Chax is a collection of minor modifications and additions that make using Apple's iChat more enjoyable.

Chax is awesome.

Chax 1.4 – Mac OS X – VersionTracker

There really is no excuse for writing poorly in one's blog. At least with IMs and e-mail your terrifying disembowelment of the language is limited to one observer. But in your blog, you'll look stupid for the whole world to see, and it will be archived for as long as humanity remembers how to produce electricity. Maybe you don't think anyone who reads your blog will care. But I read your blog -- yes indeed I do -- and I care. Madly. Truly. Deeply.

John Scalzi is fast becoming one of my favorite writers (see Old Man's War). Here he presents some useful tips for aspiring writers.

-k

Whatever: Writing Tips for Non-Writers Who Don't Want to Work at Writing

During the past fifteen years, changes in the technologies used to make and store audio and video recordings, combined with the communication revolution associated with the Internet, have generated an extraordinary array of new ways in which music and movies can be produced and distributed. Both the creators and the consumers of entertainment products stand to benefit enormously from the new systems. If the available technologies were exploited fully, the costs of audio and video recordings would drop sharply, the incomes of artists would rise, many more artists could reach global audiences, the variety of music and films popularly available would increase sharply, and listeners and viewers would be able to participate much more easily in the shaping of their cultural environments.

Sadly, we have failed thus far to avail ourselves of these opportunities. Instead, much energy has been devoted to interpreting or changing legal rules in hopes of defending older business models against the threats posed by the new technologies. These efforts to plug the multiplying holes in the legal dikes are failing and the entertainment industry has fallen into crisis.

This provocative book chronicles how we got into this mess and presents three alternative proposals--each involving a combination of legal reforms and new business models--for how we could get out of it.

You can read more.

Chapter 6 outlines the best of the possible solutions to the crisis: an administrative compensation system that would provide an alternative to the increasingly creaky copyright regime. In brief, here’s how such a system would work:

Endorsements from Lessing, Vaidhyanathan, Benkler, and many publications.

[ I have only read the Introduction thus far, but will certainly read Chapter 6 carefully and update my post here.

My initial feeling is that he's got a good grasp of the issues here, but I'm skeptical of the solution presented. It will take some time to think through. -k]

Promises to Keep: Technology, Law, and the Future of Entertainment

Dvorak on the lamentable round 3 of Apple Computer vs. Apple Corps (Apple Records)

His solution :

In an effort to save the money, though, I would suggest that the company change its name for good. Offer a million dollars to the public-at-large in a competition to rename the company. That would do the job and get the publicity needed for it to be promotional. Why not?

Is he fucking kidding? Why not? Maybe because Apple has become one of the most recognizable and desireable lifestyle brands in the world. Yes, let's toss that out the window.

It's bad enough that Apple Corps is nothing more than a holding company designed to rake in cash from the ongoing legacy of the Beatles. No disrespect, because the Beatles were unquestionably a hugely important cultural phenomenon, but it's gone on too long. This whole situation makes me hate the Beatles, which is just sad. I'm not naive, and I understand that making money for shareholders is what corporations are for, but as a rule, I favor corporations that produce innovative and progressive goods or services. Likewise, a company designed purely to extract money on the basis of a product that ceased advancing *thirty* years ago (even one as remarkable as Beatles records) is a pure leech, and earns absolutely no respect.

As a child, listening to Beatles records with my dad was a frequent and joyful event. I'd love to buy some CD's to regain access to those songs but I no longer want my money to support people I've lost all respect for. In fact, I pledge that I will not purchase any Beatles merchandise until I can do it through iTunes. A minimal loss, certainly, for them, but it's what I can do.

In the meantime, I do agree with one thing Dvorak said, and that is that this shit should've been ended long ago. This time, it better be final. Any way that can happen without ruining Apple Computer is fine, preferably in a way that does not include Sir Fucking Paul McCartney as a major shareholder or boardmember. Fuck that guy and his overpriced tickets to shows that, despite the hype, aren't Beatles shows.

