2008 Nov 16, 10:13"Imagine my mild surprise when I discovered that the woman who terrorized me in my final days in high school is the face of Proposition 8. Sonja Eddings Brown is everything you would expect a
Proposition 8 supporter to be: someone with misplaced values and a knack for being a big bully. Yes, a middle-aged mother of three went out of her way to threaten to kick a high school senior out of
her valedictory speaking position simply because the student refused to have (strange) words placed her mouth and to be used as a propagandistic advertising vehicle."
politics education california sonja-eddings-brown high-school via:kris.kowal 2008 Nov 16, 10:10"Joshua Callaghan disguises utility boxes by pasting pictures onto them of the scenery behind, thereby creating the illusion of an uninterrupted view."
art streetart graffiti urban via:swannman 2008 Nov 16, 9:48Flickr's Developer Blog has some interesting posts including various folks personal projects that use Flickr.
development flickr monthly blog web 2008 Nov 15, 12:45Lame: "Question: Is it possible for us to write custom gadgets for the home screen like the clock or the Google search box? Is there a public API for this purpose? ... No, such an API does not exist
and won't exist in 1.0."
development google android g1 howto 2008 Nov 9, 11:29
I finally replaced my old regular cell-phone which was literally being held together by a rubber band with a fancy new G1, my first Internet accessible phone.
I had to call the T-Mobile support line to get data added to my plan and the person helping me was disconcertingly friendly. She asked about my weekend plans and so I felt compelled to ask her the
same. Her plans involved replacing her video card so she could get back to World of Warcraft and do I enjoy computer gaming? I couldn't tell if she was genuine or if she was signing me up for
magazines.
I was with Sarah in her new car, trying out the phone's GPS functionality via Google Maps while she drove. I switched to Street View and happened to
find my car. It was a weird feeling, kind of like those Google
conspiracy videos.
The phone runs Google's open source OS and I really enjoy the application API. Its all in Java and URIs and mime-types are sort of
basics. Rather than invoking the builtin item picker control directly you invoke an 'intent' specifying the URI of your list of items, a mime-type describing the type of items in the list, and an
action 'PICK' and whatever is registered as the picker on the system pops up and lets the user pick from that list. The same goes if you want to 'EDIT' an image, or 'VIEW' an mp3.
I wanted to replace the Google search box gadget that appears on the home screen with my own search box widget that uses OpenSearch descriptors but apparently in the current API you can't make home screen gadgets without changing
parts of the OS. My other desired application is something to replace this GPS photo tracker device by recording my
location to a file and an additional program on my computer to apply those locations to photos.
tmobile personal api phone technical g1 android google 2008 Nov 9, 11:18
This past Tuesday I voted in my first presidential election. Of course I was eligible twice before so don't tell my social studies teacher. I
read about folks who stood in line for twelve hours waiting to vote but I personally had no issues. I found the voting location around 10am and it seemed appropriately busy: There were people
voting but no lines. I came in and looked confused until an elderly lady gave me a paper to bubble in. The voting booth was more like a fold out voting table at a very awkward height and in the end
my back ached. It feels better to vote in person and have a back ache after. Its more like I've accomplished something.
personal voting 2008 Nov 7, 4:06'A live "drawing on whiteboard" version [of pong], mixing electronics with the joy of drawing on, wiping off and repositioning your playing bat. Check it out, thrill to the high-speed action and grin
at the ultimate use of a whiteboard: so much better than the usual business drivel that gets drawn on them.'
humor video interactive whiteboard pong game 2008 Nov 6, 6:27Examination of the who and why behind those 'Single?' lawn signs: 'At this point, I came to the realization that every question I answered seemed to introduce two more. In this case, they were "did
someone hire these firms or are they acting on their own?" and, more confusingly, "how did a web design firm in Panama or India get a lawn sign physically planted in the front lawn of my high school
in South Jersey?"'
sign blog marketing dns advertising business web internet research 2008 Nov 6, 6:24Comparison of various website's US presidential election maps: "Most media outlets covering the 2008 US Presidential Election used the familar red/blue map to track the progress of the race as
results from the polls rolled in Tueday evening. Here are several of those maps, in some ways as similar to each other as they are varied."
map visualization geography president election vote voting politics 2008 Nov 6, 6:17Sarah and I at Jen's Halloween party.
costume me sarah jen-trahan halloween photo 2008 Nov 6, 6:16Jen's halloween photo albums.
photo friend halloween costume jen-trahan 2008 Nov 5, 3:51This site has example implementations for feedsync: "The FeedSync Specification is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike License and the Microsoft Open Specification Promise.
