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It looks like he quit using it in 1990. So did I, but I was back by 1991.
We saw a bunch of whales along the coast back in early August coming back from San Francisco. I didn't know what they were, but sort of assumed that they were Humpbacks. Stephen spotted them out the window and we ended up stopping to watch for a while along the side of Highway 1 (roughly sixty or so miles north of San Simeon).
I decided to find out after reading Following the Paper Trail [by Ken Weiss] in Saturdays LA Times about a group who tried to walk down the entire California coast this summer (the article mentions Humpbacks).
They did have big spouts and the time of year fits, but they were only about a half mile offshore. I found WhaleRoute pretty interesting to poke around on but I still don't know anything.
Were they Blue Whales?! I can't say, but we saw them along miles of the coastline and it was amazing.
Dan Gillmor has a thought (mostly fit) for a Sunday... Remembering the People Who Give Back to the Net.
Professor Farber added the following when he sent it to the IP list:
I would like to amplify Dan's comments and remember all the people who contributed to the early days of the net and the IETF -- not because their companies paid them but because they believed in the vision. They were the real pioneers and richly deserve credit for what they did. They made a "contribution to humanity" that is largely unrecognized and unacknowledged.
I agree.
To all of the nameless people (many who are now gone) who had to fight (in many ways) to make what we enjoy today possible, you have my thanks and deep gratitude.
Two things are bothering me this weekend. Maybe I'm just getting old and cranky (or older and crankier) but I just couldn't let them pass without comment.
First up... The national Do Not Call registry (and the new regulations it would have imposed) has been blocked by U.S. District Judge Lee R. West of Oklahoma. In his decision, he ruled that the law violates companies rights to free speech.
Free speech was granted as an individual right. It is a privilege extended to corporate entities. In the case of Do Not Call, my right to domestic privacy would seem to trump any corporate right to speak freely. It's a complex question, but Jan Falstad presents a pretty balanced overview. Here's a view which believes 'Do Not Call' was wrong. I'm afraid that the legal precedent giving commercial speech the same protection as individual speech may have been overly broad but I also worry about tinkering with it.
Next... eVoting.
The whole electronic voting issue is going to be one of contention for years to come. Diebold (parent of Diebold Election Systems) has stepped up the warfare early by using the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) takedown procedure against blackboxvoting.org. See blackboxvoting.com (which is still up) and a short note here for more information.
When our governments (local, county, state and federal) ran the voting process, we had free access to the methods and techniques used to guarantee vote integrity (if all else failed, we could sue). By virtue of a shift in technology, we have privatized voting. And now, one of the companies who own this technology has dodged behind a law (DMCA) that says that they are allowed to keep parts of their technology away from prying eyes (all of us). Somehow, this means that a basic right; the ability to elect representatives in a free and open process has been subverted because some corporations interests are threatened?
I dislike the DMCA for many, many reasons (mostly because reverse engineering is how so much of the technology we use today was — and still is — built) but this use of the law is so hurtful that I find myself shocked (along with angry and frustrated). All information about voting systems (regulations, registries, software, hardware, wetware, documents and memos; that is, everything) must remain in the public domain and be subject to constant evaluation. Anything less is unthinkable.
Commercial entities should not have the rights of individuals. They already have the resources and wealth of governments (in some cases), with none of checks that have been created to keep governments honest. They certainly should not have more rights than governments (see Matrix information) to subvert our individual rights in the republic. The sooner we remind them of this with legal repercussions, the better off we'll be.
The alternative is to give up and let commercial interests run everything. Some days, it feels like we already have done so.
I found some interesting information on NFL.com that I hadn't used before. League rules and history (1991-2000) (there are other year groups but this was what I was looking for).
I was originally just trying to figure out when the kickoff had been moved from the 35 yard line back to the 30. The answer? 1994. That explained why Jason Hanson touchback numbers plummeted after the '93 season even though his average per kick didn't change.
My car rolled over 100,000 miles last night as I drove past the Disney building on (the) 134 west in Burbank. I can't say why exactly, but I found that pretty funny.
This is something I'd been meaning to do for a while (since just about the time Userland asked me to leave my Radio weblog). I've added a GeoURL for Ztuff to the links section.
The legal run around on the recall has been turned down and the ACLU (which didn't publish a news item about the decision) isn't going to push the issue further. Good!
