20030430 #
2257
How much is enough? #
perception
- How uncomfortable does something have to make you before you change it?
- How wrong does something have to be before you make it right?
- How good does something have to be for you to want it?
- How ideal does something have to be before you commit to it?
What are the somethings on your mind?
#
20030429 #
1830
Scott Andrew at Rockin' Java tonight #
music
Another last minute notice.
Scott Andrew will be playing a guitar and vocals set at tonight's Rockin' Java open mic session which starts at 7:30pm. Scott is #6 on the sign up list, and the sets are supposed to last about 10 minutes each which would put him at around 8:20pm. Get there near the start to get a good seat, as last time I went it filled up quite fast. I'll probably be heading over in a few.
Update: Gnome-Girl audblog
Cheyenne just audblogged it.
#
20030428 #
2359
Access granted #
1720
Matrix Preloaded #
movie
If I can get tickets when I stop by the theater after work, I am going to see a preview showing of "Matrix Reloaded" 10pm the day before it officially opens at the Century Cinema 16 in Mountain View (Metreon in SF/SOMA is already sold out). If you're interested in joining me, the tickets are $9 apiece (I think). Email me before 6pm today and I might be able to grab you a ticket as well.
#
20030427 #
2359
Tumultuous Taurean Titillation #
friends
What a party indeed.
Min Jung (post, photos), Cheyenne (post and photos) , Geno (post), Derek , Heather, and Ariel (post, photos, hooping video ) threw an incredible party. The food, the people, the drinks, the house, the house music, the 80s music, the dancing in and around the conversation pit.
Forgot the camera
In my rush to leave I forgot the camera at home. The best party I've been to in quite some time, and I left the camera behind. This is usually an impossibility because the camera's default location is my pocket. However yesterday I had taken some pictures at home, and instead of putting it back in my pocket, I placed it on my coffee table where it patiently sat until I returned early next morning and promptly put it back in my pocket. Lesson learned: always put the camera back in the pocket. Fortunately it seemed like half the folks there had cameras.
Freeway traversals
Mapquest's directions were both confusing and left out key decision points. Or maybe it's just my lack of familiarity with the maze of freeways just on the other side of the bay bridge. Nonetheless, despite two wrong turns, my error correcting navigational instincts were able to sense the mistakes within a couple of exits and reverse course to the point of misdirection with only minutes wasted.
Eventually I made it to Amber's place. When I recounted my extraneous freeway traversals she gave me that look of — but it hasn't been long enough since you called to say you were leaving SF for you to get that much lost, twice, and make it over here. What could I do but shrug.
No, it was Mapquest's fault
Having heard my story, Amber volunteered to navigate. We took the right exit but the directions blew it again. After a couple of wrong turns we made the right left turn and started winding up the hill where we blew thru another omission — the street name changed and you had to turn left to stay on the same logical street.
Plenty of parking spots on the street opposite the house. Of course half an hour after the official start turned out to not be late at all. Dinner was served.
Eats, treats and l33ts
A delectable array of food awaited us. We noshed and joshed with the always entertaining Chris Pirillo (partyrolling, photos?), the lovely Gretchen Pirillo, gnomie Jake with the excellent orange hoodie, Jane with the nicely cropped matte black hair, the striking Willo flash goddess (post), the smooth Chris Wetherell (post?), the handsome Jish (post) and the wonderful above-mentioned hosts. Strawberries and brownies made for a yummie dessert.
Put the needle on the record where the drumbeat goes like this
As we ate seconds (thirds?) and sipped various mixed juices, the DJ (Mike I think) threw down some classic tunes and performed some impressive mixes (Heaven 17's "Let Me Go" to Michael Jackson's "Billy Jean"? I couldn't believe it even as I was hearing the seamless transition, beats perfectly in sync). More great peeps drifted in: the sweet and hip Vera (post (archive should work in a day or two) — you are too kind — and photos, including one where we cornered some guy wearing a Twin Peaks t-shirt just for Brittney), the effervescent Ariel (post, photos, hooping video) who taught me what a "plug" is (hint: ponytail, pigtail, plug) and how some cars don't sputter when out of gas — they just slow to a halt, Doug with friend Stacey from out of town, always a gentleman Ev, cheerful Leila (post) who also got new glasses, Jessa who danced up a storm, and eventually Kevin, Sooz and Wendy too.
