onfocus

derek powazek is the mc at panel about weblogs at sxsw interactive (is anyone not going?). since we seem to be good (as a genre) at self-evaluation, criticisim, and congratulations... I wonder what new ground could be covered at a talk like this. so does derek. give your input on this thread on sxswb. I think it's cool that the sxsw folks picked up the groovy weblog vibe and are giving it some time at the conference.

sometimes Netscape crashes.

I decided to stop complaining and do something about the parking stress I was experiencing. Today I drove to Larkspur and took the ferry into San Francisco. It was very nice.

I'm not watching the super bowl today. I'm not watching the super bowl ads today.

evhead has a fresh new look! it's moire-ific!

New Pictures: Postcards from Bodega Bay.

tomorrow, I'll be tracking down the corporate owner of mediaplex.com. or will they be tracking me? ;)

oh, this handy page clears things right up. preferences.com belongs to MatchLogic which is a member of the Excite @Home network which serves up banner ads for companies like GM through doubleclick AND deliverE their "by choice" email system AND their sweepstakes network. (step 1: enter your email address. ha!) The banner ads are then served up on pages like Wired news and suck. (members of the Lycos network) Well, now I know.

doubleclick isn't the only one. who is preferences.com? and are they just another face of doubleclick? how are we supposed to keep track?

in my stomach this afternoon: minestrone soup.

in the cd player this afternoon: the jayhawks, sound of lies.

in the cd player this morning: the tragically hip, trouble at the henhouse.

it's not too early to start listening in to the sxsw gossip. sure, finding music rumors is fairly easy, but where can one go to find out what's really happening at sxsw interactive? hmm...

how can we live without the cones of summer?

re: Finding shows, all I had to do was look a little harder at the Aimee Mann site I linked to the other day. geez!

ev has a cool pic of the Asylum Street Spankers on his page today. They'll be at sxsw this year. again. of course.

Lilly (aka. GirlHacker) wrote that she just saw Aimee Mann and Michael Penn perform at a club in San Francisco. I have two responses to this: 1.) why don't I hear about these things? and 2.) I need to get out more.

uon and only

I'm hoping for a Mars Polar Lander comeback.

happy Australia Day, Australia! though I think I'm a little late for their time zone...

Hey, I want to be cool too. (and now I am.)

I'm playing with a new design (IE only right now). If you have IE, check it out and let me know what you think. It's only slightly different.

You can now search the Blogger blogs for your favorite topics. I like xml.

ever wonder what your jib is? and whether the cut of your jib is up to snuff? why do these antiquated phrases stick around? are we all three sheets to the wind? we all know what they mean, but what the hell do they mean? our metaphors are out of control. [and thanks, Metagrrrl.]

"'No' is the saddest experience you'll ever know." -Harry Nilsson. Aimee Mann's voice on the Magnolia soundtrack is chilling.

jackie

my lunar eclipse pictures didn't turn out very well. here's one of them. (above, not below.)

lunar eclipse

I'm really just kidding. I have no idea what blog flirting would look like. Maybe, "hey, nice use of CSS in your blog. Is that Netscapeable? Nice choice of date format. wanna share an RSS file?" or something.

new weblog trend: blog flirting. Like ev and prol. They're not in each other's blog circle yet they're linking to each other like crazy. hmm... Oh, and add blog eavesdropping.

I'm much better now. Thanks for listening. :)

Parking in soma is so messed up. If you live in San Francisco and work in soma: for the love of god, do not drive your car to work. Take the MUNI. or CalTrain. or BART. or ride your bike. or take a cab. If you plan on visiting SF in the near future: do not take your rental car anywhere near soma, especially if you plan on going to a baseball game at the new Pac Bell park. If you work at Sega or USWeb or any one of these billions of companies down here: please get some ride-sharing going on if you can't take the MUNI. A car may be an expression of your independence and individuality, but the environment and I (and you) need a break. To the parking lots: if you're full, put up the damn sign that says so. And quit raising your rates. To the city: please put in some sidewalks and parking garages. To the delivery truck drivers: I know you have a job to do, but man it's dangerous when you snarl up traffic by taking up a lane of traffic. If you live in North Bay like me and have to drive in: don't. It's a freaking nightmare. To everyone, especially me: breathe!!

meltdowntown on the eclipse. (today only.)

