onfocus

Ralph Nader, Commercial Alert, and 27 authors and scholars in a letter to Borders: Don't do it! "According to the May 20, 2002 Wall Street Journal, you [Borders] have devised 250 categories for books, each to be captained by a publishing firm. These firms will pay you a large annual fee -- in excess of $110,000 according to the Journal -- which will be hard for most small and medium-sized publishers to muster. In return, the "captains" will be able to decide which books you carry, how many are bought, and where they are placed. Although you say you will keep final authority over book-buying, Borders will be an agent of the publishers rather than of its customers."

When you cut through the way Borders is framing this deal, it sounds to me like the large publishers would be paying Borders to remove the competition from their shelves. That Borders is even considering a plan like this shows how much the large publishers control demand as well as supply. Scary stuff when you think of books as a repository for diverse ideas.

Hot enough for ya?

whoa, someone connected an etch-a-sketch to a computer via motorized pulleys. [via BoingBoing] It would be cool if someone wrote software to approximate images (like people have done with ASCII characters).

TrackBack Experiment

I'm playing around with Movable Type's new TrackBack feature by plugging it into my comments system. If you maintain your site with Movable Type you can include the following URL in your "URL(s) to ping" while posting:

http://www.onfocus.com/tb.asp?id=2842

Once you've posted and it pings my site, the title, permalink, and an excerpt of your post will appear as a comment on this post.

The ID in the URL above is my local system's ID of this post. (I'm not using Movable Type to maintain my weblog.) By changing the ID, you can comment both remotely and locally (at the same time!) on any post here. I'm trying to come up with some way to automate this process a little more. I can't really test this because I'm not using Movable Type to maintain any public blogs. If you try it out and it doesn't work, please let me know by leaving a comment here the old fashioned way. Thanks!

Do you think this would be a useful addition to existing weblog comment systems?

Ev speaks the truth. In early 1998 I wrote a paper for a class I was taking at the University of Nebraska, Anthropology 472: Belief Systems in Anthropological Perspective. The paper was about the emerging group of Y2K survivalists and how their behavior and beliefs mirrored classic millennial religious movements throughout history—with a new technological twist. It had lots of quotes from mid-90's Wired visionaries mixed with quotes from Anthony Wallace. I posted the paper to the 1998 incarnation of this site, because, I figured, why not? Ev was at O'Reilly in Sebastopol, California and sent the link to skp (who was close to drawing up plans for stockpiling food and moving to the desert to avoid the inevitable catastrophe). She had some questions about the paper and we started emailing and ICQing. Fast forward to 2002, marriage. Is there anything that can bring two people together like apocalyptic visions of the future shared over the Internet? I doubt it. Thanks, Ev! (I got an A-minus on the paper...not enough attention to the role charismatic leaders play in millennial movements.)

stuck in a loop: charborg by pinback.

Last night we saw Neil Finn at The Fillmore. He has put together a spectacular band, and the show was a lot of fun. They were excited to be there and they did several things that seemed like they weren't planned. At one point Neil needed to tune his guitar so he turned to his band and said, "Does anyone have a song?" Lisa Germano was on keyboards and everyone was quiet while she played her song Wood Floors. Sebastian Steinberg (formerly of Soul Coughing) was playing bass. About halfway through the show, Johnny Marr came out and played with the band the rest of the night. They even did a few Smiths tunes including How Soon is Now and There is a Light that Never Goes Out. In another tuning-inspired moment, Neil sat at the keyboards all by himself and played Last Day of June and Message to My Girl (an old Split Enz song—the whole band did One Step Ahead earlier in the night). And there were plenty of audience-sing-along Crowded House favorites thrown in for good measure.

It was a good time, and a nice way to end my week of vacation. Now, back to work!

Here are a few photos from the Portland Japanese Garden.

By the way, skp and I are engaged!

skp and I just got back from the fireworks display in Portland, Oregon. (They were just for you, skp, Happy Birthday!) Here are a few photos:


A crowd gathering at the waterfront


People with their own fireworks


Fireworks over the water

I'm away—but I'll be back soon. Happy 4th!

skp and I got up around 4 am this morning so we could make it to the 13th annual Sonoma County Hot Air Balloon Classic in Windsor. The weather was perfect. We watched the sun come up, the balloons fill with air, and the sky fill with balloons. It really was a bizarre and beautiful site to see over a dozen hot air balloons suspended in air. I took many, many photos.


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