Ernie was out of control, in a very entertaining way (I laughed so hard at his antics my cheeks hurt). What Vera said was right on. Here is a photo by Cheyenne that appears to show Ariel freaking Ernie, and I could have sworn I saw Ernie and MJ share a "friendly" kiss on the dance floor. Maybe it was those brownies kicking in — or maybe the rumor about them was inspiring enough. Yes, I still proclaim my innocence — those essays on CSS and semantic markup were not written under the influence of any substances other than caffeine and maybe a little chocolate.
From reading posts, there were several other amazing folks who I didn't have the chance to meet. Maybe next time. Until then, see you on the other side of the screen.
#
20030426 #
1739
Home cookin' #
friends
Rebecca makes amazing black bean chili. She even told me her secret (which I don't think she'll mind if I disclose) — The Greens Cookbook.
The crowd fed on chili, cornbread, and cake. Eats, drinks and duraflame fueled fireplace warmed up her and Jesse's new place in no time at all. And what a crowd it was.
You couldn't turn around without bumping into any number of sharply (or modestly) dressed good looking digirati. Or perhaps should I say, blogerrati... etechorati? [Rebecca Jesse housewarming photos]
Tonight another similar gathering, yet across the bay. Cheyenne, MJ and friends are hosting at their pleasure palace in the hills.
I need to go cook my dish for the potluck. Off to chop green onions, garlic, cilantro and tofu to add to the peas and various other spices.
#
20030425 #
1118
Yes, I am learning. #
mind
This is pretty much how I justified playing hours of Ultima on my Apple //e to my parents: WIRED: High Score Education — Games, not school, are teaching kids to think. They somehow convinced me that getting good grades was also a good game to play, with it's own high score system. Yes, they gamed the gamer.
#
blog
Gord asks: why I redirect from /log to /log/2003/04.html. In short, it's all about the permalinks. It's much easier (and less work) to have permalinks work (persistently) from a URL for the specific month, that it is to replicate and morph them all for a set of "most recent" posts at a root URL. And I just haven't gotten around to writing a simple script to do it for me automatically. I do have hyperlinks to the root URL at the top (log) and bottom (current) of the page, but perhaps it is not obvious that those are the URLs to bookmark, rather than the "current URL" of the window.
#
govt
This is more believable: abcNEWS: Reason for War?.
Yes folks the price of freedom is eternal vigilance, not eternal isolationist pacificism. Ignoring, hiding, tolerating or sympathizing with hatred does not make it go away. Confronting it does. Lastly, sanctions on a despot only hurt the poorest of his subjects. Hopefully we'll come up with more effective (and less violent) approaches/solutions in the future.
Comments:
#
20030423 #
1659
Rolling your own #
blog
Jeffrey Zeldman: Unsyndicate. Jeffrey has written a beautiful piece describing why he writes his blog by hand, and how something is certainly lost in the process of aggregation. I'll add another reason: pushing the envelope. I like figuring out smarter and better uses of markup and styling, and being able to quickly and easily experiment with them, live as it were, without having to deal with a content management system (yes, that's what blogging tools essentially are — a spade is a spade).
Here are a few of the hand rolling bloggers that I follow:
- Jeffrey Zeldman (est. 1995)
Derek Powazek (est. 1997)(Derek has informed me that he is a Movable Type user. The relatively clean look and markup of his site, and any lack of MT attribution fooled me easily enough.)- Eric Meyer (est. 1999)
- Brittney Gilbert (est. 2000)
- Simon Jessey (est. 2002)
- David Baron (est. 2002)
Then there are the folks who rolled their own blogging content management system just for themselves, just for their blog as far as I can tell. This is more impressive than just rolling a few HTML and CSS files (what I do).
