Being Doug
[2005-05-22 14:59:51]
Say 'hello' to Wilson Manis!
Everyone say "hello" to Wilson Manis! (No middle name yet.) Wilson left the gate at 11:41am this morning and clocked in at 7lbs. 1oz. and 19.5".
I'm home with Abigail waiting for the rain to break so we can take Max for a walk. Mama is napping at the hospital with Wilson. Relatives are getting photos printed at Costco.
Photos and more information will follow.
posted by doug
[2005-05-22 06:29:09]
Going in for Day 2
Big contractions, four minutes apart. We're going back in.
posted by doug
[2005-05-21 21:38:27]
No baby yet
There is some dilation and some good contractions, but not enough, so they sent us home. We'll go back in tomorrow at 7:30am and try again.
posted by doug
[2005-05-21 17:00:15]
Evening birthing update
I'm home for a few minutes so I'm going to shove a day's worth of updates here in one chunk.
7:30am
They placed us in a palatial delivery room that is literally twice the size of the standard rooms. Apparently a member of the hospital board of directors wanted a better room so paid out-of-pocket to have two rooms combined into one giant extra special room worthy of a woman of her standing. So now the hospital is stuck with this room that takes twice the spice but commands the same price. Well, one medical institution's housing albatross is a Manisfam's gift from the sky!
8:30am
Michelle is settled in and I eat my first hospital meal of the day. A very modestly priced breakfast of eggs, fried potatoes, bacon, and orange juice. I give the kid five bucks, I get some change. I love institution food!
11:30
Grandmama and Oompa arrive at the hospital with Abby, who is on fire! She's running, talking, playing with toys. Her energy is flowing like wine.
12:45pm
Michelle gets Ptosin-ed (sp?). The contractions are steady and stiff, but they're not progressing. Hope for a quick delivery fade.
1:00pm
Abby, Grandmama, Oompa and Daddy go to the mall for lunch and to meet . . . Sarah and Greg! Sarah and Greg! says Abby. Abby's energy now flows like hard cider.
4:30pm
The conractions are getting harder, but not bigger. We're not seeing much progress at all. If nothing's happened by 7:00pm, the doctor will cut the Petosin and decide where to go from here. We're really hoping not to spend the night without sweet sweet baby boy.
Off to dinner and back to the hospital. I'll check in later. Thanks everyone.
posted by doug
[2005-05-21 06:38:12]
Countdown to baby!
Countdown to Baby Boy Manis has begun! We check in to the hospital this morning at 7:30am and inducement will begin soon after. We're more eager than anxious this time around. We've done this before and we like to think we have a pretty good idea what's coming. Of course you never know what's coming, and all the worries and concerns I obsessed over last time but managed to suppress this time are rising to the top of my mind as I sit here in the silent (for once!) house this morning. But don't you worry! We'll handle handle the worrying. We'll do a much better job of it, believe me.
We are very sleepy. Ironically, we lost our last chance for good sleep for a long, long time to working late getting the house ready for the baby. Ah well. We'll remember how to sleep standing up soon enough.
Abby has worked herself into a baby frenzy, but she's sleeping now somehow, which is a miracle, for Abby sleeping is truly above the course of nature and beyond its productive powers. My parents are here now and will help us with Abby. My sister should be here later this morning to do the same. I'd have a group beatification for them for managing Abigail, but we're not Catholic and I don't think you can have a living saint anyway.
As before, I (or other Manii) will post here through day as often as possible, which won't be often. They didn't have Internet access in the hospital room last time, and I doubt if that's changed. But check back occasionally because I might have my dad post something if he's feeling ambitious. We will certainly post the birth news, so do check in.
Thanks everyone for your excitement and good wishes. We'll lay down some toothy family photos sometime in the next 24 hours.
posted by doug
[2005-05-19 21:17:31]
Googleweiss
One Slashdotter's very funny musical response to Google's new My Google page.
posted by doug
[2005-04-09 08:00:00]
Succeed in marketing without marketing anything
A brief interview with Byron of Clip-n-Seal about using his web log to promote their product.
