Go see Dream Science Circus this week!

If you're in Vancouver, that is. They're at the Waterfront Theater
through Sunday Sept. 28, 2008. Seeing how they're from Bellingham,
the home of kinetic and static human sculptures, there'll be
plenty of acrobatics. Any more and I'd be spoiling the surprise.
http://www.dreamsciencecircus.com/, of course.

There's a $2 discount for the weekday shows if you give the password
when you order them. Email me for the secret vord.

Finite Jest

I just found out David Foster Wallace offed himself last
Friday. I'm one of those people who actually enjoyed
Infinite Jest. I had to devour it when it came out, as
I had it on a one-week loan from the new books section
of the library. That ran to about 140 dense pages a day,
but I finished with two days to spare.

Wallace's genius was more readily available in a few
stretched out pieces he wrote for magazines like
Harper's -- a famous one called "Getting Away from
Getting Away from it All" on the Illinois State
Fair, an expose of 7-day Caribbean cruise ship
vacations ("A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never
Do Again"), and most recently, a hypertext-on-print
analysis of right-wing talk stations.

And now it's over, without so much as a footnote.
Crap.

Canadian Cash Cab Debuts Tonight

From Adam Growe:

Hi There,
 
I'm even going to watch it. and I was there!
 
The Discovery Channel (and every Wednesday)
8 p.m. ET/10 p.m. PT
 
Discovery HD (Fridays)
8 p.m. ET/5 p.m. PT
 
You'll like it too.  Thanks for watching.
Adam.

Don't miss it - support Canadian culture (or at least Canadian imports of American versions of British creations).

Because +it +is contains +a

Some people are better than me at presenting Google results. I don't have time to compete, so here are the raw results:

From http://www.wikihow.com/wikiHow:Templates/Talk:

Unfortunately, your current username is in violation of the username policy because it is: contains a bad word See our username policy for more information.

From http://www.northland-camping.co.nz/activities.htm:

Houhora Harbour is unique because it is contains a fast flowing deep water.

From http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/12/3/92459/6822:

Please be sure to have a clean pair of cleanex on hand, when reading because it is contains a slew of comedic responses. A Dkos classic.

And finally, from DEVELOPMENT OF ALTERNATIVE CRAB CLAW PROCESSING SYSTEMS
TO MINIMIZE ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT:

The waste stream from this is of particular concern because it is contains a high five day biochemical oxygen demand (BOD5), ranging from 7,000 to 15,000 mg/L, and a chloride ion concentration of 135,000 to 150,000 mg/L (Harrison, 1993).

This all started with this Python error message:

SyntaxError: import * is not allowed in function 'yevtushenko' because it is contains a nested function with free variables

What other "because it is contains a"'s are out there hiding from Google's prying eyes? Share yours on the comments page.

Best use of the word "recently"

"We have recently changed our menus so please listen carefully".

Dealing with cat pee is no miracle

So we had a couple of families over for dinner on Friday, and then sure enough Sophie peed on our bed sometime after everyone left. This time the pee soaked through the mattress lining, so we sprayed it with this solution called "Nature's Miracle". Next morning it still stunk. I gave it another drenching, waited an hour, and it was still bad. So I hit the net and got some advice.

Cat pee is mostly ammonia, so a 50/50 solution of white vinegar took care of that, and then I applied a paste of baking soda and water to neutralize the vinegar. As soon as I vacuum up the residue we'll have a clean bed again for the neurotic cat (and us) to sleep in.

But I had a look at that "Nature's Miracle" label. For eight bucks, you get water, "Nature's Enzymes", isopropyl alcohol, and "citrus scent". Something smells here, and it's not lemon fresh. From what I recall from my bio-science courses, all enzymes are nature's, and isopropanol probably does a good job of denaturing them. But it is a good disinfectant.

So here's my plan. I'm going to pick up some isopropanol for a fraction of the price at the drug store, and mix it with 2 parts water in the spray bottle. Next time Sophie pees on the bed, I'll try the cheap miracle to disinfectant the area, followed by the vinegar and baking soda, and report back here.

