Sunbeams illuminating a coastal forest in Port Orford, Oregon

Chuggnutt!

Month: April 2004

  • Bayer

    Here’s an interesting bit of trivia I unearthed last week: in trying to prove to somebody at work that aspirin is a coal tar derivative, I found out that Bayer developed and registered the drug as a trademark in 1899.

    By itself, that’s not so interesting, I know. However, it turns out Bayer also discovered, trademarked and marketed another drug: heroin. “From 1898 through to 1910 it was marketed as a non-addictive morphine substitute and cough medicine for children.”

    Yikes. Of course, then the thought of “Bayer Heroin” kept me amused for a bit:

    Bayer Heroin

  • Weekend off

    So yeah, I took the weekend off from blogging. Ran out of steam, I guess; I didn’t even read any other blogs on Saturday, I was engrossed in finishing up Kiln People. Sometimes it’s just plain nice to take a break.

  • Clone Wars

    This is a total geek-out post. You’ve been warned.

    The kids and I have been watching the Clone Wars mini-series that was on Cartoon Network (we’re watching them on the computer, a few episodes at a time… it’s much more convenient that way), and enjoying it quite a bit. Hell of a clever idea, too, the way they put it together, with 3 minute segments/episodes.

    Anyway, I have to say that by far the best episode is Chapter 13, the “Mace Windu kicks ass” episode. This one little episode alone basically makes all this whole Star Wars prequel stuff worthwhile.

  • Snow in April

    Just looked out my back door a few minutes ago and was mildly surprised to see snow falling. I’d heard there was a chance, but you never really expect it this late in the year. Oh well, welcome to Central Oregon—you gotta wait at least until June before you can guarantee no snow.

  • On Politics

    I make it a point to not really write about politics here, for several reasons. First, it’s a hot topic for too many people. Second, I frankly don’t feel qualified one way or another to sound off; I have opinions, sure, but before I voice those opinions, I better be able to back them up intelligently—and there’s a fair amount of political knowledge that I’m ignorant or just plain wrong about, I bet. Third, it’s been my observation that once you start voicing a political opinion in a public venue like a website, the vast majority of people who respond either are of the same opinion as you (which ultimately degenerates into a mutual admiration society that closes off from the rest of the world) or are fervently opposed to your point of view (which ultimately degenerates into a vicious group of trolls who have nothing better to do than denigrate you because you think differently from them); there’s very little real diversity or intelligent conversation. Finally, politics just doesn’t interest me enough to write about.

    Having said that, I’ll write a bit about politics, inspired by having President Bush on television tonight (annoyingly pre-empting regular TV).

    I’ll just be blunt. I am so sick and tired of the spin and political bullshit that surrounds politics these days. All of it. Whether it’s Bush and all the shit going on over 9/11 and Iraq and everything, or Clinton and his “That depends on what your definition of ‘is’ is” hijinks, I don’t care. I do not care.

    What I want is a President who can step up to a news conference like Bush did tonight, and instead of spinning out lies and evasiveness and bullshit, just look into the cameras and say, “Yeah, we fucked up. I fucked up. I was wrong, and it cost us, and now it’s time to fix things.” Is that really too much to ask? Whatever happened to responsibility, accountability, and humility, anyway?

    Hell with it. Rant over.

  • Bots and JavaScript

    Here’s something to think about: do any search engine bots and crawlers recognize and parse JavaScript? I haven’t heard of any (and I’m really too lazy right now to do any real research :) ), but I got to thinking about this today, and there’s really no reason that they shouldn’t be able to handle it.

    Sure, there’s a lot of cruft and dross in JavaScript code that isn’t relevant in a searchable context, but what about something like I’ve been working on recently: dynamic menus? Each menu item points to a valid page with some contextual link text, but since the menus are generated in JavaScript, the search engine process parsing the content out of the code might easily pass it up and miss the links. Those same links are ultimately being repeated in the actual content of the page, so they’ll be picked up for sure, but what about next time?

