was, where the heck are people supposed to ride these things? and for what will they be used (aside from causing rubbernecker traffic accidents)?
the Segway is not large. one small person on a Segway takes up about the same physical space as one really big person with feet planted on the ground. it's extremely quiet, seems to roll quite well up and down san francisco streets, and it turns effortlessly. in fact, i wasn't really able to see completely how its rider was directing it...it almost seemed to pilot itself.
with all of that said, it's pretty slow. most of the yuppies who run in noe valley would pass someone on a Segway. a little faster than walking, but not even close to the speed of a bike, car, or even skateboard. it also has about the same protection (i.e., none).
which leads me back to my questions above.
if it's slower than any other form of non-bipedal transport, yet slightly faster than walking, where do you ride it? the sidewalk, or the street? the sidewalk seems the most logical place, given speed and safety factors. what if the sidewalk is crowded? hmmm. bike lane? maybe, except there are three bike lanes in san francisco. in the street with cars? you wouldn't catch me out there.
the next question is perhaps the more important one - what mode of travel does it support? you can't use it for long trips (although david lynch might have something to say about that). i couldn't even realistically ride it to work, which is about 4 miles from my house. it would take me a long time to get there, and i'd probably get beaten up for riding the Segway before i got there. which seems to leave the intra- or inter-neighborhood trip as the probable usage of the Segway. (maybe there are other rural usages, but i'm going to be a city snob, for the moment)
so why would i spend $5000 on something to get around in the neighborhood, or to go and have a glass of wine with a friend who lives a mile or two away? i would just walk or ride my bike.
so from my perspective, that leaves two possible user groups: (1) people who travel only short distances and are not capable of walking, driving or biking, through disability, illness, or some other unavoidable cause, and (2) people who could take $5000 and flush it down the toilet without thinking twice. (NOTE: for those of you thinking about people who can't afford cars, think bike. or scooter. or skateboard, for the young or highly coordinated and risk-tolerant old.)
maybe i'm just being a cranky cynic (and it's not because of the heat wave, which is now gone).
anybody got any other thoughts? i'd love to hear that i'm really missing something here, because Segways seem like a really cool idea.
Posted: 07.02.03 at 7:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)
July 1, 2003
blog tech
file under: technology
i am now convinced that blogs, and other forms of social networks, are driving a massive amount of innovation on the web.
while this may strike some as patently obvious, it just hit me in the face like an unwelcome (yet necessary) slap. it always happens like this...i pull one ignorant thread on the sweater of my life, and pretty soon it's unraveled at my feet, and i'm cold and shivering, painfully aware of all the sh*t i don't know. again.
...
i'm helping a friend get his weblog up and running, and in the process realized i needed to update my version of movable type. then i realized that movable type has some cool new features that i might want to take advantage of. then i started following the threads of connected information and knowledge, spreading like a glorious virus, and i realized - i am behind the times.
XML-RPC. RSS. Google API. Amazon API. Blogger API. trackbacks. blog pings. the iceberg goes much deeper...
how the hell does anyone keep up with this stuff? i mean, this is ostensibly my job, and i feel like a country bumpkin who's just come to the city and seen his first sushi restaurant.
it's seems like the process of technological innovation on the internet has become autocatalytic. i think the web and blog communities are pushing a good deal of this growth (e-commerce is so two years ago). people tie themselves in, learn a few bits of web tech, and the technology grows and spreads like a virus.
just imagine what you could do if you harnessed the power of that intellectual connectivity. i lay awake at night thinking about the connectedness of people, places, events, and how the web is making milgram's six degrees of separation a visible reality. you can start to see those degrees now...sometimes they're just shadows, sometimes they're the forest in front of you, hidden by the trees.
i'm not explaining myself well. more on this topic later...
Posted: 07.01.03 at 9:08 PM | Permalink