- Wendy Beck (est. 2000) (interesting most recent post with frank discussions of the filtering/comfort/privacy issues that blogs raise, and some of the (perhaps unintentional) social consequences of blogging. Wendy says smart things, we hope she continues to share such insights.)
- Ian Hickson (est. 2002) (Ian has explored CSS to depths that very few others, if any, have. Yet never have I seen so many CSS rules do so little (stylistically) and still manage to egregiously break browsers for no good reason. Be sure to translate uses of "Totally broken" to "Fails in this weird edge case test case that I artfully constructed" in his most recent post. Don't get me wrong. Ian is one of the most valuable members of the CSS "community" and we regularly give each other a hard time about various standards related issues.)
Another reason I "roll my own" is the sense that I am somehow closer to the art. I've been reading several knitters' blogs lately (Robin got me hooked), and perhaps that's one of the reasons why — it's the "I take pride in constructing it myself by hand" vibe which I can so completely relate to.
Do you roll your own? Mention and link this post in your blog and I'll link right back to you in the comments section for this post.
Update: more handrollers
- Adrian Holovaty
- Ben Darlow
- Dan Cederholm
- Ned Batchelder
- Joe Clark
- Ben Henick
- Andrea See
- Rebecca Blood
- Abhi Malani
- John Manoogian, III
Comments:
- Matthew Mullenweg
Hey Matt, don't be so harsh on Brittney. It's not like typical blogtool generated markup is much (if any) better. And besides, I've seen you being much more charming than that. Or is this some variant of the "pull on the pigtails" approach? Yes, I agree it's tempting.
- Ben Darlow
- Dan Cederholm
- Ned Batchelder
- Ben Henick
- Paul Mucur
- Andrea See
- Rebecca Blood
- Abhi Malani
- John Manoogian, III
- Robin Knits
- Gavin Coles Middleton
- Simon Jessey
- Philippe Janvier
- François Hodierne
- Eric Meyer
- Jonas Voss
#
20030422 #
1832
Style syncing with script #
blog
I'm using javascript to sync my blogroll styling to that of my blog. Using script for something which should be easily doable declaratively feels like cheating. Yet I don't think there is a declarative way to do this (short of using proprietary server-side include foo, which I'd rather not do).
Simple, I want green text on a black background when I use
<object>to transclude my blogroll into my blog this month, while I'd like it to stay the way it was, black text on a white background, for the previous months.So I've used javascript in the blogroll page to check to see what the parent's location is, and en/disable this month's style sheet accordingly. There's probably a more general solution for multiple months' worth of custom styling. I'll cross that bridge when I get to it.
Comments:
#
web
But how do I declaratively sync up the style sheets of a page with all that it transcludes with
<object>?And once we've gotten that figured out, how do I designate a set of alternate stylesheets across a set of pages, some which may transclude others, such that choosing a particular alternate style sheet in the user agent for a particular page also selects that alternate style sheet in any pages that are transcluded using
<object>?Anyone suggesting the user should simply pick the same alternate style sheet over and over again using a context menu in each and every transcluded object/page/frame is going to get laughed at, deservedely so. Here, I have some rocks for you to fetch too.
The same of course applies to pages transcluded with the deprecated
<iframe>element. And it's an even worse problem with<frameset>s, because the user agent has to know when you pick an alternate style sheet for the page inside a particular<frame>, whether or not the user agent should then attempt to pick that same alternate style sheet for all the sibling<frame>s. What about<frame>s in other<frameset>s higher up in the<frameset>hierarchy?#
20030421 #
2128
It's beginning... #
perception
I walked through Gate 404 and left the ground moments later.
When the airport newstand clerk took my 20 I noticed that the word
GOD
had been Sharpied, leavingIN
.![[US]](https://cdn.statically.io/img/tantek.com/../../images/flagenus.gif)
WE TRUSTOf course I wanted a bag.
"17.20" she said a matter-of-factly as I was already handing her an ATM unit.
The clerk realized she had just rung up four identical items that all looked different.
As casually as I could, I laid my collection on the counter.
There in a different pile was #2 and way in the back a single #4.
Maybe there's more somewhere else in the store.
