Duck Butt

2006-08-29T05:41:00.000-05:00

It's cartoons like this that make Calvin & Hobbes one of the only comic strips that I consider to be pure genius.

World Building

2006-04-23T16:30:00.000-05:00

I didn't realize just how elaborate some of the hobby worlds could be. In most cases they are created for no reason but to entertain the creator and to give him or her a playground for their imagination. But the depth to which these worlds are describes are truly impressive. I have yet to see anything as elaborate as middle-earth, but that is an unusually high bar to set. Wikipedia has an entry on world-building that was enlightening.

They have some links to some of those worlds. Interesting.

SketchUp And Google

2006-03-18T10:00:00.000-05:00

Having once worked for Nemetschek North America, my interest was piqued by Google's acquisition of SketchUp maker @Last Software. SketchUp is an amazing product and has been wildly popular pretty much since it was first announced but how this fits in with Google's takeover of the world is not clear to me. SketchUp did make a plugin for Google Earth that seems ultra-cool. Is that all it takes? Or is this technology going to be made accessible via the web somehow? With the acquisition of Writely, it's hard to ignore that possibility.

StoryStream 0.3.12

2006-02-10T13:36:00.000-05:00

A couple of important bug fixes:
1) The first takes care of a problem where errors are generated unecessarily on some server configurations.
2) Multiple users were able to register using the same email address.

Get it here

Scandals

2006-02-06T07:09:00.000-05:00

This is a good list of all the scandals that this administration has overseen over the last several years.

Chris Buzelli

2006-01-30T08:48:00.000-05:00

A nice collection of work. I like his style - distrubing, but not too.

A Joke

2006-01-28T11:24:00.000-05:00

On one of last week's Daily Shows, Jon Stewart began a segment with 'The Bush administration...'. Nothing else was said before this provoked laughter in the studio audience. That says something, doesn't it?

Criminal Negligence

2006-01-24T09:02:00.000-05:00

White House Got Early Warning on Katrina

Garrison

2006-01-18T07:09:00.000-05:00

This must be read by anyone who is able.

Quantum Entaglement

2006-01-13T11:41:00.000-05:00

An very simple and understandeable description of the phenomenon. And an amazingly interesting phenomenon it is:

Quantum entanglement is a phenomenon that Einstein famously dubbed
"spooky action at a distance." In short, an entangled pair of photons
have quantum properties that are linked to each other. If one photon's
spin is up, the other must be down. So if you generate an entangled
pair of photons and then separate them by any distance—from a few
nanometers to thousands of light-years—you can collapse the wave
function of one by detecting its spin direction and you'll know
instantaneously the spin of its entangled partner. In such a scenario,
the information about the spin of the entangled particle travels faster
than light, which is a problem for quantum mechanics and is why
Einstein didn't like entanglement.

Warp Drive

2006-01-06T07:31:00.000-05:00

I realize that I'm a geek. So it's not surprising to me that I got as excited as I did when I read this article about possible faster than light travel. There's something about science fiction that makes it more enjoyable when the seed of possibility exists.

Google Interview Questions

2005-12-31T21:51:00.000-05:00

This. Is. Ridiculous.Not only do I not have the brainpower to even begin formulating answers to those questions, but I don't think I would be able to generate the interest to learn how to answer them in whatever time I have left on this green earth.. God, I hate shit like that.

Pandora

2005-12-23T08:30:00.000-05:00

Internet radio has reached a higher level of cool-ness with Pandora.com
The people behind this site has categorized songs on 400 different musical criteria and stored all the information in a database. That means that when you give the system a song or artist you like, it will use that criteria to generate a playlist. With a database of 150,000 songs, it comes up with some stuff that not just anyone could come up with.

Polls Rising

2005-12-21T20:59:00.000-05:00

Today, I heard Rachel Maddow on the Al Franken show. I have never heard anyone speak so articulately for so long. I'm truly impressed by her ability to make her point so clearly and effectively without taking herself too seriously. It's nice to know people like her are on the air.

