Noted sci-fi/cyberpunk author William Gibson has just started his blog. No RSS feed, though, which means I’ll probably forget to check it on a regular basis. Bummer.
(via Jason Kottke)
Searchling
I just stumbled across Searchling, a very cool little mini-application for OS X. When running, it adds a system-wide search field that allows you to search Google, Slashdot, or a few other sites.
The coolest bit, though, is that the search options are defined by a simple XML file. So, I did a bit of digging, figured out the syntax (which really wasn’t all that hard), and added djwudi.com to the search options!
On the off chance that another OS X user might want to add me to Searchling, here’s the code to add:
<dict>
<key>name</key>
<string>djwudi.com</string>
<key>types</key>
<array>
<dict>
<key>type</key>
<string>Web</string>
<key>url</key>
<string>http://www.djwudi.com/cgi-bin/search/search.pl?
nocpp=1&Match=1&Realm=All&Terms=</string>
</dict>
</array>
</dict>
(Note: the string between <string> and </string> is one continuous line, a linebreak has been added here for readability.)
Update: As I’m no longer weblogging at djwudi.com, the above XML snippet won’t actually work. I’m leaving it up here, though, as a handy example of how to add things to Searchling.
So many books, so little time
In a fortuitous bit of serendipity, I just re-discovered a website I’d found a few months ago, but forgotten to bookmark — All Consuming, which scans recently updated weblogs for Amazon book links, and uses that data to track what books are currently popular in the weblog world. Nifty stuff to explore!
Amusingly enough, there’s a feature in the top right that lists the first line of a book for you to attempt to guess the source, which reminded me of a bookstore up on Broadway on Capitol Hill that does the same with a readerboard on the sidewalk. As it turns out, that very bookstore is where All Consuming’s webmaster got the idea! Small world, I tell ya.
Incidentally, though, I’ve never run across a first line up at the bookstore that I knew. Hm. Guess I just haven’t read enough yet!
Web Writing Style Guide
on a side note, i wonder when somebody will get the hair to standardize style and do a stylebook specifically for the web? Like MLA, AP, Chicago Manual of Style, etc.
— Kirsten, in a comment on this site
Your wish is granted!
Well…er…sorta. I don’t think this is quite what you were aiming at. Pretty accurate, though!
No matter what Flash-blinded web monkeys would have us believe, the Internet is a text-based medium: especially its major discussion forums (IRC and Usenet) where people from all over the world can interact and share information. A popular misconception about text messages on the Internet is that, to be an effective communicator and earn the respect and admiration of your peers, you must be able to write lucid prose; that your messages, articles, posts and pages must be easy to understand and pleasant to read.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
Popular sites filled with cutting-edge Internet cognoscenti (such as Slashdot and ShackNews) give the lie to this harmful and destructive myth: they are brimming with horrific grammar, atrocious spelling, gratuitous abbreviation and childish, arrogant attitude. To be “in” on the net, you must write like a wanker.
As far as when someone will write a real style guide, I’m not sure, though it wouldn’t really surprise me if there were one already out there and I just haven’t stumbled across it yet. Pointers, anyone?
Fine tuning
A few more changes to the main page here, as I work my way through the ideas I’ve got running around in my noggin.
Can corporations lie?
We may congratulate ourselves that this cruel war is nearing its end. It has cost a vast amount of treasure and blood. The best blood of the flower of American youth has been freely offered upon our country’s altar that the nation might live. It has indeed been a trying hour for the Republic; but I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country.
As a result of the war, corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed. I feel at this moment more anxiety than ever before, even in the midst of war. God grant that my suspicions may prove groundless.
— President Abraham Lincoln, November 21, 1864
Nearly one hundred and forty years ago, towards the end of the Civil War, Pres. Lincoln foresaw the rising power of the corporations that had grown the most due to wartime industries, and penned the above quotation in a letter to Colonel William F. Elkins. Now, in a case heading for the U.S. Supreme Court, the corporate world may be fighting to hold onto everything that Pres. Lincoln feared, and that has come all too true.
While Nike was conducting a huge and expensive PR blitz to tell people that it had cleaned up its subcontractors’ sweatshop labor practices, an alert consumer advocate and activist in California named Marc Kasky caught them in what he alleges are a number of specific deceptions. Citing a California law that forbids corporations from intentionally deceiving people in their commercial statements, Kasky sued the multi-billion-dollar corporation.
Instead of refuting Kasky’s charge by proving in court that they didn’t lie, however, Nike instead chose to argue that corporations should enjoy the same “free speech” right to deceive that individual human citizens have in their personal lives. If people have the constitutionally protected right to say, “The check is in the mail,” or, “That looks great on you,” then, Nike’s reasoning goes, a corporation should have the same right to say whatever they want in their corporate PR campaigns.
They took this argument all the way to the California Supreme Court, where they lost. The next stop may be the U.S. Supreme Court in early January, and the battle lines are already forming.
The article contains some very interesting commentary on just how corporations have gotten the amount of power that they now hold, including their status as legal “persons” — a status never actually legally declared except through tacit acceptance of a headnote to a court decision, without any legal precedence to support it, added by court reporter (and reporter, former railroad president) J.C. Bancroft Davis in 1886.
More information can be found at Reclaim Democracy’s Kasky vs. Nike page.
(Via Jason Kottke)
I wish…
I’m not too sure how they stumbled across me, but I just got notification today that I’ve been added to the list of birthdays at I Wish, You Wish. They’re working on collecting links of bloggers that have their Amazon Wishlists posted, and listing them alongside their birthdays. A pretty cool little idea, I think.
A tweak here, a tweak there
Finally! I’d noticed a week or so ago that after an upgrade to the W3C’s Validation tool that made it a bit more strict, my site wasn’t validating properly anymore. After a few minutes work tweaking the code, though, I can now honestly state that my site uses valid XHTML 1.0 (Transitional) and valid CSS.
At least, it does on this page. I’ll do a page-by-page (ugh) check at some other date. That’ll be fun….
The ‘Recent Tunes’ list is no longer an automatically updating frame. It was fun to play with, but a simple list that loads with the page will do fine, and produce less uneccesary overhead in bandwidth.
I’ve also removed the links to ‘featured posts’, along with the link to my NaNoWriMo blog, as it’s been residing in a state resembling suspended animation for a while now. However, fear not, gentle readers — in the words of Monty Python, it’s “not dead yet!” and will resurface in the (near?) future, along with some other ideas I have for that side of my site.
Further changes (including some of the ideas that have been tossed at me in the comments to my last post) will appear as I get around to them. In other words, it could be tomorrow, and it could be sometime in 2007. Around here, you just never know.
Everything old is new again
I’ve finally managed to finish up what’s been something of an ongoing “whenever I’m bored” project for the past few months — re-entering all my old posts (two years worth, approximately 700 or so?) that disappeared when my old webserver died in August. They’re finally all back in, so with the exception of a two and a half week period in mid-August that I didn’t have a backup for, every post I’ve written since November of 2000 is back online!
Just in case you’re really bored and want to read everything I’ve ever written, from start to finish. Um…sure. That’ll happen. ;)
Now, time to backup.
tlhIngan Hol
Did you know that you could Google in Klingon? Completely bizarre. But cool.
(Seen in the .sig for this /. post, by codexus)