Disorderly Content

The death of Rosa Parks has inspired a lot of tributes, from having her lie in state in the Capitol Rotunda to Apple's resurrection of their Think Different campaign on their homepage a couple of days ago. Mrs. Parks was a pivotal figure in the Civil Rights movement who deserves all the attention she's receiving now, even if it's too late for her to enjoy it. And assuming for the moment that she wanted more attention while she was with us. But it does make me wonder why we like the myth of Rosa Parks so much better than the reality.

The story we all know is about a working woman with tired feet who just had enough one day and refused to move to the back of the bus. That version of the story has a nice Western feel; you can almost hear John Wayne or Jimmy Stewart speechifyin' about how "a man's gotta do what a man's gotta do". But it wasn't that way at all. Rose Parks was an activist, not merely a tired seamstress. And a boycott had been under discussion for quite some time. People in the movement were looking for the right person to take the right action at the right place and time. Mrs. Parks agreed to be that person.

But we don't like activists; we want catalysts, the more accidental the better. And if we don't get 'em, we'll invent 'em. And give 'em tired feet. That's a particularly nice touch.

Peter Hartlaub at the San Francisco Chronicle writes about when a fad goes from Wired to Tired, as Wired Magazine used to say. (Heck, they may still say it; I long ago tired of Wired.) His example is those silicone wristbands everybody's wearing for every reason, or no reason at all. And his measure of over-ed-ness is Katie Couric: when she uses it, you know it's passé. Can't argue with that.

Just in time for Halloween, one of my Scaper friends provided a pointer to Making Fiends, a Flash-based cartoon series about... well, that would be telling. Just be sure to watch it with a friend of your own.

Rob Malda, AKA Commander Taco at Slashdot, has an interesting piece there about being forced to change his identity in the online game World of Warcraft. It seems one of the dungeonmasters (online admins) decided that CmdrTaco was a violation of the rules, since it includes a title. Rob talks a bit about having no recourse in the opaque bureaucracy of the game, but then considers why it matters to him: that our online identities matter. And they matter far beyond the personal inconvenience of having to reestablish a connection with people who know you in a particular context.

What brought this home to me was a reminder of a threat a couple of years back to this very domain. It seems the powers that be were considering changing the rules regarding domain names, specifically those in .ORG. They were discussing limiting .ORG to actual nonprofit organizations. And they weren't planning any grandfathering of existing domains, which would have meant losing almost ten years of connections and good will for people like me.

Fortunately, the proposal didn't go anywhere. But it made me conscious of how much of a house of cards an online reputation is. Rob talks about a heavy game player who abandoned the game when his or her identity was taken away. Would I be willing to start back at square one and recreate my reputation and my audience if new rules said I couldn't be disordered any more? Would you? Could we?

Boing Boing has a link to an amazing optical illusion at Ian Rowland's website. It's a pair of pictures of one angry and one calm individual. But what's really cool about the pictures is that if you get far enough away, the angry picture becomes calm and the calm one becomes angry. Go take a look; you too will be impressed!

(I'd have included the pictures here, but Mr. Rowland credits a paper from the University of Glasgow that claims copyright ownership. So if they disappear from his site you can find them at cvcl.mit.edu/gallery.htm.)

I've just violated one of usability expert Jakob Nielsen's Top Ten Design Mistakes for weblogs: I used (what I thought, or at least hoped was) a clever play on words for the title of this posting, rather than something descriptive that will tell the reader whether or not they care about the topic. Then again, this blog violates a bunch of his other rules. Hey, it's my blog; you're gettin' your money's worth, right?

But never mind that; the only real value in the previous paragraph was to pad this posting so it wouldn't look so awkward next to the tall, thin image at right. Which is a wonderful thing: a limited edition Homer-Simpson-as-Da-Vinci-model roller ball pen, also available as a fountain pen. Like Cory Doctorow at Boing Boing, I'm glad they exist. Unlike Cory, I think they might just be worth a few of my hardly earned dollars. Okay, more than a few. But still.