Fox - Fair and Balanced

2005-06-27T09:59:00.000-05:00

Supreme Court Decision Headlines:

Washington Post: "Court Rules Against Commandments Display"
CNN: "Commandments displays barred at courthouses"
MSNBC: "Ten Commandments displays at courts illegal"

Fox: "Court Rules Against Ten Commandments"

Minimum Wage

2005-06-24T08:53:00.000-05:00

Whether or not John Edwards is planning on running again in 2008, his struggle to fight for the working poor is truly admirable. In particular is his current fight to slip minimum wage increases past the asshole senate and go straight to the state ballots. How curious that in this time of Republican domination, state's rights have never been so critical.

http://www.oneamericacommittee.com/minimumwage/

Papal Pollution

2005-04-18T14:01:00.000-05:00

Vatican, April 18th, 2005
The vatican today announced that they have not yet elected a new pope, using the traditional black smoke/white smoke out the chimney method. As the tension escalates, so does the risk of permanent damage to the environemnt. If another day of failed elections occurs, environmentalists fear the worst. Next up: the cardinals will release crude oil into the nearby Tyrrhenian Sea if no pope was elected by close of papal business tuesday. Ecologists shudder to think what will happen if no pope is elected by Wednesday evening.

Stick

2005-04-15T16:15:00.000-05:00

I've returned to developing stick. here's a screenshot of the application on my desktop. The thinking is that people want a way to jot down notes, get to files, browse the web, etc that's not obtrusive. There have been many implementations to solve this problem. Here's mine. I just changed it to allow notes to slide in and out instead of just popping in and out. Also changed the way it saves stuff so that tab details and template details are saved to an XML file (two, actually) instead of to the registry.

Um. Wow.

2005-04-07T15:03:00.000-05:00

I'm speechless: Zoom Quilt

LiveDictionary

2005-04-07T06:04:00.000-05:00

Oh man, this is a great application (potentially, i haven't tried it yet). It's a plugin for Safari that will display definitions of words that you hover over with your mouse in a small tooltip-like window. Would I pay for it? Yes, if i used a mac at work. But I don't. So I won't.

Pedro the Lion

2005-04-06T15:54:00.000-05:00

I've been keeping my eye out for art that packs the biggest emotional punch(for me) using the simplest of styles. This one comes from the Lure Design Studio:

Drumhead

2005-04-05T06:51:00.000-05:00

Have you ever wanted to beat the crap out of someone's head with a drumstick?

Dusky Ward

2005-04-04T18:55:00.000-05:00

Check out these
illustrations by Dusky Ward:

Amazingly well-done. Nothing moves me more than evoking emotion with simple lines. I think that's why I like illustration as much as I do. Or maybe it's cause I can't paint to save my life. The first one. Yeah. The first one, definitely.

RSS Feed Reader

2005-04-04T08:10:00.000-05:00

I've been using Bloglines to read RSS feeds lately because it's web-based and I read news from home and work. A convenience I still cherish but some of the inherent problems associated with web-based interfaces were a constant thorn in my side. So I started looking around for alternatives. That's when I ran into this whopper:

JetBrains Omea Reader

My favorite feature: import your feedlist directly from Bloglines.

Nice.

Air America Anniversary

2005-03-31T08:08:00.000-05:00

Air America is a liberal success story and today it completes its first year on the air.

Portable Bookmarks

2005-03-30T06:40:00.000-05:00

I've started using del.icio.us and Firefox together to make a portable bookmark system. With del.icio.us, you can get an RSS feed of your bookmark list, which I hook up to Firefox via its integrated RSS. Very nice.

Loose

2005-03-29T20:41:00.000-05:00

There's a quality to some art that is unique to those who practice *a lot*. The art of letting go. In fact, it's true of any skill or talent be it artistic or technical. If you practice something you're passionate about ad nauseum, you reach a sort of zen wherein you can't help but be so confident and maybe even bored with what you're doing that you start to branch out. The branching out leads in odd directions sometimes but that's not what's important. What's important is that it signifies a letting-go of inhibitions. You're no longer worried about whether or not you can do it - instead, you begin to consider what else can be done. It's an exciting time in a person's artistic life because the nature of what you're doing changes from stressful to blissful. Each brush stroke is free of the burden of doubt. Every word written is blissfully ignorant of the machinations required to create it. At this point, your mind can focus on the result and not just the process.