The Clip-n-Seal folks spent $0 (zero dollars) on traditional advertising such as print and web ads. They instead used the Clip-n-Seal web log to communicate directly to their customers, who, when the business started, were mostly their friends. Their friends started telling people, those people wrote about the product on their websites, driving up clip-n-seal.com's precious Google PageRank scores, which led to more customers, which led to more write-ups, higher Google ranking, and so on into new customers and entirely new markets for their product.
Again, this happened with no advertising. None. Byron and Clip-n-Seal had no budget for advertising (or much else for that matter), so they decided to use the tools at hand: the web and their own writing talents. They spoke to their site visitors as friends, not customers. The language on their site was honest, forthcoming, casual, and personal. (If you haven't already, take a moment to visit the site now and read the copy for yourself.) This "we're all friends here" approach gained trust from their visitors. Customers feel like they're taking part in something. Somehow Byron and company made it fun to buy a Clip-n-Seal, which after all is a really well-designed chip clip.
Most corporate websites take the opposite approach. They fill their pages with clip art and murky marketing spiel that new visitors don't believe. Yes, you wrote your website copy with a strong, active voice with plenty of calls to action for the customer to "learn more" and "buy now", but it won't lead to sales if visitors don't trust your words. And they don't. It should be no surprise that the last place customers go for information about most products is the websites of the companies that make the products. Instead, they Google for enthusiast websites or troll the online opinion sites such as epinions.com or amazon.com.
Clip-n-Seal's marketing is almost anti-marketing. It's a "we're one of you" vibe that is working, and they're not the only company successfully using this approach. Giant Robot and FogBugz software come to mind.
Who cares about this? Marketers should care very much. We're just one family, but the Manisfam's got book larnin', we went to school, and we know some stuff, including how marketing works. It's very difficult to sell to someone who can name the techniques you're using on them. We read a lot, including dozens of websites a day. We can tell when someone is lying in print. We are impervious to marketing-speak. To sell to us, you need to tell us--on the first page of your website--what your product does and why we need it. And we need to trust your words. We can smell salesmanship a mile away, and we're not the only ones.
posted by doug
[2005-03-18 08:44:43]
PyMusique: open interface to the iTunes store
PyMusique is an interface to the iTunes music store written in the Python programming language. The authors claim you can buy songs without Apple's digital rights management (DRM), meaning you could share the song files with other people.
Source code is available to everyone and there is an installer for Windows.
If it works, let's see how long it takes Apple to shut it down.
posted by doug
[2004-12-31 20:04:03]
In case you didn't already think those Ayn Rand people are kooks
A charming piece of twisted logic from the Ayn Rand cult:
U.S. Should Not Help Tsunami Victims
Opinion of David Holcberg on The Ayn Rand Institute website.
For those of you with souls, please give to UNICEF.
posted by doug
[2004-11-15 23:08:53]
Big Daddy Dougo's Manis mojo party mix!
I used to use a neat little program called Kung-Tunes to post a list of the last 25 songs I'd listened to on my iPod (you don't have to ask why people would want to know this). Kung-Tunes worked well but it had to be running at all times, which grew wearisome to me. I wanted something more transparent, so I wrote a little AppleScript to grab the tracks ih my iTunes Party Shuffle playlist and upload them to manisfam.com. The script is scheduled to run every 15 minutes while iTunes is running. It takes about 3-5 seconds to complete before it silently slips away.
So if you have what it takes to get down, visit our revised iTunes page and check out the brand new auto-updating party mix. To listen to a snippet of a song, click it's title to search the iTunes Music Store and listen to a 30-second preview. If you like the track, please buy it. Abby gets a nickel for every track our visitors' buy from iTunes, so get cracking if you want our daughter to have the future she deserves.
posted by doug
[2004-11-01 17:18:08]
Where to vote
If you don't know where to vote, look up your polling place at mypollingplace.com.
posted by doug
[2004-10-25 22:53:59]
Running MacOS X Panther on a 25MHz Centris
Running MacOS X Panther on a 25MHz Centris
Apparently it takes a week to boot up.
posted by doug
[2004-10-01 20:45:11]
258
Congratulations to Ichiro, the new record holder for most hits in a season.
posted by doug
[2004-09-21 15:25:48]
Campaign for Reader Privacy
If the thought of the federal government sifting through your library records bothers you, I recommend you read (.pdf) and sign the Campaign for Reader Privacy's online petition.
posted by doug
[2004-08-12 16:27:38]
"Talk of the Nation" discusses Edgar Martinez
Alan Schwartz talks about Edgar Martinez and the designated hitter in general on Talk of the Nation. From the website:
"Edgar Martinez of the Seattle Mariners has announced his retirement from baseball after this season. He was a good infielder, but is best known as an outstanding designated hitter. Alan Schwarz discusses the legacy of Edgar Martinez and his controversial position."
