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BoingBoing reports that Joseph Weizenbaum, creator of Eliza, has died:
> Hello, I am Eliza.* Hi
> How are you today.. What would you like to discuss?
* Joeseph Weizenbaum, the man that made you.
> Say, do you have any psychological problems?
* Probably, but that's not why I'm here.
> Did you come to me because you are here?
* I guess that's one way of looking at it.
> What does that suggest to you?
* I just wanted to tell you that the man who created you died yesterday
> You're not really talking about me, are you?
* Yes, I am.
> Do you believe it is normal to be ?
* Are you sad that Joseph died? Don't you care?
> Perhaps in your fantasies I am sad that Joseph died? Don't me care?
* I would like to think that you would be sad.
> We were discussing you, not me.
* I can understand why you wouldn't want to talk to me about this.
> You're not really talking about me, are you?
* Goodbye, Eliza.
Donkey Kong and Me is a blog post by the guy who programmed Donkey Kong. For the Atari 800. Some insight there as to why the company tanked, and on the importance of decent comments in your code.
Zach is currently obsessed with Super Mario Galaxy which he plays at the local video game store (but just once a week, we've had to ration him). I wonder what he'd make of Atari Mario?
SuperCopier is a freeware app that replaces the regular file copy function in Windows. Pretty removes every annoying thing about moving or copying files.
Kevin Kelly (he of the WELL etc.) has an essay that's making the rounds about what people are willing to pay for when the Internet has essentially made everything (digital) free.
GiveWell astroturfs Metafilter. Their mea culpa is here. Ouch.
Oh, and here he does the same thing at the expense of DonorsChoose.org. (For any of you who don't know, I work at DonorsChoose.org.) Which is disappointing, as Holden and I have gone back and forth over the issues he raises on Luxist.
There are two issues here: one is "astroturfing" or "sock puppetry" -- promoting one's own business on the web while posing as a disinterested third party. (See the Aquasana thread for another example.) The second issue is that in the do-gooder business, there's an unspoken agreement that while it's OK to promote yourself, you don't do so by tearing down other do-gooders. Unless specifically asked for a comparison to others in our field, we just don't generally talk about "the competition." Perhaps that taboo should be breached in the interests of transparency or efficiency, but it's still a taboo, and I don't think Mr. Karnofsky quite understands that.
Update: Story picked up by the Chronicle of Philanthropy blog. Also a good summary at Uncivil Society.
What irks me most is that GiveWell actually invited DonorsChoose.org to apply to its "Clear Fund," earlier in 2007. (I almost said "earlier this year." Happy New Year everyone!) I made it as far as reading through the application, and it seemed that we were not a good fit for what the Clear Fund was trying to do -- that is, give individual donors access to quality research on effective nonprofits. This is something we come up against frequently when applying to foundations -- it's really hard to prove the educational outcomes of putting a reading rug in a kindergarten classroom. Our basic philosophy is that giving teachers the tools they ask for will be good for education. But we can't show increases in test scores, precisely because every DonorsChoose.org project is completely different. (There may be some ways to do a study, but we haven't the bandwidth.)
So Holden and I went back and forth over this, as I explained why I wasn't applying.
Then in December he makes this disparaging comment about us without identifying himself -- with the apparent intent of siphoning donors to his own site.
For a competitor to have engaged in such a practice would be Very Bad Indeed. But for a potential grantor to anonymously slam us, Heifer, and others is just Flat Out Bizarre.
2nd Update: The GiveWell board demoted Holden to Program Officer. More at the Chronicle of Philanthropy. Move along here, folks, nothing to see.
3d Update: I received a personal apology from Holden, which I accepted.
They'd look like this. (Via Boing Boing). I know Ben's Laptop would have the following buttons on it: Headsprout (Good!), Webkinz (Evil!), and new on the scene, Build Your Wild Self (Growr!)
When I first heard about Amazon.com's Simple Storage Service I knew I should sign up. Basically it's a place to securely store your computer files on Amazon's server farm. You have to get a front-end program to use it -- I spent a double sawbuck on Jungle Disk which works just fine and has a simple enough back-up function. Once I signed up, it costs 15 cents a gigabyte per month. Jungle Disk creates an "X" drive and will automatically backup my files to that drive every day.
As good as I try to be about making backups, I only get around to it every few weeks or so. Plus, while backing up to an external hard drive protects me from disk failure, what if something happened to the external drive? I pay renter's insurance every month; paying "data insurance" is well worth it.
