While spending a few days in Portland, Maine I had the unfortunate opportunity of watching some classic in-room american television. ESPN showed a military showcase and airshow that was the year 2000 equivalent to the now hilarious and frightening US and Soviet propaganda videos of the 50s. According to the hosts of the show it is a great opportunity for the military to mingle with the public and for the public to get a see “all the wonderful things that the U.S. Military is doing”. Don’t worry, young environmentalists, the smoke generated by the showplanes is ‘environmentally friendly’. I shudder.

On a more positive note, Portland is a beautiful city (despite the hideous buildings built in the last 40 years). I strongly recommend the Basket o’ Gritty Chips at “Maine’s original brew pub” Gritty McDuffs.

Oh, they still show Full House on TV here and the Olympics broadcasts are all a day old. God bless the CBC.

Let him know he is missed. If you are going to send him foolish bluemountain “e-cards” please use his spamorama email address: rob51@usa.net

Get well soon Rob.

re: apple legitimizes amazon patent tomfoolery

Mastah programmah John Carmack (his company, Id Software created Doom and the Quake series of PC Games) on software patents:

“The idea that I can be presented with a problem, set out to logically solve it with the tools at hand, and wind up with a program that could not be legally used because someone else followed the same logical steps some years ago and filed for a patent on it is horrifying.”

Check out the rest of the interview at VoodooExtreme.

A few months ago, Amazon.com went after BarnesandNoble.com with their absurd ‘1-Click Shopping’ patent.

Now Apple has legitimized the foolish patent by licensing 1-Click Shopping for the Apple Store.

If you locked a few reasonably intelligent web developers in a room for six weeks to design a user-friendly ecommerce site and they had never heard of 1-Click Shopping (capitalization used sarcastically), they would probably develop it independently.

Boo Amazon.com, boo U.S. Patent Office, and boo Apple.

A French artist creates a mutant rabbit.

Thanks to Don at IslandEdition.com for the kind words in the Island Web section of the latest issue (and it is a fine issue, as usual).

<sarcasm>
It’s good to see that we still control the media even with Kirby gone.</sarcasm>

The smart folk at IslandEdition.com put it nicely, comparing the spread of ‘blogs’ to a bad genital rash:

“Done well, blogs can be a refreshing, quick read. Done badly, they’re indulgent and dull.”

Blog. I hate the word. Maybe that’s what this site is, and maybe denying it is like The Moffats saying “we are not a boy-band”, but I still loath the term.

One final note: However hip/cliché it may be, the proper capitalization is silverorange. Not SilverOrange, Silverorange, or Silver Orange. We artists are picky about that.

actsofvolition.com access may have been somewhat intermittent for some of you over the last week or two. We apologize for the annoyance. Things should get back to normal this weekend.

At least we are not the only ones; Both zeldman.com (alistapart.com has been down for weeks) and k10k.net are having similar problems.

I’m as skeptical of the Olympics as the next steroid-scandal-weary member of my generation but while watching the CBC’s typically brilliant coverage of the opening ceremony of the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney, I was weak.

It was a ceremony so fine, it was easy to forget that the Olympics have been bought and sold by Coke and IBM.

Read a well crafted description of what was “…by far the most technically advanced and artistically sophisticated opening ceremony ever…” by Gary Kamiya of Salon.com in his article Already Gold.

Speaking of defining oneself with material goods (as I was a few posts ago), I have found my dream vehicle, the Audi A2. The Audi site calls it “Discreetly distinguished – not attention-grabbing”. Just like me.

The A2 combines the smart and sleek lines of the 2000 VW Jetta with the practical form factor of the hideously american PT Cruiser.

While I’m on the topic of new car form factors, what’s up with the Pontiac Aztek? It looks like a bad prop from Judge Dredd. They could have at least spelled it correctly.