Where I’m @

20020131

Interestingly enough, CNN/Money is the first mainstream site I’ve seen to write, perhaps unknowingly, about the forcible and anti-democratic “security” measures at the WEF, saying that the massive martial presence intended “to keep the participants at the World Economic Forum away from those protesting it”.

7 ACT=UP demonstrators arrested in NYC, likely to be held at Brooklyn Naval Yard. (The Navy Yard? WTF?!) — ACT=UP press release, may contain bias and hyperbole in addition to truth.

Better than Office Space is the real world. Someone in my cubicle area has a birthday today, and her colleagues (not, fortunately, including me) got her a cake of some sort, or so I could overhear. But the coolest thing is that when she was presented with the cake, about half of the people started singing with about as much pep as a fourteen-year-old girl taking her younger cousin with her to the movies, and then trailed off about halfway through the “Happy Birthday” song. Worth every penny I’m spending on COBRA instead of having real health insurance.

And of course, one of the best places to get your information, counterinformation, misinformation, disinformation, and all that an educated citizen needs is the IndyMedia site and its child site, New York IndyMedia.

World Economic Forum
New York 2002
Day 1


Nothing really going on so far today. Walked to work through the same security cordons as yesterday, though the cops seem to be getting a bit hepped up. I was told I couldn’t cross Madison at 50th, that to get to my building I would have to go to 52nd and over, but was then allowed to cross at 51st.


One cop, who was controlling the bike-rack barrier on my route at my building was loudly saying “Hup! Hup! Hup!” as he cursorily examined my building pass and moved the barrier. Someone clearly had given him a talking-to about not being lax. There’s a hotel room full of suits across Lex, though they could be completely unconnected to the WEF. Protest at the Gap on 5th Ave. this afternoon, and don’t forget the virtual sit-in.


Spotter on St. Bart’s church roof. Not there the next day.

20020130

Dealt with my many digital photos, as you can see in today’s first post, and also picked out a before-and-after shot of the entrance to what used to be my subway stop (before that darn V train showed up).

And then there’s the intelligent rePost on LGF. So much for the right to dissent.

Items from around the news on the WEF from today:
New York Times talks about the benefit to the city from holding the WEF here — free registration, tolerance for advertising, skepticism required
Yahoo! News via Reuters talks about security
Newsday does too
And there’re blog posts too, at Fresh Green Blog, Dan Gillmor’s pseudo-blog, MeFi, and zem:weblog

We’ll be doing something new here at Bleahh soon — photos! That’s because my current office is across the street from the Waldorf-Astoria, site of this year’s World Economic Forum.

World Economic Forum
New York 2002
Day -1
The E train that I was on stopped at 50th St and we were told that a train at Ely Ave in Queens had had its emergency brake pulled, so our train was gonna be taking a bit of a rest for a while. Most of us got out and hoofed it, so I got to experience almost as much as possible of the blockade. The first cutoff was at 50th and 5th, where a police van sat crossways to the street, blocking any traffic from entering what is normally a pretty busy cross street. The first ID checkpoint was on the west side of Madison, where they just checked the proof-of-workplace that my current employer, Volt, handed out yesterday. On the east side of Madison, they checked the papers and a photo ID. It seemed they were accepting simple office passes of people who have something more than a note from their employer (not like I couldn’t fake that thing inside of 10 minutes), but I was too busy taking photos and dealing with my own self.


Park Avenue was another matter entirely. There, the cops were being pretty thorough, checking our identity papers on both sides of the ave. Tons of cops, just tons. A sanitation dumptruck full of sand (so it wouldn’t be tipped over by those rascally activists, I guess) blocking 50th St next to the W-A.


A police communications center vehicle on 50th.


A squad of motorcycle cops at 50th and Lex.


Oddly enough, though, nobody checked my papers at the barriers right in front of the building, and nobody checked anything other than my regular building ID when I entered the building. There were, however, more than the usual building security guys and building maintenance guys. (If my learning from Hollywood is any good, at least one maintenance guy is either a German bad guy with a British accent or else a scrappy FBI agent who’s having problems with his wife, who wants more independence because she hasn’t learned that his job saving the world is more important than their marriage and he really loves her anyway.)

