5th Annual Oscar Blogging

I've been asked repeatedly if I'm going to continue my annual tradition of Oscar™ blogging. Okay, the only one asking was Tom, but I decided that hey, having seen hardly any of the movies^* hasn't stopped me before.

I'm going to try something new this year. Last year, I put up my IM address during the show, and I ended up trying to blog while trying to manage a half-dozen or so simultaneous chats at once. You have to be a teenager for that not to cut into your productivity, so this year, I'll be running an AIM chat room instead. Here are the directions to join us, borrowed from (and with the permission of) the amazing Mr. Knaster:

For Mac OS X:
    • Logon to any iChat account (AIM or .Mac)
    • Select File > Go to Chat
    • In the Go to Chat dialog, fill in backupbrain for the chat name and click Go

For Windows:
    • If you don't already have it, go to AOL.com and download AIM, and do what's necessary to get a screenname (AIM is free and you don't need to have an AOL account to use it)
    • Launch AIM
    • Choose People > Send Chat Invitation…
    • Invite getwebdevhelp to join you in the room backupbrain — you'll be transferred into the room instantaneously.

Note: I don't have a PC handy to test the latter, so if those directions don't work for you, please let me know.

If you're looking for Oscar blogging done by someone who knows a heap about cinema, has actually seen the films, and who will offer insightful analysis about the Academy Awards, you want Andy Ihnatko Picks On Oscar! 2006. If you want me laying bets that anyone who wins for portraying a gay, lesbian, transsexual, or transgender role will, upon announcement of their name, immediately grab the closest person of the opposite sex and plant a big honking kiss on their mouth so that's the first thing the camera shows — this is the place.

Previous Oscar blogging can be found at:
    • 2002 Oscar Blogging
    • 2003 Oscar Blogging
    • 2004 Oscar Blogging
    • 2005 Oscar Blogging

^*You think I'm joking? Here's the complete list of nominated films I've seen:
    • "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire"
    • "King Kong"
    • "Batman Begins"
    • "Star Wars Episode III: The Revenge of the Sith"
    • "The Chronicles of Narnia"

Obviously, I've gotta stop letting Tom and Sean decide what movies we're seeing.

More cat-and-mouse college games

This New York Times article, Schools Avoid Class Ranking, Vexing Colleges, discusses a trend amongst high schools: refusing to assign a class rank for their students. Some high schools have concluded that class ranks hurt the chances of their very good, but perhaps not the absolute best, students to get into competitive colleges. And in some schools, the numeric differences between the top five students may be just a few hundredths of a point.

From the college admissions officer's standpoint, class rank is a key indicator for how the high school student has done in the context of their high school.

I can see both points of view. Sean's overall GPA (and therefore class rank) is great, but it was harmed by the one C in English he received in his sophomore year, from a teacher that we consider to be incompetent (we thought that well before the grade was given, btw). The bottom line for us is that Sean's school still does class ranks, and that college admissions staff interviewed for the article say that high schools that have abolished class rank are having more problems placing students into the best schools. We should know within a month the results of all of Sean's college applications.

Bookstore Seeks New Name

From readsf.com:

Harlan Ellison has asked us, through his lawyer, to stop using the name Dangerous Visions for our bookstore which went virtual-only in 2002. We have complied with his wishes and are now openly soliciting the public for a replacement name. Send us your recommendations and we will post the top ten on our site. The person who provides the best name will win a $50 gift certificate — good on any purchase — and our undying thanks. The next five runners-up will receive a $10 gift certificate. Name selection ends April 30th. Until then, we remain readsf.com.

I won't add any other comment except to say that I'm looking forward to reading Cory Doctorow's take on this.

Mac Link Dump

I've got five zillion open tabs, so it's time to do a link dump or three. Here are the Mac-related ones:

• Like Woot, but wish it had more in the way of Mac shareware (as in, any)? Wish it was all Mac shareware, every day? If that's you, check out macZOT! — it's what you've been looking for.

• From the everything old is new again department, it's MacUser. Yeah. Careful with those flashbacks, bub. As they say, it's "News, info, and opinion by Mac users, for Mac users." Unsurprisingly, it's from MacPublishing (who also do Macworld). Suprisingly, they let fourteen year olds post. Damn, I feel old. Has that kid ever even seen a paper copy of MacUser?

• Someone recently recommended Onlife to me as a way to figure out what applications I'm spending most of my time in. From the looks of it, it does a whole lot more than that.

The Healdsburg update

I haven't done a Healdsburg update in a while, and things have been just too darn weird around here not blog it. I knew about the arsonist who set four fires in five days, and thankfully, he's been caught. His motive? This is "a quiet but boring city and he wanted to cause some chaos." And for those who keep track of such things, this is the same guy I wrote about back in 2003.

Until Dan blogged it, though, I didn't know about the dead "ninja". I admit that I'm curious about the full story.

We have enough chaos now, thank you. Can we get back to being a boring and quiet little town?