A Whole Lotta Nothing

We've acheived the impossible. We've

We've acheived the impossible. We've created something that will make you want to get spam.

We've made spam fun.

Anil was right. Installing Windows

Anil was right. Installing Windows XP is worth it, just for cleartype alone. It adds a very light anti-aliasing on all characters, making web pages, documents, emails, and everything else easy to read (but only on LCD screens, either laptops or flat panel monitors).

The point I was trying

The point I was trying to make, and I'm not sure it was entirely clear, was that we used to make beautiful music together. Some of the sweetest, best sounding music you could ever imagine. Then we decided against doing any more records together, and he kept playing. The last song was out of tune, and the band would have never let that happen, but he keeps playing.

I guess I realized the music's never going to sound the same.

The following sites have been

The following sites have been nominated in the first annual Nothings^TM (or the A Wholes^TM - whichever you prefer) awards:

1. Lileks

2. onFocus
3. rc3
4. metascene
5. cacophony/exitwound

The highly praised and esteemed awards will be held at the Taco Bell on El Camino, next week sometime. In the booth near the back. Your speech will have to be 3 words or less.

ReJakob

ReJakob

Shots from a hike I

Shots from a hike I took a couple weeks ago with pb, shawnde, preston, and kay.

While going through some old

While going through some old files this morning, I found a few interesting things untouched since 1998.

When our cats were new (they're huge now)

The CubicleDance (this was funny once? oh man)

My friend Mark's new child (warning, scary baby shots ahead)

Inspired by jason's find today

Inspired by jason's find today of unused IPO glasses, I did some digging at ebay for similar items. It looks like everyone's trying to cash in on the downturn (the images with that item are great by the way). The greatest find was this set of office supplies and documents from a former Idealab! company. It includes their budget for last year, which contains everyone's salary. I never knew that Barbie and Ken had dot com waredorbes complete with little khakis and laptops.

There's quite a few failed dot com t-shirts for sale. A few months back I wondered if I should collect shirts from companies on their way out or gone completely. I even started said collection with an APB News bowling shirt I got for a steal.

Hopefully someone will pick up where I left off and have a museum in t-shirt form someday.

I couldn't help but notice

I couldn't help but notice the peace, love, and linux sidewalk stencils while walking around the Haight yesterday, which forced me to make an addition on my mental "things I hate" list.

#145: Corporate sponsored graffiti

For no good reason, I'll

For no good reason, I'll tell you that my favorite font dingbat is found in Microsoft's free Webdings font. It's the # character, and it looks like this:

I hope to someday come across it in use. I could imagine going into a seaside restaurant, and seeing signs like this:

Absolutely No Shivering of Timbers Allowed

No Scalawags

Please refrain from yelling "Avast Ye Matey!" in the theater

Riding again

From the age of about 7 to about the age of 22, I rode a bicycle everyday. Between the ages of 14 to 20 I would ride it two or three hours each day, in small flat areas, and always twirling, twirling, twirling. Fast forward to age 21 - after the first couple years of college, I had to lighten up on my riding. I was doing alright in school, but not excelling in my coursework. I liked riding a great deal and it was my life for so long that it was hard to give it up. I can still remember riding in my street and being idolized by the neighborhood kids. I can remember riding whenever life got stressful, to keep a bike upright and spinning required absolute concentration, and when I was concentrating on riding, I couldn't think about anything else. It was a popular study break. I missed it at first, but still dreamt about new tricks, I kept in touch with my friends that chose bikes over college, and I continued reading bike magazines and watching videos. After a few months though, things began looking up. Spending a couple more hours studying each day meant I started enjoying all my classes, and getting the highest or second highest grade in every course. There were a few dark moments in college; once while delivering pizzas on a friday night (a shit job I've never wish upon my enemies), a pack of guys rode past and my thoughts immediately went back to being 16 in southern california. I'd ride with 3 or 4 close buddies every weekend night, sometimes in downtown LA (no cops or security to bust you), sometimes at the local college campus, or sometimes in the industrial parks near home. When I got home that night from work, I told my then-girlfriend about it, and she likened my saddened state to being a domesticated dog, and catching a glimpse of your old wolf pack buddies running past. I rode occasionally throughout college, maybe a couple hours here and there, enough to re-learn everything I'd forgotten until then. When I first met my wife, she would stare at my back in fascination, due to some weird musculature bike riding caused. When I moved away to attend grad school, I remember leaving my bike in my parents' garage. It was the last nail in the coffin, and since then I've ridden only once or twice. Over the past year though, the x-games inspired marketing machines have put bike riding back in my life. Every time I crank up tivo, there's a few episodes of Bluetorch TV waiting to be watched. On the day of my wedding, there was a bike contest less than 100 feet from my apartment. And when I parked my car today on Hayes, I was just a few feet from the "Frisco Freestyle Bike Shop." Kay mentioned a few months ago that she popped in the shop, and noticed it was filled with bikes like my old one. I've been wanting to visit it for a while, but it always seems to be closed when I get home from work. A couple months ago, I started doing research. I found the bike I wanted, and began saving up for it. Five hundred bucks was beyond the "what the hell?" level of impulse spending, and I had to wait. Leaving a job and looking for a new one didn't help matters either. I entered the shop and looked around. They carried the brand I wanted, but unfortunately, only the top of the line models (~$700 each). I asked if they could order the exact one I wanted, and the owner said yes. I bought a video, and on the way out, he said "hey you want to test ride it?" I said no, thanks, and walked out... maybe ten feet. I turned around, he took it out of the racks, and the next thing I know I'm riding a freestyle bike for the first time in four or five years. It didn't feel as sketchy as I thought it would, and I even tried a few tricks. Megaspins? Check. Steamroller? Check. Hang five? Check. Oh god it felt good to be riding again. I put the bike back in the racks, thanked the owner, and walked home. The whole way back I ran calculations in my head. We've got that trip to Australia coming up, but with our big tax return, my current savings and upcoming paycheck I could easily cover it without any problem. Of course I could cover it. Isn't this what being adult is all about? I can buy anything I want, can't I? Of course I can! Next month we won't go out to eat much. I'll keep eating breakfast and lunch at work. No frivolous purchases for the next few months, I promise. Sound good Kay? Great! I watched the video I bought, looked down at my watch, and put my shoes back on. "Where are you going?" Kay asked. "I'm going out to buy that bike I've always wanted." "Cool." she said. As I walked back to the shop, a "full circle" thought ran through my head. When I was fifteen years old, I won first place in a flatland competition held in Southern California. The person that came second behind me was named Day Smith, and today, thirteen years later I was buying his pro model from Hoffman Bikes. (note: the cover image above is a shot of me, when I was sixteen or so, practicing at a contest in the Rose Bowl parking lot)

I'm back in the saddle

I'm back in the saddle again.

Remember when I jokingly added

Remember when I jokingly added "fear the maple leaf" to an earlier post? Well, it looks like those nice northerly neighbors aren't joking around. They've got the coolest t-shirts ever, and as everyone knows, you can't have a revolution without t-shirts.

It's too bad canadians are so nice, because the stand on guard guys should really sue/vandalize/hack the shit out of a canadian hate group's copy of their site. To steal images and use them for an anti-immigration, border-closing movement is a lot worse than merely trying to make a buck off stolen work.

It probably goes without saying,

It probably goes without saying, but I think filepile (the new beta site that should launch any day now) could be bigger than napster. Where else can you easily find, discuss, and download Mojo Nixon's 'are you drinking with me, jesus?'

Since the trading part is kind of a pain (you have to wait a while when you upload something), I doubt it ever becomes a way to traffic entire albums. But you get a taste of something good, something offbeat, and it makes you want more. I hope the quality stays up when it gets more exposure, or someone like CDnow wakes up and realizes it's a cool way to preview tracks.

The best part of the site is that it's a very simple and cool idea that andre came up with. It doesn't use any new technology and could have been made three years ago. The concepts have been sitting under our noses this whole time and it only required one smart person to do a week or two of programming and a great site was born.

Those are the best kind of ideas, the ones that combine simple concepts in a new and elegant way, producing breakthrough sites.

Fun things to do

Fun things to do at work (part 32 in a series)

1. Napster down a copy of Outfield's "Your Love"

2. Crank it as high as you can stand in your headphones.

3. Sing along in a loud, high-pitched voice.

"Josie's on a vacation faaar awaaaaay..."

Your coworkers will be jealous, and ask for their own copy. Then the contest begins: who can sing highest and loudest. After that, the reminiscing begins: who asked who to dance to it in eighth grade, who had a brother that cranked it in his badass '72 Nova, who went to see them live, etc.

Fun for hours.

Bob Mould is still kicking

Bob Mould is still kicking ass (if I say "Husker Du" and you say "Husker who?" get yourself to a record store now to fill up on Mould CDs. I'll wait.). His site has information about his fantastic new album, he has a great community, and he even shares the media (music/books/sites/movies) he's currently enjoying.

It's nice to see musicians using the web in a good way, and even better when it's someone you like.