A recent episode of Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me on NPR mentioned a closed captioning foulup that once described Alan Greenspan as suffering from "an enlarged prostitute". Andrea Mitchell, newsperson and Greenspan's wife, was alleged to have replied, "He should be so lucky". Which is funny if not particularly illuminating.

Not so what I have to assume was a typo on The Today Show this morning, which referred to Bill O'Reilly as being in the No Spine Zone. Think Progress has the screenshot, which they swear hasn't been altered. At last, somebody other than Al Franken tells the truth about the bloviating O'Reilly.

A few blogs are quoting from the list of the 100 oldest .COM domains. I take pride in the fact that Symbolics, Inc., my employer at the time, got the very first domain name back in March of 1985. Before that we had to use names like SCRC-STONY-BROOK.ARPA (SCRC was the Symbolics Cambridge Research Center) and manually route all our email and such through servers at MIT. I was based in Chatsworth, California, which was connected to Canbridge, Mass. by a leased line. Which meant that if I needed to share some data with folks at JPL in Pasadena (really La Canada Flintridge, but Pasadena sounds so much classier), it had to go from Chatsworth to Cambridge, across the road to MIT and then via the ARPANET all the way back to California. When it worked, that is. Which wasn't all that often.

Well, sorta. I've added two new podcasts to the collection iTunes manages for me. One really is old time radio; it's called Soap Detectives, and it offers real recordings of radio detective stories from the 40s and 50s. I've just been listening to a seven part serial called Paul Temple and the Spencer Affair and enjoying it immensely. You can get the episodes from their website or via the iTunes Music Store.

The other podcast isn't really from the good old days; it only plays it on TV radio my iPod. It's called Decoder Ring Theatre, and it's a wonderful pastiche of radio drama from that time before you and I were born. Featuring the adventures of The Red Panda, Canada's Greatest Superhero! And, repeating myself with different URLS, available at their website and the iTMS.

This'll probably sound strange to anybody who lives outside California, but a couple of days ago I took a look out the window and was absolutely thrilled to see clouds in the sky. I'm reminded of a story about Howard Hughes and the making of Hell's Angels. The movie's about an RAF squadron in World War I. And Howard Hughes, who directed the film, would get in a plane to look for good clouds. Because he knew he needed that contrasty backdrop to make his flying footage interesting.

And so it is with me and my stock photo efforts. I have a favorite spot at the entrance to Baylands Nature Preserve in Palo Alto. It's right by the end of the municipal airport's runway. And I can stand on the trail and get some nice shots of the planes as they come in for landings. But that damn perfect blue sky! The shots are so boring! They need some texture make the picture interesting. Which is why I was so pleased to see those clouds. In about fifteen minutes I had a couple of dozen great shots for my stock collection.

So, much as I'll miss the sunny days when the rains start for real, I'm very happy to see a little gray in the sky. And why not? I'm getting pretty gray myself!

Just got back from seeing Capote with my local Meetup group. It's an amazing film, with breathtaking performances by Philip Seymour Hoffman in the title role and Catherine Keener as Harper Lee. The film tells how Capote came to write In Cold Blood, beginning with the Kansas murder that caught his attention and ending with the execution of the killers. In many ways this film follows the structure of In Cold Blood. At least the film version; I will plead ignorance of Capote's book. I can't imagine how you can appreciate this film fully without having seen the earlier one, although my companions seem to have done just fine.

I'm old enough to remember Truman Capote on the talk show circuit in the 70s. And I think Hoffman got him to a T; not just the mannerisms and the voice, but the shallowness and the insufferable self-importance. By the time I saw him, Capote was famous mostly for being famous; the writing that got him notice was long in the past and never to be repeated. The film takes the point of view that this book was both Capote's great success and his undoing; by getting so close to the killers, by manipulating them to reveal what he needed to know, he became something even he couldn't ignore. As I remarked at the end of the movie, at least vultures wait for their prey to die before they begin feeding. Capote couldn't, and didn't. And maybe that's what broke him, the realization that he wasn't as distanced and superior as he'd always believed. To create a great work he had to do great evil. And the fact that he was doing it to those who had done much greater evil didn't keep him from suffering.