Tabhunter picked up by mac.softpedia.com

I haven't even submitted it for Mozilla review, but Tabhunter was picked up and made available for download by the mac.softpedia.com site (http://mac.softpedia.com/get/Internet-Utilities/Tabhunter.shtml)

Meanwhile the downloads off the google-code page are nearing 100, not counting my own test runs.

And I'm actually using this thing, constantly. Apparently a few other people are too. It would be great to hear from them.

Tabhunter - A Firefox Extension for the Tab Hoarders Among Us

First, let me get the obligatory apology for being too busy to blog. And like George Carlin's memorable moment, it's gone[1]. Let's move on. We've got a lot of work to do. For one thing, work, or at least my work, has become increasingly more web-based. And since I never was one to write URLs on post-it notes, and I find the bookmarks manager tedious to clean up, I developed a habit of using my pile of tabs as an ever-present todo list. It was convenient, but with 50 or 60 tabs spread over 3 or 4 windows it was getting harder to quickly find things. Especially partially filled in bugzilla reports.

So rather than streamline my work habits (and clean off my desk while I'm at it), I took the developer's usual way out, and wrote a Mozilla extension. It offers two main ways to navigate to any tab in any window -- either use the Tools|Tabhunter popup menu, or try out the Tabhunter Panel, where you can type a substring (actually a JavaScript regex), and it will show all tabs with matching URLs or title fields. So now I can easily switch between bug reports I'm working on, plow (ActiveState's source code search engine), mxr (Mozilla's), "^att" to see the attachments I'm currently working on, and any other pages I'm working on. Finally I don't have to close any tab before its time has come.

Just like building freeways temporarily reduces congestion, only to see an increase in total vehicle usage, I now typically have 100-120 tabs loaded these days, as opposed to the 50 or so I was struggling with a short month ago. And it's a snap to find the tab I need. Yes, you probably want to have a decent amount of RAM to really take advantage of this one. My FF3 sessions tend to run at 300-350 Megs, which these days couldn't cost much more than a pack of post-it notes.

I submitted Tabhunter a week ago to addons.mozilla.org, but it doesn't seem to have gone live yet. But you can get a sneak-preview at http://code.google.com/p/tabhunter/downloads/list (at version 0.6.0 right now). Unfortunately code.google.com doesn't serve XPI files as Mozilla extensions, so you'll need to save it and open it in Firefox manually, and do the usual extension song-and-dance. Tested with Firefoxes 2 and 3 on the big three platforms, and just for fun, Flock 1.2.1 on Vista. Mozilla rocks.

If any of you are wondering why my side projects always seem to pay homage to pop-culture folks, well, hi David. Once I had the concept down, the name quickly followed, and I couldn't resist passing up the chance to write something with that name. That it turned out to be useful, at least for me, is icing on the cake. For the rest of you wondering what I'm talking about, Tab Hunter (or as I prefer to pronounce it to avoid any confusion, "Tab Space Hunter") is an actor whose career made a meteoric double-start in the late 50s with both #1 songs and Hollywood starring roles (mostly in movies that, shall we say, have not held up over the years). With the arrival of the British invasion and the demise of the American B movie, Tab's career shifted to television, first with his own show, then mostly in supporting roles. People in my generation probably first saw him in the revival of his film career in John Water's Polyester -- we were old enough to know he used to be famous, but too young to know what for. You all know how to google and wikipedal for more info.

I'm reminded of a more recent film: There Will Be Bugs. Please report them to http://code.google.com/p/tabhunter/issues/list. In particular, I'd love a better icon, especially one that combines elements of hunting crossbar scopes and that early-1960s look with champagne glasses and pastel colors.

[1] Apparently NBC reran the very first SNL episode after Carlin's passing. I still remember one of his routines, where he tried out a you-had-to-be-there-and-stoned piece on the momentariness of moments. But in that same routine there was that classic line about how everyone on the road is either an idiot or a maniac--and isn't it amazing with all the idiots and maniacs out there, things work pretty well?

Clay Shirky is back and talking managing surpluses

Did I miss April? Not really, but I hit three different conferences --
RubyFools in Copenhagen and Oslo, Open Web in Vancouver, and
Linuxfest in Bellingham. All three conferences I'd recommend in the
future, although I think Norway could stand a good five-cent cigar.

