Another month is coming to an end, and I realized I haven’t been posting much. The problem lately hasn’t been finding things to link to, but rather putting together words to go with the links. Between being busy at work, the frenzy of a holiday weekend, and a few evenings with more beers consumed than was perhaps wise, I just haven’t been in a writing mood.
I was in a picture-taking mood last weekend though. The photowalk was a nice diversion on Saturday evening, as was going to a couple gun shows with a cow-orker earlier in the day on Saturday. There were only two things that tempted me at the shows. The first was a CZ-52, but there were three of them, none in great condition, and I ended up passing on ’em. Then there was a reproduction Sharps 45-120 (the Quigley gun), but at $1500, I figured I’d pass. Especially since there really isn’t any place I could shoot it until next spring, anyhow. But it shore was purty.
And that’s pretty much the news. This coming weekend is already jam-packed with stuff, since a friend is getting ordained on Saturday, and another friend has a birthday. And I’m probably forgetting something else, too. Seeya in December sometime.
- Ray Maxwell’s A Short History of “Manufacturing” Color is a pretty good read if you’re interested in color managment (which you probably need to be if you’re taking digital photographs). Not a whole lot of new stuff for me, but then I’ve been living with this stuff since 1990 or so.
- If you’ve experienced Flat bed scanner fustrations, you might be interested to know that a lot of them can be solved. Not easily, but you can do it.
- Wow. A website full of Minneapolis Street Information. Perfect way for a history/map geek like me to spend a few hours. [metro mpls]
- Kim quotes a post about the modern man and Girly Stuff. Sad but true. [kim]
- Hmm. Did you know Bloomingon, MN police are Blowing Up Scientific Equipment in the Name of Security? Because it’s suspicious looking, natch. Plus they’ve got all those expensive toys paid for by our tax dollars, and if they don’t use ’em, we might gripe. [boing boing]
- Searching for some justice, Zombies sue city, county for abuse of locking them up for
simulating weapons of mass destruction
last summer. The sad thing is that suing the city and the police may be satisfying, but if they lose, it’ll just come out of our pockets, and none of the real villains in the story will get anything more than a slap on the wrist. Depressing. [jim] - Andy, Jim and I have posted photos from the photowalk last saturday. There’s some nice night-shots in there, I think. I’d post a preview here, but I’ve gotta run, and that’d take time I just don’t have this morning. In the long-term, I’m thinking about a better way to post photos from flickr here. Maybe I’ll work out the scripts some evening and you’ll start seeing more pictures.
Weather in Minneapolis for November 29, 2006 November 29 in History
Let’s see… not much news in the last week. Dinner club at Babani’s last Thursday, and the Auto Body at O’Gara’s on Saturday. The former was good food, but bad parking due to construction. The latter was better attended than I expected, which made for some parking hassles, but it was good to see some folks I haven’t seen in a while. Beyond that, the rest of the week and weekend were just okay. Nothing notable really.
This week is a short one. Yay! No big plans for me for the weekend, except the Saturday evening photowalk I’ve organized. Sounds like the weather might not be too bad for that. And a bunch of little projects around the house that have been waiting for me to get into a project-tackling mood. This might just be the weekend for it.
- Slate has an interesting article on The rise and fall of the “Bus Plunge” Story. I haven’t picked up a physical paper for quite a while, but it doesn’t surprise me that these have disappeared. [flutterby]
- In a bit of local news, St. Cloud makes ‘Absolutely worst places to live’ list. But at least it’s not Fairbanks, Alaska:
Take the worst place you’ve ever been, then subtract the sun.
Read this one before Friday, since IIRC, the Times hides anything more than a week old behind their firewall. - Did you know Hellmann’s has changed their mayonnaise formula? Fargin bastages. Two words: New Coke. [kottke]
- Mark over at Boing Boing is finally noticing that the Patriot act makes it harder to get real Sudafed. Nice to see that I’m not the only one griping about this. [boing boing]
- Don’t watch this Intro to Large Format Photography with J. Brunner (video) while drinking a soda. You’ll have to clean up your keyboard if you do. According to a friend who does that sort of thing, it’s fairly accurate, too.
Weather in Minneapolis for November 20, 2006 November 20 in History
Not especially physically, but psychicly. And mostly tired due to my presence on teh intarwebs. I just spent almost four hours trying to get this update put together, and back up my server so I can start adding a database for a client and have a clean pre-database-creation backup in case I’m an idiot in the process.
Along the way, I also cleaned out the email, deleting a thousands of spams and updating the spam-blocking software that runs on my Mac. And just a whole bunch of other random crap that I wouldn’t have to do if people weren’t generally assholes on the net. It ate my morning, and if it weren’t for having a bunch of links already piled up, this would be another completely lame update. As it is, it’s just half-assed. Don’t you feel lucky?