    Of course, then it would be easy to abuse search engine rankings, by stuffing JavaScript full of hidden and obfuscated content. Perfect for the snake oil of Search Engine Optimization. Even so, though, there might be a lot of content or linkage going unnoticed…

  • Easter

    Better late than never, I suppose, but here’s hoping everyone had a good Easter today.

    Growing up, I could never understand why Easter always fell on a different day each year, rather than like “regular” holidays like the Fourth of July, or Thanksgiving. Ironically, it was some computer programming trivia that clued me in to how Easter Sunday’s date is determined:

    Easter is the Sunday following the first full moon after the spring equinox.

  • Edgefield History

    This is just a little bit of history and trivia that popped into my head tonight, about McMenamins Edgefield in Troutdale, Oregon (just outside of Portland). The Edgefield is a 38-acre estate that features lodging, restaurants, a brewery, a vineyard and winery, a distillery, and more, dominated by a Georgian-revival style manor. It’s a fantastic, fun place, as all of the big McMenamins renovations are.

    Built in 1911, it was originally the Multnomah County Poor Farm:

    Residents operated a self-sufficient environment, raising hogs, poultry, growing a variety of fruits and vegetables, operating a dairy, cannery and meat packing plant as well as working in the laundry, kitchen and hospital.

    At that time, not long after the turn of the last century, my great-grandfather was a mortician in Portland, and on occasion he would have to make a trip out to the Poor Farm to pick up the bodies of residents who died.

    Yeah, an odd bit of trivia. It’s been an odd week.

  • overLIB

    Pointer to a totally excellent JavaScript library for creating popups: overLIB. I’ve been using it the last few days to put together a dynamic drop-down menu for a Web project at work. And I’ve used it before to create popup context menus and tooltips. It’s simply one of the best JavaScript tools out there that I’ve come across—it’s clever, simple to use, and it just works, period.

  • David Brin

    Ugh, it looks like I’m taking a blogging vacation. Time to try to get back on track. Tonight, since I’m reading one of his latest books, I thought I’d provide some links and commentary on David Brin, one of my favorite science fiction authors.

    The book I’m reading is Kiln People, and it’s really good so far. Brin has a knack for taking some of the most out-there, implausible-sounding ideas and turning them around into fascinating, believable premises. Kiln People is a good example; the premise is that future society will be transformed by the ability to create temporary, clay copies of yourself (called “dittos”) that essentially operate as a proxy version of you, and at the end of the day you can “inload” all the memories from the copy—in effect, experiencing and remembering everything the ditto did without risk or effort to yourself. I put off reading this book for a long time because it sounded a bit absurd, but once I got into it, it’s entirely engrossing and convincing.

    Brin also excels at portraying alien points of view. Brightness Reef is the best example of this I can think of, jumping POVs among half a dozen different alien species fluidly. That sort of writing is hard work, but it pays off when done well. Which Brin does.

    Herewith my thoughts on the essential David Brin reading list; if you haven’t read any of his books, start with these.

    • Startide Rising: This was the first Brin book I read. Utterly fantastic, I was hooked from that point on. It’s actually the second book of his Uplift series, but it’s the best one to start with, hands down. Space opera, lots of aliens, cool ideas—it has it all.
    • Earth: This paints a frightenly real portrayal of Earth in the near future (2038, I believe). Much different tone than his Uplift stories, but very good.
    • The Postman: Forget the movie, the book is totally different, except for a few things. And a thousand times better. As a plus, it mostly takes place in Oregon :)
    • Otherness: The second collection of his short stories. I like this one better than his first collection, River of Time, because he’s a much stronger writer with the later stories.

    And, if anyone’s counting, my least favorite Brin novel is Glory Season. Why? It was just too long for me, and the ending was far too ambiguous for my tastes—it didn’t leave me with any real sense of closure, just left me feeling unsatisfied.