antipaucity

I’ve been given claim code, which apparently has to exist in a post, hence this one

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With the new iPod nano from Apple, it looks like someone is starting to implement a digital radio recorder.

It’d be nice if it wasn’t just the “skip” or “pause” protection, but it’s a start.

It’s been a month since I last posted on my weight loss attempts.

From a month ago, I’ve dropped 11 lbs. For my metric-bound acquaintances: I have no idea, so look it up

Now I have a good (but somewhat costly) problem – I need new pants

I just found this article from David Pogue that indicates how to avoid the voicemail prompts and greetings:

It turns out that each carrier offers a “bypass the instructions” keystroke that takes you directly to the beep. (It bypasses both the person’s own recorded greeting and the 15-second carrier nonsense.)

To be as evil as possible, the carriers do not promote or tell you about the existence of this keystroke. Furthermore, the key to press is different with each company:

* for Verizon

1 for Sprint

# for AT&T

# for T-Mobile

The NY Times has an interesting op-ed on this topic today.

Maybe we should consider sending people on one-way trips to Mars because if they’re explorers as earth-bound ones were, presuming a return trip may be too expensive – or even undesirable.

We’ve had lots of experience as humans of sending people on one-way trips. Maybe we could turn Mars into a penal colony like Georgia and Australia once were

More seriously, though – this has been proposed in various contexts before, but if the people signing-up for the program are truly volunteering, then why not?

Along with the /. post mentioned by Jason, is Bob Cringely’s discussion on outsourcing education.

What is the emphasis on in-person education from specific professors? I’ve been asked for my transcript professionally once – and that’s because my current employer pays more attention to grades than technical aptitude.

I can recall only a small handful of professors I would want to take classes with, and almost none who I actually got one-on-one time with while in school. (I think there was only ever one, Dale Bryant @ HVCC.)

MIT, Berkeley, and myriad other schools are making their lectures available online for free. Hundreds of schools have podcasts of classes and special events.

So, why DO we insist on graduating from “the school” – and not learning what we can and want, when and where we can and are able?

Have begun.

I just got a site setup for my fiancee and I to keep our friends and family up-to-date on what’s going on: http://warrenmyers.com/wedding/.

And yes – she picked the blog theme

I realize I asked this question a while back, but in reviewing some of my history, I was reminded of how helpful the site has been for a variety of issues.

And I’m sure that questions like this one regarding VMware and VPNs is something “I should have known” – but not knowing where to look for appropriate data is what makes sites like these so helpful.

I do still wonder, though, how we remember what we know, and whether out-sourcing our collective minds is still a Good Idea™…

A list apart has a nice write-up of the forthcoming HTML 5 standard.

If you are like most designers, you probably don’t write all your markup by hand. But until the tools you use catch up to the new elements in (X)HTML 5, you will be doing some markup by hand while you learn. There’s been a bit of confusion (and controversy!) about the relationship between HTML 5, XHTML 1.0/1.1, and XHTML 5. Let’s clear that up right now.

HTML 4.0 (the markup language we all know and love) is based on a “rulebook” called SGML. In the SGML rulebook, element names are not case sensitive, you can have elements with optional closing tags (like <p>), and you can have attribute values without quotation marks. XHTML 1.0 and 1.1 are based on a rulebook called XML. In the XML rulebook, element and attribute names are case sensitive, every opening tag must have a closing tag, and attribute values must be quoted.

HTML 5 defines a markup language that isn’t based on either rulebook, but that can be written in either “HTML form” (or serialization, as the spec calls it) or “XHTML form”.

Excellent – so now we all have an easier standard to work with that is more flexible, less demanding, and .. oh yeah: is only supported in the absolute newest of browsers.

I ran across the Tiny Code site recently, and was reminded of how many of us started programming on ancient machines that barely had enough horsepower to handle typing – yet we’d spend hours on end writing little games and whatnot that had to be small or they wouldn’t run.

I’d love to see a return to a minimalist approach to development – but I know it’s only a pipe dream.