Similarly, if you’ve been waiting on an email reply from me, it’s not the I hate you. It’s just that the few hours I’ve spent at the computer at home lately have been dealing with that sort of crap, and as a result I’ve fallen way behind in my replies. I’m hoping to catch up sometime soon…
- In a bit of post-election musing, I think what we really need is an oath for politicians along the lines of the Hippocratic Oath (or more likely, the popular misunderstanding of it,
first, do no harm
). Of course that would paralyze government, because almost every law they pass ends up being so complex that humans can’t be sure whether it’s helping or hurting, and rely on faith to make their decisions, but paralysis in government (or gridlock) is not a bad thing. - Did you know that Bar Code, MN is Hiding in Plain Sight in St. Paul? Thanks to Sarah for digging into why Flickr was putting a funny-looking location on my photos from last weekend and jr for splaining that it’s the Post Office who propagated the data. Do we need to start a campaign to Save Bar Code? Probably. But I don’t have the energy to lead that effort.
- If The Wikipedia Knowledge Dump continues, it’ll be pretty cool. And articles that are rejected from Wikipedia will get one last chance at immortality. [boing boing]
- It’s not about the Georges anymore, It’s All About the Thomases. Apparently other people are using twos now. [kottke]
- OMFG! Joey points out Billy Idol: Happy Holidays. Took me about five seconds to decide to add it to my wish list. [accordionguy]
- Also from Joey, Apple Ditching the Mac, Keeping the PC. The snotty (but sometimes funny) Mac guy is gone. PC, he’s still around. I don’t think that’s a parable. [accordionguy]
- Next Saturday is the first Auto Body Experience gig in a while. See Scott’s new Haircut and hear some new songs. November 18, 9pm, O’Gara’s. Mark your calendar.
Weather in Minneapolis for November 12, 2006 November 12 in History
Elections are tomorrow here in the US. That’s making for a certain amount of noise that I just haven’t been paying much attention to. Still not even sure if I’m going to vote. But if you are, here’s a quick bit of information on the transportation amendment that’s on the ballot in MN, and some more tools for voters that you might find useful.
The weekend, it was just gosh-darned nice. Saturday was the flickr walk with a big turnout, and lots of pictures by folks. Then I came home and put the bagger on the lawnmower and got all the leaves off the lawn. I’m sure my neighbor appreciates that, since they won’t blow onto her lawn for her to rake now. Then it was the monthly card-game that I host, and to bed. Sunday, I’d planned to head up for lunch with mom, but I was still coughing and sneezing and feared I might still be contagious, so I stayed home, uploaded the pictures to flickr, and then relaxed through what remained of the day.
The weather’s supposed to be gosh-darned nice again the next few days, and I’m sure it’s going to be difficult to keep my mind on the work I’m supposed to be completing this week. And then maybe we get snow on the weekend. That’s Minnesota for you.
- Ooh, pretty. The Serene from Bang & Olufsen is one of the coolest cell-phones I’ve seen. I think I’m going to have to go look at one in a store… Won’t buy one, but damn, it’s sure pretty. [vowe]
- This is disgusting. The NRA says Ron Paul Must Go. I think I need to work on a strongly worded letter. [war on guns]
- Jim says: Every now and then there’s evidence that our “elected representatives” have too much time on their hands [I’d say it’s more often than that]. A recent example of this is when one Minneapolis City Council Member tried to regulate what kind of music can be played at a bar. The concept is so absurd I really don’t know what else to say. [What Jim said, but I’ve never been especially impressed by Diane Hofstede - she seems well-meaning, but completely and utterly clueless about the law of unintended consequences] [jim]
- Finally, on the work front, I’ve been having to work with XML, and boy has it been an education. As a
technology
XML is such a broad thing as to be essentially meaningless. Even Tim Bray, one of the co-inventors of XML says XML Is Too Hard For Programmers. In a comment on Slashdot, an anonymous coward saidXML is like PDF without Acrobat
. That’s a pretty damned good metaphor in my mind. And of course, Joel had something to say about it years ago in an article titled Back to Basics (which I wish more people deciding this stuff would read). Anyway, the XML I’m having to work with is vastly over-complicated for me to deal with because of the intellectual laziness of the company using it. I don’t really care how the data is represented internally, but because they’re expressing it in astandard format
, they feel they don’t need to provide any accessor functions. And that’s what I get to fight with this week. Pretty exciting, eh?
Weather in Minneapolis for November 6, 2006 November 6 in History
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| He voted for Torture |
Neil Alexander in New Hampshire had an excellent idea about campaign signs for this election cycle after getting mad that all four elected representatives from New Hampshire had voted to overturn habeas corpus and authorize torture. I don't think there's time for me to replicate the idea here, but a few of my readers might be able to pull something off in time…. Click the image for more.
Thanks for Claire for pointing it out.
Weather in Minneapolis for November 2, 2006 November 2 in History