A Whole Lotta Nothing

Quick, someone build me a LazyWebApp

For future reference: all the countries of the world as a MySQL table export file. Now I need to find a similar list of US States, as well as convert scripts from MySQL to Microsoft SQL Server.

Adding location data to an (admittedly US-centric) application isn't as hard as I thought. The standard set of data about countries of the world and their timezones have nice and neat ISO variants. Three tables, one of US States, one of countries of the world, and lastly a table of all the timezones are enough to add a good chunk of location information to your existing data. The weird part is that it wasn't easy to find this data online. You'd figure standard installs of any flavor of database would eventually require them. It's a shame there isn't an instant and easy way to update standard tables of common data for databases. It'd be great if there was something like the perl PPM system that allowed for network updates of common packages.

(thanks to some googling for MS SQL tips, here's my country list in MS SQL format, and thanks to Anil Dash for providing a MySQL state list, here's a converted to MS SQL format of all US States)

My mind says stop, but my hips cry proceed

Photos of xmas booty

Marge: What's Brunch?

Jacques: You'd love it, It's not quite breakfast, it's not quite lunch, but it comes with a slice of cantaloupe at the end. You don't get completely what you would at breakfast, but you get a good meal

-- [7G11]

Winter in Yosemite

I've been to Yosemite National Park at least half a dozen times since I was a kid, but I've never gone there in the dead of winter. In a couple weeks, I'll be there for a week, enjoying stuff like this and this. If I have internet access, I'll post daily photos, if not, a boatload will be uploaded when I get back. I can't wait.

It's called a teaser

If all goes well, I should be launching a new site next week, on the first. Keep your eyes peeled.

PacBell sucks: Part 2,343

Reason 4,234,451 to dislike PacBell/SBC: Since they co-branded their internet services with Yahoo, every link on the SBC site pointing to anything remotely internet or DSL related leads to an order page. I'm just trying to find their current list of dialup numbers (for use on the road) and it appears to be gone from their site. Since they use some sort of awful content management system with variable URLs, outside search engines can't find the pages either. It'd be nice if their site supported current customers, instead of funneling every request into advertising for new ones.

10 frustrating minutes with their search engine finally turned it up.

Time to upgrade to PGP-powered tin foil hats

This is by far, the worst idea I've heard in the wake of the September 11th attacks: a central database to monitor every network packet possible.

I've heard a lot of "chicken littles" screaming about falling skies and "1984" and "police states" over the past 15 months, but I never saw anything tangible worth getting worked up about. A constant and total wiretap on any and all online communication is the first tangible awful idea I've seen come down the pipe. Never mind that terrorists could get a free copy of PGP or GPG and operate just fine as encrypted packets even in a state of total surveillance. Never mind that every investigation into the US' lack of preparedness points to the US not having the organizational skills to properly handle the small sets of data they were getting previously. This will somehow keep us "safe." I also can't help but see the incredible hypocrisy coming from the President's party of "smaller government." If a gun doesn't need to be registered, and a computer doesn't need to be registered either, I would hope that I should be free to use a computer without surveillance just as I should be able to use a gun at a range or hunting without someone in washington having to know my constant position and what I'm doing with it.

So far this year, I've given the EFF about $200. I'm going to give them another $100 right now.

I'd actually call him Lessig the Black, since that's all he ever wears...

I gotta say, now that I've seen the movie, Gollum does kind of look like Steve Buscemi.

The Two Towers was an amazing movie experience that pulled me in like few other movies ever have. I'm starting to understand how lifetime fans of the book series feel, how they relate everything in the world to the story. I have this unstoppable urge to refer to others I work with as Lessig the White and Aaron the halfling. I'm sure I'll get over it eventually.

For now though, I must...resist...urge to buy figures.

Not too early to go pure xhtml/css

The Creative Commons site is the biggest site (in terms of traffic and exposure) I've ever done in fully valid XHTML 1.0 and uses quite a few bits of CSS for layout.

I get all the webmaster email, and apart from a few bugs, typos, and general questions, I haven't received a single complaint about the layouts in Netscape 4 browsers (I hide all CSS from NN4 users). I thought we might be thinking too far ahead going with a full XHTML/CSS site, but so far it looks like the general public can handle standard markup.

also: a handful of photos from the launch

20 things auction

Judith launched her 20 Things auction today, and there's a lot of great stuff being auctioned off for charity. I really like some of the pieces, and the bidding wars have already begun. I'm planning on going for the last minute swoop-and-bid to win.