The always on the ball Talking Points Memo tells of a new job finding service for the well connected. Think HotJobs, only with fewer of those annoying questions about skills or relevant experience.

I've only added one new show to my ReplayTV this season: a comedy called How I Met Your Mother. It's on CBS. *shudder* It has Bob Saget *shudder*, although thankfully only in small doses and only as a disembodied voice *small sigh of relief*. It has Alyson Hannigan, a small point in its favor. And Neil Patrick Harris of Doogie Howser and Harold and Kumar fame. (We shall not speak of his involvement in Stark Raving Mad. Ever.)

NPH plays Barney, shallow best friend to Ted, the show's putative lead and without a doubt the dullest character in the cast. But Barney's not just shallow; he's also a blogger. And in a fit of creativity and with-it-ness one doesn't expect from CBS (ever!), Barney's blog has moved from the purely conceptual to the real, or at least as real as anything in cyberspace. Yes, somewhere some anonymous CBS employee is channeling Barney and blogging about it.

I know I let my subscription lapse a couple of years back, the onscreen schedule on my ReplayTV providing more than adequate warning of anything worth watching. And I guess I wasn't the only one, as declining subscriptions have led its publisher to abandon the (big) pocket sized edition we all grew up with in favor of a more magazine-like magazine.

Anyway, this week is the last for the classic Guide. And they're celebrating or mourning its passing with a series of nine different covers. Each one recreates a classic cover, in some cases using an old show's modern decendent. M*A*S*H begetting Scrubs I can see. Good Times leading to Bernie Mac, okay. And The Flintstones begetting The Simpsons, sure. I'll even accept Reba MacEntire as a modern Lucille Ball, although truth to tell I mostly found Lucy grating. But Jennifer Love Hewitt as The Flying Nun? Conan O'Brien as Buffalo Bob Smith? Everybody knows he has more in common with Howdy Doody...

There's an old saying in the computer biz that there are two kinds of users: those who have lost data and those who haven't... yet. I was reminded of that saying yesterday, when I discovered that the external drive on my file server had stopped responding. Walking over to the desk, I could see that the red light was on solid and the green one was flashing rapidly. Shutting down the server and restarting didn't help. Unplugging the drive didn't either. And of course, there was stuff on the drive that would be a royal pain to have to recover, if recovery was even possible.

My hope diminishing by the second, I tried moving the drive from my server to my laptop. (Ah, the wonderfulness of Firewire.) Same problem; as soon as the drive was plugged in I had the solid red/flashing green of an insane traffic signal. So I unplugged the drive. And noticed something really interesting: the little green light on the power supply was flashing like mad. Huh! Looks like the drive might actually be okay, or it will be once I can find a replacement power supply.

Visits to Fry's, Micro Center and even Weird Stuff Warehouse (hey, you never know) proved fruitless. Fortunately, I had better luck at online stores. And in a couple of days I should have my new power bricklet and will see if I'm back in business. Oh, and of course I'll set up a backup regimen for my big drive. I have another external drive I'm not doing much with. What's that other old saying? "Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me?" Something like that.

Update 10/13: All's well that ends well, as the Bard once wrote. My replacement power supply arrived a few minutes ago. Plugged it in, reconnected the drive and I'm back to normal, or at least as close to normal as I ever get. Now I just need to do something about backing up that drive. Good thing I have an even larger Firewire drive that's not doing much right now.

It's often been said of various actors that they would be great just reading from the phone book. And in an example of life imitating humor or somesuch, Dateline Hollywood has news of a commotion caused by Joss Whedon's grocery list. No word on who'll play the Raisin Bran in the inevitable made-for-TV movie version.

