Ian Forrester Interviews me at XTech (Six Apart, XMPP, and OpenID)
Ian Forrester interviews me at XTech hitting on what I do at Six Apart, my keynote on building open platforms (slides), the session on XMPP, and branding OpenID for the mainstream.

(Comment on this)

New Userpic
Me, the camera, and a random cat attack.

Well, a cat attack from my cat.

(Comment on this)

"Why the long face?"

This reminds me of the "censorship" pixelization code in The Sims that prevents you from ever seeing their little 1×2-pixel SimRogenous zones. (Don Hopkins once told me a long story about how hard that was to implement...)

There are also now Wikipedia links in the maps (checkbox on the "More" tab). There aren't very many of them, though. Anyone know what triggers their presence?

Current Music: Northern State -- Better Already

(19 Comments |Comment on this)

actual quote from a conversation outside my office
"Well, let's make a list of things that came alive after being struck by lightning."

(Comment on this)

Ouch, Premium

(2 Comments |Comment on this)

Северный Бог, Камня властелин.
Зубы его сточились,
Уже нет сил перемалывать плоть земли
Кровь иссохла в жилах,
И служители не приносят ему свежих подношений...



Под катом больше размером.

( Read more... )

Current Mood: Foto - Grafik

(Comment on this)

Artificial Finnish

Uttavalon estaa ain pahalukselle? Min omatunu selle menneet hy, toista. Palveljen alh tkö an välin oli ei alkohol pisten jol elenin. Että, ille, ittavaikki oli nim tor taisuuristä usein an sie a in sittä asia krista sillo si mien loinullun, herror os; riitä heitä suurinteen palve in kuk usemma. Tomalle, äs nto tai sattia yksin taisiä isiäk isuuri illää hetorista. Varsi kaikenlaineet ja pu distoja paikelmai en tulissa sai itsi mielim ssän jon sn ässäksi; yksen kos oihin! Jehovat oli kukahdol ten on teistä vak kkiasian aa itse ee eik tse sani olin mutta todistanut t llisivat oisessa sittä on raaj a vaisen opinen. Ihmisillee stajan opea tajat ja jumalang, sitten per sa ollut aantutta että voinen opeten. Ettuj, jon käs iv telijoitalikantaminun hä seen jälki yl nilla, kkeen, vaaraajil tuneitteistamaan same?

This was generated by a program based on trigraph (three-letter sequences) frequencies obtained from real Finnish text. And indeed, it does look fairly Finnish to a casual observer!

See Mark Dominus's blog entry for more details on this.

(4 Comments |Comment on this)

dnalounge update

DNA Lounge update, wherein we network with a socialness.

Current Music: The Kills -- Run Home Slow

(3 Comments |Comment on this)

Strangers and politics
Why is it that when strangers hear my accent they immediately ask how I'm going to vote? I don't know these people! Like I'm going to share that information with you! and the thing is, They always ask something stupid like: Are you going to vote for the Black Guy or the White woman? My response usually to ignore their uninformed knowledge of the primaries and just say: "Well, I vote for the candidate that most closely resembles my views." They respond with "oh, so you must be a xyz (insert stupid party here) supporter"

Why are these STRANGERS asking me these stupid questions? I'm determined that the next time someone asks me I'm going to tell them that I am sorry, but I don't know them well enough to discuss politics. In other words: MIND YOUR OWN FUCKING BUSINESS!

Americans don't ask random American strangers what they think about politics until you're no longer a stranger... Why should I tell a Kiwi?

When I was travelling I got so much flak for being from America/Texas that I sometimes avoided it entirely by telling them I was Canadian. Greg has given me official Canadian permission to do this now.

In as little as two days, four complete strangers approached me about this. I'm losing my patience with them.

Current Mood: grumpy

(1 Comment |Comment on this)

New Years Resolutions..
Pay down debt.... check!
Go to gym... check!

Now I just need world peace to be declared and Im all done till next year..

Current Mood: sore
Current Music: Broken Wings (Sean Tyras Club Mix) - Mr. Mister

(2 Comments |Comment on this)

Wood Dale, IL. Sunset 5/6/08.



( 2 more back here. )

Current Mood: tired

(3 Comments |Comment on this)

All kinds of awesome

Wednesday, 14 May 2008
Man dressed as Darth Vader attacked Jedis

A man has received a suspended sentence for assaulting the founders of Britain's first Jedi church while dressed as Darth Vader.

Wearing a garbage bag as a cape to complete his Star Wars-themed costume, Arwel Wynne Hughes used a metal crutch to hit Barney Jones, also known as Master Jonba Hehol, on the head, the Associated Press reported.

Mr Hughes, 27, also attacked Jones' cousin Michael Jones, known as Master Mormi Hehol, and wounded him in the thigh, a British court was told.