Speaking of external hard drives, my trusty Maxtor was starting to run out of space. So I picked up this LaCie 500GB drive for all of $120 at Newegg. Half a terabyte should hold me for a while....
"Lemme tell you: if Bruce Schneier is even a little afraid, then I'm curled up in a fetal position somewhere rocking back and forth." It's like a good suspense movie -- the threat is just sitting there, getting bigger, but not doing anything. Yet.
So I tried using Webolodeon, a Greasemonkey script that would ping me every 5 minutes and ask for a reason that I should continue using the web. Good, but not great, since a good chunk of my work is on the web, and it was more annoying to keep typing in "I'm working I'm working I'm working" (or usually "aksjfd;lakjf;lkajf;alksdjf") every 5 minutes. So I ended up not using it.
Enter Stealth Kiwi, a script that does exactly what I want it to do to keep me on task:
Stealth Kiwi is a GTD tool that blocks access to all "Included pages" during work hours. Because a script is so easy to get around, SK relaxes its guard every hour. By giving yourself a future break time, you have less incentive to break your rules, and more chances to Get Things Done.Responding to popular demand, I've reworked Stealth Kiwi so that you can take a break any time after the hour has passed, instead of just during a scheduled period. You will have 10 minutes from whenever you start the break to play, after which SK will block you until an hour has passed. This way, you can focus on work instead of the clock, taking breaks when you really need them, not just when the internet comes back.
Since I get to define which domains are blocked (bloglines, gmail, and of course this blog are usually my 3 biggest time drains) during work, the script doesn't bother me when I'm doing DonorsChoose.org stuff. If I try to access a "restricted" site, it will helpfully tell me how long I have until my next "surfing break."
Oh, and why "Stealth Kiwi"? Because it's based on an earlier script called Kiwi Cloak:
After modifying the Invisibility Cloak script to do this, we couldn't think of a good name for it, so we're calling it Kiwi Cloak, in honor of a mysterious fruit/bird/nation fondness of Lucy's.
Plus, "I'm using Stealth Kiwi" is just fun to say. Highly recommended!
DonorsChoose.org needs a hosted file server system -- basically a internet-based corporate "X Drive" that our regional teams can all access and use like a regular server drive to share files. Does anyone have any suggestions?
Last year I tracked my region's performance at DonorsChoose.org from week-to-week using sparklines, generated with the data that Lauren my SQL ninja would compile for us. This (fiscal / school) year, the data has multiplied (tracking nine regions instead of two) and my team has grown from 2 to 5. I needed a better dashboard. Here it is:
Over on the right are sparklines for week-to-week trends. To the left of those are Bullet Graphs which basically show a thermometer against my YTD goals. Both are made with Micro Charts which gets the thumbs up from me, especially if you're doing this sort of thing.
One of the articles on their site showed these nifty red dots as Key Performance Indicators, and I wondered how to do them. It turns out you don't need any plug-ins at all, you can just do some fancy conditional formatting, as explained here. The dot is actually a dingbat from Webdings.
But I wanted to take this idea a bit farther. Could I have more than three states to show the severity of the problem? And couldn't I also vary the size of the dot to indicate the magnitude of the problem, in addition to the shade of red? If, say, my Maine figures were only at 56% of my goal, but since my Maine goal was so low to begin with it only amounted to a deficit of a few hundred dollars, I really shouldn't worry too much about it:
Well the problem is two-fold. First, Excel (at least in Office 2003) you are limited to three formats. Second, Excel won't let conditional formatting change the size of a font. Drat! Getting around the first isn't hard:
There are actually four conditional formats that can be specified. The fourth one is the format that is used by Excel if none of the three conditions specified in the Conditional Formatting dialog box is true. (In other words, the way you format the cell to begin with is the fourth format.)
In my case, I formatted the "dots" column white. If none of the three "alert" conditions apply, then the dot's invisible. If one of them applies, the conditional formatting rules turn the dot light pink, pink, or REDOMGREDOMGHELP!!!
Changing the size of the dot merely requires a bit of slight of hand. (Mouse?) Instead of using the Webdings "n" (large dot), I substitute the Webdings "=" (small dot) if the problem isn't large using a simple IF formula where the dot should appear:
=IF(J5>10000,"n","=").
Format the column with font Webdings and ta-da! Tufte Dots.
