::: straight shootin' painfully coded in a tiny little textbox journalin' :::

((( bs free zone )))

leonard's fa410 blog

Welcome to my weblog for the fa410 class I took in the fall 1999 semester.
Other sections:

[ archive | assignments | class notes | matrix redesign | recommended reading ]


Wednesday, December 08, 1999

12/8/99 3:42:35 AM
still waiting for my copy of quake3 to ship... luckily i'm so swamped w/ work it doesn't much matter.

current desktop bg:


12/8/99 2:35:07 AM
ahh, full screen fun w/ ie. try the kiosk mode, it's a blast. no chrome, alt-f4 to exit — run iexplore -k


12/8/99 1:35:36 AM
more articles on stupendous hardware from IBM: 90 GHz circuits. yowzers!


12/8/99 12:54:49 AM
1 petaflop = 1 quadrillion operations / second. that's frickin fast.

care of scary's


12/8/99 12:03:58 AM
You might be a Republican if...


Sunday, December 05, 1999

12/5/99 9:19:25 PM
Britannica.com has a deal going where when you visit you can choose $1 to contribute to a charity. pretty neat, i guess.


12/5/99 4:26:31 PM
pontification always sounds better in the wee hours of the morning.


12/5/99 3:44:41 AM
i've never read molly ivin's column before, but she come across as very insightful.


12/5/99 3:10:33 AM
shallow and basic thoughts @ 3am:
one of the the most important things about being smart, learned, intelligent, wise, older, whatever is being able to keep things in perspective, specifically ego wise. once you lose your humility, you start getting cruft accumulating. at some point, these traits go from being acceptable to being not acceptable, at which point you become known as an asshole and not worth wasting one's time with. the important thing to note is that it's not always so apparent. it creeps up on people. with the loss of humility (and the corresponding vigilance) due to self-satisfaction, there is a loss of flexibility, and a loss of perception. (compounding the natural difficulties of self-evaluation).

some people enjoy and become proud of cruftiness, and you know, yeah, a lot of those things are what make us unique. i'm going to argue that there is enough eccentrity that gathers over time and it's not something that we have to consciously work at. that, and if your too proud (the humility deal), you lose awareness and basically it can just spiral outward to an unacceptable level. i'm of the believe that humans are social creatures, and i don't think anyone should too proud of being misanthropic or anti-social (of if they are, they should not be living in the society but trying their best to strike off on their own -- you're free to do whatever you want as long as your not doing harm to others and inpinging on their rights)

if there be only one worthy contribution post-modern thought, i think it is that it tells us to constantly question ourselves and our assumptions. sure post-modernism can itself become a cargo-cult of thought in itself, but that's just more thing to be kept in mind. although my philsophy ta would say this more eloquently, "read what the brightest minds have writtent, and then think critically," is a sentiment that should probably mentioned (it's implicit in postmodernism (you can't criticize without first understanding or revealing), but a lot of people seem to miss it nowadays).


12/5/99 2:38:46 AM
i will never cease to be amazed at how resourceful i can be in wasting time when i'm procrastinating. found this interesting message thread arguing weblogs vs. journals

gabby says

I do not like weblogs. For they are boring and overrated and glorified link lists and their authors tend to think they are Christ incarnate just because they made a link list and get to make a few witty comments. I disagree with every statement I've read in various places that weblogs and journals are in any way, shape or form similar. Linklist vs. Journal - I don't know how much more obvious it can be.

Webloggers have taken the cheap way out and think they should get hosannas for it. I disagree. It's a link - big deal. Try extended, narrative writing for a long period of time, for an audience and then we can talk.

i dunno, i have my weblog, which has sort of picked up where my earlier writings left off, and i have my linklist. gabby seems to be dealing w/ webloggers w/ a misconceived stereotypical notion (lumping webloggers as a group w/ defining aspects, and doing so inaccurately - hossanas?). the tone of her postings seem to reveal her own "Christ" syndrome, it seems-- we're all selectively ignorant; there's no need to be snobbish--that's just plain rude.


12/5/99 1:51:53 AM
i know that people have mentioned this elsewhere, but damn, this wto business is so fucked up. the wto summit ended yesterday in failure, although this is a good thing in the protestor's view. i don't really know enough to have a coherent opinion of whether this result is good or bad (and frankly, and more than slightly apathetic about the gloabl economy in general). i do know that civil rights were definitely violated by the police response, and that the aftermath is sort of messed up (back to normal - regular consumer behavior), and that some the activists acted pretty inconsiderate.


12/5/99 1:19:06 AM
cameron talks about the design and production process.


12/5/99 1:03:36 AM
Fight back this Christmas (technically it's not really free speech but general personal online rights)


12/5/99 12:59:13 AM
zeldman:

photomontage.com. yenz.com. futurefarmers.com. quiet-time.com. volumeone.com. yugop.com. fray.com. smug.com. glassdog.com. 0sil8.com. k10k.net. once-upon-a-forest.com. prehensile.com. famewhore.com. eneri.net. palesky.com. bittersweets.org. croon.com. grantstreetjournal.com. truedesigns.com. soulflare.com. themonster.net. jodi.org. gizmonics.com. randomacts.com. harlem.org. fathom5.net. superbad.com. bornmag.com. praystation.com. infinite-race.com. pixeljunkie.com. thefinger.com. grijn.com. industries.de. uploading.com. invertebrae.com. hoopla.com. tree-axis.com. projectbox.com. beatthief.com. neuesentimentalfilm.com. opussoup.com. perfect.co.uk. rsub.com. disinfo.com. suffocate.org. liftingfaces.com. navigatingthebody.com. combine.org. mappa.mundi.net. coolstop.com. shift.jp.org. projectcool.com. 3-am.com.

12/5/99 12:40:44 AM
blogger is starting cheese me off a bit. ftp problems still (for the past few weeks) ;-(``` software's not free if you grow to depend on it and then it doesn't work -- even if you weren't charged any money for it. here's hoping the pyra ppl are able to fix blogger soon.


12/5/99 12:29:10 AM
an interesting article about the kind of society we want. i've been thinking about this issue a bit since eric raymond's talk @ usc. (raymond's talk was interesting - mostly about the economic / social implications and reasonings of open source - but there was a short privacy discussion panel that was the article is in relation to).

mike elkin recommended i take a look at a david brin book, which had discussion comparing a totally open society and it's implications vs a totally private one.

in other news, the etoy thing seems like a big deal to me, but I haven't seen too much online about it. /. has an article on it, as does the village voice.

if i had realized this blog would start getting listed in various lists and whatnot I would have thought up of a better name for my weblog. really!I'm glad to report that this page looks just as bland through the shredder

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