Anyway, this all came up when I saw this:

There's a looseness to the style that relaxes me just to look at it. The ability to render something in mostly straight lines that achieves that affect is truly impressive.

Task Management Part 3

2005-03-29T16:32:00.000-05:00

In this revision, I've redrawn all the icons from scratch, cleaned up notes support. After using the old version for a few days, one of the things that was bugging me was that I had to click on the 'Create Note' button, then start typing into the dialog then hit OK then move the item around the screen. Now I've changed it so that you just have to give focus to the 'drawing' area. Once you do that you can just start typing and a new note will be created and whatever you type will be the title of the note. Press return to complete or escape to abort. I'm liking it but I need a way to start typing in the content area. Maybe pressing tab will get you to the content area.

I also added icons to the list area on the right to make it a little more visually appealing. I'm having some problem with tooltips but I plan to add those really description bubble tips to the toolbars at some point.

Notice the conspicuous absense of a menu bar? That's my new theory in interface design (note this doesn't apply to all interface necessarily): if I need to put a menu bar in then I've failed. Having to go to the menu bar to do something is like having to go to the glove compartment in your car to turn on the headlights. In other words, if you've cramped up your ui to the point where you have to stuff functionality into arbitrarily organized textual lists, then something's wrong.

This will be interesting.

Duck Butt Anthology

2005-03-18T16:45:00.000-05:00

Excellent! Who knew that in choosing Duck Butt as the name of this blog that I would be treading where others had tread before? Who knew that Duck Butts were as prevalent as I now know they are?
First things first. I've been wondering how I could re-enact my own duck-butt experience that I mentioned earlier. Well now I have the tool I need:

It is an "Expedite Quiver Duck Butt Decoy" available for the low low price of $29.99. And this is not one of those dumb duck butts you might find at Sunny's or whatever. This one is battery-operated for advanced duck-butt action.

Next, I direct your attention to the Urban Dictionary where the 'Duck Butt' is actually a hairstyle that blah blah blah. Whatever.

Anyway, the decoy is cool.

Task Management Part 2

2005-03-18T10:02:00.000-05:00

I've been working on that task management project I mentioned earlier. I've added support for drawing squares and lines, zooming in and out, panning, selecting then reshaping drawing objects, deleting drawing objects and a bunch more stuff that's too boring to mention here. The effect is a good one though I'm thinking I'll need to add support for drawing object properties like line thickness, color, arrowheads, fill color, opacity and stuff like that.

Draw!

2005-03-16T10:15:00.000-05:00

Draw! is a blog that was mentioned on Boing Boing a few days ago. I've been looking for something like this for a while and it hasn't disappointed. It's a great source for the kinds of illustration I've been looking to satisfy my deprived eyes. I highly recommend it.

WiFi Broadband

2005-03-15T09:17:00.000-05:00

I just saw an article over at ArsTechnica regarding a newish technology AT&T is rolling out that would provide broadband internet service to a couple of corporate beta testers. The cool part about this particular technology is it's based on wireless technology that will spread the goodness in 30 miles in all directions.

Ever since I read Snow Crash and Shadowrun, I've been waiting impatiently for this particular technology. Because when information is available to you anywhere, so are the possibilities. The internet, for me, is one of those things that I have trouble imagining being without. I'm not convinced that it hasn't done more harm than good, but that can be said about any technology.

Anyway, this wifi access thing is really exciting to me and I hope it goes somewhere; partly to satisfy my own technology wunderlust, but also to give comcast some freakin competition. They're killing me.