Waaay back in 2004, I wondered why the media companies didn't just flood P2P networks with fakes. Of course, they did, and more. MediaDefender is a company that's hired by the likes of HBO and BMG to fight piracy. But they're not merely "flooding the zone" with decoy files. MediaDefender, which apparently can't hire a decent web designer, just had months of internal emails leaked -- to BitTorrent, of course. Petard, hoist, etc. The emails reveal that the company tried to set up its own video sharing site (Miivi.com) for the sole purpose of snagging illegal file-sharers. More on this story over at Ars Technica.
Thudfactor reviews the latest MMORPG: "Outside":
In order to make money to pay the interminable fees, you’ll have to find a job. Most of these are only available “inside” in low-rez, poorly-designed environments where you’ll do the same repetitive tasks for hours among uninteractive npcs. “Incredible NPC AI”? I find the notion that they have any AI at all questionable. Nevertheless, because of the massive fees involved in doing anything “outside” you are likely to spend most of your time “inside” in order to accumulate the requisite funds. So, forgo the “Inside” expansion and you’ll find yourself unable to participate in most of the game features. Without the “inside” expansion you cannot work, store goods, or even sleep in safety.
OK, so I'm on Facebook. I can now Pownce. I've never Twittered.
But I don't really get it. I suppose I'm old and crotchety and set in my ways by now -- if people want to tell me something, why don't they just blog? Or email? Or IM? What's this hybrid -- thing?
I suppose I would have gotten it earlier had I read Grant's piece on How social networks work:
Jerry Michalski and Pip Coburn were recently talking about the puzzle of "exhaust data." These are data that pass between friends on Facebook and Twitter...as when someone tells me they're doing their nails, or I tell them I'm entertaining my cat.Who on earth cares? What kind of communication is this? Can it be that we are using the internet to issue trivial facts about ourselves? Facts? The "fact" that I am entertaining the cat is so staggeringly unimportant it fails to interest even the cat.
But there is another, anthropological, point of view. Exhaust data is, I think, a clear case of "phatic communication." This is communication with little hard, informational content, but lots of emotional and social content. Phatic communications doesn't get much said, but it has social effects so powerful, it gets lots done.
So basically:
10 PRINT "Hello World"
20 GOTO 10
Check it out!
DonorsChoose.org is now open to every public school in every state in America!
It's a huge day for us and one we've been working toward for a long time now. So if you know any teachers, tell them they can start writing proposals !
Yes, I just got to play with one of the One Laptop Per Child laptops (a Thai version). They are pretty sweet.
The Mozilla Foundation and its Commercial arm, the Mozilla Corporation, has allowed and endorsed Ad Block Plus, a plug-in that blocks advertisement on web sites and also prevents site owners from blocking people using it. Software that blocks all advertisement is an infringement of the rights of web site owners and developers. Numerous web sites exist in order to provide quality content in exchange for displaying ads. Accessing the content while blocking the ads, therefore would be no less than stealing.
Via Gadgetopia via Metafilter where the usual discussion is taking place.
Via Balls and Walnuts comes this mapping of Simpsons Characters to Presidential Candidates. I guess Cheney has the Burns character wrapped up, hence not on the list.
Speaking of the 2008 Election, here come the usual "candidate selectors": one at dehp.net (using data from 2decide) and one from Select Smart. Both give me different results: Dehp rates my top 5 as Kucinich, Gravel (who?), Obama, Edwards, Clinton, while Select Smart ranks them Kucinich, Obama, Biden, Edwards, Dodd. The dark horse Gravel is 2nd on the first list but 13th on the second. Full results after the jump, should you be interested.
My vote's for the "Bart" candidate, if you must know...
Continue reading "Simpsons / Electoral Candidates Mapping" »
Over the weekend I read Bit Literacy, another how-to-get-things-done book. More on it later as I start to figure out what to implement, what works, etc. The author's central tenet, though, is "Let the bits go." A good chunk of the book is therefore given over to your media diet. What are you going to read / watch / listen to? What's OK to let go?
Internet-wise, outside of email and writing / maintaining this blog, the mainstay of my media diet is RSS feeds. (One of the things I thought Hurst could have said more about was the use of a good feed reader as a way to stay on your media diet, since it discourages surfing, but he thinks that RSS is for "techies" only.) Over a year ago I put a stake in the ground and said that my limit was 99 feeds. Today, I've moved the goal posts (in a good way) and cut back to 43 feeds. (Link goes to my list of feeds on bloglines, so if you need to check if you're still in there go ahead.) Why 43? In honor of 43 Folders, the lifehack site, which is named for the 43 folders in a Getting Things Done "tickler file" I talked about here.