Alcohol was a likely factor behind the assault, since Hughes claimed he couldn't remember what happened because he had consumed most of 10 litre box of wine before.

The incident was caught on a video camera, which the two Jedi masters had set up to film themselves in a light sabre battle.

"Darth Vader! Jedis!" Hughes yelled as he came on to the scene.

Hughes was given a suspended sentence of two months in jail and a £260 fine.

Jones' Church of Jediism, a philosophy gleaned from the popular Star Wars movies, was set up last year and has about 30 members.

(2 Comments |Comment on this)

A: No. Q: Was this ever funny?

Am I being singled out, or is there a new plague of AIM bots going around? I used to get prodded by these stupid things every couple of weeks, but I've blocked a dozen of them in the last week. This time it's usually a bot with "salmon" in its name.

Current Music: The Kills -- No Wow (Mstrkrft Remix)

(23 Comments |Comment on this)

2200 miles in a Beechcraft Baron last weekend.


Pictures

(Comment on this)

This morning, as I was waking up, I had a dream that someone knocked on my door. And then someone opened the door and came in. I was a little worried that someone was coming into my apartment, and that I had left my front door unlocked, but for some reason I didn't get up.

Anyawy, that someone rounded the corner to come into my room, and it was Fran Drescher. Fran, it seems, had come by to drop off a birthday card for me. The birthday card was from my friend Chris. And all the while I just lie in bed sleepily and thank her for bringing it by.

It is not my birthday. (I was born in December.) I do not have a friend named Chris. WTF?

(Comment on this)

best voicemail of the week
"Hey Ben if you are looking for some excitement this afternoon, you want to help me pick up chicks?"

Bob of course was asking me if I wanted to help round up week ol pheasant, but still. :)

(Comment on this)

Damned dirty apes

(36 Comments |Comment on this)

Dear lazyweb:

Is there any way to get thunderbird to authenticate via IMAP with servers that use self-signed certificates? Every other email client I've used gives me the option of accepting the certificate, and if thunderbird is trying this elitist tactic of protecting me from myself then that's just a bit annoying.

I've googled and am finding lots of instructions for connecting with university mail servers, but nothing of use. I'm specifically not allowed to connect because the cert is self-signed. There are no options to view/accept as is true of every client from outlook express to the one on my phone.

Failing this, are there any authentication options that aren't a PITA to set up for situations where I just want to encrypt my traffic? Is there anywhere I can get a free SSL cert that won't require me to jump through eight million hoops?

(2 Comments |Comment on this)

Iu ĉe klienta kompanio nia diris al kunlaboranto mia ke li konas min de la loka esperanto-grupo. Malgranda mondo! Sed mia kunlaboranto ne memoras lian nomon. Nek estas helpa lia priskribo pri tiu ulo. Do, ĝi estas mia posttagmeza mistero. Kiu li estas?

(7 Comments |Comment on this)

Architecture building at my university collapsed in a fire
This is surreal. The building that I looked at for many years sitting in my office on the 14th floor of the EE building is no more. A short-circuit caused a major fire, ending in the partial collapse of the building. Many of my architecture college friends went to college in that building.

Here's the view from the 14th floor (it's the building on the right):


This is a video of the building's collapse:

(1 Comment |Comment on this)

I has Taro
I went out looking for tropical yams for a Beninese recipe I wanted to try, but I ended up buying taro. I guess I'll boil the corms.

PS: The Ethernopian was delicious.

(4 Comments |Comment on this)

HTML snippet of the day

<base target='_top'>

Stupid frames.

Current Mood: pleased

(1 Comment |Comment on this)

Badass!

smason wrote:

I wrote a Missile Command clone for the multi-touch wall at Obscura Digital. Just like the original, except you can fire by touching the wall with your fingers. Save the Golden Gate Bridge from ICBMs. Fun for the whole family!

Current Music: Spacemen 3 -- Suicide (Live)

(8 Comments |Comment on this)

Split lentil stew in berbere sauce
I've got a fever, and the only cure is moar Ethernopians. Nom nom nom.

(7 Comments |Comment on this)

not even wrong russian

Amy and I watched a movie on DVD yesterday and the first menu on the DVD was a language selection choice. Something struck me as odd about the list though:

The choice in the lower right is supposed to represent Russian. In the Cyrillic script, Russian is actually written Русский (transliterated as "Russkiy"). The last two letters are ИЙ in upper case and ий in lower case. The weird mirror-image Roman n must have been the result of somebody trying desperately to bash Cyrillic letters into a Roman character set. I can't imagine a system that would render text like that by default, so they must have gone to some manual effort to specifically mirror the n. Madness!

The other letter shapes are all wrong too, especially the k which shouldn't have an ascender.

Anyway, I thought it was amusing. I'll forgive you if you don't.

(7 Comments |Comment on this)