Monkinetic Weblog

Jodi and I had dinner last night with Bill and Sandi. Bill surprised me with a late birthday present, the Coolest Mug Ever!

A while back I wrote an Applescript that would render an outline from OmniOutliner into html based on user-defined templates.

Life can be so unfair.

I'm not much of a Metallica fan but I'm a huge fan of covers, remixes, and mashups.

Chris Lydon's interview with David Sifry of Technorati is pretty cool.

James Patten is doing some amazing work at MIT (where else!) on tactile user interfaces (computer interfaces made up of a tabletop that senses the positions of the objects on it's surface) More information and an incredible QuickTime movie here.

Heh. Ptypes' personality test confirms what I already knew - I'm an Idealist.

Well, we're back! Tired and a bit jet-lagged, but very happy to be home!

Well, tomorrow ends our 2+ week sojourn in Jacksonville, Florida. We've been helping to care for Jodi's grandmother Becky, who is suffering from cancer. Jodi has done the lion's share of the work - I've tried to support her the best I could.

Oh, I miss the internet. "But Steve," you say, "you're on it now!"

from FreeForm Goodness comes the fix for Safari's minimum font size, which changed in Safari 1.0. quoteHidden pref, your ass is mine.

defaults write com.apple.safari WebKitMinimumFontSize 9
defaults write com.apple.safari WebKitMinimumFixedFontSize 9

(you need to enter those two lines in the Terminal.)endquote

country-feedback-live-in-atlanta-08-31-99 tags: "" tp_commentcount: "0" tp_favoritecount: "0" tp_urlid: 6a010534988cd3970b0120a55ce2a1970b

quoteIt's crazy what you could had, crazy what you could have had...
I need this, I need thisendquote

Country Feedback is one of my all-time favorite R.E.M. songs, from the album Out Of Time.

Of the 5 versions I have, the best one I think is a live recording from Atlanta, August 31, 1999. Michael Stipe's vocals are ragged and haunting, the live, loose, setting lends an even more desperate tone to an already impassioned lyric.

Peter Buck's guitar work goes on and on, with a lot more distortion, reverb, and yes, feedback than the (now seemingly) anemic album version. He plays all around the melody, lurching through his signature arpeggios, and even getting a decent solo feel to it, which was never his strong point.

One of the things I love about this song is it's determinedly languid pace. It flows and flows, Stipe's extra lyrics and vocalizations toward the end slide along on top of the music, drawing you in.

In my mind's eye I see the wooden shack above the bank slide by as the river carries me past - slow, green, and cyprus-choked...

quoteIt's crazy what you could had, crazy what you could have had...

I need this, I need thisendquote

Rands in Repose describes Nerd Attention Deficit Disorder. Hi, my name is Steve, and... hey! I have email!

No time to blog this properly, but Bill blogs an IM conversation we had about Mark Pilgrim's "Winer Watch". See Bill's site for links.

Dave says: quoteYesterday I asked for a feature in Manila, and today it's being tested with the most technical Manila users (also known as developers).endquote

Well, after a couple years of enjoying wireless Net access at home, I found myself at Best Buy tonight buying one of those special workhorses of the wired world: a Netgear E104TP 4 port hub.

John Robb is leaving UserLand. No reason given, and none expected.

Jodi and I are in Jacksonville, Fla. helping our with Jodi's grandmother who is recovering from surgery and fighting a battle with cancer. It's a hard experience for the family, watching someone who has been (and is) so respected and loved fight such pain. I'm posting from Jdi's grandmother's AOL connection (56k again!) but I should be on in the complex's computer lab tomorrow (broadband!)

I found a bug of sorts (no pun intended) with iChat AV's buddy list. There is a new feature where if you click a buddy in the list and drag a bit to the left, you can then re-order your buddies right in the list. That's the feature.