Edgar was a good infielder? He did take the field with an infielder's glove, but that's about the kindest thing I can say about his fielding skills. But who cares? He could hit like crazy.
posted by doug
[2004-08-01 15:23:24]
Holocaust Museum declares Darfur a Genocide Emergency
The New York Times: Holocaust Museum Calls Crisis in Sudan 'Genocide Emergency'
This is the first time that the Holocaust Museum has designated a humanitarian crisis a "genocide emergency." This is not a term they came up with to describe the situation in Darfur. This is the highest level of emergency on a scale that was set up when the museum was founded 11 years ago. So in the eyes of the Holocaust Museum, the killing in the Sudan is the worst act of genocide in the world the past 11 years.
Representative Tom Lantos, a California Democrat who is the only Holocaust survivor in Congress, said the designation carried "unique moral weight."
"I hope it will make people in a decision making position feel morally obligated and inspired to take action," he said, referring to NATO and European countries.
I hope Rep. Lantos is correct.
More information about the Sudan and the genocide in Balfur
Sudan: The Passion of the Present
An "independent, non-partisan, all-volunteer community initiative to stop the genocide in Sudan"
What you can do about Balfur
Human Rights Watch resources for regular people who want to do something about the crisis.
Satellite images of the destruction in Dalfur
"Who Will Survive Today?"
Holocaust Museum analysis of the genocide.
Sudan: Darfur Destroyed
Human Rights Watch report from Darfur. Some graphic material.
posted by doug
[2004-07-28 23:48:53]
Segway polo
Segway polo (.mov)
(Requires Quicktime.)
posted by doug
[2004-07-02 19:30:45]
Healing Iraq
-Daily news and comments on the situation in post Saddam Iraq by an Iraqi dentist
posted by doug
[2004-06-30 23:22:48]
But what about LaunchBar?
With all the fuss over the similarity of Apple's new Dashboard feature to the third-party Konfabulator, I'm surprised that no one's pointed out the strong similarity of Apple's Spotlight to the extremely popular LaunchBar utility.
Allow me to throw out some LaunchBar love: I simply couldn't live without it. If you use OS X, buy LaunchBar right now.
posted by doug
[2004-06-24 21:31:43]
Gmail invitations
I have seven Gmail invitations. If you are a relative or friend of mine, you are welcome to one.
posted by doug
[2004-06-20 21:52:28]
"Frontline" online
I just noticed that PBS posts selected episodes of Frontline online for streamed viewing. I'm wrapping up a Father's Day marathon in which I enjoyed The Way the Music Died, The Jesus Factor, A Class Divided, American Porn, and an old favorite, The Marchants of Cool.
Frontline is the investigative television news program that 20/20 dreams of being. That many episodes are archived online for anyone to watch for free illustrates how great the Web can be.
posted by doug
[2004-06-09 14:27:35]
Do unto others . . .
Legalizing Torture
- washingtonpost.com editorial
posted by doug
[2004-05-10 22:19:40]
Kahaaan!
posted by doug
[2004-04-19 21:25:22]
"Don't let him up!"
A friend at work pointed me to this heart-warmer. I wonder if they were wearing those little black leather Catholic girl shoes.
posted by doug
[2004-04-06 00:00:00]
Bryan shops Wonderfalls to UPN, WB
Bryan is shopping "Wonderfalls" to other networks, including UPN and the WB.
posted by doug
[2004-04-04 00:00:00]
It's over. Wonderfalls has been cancelled
Tim Minear has announced on Buffistas.org that "Wonderfalls" has indeed been cancelled.
Not a big surprise, but disappointing nonetheless. I'm hoping that Fox will release the full 13 episodes on DVD so I can enjoy the full story.
