God save our gracious dictator

June 3, 2002 by Steven Garrity

In the last month, I’ve seen both Cuba and Iraq criticised on American television news for their state-sponsored celebrations of their government and leaders. The term state-sponsored is used as an insult – you know, those backwards countries where the government throws parties for themselves?

Then, this week, the CBC is all over the Golden Jubilee, which is, as far as I can gather, a state-sponsored celebration of the Queen in England. Every country does this.

I realize there is a big difference between England’s celebrations and those in Cuba and Iraq (and I’m not suggesting that Cuba and Iraq are similar either – except maybe in the eyes of the U.S. administration). The most obvious example of this difference is that those who criticise the British Monarchy aren’t thrown in jail. Also, there is a fundamental difference when a democratic government celebrates itself – since a democratic government represents the people, in theory, the people are then celebrating their own government.

Still, I find it remarkable how we in the west (and I include myself in this) are able to hold such obvious double standards.

Thank you for reading my amateurish political opinions.

Google Labs

May 20, 2002 by Steven Garrity

I asked Google’s new Glossary for the definition of god (an appropriate question). The first response:

Obviously, this is an impossible word to define. After all, to “define” a thing means putting boundaries around it, and God is Infinity, the very absence of boundaries.

See other cool rumblings at Google Labs.

To my bicycle thief: rot in hell

May 9, 2002 by Steven Garrity

Today, for the third time in my life, my bicycle was stolen. It wasn’t an expensive bike, and I hadn’t been using it much, but it was mine.

People seem to think it’s your fault if something is stolen from you and you hadn’t protected yourself from theft. If your bike or car is stolen, but wasn’t locked, it’s your fault. Bullshit. I should be able to leave the keys in my unlocked Jaguar if I want. It doesn’t make it any less of a crime to steal it. My unlocked or unprotected item is no less mine.

This might sounds like a naïve rant rather the usual smart and insightful thoughts you find here on aov. Fair enough, I’m just mad because someone stole my bike. However, the way that a small minority of deviants can hold the rest of us hostage relates to technology in an important way. Think of the resources that are spent (or wasted) on security – entire industries are built around it. Working with software developers, I see features and capabilities of software greatly limited by security concerns every day.

Even now, Bill Gates has ordered his company to shift the focus from new features to better security. Of course, because there are those who exploit any potential flaws, we welcome better security in our software – we all lock up our bikes. However, we shouldn’t accept this as inevitable, even thought it is exactly that. It should sadden us every time we go out of our way to protect ourselves from those who would exploit our weaknesses.

To the person who stole my bike, I hope you rot it hell.

Pardon my anger. Thanks for humouring me. If I bummed you out or annoyed you, check out the classic Kids in the Hall skit, Open Letter to the Guy Who Stole Bruce’s Bike Wheel – of the funniest things ever on television.

500 Acts of Volition

May 6, 2002 by Steven Garrity

This post is the 500th post on aov since its inception almost two years ago on August 25, 2000.

A few stats:

There has been an average of 0.8 posts per day, or an average of one post every 29 hours.
Since the site has been opened up for reader replies on April 20, 2001, a little over a year ago, there have been an average of 5.5 reader replies per day and an average of about 10 reader replies per aov post.
The 10 longest threads have been:
1. matt abandons the virtual for the tangible – gets ink on hands (58 replies)
2. An open letter to the web design community: Why should I redesign my site with Cascading Style Sheets? (56 replies)
3. Timothy McVeigh Executed (45 replies)
4. the new identity crisis (44 replies)
5. BlogML: The Weblog Markup Language (41 replies)
6. now what will i listen to? (40 replies)
7. words and phrases due for retirement (38 replies)
8. aov on the radio (37 replies)
9. planning for life as a wealthy eccentric (35 replies)
10. off to U2 – back in 3 days (34 replies)

I’m having fun.

Steven’s Guide to Real Estate Jargon

May 4, 2002 by Steven Garrity

I’ve been looking for a house for the past month or two and I’ve learned a few things about real estate jargon that might be helpful for anyone looking to take on an enormous amount of debt.

You might want to print off this handy legend and take it with you when you talk to real estate agents.

Real Estate Jargon	\|	Actual Meaning
Tidy Home		Small
Cute Home		Really Small
Shows well		Leaky basement
Needs TLC		Is on fire
Good starter		This is a crappy house
Good retirement home		This is a crappy house
Character Home		Shitty old house

It also seems that, as a rule, all photos taken for real estate listings, particularly those on the web, are taken at night with no flash.