#3 was right behind #1, with no sign of the others.
I am the target.
Special Matrix edition cover #1 of 4 apparently.
It was immediately a foregone conclusion that I was picking up the May 2003 issue of Premiere with Neo on the cover.
I recognized the face from a distance, or maybe the sunglasses.
Comments:
#
1700
What to do with things to do #
balance
This categorization popped into my head recently:
- grow
- restore
- maintain
- prune
- close
as yet another way to group things to do, areas of activities, and perhaps even relationships. Some areas of your life you want to expand and grow. Others have been neglected, and you need to work on restoring them. Most things just need to be maintained, and it might help to make a list of all the things that demand maintenance (how much and how frequently) in your life. Some of those things should probably be pruned away. And everyone I know has areas of their lives or unfinished projects that need to be closed off and put/parked away for good.
I know the unfinished things in my life bother me from time to time. Spending time reaching closure in those areas is more than worth it. Less clutter in the back of my mind means fewer things to distract me.
Some things you can simply prune away, and that can be incredibly liberating. In the process, you might even eliminate (close) some. Others you might just prune back to a small necessary core which you then maintain.
Either way, as any gardener knows, pruning is critical to achieving optimum growth. While there is perhaps no limit to the number of things that can be closed and pruned, it is good to keep the maintenance list under control (new things always come up). After that, it seems there is just enough time left to grow perhaps one or two activities / areas.
What do you need to close up, what do you need to prune or restore, and what do you want to grow?
Comments:
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20030419 #
2359
Congratulations #
friends
Congratulations to Robert Scoble on his new job, and to Robin Knits on hers.
#
20030418 #
0858
Condolences and comforting #
friends
My deepest condolences to Eric Meyer. Our thoughts are with you.
I'm leaving today to spend a few days with my parents. My siblings and I are all convening at the parents' house to spend time with them talking and sharing about our grandma. I am hoping I can convince my dad to tell as many stories about her as possible. I'm about to go to Fry's to pick up a color scanner so that my dad can also scan in his photographs of her. Somehow, in this day and age, creating an archive memorial seems like the right thing to do, and at least one way of dealing.
Comments:
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20030415 #
1610
Fried #
mind
Mentally that is.
#
govt
Finished my taxes and filed them electronically. It's after four o'clock in the afternoon and what I thought would be a little bit of work left in the morning turned into most of the day. Yes I'm getting refunds, but overall smaller than last year. No I haven't had anything to eat yet. Yes I took today off from work as well.
#
weather
Thankfully the sun is still shining, filtered only by a thin sparse cloud cover. I think I'll go skate somewhere and get something to eat.
#
art
My friend Rhett told me about an evening gathering at the newly reopened Asian Art Museum tomorrow night. It's called Art After Hours: The ReincarnAsian and it's from 6:30-10:00 pm. I should be able to make it if I can escape work in time tomorrow afternoon to make the 5pm Caltrain.
#
20030414 #
2220
Mid April Crunch #
balance
Mid April always seems incredibly busy. Taxes obviously (which could have been done a couple of months ago), but every year it's something.
#
city
People keep asking me why I live in the City (as opposed to the Peninsula or (gasp) the South Bay). Real simple. I like being able to step outside of my house after 10pm (an hour later than expected, thanks to Turbotax crashing and me having forgotten to "save" for over an hour or so — why isn't it "saving" automatically when it shows that stupid "performing calculations" dialog with the three second progress bar every third step?), on a weeknight, and easily walk to a cafe
#
cafe
like Crepes on Cole, that serves made to order crepes, scrambles and other breakfasts. Plus the daily soup is often quite good as well.
#
work
I took the day off. Not to enjoy the nice weather, or anything fun like that.
#
govt
No, I took the day off so I could attempt to finish my taxes. Pathetic. And annoying. Tell me again why a flat tax (with a sufficient standard deduction) wouldn't work? Oh yeah, too many lobbyists and accountants would be out of work. They should consider themselves so lucky, to be liberated from such dreary labors, free to pursue more productive and fulfilling ventures.
