Archive.
Tuesday, July 31, 2001 Link
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My Newton is back online. Leave a message. Be amazed. Tell your friends.
Monday, July 30, 2001 Link
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Several months ago, I mentioned how addictive a collaborative typography project called Chinese Whispers had become for me. Over the course of a dozen or three visits to the site, I fiddled, clicked, moshed, and otherwise contributed my own typographically-derivative characters to the various fonts in progress. Time passed, focus changed, synapses flickered. During the time that passed, I had forgotten that I had added my name to a list in order to receive a copy of the project catalogue when the first round of experiments were completed. Imagine my delight when said catalogue arrived in the mail last week, and not one, but six of my esoteric glyphs made it through to the final typefaces. For the curious, I'll point out that the lowercase n, o, and p in the Mentalist Stencilist typeface (shown below) are mine, all mine. If you missed participating in the initial project, there is still hope. You can now design and submit your own template character that may be used as the starting point for a future typographic whisper.
Sunday, July 29, 2001 Link
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Tired of all your geeky Unix-spewing acquaintances teasing you in the halls because you still use a GUI-based text editor for coding? Fear not, programmatic paladin, Porkrind Dot Org has a Carbonized version of Emacs for Mac OS X ready to save your sorry hide. Via camworld
What sort of twisted, common sense-impaired person starts cleaning out their mini-van with a shop vac at 6:30 on a Sunday morning? My twisted, common sense-impaired next door neighbor, that's who.
Friday, July 27, 2001 Link
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Hello? Is this thing on? Well, we seem to be up and running again. However, in the process of upgrading the server hardware, we have lost the grantcam. The rickety old Connectix Color QuickCam drivers just don't cut the mustard under the new operating system. Nuts. I guess I'll have to break down and buy me one of them newfangled video contraptions.
Look out! She's got salad in her shoes... A sufficiently large pre-cooked ham goes to Sean for pointing our that our mutual friend Tabitha has been secretly blogging from her underground corporate communications cave since the beginning of July. And by all accounts, it's a jolly good read too.
So I just shut the web and ftp servers down on the old machine so I can start migrating the contents of the old (and cute as a bugs ear...) 250 MB hard drive over to the new box. Normally this would only take a couple of minutes over ethernet, but the old Quadra has only its standard Apple-issue onboard 10baseT connection versus the 100baseT fast ethernet card plugged into the new PowerMac. Of course, you won't be able to read any of this until I get the servers back online anyway. Sigh. I guess we'll chat again in about an hour.
And the serendipitous files and attachments keep on sliding in courtesy of the SirCam virus. The most interesting contribution so far? How about: "Aztektrek team names and passwords"? Looking for more snippets plucked from the hard drives of hapless Windows users? Glenn Fleishman has collected a list or two.
Thursday, July 26, 2001 Link
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A new discovery. The friction that is generated while travelling down a water slide in a sitting position (rather than recumbent) will cause your butt to heat up. Really. I wouldn't kid you about something like this.
Can you smell the excitement in the air? It might just be the smell of 20 amps worth of gear plugged into a 15 amp circuit, but I'm still going with the excitment angle. Why am I excited? Well, the new server got moved downstairs this afternoon. It's now sitting all cozy-like between the fast ethernet switch and the soft router. The video driver problems have been solved, the current version of WebStar has been installed, and the cat 5 cable has been connected. Sometime tomorrow you'll either see a vast increase in server performance... or a prolonged period of connection errors. I'm rooting for a hefty dose of the former. Cross your loose digits and appendages everyone.
Tuesday, July 24, 2001 Link
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Heir To The Evil Empire Throne
Regardless of how anyone interprets the current titanistic status of Microsoft and America Online, in my opinion both of these companies are the corporate equivalent of the spawn of satan. RealNetworks is their ugly stepsister.
Monday, July 23, 2001 Link
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Dagnabbit. I just smashed the end of my thumb with a hammer whilst fixing a stubborn cord retractor in our vacuum cleaner. Deep purple is definitely not my favourite colour when it comes to blistered digits. Of course, yellow or green aren't very attractive either.
Any semi-respectable shelf containing even a modicum of design books and other reference material couldn't possibly be considered adequate without a hard copy version of the Aqua Human Interface Guidelines. Yes, one more thing to add to the shopping list.
