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Ideapad
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October 30, 2000 +

My site host lost another 90 emails of mine this weekend.

This is the third time now, and they have yet to explain to me why, or tell me they were investigating the problem. Great company, eh?

I saved most of my email this time, but if you sent me anything between Thursday and Monday, please send it again. If you find this aggravating, email support@softcomca.com and tell them so.

Way to go, guys. You have just about lost my business.

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October 27, 2000 +

Friday is Funday here at the Ideapad.

Naked News is a lot funnier than I expected it to be. And, actually, it's more entertaining with the sound on (just like real porn!).

The Fat Project is trying to determine whether otherwise rational and attractive adults can intentionally gain 30 pounds in 30 days. (Most of us gain weight by accident, but never mind that.) The daily summaries are fun, as are the charts -- anyone who's ever performed a quasi-scientific experiment for personal amusement will love it. (saw this and forgot about it three weeks ago; reminder via MetaFilter this morning)

Someone hacked the Yankees web site after they beat the Mets to win the World Series last night (yeah Yanks!). And boy, the hackers did some seriously evil damage. I took a screenshot but it's too nasty to share (although I'll link to it if I find it preserved somewhere else). Looks like the work of a Mets fan all right.

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October 26, 2000 +

This month's Vanity Fair, a music special, has a great piece by Elvis Costello listing his choice of 500 essential albums. I want to use it as a checklist and post a running tally on this site as I fill in some of the gaps in my collection.

But hey, Vanity Fair doesn't have the article on its website. VF has nothing on its web site, actually, except a subscription push and, unbelievably, four advertisements. (They also seem to be running Vignette Story Server. Dig the irony.)

I want that list in a digital format. If you know how I can obtain a copy -- or, even better, if you work for them and can snag me a file -- please give a holler.

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Well, I wanted to play with a Modo to see how it compared to Vindigo, but so much for that.

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The witty observation of the day comes froms John Paczowski in Wednesday's Good Morning Silicon Valley: "The Instant Messaging and Presence Protocol working group -- the industry group charged with establishing an IM standard -- says it has decided not to choose a standard, and will instead charge someone else with that responsibility, leaving one to wonder just why the group was assembled in the first place."

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October 25, 2000 +

Back online on a regular basis. And, as they say, there was much rejoicing. (Yay.)

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My site host lost 90-some-odd emails of mine Friday. If you sent me anything between the 12th and the 20th, please send it again. (My host is trying to find a backup, by the way.)

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Cameron muses: "The upcoming Subway Series here in New York will surely be an interesting study in group dynamics. ... I wonder about the worst-case scenario. Are there going to be silly riots after one of the teams loses?"

No, Cam, there aren't. New York is, amazingly, a sane sports city, unlike, say, Los Angeles and Chicago. When the Yanks won the World Series in 1996, police braced themselves for a wild night. And what happened? Very little. And in 1998, there were no arrests at all. With the Subway Series, there's bound to be a few bar fights and broken noses after one team (the Yankees, of course) takes it all, but not much else.

New Yorkers are brash, stubborn and noisy. But in general they haven't done anything stupid lately, Senatorial candidates aside. Sleep tight.

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You've come a long way, baby: Check out this 1993 Wired article about the new "World-Wide Web (W3)". In 1993 I used Bitnet to email through my school's vax, and I knew of folks (not me, I got bored) using Fetch and Gopher to download porn via FTP. (found in an aside on MetaFilter)

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October 22, 2000 +

My brother has taken to reading a handful of weblogs regularly. We've discussed them numerous times this weekend, as I try to find out what he reads, what he likes, and why.

And while I have rather deliberately avoided putting up a link list on this site, I thought I'd share my sources for a change. (Really, though, my readers should just come here all the time, but you knew that.)

My weekly surf includes the following, in alphabetical order. There are no links here, primarily because I'm too lazy to hand-code 34 links while I'm on vacation, but use your imagination:

Daily news: CNet News.com, Good Morning Silicon Valley, Salon Technology, Yahoo FYI.

Weblogs and commentary: Camworld, Dack, Anil Dash, Evhead, Goodexperience.com, A Jaundiced Eye, Linkinlog2000, MrBarrett, the Nubbin, Peterme, rc3.org, Sippey.com, What's in Rebecca's Pocket?

Wordsmiths: Eatonweb, Elan.org, An Entirely Other Day, Ftrain, Kottke.org, Lancelog2000, Mo Nickels, NYC and Me, Powazek Productions, Stating the Obvious, Uber.nu, Whatever-Whenever, ~carl.

Link heaven: Fark, memepool, MetaFilter, Tomalak's Realm.