#
dinner
Ah but my dinner is here. Ok, I'm a little less grumpy now. No I'm not doing my taxes at a cafe. Not here. Not in sanctuary. I'm taking a break, to eat a little, and write a little.
#
friends
A big happy birthday to my dear sister Aytek, and big thanks to her husband Steve for cooking an amazing array of birthday desserts yesterday. I even took some home last night and I'll probably have some tonight after finishing taxes (maybe after filing Federal, but before State, if it gets too late).
And a big happy birthday to my friend Chris Cotton, who was just in town for a week or so.
Last but not least, a very warm house to Heather T., and the same to Jish as well. Did you manage to finish those dark chocolate Pepperidge Farms yet?
#
blog
My incredible shrinking blog roll just lost a couple more items. I'm still throwing things off...
#
web
Or rather sending them off. This morning I finally completed editing the Candidate Recommendation draft of the CSS3 Color module, the respective disposition of comments, and an editorial update to the CSS TV Profile and sent them to the W3C CSS Working Group. Whew! So those items are now off my writing list. With any luck, in a few weeks to perhaps a month, they might even be published.
#
perception
Amazing how other long term tasks seem easier to complete, when one is supposed to be working on one's taxes. So much paper filed, recycled or awaiting the shredder. Oh, I almost forgot, I could be folding laundry...
But no, I'm not even going to attempt to finish organizing my CDs. Unlike some people. There is still the matter of what taxonomy to use to organize my CD collection.
#
20030410 #
1342
Backdoor RAVE act #
freedom
As our troops are liberating Iraq, bringing Iraqi citizens freedoms not seen in a quarter of a century, here on the home front, (some of) our senators are continuing to reduce or eliminate our freedoms.
Last year I (and many many others) wrote about the RAVE act and thanks to the overwhelming feedback that we collectively provided, helped defeat it.
Having suffered a defeat on its own, the proponents of the RAVE act are "backdooring" it by attaching it to the Amber Alert Bill, hoping that nobody will notice, and that noone will dare vote against a child abduction bill.
#
citizen
Once again, if you are a U.S. citizen, you need to speak up and help defend our Constitution.
It takes only a few moments to send a letter via a web form that was setup by EM:DEF - the Electronic Music Defense & Education Fund. EM:DEF is part of the Drug Policy Alliance.
Call your Senators and politely ask them to please oppose and work to remove Section 609 of S151/HR1104. You can contact your Senators through the Capitol Switchboard at 202-224-3121. If you are a California resident (i.e. registered voter), your Senators are: Senator Boxer 415-403-0100 and Senator Feinstein 415-393-0707.
Finally, take note of who introduced the legislation this time around: Senator Joe Biden (D-DE). The same guy that first introduced the RAVE Act last year in the Senate. Residents of Delaware, you especially need to contact this particular senator and ask him to cut it out and go back and reaffirm his pledge to defend the US Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic.
#
20030409 #
1418
Elastiq — tonight with Amber #
club
I've been frequenting Elastiq from time to time the past few months and it's consistently delivered a variety of delicious beats.
Tonight, Amber (who I bumped into at Muddy Waters) will be spinning her particular mix of hard trance / acid techno. Try a sample.
Telene opens at 10pm and Amber follows at 11:20. Maybe I'll see you there.
#
20030408 #
1848
Found while procrastinating #
psych
- Facial expressions cause emotions rather than vice versa. I remember seeing an earlier study that said that just the act of smiling made people feel better, but this study seems to cover more.
#
anthro
- adultlescents.
the ever-widening gap between biological and social age... with increased wealth and leisure ... it's possible for a person's social adolescence to extend for decades ... The youngest members of the 'adultlescent' generation are also members of Generation X
And here I thought social immaturity was more likely a consequence of being too geeky and introverted early in life and thus missing out on so much social interaction experience that most take for granted.
#
- adultlescents.
city
- 'Vertigo' then and now. Before and after images of various San Francisco locations used in the film.
Comments:
- Robert Kirkpatrick (Um, what pictures would those be?)
#
freedom
- Libraries learn how to protect patrons from Patriot Act.