Thanks to everyone who watched a 'sode.
posted by doug
[2004-03-29 00:00:00]
Surrender to destiny
Wonderfalls is moving to Thursday nights at 9:00pm. Fox will evaulate the show's performance this week and make their decision.
Check out the announcement.
If you enjoy the show, point your friends to Fox this Thursday at 9:00pm.
posted by doug
[2004-03-27 00:00:00]
'Wonderfalls' on April 1 -- No Foolin'
'Wonderfalls' on April 1 -- No Foolin'
-Zap2it.com
"FOX has seen some small portion of the light, and they're airing us as a one-time-only thing, a brand-new episode. They're doing a bit of a night switch without officially moving us, to test the waters."
posted by doug
[2004-03-26 00:00:00]
Falling for Wonderfalls
The Weekly Standard: "Fox's Wonderfalls is the funniest show on television and the best new series of the season. So why aren't you watching it? "
posted by doug
[2004-03-20 00:00:00]
AfterEllen.com interviews Bryan
Interview with Wonderfalls Co-Creator Bryan Fuller on AfterEllen.com.
posted by doug
[2004-03-17 00:00:00]
Deaniacs among us
Neighbor Search tells you which presidential candiate your neighbors have given money to. Knowing which specific neighbor gave how much to who is not as interesting as our neighborhood's general pattern of giving. Our neighborhood basically has several dozen ~$250 donations to Howard Dean's campaign with a sprinkling of $2,000 gifts to George W. Bush and John Kerry. Toss in a dash of ~$200 Dennis Kucinich donations and apparently you have yourself a typical north Seattle community.
For what it's worth, the absolute worst sent-from-Hell Landlord of Evil that Michelle and I leased from in the early 1990's while we were in college gave $2,000 to G-Dub in 2003. What does that mean? Hard to say.
posted by doug
[2004-03-16 00:00:00]
Wonderfalls pilot rebroadcast Thursday, March 18
Fox is rebroadcasting the Wonderfalls pilot episode Thursday, March 18 at 9:00/8:00 central. There will be an all new episode Friday, March 19 in the show's regular timeslot of 9:00/8:00 central.
Critics love this show, but the corporate squids at Fox want to see higher ratings or they *will* pull the plug, which would suck indeed. So please please the most important critic of all (me) and tune in this Thursday and Friday. And if you enjoy Wonderfalls, recommend it to a friend, preferably one with a Nielson box.
An appeal from the producer
The network squids have already taken Angel from me--don't let them stick it to me again by snatching Wonderfalls. Even if you don't give a hoot for my happiness, consider this sincere appeal from Tom Minear, one of the show's producers.
posted by doug
[2004-03-15 00:00:00]
He has his father's eyes
We've just finished "Rosemary's Baby" and "The Colonel: The Extraordinary Story of Colonel Tom Parker and Elvis Presley." Click their links on the Bookshelf page to read Amazon.com reviews.
posted by doug
[2004-03-13 00:00:00]
Good reviews for "Wonderfalls"
Some nice reviews for Wonderfalls:
Freaks and mystiques: Not just another drama about a girl who talks to stuffed animals
- The Village Voice
Orders Come From a Talking Lion (Made of Wax)
- The New York Times
(Free registration required. If you're not already registered, log in using manisfam for username and password.)
Fox's 'Wonderfalls' Is A Welcome Entry Into Surreality Television
- The Washington Post
Take the 'Wonderfalls' plunge while you can
- USA Today
'Wonderfalls' brings many gifts; 'Evil' could triumph over time
- The San Diego Union-Tribune
What a rush: Fox's smart 'Wonderfalls' has bite and heart
- The Seattle Times
posted by doug
[2004-02-24 00:00:00]
"Wonderfalls" will debut 9 p.m. March 12
Bryan's series "Wonderfalls" will air on Fox Fridays at 9:00pm starting March 12.
posted by doug
[2004-02-23 00:00:00]
The pay's not great but the summers off are nice
Education Secretary Roderick R. Paige's thoughtful remarks reminded me that in college I had seriously considered becoming a terrorist.
