2020 Hindsight

Random Acts

Random Acts Reuters: Random House starts E-books unit

The Random House move comes just a week after horror novelist Stephen King

broke new electronic ground by offering online installments of his novel ``The Plant'' directly to readers through his

Web site for $1 each, bypassing publishers entirely.

And while we're on the topic of publishers. . . Reuters: Pearson buys National Computer Systems. (Pearson Education owns Addison-Wesley Longman, which owns Peachpit Press.)

Surprise Birthday It's Mira's Birthday! Happy Birthday!!!

Speaking of Books I've been at it again, attending another bookbinding workshop with Wendy Poma at Vroman's Bookstore. This time it was a classic traditional hardcover book with signature pages.

Here are some samples. (Oddly enough, I didn't take pictures of mine in my last minute dash to get fotos of things)

Here's Wendy, the instructor, looking at one of the books:

and the book she was looking at is this:

We did gold leaf or silver leaf or copper leaf decorations that went on the books. Here's the work area for the gold leafing:

I found my neighbors' books particularly fetching--a solid color at the spine and a very pale not-quite yellow for the main covers.

and they stand with their books in hand, smiling

I'll have to wait till it's daylight tomorrow and get a snap of mine and then post it here.

Eclipse and other Phenomena

Eclipse! Sheila mentions an eclipse. Darn! The info page that she linked to states that the eclipse is visible from Northern California but not Southern. Well, all of you north of me, please enjoy it, okay?

Speaking of Sky Phenomena I've been trying to find info on what appears to be an annual meteor shower that occurs in August. Perseids. Is no one talking about it this year because it happens to coincide with a full moon? (sigh). Here's something I found, thanks to Google: Meteor Shower Calendar, 2000: "The year promises many Moon-free major

showers (except the Lyrids, Perseids, Orionids and Geminids), and the Leonids may produce high to storm rates in November." Oh well.

Radio User Land is a Windows only release (thus far). Interesting. I noted that the top item listed on the Bugs and Issues list kept by Brent Simmons, is the lack of a Mac version. They need to determine the best MP3 player. (I'd think that with QuickTime being system-level software, the QuickTime player would be the first choice.) I've sounded a call on the macster blog to help.

Critical Mass? L.A. Times: A Climate of Despair Nears Critical Mass at U.S. Labs Los Alamos and Livermore Labs' morale in decay.

"The kind of loose management and casual atmosphere at the labs has to change," said Drell, a professor emeritus at Stanford. "But you don't want to get so rigid in security that you harm the science. That's the danger now. They've created a siege mentality."

L.A. Co. District Attorney Race L.A. Times: Gil Garcetti and Steve Cooley debate Surprisingly, I find myself disagreeing with Cooley on the matter of TV cameras in the courtroom; he sees that on principle, they should be in there, whereas Garcetti, after the OJ trial, did a 180 turnabout on their usefulness. Maybe, on principle, public access and awareness is a good thing. But still, was what transpired in that televised courtroom a service to the public citizenry? 'S okay, I'm still voting for Cooley.

L.A. Convention NewTimes LA: Jill Stewart on the Shadow Convention and Why It's A Cool Idea. The nice thing about reading Jill Stewart is that she's not trying to report in the "I am being completely fair and unbiased" manner that we tend to assume from news publications. Reading Stewart, you definitely get a sense for what she stand for. It makes parsing her articles easier (I agree, I don't agree) I may be a writer, but I never took a journalism class, so my own thoughts on supposed objectvity have been unformed, for the most part. I received much enlightenment on the matter from, of all things, from the writings of I, Cringely. Robert X. Cringely made very interesting points in one column about the Associated Press:

First, the AP invented objectivity. The concept that

the press was unbiased came from nothing so much as the AP's need to sell the same story to both

Republican and Democratic newspapers. An objective story being the least objectionable was the easiest

sell. This is, interestingly enough, the sole reason why papers today even claim objectivity. Certainly, there

was no particular tradition of fairness in the news from Ben Franklin right into the 20th century.

Along with objectivity, the AP invented sensationalism (well, maybe they invented it. Maybe they invented netweorked distributed sensationalism. After all, weren't hangings at one time a big public spectacle?) Interestingly enough, Stewart touches on both of Cringely's themes -- bad news and sensationalism -- in her coverage of the Shadow Convention. The reasons for the potential convention-related violence have been taken care of; the Shadow Convention is dealing with issues, even as the Convention-convention is preoccupied with violence.