Anyway the blogosphere has posted this link, I might as well too:

Read it at http://www.shirky.com/herecomeseverybody/2008/04/looking-for-the-mouse.html

Watch it at http://jeremy.zawodny.com/blog/archives/010218.html

-----

According to blogger the next one's #100. Any suggestions for a topic?
I'm leaning to an imaginary tale myself.

Those banjo players again

From http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20080327.worchestra0327/BNStory/Entertainment/home?cid=al_gam_mostview:

This is not a good day. One of my favorite CBC programs is Two New Hours,
where I can end my weekends listening to new compositions, sometimes
performed by this orchestra. CBC claims this will free up $1 million of
their budget to record other music. If their budget is that tight,
how far can it be before CBC starts syndicating NPR material?

I have a high regard for Nancy DiNova, and this quote sums it up:

> It's almost like open warfare on classical music in this country. I
> just don't understand what people are thinking who are in charge of
> the CBC here," said Nancy DiNova, a violinist who used to play with
> the orchestra and whose husband and son are both members now. "The CBC
> is now going to spend more money on banjo players."

Next time I hear Bela Fleck or Tony Furtado Sunday night, I'll know why.

Bon appetit!

Looks good. Anyone know if this place is still open? Google says:

Your search - kamouraska "hotel maurice richard" - did not match any documents.

Dress Code

Now revised so you can read it top-to-bottom. And the names changed to
protect the usual. I figured if you're used to reading blogs, then
you've grown accustomed to the bottom-to-top form. But I haven't.
_____________________________________________


Hi Joseph K,

It has been brought to my attention that you are sporting a mohawk and it doesn’t meet the employee handbook policy requirements regarding a professional appearance. The policy allows for casual dress, but we still must maintain a professional appearance.

I understand you will be visiting a client site in early April. The Utepils Senior Management Team feels that the Mohawk is inappropriate and will not properly represent professionalism during your visit. As per the policy, you must appear professional.

We cannot send you to a client site if you appear unprofessional. Utepils is booking your travel tomorrow, therefore, I require you to confirm you understand the policy by end of business today.

9.2.1 Casual Dress

Employees must be dressed and appear professional. Employees are able to wear casual clothing, but employees must also appear neat and well-groomed. If you are not sure, you can ask the HR manager for guidance.



Thanks,

HR Manager

_____________________________________________

Hello HR Manager,

I will try my best to modify my hairstyle to conform to the company dress code standards. Unfortunately I cannot guarantee that it will be long enough to be fixable before the time I am scheduled to be on site.

I do have a question regarding the dress code policy. Since the decisions of what is considered professional and what is not are solely dependent on the judgments of each individual, do we have a standard definition of what a professional appearance is?

Thanks,
Joseph K

_____________________________________________

Hi Joseph K,

I appreciate your willingness to adhere to the policy in the future.

We didn’t make the policy strict to the point we had to say how your hair style should be or how long your shorts need to be, etc since we are creating a policy for people that are intelligent and reasonable and it gives some room for flexibility within the policy. If we need to go to the point of describing every detail of your dress and how you should appear, then it doesn’t seem fair to other people who have a reasonable understanding of what “Professional Appearance” means. We don’t want to treat the employees like they are not intelligent and that we need to tell them exactly what to wear. I also stated in the policy that if you are unsure of something to come and ask me about it.

Let me ask you, do you think that a Mohawk is considered, by a reasonable person, to be professional?

I will follow up with (my manager) regarding who will be going to the client site.

Thanks,

HR Manager

_____________________________________________


Hi HR Manager,

I do not appreciate the manner in which the company policies have been explained. My first impression after reading the description given is that anyone with alternative views of what professional attire is is either unintelligent or unreasonable. I believe that I asked a straightforward and non-confrontational question when I requested more details of the company policies. The response that I was given was far from non-confrontational.

I am fully willing to modify my attire to comply with the company policies but I am not willing to have my character and personal judgment demeaned.

Thank you,
"Joseph K"

_____________________________________________





Names and prices changed to protect the innocent

iPhones Considered Dangerous to Your Social Life

From the "I knew that" category in the this LA Times article:

"It's turned me from a really annoying know-it-all into an incredibly annoying know-it-all, with the Internet to back me up," said Sadum, a technology writer in Denver. "It's not a social advantage."

