The World Serious

MLB once again did a good job of hiding where they're doing the web-based play by play of today's game. So you want to look here to find it.

Ooh, new toys!

One of the good/bad parts of being in the computer book biz is that I frequently hear about new books before they're announced. While I love hearing what friends are up to, it's a drag not being able to talk about it with other people. It appears that what some buddies of mine are up to are now available for pre-sale through Amazon:

• Google Hacks by Tara Calishain (January 2003)
• Linux Server Hacks by Rob Flickenger (February 2003)
• Mac OS X Hacks by Rael Dornfest (January 2003)

Congrats to you all, and best of luck! (and if I still wasn't supposed to have mentioned it as yet, well, ya shouldn't have put it up at Amazon!)

A Rose by any other name...

Rebecca pointed to Baby's Named a Bad, Bad Thing: A Primer on Parent Cruelty. Tom and I regularly scoff at "The things people name their kids these days" (along with a previous link to The Utah Baby Namer), but these seem to really take the cake. According to the site's creator, it's a "catalog of naming questions and suggestions posted on two different baby naming bulletin boards going back as far as early 2001." My personal favorite:

I really like Freddie Prinze jr. and heard his father was famous and died tragically. What was his name?

Pink AND Blue

Congratulations to Meryl and family on their brand-new bouncing baby blog. Or at least that's what they could have called it; it's real name is B-DAY: May 16, 2003. Welcome, and don't let the stupid questions get you down!

Sports. Really.

I'm not a sports-oriented person (far from it!), but I've been "watching" the World Series by leaving my PC on this page. Along with being a great way to "watch" the game, it's a great example of web tech. Check it out.

Network printong on OS X

We love Mac OS X, but there's been continuing trouble with hardware drivers that has been too slow getting fixed. For example, our Canon N650U USB scanner still doesn't have OS X drivers, though Canon claims they'll be out soon. We've been more frustrated by the fact that the AXIS 1440 print server that we used to put the Epson Stylus Color 777 on the network didn't work under OS X. It's awfully annoying to have to print under Classic, or worse, reboot into OS 9. No longer; Gimp-Print for Mac OS X Jaguar brings back network printing for a wide range of Canon, Epson, Lexmark, and PCL-compatible printers. We installed it today, and it works great. Note that you'll have to install two packages: Ghostscript and Gimp-Print. The programs are standard Mac OS X Installer packages, and configuring the printer was a snap. This is a terrific example of how Mac OS X's Unix underpinnings allow great Unix programs and utilities to benefit mainstream Mac users. Thanks, you open-source folks!

Too good to be true

The Thrill of a Good Conspiracy: Iraq and the Oklahoma bombing case. Conspiracy stories are fun. Debunking stories are better.

Yay us!

Sometimes I just feel like bragging:

Regime Change Begins At Home

Regime Change Begins At Home. Not thrilled at Bush's rush to an ill-thought-out war? Check this out, print it out and then help get out the vote, especially if you live in a Congressional district where the race is close, or if you live in a state with a vulnerable GOP incumbent.

Cookalotamus

Cookalotamus is a cooking site for kids and parents. If you've been looking to get your kids interested in cooking, check it out.

Product placement in CARS

Today's Crazy Apple Rumors Site presents Waiting for Schiller, a play in one act. Note the product placement. I hasten to point out that I did not pay for that placement, so if you're interested in buying the book, please do buy it through John's site, because he really deserves the support for being so consistently hilarious.

Meet The Makers

A few thoughts on yesterday's Meet the Makers get-together:

• I'm so used to wireless and power strips at conferences that it seems utterly unnatural when they're not present. There was downtime, and I wanted to check my email, and I couldn't. Arrgh!
• The ratio of Macs to PCs was about 4 to 1. OTOH, there were fewer laptops than I've seen at any conference in years, possibly because of the previously mentioned lack of facilities.
• It's not the Web Standards Committee. It's not the Web Standards Group. It's the Web Standards Project. And btw, it's not "Jeffrey Zeldman's Group," either.
• One of the attendees made a comment about how she had thought that client-side Java was dead, but wasn't so sure any more after seeing two back-to-back sessions featuring client-side Java applets. This may be a trend to watch out for.
• In response to a question about open source and Lindows, Jeff Veen made a comment about how the next machine he buys is going to be a BSD Unix box... but one with a nice UI. At which point, I held up my TiBook and waved it over my head, and he pointed to it, laughed, and said, "Yeah, just like that one." IMO, it's great to see people in the tech biz state publicly that OS X is a full-fledged Unix box. Apple doesn't say much of this in their mainstream advertising, for good reason: Unix is perceived as user-hostile. But techies understand that Apple stands for usability, and that OS X is the first Unix machine that actually makes sense as a desktop or laptop computer.
• I hate conferences that have back to back sessions. This is the 2^nd or 3^rd I've been to that's done this recently. How on earth do the organizers think that people are going to magically teleport from the 1:15-2:15 session in one room to the 2:15-3:15 session in the room down the hall? Do they think that if they give us any time to get between the two we'll get distracted and never make it to the 2^nd session?
• The session on "Web Standards and the Future of the Web" was way too short. In order to make the schedule, and after the introductions, and minus the futzing around with the crappy projectors, there was only about 15 minutes left—not near enough to actually get anything meaningful from the three great speakers they had. I asked a cranky question about whether the W3C's latest proposals to deprecate XHTML 1 would influence the (long-overdue) uptake of XHTML by actual sites, and got some good responses. IMO, that would have been an interesting session all by itself, and I hope that we get to cover this more at Web Design World Boston next month.
• Macromedia's got something cool in their pocket, but I had to sign an NDA. Keep an eye out for this one, folks.
• Best buzzword I don't recall having heard before: "marchitecture."

Nope, not us

Now for sale on eBay: Helplessly Addicted to eBay Barbie.

Potatoes?

I tell Tom he can post anything he wants for the day, and he blogs about potatoes. That's why I love the man.

Potato spam

OK, I'm used to the spam that offers me pictures of frisky farm animals cavorting with people who love them way too much. I've gotten more offers for questionable herbal products than I can count. And I've successfully resisted obtaining the CD That Bill Gates Doesn't Want Me to Have (nice to know that Bill's looking out for me). But this is just plain weird: today I got offered "50 lbs of Idaho's best potatoes shipped to you every 2 to 4 months." I am now officially flummoxed.

ShmoozeFest SF

If I can get up early enough, I'm off to Meet the Makers on Monday. Tom, the blog's yours for the day.