Nevertheless, the media, baah-baahing in unison, have yet to grasp this crucial change [in circumstances surrouding the Democratic Convention]. (What, no ignition switch for all that violence we were promised?) As everyone in the media gossip circuit heard last week, top reporters and anchors for CNN, NBC, and others were just insisting on being assigned to the streets and not to Gore the Bore inside Staples. Their attitude in two weeks is bound to be: How dare the violence be cancelled?

Bookbinding fotos Yes, sometime yesterday I promised fotos from the bookbinding workshop, but I'll postpone them till tomorrow; I don't like to post a whole mess of fotos two days in a row. I care about your bandwidth! Tune in tomorrow!

Dance Fotos

SuzyQ's is a happens-every-Friday night dance club in Westwood. Starts with a swing lesson. Amazingly enough, the instructor, Audrey, got through the basics of the 6-count East Coast Swing and through the barest basics of the 8-count Lindy Hop during that one hour.

After the lesson was over, the crowd did dance!

I went with some friends from one of the classes I've been taking. Gayle and I strike a pose.

Mark and Gayle

Digital cameras are fun. Here's another in the ubiquious look-at-your-self-in-the-LCD screen, only it was dark enough that the screen hardly showed anything--until the flash, that is.

More dance crowd.

Susan with Tom

I admire the men; in swing dancing they lead, we women follow. Though they get to spin us ladies around, the men not only have to know the moves, but to be able to get us through it. There was a very good scene about partner dancing in Star Trek, TNG. Data was being taught how to dance (for a wedding or some event). First he tried to do the same move over and over again. His teacher told him to mix up the moves, to make it interesting. He said something like, "So I am supposed to know the moves, and lead you through them, and vary the moves to make it interesting, all while conducting conversation with you? Those are a lot of variables."

A couple strut their stuff:

Gayle and Robbie

More dancing! Swing dancing gets you moving, and gets your heart pumpin', and brings out a little sweat! Or a lotta sweat!

Here I am, standing with Mark. Near the Fan. Yes, Fan. Fan is good!

Right before my camera batteries died, the band --Jumpin Joz Band--came back from their break. You can see them in the background on the bandstand. Here's Shane, puttin' his partner through some moves.

Of course, right about then, a jam circle broke out. Everyone stands in a circle on the floor, clapping, while one couple at a time dance some very fancy moves. I saw somersaults, aerial moves, men hitting the floor in splits, and other awe-inspiring moves.

Oh?

Did I forget to flip the page? It's because I've had my nose stuck in other things (productive things, getting-stuff-done things). My nose'll prolly stay there. Not much here today folks. Run along, run along.

Well, except for this link that a friend said that I've gotta go see. Requires Flash. Mr. Man, by Steve Whitehouse. So now you've gotta go see it, too.

Shout and Feel It! AP/L.A. Times Napster granted a stay by court of appeals.

Whee! Another (short) chapter down. Is that light I see toward the end of the tunnel? Maybe. In any case, it's time to dance!

Stories

Must Must See!! The Magnum Solutions Recruitment Page. No matter what job you're doing, you'll find a job here that will fit you to a tee!

Snail Mail Report The Pacific Storytelling Festival flyer came in the mail the other day. Sept 15, 16, 17. In San Luis Obsipo. I went last year for the first time. Price was a mere fraction of that other Storytelling Festival (two figures, not three or four). Equipment is limited to sound and amplification. It's held in a campground that's at the seashore. The stories held me spellbound.

Oh, a quote from last year's festival that I had to write down. It was said by Derek Burrows, one of the storytellers.

An African doctor treating a sick person asks 4 questions: "When is the last time you danced? When is the last time you sang? When is the last time you told and listened to stories? When is the last time you listened to silence?"

Decisions, Decisions. That is the same weekend that Julia Cameron comes to town to speak in the Vroman's Saturday morning writer's series.

I took my camera out walking again, and. . .

I went for a walk yesterday a little before sunset. Near where I live there is a street lined with trees. Here's how it looked lit by the westering sunlight.

A little jag on this street over to this other one takes me past a house. Out in front, where the mail box and a great big tree are, they planted succulent "flower-like" plants for ground cover. I can't help it; every time I see those plants--all the same shapes--I have to grin.