Back in the Nixon years, before Watergate and before Spiro Agnew brought nolo contendre into the popular lexicon, National Lampoon had a monthly feature called Mrs. Agnew's Diary. Purporting to be the private musings of the veep's wife, it was both funny and insulting at one and the same time. And now we have proof that history repeats itself, or at least joke versions of history do. Bloggers everywhere are reporting that Harriet Miers, Bush's nominee to replace Sandra Day O'Connor among The Supremes, has a blog. And what a blog it is! Who needs Senate hearings when we're presented with all the insight we need, right from the horse's mouth as it were. Way to bypass the process and go straight to the people, Harriet!

David at Joho the Blog links to Isabel Walcott's blog, where she displays a great cartoon from The New Yorker on blogging and asks if all this attention to blogging and bloggers (but not to this one or this one, or at least not nearly enough of it) means that the bloom is off the rose, it's all over but the shouting and other cliches. (I refuse to use the Fonzie's motorcycle stunt one on general principle. Yes, I do so have principles!) She's probably right, although I'm hoping that, like web pages, after the bubble bursts it'll go back to people doing it for their own amusement and that of a few friends. Podcasts; that's where the real money is! Right?

My antispam filters are doing okay against most of the deluge, but I'm still having trouble keeping the pump & dump stock scammers' emails away from my inbox. I've never had the urge to investigate any of the stock offerings these people (and I use the term in its loosest sense) announce with such breathless enthusiasm. Fortunately, someone else does. As I just read at Boing Boing, a website called Spam Stock Tracker has a real time display of the performance of a basket of penny stocks being pushed by the scammer-spammers. To my very great surprise, the news is not at all good; the theoretical portfolio has lost almost half its value since the experiment began in May. Gee, and they seemed so genuinely excited!

(One amusing side note: the owner of the site is using Google AdSense to try to make a few pennies from his traffic. And one of the ads Google considers relevant to his content has the title Hot Penny Stocks. There's a bit of irony here; if only I were clever enough to articulate it...)

I'm a big fan of Richard Sharpe, British infantryman turned officer during the Napoleonic Wars. The creation of novelist Bernard Cornwell, Sharpe was brought to life by Sean Bean in a series of TV movies I discovered on PBS and collected on tape (remember tape?) and then DVD. Sean Bean's one of those actors who gets work but not necessarily respect; aside from his anti-Bond role in Goldeneye, he's almost always portrayed as a weakling, a coward or an outright villain. None of which is true of his portrayal of Sharpe, although as The Movie Blog argues, aspects of that role may be responsible for his typecasting.

Anyway, The Movie Blog also mentions that Bean's about to embark on a Sharpe sequel, to be filmed and set in India. I for one can't wait!

While the press continues to focus on the disaster around the Gulf, other disasters go unreported, ignored and not paid attention to:

Local Los Angeles residents suffer....

No electricity for 26 minutes. 'This is our Tsunami.'
By Joshua Gates. Actor, Photographer. Victim.

LOS ANGELES, CA, September 12, 2005 - Horror and disbelief swept through the greater Hollywood area this afternoon as a minor power-outage turned the city into a virtual war zone and local residents struggled to deal with the devastating aftermath. The outage struck at 1:35 PM, during L.A.'s busy afternoon coffee and Pilates rush hour. Traffic lights fell dark, local gyms and sushi restaurants were without power for nearly 30 minutes and many businesses were illuminated only by the light of the sun and its blistering 78 degree heat.

"It was horrible," said out of work actor and voice-over artist Rick Shea. "I was in a Jamba Juice on Melrose when it hit and the blenders simply shut down. A woman lunged for my Berry Lime Sublime and after that, well, it got pretty ugly."

In the ensuing panic, local radio stations broadcast conflicting reports as to exactly which local businesses would be offering relief supplies. Almost 100 people flocked to the Starbucks at Santa Monica and La Brea only to find helpless baristas, no hot coffee and a totally meager selection of baked goods. "My mother is 83 years old and we heard on the radio that this Starbucks was going to be up and running. If she doesn't get a venti Arabian Mocha Sanani, I don't know what's going to happen to her, I really don't." said Lucinda Merino of Los Feliz.