Attention MEGNUT readers! megnut is moving her site. her site will be down or will be an old version while DNS works its magic on servers across the world. In the meantime, you can now get your new moment by moment nutty megnut memes here. keen. (why didn't I go into marketing? geez, that's some killer copy.)

more moon stuff. (last one, I promise.)

unamerican revolution unlimited? "Just because it's 'punk,' does it mean we don't get to be critical?" [via Jack Saturn]

Total Lunar Eclipse Milestones for January 20, 2000:

Milestone Event	GMT	PST
Partial Eclipse Begins:	03:01 AM	07:01 PM
Total Eclipse Begins:	04:05 AM	08:05 PM
Mid-Eclipse:	04:44 AM	08:44 PM
Total Eclipse Ends:	05:22 AM	09:22 PM
Partial Eclipse Ends:	06:25 AM	10:25 PM

The moon should be brick-red during the total eclipse.

there's a total lunar eclipse tonight. hope for clear skies, these don't happen very often.

another redesign: haughey.com. sharp!

blog circle: back at ya! can't wait for SXSW. (and a few Shiner Bocks!) ;)

two gulls

and I'm Paul: "Your questioning, critical, practical nature makes you prove all ideas to your own satisfaction, rarely accepting anyone's word or ideas. At times you are torn between your desire for system and order and your desire for change and new experiences." Tell me something I don't know.

If it's a boy, Blog. If it's a girl, Pyra. The descriptions are uncanny.

you don't win friends with salad. you don't win friends with salad.

Homer: All normal people love meat. If I went to a barbeque and there was no meat, I would say 'Yo Goober! Where's the meat!?'. I'm trying to impress people here Lisa. You don't win friends with salad.

welcome to the web, jen!

scrub jay

Lynx/2.8rel.3 libwww-FM/2.14, aww yeah.

the most despicable kind of spam is spam advertising a spamming service.

groupThink. SJMerc: Net2gether.com launches group Web-surfing program: "The user can then 'beam up' one or more Net surfers in addition to being able to instantly message each other in ICQ or AOL-style. One person becomes the 'leader' and controls the Web surfing for the group."

today's secret word is "Transmeta".

overheard in wetlog's bathroom:

"geez, I gotta quit picking up material for my weblog in Pyra's bathrooms."

I'm really feeling the pressure to redesign now. jake did it. brig did it. prol did it. another blog circle theory: when someone from your blog circle (jake, in this case) redesigns, everyone in the circle will redesign within a certain period of time. let's say, umm, 2 months. yeah. I'll start testing the theory now. yep.

according some server stats, someone is using spyonit to spy on this page. Hey, I'm spying on spyonit!

I saw Winona Rider's Girl, Interrupted this weekend. They had to "dumb it down" quite a bit to turn the book into a movie. I think it would be tough to translate this book directly to film, especially a mainstream hollywood film. I thought they did a fine job of bringing some of the ideas in the book to the screen, though. And Angelina Jolie was fun to watch. I don't think this film will be very successful at the box office. it's a tough one.

kill your tv. again. Network anti-drug messages. Do free societies advance political agendas covertly through popular entertainment? As the brilliant George Clinton once said, "there is more money to be made from pretending to stop it than there is to be made from selling it."

Here is the full text of his last speech. The most moving part of this speech, to me, starts with this sentence: "You know, several years ago, I was in New York City autographing the first book that I had written..." (about 3/4 of the way down the page.)

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s speeches are moving and inspiring. Especially his last speech.

I guess it's time to brush up on some lunar photography techniques.

In about a week, there will be a total lunar eclipse around 8:00 PST.

GirlRadio has a new look. cool.

for more information about my "blog circle", see mthology. (this is how it works, no?)

Hey, Hubble works again: An Expanding Bubble in Space. It's probably the most expensive camera ever built for taking photos for desktop backgrounds.

hello everyone! today will be a good day.

New York Times: "Dan Rather, the CBS News anchor, called the decision to superimpose a digitally created CBS logo to block out an NBC-sponsored sign in Times Square during CBS's news coverage of New Year's Eve celebrations 'a mistake' that he regrets." [via offhand remarks]

Like megnut, I took the dog test. It told me I was a german shepherd. It's funny because part of my family is originally from Germany. how does it know? ;)

kip has some great photos of Lincoln, NE.

thinking of starting your own weblog? Is your name up to the task? Better get a hip, happinin' weblogger name. [via Dan "Now that's a weblogging name" Hartung]

oh dear.

oh, and I forgot to mention, Brill's Content's cover this month is disgusting. I don't care what sense of "irony" or "superior irony" they think they have. (that's my superior ironic sense of "inferior morality" talking.)

BRILL'S CONTENT: Why We Look Different: "A magazine's design--or, in this instance, its redesign--pretty much has to speak for itself. Nothing I tell you about how we chose our color palette, or why we've changed fonts, will determine whether our new design works for you."

It doesn't work for me at all. It sucks. Brill's Content now looks like every other crappy magazine on the rack, and I really used to enjoy the look of this magazine when it arrived in my mailbox. What a disappointment.

megnut needs new hair. I voted for blonde, but encouraged her to include the "shave it all off" option. I seriously think it would look good. Kind of an old Ani Difranco/Buddhist Monk look.

I wrote a rushed, mediocre paper about y2k in April of '98. It was for my Belief Systems class, otherwise known as Anthropology 431 (or something). It's interesting (to me) to go back and read it now. My thesis was: "...a new millenarian revitalistic movement is emerging in the wake of the 'millennium bug.' It is an attempt to deal with cultural stress associated with increased reliance on technology and an attempt to revive pessimistic views of the future." huh.