"We are grappling with this -- we are a country at war and everyone wants to be patriotic, but they're forgetting the First Amendment," said the librarian, who asked not to be identified.
Understandably.
#
- Libraries learn how to protect patrons from Patriot Act.
web
Vera saw a license plate today that said MSN SUX. Well hopefully the "coming soon" release of msn for MacOSX will make it suck less (with no apologies to System 7.5).
#
transport
However, Vera's sighting has nudged me to finally publish this particular gem that I snapped last November on 101S.
Ok, Yahooites, fess up. Which of you owns the silver Volkswagen Passat stationwagon with the license plate "IH8 AOL"? And do you really? Don't you know that haters never prosper?#
20030407 #
1609
Monday already? #
transport
Thanks to Jess Barron for letting us know about one particular Caltrain car that is cooler than all the rest.
#
friends
Chris Wilson and his wife Jen stayed over for the weekend on their way to a few weeks in Hawaii. Friday we ate in the heated outdoor patio at Zare which as usual had delectable fare.
Saturday was grill/movie/xbox night at Patrick's. If you haven't tried four on four Halo with each team in a separate room with their own TV and Xbox — you really should. "Free Enterprise" is a must see for any sci-fi buff, trekkie, Shatner fan/mocker or comicbook store vixen fetishist. And don't forget to grill some Chilean Sea Bass before they're extinct — just wait a few years before grilling some more (if they're still around).
Sunday started with brunch with Chris, Jen and George — at Crepes of course. After bouncing around some Haight street distractions we took off through Golden Gate Park and walked all the way to Ocean Beach and back. Beautiful day for it too. The second weekend in a row that I've been to the beach. I haven't done that since I lived in LA.
On the return walk we stopped by Amoeba for some cheap used CD's (and laughed at Hollywood for not making any money off us — they must just hate "The First Sale Doctrine"). A quick espresso drink and snack at Rockin' Java and we crawled home. After collapsing on the couch and watching a movie (I was too tired to remember what we watched), we decided it might be a good idea to get some takeout. Having had enough walking we drove to the Inner Sunset where we actually immediately found a parking spot at 7th & Irving. Just a couple of blocks to Gordo's on 9th (where you can feed five for a single ATM unit) and on the way back we picked up a couple of tasty desserts from Tart to Tart, to share of course.
#
work
Chris and I spent the many hour walk through the park to the beach and back discussing the company we work for and our respective roles and potentials. He has me convinced not to give up just yet, and I think I at least got him to consider that he might have a bigger impact elsewhere. We're to reconvene in Redmond in a few weeks to decide on next steps — plus he promised me an introduction to a particularly interesting individual. In the meantime, I have plenty to keep me occupied for a few weeks.
#
20030403 #
2027
Maxfield's House of Caffeine: walkwire )( 768K #
cafe
On the way to dinner this past Monday, I noticed a cafe (Maxfields) at the corner of Dolores and 17th that I had not seen before, with "wireless" painted on the window outside. When I looked it up on the web, I didn't find it — which was quite odd. Apparently I had left out an apostrophe (because the sign out front had no apostrophe).
Check out the search results: without apostrophe and with apostrophe. You would think that as clever as the Google folks are, that they would be automatically searching with/without punctuation (especially punctuation as silly as an apostrophe) from the query. Maybe they're still in a panic over yesterday's announcement (which surprised me too).
So here's the 411: Maxfield's House of Caffeine @ 398 Dolores @ 17th. It's open 7am-9pm every day. Happy hour is 5pm-9pm (shouldn't that be Happy Hours?), and a weekly "Open Mic Nite" — poetry & acoustic jams every Tuesday from 7:30pm-9:30pm. No, I don't know how there's an open mic nite for half an hour after they are supposedly closed, and I haven't bothered asking yet. I figure I'll just have to show up and find out for myself. And sure enough, there's open wifi as well.
Comments:
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20030401 #
1445
text-transform:continental #
web
Please see my recent proposal on the W3C www-style mailing list and feel free to comment.
Comments:
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Comments: