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Tuesday, June 18, 2002
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Some More Online Fiction
Untitled (Grey Girl): A hauntingly beautiful short story.
Moon Age Daydream: A great cross between Scifi and Magik. It also has one of my all time favorite AI characters.
The author of Moon Age Daydream offers the first half for free and charges $10 for the rest, its well worth it and you can also see naked pictures of his ex-girlfriends. Well to tell you the truth when I first read it I just emailed him cause I didn't have any money and he gave me the second half for free in exchange for telling him what I thought 
12:35:56 AM  Google It!
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Monday, June 17, 2002
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Web gives a voice to Iranian women
The web is providing a way for women in Iran to talk freely about taboo subjects such as sex and boyfriends.
Over the past few months there has been a big jump in the number of Persian weblogs which are providing an insight into a closed society.
The article that there are 1,200 persian blogs. Are there any in english? Or translations?
5:23:40 PM Google It!
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Choosing a DOCTYPE
Day 6 of 30 Days to a More Accessible Weblog
Mark Pilgrim finally gets to what we can do.
You start your sentences with a capital letter; start your HTML with a DOCTYPE. It's just basic grammar.
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If you have a DOCTYPE, don't change it. However, if your source shows no DOCTYPE before your tag, add [one].
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Note that every page of your weblog should include a DOCTYPE, so you should check all your templates.
5:03:43 PM Google It!
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Everybody Blogs It
I have already started suffering from Scripting.com abstinence. I keep reloading and reloading that page but nothing changes.
While Dave recovers for this week (get well soon Dave, and please, to everybody who is listening: don't let him touch a computer! Most probably he needs to take a break), here's an experiment: let's blog together to fill the scripting.com gap, just for this week. [more via Paolo]
4:39:38 PM Google It!
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Random Tea, Yum
Something Different: A New Approach to Your Personal Caffeination or "The Random Tea"
I don't know what it is about Systems Administration (aka SysAdmin) work but nothing causes me to consume more caffeine than this type of task. And I consume it by the gallon, not quart, not liter, when things are, ahem, interesting. So, Friday, when the diet coke had run out, the local convenience store was either closed for the night or not yet open in the morning (yes -- everything is just blurring together lately) and I came up with this:
- A Large Pitcher
- Cold Water
- 2/3s of the normal quantity of Lipton's Ice Tea mix -- the heavily synthetic kind -- that hasn't ever seen "Tea".
- 1 packet of Kool-Aid mix, a powered fruit drink mix.
Now here's the cool part: Kool-Aid Switchin Secrets. This is a packet of the drink mix where they don't tell you flavor and the colors don't match the taste. So I've had Strawberry Ice Tea that was green. And Orange Ice Tea that was red. A little bizarre but kind fun.
I should try that out, I already do the Ice "Tea" thing.
4:15:17 PM Google It!
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True... True...
Kuro5hin is Broke: But Am I All that Surprised?
"There is a fundamental disconnect between users of sites and designers of sites. I am a huge believer in cheap human factors testing, what I call, the "Give it Mom" test. This is where you just give your site to someone, perhaps Mom, and watch how they perform on simple tasks. I've done this probably a dozen or more times and the site NEVER is the same afterwards. Of course, if Mom is a *nix Kernel Hacker, you should try Dad. Or your little sister. If those fail then someone random off the street. My real point is that there are two types of usability testing and one is expensive and uses highly trained professionals and is a big investment. The other type is just you getting decent input from real people and then actually following it. I like the second approach a lot." [The FuzzyBlog!]
Here's another reason why scoop sites are insane:
- Load up a random story like this one.
- Go down between the bottom of the story and the beginning of the comments and change any of the settings and hit 'Set'.
- Now try to copy/blog/bookmark the URL of the resulting page and you'll be in for a supprise.
I run into that problem all the time and it really pisses me off sometimes
That said, kuro5hin is still broke and needs your help so either, buy a text ad or if you actually use the site, get a premium membership.
I just bought an advertisement for 50,000 impressions for $50. We'll see how many click throughs I get!
3:51:29 PM Google It!
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Sunday, June 16, 2002
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Reality Check
This is a reality check.
Please perform a soft interrupt now. Pattern-scan this text for embedded code and check it against the reference verifier in the blind spot of your left eye.
If there is no match, resume as you were; this message is not for you. You may rationalize that the text you are reading is no more than a mildly amusing and easily-forgotten piece of entertainment-fluff in an stylish modern magazine.
If the codes match, however, please commence, gradually, becoming aware of your true nature.
You expressed preference for a narrative-style wake up call. So, to help the transition, here is a story.
I've had this short story by David Brin open in my browser for over a week meaning to blog it. I finally decided to do it cause I had only seen one other person in my aggregator link to it so I thought it needed a little more exposure. I also just wanted to get that browser tab out of the way.
7:43:06 PM Google It!
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I Knew Something Was Fishy
Here is an update on my friend and boss Dave Winer. He is in the hospital and will remain there until next weekend. To those that are sending notes, he should be OK, but in the meantime send positive healing thoughts in his direction. He will be providing more details when he is able. [John Robb's Radio Weblog]
Get well soon Dave!
6:57:01 PM Google It!
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My Father Gets Weirder Every Day
'Okay, so it's crazy. I've gone and done it anyway. We'll see what the press makes of this down the line.
I've decided to run for President of the U. S. It isn't the first time either, but this time I am serious, and
the weblog will be used as a kind of diary of that work. As I said to a friend, when discussing this
decision, "I'm going to have fun!"' [Hermit's Weblog]
You can read his announcement from 1998. Plus he has a lot of other good writing on his website. He even has an RSS feed. What other presidential canidate can say that?
4:59:17 PM Google It!
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Friday, June 14, 2002
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AmphetaSweetness
AmphetaDesk 0.93 is available. Here is an interview with AmphetaDesk creator Morbus.
Morbus is really cool, he's totally willing to help you out whether its setting up AmphetaDesk or hacking the source code. He helped me add the ability to sort your feeds (by title, url, last downloaded, date added, and language) in either forward or reverse order. Here's a teaser screenshot. I'm working on writing a full HOWTO which will introduce you to playing with AmphetaDesk templates.
6:42:17 PM Google It!
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© Copyright 2002 Adam Wendt.
Last update: 6/18/2002; 8:10:41 PM.
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