...

.... Backstage recently in a Little Rock, Ark., theater, actress Natalie Canerday said the cast of a play was enjoying debating the year Bruce Springsteen's album "Born to Run" was released. Then the director took out his iPhone. All conversation stopped as he sought the answer: 1975, according to Wikipedia.

"Everyone said, 'Oh,' " Canerday recalled. It was another awkward iPhone moment.

Man, I remember seeing the ads for that album in National Lampoon and Rolling Stone that summer. Shows I can be annoying without paying the $400.

In Memory of Arthur C. Clarke

Actually, the only memories I have of ACC are pretending to understand both the book and the movie in grade 5, and hearing about the inventing of geosynchronous orbit over and over again (pun intended). So this is more a memory recounted by a friend in Ottawa. Many years ago David dodged a winter in Sri Lanka, and recounted his many encounters with Arthur C. Clarke in his Scribbles magazine (ISSN something or other...). Read about it at
http://ca.geocities.com/scribbles.magazine@rogers.com/files/ClarkeQuest.htm

The Algebra of Commitment

Trust Me

Send your kids here with their questions

http://ask-us-now.blogspot.com/

The kids do all the writing. I showed them how to choose templates, change colors, and it helps to have a dad who knows how to write a bit of CSS (realizing there's no evidence of that here). Kids only please.

Here's the ad for the web site. Feel free to pass it around.

Steve Gerber RIP

After posting these this morning, I just found out Steve Gerber died
last month at the age of 60, cause not stated, but possibly related
to having been ripped off through much of this career.

Cultural speedup

When was that Robert Plant/Alison Krauss duet thing released, last December?
Like three months ago? I forget what show the kids were watching last weekend,
but an ad came on using one of the tunes as background. Three months: that must
be a record for the gap between when a song is released and when it's used to move
products. The X-Ray Specs needed 25 years, while an out-of-left-field country
compilation needs less than 100 days.

Now I gather Bob doesn't need the money, and Alison probably has a nice
spread in Fort Wayne or somewhere else in middle America where the living
is easy and not so expensive. No, this is how the record companies are
making their money now. Let the album out, figure out its audience, and then
use advertising to bring in the revenue. I knew the labels would figure it out.

Spy vs. The White Stuff Guy

So the meme of the week (or maybe last week, or last month, but I just heard about it) is the Stuff White People Like blog. While it's mildly amusing, the part that gets me is how each entry is attracting hundreds of comments. If he called it "Stuff Yuppies Like" he wouldn't get nearly as much response, particularly from people who identify themselves racially.

Meanwhile my wife found an anthology of Spy magazine at the library. I had forgotten all about that magazine, but now see it as a vital cultural link between National Lampoon (when it was funny) and whatever biting satirical publication is making the rounds now. What's that, there isn't one? Exactly. We live in sad times. Yesterday I opened the book to an article on "Yuppie Porn", featuring items with matte black, digital readouts (remember this was the late 80s), and other stuff that people bought to make a statement about how they stood out. Things haven't changed that way, at least.

Show of the year: Grace Potter at the Media Club

Sometimes I don't understand Vancouver. Here's this talented band from the northeast,
currently playing venues like the Fillmore in San Francisco, and they come to Vancouver
and play the tiny Media Club to about 70 people, maybe 80. The listings said the doors opened
at 6:30, so I showed up at 7:30 just as the main act came on. And my friends Matt and
Lena didn't arrive until 8, coming in mid-way through the show-stopping "Stop This Bus".

After 90 minutes they came back for one encore, a 15-minute Down by the River that let them
show their jamming abilities one more time, and then it was time to break down the stage,
chat a bit at the merch table (I didn't have a chance to ask her about Java House, my
favorite living-room-size room in Canton, New York), and we got kicked out of the place
at 9 so they could set up for a punk show.

The band is playing somewhere in Idaho tomorrow, no doubt to a crowd about ten times the
size of the group on Saturday. At least we had that moment here.

