Friday, January 31
More commonly known by their initials, Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) and Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) have long been recognized by the medical community as real ailments that afflict 5% of children - Ailments that can be treated with a high degree of effectiveness with Ritalin. (a www.mentalhealth.com link) But to conservative pundits, it's all nothing more than a fraudulent liberal scheme to "redefine childhood as an ailment, and medicate it until it goes away." (a www.thenewrepublic.com link) The arguments against ADD and ADHD as bona fide ailments coincide well with other traditionally conservative themes: It's not a real disorder; It's just a feminist plot to make boys act like girls; It's a scheme by public schools to shirk their responsibilities; It's an effort by parents to avoid normal child-rearing duties.
Word's ability to handle graphics is absolutely terrible. Whenever
you put in a graphic, insert the graphic from a file (don't paste it).
Make sure you uncheck "float over text". This makes the graphic act
like one big letter. In the image properties, resize it so that it
will fit within the page margins (the image oftens moves randomly if
it goes out outside the margins). Avoid using text wrapping or
cropping of the image.
I'm writing a manual and would like to creat a sidebar. By sidebar I
mean that when I print front and back the sidebar stays on the outside
edge. The sidebar will have two uses. In the instructors manual it
will have notes and icons describing how to present the material. In
the students manual it will be blank space to make notes.
Using one of Microsofts tips
(http://www.microsoft.com/insider/word2000/articles/headside.htm), I
created a template with mirrored margins and made the outside margin
about 3" wide and then putting a text box in the header for both an odd
and an even page. This almost works but the only thing I need now is to
have every page with a different headers and footers so the information
in the text boxes won't be the same on every page. To do that I know I
can insert a section break but that will also make changes to the layout
of the document when I have to update the manual.
Inserting a Column Break in Word
Inserting a Column Break in Word
Columns in Word will run continuously, down one side of the page, then to the top of the next column. If you want to stop one column in the middle of the page and have the next column start at the top of the page, just put your toothpick cursor in the column you want to break, maybe at the end of a paragraph. Then choose Insert, Break. Choose Column Break from the list; then click OK. Your next column will continue at the top of the page!
Napoles harks back to a time when flamboyant Colombian drug barons flaunted their riches and bombed and killed anyone who got in their way. Escobar, who rose from tombstone robber to one of the world's most famous and feared criminals, had amassed a fortune of $3 billion by age 33.
Wednesday, January 29
This conversion is done using the LaTeX-2-HTML script by Nick Drakos, (Univ. of Leeds).
\r" } else print } or you could make cr be the field separator, and test to see if the last field on the line is empty, and if so stick
into the preceding field: BEGIN { FS = OFS = "\r" } NF > 1 && $NF == "" { $(NF-1) = $(NF-1) "
" } { print } --
finale 2001 and then i filmed again monday for the upcoming inagural
ball episode..when rob lowe was on the set the gossip among cast and
crew was that everyone hated his guts, especially martin sheen. They
thought his ego was out of control. During shoots hed hang out by
himself and read his copy of variety while smoking a giantic
cigar..and he didnt fraternize at all with the rest of the principal
cast.
For this past mondays shoot, rob lowe was not anywhere to be seen,
and i overheard things like "apparantly hes too good for tv" or
something like that..so yeah..thats what I saw and heard.
Mitch: No, what?
Curly: One thing. Just one thing. You stick to that, and everything else don't mean nothing.
Mitch: That's great, but what's the one thing?"
Curly: That's what you've got to figure out.For some, I guess that's super zaxxon.
You have two basic options, depending on how you want your hanging indent to look.
*
Using a pre-defined style:
1.
Open the Format Stylist (select: Format -> Stylist from the pulldown menu)
2.
Have the text cursor in the text that you want to format as hanging indent (or have the cursor in an empty text style and enter the text later)
3.
Double-click on the "Hanging indent" choice in the Stylist window. This default style has a hanging indent - but it also has a left margin offset of .19 inches.
echo "Getting server..."
export SERVER=`whois $1 | grep -i whois\ server: |
awk '{print $3'}`
echo "Searching server: $SERVER"
whois -h $SERVER $1
This is an OSX script.
Tuesday, January 28
Extract email addresses from incoming mail. The mail would be guided to the following script from within the ~/.forward file. This is not an eficient method, but only an example to show serial processing of text. The next example will do the same thing within awk only and will be efficient. The mail comes in over standardinput into the script.
Between the commands there must be a pipe "|". For continuing on the next line one needs a "\" behind the pipe to escape the invisible newline.
awk '{print $n}' infile > outfile will extract column n of infile and put it in outfile.
