Michael Hanscom

Sometime between 10:12 and 14:47, I thought this stuff was interesting. You might think so too!

• Sarah Palin’s Dead Lake: "Sarah's legacy as mayor was big-box stores and runaway growth," said Patty Stoll, a retired Wasilla schoolteacher who once worked in the same school with Palin's parents, Chuck and Sally Heath. "The truth is, Wasilla is just plain ugly, it's not a pleasant place to live. It's not thought out. And that's a shame. Sarah fouled her own nest, and I can't understand why. I hate to think it was simply greed or ambition." (The most common nickname for Wasilla when I was growing up in Alaska was "Wasyphilis", and that was before Palin got her hands on it.) (via Halsted)
• The Wheels Come Off Sarah Palin’s Not So Straight Talk Express: From calls from the National Review for her to drop out of the race (!) to the New York Times saying that she owes voters an explanation on the rape kits issue to news that she accepted $25,000 in gifts from lobbyists as governor to stories about anti-Semitic leanings by her pastor, it's just not turning into a good end of the week for Palin either.
• The Palin interview: The Economist: "…she rambled, she edited her own sentences recursively, she looked away from time to time, and her answers did not make sense—and I don't mean political sense; I mean they made no grammatical or logical sense." Sounds a lot like what I posted a day or two ago. (via gruber)
• Still think your single vote doesn’t matter? Think again.: Statistical analysis shows that in 2004, 57,787 votes would have given us President Kerry; and in 2000, 269 votes would have given us President Gore. In all there have been 12 US Presidential elections that were decided by less than a 1% margin; meaning if less than 1% of the voters in certain states had changed their mind to the other candidate the outcome of the election would have been different. (via Slashdot)
• Cisco home page FAIL: Cisco’s home page this morning: looks like they ran out of their allocation of lowercase letter ‘t’.

Sometime between September 25th and September 26th, I thought this stuff was interesting. You might think so too!

• Welcome WaMu: We're proud to welcome you to one of the nation's largest banks; as of September 25, 2008, JPMorgan Chase & Co. has acquired the deposits, loans, and branches of Washington Mutual. Your deposits remain insured by the FDIC and are now also backed by the strength and security of JPMorgan Chase. Our combined company will offer superior banking convenience – over 5,400 branches and 14,000 ATMs in 23 states. Here's what this means for you…
• FDIC: Bank Acquisition Information – Question and Answer Guide for Washington Mutual Bank, Henderson, NV and Washington Mutual Bank FSB, Park City, UT: It boils down to a name change, nothing to worry about, go about your business, nothing to see here.
• Election 2008 | powered by Twitter: Neat real-time stream of election-related tweets. Watch everything, or filter by the four main candidates.
• Palin On Foreign Policy Video: Oh, dear lord. This interview is a trainwreck. Palin's answers could be dropped into a political spoof and fit right in, they're that nonsensical. How anyone can listen to this woman and seriously think that she's capable blows my mind.
• Nina Katchadourian: Sorted Books Project: The Sorted Books project began in 1993 years ago and is ongoing. The project has taken place in many different places over the years, ranging form private homes to specialized public book collections. The process is the same in every case: culling through a collection of books, pulling particular titles, and eventually grouping the books into clusters so that the titles can be read in sequence, from top to bottom. (via unlibrarian)

Sometime between 06:45 and 12:22, I thought this stuff was interesting. You might think so too!

