Geekery ARCHIVES
05 February 2007
A few weeks ago, I skimmed a thread on a cycling email list about a women's bike skills class hosted by a local bike coalition. Then I watched it slip benignly and steadily into doom. It began with a few...
23 January 2007
There have been a number of recent comments, disparaging and not, online and offline, about my lack of TiVo. What can I say? Hey, at least there's a television in my living room! (Which is a good thing, because you're...
20 March 2006
While cutting across the southeastern tip of Nevada I noticed that my engine warning light was on. It's usually a reminder to replace the oil. But I'd just gotten that changed a few weeks prior, and so I spent the...
13 February 2006
I was at the Nuthouse sometime last month with work friends. Amongst them was a recent MIT grad who'd invited all of his local college friends to join us. Once someone had started the ball of introductions rolling, floods of...
30 December 2005
There ought to be a Movable Type plug-in that automatically closes comments to a post after a certain amount of time. Blocks spam and helps keep stuff relevant. I've noticed some blog authors doing this manually — but they shouldn't...
28 September 2005
I've been having trouble categorizing my recent entries and thinking of going to a two-party system, à la Dirk Knemeyer's site. Oh, man. Party on my website! TWO parties on my website! All jokes aside, I think that'll help make...
13 July 2005
This spring I uttered many a mutter under my breath as self-described gamers around me expounded on their own state of nirvana known as "flow". It's the word I turn to, however, when I want to describe a period of...
20 May 2005
The New York Times is raising a ruckus with the recent announcement that it would begin to offer some content under a subscription-only model. Starting in September, you must subscribe to the $49.95/year TimesSelect service to access Op-Ed columnists and...
19 April 2005
Ever since my HCI studio class had the chance to play with an entire rack of HP Tablet PCs last fall, I've been smitten with their portability and unobtrusiveness. The angled laptop screen raised to take notes at a meeting...
18 April 2005
Or is it the other way around? The real question is, how do you use a website (blog, site, LiveJournal, whatever) to communicate with friends while keeping it fit for public and Googleable consumption? I've seen some writers damn the...
15 March 2005
On Mar 15, 2005, at 8:43 AM, Janet wrote: Do you not have comments cuz of spam? On Mar 15, 2005, at 9:11 AM, Roger wrote: you totally need to have comments. psych study: people watching a funny video were...
11 March 2005
Hey, look! Apple wins a court ruling today affirming their right to subpoena names and sources for recent leaks of company information. Although the ruling doesn't explicitly name bloggers, one assumes that it's a broad blow for them as the...
23 February 2005
Status update: I think we're at a breaking point here, y'all. I've designed and coded and tweaked templates for all sorts of views and archives, and sketched out wireframes for a bunch more. It's helped immensely to think of this...
23 February 2005
If, in attempting to create category archive templates in Movable Type, you find that your lists of categories themselves are not appearing on aforementioned category archive pages despite using the VERY SAME CODE, do not fear! A quick Googling will...
02 March 2004
Herewith, a summary of social networking sites: media/040302-socialchart.gif" alt="chart of strengths and weaknesses"/> Craigslist [http://www.craigslist.org] Craigslist is the ultimate online classifieds, but keeps roots in the real world by keep listings based around a metropolitan area. San Francisco and New...
28 December 2002
"In Fall 2002 Stanford implemented a spam filtering system for @stanford email. The system works by scanning incoming email for spam before it gets delivered to your Inbox. When the system finds email that matches verifiable spam message patterns,...
25 December 2002
While playing around with my Control Panel settings, I find something interesting under Control Panel > Display > "Appearance" tab > "Effects..." button. The second checklist item in the Effects dialog box reads: "Use the following method to smooth edges...
25 November 2002
When you're trying to express complex ideas in a language that you haven't quite mastered, do you simplify your ideas so that they can be expressed with your limited lexicon? Or do you try to circumlocute, however awkward that may...
30 October 2002
There's no keyboard shortcut listed for "Forward" in Eudora in Windows—ctrl + F brings up the "Find Messages" search box instead. At first, I was disappointed to have been let down by my fellow Windows lovers, but they've probably made...
28 October 2002
Would Google Answers, time lapse aside, be a legitimate phone-a-friend on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?...
17 August 2002
The compelling reason for the recent lack of updates is that a lot of keys on my keyboard don't work. I think it's because I installed a program that maps my Stanford AFS space directly to my hard drive, though...
13 July 2002
Notepad's refresh rate lag has gotten truly abominable since I switched over to Windows 2000 Pro, so I think I'm finally gone over to the dark side of content editors. There's an awesome program I've been using at work called...
11 July 2002
Haven't had very coherent thoughts lately, so maybe I'll just start listing the projects I've assigned for myself: Do something about Dire Wolf's yard. It's gonna be an interesting challenge because whatever we (one of my housemates, Serra, is in...
17 June 2002
I spent two days backing up data and apps and capturing screenshots of important toolbar and taskbar configurations in preparation for The Great Reformat. Guess what I forgot to do, though? Yeah, that's right. I forgot to back up my...
29 April 2002
The question of the day is whether you eat a beautiful batch of fresh strawberries plain, or desecrate them by submitting 'em to a recipe, which compromises all of their natural flavor. By the supremely impartial way in which I...
09 March 2002
Several weeks ago, I think I figured out why Notepad lag exists. I kept forgetting to post it to the site, which I'd very much wanted to do because I remember having complained about it in an earlier update. It's...
11 October 2001
Want to hear a joke? It's of the type that would go in a YKIGTSW... category, Ã la Roger's YKIGTGTW, except I'm too lazy to create and maintain more categories than my current four oversimplified ones. So, here we go....