Creative Commons is live

A little birdie told me that we launched the new Creative Commons website a day early.

I've released all my photographs under a license and will be doing the same for my essays this week.

Talking Points Memo: pretty damn impressive

Josh over at TalkingPointsMemo is digging up an amazing amount of info on the Trent Lott gaffe. He's the one that found the old amicus brief in favor of Bob Jones University (which was used as a source in the WSJ). He brought up an old article about Lott not voting in favor of a day to recognize lynching victims. This is a prime example of what can happen when people have tools available like the web to publish cheaply and reach a wide audience, it's great seat-of-your-pants journalism.

those wacky jehovah's witnesses

I just got a visit at my door from some concerned citizens that wanted to warn me about the horrors of video games. I suppressed my laughter at first -- you know you live in the suburbs when you have to entertain visits such as these.

The "horrible new game" they described is the runaway hit Grand Theft Auto 3. While I'll admit GTA3 definitely has some serious edge and pushes some boundaries, I don't see why it shouldn't be available for sale to adults (even though I don't own it myself). When I laughed after hearing them mention GTA3, they asked if I was familiar with the game and I said I was. I told them it was a game marketed to adults, isn't available to minors, and why should I as an adult not be allowed to play it due to irresponsible parents making it available to their children (by the way, kids have a good handle on the differences between fiction and reality, but I doubt anyone can make a connection between GTA3 and a rise in violence)? They didn't have an answer so I stated that I wasn't interested in what they had to offer.

To lighten the mode, one of the women made a joke asking me that since I played the game, had I gotten an increase in traffic violations? I answered with no, it's just a game that you play, not to be used for driving instruction. After they left, Google let me in on my suspicions: they were jehovah's witnesses with a copy of "awake" magazine. It makes me wonder though, did they change the name of "the watchtower" because people slammed doors upon seeing the well-known publication?

subverting copyright with Doujinshi

In an interview on the SXSW site, Lessig talked about comics in Japan. I knew that comics were huge, on a scale of popularity nothing like we see in the states, but I hadn't heard of "Doujinshi" before. Thousands of people are creating their own comics based on popular characters, re-telling stories, and/or making up new characters and situations completely, all with the support of the original comic artists (copyright law preventing derivative works be damned). It's fan fiction on a completely different level and definitely worth watching (though I must admit, Google gives me almost nothing besides galleries of work for searches about Doujinshi).

update: a good intro on doujinshi (thanks waxy)

SBC PacBell intends to phone spam everyone

From a local email list, definitely worth spreading:

"SBC PacBell is about to give your phone #'s to companies "...within the SBC Pacific Bell family of companies ..." Look in your November statements and you'll find an innocuous white postcard with a 'Business Reply Mail' header on it. If you read the statement, they're telling you that unless you contact them, they'll give your phone number to other companies within the SBC 'Family' so they can call you and sell you more stuff. I usually throw out the extra crap that comes with my phone bill without looking at it, but someone tipped me off. We have less than 40 days to contact them either by mail or web or by phone: 1-800-310-2355

If you _want_ to get lots more tele-SPAM then simply _do nothing_---what a great deal!"

KnowNow finally comes to its senses

I'm glad to see KnowNow re-embracing open source by releasing some of their application server technology. It appears to be the same code that wowed people almost two years ago at the first big KnowNow demo, and it's good to see the company get back to its roots. Back when I was a part of the company, I (and others on the web app team) sat in meeting after meeting in total disbelief as plans were made to abandon all developer relations, to stop being an open-source friendly outfit, and instead become an enterprise software corporation. Why they chose to abandon all the great buzz and community support they had in March of 2001 just to try turning a big buck (instead of free code, price tags in the tens of thousands were stuck to everything) on unproven software should be a lesson for MBA courses everywhere. Market buzz is about the best momentum you can have in a new startup, and doing everything you can to kill it is giving yourself the kiss of death.

Mark my works, once someone ports the code to an apache module you'll start seeing some wicked-cool applications using it. Heck, I'd finally make the switch to apache just to use it on MetaFilter (real-time message counts/comment output/instant messaging).

Verizon sucks, as always

I've been looking for a new cell phone for a while, and looked longingly at the t-mobile hiptop. I've been looking for a phone that has some serious memory for numbers, has a usable calendar, and some form of internet connectivity. The always-on web access, AIM client, and digital camera are all just gravy on my initial requirements, but definitely make it more useful.