You know a hotel's going

You know a hotel's going to be good when they have custom designed chairs specifically for it (they're fun too).

hilarious pic.

hilarious pic.

Brad was kind enough to

Brad was kind enough to point out Audio Stocker Pro. It's the winamp plugin I've always wanted, it equalizes sound, automatically changing volume for you when louder tracks start, and upping it on quieter ones.

I've needed this since winamp came out.

You've all seen the Yahoo

You've all seen the Yahoo most popular images in the news page, right?

The photo subjects are typically those involved in timely events. You never know what or who you're going to see from one day to the next, but if you follow it over a long period of time, you see a definite pattern develop. The images are still timely, but common subjects continually crop up. The two most popular subjects in the list? Baby animals and actress or models showing their breasts.

Tonight, I grabbed a couple images, and produced what could very well become THE MOST POPULAR YAHOO IMAGE EVER!!!

Since I'm getting a zillion

Since I'm getting a zillion hits through slashdot, via Ev's site, here was my take on the dissolution of the company lo those many moons ago.

While chatting tonight with Anil,

While chatting tonight with Anil, I made a few easter-jesus-rising-from-the-grave jokes and he said "you know if it were two years ago, you could probably make a flash movie of that, no, a series of them, and get it picked up on a media site." I replied "I coulda been funded!!!" he said "ah, the good old days of the unreasonable web."

The unreasonable web.

It's a great term. All the pimentoloaf.com's of the world were part of the unreasonable web. Any company that started out by losing money on every customer, with the hopes of market domination years later is a part of it. Any site that described their success as "stickiness" or in terms of "eyeballs" or "time spent on the site" is part of the unreasonable web.

The unreasonable web is on the way out, as it should be. The users, markets, and investors are making sure of that. The problem however, are the good ideas run by CEO and marketing teams that steered companies towards unreasonable areas. Kozmo and Webvan are either dead or dying, even though they're great, useful services that can make money.

They just had unreasonable visions of how they'd conquer the market. My hope is companies with more business sense step in to meet the demands left by these dead companies, so users willing to pay can once again enjoy their services for a long and prosperous time.

If you've been a member

If you've been a member of metafilter for some time, and you're in college or going to college, please take a look at the scholarship award I just set up.

So here they are, my

So here they are, my photos from the trip to New York to shoot the Brill's cover.

Some notes about the pics: I went from Austin, TX to NYC because I was at the South By Southwest conference when Brill's needed me. The trip was about 24 hours total, so I took as many photos as possible (and I wrote a bunch, which isn't up yet) to help me remember the whirlwind tour. There are a zillion photos of my hotel because Bryan turned me onto the boutique hotel movement recently, and it helps to have plenty of notes and images when compiling personal reviews of the best boutique hotels you've stayed at. If it's not clear in the photos, the Hudson Hotel was amazing. No more cheesy chain hotels for me, it's boutique all the way from now on.

Oh, and if you wondered what this post from last month was all about, look at this shot, and it should now make sense.

Happy motherfucking birthday to Lance's

Happy motherfucking birthday to Lance's Glassdog.

Five long years doing the same site. I'm feeling the burden after just two years of MetaFilter, and four years of a somewhat updated personal site, but nothing compares to the labyrinth that is glassdog. I saw pointers to it in 1996, which I followed, and I didn't get it. In 1997 it came up more and more, and still, it didn't strike me as all that interesting. Some time in early 1998 I found a smart and funny essay on the site and suddenly it all clicked. I've visited near-daily since then, even going back and reading probably every word on the site at least once. It's always been a source of laughs and inspiration and I look forward to many more years of enjoyment there.

Bryan's been keeping track of

Bryan's been keeping track of his spam for the last month or so and he's finally revealed some of the data. We all helped come up with the categorization scheme (which entails bryan yelling "I just got a 'make your penis larger' spam, is that a product and service or a porn spam?" - it's product and services), I hope he posts more data and full explanations soon. It almost makes getting spam fun.

Almost.

Today was a strange day.

Today was a strange day. It was the me day.

I had to call a few bookstores, in search of me. Then we decided to just go to a different bookstore, and hopefully they'd have a copy of me I could buy. After I couldn't find me, I asked about me, and they said they were located in a different place, and being given away for free. So I picked up 3 or 4 copies of me, and went out the door.

Here's me, holding a copy of me.

me, me, me.

