Page of Moss - bloglet for Tuesday 8 January 2002

This story is one of the best in The Devil's Dictionary. I'm glad that it sometimes comes up as a fortune on my computer:

After his Ignoble Disgrace, Satan was being expelled from Heaven. As he passed through the Gates, he paused a moment in thought, and turned to God and said, "A new creature called Man, I hear, is soon to be created."

"This is true," He replied.

"He will need laws," said the Demon slyly.

"What! You, his appointed Enemy for all Time! You ask for the right to make his laws?"

"Oh, no!" Satan replied, "I ask only that he be allowed to make his own."

It was so granted. _
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02:45:55 PM, Tuesday 8 January 2002

Mike asked earlier why I think the m14m.net weblogs should be running on something other than bloglet. The biggest reason is this: the bloglet script works by inserting new entries into static html files. It keeps no record of older entries, apart from the already generated html. As a result, it's very hard to build a good interface for editing old entries. Also, because the configuration is stored in a text file on the server, it's hard to build a good web interface for reconfiguring the look of a bloglet. There are various hacks I could apply to do both of these things, but they'd leave the code a great big mess--in this case, I think it's better to either build or download something new. _
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02:36:38 PM, Tuesday 8 January 2002

Just saw someone refer to USA Today as "News McNuggets". That's perfect. _
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02:35:16 PM, Tuesday 8 January 2002

This is, at the very least, the stupidest idea I expect to hear today. _
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12:37:21 PM, Tuesday 8 January 2002

Interoperability is important because no single platform will ever be right for everyone. And the state of interoperability today is dismal. What can be done about this? _
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05:46:33 PM, Monday 7 January 2002

This is very exciting news indeed. After Dinner often had some great writing. It would be very nice to see it return. _
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11:52:46 PM, Sunday 6 January 2002

This is important: you have to go read The Geek Hierarchy on Brunching Shuttlecocks. _
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07:08:15 PM, Saturday 5 January 2002

AMERICA! JUG BAND MUSIC IS COMING FOR YOUR CHILDREN! _
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05:57:02 PM, Saturday 5 January 2002

It's spiffy, yes, but it's entirely content-free. _
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06:35:52 AM, Saturday 5 January 2002

farming - What the heads of a disk drive are said to do when they plow little furrows in the magnetic media. _
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06:21:54 AM, Saturday 5 January 2002

"Now I know, now I know what it means to be broken.
Now I know, now I know what it means to be bared.
You in the chair, perceptibly sinking.
I'm on my knees once again made aware
of the world out there.
Grief is a word to describe the absence of feeling.
Now I know, now I know what it means to be broken." _
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06:19:51 AM, Saturday 5 January 2002

"she shows no emotion at all / stares into space like a dead china doll" _
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06:17:00 AM, Saturday 5 January 2002

"everything I do today has gone amiss" _
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06:13:36 AM, Saturday 5 January 2002

"Bottom, thou art translated!" _
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06:13:13 AM, Saturday 5 January 2002

To translate is to betray. _
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06:12:54 AM, Saturday 5 January 2002

"Fortunately, we don't need to understand things. We can just pretend to understand them, instead." (I paraphrase, of course.) _
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06:08:07 AM, Saturday 5 January 2002

"Dave, will you stop? Dave, stop. I'm afraid. I'm afraid. I'm afraid." _
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06:04:25 AM, Saturday 5 January 2002

howl! O! you are men of stones _
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05:59:06 AM, Saturday 5 January 2002

We Must Be Crazy To Be Selling Truth At Prices Like These. _
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05:56:27 AM, Saturday 5 January 2002

...murderous, doomed, that cost the Achaeans loss on bitter loss... _
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05:25:19 AM, Saturday 5 January 2002

You are in a twisty little maze of passages, all alike. _
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07:34:54 PM, Friday 4 January 2002

You are in a little maze of twisty passages, all different. _
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07:23:50 PM, Friday 4 January 2002

Argh! Comments stored on m14m.net--that is, anything from the m14m.net or sjca.edu blogs--haven't been pinging BLT properly, due to a difference between the new and old servers that I hadn't accounted for. So you might want to check them to see if you've missed any comments. Also: if you're seeing this message, then you're getting m14m.net at its new location, and it's safe to start commenting again. As far as I can tell, the only person still stuck on the old server is Mike. I'm sure he'll be over soon. In the meantime, I'm moving things he does over as they happen.

If you suspect you've lost comments or entries, let me know, and I'll see what I can do. _
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07:11:17 PM, Friday 4 January 2002

Time for some hacking, methinksme. _
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06:02:32 PM, Friday 4 January 2002

Okay, now I've added a messages link, like Kerne has. _
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05:58:47 PM, Friday 4 January 2002

Playing with a couple more format changes... _
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05:57:16 PM, Friday 4 January 2002

Hmm... will this do it? _
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05:54:31 PM, Friday 4 January 2002

Wow... will the JavaScript popup trick Kottke recommends actually do the right thing? If so, that's extremely cool, and everyone else should switch to it, too. _
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05:51:12 PM, Friday 4 January 2002

"and mid that tumult Kublai (that's me!) heard from far" _
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12:59:02 AM, Friday 4 January 2002

It strikes me that Kerne's BLT and Google's 20 Year Archive are comparable in their ability to resurrect old threads, in bloglets and newsgroups respectively. _
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05:09:38 PM, Thursday 3 January 2002

There's a seriously evil security hole in the most recent Windows versions of AIM. _
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01:22:29 PM, Thursday 3 January 2002

Wednesday is Pizza Night! _
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12:21:50 AM, Thursday 3 January 2002

My best Tetris game ever. 701 lines. _
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06:46:20 PM, Tuesday 1 January 2002

I should warn y'all--until the domain change has finished, commenting's going to be a bit dodgy, as some people will be commenting on the new m14m.net, some on the old. You might want to hold off on commenting for a couple of days--chances are a few comments will be lost in the change. _
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03:46:00 PM, Tuesday 1 January 2002

Happy New Year! _
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03:33:08 AM, Tuesday 1 January 2002

If you see this message, you are viewing m14m.net at its new home. Whee! _
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09:04:23 PM, Monday 31 December 2002

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