It was 20 years ago this coming April

My first juggling convention:

> April 8-10
> Amherst, Mass.
> "Return to Amherst" Juggling Mini-Convention. The 9th Annual! Start juggling at
> 5 p.m. Friday and keep it up until you drop. 48 hours of non-stop juggling in
> the spacious Robert Crown Center on the Hampshire College Campus just four miles
> south of Amherst on Route 116. A $15 registration fee covers the entire weekend,
> including public show, workshops and door prizes. Bring your sleeping bag if you
> want to sleep on site. For more information, call Carol at 203-878-3121 and
> leave a message on the machine.

And the first is still the best. I met tons of great people that weekend, including Mark Nizer, 9-ball wizard Sue Kirby, economics prof Arthur Lewbel, and even the irrepressible Brad Zentmeyer.
The on-site sleeping area was in the karate room adjacent to the gym. We had the use of the sauna nearby. It was the first time I had been served brown rice in an otherwise unassuming Chinese restaurant. And I have a feeling the Cafe Classé is history, but at the time their Sunday
brunch was unrivaled. OK, all our tastes have matured since then.

If you got bored of juggling, there were also workshops on bicycle repair and reproductive freedom happening on campus that weekend as well. And the muted beauty of an early spring New England weekend added to the perfection.

Honesty in Spam

Today's winning entry comes from a Mr. Jin Renqing:

Hello,

I wish to crave your indulgence in assisting me in receiving a large sum
of money on my behalf.
If You are Interested, kindly send your response to my personal email
:[deleted because I crave your indulgence even more than he does].

Thank you and i look forward to a good business relationship with you.

Sincerely,
Jin Renqing

What sort of bugs do spammers on Rails file?

See http://dev.rubyonrails.org/ticket/10919. Maybe even contribute a fix. Courtesy sbaker.

Everything you wanted to know about stoner rock

http://orexisofdeath.blogspot.com/2007_10_01_archive.html

The link is to a Russian blogger's page, but the content looks like it's been
lifted from a rock encyclopedia or two. Starts with Vancouver's own Mock Duck,
mentions the venerable Retinal Circus, and then it's a wild ride all over the place.

Book review: Wandering Home

I just read "Wandering Home" by Bill McKibben. A little book about a walk
he did from his current home at Middlebury to his old home in the eastern
Adirondacks. I find him the prototypical young folgie, but his descriptions
of the Adirondacks took me back to all those hikes I used to do there
when I lived in Ottawa. The contrast between Vermont and New York, separated
by a thin lake, are brought home clearly. The Adirondack natives drive
Ford pick-ups, not the SUVs and Subarus so common in Vermont.

We'd usually stop at a store for cheap dairy on the way home from those
hides, and invariably someone in the lineup would be paying for their
groceries with food stamps, something you rarely see in most parts of
the states frequented by visitors. The book's worth the two hours or
so it takes -- it certainly reminded me of the many charms of
those mountains.

Celebration of Bland Architecture

http://www.vancouverspecial.com/ makes for a perfect
starting point. These houses sprouted like weeds in the 60s and 70s in
Vancouver, and some say have the same aesthetic value.

Every North American region has its own kind of pedestrian residential
architecture. Where are the web sites devoted to the Levittowns, the
suburban townhouses of the mountain states, the strip malls of Southern
California? I found the Suburban Frontyards International Pool at http://flickr.com/groups/354832@N23/pool/,

but they seem to be trying to hard to post photos of interesting buildings.
I want the ordinary that we pass by every day without noticing.

Harlan Ellison on Getting Paid

http://www.thevancouverite.com/vancouver_film/harlan_ellison_on_paying_write/

"I don't take a piss without getting paid for it."

The site doesn't have comments, but I wonder how much Ellison got paid to do that rant.

Anyone remember Harlequin Ellis? The guy in the film looks nothing like the cool
dude from the comics.

Irony in Wikipedia, Example #308

They'll most likely fix this soon enough, so check it out now.
The page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_linkage_clustering on Single linkage clustering starts with this notice:

This article is uncategorized.
Please categorize this article to list it with similar articles. (December 2007)

I know, I know, it's a wiki. I can fix it, but this is too precious.

Good article on Zep, Guitar Hero & Gilligan

http://thetyee.ca/Music/2008/01/10/LedZeppelin/

Can you outsmart Ayumu the chimp?

Click here and find out.

UUID poll

Admit it, when you need to generate a GUID, do you create a dozen or
so, and select the most aesthetically pleasing?