I think the recall itself is stupid and wasteful, but that's the way it is until some group (or person) finances a proposition (and the lemmings vote yes, yes, yes). At which point, we'll get to play again in the court system.
Trying to stop the election because chads are harmful was stupid. None of us has any real idea of how badly electronic elections can turn out (but the initial analysis is far from good). I don't trust any system which can't be audited from end to end. That's my nature and a big part of what I do. We'd better get the problems out of the eVoting systems soon because that's where we are going.
My votes? No and no idea.
I haven't developed amnesia since I last voted for Governor. I voted for Davis because the California Republican Party can't seem to get a reasonable alternative past the primaries. Bill Simon? Hahahaha! I'm somewhere in the middle (fiscal conservative, libertarian and/or liberal elsewhere). A vote against the recall is my affirmation that you don't get to turn back the clock and start over regardless of how badly you screwed up (and I may yet live to regret that idea).
The leading candidates are all disheartening, and yet, I hate to toss my vote into the wastebasket.
We've got Cruz (a typical party apparatchik), Arnold (I was enthused when Buffet had a say for about 13 seconds, everywhere else we have the Wilson *touch*) and McClintock (a Wilson supporter when it didn't make sense, he opposed Wilson raising taxes to balance the runaway budget in the early 90's — that's a fiscal conservative?)
We shall see...
I'd heard and seen some interesting things about the Fox TV series 24. I'd tried to watch it once somewhere during the first season, but was totally lost. If you haven't watched it yet, don't poke around too long on the FOX site or you'll find out things that you don't want to know as I accidently did with one of the characters.
The six DVDs each carry four hours of the show, each hour taking just over 40 minutes to play. The commercial transitions are pretty interesting to watch and after a while I noticed that they were samplings from the 4:20 (about that on average) time gaps that we missed in 'real time'.
One Victor Field on IMDB put it well:
As befits a series created by former writers for "Miami Vice" and "La Femme Nikita," the plotting isn't watertight, and this show - even more than most - defies casual dipping in and out - but it's put together with such conviction that you're just dragged along for each hour. I should point out that in Britain BBC2 screens it without commercials, so each episode runs in a 45-minute slot; which is not to say that it hurts the suspense.
This show is highly adicting even if there is a period there where it seems to struggle forward for a bit. By then you're already 18 hours in and you just want to see how it ends. Given how quickly things change, you can't just skip ahead lest you become lost. It picks up again during the last disk (hours 20 through 23) and finishes quite strongly.
What an amazing accomplishment for everyone involved with the show.
I told someone not too long after I watched it that it was a bit like digital crack (or similar silliness).
My reason for finally posting this about two months after I wrote it? I bought season two of course. Now I just need to wait until the next time the rest of the family goes away somewhere and football is over. There goes a weekend.
Peter King thinks (he thinks) that Green Bay is in serious trouble. That's the under statement of the week. The Packers are a train wreck in progress. At least we've got company, the Raider's are looking pretty sad too.
King also thinks the Monday Night games should start at 8 PM ET. I think perhaps he ought to ask the league what they think. I'd love to see the audience numbers for the western and pacific time zones if they move. Any significant drop in first half numbers would mean less money for the ads and turn a marginally profitable deal for Disney into a money pit. And that means less money for the league (owners and players alike) the next time the television contract comes up.
Anyway...
I watched about one hour of the game on fast forward. It's the funniest thing I've done with the EyeTV thus far. Madden never stops filling every available moment and after about five minutes I could actually tell the difference between Madden and Michaels.
I found this on MacInTouch this morning... Unwise Microwave Oven Experiments.
When we're ready for a new one, I'm going to have to give a couple of these a shot.
Now that I've finally seen Chicago, I have to admit that the hype seems well deserved.
Above all, it's very American in a cynical way: big dreams, tragedy, deceit, greed and ego mix with quite a few pokes at our legal system. A classical treatment of the subject would have been depressing and covered all the reasons for guilt. Not here! This is one long scheme to get away with it. At some point we forget the original question because of all the glitter, focusing only on what's happening now.