• McCain cancels Letterman. Letterman rips McCain: It’s one thing to irritate your opponent. It’s another to irritate a newsperson. But when you irritate the guy who’s made a living out of making people laugh for more than 26 years, any criticism may pack more of a punch. So when John McCain cancelled on Letterman – at the last minute – you could hardly expect that the comic would take it easy on him. He didn’t.
• Hack the Debate // Current: Current & Twitter have teamed up for the very first time to integrate real-time Twitter messages (aka "tweets") over major portions of a live television broadcast. Hack the debate by adding your Twitter posts to our live broadcast of the 2008 Presidential Debates. We will broadcast as many of your debate tweets as possible right over Obama & McCain, in real time, on our live broadcast.
• Retro Futurism: Crazy 1980s “New Wave” Princess Leia Poster: Very Nagel, pretty slick!
• Don’t drive iPhone developers away, Apple: If developers are afraid to write programs for the iPhone that aren’t games, to-do lists, and tip calculators, for fear that all their hard work will be wasted by a malicious or capricious Apple rejection notice, they will stop writing programs for the platform. And the well of innovative, interesting iPhone software will dry up. (via Daring Fireball)
• YouTube – David Letterman Reacts to John McCain Suspending Campaign: Heh — McCain ticked Letterman off. Letterman spends about six minutes laying into McCain for suspending his campaign and ditching his scheduled guest appearance on Letterman's show…and that's before he finds out that instead of "flying back to Washington" to work on the crisis, McCain's actually live with Katie Couric during the taping of Letterman's show.
• ⌘C ⌘V Character: Simple, fast way to use the most common extended characters (things like © or ½, but also including less common things like ‽, ♀, ☂, or ).

Sometime between September 23rd and September 24th, I thought this stuff was interesting. You might think so too!

• Tom’s Essay: Suzanne Vega tells the curious legend of “Tom’s Diner” — how an a capella ditty became a hit single and, eventually, a key component in the development of the MP3.
• Ten Ways to Celebrate National Punctuation Day: I'm sure I don't have to tell you that September 24 is National Punctuation Day. For weeks we've been gathering dashes, calling up old commas, and hiding gaily wrapped colons where (we think) the kids can't find them. So now that we've hung all those apostrophes with care, let's kick out the stops and celebrate! (via Seattlest)
• VH1 crowns Public Enemy’s “Fight the Power” No. 1 of 100 greatest hip-hop songs: At No. 2 is the Sugar Hill Gang's groundbreaking song, "Rapper's Delight," followed by Dr. Dre's "Nuthin but a 'G' Thang" at No. 3. Run-D.M.C.'s "Walk This Way" with Aerosmith and Grandmaster Flash & the Furious Five's "The Message" round out the top five.
• Democrats sue to keep Rossi a Republican: Rossi's listing his party as "prefers GOP" instead of "Republican", leading to confusion among voters who don't know the GOP nickname — enough confusion for a six-point jump in polls for "GOP Rossi" over "Republican Rossi". He's a shmuck and a Republican, this is a dirty, underhanded trick, and I hope he doesn't get away with it.
• Fake popup study sadly confirms most users are idiots: …the students seemed to find any dialog box a distraction from their assigned task; nearly half said that all they cared about was getting rid of these dialogs. The results suggest that a familiarity with Windows dialogs have bred a degree of contempt and that users simply don't care what the boxes say anymore. (via Slashdot)

Sometime between 10:22 and 15:40, I thought this stuff was interesting. You might think so too!

