Archive for October, 2004

User Friendly, by Spider Robinson

Go get it, go read it. I don’t agree with everything Spider says or writes, and he has a disconcerting preoccupation with clothing, or the lack thereof, but he is a seriously fine author (who happens to live right my backyard – Vancouver), and this compilation of short stories is VERY good. Perhaps I’ll...
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Seriously Unimpressive

I picked up Walter M. Miller Jr.’s Saint Leibowitz and the Wild Horse Woman the other day, really anticipating an excellent novel along the lines of his enormously influential A Canticle for Leibowitz some 40 years ago. Major disappointment. A hundred pages in, after assorted buggeries in a monastery, other nastiness with priests breaking...
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The Rape of Nanking, by Iris Chang

This is an amazing historical book about the most forgotten massacre in history: the killing, raping, and torturing of hundreds of thousands of Chinese by the Japanese Imperial Army in the period before and including the Second World War.
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Books I’ve read and don’t have time to fully review …

I like to maintains some kind of record of the books I’ve read … I’ve sort of been in that habit for the past few months. I like to actually do a mini-review of them all, but this week I lack the time … In any case, here’s the list, with a brief comment...
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Too Cool … Turn all the TVs Off

This is way too cool to pass up sticking a very brief note here: Turn off TVs wherever you go with TV be gone. Of course, I saw this 4 days ago on Wired, and now it’s all over the blogosphere …. serves me right for waiting too long.
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Yes mum, a beaver chopped down a tree onto my car

This must be a quintessentially Canadian story, at least to those who think of Canada as the land of trees, hills, snow, and beavers. I was working quietly in my office when Carl, one of our developers, sais, “Uh, John, a tree just fell on your car.”
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Theory and Practice

The difference between theory and practice is greater in practice than it is in theory. (This is from Carl, one of our developers.) I liked this quote, so I blogged it. And yes, are just finishing a major, massive, site upgrade.
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Really Stupid Smart People

How could they be so dumb? They’re the people who can actually answer “yes” to the question: “What are you, a rocket scientist?” And yet they make incredibly bone-headed mistakes like installing a deceleration sensor upside down or failing to convert from imperial to metric. Unbelievable. Kinda restores your faith in the everyday average...
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Wolf sounds

Ever need the sound of a wolf growling or snarling? I just did, and I found it right here. Very cool! UPDATE: This is much more cool … a search engine for sounds. Wow. Love it. Now why didn’t Google do this?
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Apple’s .Mac: You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave

Apple’s .Mac: You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave

2 months ago I received a Gmail account. 1 GB free, no need for .Mac, Apple’s email/storage/Sync/everything solution. So I thought I’d cancel. Nice try. You can’t cancel!
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