moblog: Halloween in the Castro!

don't know if you can tell, but that is a woman on a gurney with her legs spread, giving birth. there's a guy under the table with his head poking through as the baby. definitely the winner for tonight.

Vows: The Story of a Priest, a Nun, and Their Son

A Family of 'Vows': The Son of a Priest and a Nun
@NPR by Terry Gross

Vows: The Story of a Priest, a Nun, and their Son
by Peter Manseau

Peter is a friend of an ex of my wife's. Yup, how's that for some throw-back college drama. But that's beside the point. He's also apparently a wiz of a writer and just got interviewed by the best of the best -- Terry Gross. Besides being a memoir, Vows gives those of us who aren't New England Catholic Democrats some insight into how the priesthood evolved to accomodate the generation of Kennedys and Kerrys that came out of the 50s.

The book forms a history of how the priesthood evolved -- and how people navigate the boundaries between religious tradition and modern life. In the process, Manseau paints a picture of liberal -- and devoutly religious -- Catholics living in 1950s Boston, facing up to the church's authority.

listen to the interview. | buy the book.

Time-suck of the day: Grow Cube

GROW CUBE is a puzzle... pick items in the correct order and you will be rewarded.

why oh why do i get sucked into things like this?? but oh the sweet satisfaction!

Photography -- Scientific and Jell-O-rific

San Francisco in Jell-O by Elizabeth Hickock

beautiful pictures of glimmering jell-o molds... city skyline, painted ladies, bay bridge. be sure to click through all six.

Visions of Science 2005 Winners

some of these pictures are truly amazing... mosquitos emerging from their pupas, new blood vessel growth in the retina. the photo to the left is "Worship" by Paul Rapson -- blue ink diffusing into water.

Poll: Bush would lose an election if held this year

At CNN.com:

In the latest poll, 55 percent of the respondents said that they would vote for the Democratic candidate if Bush were again running for the presidency this year.

Thirty-nine percent of those interviewed said they would vote for Bush in the hypothetical election.
...
Democrats preferred on issues

On separate issues, a majority of those questioned felt the Democrats could do a better job than Republicans at handling health care (59 percent to 30 percent), Social Security (56 percent to 33 percent), gasoline prices (51 percent to 31 percent) and the economy (50 percent to 38 percent).

Forty-six percent also believed Democrats could do better at handling Iraq, while 40 percent said the GOP would do better.

Wait, wait wait.... the Democrats won on issues, too?? Those are pretty big numbers. WTF?

Just goes to show you what a huge section of the country really does sit on the fence, blowing as the spin blows. We'll see who wins the spin wars come next year's mid-term elections.

Honor the 2,000 soldiers fallen in Iraq

Join a vigil to remember the fallen and the living.

Vigil for 2000 Killed in Iraq

This week, the number of American soldiers lost while serving in Iraq reached over 2000. While thousands of families have made the ultimate sacrifice, thousands more send their children and loved ones off to a war that seems to have no end in sight.

Tomorrow, Wednesday, October 26, 2005 at 6:30 p.m. we will gather for a vigil to acknowledge our fallen soldiers and reflect on the war in Iraq.

This is an opportunity for thousands of us to gather together and acknowledge the sacrifices made by over 2000 American men and women in Iraq and their families and speak out against the war.

-- from MoveOn.org

I don't know what is "the right thing to do," but one thing is certain, the pressure is mounting on this administration to figure it out.

More over at CODEPINK.

Shark Season!

BODEGA BAY / Surfer felt 'sharky' premonition before attack / Facing surgery today, she vows to return to her sport

it's october (and add in an indian summer) and 'round the bay area that means it's shark season. there have been at least two sightings this month and now one attack... hopefully that's the quota this year. this is by far the only reason i'm glad i haven't been in the water lately.

(link to the original report in wednesday's chronicle)

DangerMouse + MF Doom = DangerDoom

An article from last month's WIRED magazine featuring the latest from DJ DangerMouse -- a collaboration with MF Doom. The Mouse and the Mask, a kind of looney tunes concept album, is a pretty good follow up to DM's underground mash-up hit The Grey Album. As a fan of "Adult Swim," the samples from Space Ghost, Brak and Co. light up my inner 13-yr-old's heart.