#!/usr/bin/tclsh # The above line is UNIX Scripting 'scenery' # 'newline' on output is cr/lf fconfigure stdout -translation crlf # 'newline' on input is cr/lf fconfigure stdin -translation crlf # While gets does not fail (gets will 'fail' on EOF) while {[gets stdin line] >= 0} { # If the line is not empty (not between a pair of newlines (cr/lf/cr/lf) if {[string length "$line"] > 0} { # Output the line, with a space instead of a newline. puts -nonewline "$line " # ^--- note the space } else { # otherwise, output cr/lf/cr/lf (end current line and add another) puts puts } }
There were also plenty of "reality checks" during the design of the experiment. The mission with the student experiments was postponed 19 times.
The delays gave students in the United States and other countries time to make design adjustments, and to rethink many aspects of their experiments.
The Fowler students picked an experiment with ants, rather than plants, because they wanted to see some activity in space. They have been following the ants' progress on the web at http://www.starsacademy.com/sts107.
The students and their teachers also have learned that sometimes the best thought-out hypothesis does not pan out in reality.
Monday, January 27
Sunday, January 26
First, in college you can wholeheartedly believe any stupid idea that comes along and no one will fault you for it. People assume that whatever crazy doctrine you currently subscribe too, you'll soon take another class or read another book that will send you off in new philosophical direction. After reading "On Walden Pond" you honestly believe that, upon graduation, you are going to renounce all your worldly possessions (except for your Phish CDs, obviously) and move to a remote cabin by a lake. And you tell your friends and family this, and they're, like, "That's a beautiful dream! We support you!" But inside they're thinking "Oh well, no need to worry. Next semester he'll take economics and be all like 'Greed is good! Invisible hand, yo!'."
Undesign
Liz Bailey recently wrote an article called Lo-Fi Allstars (PDF) for Graphics International on the trend toward simpler, more usable web design. The article includes a few quotes from me about weblog design. Here's part of a rambling email interview I did for the article:
"Weblogs have definitely affected the look and feel of the overall Web. With weblogs, the design doesn't matter so much. It's not even really design, not to the people who just want to get a blog online so they can get their voice out there quick. All they want is something reasonably readable and distinct (and even the distinct part is optional...there are loads of BlogSpot sites that look exactly the same).
"The explosion of zero-budget amateur publishing (nearly impossible before the Web) we've seen with weblogs, has resulted in a parallel development of zero-cost amateur Web/graphic design. Everyone is a writer. Everyone is a designer. As opposed to the design of personal home pages in the mid 90s where people were designing pages that expressed their individuality and personality, weblog design is much more functional in nature. There's so much content flowing through the site that the design is almost a non-factor. If people can read the posts and if the design isn't getting in the way too much, then it's done 95% of its job.
"Weblogs very much embrace the idea that the Web is ever in flux. In the late 90s, many Web design firms developed a 'prototype, test, reiterate' approach to information architecture and Web design, with various degrees of success. Webloggers seem to have developed a similar system on their own. The content they post is so fleeting that the weblog is always a work in progress. The writing is never done so why would the design ever be done either? Everything is malleable. Get a bad design up...if it works, tweak it using the feedback from your audience, and if not, throw it away and start over. But quickly, there's writing to do.
"Best practices are huge. If someone else is doing something that works, why change it? If you load up 10 weblogs at random and squint your eyes at the screen, they all look about the same."
of the software updates.
Check /var/log/system.log for error messages from sshd. In my case,
the permissions for my home directory were set to allow write access
for anyone of group "staff". To fix it, I opened a Terminal window,
then used the command "chmod 740 /Users/login_id".
Saturday, January 25
But some scholars dismiss the network hypothesis altogether. Judith S. Kleinfeld, a psychologist at the University of Alaska at Fairbanks, prompted a flurry of media attention last year when she published an article questioning the validity of Milgram's small-world findings. Given the prevalence of networks
>my machine from home. Did anyone else experience this?
Unlike our Windows brethren, MacOS tries to be reasonably secure when
installed, disabling anything that might be exploited.
After a clean install, you need to go to the Sharing System Preference and turn
on remote login.
Friday, January 24
After installing the new OSX upgrade, 10.1.5, sendmail will fail to run. Apple updated sendmail to 8.12.2, but did not upgrade some sendmail related files, nor did it do the permissions properly on some directories. A manual update of /etc/mail/sendmail.cf will do the job (alternatively, you can follow directions in /etc/mail/README and regenerate sendmail.cf). Su to root, do a pico or vi on sendmail.cf and replace the line
V9/Berkeley
by
V10/Berkeley
and the line
DZ8.10.2
by
DZ8.12.2
Finally, replace every occurence of "A=IPC $h" by "A=TCP $h".