JOHN DVORAK'S SECOND OPINION : Apple vs. Apple is an old song

This guy really is good at what he does. Kid's draw pictures of their 'monsters' and super-heros, and he takes those pictures, and paints them realistically, all the while leaving the basic lines and scope of the drawings.

My son really enjoyed this site, as did I. It is very interesting!

[Awesome!]

THE MONSTER ENGINE - What if a kid's imagination....was better represented?

After a year in the making... researching, number crunching, layouts, stock gathering, and lots of procrastinating, i am proud to say it is finally done.

the SUPERDEVIATION, or "spot" as it was known to some, comes now with the final title.

Death and Taxes: A visual look at where your tax dollars go.

This visualization is very interesting. There is a deliberate attempt to remove social security and medicare from the picture here. I wish they were added back in. I also wish this kind of visualization was available for every budget year.

[ Aggreed. This is really neat. -k]

deviantART: Death and Taxes: ... by ~mibi

In 1995, Steve Sillett received a Ph.D. in botany from Oregon State University, in Corvallis. Soon afterward, he took his present job, at Humboldt, and began to explore the old-growth redwood canopy.

No scientist had been there before.

The tallest redwoods were regarded as inaccessible towers, shrouded in foliage and almost impossible to climb, since the lowest branches on a redwood can be twenty-five stories above the ground. From the moment he entered redwood space, Steve Sillett began to see things that no one had imagined. The general opinion among biologists at the time -- this was just eight years ago -- was that the redwood canopy was a so-called "redwood desert" that contained not much more than the branches of redwood trees.

Instead, Sillett discovered a lost world above Northern California.

Gold Star.

Gold star for the sense of wonder and awe.

Cimbing the Redwoods, by Richard Preston | The New Yorker

ASP.NET 2.0

Work has started in some of the features of 2.x in Mono. To run these applications you must use xsp2 (which loads the 2.x assemblies instead of the 1.x assemblies).

Current features:

* Client callbacks.
* New Configuration engine (partial)
* New controls:
o ButtonField
o CheckBoxField
o DetailsView
o FormView
o GridView (client and server side sorting)
o HyperlinkField
o ImageField
o Menus
o MultiView
o TemplateField
o Trees
o View
* Masterpages
* Two-way bindings
* ObjectDataSource

I was very pleased to see Mono supported from of the 2.0 framework. Has anyone here do any work using Apache and mod_mono? How well does it scale? Any major projects using this setup?

[ Interesting. I was just bemoaning the fact that a project at work is requiring me to learn ASP.NET 1.1 because it's the version that the gov's standardized on. I hate learning something for the first time that's already outdated. Perhaps I'll give mono a try. -k]

Mono supports some of ASP.NET 2.0

Rumsfeld was pressed to explain the U.S. military's plan to respond in the event that Iraq's sectarian violence grows into a full-fledged civil war.

"The plan is to prevent a civil war, and to the extent one were to occur, to have the — from a security standpoint — have the Iraqi security forces deal with it, to the extent they are able to," Rumsfeld said.

uhm, what? Sounds a lot like they're building a ready-made excuse for pulling out. "No no, it's not cutting and running like that traitor Murtha wanted. But this is an internal issue for the newly established Iraqi government and it would be wrong of the US to interfere. So, yeah, we're taking our troops home."

Brilliant.

Rumsfeld, Rice Say Iraq Not at Civil War - Yahoo! News

Have you seen this guy's 3D sidewalk art? Well, it's 2D... but done in such a way that if viewed from a certain angle, the image will trick your eye into thinking that the object depicted is "on" the sidewalk.

Make sure you scroll down far enough to see what his artwork looks like if photographed from the "wrong" angle!

[I've seen it before but it deserves another shout... extremely cool. -k]

Impact Lab - Amazing 3D Sidewalk Art Photos