The building guys (all men) were talking louder than usual, joshing around and generally belying their nervous excitement at the whole thing. Not that I blame them. I’m nervous and excited, too. It’s not exactly a good time for me to be arrested or beat to a pulp, so I probably will avoid all but the calmest demonstrations.

The office has a conference room with a commanding view of 50th and Park,

so I expect to spend some time in there tomorrow, and it wouldn’t surprise me to find an NYPD officer there also.

20020129

Over on Ishbadiddle, I’ve posted some short thoughts about the World Economic Forum and my work location.

20020125

Independent Site of the Day #6: Realm of Redheads
More a curiosity than a site of fantastic content, Realm of Redheads is yet another site that exemplifies what the web can be about. Are you a redhead? Sign up for a membership at this site, and commune with your own! And what makes this site worth a mention is really that it’s pretty well designed, it’s got good organization and content that some people clearly care about, and it even comes close to validating at the W3C. Another labor of love, unearthed just for you.

Independent site review concept by Aortal

BEN 9243
That’s the new license plate number, just picked up this morning at the Kings County branch of the New York State DMV. Much faster than expected, and I drew neither Patty nor Selma Bouvier. I did, however, have two small setbacks during the process: filled out the forms in red ink, which was a no-no (since the DMVbots write in red); and had a slight variation of my name on the insurance card from the way my name is on my driver’s license. Other than that, the experience was quite pleasant. As a cherry on top, I ran into one of my best friends on the subway on the way into town — on a line I never take to work, at a time neither one of us normally goes in.

In other news, I just found out that Ron Taylor, known for, among other things, voicing “Bleeding Gums” Murphy, died last week of a heart attack.

20020124

Independent Site of the Day #5: Evolt
Evolt.org is “a world community for web developers”, not to be confused with Evolt.com (a magazine and comics design site whose contents you can only access if you know your directory in advance). Evolt.org looks a lot like a blog at first, and indeed its front page is published blogstyle. But the general metaphor is much more of a continually publishing magazine, since the bits on the front page are simply descriptions of and links to the articles within. Content is outta sight on Evolt, with articles kept at very readable lengths (in very readable color schemes as well) and casting a wide net of reader expertise levels. I’ve gotten good information from Evolt on, inter alia, databases (general SQL, MS SQL, and MySQL), UI (CSS, HTML, layout principles), and server workings. Like any good community, they’ve got ratings and comments for the articles, as well as short lists of top-rated pieces and current hot discussions. Nice extras for community members include job listings and access to rate/comment on articles, or even to write an article. Equally to the point of any of this, the whole thing is done by amateurs (in the sense of the word that these people are doing it because they love it), showing by example that with effort and study, anyone can be good at the development game.

Independent site review concept by Aortal

Yesterday morning I began my participation in the New York Cancer Project, “a research study designed to help medical scientists learn how the environment, diet, physical activity, family health history, and genetics (patterns of inheritance and specific traits) may affect a person’s chances of developing cancer.” What the brochure doesn’t say, though, is that it’s also a massive study, possibly one of the largest and longest ever done on the myriad factors that may influence cancer incidence. They’re starting with 25K people and will expand to as many as 300K when it really gets rolling, and the study will be conducted over the course of twenty years. So every two years for the next twenty years, I will be contacted and asked questions about the factors listed above. Call 877.NYC.PROJ if you want to be a part of it, but I think the enrollment only goes through the end of May.

It’s nice to feel like I’m doing something useful for a major disease, especially now that my family’s joined the ranks of the cancerous. Too bad there isn’t something similar for ALS. I’d be into that like a pig into a poke.

20020123

New cool blog: Haikus of the News! Link first seen on Dynagirl.