Save your changes and then do a:
sudo chgrp smmsp /var/spool/clientmqueue
and restart sendmail, by doing a 'kill HUP' on it's processID.
Why, you ask? Why? Well, I don't know why Apple forgot to do the permissions and be more verbose on the changes, but upgrading sendmail was necessary. Previously, sendmail ran as root, but it doesn't actually have to and constitutes a security hole. Version 8.12.2 fixes this by having sendmail run as a "submission agent" to add mail. For this purpose, 10.1.5 added a new user named "smmsp" to the passwd database, and created a directory for submitted messages called /var/spool/clientmqueue.
Nov 20 08:37:09 AUTOMATIC- sendmail[342]: gethostbyaddr(10.0.1.2) failed: 3
Nov 20 08:37:09 AUTOMATIC- sendmail[342]: NOQUEUE: SYSERR(root): No local mailer defined
Nov 20 08:37:09 AUTOMATIC- sendmail[342]: NOQUEUE: SYSERR(root): QueueDirectory (Q) option must be set
Nov 20 08:37:09 AUTOMATIC- sendmail[347]: File descriptors missing on startup: stdin, stdout, stderr; Bad file descriptor
Did you install your own copy of sendmail previous to the 10.2 upgrade?
Trevor
_________________
"Don't believe anything you read on the net.
Except this.
Well, including this, I suppose."
-Douglas Adams on alt.fan.douglas-adams on Sept 13, 1998
Back to top
View users profile Send private message AIM Address
bjast
Joined: 19 Oct 2002
Posts: 49
PostPosted: Wed Nov 20, 2002 1:13 pm Post subject: Reply with quote
No, I only began the Sendmail activation AFTER upgrading to Jaguar.
Any idea where these configuration perimeters can be properly assigned?
File descriptors missing on startup: stdin, stdout, stderr; Bad file descriptor
Nov 20 08:37:09 AUTOMATIC- sendmail[342]: gethostbyaddr(10.0.1.2) failed: 3
Blosxom (pronounced "Blossom") is a lightweight yet feature-packed weblog application designed from the ground up with simplicity, usability, and interoperability in mind.
for file in `ls *.doc`
do
strings $file > /Library/WebServer/Documents/blosxom/$file.txt
done
For class today I would like you to do the following:
Read this discussion of proposals:
Proposals
It's a pretty decent treatment. Your assignment will be similar to the "nurse's handbook" in the example above, which you should pay attention to.
You should write a proposal to create a manual. You are trying to convince your fictional or actual employer that the manual and topic are worthwhile and necessary. The elements of the proposal are included below. Should you choose to omit one or more of those elements, you need to write me a note explaining why and get my permission.
You should use the time in class Friday to coordinate with your group and begin drafting the proposal.
My email address is cranema@uvsc.edu
I will bring in some more samples on Monday to demonstrate some of the weirder sections. Hang in there!
Simply append '.command' to the script name,e.g. test.command, when the script is double clicked from the Finder a terminal window will open and the script is excuted.
The script will of course need execute permissions (chmod ug x will do the trick) in order to run.
As with AppleScript scripts, shell scripts take a parameter
My most used OS X apps are:
* Searchling
* LaunchBar
Both of these give me lightning fast access with keyboard-shortcut finger twitches to what's on my mind and what I want to do. I want to find more things like this.
Thursday, January 23
Wednesday, January 22
your feedback:
This assignment sheet provides information regarding the preparation of the proposal for your semester project. You need to write an external proposal to your client, if you have a real client, with a copy to me. You will submit the proposal to me first, and after I have edited it, to your client. Those groups who do not have a client will supply the proposal to me alone.
Your proposal needs to include at least all these elements:
- Title Page
- Letter of Transmittal
- Table of Contents
- Executive Summary
- Introduction and Statement of Purpose (Need)
- Proposal (or Proposed Plan)
- Qualifications and Work Experience
- List of Materials
- Page Layout
- Estimated Cost or Budget
- Task Breakdown
- Project Schedule
- Estimate of Success
- Conclusion
Comments
Pay particular attention to the following points as you write your proposal:
- Make the document professional in all details.
- Try out your page layout for this document; make the document 10-14 pages long.
- Design your pages to be reader-friendly; use page headers and footers.
- Use graphic aids as needed for clarity. You must provide a Gantt chart for your
project schedule, and a proposed document and page layout (describe and show). - Write in formal, 3rd person objective technical style.
- Be clear, complete, and competent. Use Standard Edited American English.
- Write solid, well-structured paragraphs.
- Budget enough time to finish everything: revise, rewrite, change, proofread.
- Be consistent with final format (print entire manual from one source).