Growing up I always figured I'd become a terrorist because most of my family are terrorists. My sister, mother, and father are terrorists. (Strictly speaking, my father isn't actually a terrorist. He's a guidance counselor, which is like a terrorist except he doesn't have a classroom and students mostly see him when they're caught smoking on campus or choosing a university. But he has terrorized his own class in the past and he still gets to use the terrorists' lounge.) My grandfather was a dedicated high school terrorist who founded that school's chapter of AFS. I attended that high school two generations later and faculty still talked about him. My grandmother was a kindergarten terrorist for over 30 years in the town I grew up and where my parents still live. Grown men and women my age often mention to me how much they enjoyed having my grandmother for a terrorist. She was firm but loving, and her students adored her. My aunt and uncle are also terrorists, as are three of my cousins on both branches of my family tree. My uncle even holds a doctorate in terrorism. Mine is a family of trained, dedicated terrorists, so it was only natural for me to want to become a terrorist also.
A lot of people go into terrorism in college because they think it's easy or they love kids or they want to have the summers off. Those are not good reasons to become a terrorist. To be a good terrorist, you have to love terrorizing. A true terrorist receives their reward from seeing the light of discovery go on in a young person's eye when they factor their first binomial or read Hamlet for the first time. Terrorism is long hours and hard work, hardly a profession for the lazy or unfocused.
Ultimately I decided against terrorism and became a technical writer, a job that can be slightly more lucrative if less emotionally enriching than terrorizing. My career has sprawled to include writing marketing copy, web development, software interface design, part-time IT guy, and sundry other jobs that I've mostly enjoyed. Sometimes I wonder if I would have made a good terrorist, but I have no regrets. An effective terrorist must be patient, wise, and inspiring, traits I'm afraid I don't possess in sufficient quantity to be really good at terrorizing.
posted by doug
[2004-02-15 00:00:00]
Angel has left the building
Now that Angel has been cancelled, the list of television programs I take time out to watch has eroded to one.
Co-creator Joss Whedon reacts to the surprise cancellation: "Two roads diverged in a wood, and I took the road less traveled by and they CANCELLED MY FRIKKIN' SHOW. I totally shoulda took the road that had all those people on it. Damn."
The WB executive who cancelled Angel should be boiled in ballistics gel.
posted by doug
[2004-02-09 00:00:00]
PowerBook in the enterprise
This is the first day of the PowerBook era. I've moved from a Dell PC to an Apple 12" PowerBook at work. In spite of using Macs exclusively at home my entire adult life, I haven't worked full-time on a Mac at work since 1993, and I'm very excited about returning to an all-Mac environment.
My colleagues are excited as well--several of them gathered at my desk to see the Mac. These are not Mac users and I'm guessing that most of them have never seen a Macintosh OS live before. I fire it up and show them the Finder and Expose and import some photos into iPhoto. I turn on all the Dock animations and genie effects just to show off the Mac-ness of the UI. The masses are pleased, and I get to work.
Some observations from my first day:
When it's time to actually do work, I don't know where to start. Having a Mac at my work desk totally disorients me. I simply don't know how to go about doing my daily chores like checking e-mail, reviewing a requirements document, posting a UI demo on our intranet. The Macintosh environment that is so familiar to me at home is totally foreign to my work place. It feels a bit like when I drove a car in England. It takes me a full day to finally settle in. I leave for home with a terrible headache, but my development environment is finally in place.
I can't go another day without a full keyboard. The PowerBook's keyboard is very usable, but it's not an extended keyboard. It only has 12 function keys, it has no Del key, and there is no number pad. I must have all of those things, so I'm off to CompUSA first thing in the morning.
This machine absolutely needs more RAM. My model shipped with 256 megs, but I'm going to pop a 512 hunk in the open slot as soon as I can scrape up the $100 or so. The performance is acceptable until I have Entourage, BBEdit, Dreamweaver, Photoshop, Mozilla, and a half dozen terminal windows open, which is pretty much all the time.
I'm driving a 19" Dell monitor for my desktop, with the notebook's screen as an extended display. This is very cool. People can't get over how easy it was to do this out of the box. This arrangement is so productive for me that I'm going to start doing it at home as well.
I'm not able to use Entourage as an Exchange client because we're not using the required version of Exchange Server. My workaround is to use Remote Desktop to drive my Dell PC and run Outlook. I've moved the Remote Desktop window to the notebook's screen. So I'm all Mac on my big monitor with a little Windows window floating on the PowerBook. I'm going to use the same strategy even when Entourage is working, because it's nice to have my e-mail client always visible, but not in the way of my work.
