Vegas, baby! I'm here in Las Vegas, enjoying a few days of sun and fun before the Web Builder conference starts tomorrow. I'll be speaking on Tuesday: a panel on content management systems and a session on microcontent management systems. If you're in town for the conference, be sure and come by, at least to say hi!
Month: September 2002
The Lords of Dogtown
Greg Beato wrote in with a bunch of background information about the Dogtown film I talked about last week. Back in 1999, Greg wrote an article for SPIN magazine entitled, The Lords of Dogtown. The literary rights were eventually optioned by a studio with the intent to create a fictionalized film, and many featured skaters optioned their life rights as well, but not Stacy Peralta. Peralta decided to write and direct a documentary on the early days instead, scrounged up funding, dug up old archival footage of all of them skating and surfing back in the day, and the result was Dogtown and Z-Boys. Rad, as they say.
Googlecooking
We've got Googlewhacking, Googlebombing and now we can add Googlecooking to our lexicon. My mother types whatever ingredients she has on hand into Google and then picks the most appealing recipe returned in the results. What a good idea!
What's funny is I've always wanted a database of all my cookbooks so I could do just this. It never occurred to me to use Google instead. If I didn't have dinner plans, I'd try it tonight. I wonder what it would return for rotten basil and an onion?
Get Back to Happy Mac
Fishback Research has released a program called "hello Jaguar" that returns the Happy Mac! This software installs an edited version of the boot loader found in Mac OS X 10.2 "Jaguar" which brings back everyone's favorite friend, the Happy Mac. After installation, your computer will restart, and you can see the familiar icon smiling back at you. Woo hoo!
Audioblogging Ahoy!
A really neat article on the up-and-coming meme of audioblogging that uses OS X scripting and AppleScript, AppleScript: Automated Audio Blogging. If I find some time in the next few weeks, I'd like to try this out. I've been meaning to dig into AppleScript since I got the iBook and haven't yet gotten around to it. I don't know if I'm keen on being an audioblogger myself, but it could provide an interesting alternative voice (literally!) for this site.
Thomas Keller in the NY Times
How to Boil Four-Star Water: A Master Class is a New York Times' article about French Laundry chef Thomas Keller and his approach to food. Less focus this time on his perfectionism and more general details about his approach in the kitchen. And more about his use of the word "finesse."
Bring Back the Happy Mac
Several readers have written to share this link about modifying your boot image in Jaguar (Mac OS X.2). This allows one to solve the problem of the missing Happy Mac icon. I haven't tried it yet, but perhaps I will once I finally upgrade.
Mag Lev in the wild
All this time, I thought mag lev trains were dead, but it looks like there's one in the wild (or almost). A 40-mile link between Shanhai and its new airport will be serviced by the mag lev train. While that's cool and all, I kinda wish they were going a little further — maybe a train between Shanghai and Beijing, for example. 40 miles doesn't seem like enough distance to really get up to speed and appreciate the ride. Imagine going 300 mph in a train! I hope someday we get them here in the US. It'll make the Acela look like a rinky-dink freight train.