To remove Windows 98, start Windows 2000 and then delete the folder that contains Windows 98 (by default, this is the C:\Windows folder on the local hard disk).
NOTE: If there are any programs installed in Windows 98, you may want to uninstall these programs before deleting the folder.
You also need to manually edit the Boot.ini file to remove Windows 98 from the list of boot options.
To edit the Boot.ini file:
1. In Windows Explorer, click Folder Options on the View menu.
2. On the View tab, click Show All Files, and then click OK.
3. Click the root folder of the local hard disk, right-click the Boot.ini file, and then click Properties.
4. Click to clear the Read-Only, Hidden, and System check boxes, and then click OK.
5. Open the Boot.ini file in Notepad.
6. Remove any entries that no longer point to valid installations of Windows.
7. Save the changes to the Boot.ini file, and then restore its attributes. To restore the file's attributes, repeat steps 3 and 4, but click to select the check boxes.
Last Reviewed:
"The day I get off," Mitnick said with a shrug.
105 Houchens Building
University of Louisville
Louisville KY 40292
(502) 852-6495
There is no farking way I am graduating in Spring. I can probably defend in Spring. I hope I don't get divorced.
Yesterday, I saw a hearse driver peel out and flip someone off. That has to be in direct violation of the employee handbook.
Tuesday, January 21
Let the people make the changes they want to the version they view.
Maybe you should have to sell it in it's unadulterated form, but you shouldn't be allowed to prevent other people from applying patches in a clearly fair use.
Monday, January 20
IBM has created a utility program called CHOPPER, which will split a large file into smaller files that will fit onto multiple floppy diskettes. These diskettes can then be taken to a target system and using the same CHOPPER utility, recombined into the original single file. When CHOPPER splits a file into smaller files, it will COPY itself onto the first diskette as UNCHOP.EXE.
It is working with a Micron TransPort ZX PIII running Win2K SP2 with HotSync Manager 4.0 and PalmOS 3.5.3. This laptop was configured with COM2 disabled, I had to enable COM2 in the BIOS (auto) and restart. Windows 2000 then installed the Wireless Link control panel.
There are two important things to remember with Windows 2000 IR support:
* In the Wireless Link control panel you must disable the Image transfer (from camera) function. Otherwise the IR port is not available.
* Beam receive should be set to off on the Palm, otherwise the Palm reacts to a signal emitted from the laptop IR port and interprets in incorrectly.
spacer
These 144-pin SODIMM modules are compatible with your IBM ThinkPad 600 2645-41U Help Me Choose
Module Size Price (ea.) Qty. Order Part No. Part Details
128MB $30.99
CT145092
8. Deliberate hostile action by a motorist against a motorcycle rider is a rare accident cause. The most frequent accident configuration is the motorcycle proceeding straight then the automobile makes a left turn in front of the oncoming motorcycle.
by
John H. Carney*, Joseph F. Joiner**,
and Helen Tragou***
The Qualitative Report, Volume 3, Number 1, March, 1997
(http://www.nova.edu/ssss/QR/QR3-1/carney.html)
The autobiography should be a mimimum of 800 words in length (longer autobiographies are ok) and
should be available for viewing and response by your peer group
You should bring to your conference a list of concerns you want the group to consider. At this point
in the drafting stage, you should delay looking at editing and proofreading concerns, since this writing
will go through one more draft before it is ready to be polished.
Sunday, January 19
Saturday, January 18
Friday, January 17
Cons of Quitting Coffee
Total inability to write anything of consequence, but who really cares what a mediocre drivel a sad, small mind like yours might churn out anyway?
Total inability to write anything funny, and there's nothing funny about it
Pit of despair stretches to encompass entire day
Death of ambition, vision, enthusiasm, energy, generosity
No good reason to get out of bed, leave house, answer phone, etc.
When I told my exboyfriend Jake that I was quitting coffee, he was furious at me. He was more outraged than he would've been if I'd said I was cheating on my taxes, or that I ran over a few dozen schoolchildren on the way home from the In 'n' Out Burger. I was patient, though (OK, maybe quitting coffee made me a little more patient - but that's not surprising, since I barely had a pulse). I explained about the pit of despair, in the afternoon. He said, "That just means you need more coffee!"
But giving is important, regardless of what you give, or to whom you give it. Some people get into the Christmas spirit by giving to the less-fortunate. It sounds crazy, I know, but it's true. At Village Inn, they are urging people to donate Village Inn pies to an organization that will give them to homeless shelters, because if there's one thing homeless people need, it's pie.
This guy is funny.
Almost all the text on this page, italicized or not, is excerpted from a web page somewhere.