Two pics from the cover

Two pics from the cover photo trip to New York made it into Heather's FOJM: one and two

Signs that Slashdot sucks ass:

Signs that Slashdot sucks ass:

They pointed to the 5k contest site, and the discussion that followed is beyond pathetic. When filtered for the highest ratings (3 in this case, of which only four comments attained that rating), the results are two anti-microsoft posts making fun of the server software (that's what passes for insightful on slashdot these days?), one is by a guy that couldn't figure out what the contest was about (since the contest was over, the rules pages were gone), and the last is someone complaining about the contest site's architecture, then rambling about what they think makes a good entry though I doubt the author viewed any of them.

Utterly pathetic.

So I've heard the issue

So I've heard the issue has gone out to subscribers, the server is painfully slow, and new users are way up. I have a whole bunch of photos from the trip and stories up the wazoo that I hope to post in a day or two.

Sign of the times: A

Sign of the times: A search query on craigslist.org for "aeron" in the Bay Area-wide listings used to come up with one or two results. These days I get almost 20 results.

Who on earth is that

Who on earth is that on the cover of Brill's Content?!

Just when I thought I

Just when I thought I couldn't be any lazier, I discovered the snowcrash winamp plugin.

Let me set the stage: I have a laptop (on a wireless network) and desktop at home, with most of my files (music, website backups, file backups) on the desktop, which also has a nice set of speakers. I like to play music through the desktop system, but I'm usually across the room or down the hall enjoying the output. Occasionally, a crappy song comes on, or a song recorded at a higher level, and I have to stop what I'm doing, walk to my desktop, and adjust winamp.

Not anymore.

So today, I'm cranking music on the desktop, reading email in the next room on the laptop, and playing games on my playstation. I wanted to adjust the volume on the desktop machine, so I fired up a web browser on my laptop, pointed it at the local port running snowcrash, and changed the volume. While I played games, I could glance down at the laptop to see what song is playing, click a button to skip to the next track, and I could change the mix or add songs to the playlist.

Now that's lazy.

I was sorry to see

I was sorry to see my favorite daily news summary site (a newspaper blog?) All Star Newspaper killed yesterday, redirecting to the main Brill's Content site. I hoped the editor survived the Inside.com merger, even though 50% of the Brill's staff was cut, but now it seems like that wasn't the case. It was a good site and I wonder why Brill's would kill such a great property, but I guess I could read Slate's Today's Papers instead.

In the good news column, I finally found a great email client. It took a bit of customization, but The Bat comes the closest to being the perfect mail manager. It has threading, extensive filtering, and a great custom template editor. Eudora has served me well for over five years now, but threaded mailing list messages were just too good of a feature to pass up on The Bat.

I wonder if I'd ace

I wonder if I'd ace a class on weblogs. Will new media heavies get honorary PhD's from new media departments someday? Will there be new media departments in five years?

For no reason, here's my

For no reason, here's my custom desktop background at work (1280x1024, 100kb .gif).

There's not really much of an explanation for it other than I work for a Kleiner Perkins invested company, was goofing around their site, noticed images of Vinod on his profile page, so I stole a joke from a movie and threw the desktop together in a few minutes.

And now, for your moment

And now, for your moment of zen: Salma Hayek and a monkey

You know there's something right

You know there's something right with the world when jackass.com is a donkey and mule portal to breeders and services, and not some promotional site for a stupid tv show.

Did you realize it's the

Did you realize it's the year 2001 now? We live in the goddammed future! Robotic dogs, computerized cars, intelligent global information networks, and yet... we're still stuck with toast. With all the recent improvements in the fields of microprocessors, wireless technologies, and robotics, why haven't there been advances in speeding up the browning of bread?

For the love of god, we can slow down the speed of light. Why in the hell can't we speed up toast?!

You think the Jetsons had to wait for toast? The Millenium Falcon was able to make the Kessel run in less than 12 parsecs, you think Han and Chewie waited five minutes for a bagel each morning?

Processors can approach 2Ghz, wireless broadband can be ubiquitous, we can have personal devices capable of playing mp3s, recording hours of video, taking photographs, doing your taxes, getting your email, and telling you your global position, but I will not be impressed.

Not until I can get something toasted in less than 30 seconds.

MetaFilter comedy hour: Jason's drinking

MetaFilter comedy hour: Jason's drinking game, Adam's ideas for "name that metafilter", and Scott's board game. heh.

Things you should do today:

Things you should do today:
1. go to Scott's site and download One Sure Thing from his music page.
2. Download Back Around.
3. Download all the rest.
4. Tell him to create more.

My macrophages have seen better

My macrophages have seen better days, but I'm feeling better.

I'm pretty sure I'm enjoying

I'm pretty sure I'm enjoying my worst case of food poisoning ever. Even bread and water don't want to stay down. Eww.

April Fools.

April Fools.