Sunday, July 22, 2001 Link
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It has been just over three months since I decided to leave EyeWire by my own accord, smiling and nodding as my previous employer rolled out its new employee retention program. In all the excitement to vacate my corner of the office, I never managed to get around to canceling my corporate American Express card. Seeing as both the card and the billing statement were in my name and were my responsibility, I saw no hurry in terminating the account. That, and the fact that I had racked up nearly 94,000 membership rewards points over the past several years through a consistent schedule of hardware upgrades, department software purchases, late night work session pizza orders, and sundry conference expenses. I couldn't possibly cancel the card without redeeming at least some of those ethereal ducats. It'd be a bloody shame, wouldn't it? So what did I end up getting in return for those tens of thousands of points? Nothing as mundane as travel or accommodation. How about a handful of double movie passes, two folding aluminum scooters, and a Canadian-made six-foot wooden toboggan? Yeah! Nothing says American Express like a Canadian sled.
Saturday, July 21, 2001 Link
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As of today, I have two friends who have married people that they met through the internet. The first couple is doing well by all accounts. The second couple, who officially hitched this morning, have my best wishes for a long and happy partnership. Or should that be merger? A dot-consecration, perhaps?
We were unintentionally off the air for about six hours today. Sorry about that.
Friday, July 20, 2001 Link
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Apple ][ Font
You've just got to be able to find a use for this. A pair of pixel fonts based on the 40 column and 80 column displays of the Apple ][ screen. Perfect for mocking up those VisiCalc screen shots and formatting your CATALOG listings.
Code Red Worm Claims 12,000 Servers
I thought the net felt a little sluggish the week. In the article, spunky Microsoft security program manager Scott Culp had this advice to offer: "For system administrators who have not patched their systems, now would be a good time." Well, no shit Scotty. Thanks for offering to help pull the car out of the ditch after the wheels have fallen off.
I'm embarking on a surplus gizmo quest today. Specifically, I'm on the lookout for memory that I caan plug into a Sparcstation 5. If anybody out there has a stash of obsolete hardware under your desk or in a closet somewhere, please take a peek and see if there happens to be a pile of parity RAM chips in one of the dustier corners. Any donations will be greatfully accepted.
Thursday, July 19, 2001 Link
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Yes, I did remember to add the last two weeks worth of available domain names, dammit. Thank you for your patronage. Drive safely. Tip your waitress.
Tuesday, July 17, 2001 Link
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Well, well, well. It looks like the second beta of Opera for Mac managed to sneak out of the factory before the opening curtain of Macworld goes up tomorrow. And by cracky if they didn't fix most of the wonky style sheet problems too. Dig it.
As a visual comparison, here is evidence of how well I was holding up when I was five years old. (c. 1968)
Yoicks! Have you ever noticed how anniversaries seem to have a maddening habit of sneaking up from behind and then whacking you upside the head with the force of a hundred kilo bag of hammers? Related to that seemingly random thread of blatherment, I just realized that as of tomorrow this fine slice of the internet, namely splorp.com, is five years old. Five. Can you believe it? You can now use all of the digits on one hand to tick off the birthdays. This is assuming, of course, that you haven't suffered the loss of one or more of said digits in some tragic, yet unavoidable industrial accident. Right. And nothing new to show off either. Seeing as my redesign is still in the early stages of put-togetherness, my poor site will just have to start its sixth year of existence wearing its current utilitarian duds. Crud. Celebrate as you see fit.
Monday, July 16, 2001 Link
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Some of the fine folk who tempt the gods of fate by choosing to have their sites hosted by my chewing gum and bailing wire server technology were stuck a few days ago. It seems that even though I thought I had freed up enough hard drive space before leaving on a quick trip out to Canada's left coast, the darn thing filled up. Don't worry, I won't name names Jon. A nice warm hug to Howie for troubleshooting the problem and dumping some old archives of his own so that the rest of the gang could blog away. The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. Or the one. Right Howie? Nevertheless, this slight mishap just accentuates the need for me to get off my furry butt and set up the new server, dammit.
Hi gang, I'm back. So, what'd I miss?
Monday, July 02, 2001 Link
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The air is warm. The poplar trees are letting go of their vestigial bits of fluff. My feet are currently without socks. All of these signs can point to only one thing... it's summertime and I'm taking a blog break. See you in two weeks and try to stay out of trouble, ok?
I just love descriptive product names.
Sunday, July 01, 2001 Link
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Here's hoping everyone had a splendiferous Canada Day. This evening, as the sun dawdles towards the horizon, take solace in the fact that after 134 years the government still hasn't managed to fuck the country up entirely. Happy birthday, country of mine.
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