AIM: GZhou06
Work: 919-462-8157
Cell: 919-349-4696
ION-E Network
P.O. Box 13771
Research Triangle Park, NC 27709
GARY ZHOU
P.O. Box 13771
Research Triangle Park, NC 27709
919-349-4696
I bought a laptop from this guy and his email address is bouncing. I'm getting nervous.
However, combine this with Eric his mod_rendevous and then it gets interesting... http://homepage.mac.com/macdomeeu/dev/current/mod_ rendezvous/
As that will dynamically announce your web server to the local network.
In Safari; just go to bookmarks, rendezvous - and here we go. Sharing as it should be.
Thursday, January 16
Peter V Sundwall Jr, (801) 768-1699, 680 E Main St, Lehi, UT 84043
* Download and install Apple's X11 beta (about 40M)
* Download the latest OpenOffice.org installer (about 200M)
* Run the OpenOffice.org installer (you can leave out Ghostscript)
* Launch X11
* Add an entry to the X11 Applications menu -- path should be something like "/Applications/OpenOffice.org1.0.1/program/soffice"
* Launch the app by selecting it from that menu (ignore the "Start OpenOffice.org" script
A moderately active fat person is likely to be far healthier than someone who is svelte but sedentary. What's worse, Americans' (largely unsuccessful) efforts to make themselves thin through dieting and supplements are themselves a major cause of the ill health associated with being overweight--meaning that America's war on fat is actually helping cause the very disease it is supposed to cure.
Wednesday, January 15
As of 10.1.X, OSX standard sendmail install isn't what it could be. First, make sure you can send and receive mail normally. Once you do that:
1. Make sure you run ASK from /usr/adm/sm.bin instead of from /usr/bin (or whatever). You will need to create this directory, as Apple failed to ship with it. Or you will need to figure out how to configure smrsh (the secure shell sendmail uses to deliver mail (man smrsh)). Make sure you are invoking ASK from the correct location in your .forward file.
2. Note that all root mail is forwarded to /dev/null on MAC OSX (look at your /var/root/.forward file) -- probably because there is no valid root login account. This means that all mail errors get tossed away. You will probably want to change that to a real user so that you can see if anything is going wrong.
Please let us know if you have any problems installing ASK on OSX.
AND HOW!
As content intermediaries, publishers perform an analogous function. Individual software writers, authors, and musicians produce something close to raw sewage. The computer programs, books, and music that people buy are closer to drinkable water.
What Creative Commons lets you do as an author is label your stuff before you flush it down the toilet. If you don't want the sewage treatment plant to filter your stuff and sell the water on its usual terms, Creative Commons lets you have your way. If you think that publishers are stealing your crap, you can stop them.
4310_undecided_outline.doc
Place your responses here
Taxi drivers given brain scans by scientists at University College London had a larger hippocampus compared with other people. This part of the brain is associated with navigation in birds and animals.
Monday, January 13
Orton entertained me; now, in exchange, I have entertained him; our mutual debt is paid, except that I'm in better shape than he is; while he is resting above with the immortals, I'll be frolicking below with lesser mortals, yet, henceforth, one hopes, as an ennobled Doctor of Philosophy; life and art are both strange and wonderful. Now it is time to pull up my trousers, so to speak, and to call my late Aunt Gertrude, and to move on towards serendipity.
Groups:
Badgers--building a house
1. Seryhan
2. Foster
3. Moylett
4. Jenkins
5. Evans
6. Protel
b. Grease Monkeys--automotive repair
1.Zaccardi
2. Snow
3. Gabbitas
4. Leavitt
5. Bishop
6. Ricks
c. Tile Slayers--laying tile
1. Jacobsen
2. Lee
3. Rogers
4. Robinson
d. Undecided--building a computer
2. Hawkins
3. Rhoton
4. Coletti
5. Talley
6. Sumpter
By the third morning, a tiny mouse had flirted wit hfate. Still very young, the mouse was the color of those cashmere sweaters you see piled up in London duty-free shops. It was maybe fifteen or sixteen in human years. A tender age. A bitten-off piece of gum lay under its paws.
I had no idea what to do with the thing now that I'd caught it. Hind let still pinned under the spring wire, the mouse died on the fourth morning. Seeint it lying there taught me a lesson. Everything needs an entrance and exit. That's about the size of it."
-- Haruki Murakami, Pinball 1973 (A wonderful loan from my friend Steve and not released in the US.)
multi-line...
formattable...
goodness.
Yay.
Saturday, January 11
Of the more than 30 responses I've gotten so far, less than 1/3 have even followed the directions to apply. (Those that have though look really great and I'm looking forward to talking with them.) So here's my other theory: if you're currently looking for a job, you have a tremendous advantage over other people out there if you just do a few simple things:
Address your cover letter to the person who will read it
This is an easy one and should only require a bit of your time. Simply call the company and find out the name of the person who's responsible for handling applications for the position for which you're applying. Often the receptionist will be able to give you a name. It shows you've made a little effort and care about the job.
Write a cover letter
Writing a cover letter is the easiest way to distinguish yourself from another applicant. If you've got a standard letter you like to use, spend some time and enhance it for each application you're submitting so the person who's reading it can see, again, that you care about the position and have some knowledge and qualifications for it.
Quality is much more important than quantity
Rather than whip off thirty generic emails to any job listing that might be right for you, take the time to craft five quality responses for the five best listings you've found. Write those cover letters, address them to real people, triple-check your message before you send it (so
WHAT TO DO IF YOU MEET ME
Someone was wondering about this.
Well, you might try keeping mind that behind whatever mediated projection of “William Gibson” we’re both, in our different ways, complicit in, there’s a guy who once sat on the cold kitchen floor in his bathrobe, trying rather unsuccessfully to squirt disturbingly black fluid down the throat of a small, intensely uncooperative dog.
Getting off the grid
I enjoyed the most productive couple of hours of work in a coffee shop yesterday. No, this is not another of those tedious paeans to Wi-Fi. The converse, actually: I got work done precisely because I wasn't connected to the internet. Coffee shops ought to sell themselves, not on boundless connectivity, but as places to disconnect from the grid.
Thursday, January 9
Answer: The 5.25-inch expansion bay on the right side of the computer can accommodate either 5.25-inch or 3.5-inch devices. There is a small door that folds back when you insert a 5.25-inch module, such as a CD-ROM drive. The left bay can accommodate only 3.5-inch modules, such as a battery or a floppy disk drive.
For ideal DVD playback, disable Virtual Memory and set the Energy Saver control panel to maximum performance.
For best results when setting up the PowerBook to show DVD-Video on a television, set the resolution to 720x480 NTSC or 720x576 PAL from the Control Strip.
[] Quiet room--no windows or an internet connection?
[] food and a bathroom available?
[] sufficient supply of caffeine and/or chocolate
[] sleep: retire by 9:30.
[] work in 20 minute segments
[] prior reading and notetaking--immersion
[] perhaps have class prepped in advance
[] write in the morning, before noon
[] learn to write even when other projects are due, classes, etc.
[] learned optimism
[] organize writing files daily. Clean desk.
Popular methods of procrastination:
[] Get online
[] Stress from home
[] Hunger
[] Fatigue
[] Get online, obsess over fixing unimportant computer problems.
[] Endless emails to people who really don’t care, that don’t advance anything.
[] Piddle around until a coworker interrupts with long conversation or a task.
[] Check that email. Check it again.
[] Run a little errand from home, tell yourself you’re being useful.
Wednesday, January 8
Tuesday, January 7
The string he tied
Has been unravelled by years
and the dry weather of trunks
Like a lady's shoestring from the First World War
Its metal ferrules eaten by oxygen
Until they resemble cigarette-ash
Having ridden out the crest of the Sixties in Toronto, aside from a brief, riot-torn spell in the District of Columbia, I met a girl from Vancouver, went off to Europe with her (concentrating on countries with fascist regimes and highly favorable rates of exchange) got married, and moved to British Columbia, where I watched the hot fat of the Sixties congeal as I earned a desultory bachelor's degree in English at UBC.
So, really, the world below, the bridge and its culture, all grew down from that, called into literary being to support what would become Skinner’s room, Chevette’s home, and the core of three novels.
> Safari - Apple's new web browser, which they proudly point out renders
> pages three times faster than MS IE. It's based on the Konqueror open
> source HTML renderer, has a Google search field in the tool bar, and an
> option to block pop-up windows. I've just downloaded the public beta. It
> _is_ fast, and it's the first web browser I've seen that has a good
> bookmark editing system.
>
CES, LAS VEGAS and MACWORLD EXPO, SAN FRANCISCO-January 7, 2003-The
rapid adoption of Rendezvous� continues with TiVo, Brother and
Aspyr today announcing new products incorporating Rendezvous
networking. Rendezvous is Apple's innovative networking technology
for automatic discovery and connection of devices over
industry-standard IP networks such as Ethernet and 802.11 wireless
networks. Using Rendezvous, consumer devices such as stereos and
digital video recorders can automatically find and "talk" to any Macs
on their local wired or wireless network, making it possible for users
to stream audio from iTunes® to their home stereo and display
iPhotos on their TVs.
When you enter the amount withdrawn by a debit card, Quicken suggests that you select EFT (Electronic Funds Transfer) in the Num Field's drop-down list to help you keep track of how the money was withdrawn.