Cutting down to 43 wasn't easy. I got rid of nearly all my music blogs. I currently have more music than I have time to actually listen to. And yet I found myself constantly downloading more singles, tagging them, rating them to see if I wanted to keep them, filing them, etc. The signal-to-work ratio was getting pretty low, and from a time management standpoint I've eliminated a big distraction right there.
Onward and upward!
Here's the capture device for the sorta-controversial Google Street Maps view:
Below, the Imperial Probe Droid:
Coincidence? I don't think so!
I recently ran across Webolodeon, a script that asks you every 5 minutes to give it a reason that you're actually using the Internet.
The idea, of course, is not to make you insane and interrupt your real work, but to ensure that you’re always aware of the task that brought you where you are—that you not allow a legitimate work search to turn into a 4-hour wikipedia party.
Requires Greasemonkey and of course Firefox.
A new twist on the Nigerian email scam popped into my inbox:
Dear Sir,I have managed to sneak out this email to you from my confinement here in one of our military bases in Germany.My name is Col.Steve Moore of The US Army. I was based in Iraq until recently,I was sent back to Germany because of the Iraqi prisoner abuse scandal in which I was unfortunately implicated. I am still under House Arrest,pending the outcome of investigation.
During my sojourn in Iraq, I was able to successfully smuggle US$ 21.7m out of Iraq to a location in Europe. I reckoned that being a soldier I would not be in the best position to give a satisfactory account of how I came about such an amount of money.I could therefore not conclude the proccess of securing the money before I was apprehended as I was at a loss about into which account one could pay it and that is where your assistance comes in.
I have resolved to share the total sum with you in the fairest ratio that we shall both agree on as settlement for your own part of the deal.
Please,ponder over this and feed me back as I am in dire need of your assistance at this time.Please, send me your private contact info. in order to facilitate an easier and more private correspondence between us.
I must assure you that this will not expose you to any risk as all the possible risk has been foreseen and taken care of. I must also remind you that transaction of this magnitude and nature is to be handled carefully in order for both of us to be well protected. I shall send you more details as soon as I hear from you.I implore you to really consider this offer and feed me back. Also let me know how you wish to be settled for your role in the business.Please,reply to [redacted]. I await your response with much optimism.
Thanks in advance,
Best Regards
Steve Moore(Col.)
(only slightly smaller than actual size)
My old iPod's batteries were seriously gone. I'd had a 3rd Generation iPod since 2003, a gift from my folks, which has served me faithfully and well lo these many years. But now, I couldn't get to work and back on a single charge. And so, to the Apple store! (SoHo edition.) Thanks to Chris, I knew that turning my old one in for recycling would net me a 10% discount on the new one. So I asked the tattooed and be-pierced young man for a (Red) iPod nano, 4 GB. I swear they get these guys from Hipster Central Casting. Four gigs is plenty of space, and I find that with too much room I tend to put new music on the player less frequently. And why a nano? Because I've gadgetlusted for it since they came out. Besides, I have enough iPod-related gear (speakers, car charger, retractable USB cable, etc.) that switching to a different platform would be silly. And why get it in red? Well yes, I'm happy to know that $10 is going toward fighting AIDS in Africa. Plus, I like the color. Makes it easier to find, and for me (with a high Loseability Factor) that's not unimportant.
Back to SoHo:
Apple Store Employee Straight From Hipster Central Casting, taking my trusty old 3G iPod: OK, let's recycle this...
Me: Wait... can't I say goodbye?
ASESFHCC, looking at the 3G's quaint 4 buttons: Yeah, OK. You had that for a lot of years.
Me, realizing that the ASESFHCC was probably in high school when I got my 3G for Christmas: Heh. Well, the battery finally quit. Doesn't hold a charge for very long any more.
ASESFHCC: Well, no iPod's battery lasts forever. That's just a fact.
Me, wondering if that line was in the ASESFHCC's training manual: Um, yeah.
ASESFHCC: Yeah, so, it's going to the factory now. They'll take good care of it.
Me: And it'll be happy? Playing with all the other iPods? On a farm?
ASESFHCC: Um, yeah.
Back from the store, I'm happy with my new toy. It makes me feel that the time I've spent making sure my mp3s were properly encoded with the right album art in their metadata wasn't entirely wasted. Look! There's a tiny tiny version of the cover of The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars! If you squint you can see David Bowie's 1 pixel head!
Also, I recommend the cases from Agent 18. They're clear and simple.
