Posts from November 2000
is it just me, or is blogger.com really fast all of a sudden? ;)
I've been keeping my books page fairly up to date. I notice I've been reading lots of history lately. I picked up a few used books this weekend, and they were mostly history. I'm looking forward to A History of Private Life edited by Georges Duby. Though I won't be able to read it all at once. I've already started bouncing around in it. I wonder if hypertext and the linking nature of the Internet has changed the way I read...or if I've always read this way. Some books I do read in a linear way. I'm blazing straight through The Federalist Papers Reader (trying to better understand this crazy republican not democratic form of government). I know I can read them free on the Internet, but this book distills them down to key sections...and provides groovy commentary. It's interesting when you read them as "constitutional propoganda" (they were written to pursuade people to ratify the constitution) instead of sacred texts. Federalist No. 10 has some great stuff about the value of keeping the electorate a certain distance from the government. It's especially relevant with all of this electoral college and process and "fair" and "accurate" stuff in the news. shew, I'm rambling. It was a good break...back to work tomorrow. and so on.
TNI Books Online: Postcards and Audio Letters compiled by Damien Jurado sounds like an interesting CD: "he's built a small library of audio letters, phone conversation snippets and random conversations documented on tape with boom boxes and answering machine recorders. You heard (and will probably continue to hear) bits and pieces of these recordings in some of Damien's songs. When he told us about the project, he looked convincing and said: 'It's real life.'" This publisher has several blogs.
honk if you demand satisfaction.
what he said. (and mad props should be sounding throughout the blog universe for the Java wizardry of matt. woop.)
I picked up a great CD this weekend. Dave Brubeck's Time Out. It's so laid back. Perfect for a lazy fall Sunday like this. He reminds me of Vince Guaraldi (or vice-versa)...and though it's a bit too early now, I'm looking forward to listening to my favorite Christmas CD soon. Anyway, this is the kind of album I hear and think, why haven't I heard this sooner?
more radio madness: Heard H. J. de Blij discuss geography. It was interesting to hear him speak because from his perspective, most social change flows from environmental change. He also had several stories about maps solving social problems; including snow's cholera map.
Gary Snyder said: "The world is our consciousness and it surrounds us."
Day Without Weblogs is coming. Last year, I put up this page in place of the one you're looking at now. (it looks kind of like my old design.)
I went out to breakfast with the (p)B-List this morning. Well, it wasn't so much going out to breakfast as it was toasting a bagel and eating it on the way to work. There was much lively discussion about what I should do first at work, and talk of this post. There was also a unanimous vote not to increase the number of members past one in order to perpetuate the belief that the list in fact exists. I wasn't satisfied with this result so I thought about starting a new, more exclusive group with fewer members, but realized I would never join such a radical organization. What was I thinking? meeting time: 15 minutes.
I saw Legend of Drunken Master this weekend. I hadn't seen a Jackie Chan film in the theatre since Rumble in the Bronx. Instead of a Chinese film trying hard to be a Hollywood blockbuster, this one felt like a film in its own style with its own ideologies. Spectacular, spectacular fight choreography. It's really incredible and entertaining. Probably the best film I've seen so far this year...next to Best In Show.
So I got a letter in the mail from the IRS the other day. That's never a good thing to come home to. It was a "first contact, warning" letter about my tax return from last April. "Ugh," I said to myself. You see, I filed electronically using the online version of TurboTax. Apparently, they didn't receive form FUPB-5 of my return. The consequences of not sending a new FUPB-5 within 10 days of receiving the warning were clear: "great harm to you and your descendents through this life and any other you may believe in." I clearly remember sending them my properly completed FUPB-5 last April. "Harassment!," I screamed in my kitchen!
After I calmed down, I thought, "thank humankind for the web. I can go to my trusted web application and download the completed form." I chipperly connected to the Internet. I forthrightly surfed to TurboTax. Horror: "You can no longer access or modify your 1999 return with TurboTax for the Web. If you need a printed copy of your return, please contact the IRS at 1-800-829-1040." Expletives streamed forth. They scared the cat.
I inadvertently enlisted skp's help at this point. We went to the IRS website and downloaded some forms. So on a chilly night in November, I re-did my taxes, on paper, to be able to fill out the required form. I only hope I can get it to them in time.
Speaking of the New Yorker and cartoon issues (we were), I heard a great interview with Art Spiegelman on the radio the other day. He mentioned that our culture experiences everything in quotation marks. We are defined by nihilistic irony. (I'm paraphrasing "big-time".) He said that as he's getting older, he's tired of experiencing everthing like this. So he's starting a movement called neo-sincerity where the quotations marks are gone, yet there is an acknowledgement that the quotation marks (irony) could exist. (eg. His friends used to wear safety pins in their ears...and now they're using them on their kids' diapers.) So there's that. It was also interesting to hear that Scott McCloud was a student of his. I need to read Maus.
"Openness, patience, receptivity, solitude is everything." - Rainer Maria Rilke
David Brower is a national hero. In Ralph Nader's address to the press core this morning (saw it on cspan...watch it here, it's great), he mentioned that he recently visited David Brower at his home in Berkeley. There he urged Ralph to keep up the fight to protect the environment.
He said: Let the trees breathe for us.
fuck. bush won. (now, which country am I going to move to?) UPDATE: Dewey Defeats Truman.
Here are the Sonoma County, California presidential election results where I voted.
The people with blogs have a lot to say about Nader today.
this unfortunate measure in my home state of Nebraska has passed with a huge margin. It makes me very sad and ashamed. I think history will show that this state constitutional amendment is hateful and bigoted. There are many things I love about Nebraska, but its politics is not one of them. (I'm glad to see that Nader got 4% of the vote there. There must be some progressive closet liberals there...like I used to be.)
I'm still sick. But it won't stop me from voting for Ralph Nader. I'm not looking forward to the effort that will be required to actually go outside, but what else can I do? Go out and vote! It's your only obligation as a citizen of this country (beyond taxes and obeying laws), and it doesn't take very long. Plus, you have the satisfaction of saying things like: Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos.
more pictures from Web2000. No captions yet, I'm sick. ugh.
To make things more exciting today, Clinton and Gore are speaking right here! I hope I get a chance to leave the booth to check out the excitement.
Yesterday really picked up in the afternoon, so I didn't have time to update my site. I took a bunch of pictures, but was too exhausted at the end of the day to do anything with them. I'll try to catch up this weekend.
Just said hi to Ryan from laze.net. He mentioned that we need to make some tweaks to the Blogger interface for Opera.
The show seems a little mellower today. But it may pick up in the afternoon. Just chatted with Mr. Shellen himself from shellen.com.
Here are some pictures from today's activity. I'm used to sitting in the Pyra basement coding all day, so it's quite a different experience to go out into the bright world and talk to people. It's fun to talk about Blogger though, and people seem interested. It's a little tough to start from ground zero when people haven't heard of weblogs. With all of the attention to the form lately, it's easy to forget that there is still weblog evangelizing to be done. We didn't have to evangelize the format to weblog writer Carol. Ev and I had a nice conversation with her about the lack of personal/independent content/tools represented at the show.
greetings from the floor of Web2000! I can't believe we have a booth. We're situated in the wireless pavilion next to Immersion and Capslock. We're still getting set up...we plan on adding a webcam and some digital pictures to something somewhere today. ;) Ev spoke on a panel this morning about online communities. So much activity, it's fun!