Monday, January 6
But something more intensely provoking has happened in EverQuest which makes it addictive. Another frequently encountered figure in introductory psychology textbooks is Maslow, known for his proposed hierarchy of needs. Maslow sees human needs in a pyramid scheme. At the bottom are basic hunger and thirst needs. Then follows security. At the top of the pyramid are aesthetic needs and personal achievements, which would only be possible on a strong foundation of sated hunger and security needs. Thus, even though personal achievements are more rewarding than filling an empty stomach, these achievements are only possible once you've filled your stomach. But EverQuest makes it possible for Joes and Janes to become heroes. EverQuest makes it so that you can slay Vox in a guild raid on an empty stomach. What happens when people can feel achievement through continuous mouse-clicking? What happens when these achievements are more rewarding than "real life" achievements? And what if it's easier to click the mouse than to cook dinner?
I think that Whuffie in meatspace or cyberspace is closely entangled with the idea of an "idiosyncratic Google," the pipe-dream we chased at OpenCola in the early days. An IG is a system that tells you, in response to a query (or via a push-like suggestion mechanism), what the people whom you trust (and the people whom they trust) think is relevant to a given subject.
The reason Whuffie works so well in the Bitchun Society is that there's a universal neural interface that can be used to evaluate this trust-metric. In other words, no one ever has to manually enter trust values for any person -- the trust is extracted directly from your noggin.
I liked the "blogs as newsgroups" entry. I was pretty active in Usenet: moderating, maintaining FAQs and even operating an anti-abuse 'bot over the austin.* regional groups. What finally drove me away wasn't the spam, but the sociopathological individuals who are unable to operate in a community. Usenet is the last place they can go to rant and foam.
I remember watching the rising of blogs (individual and community) and thinking this is the future of online discussion. The one thing I miss is that Usenet--in the pre-Internet days--was inherently regionalized, given the mechanisms used to pass messages around. I wish there were more community weblogs with regional identity.
1. How do I create a zip file?
Open Winzip. Click on New and select the file to be zipped. To select multiple files, hold down the CTRL key and click the files. Select the Public folder to save the file(s) and give it a name. Click OK.
2. How do I unzip a zip file?
Double-click the zip file and click Extract. Select the Public folder.
3. How do I zip files to multiple floppies?
Follow step 1 and choose your floppy or Zip disk instead of the Public folder.
After I discuss the syllabus, I need you to write me an email, no greater than 250 words, which answers the following questions:
1. Why are you taking this class?
2. What is your experience, academic and professional, as a technical writer?
2a. What kind of access do you have to a computer with an internet connection?
2b. How comfortable are you with technology?
3. Technical writing is a broad area of study. Please indicate what percentage of the class work you would like to see spent on the following areas:
a. Professional and business writing: memos, reports, proposals and other corporate documents
b. Technical manuals: instructions, documentation, larger documents
c. Online documentation: web sites, help systems, portal development, large web projects
4. How do you feel about working collaboratively?
I kind of like Wikis for some applications, but I've found quite of few of them to be a pain to setup (current easiest in my experience has been phpwiki). I also haven't seen an easy way to setup multiple ones (I get one for personal writing, I can flip a switch and give a friend one for a book she's working on, etc). They allow for instant editing on the web in a way that is in many ways easier than even blogging (but yes, it does have its idiosyncrasies).
I know wrapping your head around the idea of a wiki isn't the easiest thing (it took me many months between the first time I was exposed to one, and the time at which I found any use for them). Still, I'm surprised there isn't any sort of single community host for them. It seems like something I'd give someone five bucks a month for, to let me run a wiki that was instantaneous to sign up and get going.
I could also see wikis used for specialized purposes, and I wonder why special flavors haven't popped up. I wrote a book with two friends, and we frequently exchanged ideas, lists, and built up the book's glossary on a wiki. It was the perfect place to go and jot something down at any point in the three month-long book writing process, working great as a collaborative idea pad. I could see it used by screenwriters as well. Start a list of funny jokes, set aside another page for subplot ideas. When the inspiration strikes, expand2
Because in advertising, mendacity and manipulation are raised to the level of internal values for the advertisers. Interruption is seen as a necessary concomitant to marketing. It used to be that a 7- or 8-year-old could read consecutively for an hour or two. But they don’t do that much any more. The habit has been lost. Every seven to 10 minutes a child is interrupted by a commercial on TV. Kids get used to the idea that their interest is there to be broken into. In consequence, they are no longer able to study as well. Their powers of concentration have been reduced by systematic interruption. Add to that our present-day classrooms. Does anybody ever say that one reason our education is in such a blighted mess is that just about all schools now use fluorescent lights? Why? Because they cost a little less. I would say that in the final count of dollars and cents they cost more. What characterizes fluorescent light is that everybody looks 10 percent plainer than they do under incandescent bulbs. Fluorescent tubes offer an unhappy livid light. Skin looks washed out and a bit sickly. If everybody seems uglier than they are normally, why, then, everyone grows a little depressed. They begin to think, what am I doing with all these plain-looking people? Aren’t I worth more?
