Posted on by mwhybark

How?

How, I wonder, might one go about excavating linkable URLs from within AvantGo?

Today, I came across two stories I’d like to blog, the Beeb on Google’s videoblogging announcement, and the P-I’s story on the upcoming Silver Cloud Hotel near Safeco Field. A story about the addition of satellite imagery to Google maps on the NYT also caught my eye, but proved too horkulated a pain in the ass to link to, even in-browser and online.

I think I have bitched about this before. It’s an unserved need which is generated by my position in the unlikely intersection of three sets: the cheap, the wired, and the bloggy. You might dignify (or ridicule) this absurd self-diagnosis by casting me as a member of the “cheapgnoscenti,” but of course I would never stoop to such a callow coinage. To that subprognothean depth of verbal flimflammery and obfuscatory pyrotechnics, I stoutly rejoin: no sir!

I suspect the answer is within spitting distance. The method is to replace the AG feeds with RSS feeds of the same data (and here’s the tricky bit), rendered within AG via a multi-format aggregator such as Newsmob. This leaves the problem of getting to the links unsolved, as they resulting feeds are still rendered by AG.

In addition, Newsmob appears to be unfunded. In my experience, the service is spotty (although that may be the fault of feed providers) and has a terrible admin UI that more-or-less guarantees each new user will create a new feed with the desired content rather than locating the extant one.

Mind you, this is all groundless speculation. But it describes my experience to date.

Please note: moblogged sans links, fixed in post.

Posted on by mwhybark

I hear you

A remarkable collection of “bawdy songs.”

UPDATE: actually, the site itself is even more remarkable than I had realized. On March 31, the site author was in B-ton for “Extreme Folklore.” It’s a shame I was unaware of this; I surely would have alerted Holly.

The site author’s précis: “This website is dedicated to traditional bawdy songs, erotic toasts and other recitations. The name, Immortalia, was chosen because it is the name of the earliest unexpurgated bawdy songbook published in the USA.”

Please note, the above is a deliberate nose-tweak aimed at the TOS, which says, in part, “derivative works and other unauthorized copying or use of stills, text, sounds or graphics is expressly prohibited.” I have derived, and I have copied, as noted by the quotes.

The author appears to expressly encourage it, as on the “What’s New” page, he states, regarding a song entitled The Motherfucker’s Ball, “If you sing this song, please email me.”

Huh, that’s pretty obviously a derivative work. I wonder if the invitation is to provide for some sort of copyright enforcement.

The site remains remarkable. Perhaps the site author will exhibit the same sense of humor that much of the material so carefully collected therein does. I simply cannot believe the sheer density of the site.

Posted on by mwhybark

Fastmail

Fastmail users: any drawbacks to the own-domain $39/year plan? I’m nearly sold, and would like to hear negatives. I don’t care about the webhosting, just the email. Do I get full access to the underlying mailhandler? How’s the integrated webmail? What about the spamfilter?

Posted on by mwhybark

Palm pix

Resco Photo Viewer for Palm OS looks somewhat promising, if a bit limited in scope.

I want a mini Photoshop for the Palm, one that I can use to create and draw in as well as look at pics. The most crucial image-editing tool for me would be curves, apart from the imagemarking tools such as brush. The few sketchpad apps I have seen are like thin-featured imitations of MacPaint, very 1985.

Adobe includes Palm as a supported OS for Elements, but I haven’t yet figured out if it’s more than a simple album-sync.

While I enjoy the challenge of working in two-bit graphics (see below), it’s sort of like using a skateboard with steel wheels.

This was drawn on an old-at-the-time Mac SE, using the mouse and looking at Chloe who was atop the warm teevee.

Posted on by mwhybark

Zoom

So, you know (and I’m sure you do) that I love posting links to paper modelcraft.

Of course, we all know what the problem with paper models is. They simply fly too slow, right?

Where’s that modern age of speed and danger that Marinetti celebrated a full century ago? Come on, man, paper models of biplanes – cloth and twigs in the original, mere leaves of a dream-folio in the model – must ultimately be assessed as puerile juvenilia, am I right?

You know, in your heart of hearts, that I am.

That’s why it gives me great pleasure to introduce you to the exciting, half-century-old practice of scratch-or-kit constructing and hand-launching flying paper or balsa wood models containing and powered by tiny refillable solid-fuel aluminimum rocket motors! What better way for a boy to learn of the hazards that await him on battlefields from Baghdad to Cold War central Europe? Watch those fingers, kid – it’s gonna get HOT!

Today, the Jetex tradition is carried on by the brave innovators of Jet-X and Rapier.