Mostly told from the fantasy perspective of the young woman in trouble, Chicago is an inside out musical. Roger Ebert calls it songs interrupted by a story and that's close enough. The songs mostly tell about personal details (and wishes) and segue to normal dialog for the connections but they are also where the most pointed satire occurs. It's a relatively unique musical and people ate it up, but I still can't get over the fact that it cost $45 M (as in million) to make. Imagine the costs if they'd had to blow things up?
Queen Latifah revels in her role and stole my heart; this woman clearly can sing jazz (and anything else she sets her mind to). Richard Gere (as the sleazy lawyer Billy) has one good scene (I think someone else has the legs for the really good parts) as the evangelical ring master tap dancing through the truth near the end of the trial. Gere is a great weasel, but can't pull off the charismatic part of the role. He's OK, but this could have been so much better. John Reilly is the wounded husband and plays the conscience of film, discussed but quickly dismissed.
Catherine Zeta-Jones seems so sure of herself as the original star of Billy's three ring circus and is terrific to watch as she shows off her two person act to Renée Zellweger. Zellweger plays the elevated star pretty well, but she never completely convinced me (the bold new persona never completely clicks). Yet there are times when Zellweger completely takes over, even when sharing the stage with Jones. If the point was to leave us wavering between the two women, then it was well done.
Jones and Latifah carry the early parts of the film, Zellweger and Jones do the heavy lifting at the end and the middle muddles along well enough that interest isn't lost. It was fun to watch and I'll do so again.
One minute, you're innocently following around some information about bratwurst and the next thing you know, you slam up against the reality of making sausage.
Len Poli has done a pretty good job of documenting his own processes. He also has a Wisconsin style Johnsonville clone recipe but this one seems to be his favorite (nutmeg is an interesting idea).
I love the web network that we've created for precisely this reason. Every link is an information lottery. You can stumble into a gold mine just as easily as you can stumble into a mine shaft. It's one heck of a lot of fun just to watch this medium evolve.
We've got some serious bumps ahead, but the new net doesn't seem likely to go away at this point. If anything, the number of people putting up their own loudspeakers on some virtual corner is accelerating with tools which make it easier (weblogs for individuals, wikis for single minded groups, forums and lists for more spirited groups and so forth all the way out to enterprise CMS solutions -- as bad as they are).
I'd never tried a smoked beer before but I sure am glad that I did today!
We've got two German deli's here in town and I bounce back and forth between them. Today I stopped at Alpine (it was on the way) for soup and a sandwich. They were out of soup so I decided to get a salad and something different to drink. I picked a Schlenkerla Rauchbier Märzen from the beverage cooler and brought it home.
It probably wasn't the best choice to go with a Cobb salad, but forget the salad, the beer was the really interesting part. The first thing you notice is the smoke, it's there in the aroma and in the flavor. Wow! Very different. It seems less sweet than most Märzen that I've sampled, but that might be the bitter flavor of the beer overwhelming the malt.
I'm going to have to get another bottle and put it aside for the next time I eat sausage and cheese, I think that'll be a perfect match. Or maybe for the next time we cook bratwurst. Yes, I'm definitely going to have to try more.
I found a couple reviews at Epinions and BeerPal (I'd never heard of BeerPal).
Update: I had to change the title a wee bit once I realized that Rauchbier literally meant Smokebeer (see rauch).
This set of optical illusions is very good, and starts with my favorite, "Rotating Snakes".
Popular Science defines the worst jobs in science.
Somebody has to do it, I'm just grateful that it isn't me.
Slumlords of the Internet is an interesting look at iTunes and the attempt by George Hotelling to sell a song on eBay this week.
I've never bought an iTunes song mostly because I was worried about the DRM restrictions tied up in the whole mess. However you might feel personally about the issue, the legal question is going to drag on for some time. One of these days we'll get it all sorted out and I'll be able to legally put up a small clip of music I like and point people to those who can actually sell it. Maybe.
In the meantime, I'll just tell you that The Fins have a great Spiderman track on the CD Superstar. I'll also say that every time I listen to "Round The World", I can't get it out of my mind for a while.
I've been thinking a lot lately about the way that kids can so easily become criminals in this digital age.
It seems to me that every generation faces more opportunities to commit crime based simply on the number of new laws and restrictions we create. What was once considered innocent tinkering becomes criminal activity over a small period of time.
Tonight, Stephen and I were babbling in my office about something or other related to a large space image of the world that I was moving around between systems. He had an epiphany and blurted out that he could put everything on his system onto his site.