• Seattle collaborates with 22 banks and credit unions to offer services to people who have no bank accounts: The city is collaborating with 22 banks and credit unions to offer services to people who are "unbanked" — those who have no bank accounts and turn to high-cost payday lenders for their financial transactions.
• The World, Justified: It shows the world we live in as only one of four possibilities, the others being a left-aligned, centred and right-aligned world. Our world is a justified one, i.e. aligned with both left and right margins. (via Daring Fireball)
• Drobo Data Robot: Planning ahead. Much as we love 'em, my G5 and Prairie's iMac (iLamp) will need to be replaced someday. I'm thinking that with BluRay software support strongly rumored for OS X 10.5.6, and with the 24" iMac already sporting a full HD resolution screen, there's a strong chance that the next iMac revision will include BluRay drives. Pick up new iMacs then, transfer the two SATA drives in my G5 to a Drobo, and add the DroboShare to allow both machines to use the Drobo with TimeMachine.
• Adventures in Flickr biking: I need to try to remember this idea. I'm planning on picking up a bike next spring/summer, and I'm wondering how easily/inexpensively I could rig up some small camera/GPS combo and mount it to the front of the bike to do something like this. Ooh, wait, the Eye-Fi Explore uses SkyHook's pseudo-GPS functionality. That'd get me pretty close pretty easly (just find a way to mount the camera to the bike). Of course, if Skyhook doesn't speed up making adjustments to their database it won't be very accurate. Still, better than nothing, I suppose.
• New Trailer For Roddenberry’s ‘Trek Nation’ Doc Online: Gene Roddenberry’s son Rod Roddneberry has been working on a documentary about his father and Trek fandom for a few years. Over the summer TrekMovie reported that Roddenberry had hired a new editor (Emmy winner Allan Holzman) who was finally putting it all together and had created a new trailer, which is now online.
• Neighborlogs is for neighborhood blogging: I'm looking for a few more 'some people' types to join the Neighborlogs beta. We're looking for a few good bloggers who either are already writing neighborhood sites and want to take their effort to the next level or bloggers in other fields (animal husbandry, for example) who are crazy enough to give placeblogging a try. If you are interested or know somebody who ought to be, you can register for our beta here. Neighborlogs gives you all the tools you will need to create a great neighborhood site. And it gives you all of that for free. (via Seattle Metblogs)
• iPhone App Store: Let the Market Decide: It's a huge mistake for Apple to appoint themselves arbitrator of what's cool, or to even appear to do so. It's an equally huge mistake for Apple to decide that all innovation must come from Apple. (via Ranchero and Daring Fireball)

Sometime between September 20th and September 23rd, I thought this stuff was interesting. You might think so too!

• Flickr: Genres: Genre artwork for iTunes or any other use you see fit.
• Custom Genre Artwork for iTunes 8: iTunes 8 ships with a total of 52 genre artwork images, which are plain jpeg files contained in the software's application bundle, and a property list file determines which image is assigned to which genre. Customizing iTunes's genre artwork is as simple as copying an image file into the application bundle and editing the plist file.
• Bartell launches free CFL bulb recycling program: Bartell Drugs is providing free recycling of compact fluorescent light bulbs at its 56 locations in the Northwest. The drugstore chain is working with Seattle-based Total Reclaim to collect and recycle the bulbs, which contain small amounts of mercury. The stores will accept mini-twists, flood, globe, 3-way bulbs and other CFL bulbs. Fluorescent tube lights aren't being accepted.
• MPAA causes ‘Zack and Miri’ Poster to become BETTER: Zack and Miri Make A Porno, the next film to be released by Clerks creator, Kevin Smith, has had some issues in the past with the MPAA, mostly dealing with the final rating of the film.  Now, however, the MPAA has complained about the theatrical poster for the film. The new poster…is Smith’s comeback to their decision to prevent the first poster from being used.
• Nikon AF-S Nikkor 50mm f/1.4G: After years of "they really should…" conversations, Nikon's finally updating one of their old standard primes with internal autofocus for D40/40x/60 compatibility. Good choice for the first to arrive, too. No word on price yet. Worth noting in the preview image and info: M-M/A switch, metal mounting ring, supplied bayonet-style lens hood, filter ring does not rotate during focus, and it's now a Canon-size 58mm thread (rather than the old standard 52).
• Microsoft’s ‘I’m a PC’ ad images made on Macs: Four of the images that Microsoft made available on its PressPass site today display the designation "Adobe Photoshop C3 Macintosh" when their file properties are examined. The images appear to be frames from the television ads that Microsoft will launch later today. (Yes, this is petty and silly. It's also really amusing.)

Sometime between September 18th and September 19th, I thought this stuff was interesting. You might think so too!

