dsandler.org

More Moleskine Hacks. (Coda this MetaFilter thread from 2003.)

“Apparently, some Starbucks managers are begging upper management to let them free up the WiFi, because they know they’re losing business to others.“ I’ve been making the case for free WiFi as customer retention perk for some time now (analogy: free bathrooms). Free wireless at Starbucks might be enough to bring me back.

“There is nothing inherently wrong with monetizing a full-post RSS feed.” —from Ads in RSS, or is RSS the Ad?

So, let’s say you have some shiny new speakers. Or crappy old ones. Or you’re a DIY audio enthusiast. How do you really know what those speakers are giving you? Chris Liscio’s new FuzzMeasure software will tell you. No other hardware required!

MLS Stands for Maximum Length Sequence, and it is a great way to measure the dynamics of your loudspeakers, listening room, or whatever you wish, using the hardware you already have. FuzzMeasure is the first-ever MLS measurement application available exclusively for the Mac OS X operating system.

Apple Store, London, UK

Seventy-five percent said people with cancer and other serious illnesses should be allowed to use marijuana for medical purposes as long as their doctor approves, according to a Scripps Howard Texas poll question commissioned by Texans for Medical Marijuana.

Yes, Texas. (from the Burnt Orange Report)

Halo Needs Women!

Better mention the Wired article on RSS advertising and the Signal vs. Noise thread about it too. Despite the abundant pithy disgust response ("Unsubscribed."), I don’t think this is necessarily a bad thing. RSS items are marshallable, mungeable things. If a user doesn’t want to read an ad, she doesn’t have to click the RSS item. Software can be written to sift ads from content if you’re really upset, but honestly, what’s wrong with targeted text-based ads?

Data point: Google’s PageAds don’t bother me at all. They don’t blink, don’t jump around, and I can choose to look at them or not without a whole lot of hassle. They’re unobtrusive, and therefore I’m less likely to shut them all down. And so now what we have are textual advertisements in a structured medium—perfect for this kind of take-it-or-leave-it user scenario.

Look at it this way. If the RSS ad keeps your favorite feed running, but doesn’t obscure the content or cause an epileptic seizure, be thankful.

Another possible way to support RSS feeds: headlines are free, but you can pay a few bucks a year for full-article service, audioblogs, images, etc. That sounds like a winning proposition.

I actually built something very similar to Skribe (a Scheme-based document construction languge) when I was a junior at Rice. Working with Shriram, I built Chisel, which could emit HTML or PostScript (by way of LAT_EX, naturally). It actually had a slightly friendlier syntax than Skribe (you didn’t have to know as much Scheme … or, more accurately, you didn’t have to knowingly know as much Scheme). I guess I should have released it, or something.

Seen recently on-campus:

Frickin’ ELECs.

Erin sez: “I’ve updated Lost, and I’ve introduced a new format, whereby I pull apart the current events from the backstory. It should make the episodes more straightforward to synopsize.”

A new Paul Graham essay, Made in USA, is out, in which American suburbs and cars are contrasted with American software and movies. And why 1 Infinite Loop, Cupertino, CA is actually, secretly, the street address of the Embassy of Japan.

So, I’m old-school, I guess. Instead of all these fancy podcasts, I use RadioRecorder to schedule TiVo-like mp3 streams for my favorite radio shows. Now I can hear Morning Edition on my iPod, whenever.

Unfortunately, the iPod’s display is too narrow to disambiguate several recordings (in this case, Morning Edition from 11/16 and 11/17):

(Radio News)

Morning Edition - Nov 1

Morning Edition - Nov 1

I started poking around the (GPL) source to RadioRecorder to see if I could hack around this. What I discovered is that RadioRecorder uses [NSDate descriptionWithCalendarFormat:] on the text in the “Title Prefix” field (of the “Track Tags” tab), so you can pop any kind of strftime() compatible formatting codes in there to add date/time information to the beginning of your track names. No coding required!

The prefix I’ve selected begins with [%b %d], which will result in files named “[Nov 11] Morning Edition - Nov 11, 2004 05:00 AM”, which will be easy to distinguish on the iPod screen.

Just thought I’d share that.

To: People of Earth
From: God
Date: 11/17/2004
Subject: stop
 
knock it off, all of you
 
seriously, what the hell
 
-- God

Coming soon to the standalone TiVo OS: when you hit fast forward to skip past commercials, small banner ads will show up on your screen. You’ll be able to click them to get more info, see an informercial, or send your home address details to get more info about a product mailed to you.

But with Pixar announcing earlier this year that it would end its distribution relationship with Disney following the 2005 release of the Lasseter-directed “Cars,” Disney CEO Michael Eisner and studio head Dick Cook have signaled their determination to bring Woody, Buzz Lightyear and the gang back to the big screen.

—CNN: ‘Toy Story 3′ in the works, something Jobs had no interest in allowing (as seen on /.)

Psychological overhead is the amount of cognitive work that must be done to make certain that a responsibility is taken care of. In other words, if two members of a household split all chores but one is in charge of making sure that they’re split and completed, there is no equality because the psychological overhead is at play. It takes a rare housing situation for everyone to equally maintain the psychological overhead.

Excerpt: psychological overhead of responsibility

February 26, 1993— I’ve learned that love can be a lot like surgery. And breaking up with Wanda was a lot like dental surgery—dental surgery with a pair of hedge clippers and a polo mallet.

McSweeney’s does it again: The Lost Journals of Doogie Howser, M.D.

Slashdot tackles art tips for programmers. Designers everywhere suffer myocardial infarction. (Fear not—many of the responses on that thread offer the following sound advice: Unless you’re willing to invest a large amount of time making graphic design a part of your skillset, you’re probably better off just hiring an artist for your project. They (often) work cheap, and (usually) produce great work. There are a few solid tips for the dabbler, as well, such as “be consistent”, “pick a few styles”, “learn about fonts”, “avoid clip art”.)