Mmmm, kool-aid.
Developing a UNIX GUI with AppleScript Studio
Over the years, AppleScript has evolved into a very powerful scripting language that rivals the best scripting languages from the UNIX world.
You have GOT to be kidding me.
« February 2004 | Main | April 2004 »
March 27, 2004
March 26, 2004
Quicksilver
Via mph via ed, a tutorial for Quicksilver, an open source replacement for LaunchBar. I've used LaunchBar pretty obsessively since I got back on OS X, but Quicksilver is one cool-ass app. If you download it, read the tutorial, like mph says. For the first hour or so I used it, I couldn't see any reason to give up LaunchBar, but go through the tutorial (it's really short, it might take you 10 min) and you discover features like:
- you can browse iTunes playlists and your library. I have really wanted something like this for awhile now. Combine this with something like Synergy and you have a very convenient interface to your music.
- browse contact info (though they could lose the enormous screen-filling type when you display a phone number)
- multiple clips
- a shelf for frequently used items (though truth be told, I don't care about this sort of thing so much; stuff I use frequently I usually have open, since I seldom shut down my machine.)
Try it out. Highly recommended, so far.
Got any more cheeks?
BW Online | March 29, 2004 | Online Extra: "A Major Change in the Political Equation"
Q: What could make blogging more useful to the masses?
A: What's lacking is grounding in good journalism. It's a learned skill that requires some tutelage by people who understand it. I wish that the people in the news business, instead of fearing the bloggers, would help educate them.
Maybe it's not so much a matter of fear as it is the natural human tendency to not want to help people who call you obsolete, backwards and stupid. "Hey, dinosaur, can you show me how to write better ledes?"
And of course the blogging community has shown itself to to be extremely receptive to advice from the journalism community.
March 25, 2004
Agent Me Me Me.
Joi Ito's Web: International Workshop on Inverse Surveillance - April 12
International Workshop on Inverse Surveillance - April 12
What? Is this when you spy on yourself? Oh my God. I'm doing it right now!
Oh wait, no, it's TypeKey 3.0!
The right sort of blogger.
Boing Boing: Kuro5hin's new membership system
BoingBoing toady BoingBoing on Kuro5hin's new "membership system," otherwise known as "TypeKey 2.0:"
This sounds like a good idea. People are already complaining on kuro5hin about the idea, but really, why should it be easy to gain membership into a club? It reminds me of the way private societies like the Masons work. New candidates can apply for membership, but need a couple of sponsors to be accepted into the club. Sponsors have to know the new member pretty well before sponsoring him, because they don't want their reps to be besmirched. And any latent jerk-tendencies in the new guy will be stifled, because he knows his sponsor will take the heat for whatever he does. Maybe Boing Boing should implement a similar system if we decide to allow comments again.
No, don't allow comments again - that would sully the echo. A weblog without comments, as far as I am concerned, has no right to that whole "Not Big Media" thing. And I am sorry, but the "you can say whatever you want on your own blog" thing just don't cut it. If you can't stand the emergent heat, get outta the cyberkitchen. Without comments you're just another record company guy with one of those little ponytails.
As fot the rest of it, I mean, come on. What's next, the International Lodge of Weblog Brothers? Can I learn the sekrit handshake? Do I get to wear a Kottke-designed furry hat with horns sticking out of it? Do these people realize how elitist they sound?
Here come the gated communities, kids.
March 20, 2004
The unasked question.
6. Will you consider abandoning this for a new simpler centralized authentication system called RSSWhichIsExtensibleJustNotByYouKey?
Bad moon rising.
Semantic Wave: TypeKey: Centralized User Authentication (emphasis mine)
Six Apart has posted information about their upcoming TypeKey privacy-protected authentication service. TypeKey is clearly a critical aspect of Movable Type 3.0 and Six Apart will be allowing other web sites and services to participate. In time, this web service could evolve into a practical alternative to Microsoft Passport.
You say that like it's a good thing, when it should be setting off alarm bells in your head.