Yipes!
I had a short explanation but we need to spend a lot of time talking about this issue. It's no where near clear even for me.
As a society with a large Judeo Christian influence, we teach our children to share and we expect them to learn how to do that. Those teachings pose a significant problem in a society which is still riding the bleeding edge of capitalism at a time where sharing has never been easier. Profit and loss decisions become codified without any real debate about what's good for both sides. There is a fine moral line that is rarely applied to decisions made on the behalf of the corporate (grown up?) side of our society.
Somehow, we need to get back to a balance between commerce and public representation.
What a neat idea! Spend your retirement documenting the coastline of California. The result? Being sued by Barbra Streisand (entertainer, movie star, political activist and now shrinking violet). Here's the S.F. Chronicle story that caught my interest. A bit later I found much more on the Smoking Gun (perhaps she'd like to see her current exposure?) along with several other views on www.californiacoastline.org.
Streisand is wrong about this issue and I hope the court finds against her.
Wouldn't anyone with any kind of interest in California history want to see this? Think about it this way. Wouldn't you love to see the coastline in the same way from twenty, fifty and a hundred years ago? I know I sure would, especially Southern California. We can't fix that, but someone has taken it upon themselves to get it all together now and make it available to all, and that makes it a significant document from a historical perspective. I'm hopeful that they'll get the photos from the 70's up soon.
Instead, Barbra is worrying about someone seeing her house as it's seen daily by people in helicopters, airplanes and those who process various satellite photos. She's famous and people want to see where she lives, just like the other famous people around the world. Her location opens her up to aerial photo from public space. The world is now 3D, imagine! Bab's needs to learn to live with it as do most owners of beachfront property.
After finishing the screed above, I started at the bottom of the state where I've spent all my time (having lived in San Diego, Los Angeles and Ventura counties). The following are interesting to me...
The southern end of California (that's the fence at the Mexico border there and last time I checked [which was a long time ago], that's a bull fighting stadium on the other side). The Tijuana River, the reason the beach at Imperial Beach was closed so often when we lived there nearly twenty years ago. Just a great picture of the San Diego "South Bay" with the submarine communication cage foremost and the Silver Strand visible behind. The 1984 Olympics torch run came down the strand and wrapped around the bay on Palm Avenue heading east before going up to LA.
Moving north, we reach San Onefre Reactor 1 during decommissioning and another with I-5 clearly seen in the background. I can't say why exactly, but I like this picture of Dana Point. And here's my friend Phil's house. He's got a great southern view (much like Barbra) when the weather cooperates.
A good sea view of LAX overall (with the old north side terminals) and on the south side. The big white building is 100 Wilshire in Santa Monica, where the Norton Group lived for a time before being purchased by Symantec (we later moved inland about a mile -- it's visible in the big pictures -- to what's now known as MGM Plaza).
Pepperdine University and the very bottom of Malibu Canyon Road. The goat path (aka Highway 23 South) at Pacific Coast Highway. Point Magu just has to be seen from PCH to be believed (too bad they didn't get a better picture from afar). It's not as crazy as The Rock (which amazes me anew each time I see it), but impressive none the less. Onto Point Magu NAS.
Oops, I forgot Barb's house! We live about 10 miles due north and here's something else I'd forgotten.
The caption here is wrong, I believe it's the Heuneme Pier (pronounced why-nee-me). They get it right here. And here is Port Heuneme.
We're now at the Channel Islands Harbor, and again. And the Santa Clara River, Ventura Harbor, and again. Which leads to the Ventura River Basin where we have problems from time to time with the hardier homeless settling into makeshift camps. The problems arise when we try to chase/fish them out before/after big storms. It happens on the Santa Clara river, but less often.
I like this shot of Mussel Shoals and the mountains behind.
Hmm... check out this oil processing plant that they hid in the hills south of Rincon (now I know what Sarah was talking about when she said that she'd seen something burning up there).Finishing up this tour, we hit Fess Parker's Double Tree Resort (Sarah and I stayed there last fall on a night away from the kids) and Hendry's Beach (a nice place to go have breakfast).
One of these days, I do want to see Diablo Canyon but we by-passed it this last trip. I've been reading about it for most of my adult life and still have a lot of friends in the nuclear power industry.