Here is a patch backlit by the westering sun.

and here are a couple of the plants, close up.

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hee hee hee! Andrea's changed her tagline. Hmmm.. Stan made a fun comment 'bout my site. I think I may adopt it for a tagline, too. Watch out.

Stupid Things

Stupid Things

In case you needed further proof that

the human race is doomed through stupidity, here are some actual label

instructions on consumer goods.

On a bag of Fritos:

"You could be a winner! No purchase

necessary. Details inside."
(The shoplifter special.)

On a bar of Dial soap:

"Directions: Use like regular soap."

(And that would be how...?)

On some Swanson frozen dinners:

"Serving suggestion: Defrost."

(But it's just a suggestion.)

On Tesco's Tiramisu dessert (printed on

bottom of box): "Do not turn upside down."

(Too Late!)

On Marks & Spencer Bread Pudding:

"Product will be hot after heating."

(As night follows the day...)

On packaging for a Rowenta iron:

"Do not iron clothes on body."

(But wouldn't this save time?)

On Boot's Children's Cough Medicine:

"Do not drive a car or operate machinery

after taking this medication."

(We could do a lot to reduce the rate of construction accidents if we

could just get those 5-year-olds with head

colds off those forklifts.)

On Nytol Sleep Aid:

"Warning: May cause drowsiness."

(One would hope.)

On most brands of Christmas lights:

"For indoor or outdoor use only."

(As opposed to what?)

On a Japanese food processor:

"Not to be used for the other use."

(I gotta admit, I'm curious.)

On Sainsbury's peanuts:

"Warning: contains nuts."

(Talk about a news flash.)

On an American Airlines packet of nuts:

"Instructions: Open packet, eat nuts."

(Step 3: Fly Delta.)

On a child's Superman costume:

"Wearing of this garment does not enable you to fly."

(I don't blame the company. I blame parents for this one.)

On a Swedish chain saw:

"Do not attempt to stop chain with your hands or genitals."

(I gotta wonder...Was there a problem with this happening

somewhere?)

Stats

Stupid Things Consumer Labeling nightmare supreme. I just received it as email; it was good enough to post here .

example: On Sainsbury's peanuts:

"Warning: contains nuts."

(Talk about a news flash.)

Oh, and what about lawsuits over excessively hot coffee? well . . . 

50/50 stats and where they lead Garret's stats are 50/50 . . .  Mac to Windows that, is. That got me to thinking--how do people keep stats on their manila sites? I've seen those little rainbow deelie-bobs. Kate has one. So do others.

On a lark, I went to the Weblogs hotlist. The 100 sites most-linked-to by weblogs that are signed up with weblogs.com. We got some stat-referrals here in the list

• The Counter (#6 on Hotlist)
  

  Two pertinent questions from their FAQ:
  

  Q: Does The Counter count/track all pages within a site?
  

  A: The Counter counts/tracks only the page on which it is installed.
  

  Q: I would like to see stats for all the pages within my site. Is this possible?

  
  A: Well, if you want total stats from all your pages you could insert the same code on all pages. Most likely, though, you'd want to get individual stats from each page and then you'll have to sign up for additional counters.

• NedStat basic (#34 on Hotlist)
  

  With a NedStat Basic counter you can track one page on your website. If you want to track more pages you can apply for a seperate counter for each additional page. (Hmm, considering that I could put a counter in my template and each page would have one, I think I'll keep looking)

• SiteMeter (the rainbow deelie bob; not on Hotlist)
  

  Lookin' good. This is one item from their FAQ: "Q: Can I put Site Meter on every page of my site?
  

  A:Yes. That way you will be able to track the number of pages viewed on your site and the length of their visit. Use the same HTML code on each page from a single Site Meter account."

So far, it looks as tho the third option is best ready-made for Manila; it can track site-wide things and using the template, it's easy to set the counter site wide.

Anyone else use any stat-keeping tools on Manila?

UPDATE: I've gotten some excellent responses--Dave P. notes that the tracking graphics are filtered out by some browser-side tools for those who want to protect privacy. Hal describes that he's using option #1, above (which is also what Garret's been using), and Martin mentioned his solution, which is something I might be able to implement on my Qube, with his help.

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Hey Hey Hey! Andrea's been among us for six months! She says "web pals" --such a good word for it.