I find the idea of this appalling. I would hope that TypeKey is an optional part of MT 3.0; otherwise, it's off to find a new weblogging system.
This is the web, kids. The things that make it so good are also the things that make it a pain in the ass and high-maintenance at times. That whole deal about "emergent democracy?" Remember that? Part of that means that people with absolutely nothing to say get to talk too. Free speech is not limited to the things you find useful, or you agree with, or you deem sufficiently serious to allow publication. That's that whole top-down journalism we love to deride over here in counterpublishing (oh, sorry, "personal publishing") so much.
But what about comment spam? Yes, it is a pain. Yes, I use MT-Blacklist. But a system requiring registration with a central authority is deciding to use a cyclotron to crush an ant. TypeKey is cc:Mail for weblogs. There's too much potential for abuse of this.
Plus. It. will. get. cracked.
March 14, 2004
Tech "press."
I've been using (and enjoying) Newsgator, an Outlook plug in. It's a great match with the H-P Tablet I'm testing, particularly in slate mode propped up on my knees in bed. Its persistent store of items is the main reason I've shifted away from NetNewsWire while I await its next release, which promises to add that as well as the embedded browsing capability I'm already testing in alpha form.
This paragraph bothers me. Why is a tech-beat journalist also an alpha tester? How the hell can I have any faith in the tech press if they are so deeply in bed with the makers of the products they cover like this? This H-P tablet he's testing in bed, is this for a review? Is this just a little freebie to get some juice from Steve?
Why should I care whether Steve Gillmore's an alpha tester for NNW? Isn't this just more of that bitter envy you Z-listers are famous for? Well, no, I care because now I have reason to doubt Steve Gillmor's motives when covering Microsoft's internal adoption of RSS: Hey, he's an internal alpha tester for NNW - maybe he's just trying to get Microsoft to give him the same. Isn't his opinion wrt NNW necessarily colored by this?
It kills me when I see certain regions of the A-list complain about the objectivity of the tech press. You think they're hard on you? Please. They're so bought off by free schwag and years of schmoozing with the people they're ostensibly "covering" that you've come to think objectivity == publishing your press releases. You guys don't even bother to mention your friendships and connections, and that is a big disservice to the reader.
March 11, 2004
Happy clammiversary.
Incidentally, and as per usual (I miss it every year) last month was the 4th anniversary of this blog. Any day now I expect to overturn American journalism.
Airport WEP.
Continuing the "weblog as bookmark list" theme: Apple AirPort Security Key Primer. Needed this to answer a question I had about where to get the hex WEP key from an AirPort for a Linux client. Brought on by reading this widely recommended wireless security primer in today's Times and deciding to get the home network hammered down.
Lessig at the Y
Reminder to self: go to Lawrence Lessig on Free Culture: Creativity and Its Enemies
RFID in Libraries
Via one of the great unsung resources of the net, Library Juice, RFID Implementations in Libraries.
4. If libraries wish to influence RFID use and development toward privacy and security, the time is now. EFF urges libraries to act collectively as soon as possible to protect their own and their patrons’ interests, as well as to set an example for society.
Our thoughts with Madrid.
Terrorism is a worldwide problem - 185 killed, amny many more (~ 1000) injured in Madrid today by ETA, Basque separatist terrorists. Let's just have a moment of silence for them rather than using this to hype blogging (I found that enormously offensive wrt 9/11), or trying to find some Islamic angle, ok?
UPDATE: Well, I could be wrong about the Islamic angle. See TPM here for details.
March 10, 2004
Fact-checking wingnut ass.
I was browsing through Free Republic (no link, you know where it is) and noticed a NewsMax article entitled "Clinton, Gore Nix Plans for Public 9/11 Testimony." The basic thrust of the article is that Clinton and Gore, after having previously agreed to testify in public to the commission, have now reneged on that promise, the bastards.
