dsandler.org

“If Lott didn’t see the storm coming, it was in part because it was so slow in building. The papers did not make note of his comments until days after he had made them. But the stillness was broken by the hum of Internet ‘bloggers’ who were posting their outrage and compiling rap sheets of Lott’s earlier comments. It took a few more days before Democrats denounced Lott and demanded a censure.” - CNN, from scripting news.

Reminder, kids: Don’t park in front of hydrants.

Wired: Why Nintendo Won’t Grow Up. (Hint: It’s Miyamoto.)

Man jumps from the side of the Williams Tower.

“We’re Americans … we’re supposed to be the good guys. Obviously we’re having some technical difficulties. Please bear with us while we attempt to corect them. Until then, please don’t watch … it’s just embarrassing.” — DubyaDubyaDubya.com.

Tabbed terminals for OS X: iTerm. Great idea, ugly interface, will try it out anyway.

Zelda news: Kaze no Takuto mania! MP3s, impressions from a native speaker, piles of new screenshots. The review: “Better than Ocarina of Time…”

An interview with Tim Minear on what’s next for Firefly.

After “Serenity,” there are still three unaired episodes, the last of which, directed by executive producer Tim Minear (who shares that title with series creator Joss Whedon), finishes filming this week. It.s not known whether these will ever air on FOX.

Creative Commons, Larry Lessig’s new venture to reimagine copyright, works protection, and fair use through the development of modern copyright licenses, has as its front-page case study Connexions, a project by Rice ECE professor Dr. Rich Baraniuk (DSP).

If you see thisonsalefor$40(assome have), pick one up for me.

Question: Last month, Hewlett-Packard started running a TV spot called “Anthem”. (There are three ads in their current campaign; one is about a spaceman, one is about fighting crime. This is the other one.) It is accompanied by a familiar-sounding piano-and-orchestra piece, set in a fast-moving, mechanical but irregular tempo (7/8 perhaps?). What is this piece of music? (I don’t know the answer. Do you?)

Guess the movie from the still. Oh wait, you have to do it based on the costumes and sets alone, because the actors have been removed in Adobe Photofalsifier(tm). This is surprisingly hard!

If you have an opinion on file-sharing, or copyright law, or mp3s — or don’t have an opinion, but like reading well-tempered opinions — read this article by Tim O’Reilly on piracy and copyright. Please, read it.

News flash: Gore will not seek presidency in 2004. Unlikely to get the nomination, or walking away from a fight (vs. the incumbent patriotic juggernaut) he knows he can’t win? Prediction: 2004 will be a pathetic, 1988-like bid for the top spot for the Democrats.

Oh, MacOS X users: Try hitting Command-Control-Option-8. Seriously. Crazy! (Do it again to restore balance to the world.)

Some of these cartoon t-shirts are just funny, and some are really clever.

“It’s a crappy little ship, a rustbucket,” Fillion said. “It’s the Volkswagen Van of spaceships.”

Yeah, this was probably the best episode of SNL I’ve seen in a while, and maybe the best Christmas episode in half a decade. I mean, come on, the Charlie Brown Christmas parody? Pure genius. And Hardball! If you’ve ever seen it, you’ll know that Darrell Hammond has the voice perfected. Special props are due to the West Wing cast, who were pretty good sports (and actually acted a little, despite ostensibly being themselves). And, really, the more Trent Lott jokes, the better.

Two more NBC11 notes: (1) The cats don’t like the Emergency Broadcast System test any more than I do. (2) This “She Spies” crap on after SNL is So. Incredibly. Hideous. My eyes!

I take it on good authority that tonight’s Saturday Night Live is well worth watching. Not only is Gore hilarious, there’s a whole West Wing goof (including the whole West Wing cast!).

Joss eulogizes Firefly on a message board. Well, it’s not exactly a eulogy, since Fox will allow him to shop the show around to other networks. But that doesn’t save the jobs of the crew: “Production will halt, they’ll need to find new jobs. You can’t imagine how that feels. How much they brought to the table, how hard and well they worked. And their Christmas bonus is this.”

The real-time traffic map is almost entirely covered with blinking blue icons (signifying accidents). Thanks, El Niño. (I’m not complaining about the rain so much as the drivers who don’t know how to deal with it.)

Smart man, that Henry.

Spaceward Ho! lives! (official site)

Who would beat up Moby? (Eminem fans?)

Another article on the Firefly cancellation: “But let’s not forget the famous story of Cheers. Ranked 75th in a list of 75 shows, it by all logic should have been cancelled. NBC didn’t have the money to make a new set for a replacement show, so they let it run for another year out of pure necessity.”

Well, crap.

I was at a dead end. I’d just sent my $2300 laptop, my Airport basestation, and a load of stuff to somebody I didn’t know and all I had to show for it was a bill from Fedex for overnight shipping and a returned cashier’s check.

An eBay scam, a Titanium PowerBook, and a little Law & Order — Caught: Mac Addicts to the Rescue.

From Amar: The world’s flags given letter grades based on originality, design aesthetic, etc. I am, of course, amazed that Gambia earned the top spot despite its blatantly colorblindness-insensitive color palette!

“For the first hour, all the opening doors on the Enterprise are accompanied by a nice door-opening sound effect stolen from Star Trek. But by this point in the movie, the Turkish audio engineers have lost interest. Now whenever someone walks into a room, somebody off camera makes the sound .swwwsh!. with their mouth two to three seconds after the door opens.” (Turkish Star Trek.)

Interesting: Web Patterns for personal web sites. Some interesting ideas hidden behind a slightly-trendy exterior (that, is, the fengshui-like “Patterns” moniker [1 2 2]

“But I’m sorry to read that my online pal Wil Wheaton, who played young Wesley Crusher for four or five seasons on Star Trek: the Next Generation, got dissed by his former employers once again. Not only was his cameo cut from the movie, but–adding insult to injury– he found out at the last minute that the “premiere” to which he had been invited was not actually the real premiere at all, but rather the b-list, no-stars, no-klieg-lights premiere.” [TMW]

Good thing we snubbed that pesky land mine treaty.

Stanford to clone human embryos.

So, I’m going back and reading about malloc(): Doug Lea’s libg++ allocator and others.

Industry news: Chinese PC maker licenses Palm OS.

Adam has explained the S.I. unit for disgruntlement, the Barta (Ba). (Beware: like Farads, you generally only want to encounter this unit in very small quantities, like, say, the mBa or the μBa.)

On KLLC this morning: regular KLLC listener, Robin Williams. (Hilarious.)