Dan Gillmore: "The new company, AOL Time Warner, will have more power over the creation and distribution of news and entertainment than any entity on the planet. It will obviously spur other news/entertaiment companies toward mega-mergers, thereby continuing the consolidation of information providers. This is dangerous."

who will control just about everything you read/see/hear? AOL and Disney. when they merge, I'm moving to France.

AOL, PBS Forge Online, On-air Alliance: "America Online, which Monday announced a merger with Time Warner, also forged a cross-promotion and content-sharing alliance with the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS)." fuck.

overheard at the mall:

woman: my new mantra for this year is be here now, be here now, be here now.
man: [blank stare]
woman: you know, like instead of thinking about my vacation next month or things in the future I should be in this moment.
man: [silence]
woman: be here now.

you may have seen todd levin's your ad here before. It's not new. I'm linking to it now. You can mention things even though they're not new. This is one of my new mottos. (actually not new, but I can mention things even though they're not new. see motto.)

congratulations to Keith Dawson [of TBTF Log fame] for being named Internet Journalist of the Year by Internet Freedom.

merge, merge, merge in a burning ring of fire. It seems funny ("peculiar", not "ha-ha") to me that AOL could aquire Time/Warner. What a kooky, whacked-out economy we have.

Here are a few photos I took at the CamWorld get together a few days ago. I notice that Matt Haughey has some pictures up too.

I'm a little confused about what to do with these recruiters that send emails to me out of the blue. If I respond to them and politely mention that I'm happily employed and have no intention of leaving, they continue to send email. (eg. do you have any friends? the company is pre ipo. keep me in the loop. etc. etc. on and on.) But it feels rude to not respond to someone that sends me a personal email. So I've started sending emails that say: "I am happily employed with no intention of leaving. I have no friends. Money does not motivate me. I'll keep you in the loop. -pb"

Wow, Magnolia is a good film. If you have three hours to spare, you won't be disappointed. Someone called director Paul Thomas Anderson Altman on amphetamines. I agree. Also, the acting in this film is magical.

by the way, it's very precise.

I found the Intellimouse Explorer at outpost.com. I ordered it yesterday and it arrived today! Free shipping! Now that's service.

dark sun

sun colors

CNN: Fertilizer levels safe for humans: "I think this is clearly a significant problem," he said. "The question I have to ask is, are you comfortable drinking water with levels of fertilizer that kills off frogs?"

the Intellimouse Explorer is on backorder everyhwere. It looks like the soonest I'd be able to get one is late February. too slow.

and happy b-day to cK.

Thanks to inter alia, I'll now add this fun legal disclaimer to my weblog: The views, feelings and ideas expressed on this webpage are mine and mine alone. They do not reflect the views of Pyra, any individual founder or co-founder of that company, or any entity of Texas State Government.

(I feel like everything I say is parenthetical.)

the CamIn was cool. We all walked over to the Metreon and ruled the food court. Cam gave out these ultra modern business card holders and everyone took many pictures. I took pictures too. You'll see them soon. I'm analog when it comes to photos, so I have to get them developed. remember that?

I hate "B2B". I think marketing people are the only people who say this. And even then they don't use it in their everyday speech. They only use it in copy. I hope they stop soon. And yes, this abomination exists. "As the 21st Century dawns, electronic commerce has issued new challenges - and opportunities - to the world of business." you don't say. hmm, maybe I should look into this whole "e" business thing. (sarcasm, by the way.)

by the way, erik is the one in the middle here. and you may know the guy on the left and that other guy.

I'm going to crash CamFest this afternoon. I'll let you know how it goes.

oops. Hi erik. inter alia is a hot new blog straight outta Austin. (but full of Nebraska football references for some reason ;)

a different kind of weblog. a sensory log.

SJMercury: Inacom is now Compaq. Thought you might want to know. Here's more info from Inacom.

current phase of the moon. (thanks US Naval Observatory!)

every time you hear the word "millennium", drink. (that's one.)

what the new year's celebration looked like from sf bay.

Anyone want to buy a slightly used copy of Time Bomb 2000? It's going cheap... On second thought, it could be a great collector's item someday. Yeah, that's it.

bay hill road 2

Here's more y2k-glitch fun; screenshots of problems. [via scripting news]

Luckily the date rollover didn't cause problems in critical systems (most were fixed in time). But there are problems. Sanger's Review is a good place to see what's happening with y2k. [thanks, skp!]

bay hill road

Edward Gorey's the Object-Lesson.

Edward Gorey's the Beastly Baby.

Nebraska played a great game tonight in Tempe. Lots of fun. Go Big Red!

I took this photo from my back porch (with my new telephoto lens).

hawk

I predict that for the next few weeks we will all hear the y2k I told you so story a few times. :)

and happy birthday megnut!!

Happy New Year!