That contributes to the deterioration of the powers of concentration. Bad architecture, invasive marketing, ubiquitous plastic—these deleterious forces bother me much more than immigration.
You see, behind flag conservatism is not madness but logic. I’m not in accord with the logic. But it is powerful. From their point of view, America is getting rotten. The entertainment media are loose. They are licentious. The kids are getting to the point where they can’t read, but they sure can screw. Morals are vanishing. The real subtext may be that if America becomes again a military machine that is huge in order to oversee all its new commitments, then American sexual freedom, willy-nilly, will have to go on the back burner. Commitment and dedication will become necessary national values (with all the hypocrisy attendant on that.)
I don’t think flag conservatives give a real damn about conservative values. They use the words. They certainly use the flag. They love words like “evil.” One of Bush’s worst faults in rhetoric (to dip into that cornucopia) is to use the word “evil” as if it were a button he can touch to increase his power
NM: I have to redefine the term for myself every day because on its face, we have an oxymoron. But, it does have meaning for me. I think there are elements in the remains of left-wing philosophy (which has not had all that many new ideas for the last 30 years), that are worth maintaining.
AC: Such as?
NM: The idea that a very rich man should not make 4,000 times as much in a year as a poor man. On the other hand, I am not a liberal. The notion that man is a rational creature who arrives at reasonable solutions to knotty problems is much in doubt as far as I’m concerned. Liberalism depends all too much on having an optimistic view of human nature. But the history of the 20th century has not exactly fortified that notion.
Sunday, January 5
And that's what's got me so bothered about people musing in their weblogs about projects they'd like to do. Stop talking about it an just build it. Don't make it too complicated. Don't spend so much time planning on events that will never happen. Programmers, good programmers, are known for over-engineering to save time later down the road. The problem is that you can over-engineer yourself out of wanting to do the site.
Saturday, January 4
*
You Just Don't Understand; Women and Men in Conversation, by Deborah Tannen
*
An Anthropologist on Mars, Oliver Sacks * * * *
*
A Poetry Handbook, Mary Oliver
?
In the wake of the dot-com collapse, fortunes have been lost, and companies have evaporated. But the biggest disruptions in Silicon Valley are not financial, but personal, as the men and women who inflated the Internet bubble now survey its ruins and try to make sense of what's happened to their lives.
Over the last few months, I've talked to hundreds of people who have lost their high-tech jobs, many of whom I knew and wrote about on their way up. I've been struck, over and over, by how *stuck* everyone seems, how unable to process the magnitude of what has changed out here. The lessons people are drawing seem oddly shallow: "I should have gone into wireless," they say; or, "Next time I'll question the business plan." (I never know how to tell them that there isn't going to be a next time, not for a long while.) Others have gone limp, giving up on the idea of work they can be passionate about and retreating into early-90s slacker mode. Many bear a grudge against those who, they think, benefitted at their expense.
Recently, a few big players have stepped forward to offer their *mea culpa.* The influential cyber-thinker John Perry Barlow emailed 890 of his friends in June to say that he felt some "miniscule" responsibility for the Dot Bust, having failed to criticize the folly of companies built on nothing more than inflated market values. In August, the Valley's highest-profile venture capitalist, John Doerr, apologized for making his oft-repeated proclamation, "The internet is the greatest legal creation of wealth in the history of the planet." By hyping wealth rather than invention, he confessed, he had distracted the industry from its role of incubating revolutionary technology.
*
Don?t try to do too much.
*
Concentrate on the heart of the project.
*
Be able to describe the central idea in 3 ? 4 sentences.
*
Look for ways to avoid re-stating points in the proposal. (e.g. You might be able to give details of your methodology in the budget section.)
I think the answer to that is likely that the iMac has a significantly smaller L2 cache (256k vs 1mb), and no backside bus. Connectix has stated publicly on numerous occasions that Virtual PC's speed is affected by availablity and size of cache, and the more you have the better off you are. That's why, for instance, Virtual PC performs much better on my 667 (DVI) TiBook (which has an L3 cache) than it does on my roommate's original 667mhz TiBook (which has NO L3 cache).
Gov. Jesse Ventura's final tangle with the Minnesota media ended with a veiled threat that his next pursuit will bring vindication. "As of Monday, you will fear me," he warned reporters at his last news conference today.