onfocus

rage against the typing machine

If you've come here looking for "latin phrases", you want to be at Sententiae Latinae – not here. I posted about it last month, and all of the search engines indexed it ad infinitum. Animus opibusque paratus!

armstrong woods: view from east ridge trail

yes, this is me. yes, there is alcohol in that glass. yes, this was at a bar in Petaluma. and yes, I believe ev was standing on the table at the time he took that photo. further comment? no.

The line between Paul van Dyk and Yanni is very very thin.

I really want one of these Fisheye Conversion Lens Kits. If someone would like to contribute one, you know, for the effort. I'll happily accept it.

Search terms in your referrer logs are a funny thing. Sometimes I think that the search engines are ahead of me, indexing things that I will say in the future. For example, someone found my site by looking for the terms: behaviourally anchored rating scale. While this term was nowhere to be found on my site earlier today, when the poor, confused searcher ended up here – it is on my site now. See what I mean? It's as if Alta Vista can predict the future. Perhaps this search really came from tomorrow, and my logs are reading the future. In any case, all of you folks who are ending up here looking for something perverse thanks to this quoted post from the past will be disappointed. However, it may show up here in the future. Now.

Judge Orders Injunction Vs. Napster: "Clearly, people who are using Napster love music. They're probably our best customers," conceded Hilary Rosen, president of the RIAA, in an interview with The Associated Press." Shutting down Napster does not shut down the Internet. You can't stop file sharing.

matt ponders old media

skp: "I'm not upset. I'm just yelling."

The new Blogger discuss section is up. In the process I learned some amazing stuff; including more gritty XML/XSLT and regular expressions. This project has been in the works for quite a while. It feels good to see it in the world. Stop by and let us know what you think!

"Sometimes I think and other times I am." - Paul Valery

"A work is never completed except by some accident such as weariness, satisfaction, the need to deliver, or death." - Paul Valery

from the garden

Stephen King Plans Serial Ebook: "Stephen King has decided to bypass traditional publishing methods and will offer chapter-by-chapter downloads of his serialized novel, The Plant, directly from his personal website." I'm not a big King fan, but I hope he makes a fortune doing this. hmm...a trust economy? It's so crazy it just might work.

I feel like I've been cashing in bad karma for the past few weeks. (looks like that site has too ;) I must have some good karma coming from somewhere. maybe some instant karma? maybe some neutral karma? maybe it just takes practice?

sometimes, at night.

"If you work on your mind with your mind, how can you avoid an immense confusion?" - Seng-Ts-an

I finally put up my rafting pictures from last weekend.

Today I figured out how to approximately translate HiMetric units into Pixels. It goes a little like this: [HiMetricValue] / 26.46. Pretty cool, eh? If anyone reading this knows how to do the translation exactly (if possible) I'd appreciate the help. Ahh, lazy Saturdays.

I just heard this in a commercial for the coal industry: "...while our production of electricity has tripled in the past thirty years, our environment continues to improve." That global warming thing? Yeah, that's qute an improvement. Thanks, coal.

"For the absurd man it is not a matter of explaining and solving, but of experiencing and describing. Everything begins with lucid indifference." - Albert Camus

I saw six live Soul Coughing shows. I've seen seven or eight Ani Difranco shows. Those are (were) my only serial concert habits. oops, I've also seen the Tragically Hip a few more times than normal. This post is not a cry for help. Thank you, though.

Many special thank yous, again, media nugget! Today's entry is M. Doughty's solo album. It's not available in stores, so don't surf to cdnow. It's only available through Napster. You may remember M. Doughty from such bands as Soul Coughing and other media adventures I may have mentioned before. Oh, and Mr. Doughty has his own BBS.

I'm still laughing at Scott McCloud's 5-Card Nancy. [via boingboing] It seems like something that would be in A Book of Surrealist Games.

The class III rapids were fun and all, but the real highlight of the trip last weekend was matt's solo rendition of On the Cover of Rolling Stone while we were all sitting around the campfire.

I just got back from a trip to the American River. It was a great time. There was much rafting, camping, and bonfire-around-singing. I'll post more photos once they're developed.

American River

as I was reading blogs this morning, I read a story about a little girl who was riding her bike in the middle of the street. It reminded me of my first weblog when I used to link to others' inside jokes and self-referencial links. Amazingly, I couldn't let this one pass without incident.

I'm going rafting on the American River this weekend. I'm really going to try to stay in the boat this time. Wish me luck.

grapes like these are in big trouble in Sonoma County: "The glassy-winged sharpshooter is not just a threat to the wine industry -- it threatens the entire agriculture industry," [Gov. Gray] Davis said. I hope they can find alternatives to chemical sprays in their attempts to control this insect.

writing haiku
is similar to football
hut-hut-haiku

Wondering what a Class 3 rapid vs. a Class 5 rapid means? Here's the rating scale from the previous article. [oops. I accidently posted this to the wrong blog. But you, gentle onfocus reader, might like it too.]

Salon | Don't tweak the geeks!: "We are wired differently; but the fact that we have to work at empathizing with others actually means we put a special value on it and on face-to-face contact, as anyone who has ever sampled the intensity of our tribal gatherings can testify." [via offhand]

lookit this! Jim Woodring's Whim Grinder. [via media nugget]

I set up an archive of photos from this site on the visualize page. It's not very organized, though.