Pictures of Luke

2005-03-14T21:38:00.000-05:00

There are those out there (you know who you are) who wanted some pictures of Baby DuckButt #2. Here they are:

StoryStream and pr0n

2005-03-14T09:01:00.000-05:00

I'm in the very awkward position of being the proprietor of a pornographic story website. Storystream, which is a web-based hyperfiction site, has caught the eye of a (very nice) person who has created an intricate, multi-forked story. The kind I had envisioned when I created StoryStream. Problem is, the subject-matter is not what I had envisioned. But what I forgot when StoryStream was created was that stories like that one are par for the course on the web.

I'm now rethinking the viability of StoryStream. It's yet another idea I had that seemed so perfect in my head but lost a lot of its luster once it joined the reality-based community.

Why DuckButt?

2005-03-11T21:38:00.000-05:00

Every day (just about every day) I take a walk around a lake near our house. I pump up the iPod and am alone with my thoughts for 30 peaceful minutes. Ducks and geese and even a couple of swans frequent this particular lake.

To the point: I wish I could say that there was some profound meaning behind the title of this blog, but actually... I saw a couple of ducks ducking their heads under water so that their asses were pointing straight at me. I found this funny not just because of the position but because they did it over and over again and they were syncrhonized. I felt like I was the victim of that very rare mooning: the duck-mooning. That's funny. It's not the kind of funny that can be easily related in an anecdote, but I can definitely classify it as one of those rare moments where one can't help but feel that nature has a sense of humor.

Task Management

2005-03-11T13:07:00.000-05:00

I'm always on the lookout for an application that will satisfy my personal organization needs. Feature-wise, Microsoft Outlook meets those needs, but the interface is lacking. It's pretty, it's logical, it's well-organized and it's inefficient. Email, it handles nicely. Task management needs *a lot* of work.

A lot of people who try out PDAs to manage schedules and tasks eventually end up going back to pad and paper. Partly because it's just more convenient and cheaper, but I think partly because of the freeform nature of the medium. Applications are inherently restrictive and this, usually, is desirable. But when you're talking about solving a problem as loosely defined as task management, some freedom of movement, as it were, is necessary. Outlook and most other task management applications use a linear and, in some cases, hierarchical paradigm for organization. That's great, sometimes, but sometimes what's necessary is a more relational paradigm. "I need to do this but only if this is done and maybe I can skip the whole thing if this gets done". It can get complicated depending on how a person thinks about getting stuff done.

Trying to satisfy every need by considering every need is a dead-end. It's impossible and even if it weren't the interface would be unmanageable. What I need is a system where my thoughts can ooze onto a page freeform but can then be gathered up and organized as the thoughts mature. Outlook and its ilk try to get you to the last step first.

I'm working on an application that lets you plop down tasks, file links, notes and anything else on a variable-sized 'canvas'. You can draw on this canvas to take notes and draw links between these items or whatever else you want to do. The thinking is that this tool would be used throughout the day to keep track of evolving tasks and thoughts but, since it's computer-based, can later been transformed into something more formalized.

Shadowy Inspiration

2005-03-10T21:48:00.000-05:00

I was just inspired by a photo I saw. I like this idea so much that I can't imagine that this hasn't already been done somewhere. A drawing in pencil (maybe pen and ink) of a shack out in the middle of nowhere. A tree stands nearby but it's winter and the branches are bear.

On the ground, the audience can see shadows of people - at least four or five of them in various poses but the people casting the shadows aren't there. Forget symbolism, for the moment, and just imagine the creepiness of this image. Maybe it's just me, but disembodied shadows have always creeped me out.

The idea behind this one is morbid, but it fits my mood perfectly at the moment. Lately there's been a dark cloud over my thoughts that I can't seem to shake. A recurring thought that no matter what I do in life, I will never amount to anything and will have no effect on the world. It terrifies me and depresses me - every action I take I think about how it will ultimately lead to some productive end. I've become task-driven but the tasks are impossible. This is no way to live.

I need to focus on what I can do, not what I can't. But the shadows. A shadow is what I feel like right now. Shape without substance.