Microsoft encourages developers to create independent implementations of the FeedSync specification. See the Developer page for more information on how to write a FeedSync enabled application, and
the Implementations page to see how people are using FeedSync already."
free software development feedsync feed microsoft live windows rss sse 2008 Nov 5, 3:48MS Live Labs has a feed sync service for generically managing feedsync feeds (formerly SSE). "Welcome to the FeedSync Service. Sign in to setup and manage your FeedSync feeds today!"
sse feedsync feed windows microsoft live tool rss beta 2008 Nov 5, 9:43Proposed new arbitrary TLDs are super expensive. As it turns out large companies have to buy their name on every new TLD to avoid potential fraud.
dns tld domain economics security iana ietf 2008 Nov 4, 1:33Kid dresses up as voting booth for Halloween collecting candy as votes in either a McCain or Obama bag and tallies the results on CandyVote.com: "Welcome to CandyVote.com - The results are in!"
humor video politics election obama mccain voting halloween costume 2008 Oct 31, 7:10Bruce Schneier pointed out this book: "A Million Random Digits with 100,000 Normal Deviates (Paperback)". Its 600 pages of random numbers. I'd get a copy if it didn't cost $90! From the stats page
Amazon lists the 100 most used words in the book: "6 8 11 19 23 28 30 32 37 38 42 47 52 54 56 60 72 77 80 84 86 92 101 102 107 108 111 115 125 126 131 143 147 148 150 157 158 163 166 167 171 179 183
188 190 197 206 207 212 215 218 220 226 228 230 234 236 242 247 249 251 253 261 265 272 292 297 304 311 323 332 336 337 338 344 345 354 356 358 359 364 371 372 374 384 389 391 409 412 413 421 433 436
443 457 481 489 516 517 642"
via:schneier random book humor math csc 2008 Oct 31, 2:37"The Microsoft Active Accessibility SDK provides several utilities that can be used by both clients and servers as testing tools."
msdn microsoft accessibility tool free download 2008 Oct 30, 12:13On hearing news of Live ID supporting OpenID this is pretty much exactly what I was thinking: "With every big portal acting as a provider but not a consumer of identity credentials, users are still
going to wind up creating accounts for more than one service (says this user of Flickr and Google Calendars). When it comes to third-party sites, they may not need to remember a new username and
password, but they will have to remember to which of the providers they chose to provide the credentials for their account. Anyone who slips up may wind up with three or more identities on a single
website, with different data associated with each."
openid identity microsoft google 2008 Oct 29, 10:22If this is true Charles Stross is going to have to rewrite a story or two.
via:kris.kowal algorithm csc
The weekend before last Sarah and I went down to Gas Works Park in Seattle. Gas Works Park is a former Seattle Gas Light Company gasification plant now turned into a
park with the machinery kept intact and found right on the shore of Lake Union. There's a large hill right next to the plant with an embedded art installation from which you get an excellent view
of the park and the lake. Anyway a very cool place. Afer, we ate at Julia's of Wallingford where I stereotypically had the Santa Cruz
omelet. Good food, nice place, nice neighborhood.
This past weekend was Halloween weekend. On Halloween at Microsoft parents bring their kids around the office buildings and collect candy from those who
have candy in their office. See Matt's photo of one such hallway at Microsoft. The next day Sarah and I went to two birthday parties the second of which required costume. I went as House (from the
television show House) by putting on a suit jacket and carrying a cane. Sarah wore scrubs to lend cred. to my lazy costume. Oh yeah and on Sunday Sarah bought a new car.
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