To make matters worse, those few people who did manage to get coffee were further thwarted by a total lack of artificial sweeteners on site. "Sugar in the Raw? Are you frigging kidding me?," sobbed local homosexual and avid salsa dancer, Enrique Santoro. "I'm on the South Beach Diet and my insulin levels are going to go crazy if I use this. Why isn't the rest of the country doing something?"

Deteriorating conditions will force authorities to evacuate the thousands of people at local Quiznos, movie theaters and upscale shopping centers, including The Beverly Center, where a policeman told CNN unrest was escalating. The officer expressed concern that the situation could worsen overnight after patrons defaced multiple "So You Think you Can Dance" posters, looted a Baby Gap and demanded free makeovers en masse at a MAC cosmetics store during the afternoon. At least 2,000 refugees, a majority of them beautiful, will travel in a bus convoy to Beverly Hills starting this evening and will be sheltered at the 8-year-old Spago on North Canon where soft omelets with confit bacon and Hudson Valley foie gras was being airlifted in by The National Guard.

Honorary Mayor of Hollywood, Johnny Grant told a group of embedded reporters at a Koo Koo Roo Chicken restaurant on Larchmont that,"The scope and scale of this disaster is almost too much to comprehend. Local carwashes are at a stand-still, the tram tour at Universal Studios has been on hold for almost an hour now and I've been waiting for a rotisserie leg and thigh with a side of greens beans for upwards of 15 minutes. This truly is our Tsunami."

"We want to accommodate those people suffering in the Beverly Center as quickly as possible for the simple reason they have been through a horrible ordeal," Grant said. "We need water. We need edamame. We need low-carb bread," said Martha Owens, 49 who was one of the thousands trapped in the Beverly Center when the escalators stopped moving. "They need to start sending somebody through here."

Along miles of coastline, the power simply surged, causing writers to lose upwards of a page of original screenplay material, causing Direct TV service to work only intermittently and forcing local residents to walk outside and look helplessly at the Pacific from their ocean view decks. "I can hardly begin to put this experience into words," said longtime Two and a Half Men writer John Edlestein . "I was just getting into my rhythm and making some real headway on a scene where Charlie Sheen parties with a busload of female volleyball players when my Power Book crapped out. I have nothing. Simply, nothing."

Delivering his weekly radio address live from the White House, President Bush announced he was deploying more than 7,000 additional active-duty troops to the region. He comforted victims and praised relief workers. "But despite their best efforts, the magnitude of responding to a crisis over a disaster area this sunny and trendy has created tremendous problems," he said. "The result is that many of our citizens simply are not getting the help they need, especially in the Hollywood Hills, and that is unacceptable."

I've been mulling over a job offer I received a couple of days ago. It's a cross-country move, which has done interesting things to my stress level. But it's a job, and a good one. And the new location has its virtues, even if California weather isn't one of them. So I'm torn between restarting my life as a once-again Right Coaster and sitting around and waiting for somebody to offer me something here in The Land of Fruits and Nuts(TM).

So when I arrived home from visiting friends in Sacramento and found a note on my apartment door, I thought I'd been given an omen. It was a rent increase, and a big one too. Aha!, I thought. Just the excuse I need to get the hell out of town while the gettin's good. They clearly don't care how much it'll cost 'em to turn this place into a habitable environment for someone else! Let 'em find out!

And then, as I went through the rest of my mail, I looked closer at the letter. And discovered it wasn't for me; it was for the people in the larger apartment next door. Huh; isn't that interesting?

This is way too weird, because it works so well. According to The Tattered Coat, a video post-production firm had a competition to edit movie trailers to make them look nothing like the originals. Check out their version of The Shining, where it's a cheerful tale that isn't full of maniacal axe murders. Amazing what a little peppy music can do.