Hey Hey Hey Deux! I don't think that I tuned in and made note of the exact 6 month anniversary, but _just now_ hit a little milestone! I just posted Message #1000.

That thing called life Al's got a sharp --and true!--observation about the relationship between living and 'blogging.

Investing Time Martin at Traumwind has been investing time into learning. His observations (it's never wasted) is amusing in light of my lil' head-banging fest of 24 hours ago. By the way, I agree--learning time is worthwhile. Maybe not for polite company, but worthwhile. ; )

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News Item Revisited I'm reviewing news item design. Who else is organizing their pages according to News Items?

• Philly Future

• Raven X I like RavenX's handling of Departments, as small text that sits above the News Item title.

• Jake's brainpan

• Serious Instructional Technology

• More to come!

News Items in Manila -- Comments, Wish List

Okay, I'm trying to get News Items to work in Manila, for the macster site.

I've got a hidden site off to the side, where I'm doing my experiments.

Granted, I'm an experienced Manila person, but it's like a "Chutes and Ladders" game where working with News Items has landed me on a square with a chute that sent me damn near the beginning of the game. My writing here is prolly gonna be more ascerbic, because I'm learning new things, and not finding stuff where I expected to. Basically, I'm writing down the results of my findings on this page. So you get to see life from a newbie's eyes.

Searching for information I can't tell if Manila Newbies has documentation or discussion. The first place I went was to Manila Newbies. Didn't see anything in the nav column. Looked at the Table of Contents. Nope, not listed there. (later: oops! I looked too quickly through the page. There IS something there. Bzzzt! User Error! Fooey on me!) So I did a search. The results didn't look too promising.

Userland-wide Search results for News Items. Hmmmm

Later, after doing the searches, but before finding anything at Manila Newbies, I did a search through the Frontier web site through the change notes for each version to see if News Items were mentioned there. That led me to this page, a humongous description of News Items (from Manila Newbies.. It didn't show up on the search, either!)

Observations thus far

Enabling News Items -- First, you must go to one the Prefs pages to enable it. Oh, there's a News Item category in the Nav bar.

Once you're in the News Items area, you get to answer 20 questions.

First, do you want to enable it? Answering Yes and pressing Submit currently blows away whatever you had on your home page at the time. I discovered to my chagrin that doing so made my calendar's date be May 27. But I only created the site in the last week. Hello?

Oh and that reminds me. While we're on the topic of Manila comments (and this one is a gripe). 'Tis all fine and well and dandy to use the calendar as a navigation device if you're posting every day. But what if you abandon a site for a while, and skip a month? Your home page calendar will only link to the previous and next month. So if the previous month had no postings whatsoever, the poor navigator has reached a dead end. The only solution for that is to have supreme understanding of Manila's workings in order to try a workaround.

This listing of things to think about has drawn to a standstill while I read the docs that I finally found.

Found this about having a news item that's not a link; changing the template. (where was it found? by a day-to-day search through recent Manila Newbies homepages. Interesting if inefficient data-mining)

There were some observations, comments and questions about managing news items. I posted them elsewhere and Jake Savin answered my questions oh so speedily!

Eyelids are heavy...the night is half gone....it's bedtime for this Bonzo News Item newbie.

Many hours of sleep and some hours of wakefulness later . . .  Well, those are the mutterings and ravings of a very task-oriented person learning new things. Free and worth every penny. ; ) By now I've got some kinda mental model of news items.

Departments as Info Architecture Now it's time to devise categories/departments for the Macster site. I list some of my ideas; whaddaya think?

The great promise to News Items/Departments is this: Like MetaFilter, many people can contribute to the site. Searching for content by department (listed in the Nav area, naturally!) can be a good way to find out things you wanna know. The hard part is thinking up a good set of departments/categories beforehand. Good ol' information architecture.

Manila Revisited Working on building a new site, as an experienced manila user, I expect to get through some stuff quickly. True, I do that. But hanging out on the Prefs welcome page, I really wish that I could edit it with my own mnemotic notes about what each of the categories are.

Problem: Invariably, for such things as finding the defualt sign up link (I'm a member, so I can't find it on the home page Members sign up box, of course!), I visit about three prefs categories before I find the right one. And Prefs is one of those things that's visited seldom enough so that whatever I learned by my visits there today is forgotten by the time I next have to go on a Prefs-edit spree.