Posted on by mwhybark

Goodwill

Well, having some unexpected free time, we went back to Goodwill and found some glasses. They weren’t the ones we’d come up with initially, but they’ll do. I can’t tell you how much I enjoy picking through the glassware at Goodwill – it’s like a giant, transparent, three-dimensional puzzle, and your challenge is to find the items that match. Since the glasses are transparent, generally a bit grungy, and poorly lit, it’s quite challenging. The little kids kicking soccer balls around in the aisle behind you as you step back to get a longer view complete this transcendent shopping experience. I highly recommend it, and will continue building matched sets amid the chaos for hours, until pulled away by Viv.

Wandering the cavernous store I took some pictures of interesting gimcracks. I have assembled them here for your viewing pleasure.

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This primitive spam machine comes complete with a mailing list.

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At the exit, you’ll be pleased to know, the management has made a concerted effort to cater to the needs of the post-atomic hipster with these rare Polynesian craft-charms. These “primitive symbols of nature” undoutedly reflect centuries of craftsmen’s secrets and the ancient spiritual wisdom of the South Seas.

As we were browsing I happened to come upon what I will argue to be the most radical and confrontational public exhibit of art I have ever encountered in a Goodwill. The pieces were all available for sale, uncredited. I do not think I am wrong in crediting them to a single unknown artist.

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The first piece I encountered, which enunciates the theme of the show, is this one. It charges radically past the boundaries of traditional collectible-sculpture aesthetics. The base features a quote from President George Bush – “The advance of human freedom – the great achievement of our time, and the great hope of every time – now depends on us.” Yet the still-recognizable profile of the Statue or Liberty, defiled and broken, mocks these words. Dangling from the neck are a pair of bare wires. It’s a clear reference to Abu Ghraib and ancillary torture policies such as the deliberate deportation suspects to friendly, torture-using states. Rarely if ever has a Goodwill played host to such an evisceration of a sitting American President. Buy it now, and get a gallery show!

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Here, the unknown artist has crafted a loving homage to exploitation movies of the past fifty years while simultaneously managing to keep the theme of torture in the air.

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In this disturbing diptych, the same artist now tackles the effects of torture – and, it must be noted, makes a glancing reference to Western ideas concerning Islamic jurisprudence. Taking as their starting place a Norman Rockwell painting, the unknown artist has, shockingly, dismembered the child. The infant gazes in shock at the stumps of their forearms while a doctor gazes helplessly on. Only on closer examination do we realize that the beloved professional is himself the victim of dismemberment. Too shocked to acknowledge his recent loss, the now-missing hand is clenched in fruitless determination about the physician’s very emblem: his stethoscope. America’s turn toward the dark side has removed trust, self-awareness, and competence from the domestic landscape, the sculptor argues.

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In what this critic found to be the most disturbing piece of the show, the artist trangresses the boundaries of gender, sexual orientation, and what is delicately known as “the furry barrier” with this image of what is presumably the artist’s prescriptive remedy to the degradation and impotence of the preceding works. Like Jimmy Stewart in High Noon, the figure stands at the door to the church, ready for action. The fact that this sheriff is not so much a cowboy as a cow, beteated belly unleashed in what can only be described as the mother of all wardrobe malfunctions, outs the radicality of the artist’s approach. The fact that the cow is also dressed in a gay man’s fetish uniform, featuring chaps, puts us all on notice: the gay furry cow sherriff is a-comin’, and she is pissed!

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It’s clobberin’ time, friends. Are you right with the Goddess?

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Fortunately, hir mercy is a fountain, or rather hand-pump, that flows from the heads of angels, and surely our hands will be free from chaps for the rest of our days, ever and ever, amen. May the heavenly angel of hand-lotion (or hand-soap, emphasizing the clean-hands thesis of this critique) remain with you unto the end of your days.

As noted, when we left the Goodwill, each of these items remained available for sale. Hurry!

Posted on by mwhybark

iSuckage

Oh, I noticed an interesting side effect of the iPod and the iTunes music store today while holding for a support rep prior to going in: the music that was played on hold was the same pablum that gets pushed via promo agreements on the iTunes store. It was enough to make me want to rip my fucking ears off.

Once upon a time, the hold music was generic Silicon Valley technoschmutz, no vocals to allow you to personalize your feelings of violation and hatred as you listen to some ex-American Idol contestant promulgate idiotic, preadolescent fantasies about fate and relationships and rainbows and stormy skies. And ponies.

This new promo program (sources tell is it was code-named “Down Your Throat”) raises customer irritation to new heights. By the time the support person came on I wanted to kill them. This change must increase phone rage.

You know what Apple should do? When you get into the hold queue, they should give you a three-part choice of music programming. I bet they’d improve their numbers and at the same time that recent troubling decline in support-case closures would be nipped in the bud.

It’s not like it’s hard to program for my demographic. Some Ry Cooder, a little Tom Waits – basically anything you can sleep through that at the same time has pretensions of asking you to think is fine with me.