• Twitter, ye markup be non-standarrrrrd.: I know this will make me sound like the annoying standardista, but how could anyone who still uses <center> still be doing web design professionally in, of all places, San Francisco? This is an element which has been deprecated for eleven years. Do we really have people who haven’t changed their coding practices since before 1997? (Also, as noted by wnalyd, going all AJAX-y broke accessibility. The redesign is pretty, but flawed.)
• Rollergirls win bout with Starbucks over logo: The roller derby team got into a bit of a dispute with Starbucks this spring after the coffee giant asked the team to change its logo, which it deemed too similar to its own.
• The 20 Best Worst Science Fiction Movies Of All Time: Not every movie gets to be the Oscar darling of its time, but sometimes we love the bad movies the most. These movies exist to be found in the bottom of bargain DVD bins and are met with squeals of excitement. Movies like Red Planet, Enemy Mine, The Faculty — these aren't successful by any standards other than the people that love them and treasure watching them for the 14th time. So I asked around and pulled a sampling of what I believe is the science fiction equivalent to Point Break. Here's our list of the greatest bad scifi movies of all time. (I want to go out and rent ALL OF THESE RIGHT NOW. At least the ones I don't own already.)
• Chuck’s ‘Buy More’ Versus Best Buy: Do Best Buy workers really watch movies in the stores' theater rooms? Do Geek Squad members (called the Nerd Herd on the show) really go joy-riding in the Geek-mobile? Is there really a special evacuation code word for use on Black Fridays? (via Engadget HD)
• Is there anything that can’t be made into a “sexy” halloween outfit?: I totally get the sexy costume idea for some of them – cheerleaders, witches, Playboy Bunnies, nurses, all of that stuff.  I even get the sexy Alice in Wonderland and Princess Peach and stuff like that.  But these… these are ridiculous. (Related: this YouTube bit for the Girls's Costume Warehouse) (via Mike and Mellzah)
• Fla. judge rules saggy-pants law is unconstitutional: A judge has decided a law banning sagging pants in this town is unconstitutional after a teenager spent a night in jail on accusations he exposed too much underwear. (This is good. As stupid as I think this fashion is, the law was ridiculous. From what I remember of the stories from when the law was first passed, the way it was presented, you could get busted and fined $150 for showing too many inches of your boxers above your pants — but if you took off your pants and just wore the boxers as shorts, you'd be fine.)

Sometime between September 17th and September 18th, I thought this stuff was interesting. You might think so too!

• Eat together, stay together: Mealtime — from prep to cleanup as well as the actual eating part — may help couples bond just as the family dinner has been shown to benefit kids, suggests a researcher at the University of Missouri who has been studying newlyweds. (Being able to eat together nightly has been one of the nicest side effects of my new job and having a 'normal' work schedule.) (via Unlibrarian)
• “Battle in Seattle” brings back memories of WTO riots: "The Battle in Seattle," a feature film based in the 1999 WTO riots in Seattle, opens this Friday. Reporter David Postman, who covered the riots for The Times, has seen the movie and talked to writer-director Stuart Townsend.
• Unscrambling the Claims of the Boastful Egg: Some claims on egg cartons are regulated by the federal government, some by the states and some not at all. Some affect consumers’ health, some touch upon ethics and some are meaningless. All purport to describe how the hens were raised, or what they were fed, or what extra benefits their eggs might provide. So, what do these terms mean? (via Danelope)
• Microsoft announcement tomorrow: No more Seinfeld ads!: Microsoft's version of the story: Redmond had always planned to drop Seinfeld. The awkward reality: The ads only reminded us how out of touch with consumers Microsoft is — and that Bill Gates's company has millions of dollars to waste on hiring a has-been funnyman to keep him company.
• New Hitchhiker’s Guide to be published… seven years after the author’s death: I'm really hard pressed to see this as anything but a Bad Idea prompted by nothing more than the desire to wring as much money as possible out of an established fan base. Not impressed.