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// update //
More than 100 email messages offered assistance after the head of a Norwegian cultural center issued a plea for help accessing a set of archived historical documents whose archivist had died without leaving the password. And indeed, one proved to contain the correct password. A librarian predicted it would be known Monday if the password provides access to all the encrypted databases.
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blogging to be taught in journalism school
According to Wired, the phenomenon of blogging will be the subject of a seminar at the University of California at Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism. The students will be required to maintain their own Web log as part of the class, which the article called "the latest in a series of signs that the media establishment is starting to warm up to what was long seen as legitimate journalism's loud-mouthed kid sister."
By the way, I'm often asked to describe just what a blog is, and the Wired article provides a pretty good capsule: "A blog is, to oversimplify, a constantly updated combination of diary and link collection."
Coinciding with the World Cup is Robocup 2002, a soccer match pitting 200 teams of robots. The match displays the latest advances in artificial intelligence and robotics.
Meanwhile, the Beijing Daily News is embarrassed when it picks up a story about Congress demanding a new Capitol building--a story that ran in the spoof news site The Onion.
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no...just, no...
According to CNN, bonehead parents are attempting to give their kids a "competitive edge" in their future sporting endeavors by enrolling them in formal classes as an earlier age. Like, three years old. Check it out...toddlers staggering around with tennis racquets as tall as they are. Meanwhile, experts say a growing number of adolescents are burning out on sports because they aren't fun anymore. Maybe it's because rather than playing for the fun of it, they're pushed by hypercompetitive parents who have no sense of their child's worth when not stacked up favorably with other kids. And of course there's the increasing trend of sports injuries in kids, too...
For Pete's sake! My oldest girl is not quite three. Earlier this week she was at the park, and she played with an oversized toddler bat and ball. There's no way she had the coordination to hit the doggone ball, and I think she's very physically oriented, but that didn't matter; we were just having fun. She's just two, for pity's sake. These people need to give it a rest.
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script kiddies at it again
A new worm reminiscent of the infamous Anna Kournikova virus is spreading around the Internet. Like its predecessor, the Shakira worm appears as an email purporting to contain a photo of the Grammy-winning singer. Outlook users who double-click on the attached file launch a kit-built Visual Basic script that emails copies of the worm to the members of the user's Outlook address book.
Those of us who alter the default Windows setting that hides file extensions would even see the .vbs file extension (tacked on after the deceptive .jpg) that positively identifies the attachment as a VB script.
I'd wager my readers are a fairly tech-savvy bunch (OK, trio), but I'll say it once again: Never, ever, ever double-click on an attachment unless you're positive about its contents, even if it arrives from someone you know.
If you absolutely must have a picture of Shakira, here's one, courtesy of her Web site.
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link housecleaning
I've been gathering links on my desktop for a while, and they've been accumulating as I've been too busy to comment on them. So without further ado, I'd like to post these links for your amusement and bemusement.
Columnist urges the Bush Admininstration to agree to independent probe of Sept. 11th intelligence failures. Which commie pinko terrorist-lovin, American-hating liberal pundit dares utters such treason? George Will. (And again, while I enjoy the irony, I think his point is valid--by stonewalling, especially in the light what now appear to be real intelligence failures, the administration gives the no-doubt inaccurate impression of having something to hide. I note with interest that Bush is apparently about to embrace the creation of a Cabinet-level homeland security post. But perhaps White House spokesperson Ari Fleisher will insist that Bush was for the idea all along.)
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evel never rests
He's back! Famed stuntman and '70s icon Evel Kenievel, noted for his snazzy red-white-and-blue jumpsuits and aerial cycle stunts, said he plans to celebrate the opening of his highway cafe by undertanking a 200-foot cycle jump, his longest ever. The 63-year-old daredevil's current record is 165 feet, not counting his renowned attempt to jump the Snake River Canyon in a rocket-powered vehicle that nearly ended in disaster when wind snagged his parachute and blew the craft back into the canyon.
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another ramone passes
A moment of silence, please, for Dee Dee Ramone, who was found dead Wednesday in his home of an apparent drug overdose. He was 50.
You may recall Ramones lead singer Joey Ramone died last April of cancer. Teleport City recently posted this review of Joey Ramone's first and only solo album; check it out.
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astonishing coincidence
Last night I watched (for the first time, yet) Akira Kurosawa's Rashomon. Today I visit Roger Ebert's page at the Chicago Sun-Times, and lo and behold, his "Great Movies" review of--yes--Rashomon is linked prominently right up front.