Lotsa activity today on the balconies I can see from my cubicle window (yes, a cubicle with a view, how nice). On the hotel across the street, there’s a photo shoot involving a man in a suit with inline skates and a helmet and a woman with thin dreads and three photography people all in black.
At the building farther east on 50th St. whose function I do not know, there are three late-middle-aged women just walking around and looking at the other buildings and the flora on that terrace. Must have something to do with the 50°+(F) temps expected.

Update: Four women now, sitting on the terrace chatting.

20020122

How is it that IMDB can get relationships between movies so wrong? I clickthrough a link on Blawg to the Wayne Wang work Center of the World and IMDB says at the bottom that if I liked this movie, I should also check out Hart to Hart: Harts in High Season, a 1996 TV movie version of that bad TV show starring Stefanie Powers and Robert Wagner. Something there is that doesn’t like a movie made about a ten-years-gone television show, but more to the point, CotW concerns the encounter between an engineer and a drummer-hooker and, as far as I can tell, all the sex they have. HtH is about actors who don’t get much work anymore and need to pay their therapist bills.

A good time this weekend with my folks in Mass., and some good progress with my mom. Not getting-better progress, of course, but acceptance-and-dealing-with-the-inevitable progress. Administered morphine to her one morning. Reminds me of stories I heard about a distant-ish cousin I had who died of cancer several years ago, and there were rumors in the family (we don’t talk about much openly, you know) about her immediate family scoring her all manner of illegal substances to ease her pain. Hard to say whether things are better now or worse in the palliative care field, but I'm guessing they’re a little better. And so Mom becomes a morphine junkie? BFD.

Differently, it was funny to hear Ozzy Osbourne’s “Crazy Train” on the radio in the car on the way back. Seems so defanged, and I can’t tell whether that’s sad or not. Listened to a tape of Public Enemy’s It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back on the way up, and it seems to still have its edge. Maybe the difference is that Ozzy wasn’t singing about social changes that are still mostly needed. Flav’s line in “She Watch Channel Zero?!” about wanting to watch the Super Bowl because there was a black quarterback in the game is one difference, though. Of the eight first-string QBs from last weekend’s playoffs, one-quarter were African-American, and half of the winning quarterbacks.

20020118

For those who think Microsoft is and will be the only target for viruses and the like, I submit for you the first virus to use Macromedia’s Flash format as a vector. Security Focus’s Shane Coursen discussed. I say So what if Flash is an inefficient vector? My point is more that popularity is the key to virus profitability, as it were. If Linux becomes the platform of choice for 95% of the US population, it will probably be just as popular a choice for virus distribution as M$.

Phun Phree Phonts from the movies, TV shows, etc. that you know and love. Including Blair Witch, Close Encounters, and much, much more. NB: At least one popup and more than one ad agency cookie involved. (Get the Mozilla browser and do away with those things easily.)

So now I’m officially part of the Ishbadiddle “team”. Even have to pick up my jersey later today. Still hoping I can get #13 like I had on my soccer team when I was just a pup.

But since some things just don’t work over there (it tends to be more newsy), I will be continuing to post at this visitor-free blog for future generations to turn up and ponder. Case in point, an hysterical short list of events in music that never happened and an accompanying list of related reading.

20020116

New blogs/journals in “Where I’m Going”, currently on the right, but in the future who knows where. Checka check ’em out.

20020115

Oh, forgot to mention the new design. Pretty much a skeleton now, but <<reculer pour mieux sauter>>, right?

Forget Ginger. The future of personal transportation is the single-person, no-skin helicopter-type thing. (NB: the Times requires registration). If you don't care to read the Times article, there’s always the company’s website.

20020114

One of my fave kiddie movies is and was Disney’s 1954 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. I can enjoy it now for some of the great performances in it: Kirk Douglas, James Mason, Peter-by-God-Lorre! One of the parts I found scariest as a youngster was, of course, the point at which the Nautilus gets attacked by a giant squid. What makes Jules Verne even better than just a cool-o writer is that he dealt with things we're still catching up to. And now, for the first time in many years, a giant squid has been caught off the coast of the UK. Not alive, but caught nonetheless.