A note to those publishing real estate listings: if you do not tell me the price or location of the house, then I will not call you.

The highlight of my domicile-hunt so far was when the mortgage lady at the bank told me that as part of the first-time home-buyer package I qualify for such benefits as no-fee banking (on my current plan, this amounts to about $30/year, and it would be free if I wasn’t too lazy to switch banks), and, get this, three free months of AOL-Canada! That’s really tipping the scales.

If I ever do find a house that I like and can afford, the first thing I will do (that is after weeks of landscaping, renovating, moving, and cleaning) is sit down with a piping hot mug of ice tea (using my AOL-Canada CD-ROM as a coaster) and order some exploding dog wall hangings for my naked new walls.

Wired is, uh, wired.

April 20, 2002 by Steven Garrity

I was given a subscription to Wired Magazine this Christmas and I agree that it’s been great recently (see comments by Jason Kottke & Jason Levine).

In an interesting move, they have published the entire contents of the latest issue online – not samples, not just the lead story – every word that appears in the print version is on the web. They’ve also started pulling content from the Wired Magazine site into the Wired News site. In the past, they’ve been known for their church/state-like separation between the print and web publishing divisions.

I welcome the acknowledgement that the appeal of a magazine goes beyond text and images. People will still buy the dead-tree version even though they can access all of the content on the web.

The Resurection of Kaliber10000

April 20, 2002 by Steven Garrity

I owe these guys – they taught me a lesson that was key to the success of Acts of Volition: never promise anything. No regular content, no deadlines, nothing.

Kaliber10000 (aka k10k) was an enormously popular (enough to have backlashes) web design ‘portal’ (I’m sorry to use the word portal, but it’s true). In 2000, they opened up their news section to an elite group of web hot shots and the site became the collective weblog of the design community.

Though often saturated with design-for-designs-sake crap, the site was still always a great read because it was a casual congregation of interesting people (currently featuring Derek Powazek and former Slice of the Month, Jeffrey Zeldman).

How did they teach me this lesson of ambiguous publishing schedules? Last year they decided to take the summer off and close down the site until September. The site was down, almost a year, until yesterday.

People criticize, but they defend themselves by saying, $#@! Off – we run the site for free. Fair enough. When people tell me that Acts of Volition should do this or that, I say “sure, and you should give more money to charity”. It’s a logically questionable analogy, but effective in conversation.

I usually try to avoid linking to ultra-popular links that are on every web log and site on the web. Whatever it is, I figure you’ve probably already seen it. I break from tradition today and link to a fine site, worth the ridiculously long wait: Kaliber10000 (www.k10k.net).

Kids don’t distinguish between content and advertising

April 14, 2002 by Steven Garrity

Jakob Nielsen’s research suggests that children do not distinguish between advertising and content on the web. Apparently the kids were aware of privacy issues. “Don’t give your name to strangers” is burned into the neurons, but parents aren’t teaching their kids what advertising is and how it differs (if it does) from other content.

Media literacy, or whatever you want to label it, is important. See the related AlertBox Column, the complete report ($125 to download), and coverage of the report in Newsweek.

I wonder if the children were frightened of Jakob?

Yes, Google, that is exactly what I meant

April 12, 2002 by Steven Garrity

I realize that all of the Google worship can get a little tiresome (all new religions go through this). Today, however, I stumbled across a feature that I hadn’t seen before.

We all know how great Google is at correcting your spelling, but did you know that if your misspelling produces no results, it will automatically search for the suggested correct spelling? Of course it tells you what it has done too. See for yourself (I don’t feel the need to explain my choice in searches to you). Fantastic!

Waste your time more efficiently

April 12, 2002 by Steven Garrity

I spend a lot of time reading on the web, but much of that time is spent (or starts) on a small collection of great sites. Some of these sites update every few hours (Slashdot), and others only every few days (Blogzilla).

A friend of mine, Jevon, has put together a great little tool to keep track of updates on your favourite sites. Blogtrack will scan a list of sites for you and notify you of which sites have updated.

There are other good tools along these lines. Most notably, Dan Sanderson’s similarly named BlogTracker. Sanderson’s tool works well, but is limited to monitoring sites that register their updates with the Weblogs.com services. Jevon’s tool works on any site.

Give it a shot (be sure and read the ‘bt Tips’ section once you’ve signed up).