I was actually disappointed by this, thinking that here was a chance for them to show some character as opposed to Bush's waffling about his "visit" to the commission, and decided to check into it.
My first step was to read up on Clinton and Gore's initially agreeing to testify publically, but Googling that story turned up nothing. So I checked the NewsMax story again. NewsMax's only source for this is a March 2nd AP wire story, which they quote like so (emphasis mine in both quotes):
Only last week, the former president and vice president had agreed to testify publicy, with the Associated Press reporting on March 2, "Clinton and Gore have consented to public questioning without a time constraint."
By contrast, the AP said that President Bush and Vice President Cheney "have agreed only to private, separate, one-hour meetings with the commission's chairman and vice chairman, instead of the full panel."
I then looked for this same story on the web, and this is how it reads in the actual AP story (note link):
While Clinton and Gore have consented to private questioning without a time constraint, Bush and Cheney have agreed only to private, separate, one-hour meetings with the commission's chairman and vice chairman, instead of the full panel.
The implications of this are left as an exercise for the reader.
March 8, 2004
It has to be a 'cool' taxonomy.
Somehow this reminded me of After the Dot-Bomb: Getting Web Information Retrieval Right This Time. In it Marcia Bates argues that the rest of us were reinventing information seeking when the library and information science field had already solved many of these problems. In the light of my work's executive manhandling, I saw Bates' insistence that we were 'ignoring' this discipline as inadvertently admitting, "We in the LIS field failed to communicate what we know and make it accessible to those who need it."
I would say it's much more likely that in the overweening hubris and egotism (and ageism, but we'll leave that aside for now) of the dot-com movement, it was probably more like,
"We in the field don't think any of your old rules apply in our hip new world." You know, kind of the way blogs are now.
Communication is a 2-way street. Maybe it wasn't so much that they weren't talking as you weren't listening.
celebrity widgets.
What's in Your Gadget Bag, Glenn?
That's it? 2 cameras and a music player? n3wb13.
Also note "thoughtful blogger" glamor shot in the article.
March 6, 2004
10 Random Tracks.
OK, what the hell. Like mph, Ed Hand, and others, 10 random tracks from my mp3 collection:
1. Cherished, Dusty Springfield, Dusty in Memphis
2. Variatio XI A 2 Clavier, Bach, Glenn Gould
3. Benzedrine, Thea Gilmore, Rules for Jokers
4. Blitzkrieg Bop, Ramones, Ramones
5. Spanish Harlem, Aretha, Best of Aretha
6. Steppin' Out, Joe jackson, Night and Day
7. Ballad of a Teenage Queen, Johnny Cash, Essential Johnny Cash
8. When it Rains It Snows, TMBG, Then
9. Christmas is Coming, Vince Guaraldi Trio, Charlie Brown Christmas
10. I'll sink Manhattan, TMBG, Then
March 5, 2004
Turbospoke.
Turbospoke - Spoke Powered Super Engine Sound
21st century update to the clothespin and baseball card in your bike spokes. As far as I can tell, this still uses a card, but set in a holder with a baffle attached. You clamp it to your chainstay and the baffle amplifies the noise of the card. Interesting take. Only available in British stores, but there is online ordering.
Not from attribution.
Wired News: Warning: Blogs Can Be Infectious
Using newly developed techniques for graphing the flow of information between blogs, the researchers have discovered that authors of popular blog sites regularly borrow topics from lesser-known bloggers -- and they often do so without attribution.
Just watch - I'll bet this article shows up on the a-list (oops, sorry, non-existent a-list) soon. Those thieving bastards!
March 4, 2004
Cole slaw.
Cole Claims a Vote Against Bush Is a Vote For Hitler.
Man, it's going to be a nasty election year. Expect this schmuck's office to open up a huge can of denaibility on this. It is NOT LIKE THAT COMMIE MOVE ON HITLER AD AT ALL, DAMNIT.
Cole actually went one better and repeated that old canard: If Bush loses, the terrorists (specifically bin Laden) have won.
Quite the tool.