On a related note, Hasbro has just announced a commemorative G.I. Joe figure modeled after legendary WWII war correspondent Ernie Pyle. It comes with a little typewriter and entrenching tool.
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Wednesday, June 05, 2002x
biker leathers don't become elektra
Amidst the popularity of the excellent Spider-Man movie, hopes are high for the upcoming Daredevil flick. Well, Comics Continuum has posted a photo of actress Jennifer Garner as Electra, and I must say, I hate the "reimagined" outfit they have her in.
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manual override
As a technical writer, I got a special kick out of a recent Wired News article about different cultures' approaches to software manuals. For example, in the US, half the calls to tech support address issues in the manual that comes with the product. Indeed, "RTFM" (for Read The F@#$ing Manual") is the standard geek response to a question whose answer lies in the book the asker obviously didn't read.
(Another response I just learned of courtesy of the MegaTokyo Forums is "STFW," for "Search The F@#$ing Web," meaning don't post questions whose answer can be found easily via Google or a similar search engine. One helpful soul in that discussion thread posted a link to an online lexicon of geek talk.)
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Tuesday, June 04, 2002x
the saddest thing i've ever seen
This is going to be a different sort of post, boys and girls. I'm going to delve into territory I don't often go into here: my feelings. As you've no doubt noticed, this isn't one of your confessional blogs; I ususally prefer the detached-ironic-commentary mode. Which, let's face it, is me all over. But something surprising happened to me yesterday: I came perilously close to a full-blown crying jag, and all because of a three-minute video clip.
Y'all know I also use this space to celebrate my geekiness. I had downloaded a couple hundred megabytes' worth of anime music videos from More Than Toast and burned them onto a CD-ROM. Anime music videos, as the name implies, is a music video someone makes by splicing together clips from one or more anime series. I've only recently become aware of them, but have been enjoying the ones I've found so far.
Yesterday, I watched a video of Paul McCartney's "Little Willow" set to footage from the anime movie "Grave of the Fireflies." I'd heard good things about the movie and planned to check it out, even though I knew it was a very sad film. I don't want to give too much about the plot away, but the film is about two children, a 14-year-old boy and his four-year-old sister, forced to fend for themselves after the firebombing of Tokyo in WWII.
More Than Toast editor Zabet distilled the footage and coupled it with McCartney's wistful tune. The result reached inside me and touched something. I suppose I've always had a soft spot for kids, but since having kids almost three years about three years ago, I really can't stand the thought of a child suffering. They can't control their surroundings; they're really at the mercy of the world. It made me think of my own girls, and how dependent they are on me, and how I can't protect them from everything.
Movies and music are amazing things, really. The characters in Grave of the Fireflies don't really exist. (Well, actually they sorta did...the author of the novel the movie's based on really did undergo a similar experience, and his book is wiedely regarded as dealing with his guilt at having survived. I can't imagine how that must have felt...well, I can, which is I suppose the point of all this.) But just three minutes of footage--happiness juxtapoased with suffering--reduced me practically to tears, and affected my mood for hours. I've since read reviews that claim the movie is an unforgettably moving experience, and I beleive it.
Compassion isn't too cool...there are segments of society that view concern for other people as sentimental hogwash (does the term "bleeding heart" ring a bell?), and more than one politician has cynically exploited voters' perceptions of compassion. But compassion counts. I've really been a little discomfited by the way the last couple of wars we've fought have been generally remote, gunsight-video-on-CNN affairs. They remind me of the Star Trek episode "A Taste of Armageddon," about two planets who'd rendered their war so sterile and impersonal that it'd endured for 500 years. Now, Kirk ususally wasn't one to hesitate from whipping a few photon torpedoes upside someone's planet, but he had a point--war is to be horrible, that's why you try to avoid it. I don't regret what we did in Afghanistan--if anything, I'm pissed at bin Laden and the Taliban, who as much as used the Afghan people as human shields to conduct their nasty little holy war. And Iraq really might pose some kind of threat, who knows. But if and when the current administration embarks on a "regime change," I'll be thinking of the kids who don't know bin Laden from Britney Spears and are suffering and dying anyway.
