thursday september 24 was national punctuation day
i observed this holiday by giving all punctuation marks and capital letters the day off
tomorrow im giving the lowercase letters a rest by using all capitals and lots of exclamation marks
24 Sep 09: national punctuation day
Category: Off Topic | Posted by: jmswisher | 1 Comment
26 Oct 08: Document, redacted
In my continuing search for the ideal open source online help solution, I came across this 3rd party page about Oracle Help for Java. Since this site allows user contributions, it appears to have an automatic search-and-replace facility to prevent users from posting offensive materials. And it appears that this function is not smart enough to look for word boundaries:
Oracle Help for Java (OHJ) is a set of Java components and an API for developing and displaying HTML-based help content in a Java environment. OHJ is designed primarily for displaying help for Java applications, although it can also be implemented as a stand-alone do(edited)ent viewer for use in a Java environment. (Emphasis added)
Apparently, certain letters in the middle of the word "document" were deemed too offensive to be displayed. However, this applies only to the summary paragraph, since "document" and "documentation" appear in their unexpurgated glory later in the description, and in the category label.
I'm glad this site is looking out for my tender sensibilities. Otherwise, it might never have occurred to me that my stock in trade might be considered risqué.
Category: Off Topic | Posted by: jmswisher | 1 Comment
11 Dec 07: Rocking the Gray Lady with David Byrne
David Byrne, best known as the former frontman for Talking Heads, recently got a tour of the new New York Times building. He has some interesting comments on the role of traditional newsgathering in the modern, online, mobile media world. His report is well worth reading.
The surreal part, to me, occurred as part of his visit to the Times' R&D department:
I'm glad to hear he was positively impressed. What was it like to be one of those guys, playing fake instruments in a karaoke game, in front of one of the funkiest musicians on the planet?
The surreal part, to me, occurred as part of his visit to the Times' R&D department:
The tour continued in a dark room the size of a kid’s bedroom with a large plasma screen on one wall and various devices — game controllers, iPods, DVD players, etc. — plugged into it. I sat on the couch. A few of the guys came in and proceeded to demonstrate the interactive “game” called Rockband. (The newspaper does review games and electronics, but I suspect these guys were not the game reviewers.) They pulled out a microphone, a virtual guitar (I don’t think it had strings on it), and some virtual drums, and proceeded to jam — full on — to a Weezer tune! The “game” allows you to select avatars — in this case a weirdly muscular drummer, a singer with a kind of white mullet, and a woman on guitar with pink hair — and you sing and “play” your instruments to the prerecorded karaoke version of the song. Lyrics and tab like graphics scroll by to help you follow along. The audience in the game world cheers. Then you get rated on your performance. These guys did really well. Really well.
I'm glad to hear he was positively impressed. What was it like to be one of those guys, playing fake instruments in a karaoke game, in front of one of the funkiest musicians on the planet?
Category: Off Topic | Posted by: jmswisher |
15 Nov 07: Harold's Legacy
I've just finished listening to the podcast of This American Life's episode Harold, commemorating the 20th anniversary of the death of Harold Washington, Chicago's first black mayor and first, and really only, reform mayor.
I'm about to date myself, here, but Harold Washington's term in the mayor's office almost exactly coincided with my time as an undergraduate at the University of Chicago. He was elected a few months before I arrived in 1983, and died a few months after I graduated in 1987. When I came to Chicago, I had no idea what Chicago politics were like, or what Washington's election represented. My education in that area began with an Orientation Week excursion to see Aaron Freeman's "Council Wars" one-man stage show (excerpted in the podcast).
I remember the night the Chicago city council elected its new mayor a week after Harold Washington's death, when a crowd of thousands spontaneously formed in Daley Plaza, outside City Hall, chanting "No deals! No deals!" Chicago's white political machine ignored the crowd and rushed into the power vacuum to regain the mayorship. I remember watching news crews on television, stationed in the halls of the city hall building, chronicling the shuttling of city council members into and out of closed door meetings that were blatant in circumventing the Open Meetings act. I stayed up late, watching the spectacle, but not late enough. In the wee hours, a deal was struck, and Chicago had a new mayor, Eugene Sawyer, who was black but acceptable to the "white ethnic" power brokers. (According to Wikipedia, Sawyer was sworn in at 4:01 AM on December 2, 1987, in the parking lot of a closed restaurant.)
I left Chicago in 1991, and haven't been back except to change planes. That has more to do with my lack of ties than with anything about the city. I still think fondly of Chicago, despite or perhaps because of its complexities. Sort of like an old boyfriend I parted with amicably but haven't kept in touch with.
The second act of the podcast focuses on the present and future. I'm heartened to hear that things have changed somewhat in Chicago. When Barack Obama, who moved to Chicago in 1984 because of Harold Washington, ran for the Senate, he polled 70% of the vote in wards where Washington got 1 or 2% in his first mayoral primary. White voters in those wards, interviewed for the podcast, are still worried about blacks "taking over" their neighborhoods, but they're willing to consider voting for a black mayor. Maybe not while there's still a Richard Daley, but in principle. So, I'm glad to hear that Chicago is moving, if not into the 21st century, at least into the latter half of the 20th. Like the old boyfriend has grown up a little and is less of a jerk.
I'm about to date myself, here, but Harold Washington's term in the mayor's office almost exactly coincided with my time as an undergraduate at the University of Chicago. He was elected a few months before I arrived in 1983, and died a few months after I graduated in 1987. When I came to Chicago, I had no idea what Chicago politics were like, or what Washington's election represented. My education in that area began with an Orientation Week excursion to see Aaron Freeman's "Council Wars" one-man stage show (excerpted in the podcast).
I remember the night the Chicago city council elected its new mayor a week after Harold Washington's death, when a crowd of thousands spontaneously formed in Daley Plaza, outside City Hall, chanting "No deals! No deals!" Chicago's white political machine ignored the crowd and rushed into the power vacuum to regain the mayorship. I remember watching news crews on television, stationed in the halls of the city hall building, chronicling the shuttling of city council members into and out of closed door meetings that were blatant in circumventing the Open Meetings act. I stayed up late, watching the spectacle, but not late enough. In the wee hours, a deal was struck, and Chicago had a new mayor, Eugene Sawyer, who was black but acceptable to the "white ethnic" power brokers. (According to Wikipedia, Sawyer was sworn in at 4:01 AM on December 2, 1987, in the parking lot of a closed restaurant.)
I left Chicago in 1991, and haven't been back except to change planes. That has more to do with my lack of ties than with anything about the city. I still think fondly of Chicago, despite or perhaps because of its complexities. Sort of like an old boyfriend I parted with amicably but haven't kept in touch with.
The second act of the podcast focuses on the present and future. I'm heartened to hear that things have changed somewhat in Chicago. When Barack Obama, who moved to Chicago in 1984 because of Harold Washington, ran for the Senate, he polled 70% of the vote in wards where Washington got 1 or 2% in his first mayoral primary. White voters in those wards, interviewed for the podcast, are still worried about blacks "taking over" their neighborhoods, but they're willing to consider voting for a black mayor. Maybe not while there's still a Richard Daley, but in principle. So, I'm glad to hear that Chicago is moving, if not into the 21st century, at least into the latter half of the 20th. Like the old boyfriend has grown up a little and is less of a jerk.