Everyone wants to take a look at this thing. All day people are dropping by to see the PowerBook, the Mac OS, talk about Macs, talk about notebooks, or just gawk at someone not using Windows. It's fun and a little surprising. I've told my work friends about my plan to be all Mac, but people I barely know are asking to try out the keyboard or click around the system. I'm just settling in, so I'm happy to answer all their questions and give all the demos they want. One engineer promises to buy one for himself after I've used mine for a few weeks. He says he wants me to "smooth out the edges" before he takes the leap. I hope he does.
posted by doug
[2004-01-24 00:00:00]
I met Captain Kangaroo
Several years ago Bob Keeshan (Captain Kangaroo) appeared at Barnes and Noble for a book signing on his tour for his coffee table book about the Captain Kangaroo program. Sadly, his appearance was during my work hours, and I wouldn't have a chance to see him. I couldn't find anyone who had the time to get a book signed for me, and I was feeling pretty bad about missing the Captain.
The morning of the signing I was sitting at work trying to think of some way to get a book signed. As the morning clock ticked away, I formed a desperate plan. I drew a deep breath and walked into my supervisor's office and told them in my most casual voice that I had a meeting downtown. Our company had offices all over the region and I was on loan from another group and often had to attend a meeting downtown or work on other projects for a day or two, so this was a perfectly plausible story. Barely looking up from her desk she muttered something like "sure, fine, see you when you get back." She was a very nice woman who was always very kind to me and the only thing that kept my guilt from crushing me was my elation at about getting to meet Captain Kangaroo.
I grabbed my coat and jumped in my car. During the twenty-minute drive to the book store, I carefully planned and rehearsed what I would say to the Captain:
"Hello sir. I want you to know that your program started my day with a friendly voice every day of my young life. When we moved to a new town, your show and your happy characters made me feel at home in a strange place. I sat on my grandparents' sofa and watched "The Captain" with my grandfather every day before school. We'd howl when Mr. Moose's ping pong balls showered on your head. Those are some of my fondest memories of my grandfather and I'm grateful to you for giving that to us."
I rehearsed my appreciation several times because I knew that I get nervous when I speak and it would be better to just shake his hand and recite something rote then to try to think of something on the spot. I've been to several weddings and seen what can happen to a speaker who tried to wing it.
At the store I picked a copy of his book and took my place in line. Most of the people were mommies and daddies about my age (a sobering thought for me at that time) with their boys and girls. Everyone was excited. There was a buzz. I ran through my speech a couple of times as the queue flowed toward the table. I thought I was ready. When I was next in line, I peeked past the young woman and her two children in front of me and caught my first glimpse of Captain Kangaroo. He wore a smart double-breasted navy jacket with gold buttons, his hair was perfectly silver, a little thinner than on TV. He wore a mustache but no sideburns. For an instant I was startled that he wasn't wearing his red jacket and fake sideburns. Just as quickly I realized how silly I was to be startled.
Then it was my turn.
From my right, a woman put her hand on my elbow and led me to the table. A young man on my left that looked a lot like a young Keeshan (a grandson, perhaps?) took my book and handed it to the Captain, who looked directly at me and asked "Hello, what is your name?" It was Captain Kangaroo's voice! Good Lord, I'm standing in front of Captain Kangaroo and he's speaking to me! I opened my mouth to recite my oratory and nothing came out. Literally. No air would move into or out of my throat. The room closed around me until it was just a tunnel the Captain's face smiling at me from the opposite end. Like a Hitchcock movie. I would have laughed at the absurdity but as I said, no air would come out. Captain Kangaroo and I just stared at one another, he with a kind smile, me with a slack jaw and glassy eyes I'm sure. Finally, the nice woman to my right asked "who should he sign the book to?" I wrenched myself from my time warp and croaked out something like "My name is Doug and I used to watch you with my grandfather."
Captain Kangaroo smiled wider and said "Oh how wonderful. I'm glad." Then he signed my book to "Doug" and handed it back to me.