The thing that's holding me back is that my old cell phone number is used by a few dozen friends and family as a primary way to contact me, and I've also got a couple hundred business cards with my old number. I recall hearing some news about how hard it was to transfer a mobile number from one company to another a couple years back but figured it was taken care of by now. I asked around and looked online for info and undercovered some astonishing stuff.

Even though you pay a good deal in taxes for mobile phones, the FCC has dragged their feet on the number portability issue, due mostly to Verizon's insistence. I love the way this site puts it: "Imagine an industry where customers are leaving more quickly than they are joining. If you were part of that industry, would you: 1) try to increase your level of customer satisfaction? or 2) fight any provision that would increase competition in your industry?"

It looks like another attempt by some companies to (ab)use obscure laws and regulatory agencies to protect their business models.

bottom of the weblog posting barrel

You know, if I was really busy working on a big launch, and I had nothing to say for a few days, I might actually hit the bottom of the weblog barrel and talk about my cats. Or even worse, talk about cat litter boxes. If I actually stooped that low, I would mention the night-and-day change a simple (tad overpriced, but worth it) product called Litter Pearls has made in our house. I would mention that having multiple cats in a small space sometimes leads to bad smells, but substituting pure moisture-absorbing desicant in place of litter knocks it all out in a way that comes close to being revolutionary.

But I'm not, so I won't.

the big xmas gift this year.

I've been trying to figure out what the big holiday gift this year is. eBay's 'holiday trends' list includes role playing card games and karaoke machines, but I haven't seen either in very many places. I've seen tiny R/C cars everywhere I look, so I'm guessing that's approaching xmas trend status. For adults, it seems like robot vacuums and iPods are getting a lot of play. I'm guessing this pointless gag gift will also be big in the gag shops that sprinkle malls across the land.

ye olde skool pyra

Whoa. While looking for something in an old image directory, I found this early 2000 screenshot

update: apparently there are still live pages available on the old server.

Not to put a damper on the guy's big day, but...

Strom Thurmond turned 100 today and while poking around stories about it, NPR had a small segment of a speech (realaudio) he made in 1948 defending segregation.

It's unbelievable, over-the-top ugly stuff, but worth a listen to remind ourselves of where we've been.

beating the terrorists one car at a time

Earlier this year, I found out that VW was making high mileage diesel powered cars. This week, when it came time to finally replace one of our old cars, I knew what we should consider first: a new VW. While looking around at the models, we found the turbo diesel was available in the Jetta Wagon, and I'm happy to say we're now the proud owners of a 2003 model.

Some of our reasons behind getting it and the great things about it:

- It gets almost 50 miles per gallon on the highway, nearly doubling and tripling our mileage compared to our other cars. At current nearby pump prices, about $25 in fuel will get us 600-700 miles.

- All that fuel economy doesn't necessarily come at the price of performance. It's a small engine, but it's turbo charged which gives it about as much power as a typical small gas engine (actually much more torque). In a couple hours of driving it around, I was pretty happy with its pickup and pep.

- It can run on biodiesel (actually runs cleaner and easier on the engine), which doesn't contain any fossil fuels at all. That's right, it's fuel you can home brew, without having to extract it from wells deep in the earth (not that I'd make fuel at home, but it's nice to know I don't have to dig up compressed old dinosaurs in Iraq if I needed to top off the tank in a pinch).

- There is tons of room inside, it's nearly SUV big, and can seat five people plus lots of junk in the back.

- Every auto buying experience I've had involved the worst kind of back-stabbing slimy salesmen until now. With no haggling at all, we got the jetta at the factory invoice price (about a $1,000 cheaper than other dealer quotes I got), with VW's 3.5% financing from a guy that was as close to a real-life Gil as I've ever met. The whole process was painless.

Although the hybrid gas/electric cars can also approach 50 mpg efficency and run cleaner, the jetta offered more space and better performance in addition to its ridiculously high fuel economy.

Creative Commons launch coming soon

I've been working on the Creative Commons site and the project behind the scenes for the past 9 months. The culmination of all that planning and work is finally going to see the light of day as we launch the site two weeks from today. Everyone and anyone who is interested in hearing DJ Spooky and Lawrence Lessig speak is invited (rsvp and details on the Creative Commons site).

It should be a fun night and I'm looking forward to finally unleashing all our ideas on the world. I can't wait to see how people use our stuff.