" /> Vitriolic Humor: March 2005 Archives

Main | April 2005 »

March 30, 2005

Watches

I don't wear a watch. The explanation usually involves something along the lines of "I don't care that much about time" (though I'm punctual) or "I don't want the tan lines" (though I'm not that vain.) I've got dozens of clocks around me at any moment, computer, cell, pager, Palm, digital camera, car clocks, public clocks. I rarely find the need to go query my wrist for the time.

I heard a quote the other day that I liked. It said that our 'human' notion of time: years, months, days, hours, seconds, are all just arbitrary divisions of the one life you have. The length of that is unknown at any given time. Why get hung up about time?

Now for someone who professes such a disinterest in time, I am always on the lookout for unique clocks. Preferably, something that indicates or displays the time in a way I hadn't considered before.

And despite all this, I do have a 'dream watch'. It would have an analog clock face with 1-12 numerals, but no hands. The background should be a digital watch that is normally not seen, but can be brought up with a push of a button (I've seen more of these recently, but not combined with an 'empty' analog clock face.) I'd wear it every day, heck, I'd wait for the moment someone asked me for the time, anticipating the conversation.

March 29, 2005

Distributed Proofreading (Project Gutenberg)

Before 2000, public domain books were largely contributed to Project Gutenberg by individuals lovingly entering the contents of each book into a computer manually. This was both time-consuming and delayed progress because the workload was not effectively distributed. When Charles Franks came up with a different approach, in late 2000, Project Gutenberg suddenly had a large, accurate, steady stream of new books coming in to its library. What changed?

Digital Proofreading decided to tackle the problem with technology and developed a web-based proofreaders tool which lets a volunteer see both the scanned page and the OCR'd text to better enable them to carefully proofread the contents page-by page. Through large-scale scanning and OCR, an effective web interface, and breaking proofreading down into 1-page work units, Digital Proofreading has contributed morethan 6,500 books to Project Gutenberg since the year 2000. That's over 5,000,000 proofread pages in a little over 4 years!

Why not check out their site and proofread a couple pages? It's for a great cause (preserving the books in digital format) and will only take a couple minutes of your time... unless you get hooked.

Distributed Proofreading

More information on Distributed Proofreading

Project Gutenberg

More information on Project Gutenberg

EggRadio.Com

OK, you are sick of the radio and MTV, the lack of variety, the dumbing down and censoring of music you experience daily. You are wandering the broadcast wasteland looking for a great selection of music. You think:
Someone has got to be able to do this better.

You've just found the best selection of music from 80's to alternative, from ska to classic modern rock. Only the best hits stay in rotation on The Egg and you, the listener, get to rate the songs. 100% FCC-Free, listener-interactive, and addictive. Stop by and setup the stream on your favorite player, Winamp, Real, iTunes, or Totem.

EggRadio.Com

[Update 3/3/2006] EggRadio.com went on a hiatus for several months and has now re-launched.

drunkennesss'

I was trying to write a simple e-mail to some friends and family indicating the drunk-like characteristics my dog has been exhibiting while getting used to his new medicine. I used the phrase 'drunkenness' in my e-mail. When Eudora shook down my e-mail for spelling, it's suggestion was drunkennesss'. The other suggestions are interesting too.

Google has approximately 50 links referring to the mythical 3-s drunkenness.

drunkennesss.jpg

Thanks for nothing, Eudora.<g>

Vitriolic Humor is Alive

I'm been trying various options, shifting back and forth over what I want to do for a blog. I've tried several commercial/semi-commercial offerings, worked a bit on making my own blog software, and for now, I've settled on Movable Type. It does 95% of what I'm looking for and the other 5% isn't anything critical.

If I could just figure out the whole TrackBack thing, I might go back to my home-made solution.

So, here are my thoughts, links, photos; snapshots of things crossing my cortex at a given time. The subjects will range from politics to programming, from motorcycling to walking, and from UI Annoyances to Favorite Links.

Enjoy!