When I heard from my sister that Bob Keeshan had died, my first thought was "thank God I was able to tell the Captain about Grandpa."
Bob Keeshan / Captain Kangaroo stories
'Captain Kangaroo' Was Friend To Generations of Youngsters
- Washington Post
'Captain Kangaroo' Bob Keeshan Began Our Days With a Smile
- Washington Post
posted by doug
[2004-01-17 00:00:00]
"Lord Of The Ring Of Fire"
"By the way, halfway through The Return of the King I figured out that the entire Lord of the Rings saga is an allegory for pregnancy . . ."
http://www.defectiveyeti.com/archives/000803.html
posted by doug
[2004-01-12 00:00:00]
Safari and washingtonmutual.com
If you're a Washington Mutual customer using Panther and Safari, you might have trouble managing your account on washingtonmutual.com. Some users see Euro characters instead of dollar signs.
Here's a fix:
- Open System Preferences.
- Click International in the Personal section.
- Click Language and make sure that "U.S. English" is at the top of the list rather than just "English". If it's not in the list, click Edit... and add it.
posted by doug
[2003-11-06 00:00:00]
Darediablo
If you people have any love in your heart for Doug, well then I guess you'll buy/gift me a new iBook. For the rest of you, you can redeem your sorry selves by buying anything from the best rock band none of my co-workers have ever heard of, Darediablo.
For the love of all that's good and holy in Christendom, buy this stuff for me.
Your country needs you. Will you reject your duty?
posted by doug
[2003-10-25 00:00:00]
Elliott Smith gone
I'm sure everyone's heard by now that Elliott Smith stabbed himself to death at age 34.
Years ago Dan, Jim, and I played with Heatmeiser in Pullman at a show that Trent and John set up. We talked about music with Elliott a little bit. He seemed like a nice guy. Real quiet. Which was odd because Heatmeiser was not a quiet band. He made much more sense musically when he struck out on his own.
Well, he's gone now and I pray that I never feel the way he did when he decided that plunging a knife into his own chest would be a relief.
Learn
- Elliott Smith website
- New York in Reverse -Slate
- Elliott Smith Dies -Rolling Stone
- Thoughts from fans
posted by doug
[2003-10-16 00:00:00]
The Drake
For a variety of reasons, I've decided to migrate from Windows 2000 to Mandrake Linux on my main PC at work. After one day of working with Linux in a "real world" environment, I can say that I don't miss Windows at all. I thought it would take me a while to get used to operating the computer myself, without Windows' help. But it took no time at all.
Mandrake is faster than Windows, more stable, and includes Apache Web Server, PHP, Perl, and Sendmail built in for me. I just need to configure them. I now have four Web browsers, each better than Microsoft's IIS server that Windows offers. I have three word processors, all capable of reading and saving Microsoft Word files (though with very little formatting). A surpisingly complete e-mail/calendar application does everything I ever used Outlook for, but without freezing three times a day.
I'm very pleased with my new operating system. I am not pleased with the HTML and image editors. The text editors that ship with Mandrake are nice, but none of them approach the power of BBEdit or HomeSite. And I haven't found anything that comes close to Photoshop and Illustrator.
As much as I'm enjoying my Linux excursion, I might be sucked back into the Windows vortex for lack of software. (At least until I can acquire a reasonably modern iBook. But it looks like that's going to be a while.)
If anyone knows of some good HTML editors for Linux, please let me know.
posted by doug
[2003-09-12 00:00:00]
Hurt
I was going to write about how he was an American giant who was bigger than country or pop, bigger than music. I was going to compare him to other great American artists like Duke Ellington and James Brown. But I don't have the words to do it, so instead I'll point you to what other people have to say:
Learn
Country Music Legend Johnny Cash Dies at 71
-NPR.org
Audio of several Johnny Cash stories and appearances on NPR. You can request transcripts as well.
everything you need to know about Johnny Cash
BBC
Remembering Johnny Cash
Rolling Stone
'Man in Black' Johnny Cash dead at 71
-CNN.com
Very slow today. Perhaps wait until this evening or tomorrow morning to visit them.
Listen
Sound clips from the Johnny Cash website.