20020111

Apparently we have found the color of the universe, and it is just about mint green. The color of certain Fiestaware. The color of good-enough-for-government green. The color of hospital scrubs. The color of cheap hotel drapes. The color of lichen.

20020110

Once again, I'm going to miss all the fun: Time Asia says that Iceland is a hot destination for Asian tourists. “Ibiza of the North,” they say. “Mammoth fire crackers [sic]” on New Year’s Eve, they say. Maybe next year. I can’t believe I’m already saying that.

Maybe it’s been out for a while, but I’m always interested in seeing the Social Security Administration’s list of the most popular baby names for the previous year. Top dogs this year? Jacob for the XYs, by a goodly amount, and Emily for the XXs, not by much. (Worth noting, though, that Emily was #64 in the 70s, #24 in the 80s, and #3 in the 90s, so she’s been coming on strong for a while now.) Contrast those, though, to the 1000 most popular names of the 1970s, in which Jennifer is #1 for the girls, with almost twice as many as #2, Amy, and #1 for the boys, Michael, has 1/3 again as many as #2, Christopher. How many Chrises and Jennifers (or variants thereupon) do you know?

20020107

Indie Site of the Day #4: UnosUnosYUnosCeros.com

Don’t ask me what most of this site says or is about — it’s a little like Jodi.org, and in Spanish, to boot. I’m just here to talk about a special project that they have up there called TimeZero, which I found out about through my subscription to Hell.org (ever wonder what was at that sort of URL?). TimeZero seems to be a photographic project, displaying pseudo-Polaroids of sites in and around Mexico City. The pseudo-Polaroid thing may be the best aspect of the project, certainly one of the best uses of Flash that I've seen in a long time. TimeZero uses the simple transparency effects in Flash, along with sound possibilities and some alpha-tweaking, to show photographs that mimic in sound and view the taking and development of Polaroid instants. Naturally, they take things a step farther in many instances and show the photo fading, usually into a deep shade of one hue or another. In contrast, my experience with Polaroids is that they’ll fade to white rather than darken, but the simulacrum at TimeZero is therefore that much more interesting. I’m no art critic, so I can’t trot out all the proper vocab and tradition, but I do think that TimeZero has something good going.

20020102

And on the first day of the new year, I found out my grandmother has lung cancer.

Not that, statistically, there was much chance of anything else after smoking for some 60 years and living for most of the prior 20 with a father who smoked unfiltered Camels, but somehow Oscar Wilde was right — as usual. I’ve spent too much time today researching cancer statistics on the web, in only the most reputable places, and they’re not encouraging, unless you consider that my contrast at this point is my mother with ALS, for which the mortality rate is 100%. Sorry to be so bleak. I was really hoping, though, that aught-two would be better than the prior.

20020101

To begin catching up with my lack of fealty to Aortal, here’s the first of what I hope to be several successive reviews of independent sites.^*
Need To Know, or NTK, is an insidery weekly “news” site for your fix of geek news. The content is fine and all, and in some cases pretty worthwhile, especially if you are in the loop or even pay attention to same. However, the more interesting thing about them is that they have a system set up whereby you can see how your stylesheet looks on other sites. Use http://www.ntk.net/index.cgi?style=http://www.ntk.net/ntk.css, replacing the trailing URI with your stylesheet’s location. Why does this matter? Well, unknown to many, you can organize a stylesheet to be used in your browser; that is, a stylesheet resident on your computer that determines how everyone else’s site looks. Of course, if the site you're viewing makes liberal use of classes and IDs, your stylesheet may not make a hill of beans of difference. But there again, that’s something to consider when drawing up your stylesheet for your website. Does it permit users to have their own styles for things like body text and background colors? Provided that those won’t wholly louse up the setup of your pages. Forgive me if this isn’t coherent — I’m writing this in a hurry so I can get back to my New Year’s cleanup of our apartment.

^*I also hope that they’ll be fresh and accessible and coded well and standards-obedient and found by circumstance, but that might be asking just a bit much.