links for 2006-02-28
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MTV to document “alternative spring break” action devoted to protesting the death penalty in Texas.
sooner magic
I switched off the Oklahoma/Oklahoma State “bedlam” game after OSU took the lead with 4.7 seconds left in the game. I thought OU was sunk - they had not been playing well the whole game - but it looks like they pulled out their fourth straight one-point victory. Wow, I don’t know if this bodes well for the NCAA tournament, but I suppose this might suggest OU could do well, since much of the play in the tournament involves winning close games. But, boy howdy, couldn’t the Sooners win a game or two with a commanding lead?
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links for 2006-02-27
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lo-budget satire of the vaguely evil yasns
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new beer co-op in Austin. crazy.
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According to a study, university professors prefer Lyotard to Habermas for world president
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LiveJournal entry on the closure of one of Austin’s most distinctive dives
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looks like the best record store has a website.
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oh dear lord… video games about the rapture
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chronicles ongoing standards war over high-definition DVD. I don’t even own a standalone DVD player, so I’m only interested as a bystander.
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story about Austin sticker maker bumperactive.com. Who knew the LBJ library had an archive of political bumper stickers?
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in sane
I’m doing some work at The Green Muse, a coffeeshop in South Austin. I ordered a coffee for here and a side of hummus. The pretty young woman at the counter rang it up, and, with tax, it came up to be $4.04. “That will be four-oh-four,” she said.
While fishing through my wallet, I asked, “are all of your prices palindromes?”
She paused to think, smiled, and then said, “Oh yeah! I wish!”
She said that palindromes actually pop up quite a bit at the coffeeshop. “I’ll bet they follow you around, don’t they.”
“Only because I’m insane,” I explained.
“I find that the number fourteen follows me around,” she revealed, “Do any numbers follow you around?”
At this point, I wasn’t sure if she was making silly small talk, or if she genuinely thought numbers follow people. I told her that the number sixteen might follow me.
After asking me about my birthday, she told me she would bring my hummus out to me.
After setting up camp at a seat by the window, the woman came by with my hummus. She told me, “It’s good that you’re insane because sane is good and you want to be in sane, not out sane.”
“If this woman is kidding, she is really funny,” I thought to myself, “if she’s not, she’s pretty darn kooky.” I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to laugh or not, so I just smiled and nodded.
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government-preserved newsreels
It’s great that these old National Archives videos are available on Google Video. I often enjoy watching old educational and ephemeral films. But I do wonder what are the copyright terms of these videos. Are they in the public domain? If they are, can I download one and use it in a found-footage project, or would I be violating Google’s terms of service. While the individual video pages have a button allowing me to download the video to my hard drive, there is little indication about the copyright status of the video. I’d rather see these videos on a non-profit project like Archive.org, which is completely upfront about the copyright status of a given video. I hope that the National Archives didn’t work out an exclusive deal to distribute old videos with Google.
Update: This Ars Technica story offers more context about the project, but doesn’t go into the intellectual property issues.
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vital connection
My host is apparently having problems with its MySQL installation, so this blog has been going down intermittently for the past few days. It’s embarrassing to have an error message pop up on my front page - it looks like I can’t edit a config file - and it’s frustrating to submit trouble tickets about the problem, only to get a terse reply from a tech support staffer telling me the site is back up. Is the problem being worked on, or are they just letting me know when the MySQL load is lighter? Can anyone recommend a cheap host for a modest blog? I’d like about 500MB of space and a minimum of 1GB of transfer. (I guess the bandwidth really does reveal how few people read my site.) If you read this before you see another “Database connection error” message, you’ll know what’s going on. If not, this post is pretty much useless.
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links for 2006-02-26
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oh dear lord… Damon Wayans wants to use a word that starts with “n” and ends with “a” for a retail line.
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ink and point
It’s interesting how Sanford is marketing the Sharpie permanent marker as a lifestyle product. They ran a commercial during the Super Bowl, they’re promoting their new retractable Sharpie, and now they even offer custom Sharpie pens, albeit with a limited number of design options. I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about permanent markers, but when I buy one I buy a Sharpie. Why are they expanding their product line and brand image?
If associate Sharpies with any lifestyle, I associate them with graffiti writers, who use the pens for tagging bathrooms and other surfaces. At first I thought they might be trying to capitalize on their association with a hip subculture, but it doesn’t seem like graffiti factors into their ads. Perhaps they’re trying to recuperate their image, or maybe they just want to own the permanent marker business.
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links for 2006-02-25
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According to a study, university professors prefer Lyotard to Habermas for world president
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Virtual museum of calculator watches
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good conversation
Oh rad, Siva Vaidhyanathan linked to one of my blog posts! Too bad it was on the blog for Don’s class, rather than my personal blog.