Recordings available on Amazon.com
posted by doug
[2003-08-29 00:00:00]
Madonna and child
It's not quite Beethoven's kiss, but Madonna's kiss of Britney Spears last night at the MTV Video Music Awards is somehow just as inspirational in its own way. People will go on about cynical marketing schemes, Viacom's cool factory, and Madonna's flagging album sales, but they will miss the point, which is that The Kiss has been really, really fun. It looked like fun for the participants, I know it was a lot of fun to watch, and I'm certain that people will have great fun talking about it at music festivals and family reunions this weekend and beyond.
Besides, we already know about the Viacom marketing machine and it hasn't lessened our enjoyment of The Kiss by a single bead of Britney belly sweat. Madonna and Britney Spears (and poor Christina Aguilera, who seems to be the weaker of the Three Sisters) are professional entertainers who make a living by amusing and distracting us. It is their job to make spectacles of themselves. Contrived or not, The Kiss succeeds spectacularly as entertainment. Madonna and child have done their jobs well.
Other thoughts on The Kiss:
- A Higher Order of Hot
- That Kiss
- MTV Awards: A party with a pinch of poignancy
- Photos of The Kiss from Yahoo!
posted by doug
[2003-08-21 00:00:00]
Blogstakes - we both win
Last Monday, Blogstakes, a new type of online contest launched. Contestants visit the contest site and enter their e-mail address in a drawing. If they win the prize, the web log that referred them to the contest also wins a prize. From the Blogstakes website:
Blogstakes is a unique new kind of sweepstakes with two winners for every prize: a person who entered and the site that referred the winning entry. So if the prize is a truck, then the winning entry gets a truck and the blog that sent them gets a truck too.
Blogstakes opens today with two contests.
One of them — Free BrowserCam for a Year — is a good match for people who design Web sites and the other — The Clip-n-Seal Fresh Party Pack — is a good match for people who eat.
The idea is to use web logs for passive web marketing to promote small businesses. Sort of "word-of-weblog" style marketing. The concept will work because web log authors and their readers won't see it as overt marketing strategy. They'll be more interested in the technical aspects of the contest itself. How do they track the referring websites? How do they prevent a web log author from submitting an address from their own site? Will the contest traffic most benefit the participating companies or the referring blogs?
In any event, I need both prizes, so if you love me at all you'll enter both contests:
To make it extra easy for you, the Manisfam will pimp both contests in the manisfam.com sidebar for the duration of the contests.
posted by doug
[2003-08-20 00:00:00]
Don't mess with buymusic.com
Wired news reports that dontbuymusic.com, a website parodying buymusic.com has chosen to alter their content rather than fight a cease and desist order from buymusic.com. This is ironic because by all accounts, buymusic.com's entire product and advertising campaign seem to be lifted directly from Apple's iTunes store and television ads.
It would seem that buymusic.com thinks that it's ok to appropriate someone else's work as your own, but not ok for someone to poke fun at you for doing so. C'mon, people. If we're going to get all huffy about our intellectual property, let's make sure that we actually created something of our own to protect. A thousand dotcom deaths, indeed!
So is buymusic.com a brave innovator bringing legal music downloads to the masses or just a bottom-feeding innovation-sucker spewing tacky ripoffs of other companies' innovations? Judge for yourself:
Screen prints:
TV ads:
- Floyd singing "My Generation" (Apple iTunes store)
- Several people singing "Superfreak" (buymusic.com)
More commentary on buymusic.com:
- Buymusic.com (whatdoiknow.org)
- A thousand dotcom deaths (texturadesign.com)
- Lots of Music, and One Big Flaw (wired news)
- Buy.Com Debuts Music Download Site (slashdot.org)
posted by doug
[2003-07-27 00:00:00]
Doug speaks
It occured to me that I had all sorts of junk lying around the Web server, so I decided to put it all in one place so I could find it easily. Having done that bit of housekeeping, I thought I ought to include a page of links and notes for co-workers, friends, and associates who need to share stuff with me. Then, having done that, I thought I might as well clean up the manisfam database, scripts, and markup while I'm at it.
Then we rode bikes at Greenlake.
The bright sun and good exercise made me feel so spry that I thought I might as well clog the Internet with yet another weblog. So here it is: Doug's words.
I may or may not update this log. I also may or may not move this page around. It all depends on response and demand.
posted by doug