From eMusic:

The long-awaited collaboration between Doom and DJ Danger Mouse (who's most famous for Frankensteining the Beatles' White Album with Jay-Z's Black Album), Mouse meets expectations by not straining to surpass them. It's easy and ebullient and winning, instantly reminiscent of masterpieces like De La Soul's 3 Feet High and Rising and Mr. Hood, the high-concept album Doom made when he was going by the name Zev Love X as a member of KMD. It's like 1990 never ended: Danger Mouse builds his beats from old vinyl, snatching from funk and soul and soundtrack albums with giddy abandon. He loops a wah-wah porn track to create the dank backdrop of "A.T.H.F." and employs a screwy violin hook on the creaky, creepy "Sofa King." Doom sounds more relaxed than he has on any record since Vaudeville Villain, barking "Got riddles and spittles, crystal clear to the jot or the tiddle/ Came to take the cake whether there's a lot or a little" with vigor and authority.

go get it!

Flock Review - not mine, but lots of screenshots

Flock, Under Those Feathers at PaulStamatiou.com

developed by a group of a 10 guys and a gal in a garage in Palo Alto, California

apologies to the token gal for my previous post. :)

Micro Persuasion: Flock Not Ready for Primetime

interesting "thumbs down" review by Steve Rubel over at Micro Persuasion. he makes some fair points about the maturity (or lack thereof) of this early release... but that's what it is -- an early bug-ridden development 0.x release.

we'll see what the boys over at flock do with all the buzz, positive and negative. it's the new geek-fanboy browser afterall. i downloaded the developer's preview (and so can you) and haven't had time to truly dig into it. i'll post a brief review sometime soon.

1000 pound butter sculpture of Vader and Yoda at the Tulsa State Fair

Each year at the Tulsa State Fair, an artist is commissioned to make a sculpture out of butter. In past years, cows, farmers, and baseball players were created out of hundreds of pounds of butter. This year, in celebration of Star Wars's final episode, TSF is featuring Darth Vader and Yoda, all dairy-like.

tulsa is a mere 90 miles from my hometown, and i for one am pretty sad to miss this! might call for a special trip back home. this totally beats the traditional butter-sculptured cow or milk-maid.

read more | digg story

Ebay bans other payment processors, only PayPal is allowed.

eBay has revised its policies to only allow one online payment service, PayPal. This comes after speculation that Google is preparing a payment service. So far the reaction among eBay users has been mixed.

we should have seen this coming. in case you didn't get a chance to flip through the "Ebay Aquisition of Skype" Powerpoint, here's a link: http://investor.ebay.com/downloads/050912ebay.pdf

gives a good idea about what was on their mind during the $2.6 billion acquisition. more info available on their web site.

read more | digg story

moblog: road trippin' dog

moblog: road trippin' dog
Originally uploaded by hlh-abg.

lola accompanied me to wyoming last week and we had a great trip. she loves the car, so the 9-hr days were just heaven. plus, she doesn't mind it when i sing at the top of my lungs.

moblog: weinermobile!

moblog: weinermobile!
Originally uploaded by hlh-abg.

we passed the weinermobile just outside of tahoe. this is the best shot i got, but i suppose it's fitting that it's a butt shot.

moblog: my foot

something stung/poked/punctured/bit me while i was out walking the dog today. not sure what it was, but it got me good! fortunately no further swelling or streaking, just a weird dime-size bruise.

mom thinks it was a hornet... i guess we'll never know.

Top Ten Web Design Mistakes of 2005

(From Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox)

1. Legibility Problems
2. Non-Standard Links
3. Flash
4. Content That's Not Written for the Web
5. Bad Search
6. Browser Incompatibility
7. Cumbersome Forms
8. No Contact Information or Other Company Info
9. Frozen Layouts with Fixed Page Widths
10. Inadequate Photo Enlargement

Santa has come early this year. Most of these are repeats; I guess it's safe to assume that the vast majority of web development is a wee bit stale (or according to Nielsen needs to get "back to basics")? I have to cop to a couple of these (fixed-width, anyone?), but we all know Nielsen's just a stickler for his rules.

A good read with some good links, nonetheless.

Google Launches Feed Reader

Audio/video integration... import from other services... integration with Gmail. looks slick, but we'll have to wait and see about adoption rates.

read more | digg story

Make Netvibes your new homepage

Netvibes.com is a customizable Web 2.0 homepage solution.

This service is free and gives you the user the ability:

* to create a personalized page with the content you like.
* to put together data feeds and services from web 2.0 applications with a very simple interface
* to access your page anytime and from any computer .

Very cool AJAX alternative to Google's Personalized homepage, Start.com and others. Be sure to check out their blog and wiki for more info.

Office 12 to have native PDF support

This is a big, and good forward-looking step for Office. Especially since it looks like .pdf files are here to stay.

Good news for PDF, bad news for Adobe? More and more open source software enables PDF creation, but with the big M$ taking them on, I wonder how long they can stay the market leader.

read more | digg story