Solution: I'd like to either be able to edit the welcome page to make my own notes about what's in each category, or else plead for UserLand to post a small summary for each category on the Prefs Welcome Page. An unordered list that describes what each category does.

Two-fisted Browsing Since the weblogs.com server has to go and grab information for the theme off of the weblogger.com server, it takes longer to load. Noticeably longer in Netscape. Enough so that for someone managing the site, I'm using Explorer. And! I! Hate! The! Fact! That! There's! No! Drag! and! Drop! in Explorer's! Text-entry! boxes! Nor can I use command-Z to undo the last little bit of text I just typed, either. Netscape Communicator's (version 4.6, MacOS) behavior here in textboxes is surprisingly easy-to-use for working with text.

<this page is a work in progress. . . >

<this site is a work in progress . . .  >

<this life is a work in progress. . .  >

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Chocoholic Help? The upside of having the Trader Joe's open a nearby store it's a 5 minute walk. The downside is that I get to exercise my chocolate-resistance more, since I darken the door of TJs more than I used to. (Since the end of last year, I've lost 25-30 pounds, and still have a little ways to go, so this is a real issue for me!) Hmmm. Just saw this news story about a patch for chocoholics to reduce cravings.

Sense | Search

Sealed With A Kiss L.A. Times: Turkish Singer's Latin Success Sealed With a Kiss, or Two The article is about Tarkan, the musician I enthused about upon return from my trip to Panama. So he's getting lots of play in the latin market. Makes sense. Where did I first hear his music? Central America. Bought a Universal-Mexico CD of his album, too. Then heard him again when I was in Baja CA earlier this month. I'm here to testify to the fact that Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez of the L.A. Times is onto something.

Hitlogs, Ratings, and Google From time to time I look at the Most Hits Yesterday page. Yesterday's Yesterday page (sorry, can't see it anymore, that I know of) had me in a higher-than-normal ranking (somewhere between 10 and 20), with about 800 hits. I usually hang out in the 20-40 range. That 800 number certainly wasn't reflected in the "Page Reads" for the latest page, so I figured that something else mighta happened. No single page got read a ton of times, but that lots of the pages in my site got read a little. Maybe someone found this site absorbing enough to go on a web-reading binge here. I flatter myself. Still, from time to time I've binged on someone else's site. Or a search engine went crawling through it. Heh. After 7 months' worth of nearly-daily entries, that's a little over 200 pages to read right there, let alone stories and pictures and discussion.

Those reflections led me to my Most Read Messages page, which lists the Top 50 pages by the number of "Page Reads" they've had. Two things that are close to the top are the intro page to my time in Lake George, and my big Panama brain-dump that I posted from Canopy Tower.

So I decided to go to Google and see if those pages register on their search engine. So I did a search for Lake George and a search for Canopy Tower. Imagine my shock when I discover that my A Lake George Diary intro page is the number one entry for Lake George!! My Panama recap is number 4 for Canopy Tower.

Whoa.

That's success!! But in the case of the Lake George entry, I'm not sure I want *that* level of success. Um, for a native Southern Californian to have the first word on a large region in the New York Adirondacks is . . . well, it smacks of Californication. Plus (and more importantly), there are other family members' feelings about privacy and security, which I seek to honor. I don't want to be so far up there.

So, now I'm in the position of trying to do the opposite of what most people want to do with search engines--get myself out of the number one spot.

Google ranks entries based on the number of links to the page. Does it do so by the number of links within the site? If so, then every page I have links to that page. Maybe I could drop my ranking down by removing the navigational link from my navigation bar. Feh.

(Well, I tried other search engines, and I'm anywhere near the top on their Lake George search results. Heh. Shows how dependent I've grown on Google!)

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New Macster Theme. I changed the look of the macster weblog to display in the Aqua theme. It's very very pretty now. Looks Mac-like. Needs some tweaks, to be sure. But I'm discovering that the weblog now loads at a glacial pace for me. <sigh> Maybe it's cause I'm a Netscape browser holdout (I'm TOO attached to using drag and drop here in the text entry windows to change); I notice that certain weblogs display slowly if they're gonna pull data from elsehwere, such as Weblogs.com (I have favorites), and other manila blogs that display favorites listings. <sigh, sigh>