Some of these sites I visit daily, some only once in a while. Some I like a whole lot more than others. And there are many, many sites in my bookmark file that are not listed here for assorted sundry reasons; many apologies for my exlusionary tactics.

OK, folks, thus concludes the sightseeing. Surf at your own risk.

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October 18, 2000 +

Dun-dun dun-dun-dun Let's go Yankees

Dun-dun dun-dun-dun Let's go Yankees

Dun-dun dun-dun-dun Let's go Yankees

Dun-dun dun-dun-dun Let's go Yankees

Dun-dun dun-dun-dun Let's go Yankees

Dun-dun dun-dun-dun Let's go Yankees

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Microsoft Announces Windows in Cars. That really is a great headline. (from goodexperience.com, witty comment and all)

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October 17, 2000 +

With apologies to Adam Sandler:

Paul Newman's half Jewish
And Goldie Hawn's half too
When they get on the web, we'll tell 'em
Half Jew dot com's for you!

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October 16, 2000 +

On PDN, Zeldman discusses: Do print art directors make the best web designers?

In a word, Mediaweek.

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October 13, 2000 +

We Made Out in a Tree and This Old Guy Sat and Watched Us.com. Heh.

Neale linked to this (I assume) for the URL; I happen to like the content: "Odd quotes, strange statements, bad writing and other oddities of the English language." If they find a reference to "killing the fatted cow," I'll be hooked forever.

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October 12, 2000 +

Digging the new Harvey Danger album, King James Version. Entertainment Weekly called it "too clever by half," which is amazingly accurate. Catchy, witty, cool.

I try and avoid discussing music in this space -- that's what the Now Playing box is for -- but I'm on a big new music kick right now. (Which is bad news for my mainstream friends who will be driving to Pennsylvania with me tomorrow.)

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October 11, 2000 +

Jami Attenberg on the merits of getting offline once in a while:
The web makes my eyes bleed sometimes, and the work I just finished will be in a book. Books are sturdy. You can put them on shelves. You can loan them to friends. You can check them out of libraries, put them in backpacks, walk to a cafe, buy a coffee, and then go sit in a park and read them. You can use ticket stubs or ribbons or receipts or photos or envelopes or napkins to mark your place in books.


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October 10, 2000 +

My free TiVo (Mom's free TiVo, that is) arrived the other day. Awwww yeah.

Good news: They sent me (well, her) the 30-hour model instead of the stripper 14-hour one. Bad news: I still don't want a TiVo (and neither does she).

So eBay, here we come. I am (we are) not going to sell it till after my trip, whereupon I (her -- oh, fuck it) should clear more than $250 on its sale, which will probably fund some other nifty gadget purchase over the winter.

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October 6, 2000 +

From my vantage point, the Economist.com redesign is going over quite well. I've received a lot of customer service email forwards that say things like this, which are gratifying and reassuring:
Hey, now you've got a web site and not just a magazine reproduction. So far, it looks very clean and serviceable. It's got that special quality of, what I'll call "sequential allusiveness", meaning that the stories and references are intelligently planned to enhance the user's pleasure in hopping around for further information. Could have called it "stickiness" but there's something more.
Of course, there's always some fun kiss-offs, too:
Congratulations! you have managed to turn a unique looking and highly useful web site into one with the look and feel of every other newspaper web site in the world. The same cluttered cumbersome design requiring endless fusty search to find what is useful and the same crabby search engine that drives every web surfer up the wall. ... I would have expected The Economist to know better but I guess herd instinct is as strong in your shop as it is elsewhere on the panic stricken web.
And one has to appreciate the intellectual level of Economist readers. "Sequential allusiveness?" Now that's a solid compliment.

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October 5, 2000 +

Gripe time.

I don't understand why magazine sites don't post their articles online. I read a great quote from Bill Maher on the elections in Time Out New York last night, which I wanted to share in Pathetic America. But TONY does not have a whit of editorial content on its site beyond its guides. So much for that. Note that I didn't link to TONY either.

I also get annoyed when I read song lyrics on other folks' weblogs. If I wanted to get Soul Coughing stuck in my head, I'd play it myself. Music freak that I am, you should be thankful that I don't maintain a page listing all the songs I hum in the course of a day.

And I don't get why art-director types with salaries higher than mine apply for a job titled Web Designer when it's clearly below their experience levels and (ostensibly) aspirations. Those resumes aside, I have been enjoying interviewing people this week. Interviews are fun.

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October 4, 2000 +

I have been a fan of the New York Yankees since I was old enough to go to a ballgame. But the way they're playing, I get the sense it won't be long before I have no choice to root for the upstart Oakland A's.

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October 2, 2000 +

Economist.com relaunched last night.

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Copyright © 2000 David Wertheimer. All rights reserved.