Yes, Tom's birthday is next

Yes, Tom's birthday is next week. No, he's not getting this.

It looks like Memepool may

It looks like Memepool may be checking out our links, so I'll link back to one they've got: more missile silo homes.

Sontag Hedges by Andrew Sullivan

Sontag Hedges by Andrew Sullivan is an excellent response to the craven interview Salon's David Talbot did with Susan Sontag a few days ago. Normally I really dislike Sullivan's work, and I appreciate Salon's take on the news, being a left-leaning guy myself. But preening leftist intellectuals simply deserve to be brought up short when they're dead wrong. When they're correct, of course, they may continue to preen. Though I might still laugh at them. They hate that.

For those of you who've

For those of you who've asked, thanks, but no news really is no news re: my health status. Ask again next week.

Anthrax got you feeling like

Anthrax got you feeling like you want to crawl into a hole somewhere until this all blows over? Here's a few above-average holes worth crawling into:

• The Boeing 727 Home
  
• The Subterranean Fortress
  
• The Missle Silo home

In all cases, if you have to ask how much, you can't afford it.

I've got a pretty good

I've got a pretty good track record of picking up on terrific singer-songwriters while they're still obscure. I bought Suzanne Vega's first album on vinyl. I saw Shawn Colvin at McCabe's in LA right after her first CD was released, and latched on to Mary Chapin Carpenter before her crossover from country. I've been a fanatic supporter of Lucy Kaplansky since 1994. And I came late to the party, but still love Patty Griffin, Richard Shindell, Eddie From Ohio, and Kim Richey. Anyway, we saw Lucy at The Powerhouse in Sebastopol last Sunday (an excellent show with the incredible guitarist Nina Gerber). Opening for Lucy was someone new to me, Alice Peacock. Alice is someone to watch. Her first and only CD (self-produced, but available via Amazon) is Darn Good; I liked her enough to buy it at the show. From the songs she sang that will be on her next CD, (probably January '02), I think she's got a great future. If you like this sort of music (and I'm looking in your direction, Mr. Hawkins), you should check out Alice's CD.

Everyone else gets spam for

Everyone else gets spam for Penis Enlargement. Today, I got spam asking me if I wanted to buy, sell, or lease a yacht. It makes me wonder how the hell I got on the Penis Size Compensation mailing list. After all, Dori says that I have nothing to...well, let's not go there.

Psywar Update: Screwing with the

Psywar Update: Screwing with the heads of terrorists and terror supporters.

Allan Liska of allan.org links

Allan Liska of allan.org links to us here with a pointer to my Amazon notes from yesterday. Oddly enough, he worked on books # 31 and 47.

Idiocy Watch #4, The New

Idiocy Watch #4, The New Republic's compendium of really stupid commentary relating to the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Collect the whole set. And by the way, here's a personal annoyance: it was an attack, not a tragedy. In the way that most people use the term, a tragedy is something that is unavoidable, like a hurricane. Using the word "tragedy" rhetorically mitigates the responsibility of the terrorist scum that did this act.

MacASP is in public beta.

MacASP is in public beta. The bad news: it's not MS ASP compatible, and it doesn't work with Apache (drat and double drat). Otherwise, it looks like an interesting toy to play with in my copious free time.

Really darn useful stuff for

Really darn useful stuff for JavaScripters, via Netscape's DevEdge Evangelism site: Cross references between Netscape 6 and IE 5.5 for the document object, DOM CSS 2 properties, DOM HTML elements, HTML elements, JavaScript, and the window object. I hope that they update this for IE 6.

I'm doing some research now

I'm doing some research now into the JavaScript book competition, so I thought I'd look at Amazon's best-selling JavaScript books. All I can say is, wow, their database must be screwed up. Out of their top 60:

• Ship within 24 hours: 17
  
• Ship in 2-3 days: 6
  
• Ship in 1-2 weeks: 2
  
• Limited availability: 28
  
• Special order: 6
  
• Availability unknown: 1

Yep, of the top 60 "bestselling books", they won't even try to sell you about half of them. Which isn't terribly surprising, when you notice that 47 of them were written over three years ago (yeah, like JavaScript hasn't changed a tad since then!).


A few more data points, all relating to our JavaScript book:

• Bestseller rank of the 4^th edition: Not found (and it's been out for 6 months)
  
• Sales rank of the 4^th edition: 4174
  
• Bestseller rank of the 3^rd edition: 5
  
• Sales rank of the 3^rd edition: 4691
  
• Bestseller rank of the 2^nd edition: 46
  
• Sales rank of the 2^nd edition: 3507. A book that's been out of print for over two years is the 3507^th highest selling book at Amazon? And it sells better than our other two (later) editions? I don't think so!

My guess is that the bestseller list was last updated about two years ago. Time to work on that database, folks.

I'm doing a book that

I'm doing a book that will include a discussion of MSN Messenger for Mac OS X. So I've fired it up, and I realize that I have nobody to talk to, because I've never used IM. I don't know anyone that uses MSN Messenger (or if I do, I've not paid attention to their IM address). I don't even know if I can talk to the AOL IM folks or not. So if you use MSN Messenger and don't mind being added to my contact list, please send your IM contact information to my Hotmail account.

I'm in the process of

I'm in the process of helping some Los Angeles-area folks try to find some work in the post-dot-com-bust economy. This is to keep track of some of the links I've run across worth passing on. If you have any recommendations for additions (or just suggestions for the LA biz scene), please let me know.

• Web405: if you're in LA, join already.
  
• The Goodtimes List: despite the name, it's not just for parties, but it's not for newbies, either.
  
• Craig's List, LA-style.
  
• The LA chapter of AIP (the Association of Internet Professionals). Often copied, never equalled. And speaking of AIP, does JP know everyone, or does it just seem that way?
  
• The VIC. What used to be the Venice Interactive Community is now the Virtual Interactive Community, but it still has some LA-area networking events.
  
• The Southern California Technology Calendar.
  
• Southern California Networking and their events list.
  
• The Layoff Lounge, Los Angeles.