I don't really want to think about this, but after I got home (and hugged my kids tight, you betcha), I'd surfed the Internet, cooked dinner, gone to the grocery, watched an anime video, and played PlayStation. By the end of the evening, I'd felt the return of my smug comfort, believing that I'd never have to decide if my babies got to eat, or I did...and yet there are children in India, in Africa, in Iraq, and probably in Afghanistan who are probably going through something very much like what was depicted in the movie.
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interplanetary
As I've mentioned before, I've noticed a couple of cool blogs courtesy of Blogger's recently updated list. One that just caught my eye is another celestially-titled blog, Planet Jen. She even uses the same NASA pic of Saturn in her banner!
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commie pinko tree-huggers...oh, wait, never mind
It's an article of faith among the conservative blogosphere that global warming is either 1) a myth or 2) occurring naturally with no help from human activity (the fact that the warming has been commensurate with 150 years of increasing use of fossil fuels and ongoing deforestation being, of course, coincidental). And who knows, maybe they have a point. Although my perception is that scientific consensus acknowledges a causal link, the global climate system is hideously complex and difficult to measure.
But a new source has weighed in, acknowledging in a report that global warming is caused by greenhouse gases contribured at least in part by burning fossil fuels. So which bunch of anti-industry, über-green, tree-hugging, fuzzy-science pinkos is it this time?
...Seriously, though, while I enjoy the irony, the EPA position outlined in the cited article holds that while evidence supports a causal link between fossil fuels and global warming, the extent of that causal relationship versus natural climate change is extremely difficult to judge. That's a completely reasonable position.
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you have got to be kidding
In this morning's AnchorDesk column, David Coursey opines about the ongoing game console wars. Specifically, he examines the competition between industry leaders Nintendo and Sony and compares it with the disastrous competition between WordPerfect and Lotus, which once dominated the office productivity application field. When the dust settled, Microsoft Word and Excel had become (and remain) the de facto standard, with WordPerfect and Lotus reduced to all but irrelevance.
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welcome back, mr. jones
Indiana Jones will return for a third sequel in the summer 2005, according to the Paramount movie studio. Oscar-nominated writer Frank Darabont, who directed The Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile, has been tapped to do the screenplay, with Raiders director Steven Spielberg and star Harrison Ford returning as well.
The story mentions that the term "geographically undesirable" used to point to a long-distance relationship—say, D.C. to Chicago. Now it can mean the other side of the Beltway.
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commemoration
Remebering the 60th anniversary of the Battle of Midway (June 4-7, 1942). For those unfamiliar with history, the battle marked a turning point in the Pacific Theater of World War Two, as the Imperial Japanese Navy lost four of the carriers that participated in the attack on Pearl Harbor. Worse, many skilled pilots lost their lives. The victory also cemented the Allies' hold on Midway Island, from which air and naval attacks on Japanese territory would be launched.
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Sunday, June 02, 2002x
pros and cons
I haven't been to a con (a science fiction, gaming, anime and general geeky stuff convention) in ages and ages. But as I was signing on to Blogger, I noticed in the "Recently Updated" column a blog by three young ladies who just attended Project A-kon down in Dallas. Their blog shows photos of them in cosplay, or costume play. One of them dressed as Rinoa afrom Final Fantasy VIII, and another as Pirogoeth, a character drawn by the artist of Megatokyo. Fun stuff.
I actually plan to attend a con sometime next year...I strongly doubt I'll cosplay, though.
Enough of this...time for some Final Fantasy VIII before bedtime.
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k-pop goes the weasel
Prompted by some commentary on the forums at Destroy All Monsters, I've been meaning to expand my limited knowledge of Korean music, or Kpop. Among my activities this weekend, I downloaded some music by several Kpop acts. I'm liking it so far. I burned a CD of a full album by the all-female group Fin.K.L (which stands for "Fine Killing Liberty," apparently). I got their third album, Now, but I haven't had a chance to listen to it all the way through yet.
Now
Feel Your Love
Eternal Love
My Love
Waiting For What
One Fine Day
Love Is Drafting
The First Kiss
Pure Love
I Love School
Sting
Remember Me
Dear Man
In addition, I snagged two music videos by Fin.K.L, one by SES and one by the lovely and talented Park Ji Yoon. I burned them, along with a collection of k-pop by the aforementioned artists, onto a hybrid music/data CD—the first time I've had occasion to burn one.
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a relaxing weekend
Obviously I didn't get anything posted to my blog until now (it's actually late Sunday night local time; my posts are dated Greenwhich Mean Time. My apologies to my loyal reader (both of you).
