autosave failed ... autosave failed ...

google's blogger, a year or two later: utterly boring layouts and templates. unbearably mediocre editing front-end. endless "autosave" failures. same sorry software, different day.

[addendum: yes i know i can take my blog elsewhere, but quietely walking away is not good enough. i want google to be informed. i want it to know that blogger is mediocre, and should be improved. google did not get to where it is by being the second or third best.]

[april update: at least one blog entry become entirely un-savable in draft form. several other drafts have had intermittent autosave failures. this is gone from bad to disgusting.]

daily rotfl

yet again pz myers is making fun of fishes in a barrel, er, creationists. [a creationist own goal?]

Creationist: There are no transitional whale fossils!

Scientist: Oh, dear, really? That's terrible! We should teach the students about that, don't you think?

Creationist: Yes, we should. That information must go into the science standards for our state.

Scientist: I quite agree. When we mandate that our teachers must offer instruction in the details of whale transitional fossils, the gaps will be so obvious.

Creationist: Good. Let's insert, "Teachers will discuss the nature of evolutionary transitions, emphasizing the kinds of evidence needed to support claims that land animals evolved into whales, and that cats give birth to dogs."

Scientist: Well, as a compromise, let's leave out the bit about cats and dogs, and we'll have to clean up and standardize the language in committee, but let's do it. The committee might even make this broader, pushing for discussion of all kinds of transitional fossils, which, of course, are absent. Boy, you sure got me over a barrel, forcing me to include discussion of an evolutionary flaw in our public schools. I hope you aren't going to continue to outwit me with your Mastery of Science.

Creationist: <preening smugly> Ha ha, our cunning plan is working!

dns and censorship

a judge orders dynadot to

prevent the domain name from resolving to the wikileaks.org website or any other website or server other than a blank park page, until further order of this Court.

hm. until we get a domain name system that can withstand arbitrary attempts of censorship and manipulation, click this link: wikileaks

blue note needs java and linux

i try to track all rudy van gelder remastered blue note jazz. this used to be somewhat easier; rvg had its own section in bluenote. it is now redesigned, and more difficult to navigate even when not throwing up after a simple click. how embarrassing for such a legendary label...

Exception Details:
System.FormatException: Input string was not in a correct format.

Source Error:
Line 40: for (int i = 0; i < b1.Items.Rows.Count; i++)
Line 41: {
Line 42     if (Convert.ToInt32(b1.Items.Rows[i]["Width"]) < 433)
                   b1.Items.Rows[i].Delete();
Line 43: }
Line 44: b1.Items.AcceptChanges();

Source File: e:\inetpub\wwwroot\LabelSites\BlueNote\
bluenote.com\www\CatalogArtistReleases.aspx.cs    Line: 42

prophet and wikipedia

nytimes reports on an attempt to censor a medieval image of prophet muhammad in wikipedia. evidently, no amount of inhumanity or insanity [such as beheadings, suicide bombings] can arouse enough islamic sensitivity to put together a petition [not that petitions would ever work against insanity] but a medieval image in wikipedia can. too bad the painter is already dead...

quote of the day

So in light of the issue’s new prominence and with a desire to improve the mental hygiene of others, I would just like to say that Intelligent Design is a really, really bad idea -- scientifically, politically, and theologically. I say this as a dedicated conservative, who has on many occasions defended and espoused religion and religious conservatism. I also say it as a professional molecular biologist, who has worked daily (or at least week-daily) for years with biological problems to which the theory of evolution has contributed significant understanding -- and to which Intelligent Design is incapable of contributing any understanding at all. -- mac johnson [intelligent design and other dumb ideas]

late resolutions for 2008

• touched: i will never buy any new electronic gadget without a reasonable touch interface. thanks to apple, the year of the teeny buttons, plastic styli, undergrad-grade interfaces and poor navigation are gone. [sad observation: palm is still producing things for year 2000. see centro.]
• right of ownership: i will rip every single cd in my cd library in three different ways: lame mp3, aac, and ogg, and i will encourage and provide assistance to anyone with a cd collection to do the same to their own library.
• food fight: every package of food that i find in my storeroom that has any form of tropical oil [such as palm oil] regardless of how many "healthy grains" claims it may have, will go in the garbage. companies that produce this crap [such as orville redenbacher] and pretend you are getting something healthy will be boycotted.
• environmental protection: i will do everything within my power as a canadian citizen to keep majority [preferably even a minority] government from the reach of harper and his drooling toadies.
• squeezed: i will write ten thousand lines of python. a portion of that will be rewriting others' java, perl and ruby code.
• overbooked: i will finally clean up my library, and get rid of anything i have not looked at in the last five years. [this is going to be very difficult. what am i to do with my copy of weissmann's lisp 1.5?]
• wikiful: i will contribute to at least ten wikipedia entries. [i had also once promised that i would contribute 100 images to wikimedia; i am still working on that one...]
• fox hunt: i will remove every copy of firefox, iceweasel and any other related animal from all my systems. i am sick and tired of of this bloated, resource gobbling piece of cyberblob eating up my systems.
• martial way: i will finally learn aikido. [i am minutes away from aikido yoshinkai canada where kimeda sensei teaches.]
• imagenation: i will make 2000 good [keeper] images, and display ten of them at a nearby starbucks. [see photographic goals]