blueblog

webapps.editthispage.com is a great weblog about web apps. browswerware lists web apps with a brief description, and anyone can suggest one to add.

As usual, I'm thinking up a meta level - what would be the best way to organize, catalog, review, and share links to web based applications? The weblog format seems insufficient - it's great to find something new and interesting daily, but trying to find specific things later is a hassle, and there's no real useful underlying structure to the data to allow searching or categorization. I like the "anyone can submit" format on browserware, but I want more than just a quick blurb about the apps, I think.

And I don't think a categorized link list or "portal" is sufficient either. As the field of web applications grows, I want to be able to sit down, type into a search box exactly what I want to accomplish, or what kind of service I'm looking for, and get a relevant list of sites, with descriptions, reviews... I guess this is starting to sound like some kind of epinions rip off. Except that I don't really care about that whole "web of trust" thing because it makes my brain hurt.

I don't know. Maybe I should try to whip up something simple this weekend before classes start to monopolize all my time. And it would give me an excuse to develop something with zope. Then again, it is 80 and sunny outside, it seems "wrong" to sit inside coding something useless.

And I really want to go to the Webapps 2000 conference, but I don't think it's going to happen.

3/31/2000 05:34:42 PM | +

I was reading about and playing with zope and I think it's really nifty, but it's too nice out to be inside staring at a computer screen and doing web dev. I'm going to go take a walk and read a book instead. I'll figure out how I'm going to create important things that will change the internet tomorrow.

3/31/2000 02:01:52 PM | +

I just "beamed about 80 albums. I really like the idea of being able to listen to any part of my cd collection anywhere there's a high speed internet connection. This is a great service. I mean, wow, there's actually some good things going on using mp3. There's more to mp3's than that stupid piracy app. And despite what others allege I think this is pretty obviously fair use.

Only a handful of my CD's weren't in the database. One was Flammable Dress's self-titled debut, which is a shame. Go have a listen - I really like them. And not just because Sally Moore, their vocalist, was my English teacher in high school.

3/30/2000 06:12:45 PM | +

3/28/2000 09:13:43 PM | +

Note the "semi-perma-links" are now "perma-links."

Not that anybody reads or links this weblog anyway. Umm, yeah. Never mind. Sorry to waste your time. Please move along.

3/27/2000 10:53:57 PM | +

This Salon article - Keep a Web journal, get fired ... or worse will probably be linked in tons of weblogs today. And with good reason.

There are definitely "issues" with personal publishing and emoting online. I don't really know what I think about it anymore.

I am kind of sorry I never got around to reading mark's quietriot. I just felt it was too weird to ask someone who I only knew through blogging and a brief email exchange for the password to his personal diary.

3/27/2000 04:27:09 PM | +

I knew I was back home in the weird alterna-universe bizarro world that is California when all the billboards were for "e-companies" and had urls on them.

"How was Spring Break?"

"You ever watch MTV's Spring Break, with all the sun, the tropical beaches, rock stars, and half-naked beautiful women?"

"Yeah."

"It was absolutely nothing like that."

3/27/2000 12:06:15 AM | +

I didn't stay offline like I said I would. At all. I only made it through about half of the books I wanted to. And I still can't take real photographs.

Spring Break 2000 summary -

gains

• Nikon FM2
• an old Dell Latitude Laptop

losses

• 7 inches of hair. (i now have dutchboy hair)
• ability to say i wasn't speaking to my ex-girlfriend

3/25/2000 11:16:58 PM | +

I finished typing up my diary. In the last six months I've written 11390 words that no one else will ever see.

After going through it all again it just doesn't seem very interesting.

Every day I always try to keep this thought in the back of my mind, "would what I'm doing make good copy in the screenplay version of my life." I keep thinking that will help make my life interesting. It hasn't.

3/25/2000 03:11:50 PM | +

Look, it's today! Damn I'm easily amused.

3/24/2000 12:21:43 AM | +

3/23/2000 11:31:14 PM | +

Pointless server side includes now replace the date header with "today" if, well, today is today, slowing down the page and bogging down my host's server for no good reason. Hi, my name is adam and I'm an evhead wannabe.

Update - As Firda noted, I uhh, screwed some stuff up in the process. I'm still doing some experimenting. If something isn't working - please let me know.

Further boring update - Note that the date header is now simply the day. Getting that to work with my stupid "this is today" ssi's was much more complicated than one would think. And I haven't conceived of a clever way to get the "yesterday" thing working without bugging the pyra gang to add some more blogger tags. I could just run some simple ASP code on the server instead of standard SSI's... this is definitely one of the dumber things I've wasted time on... maybe it'd be better to do some cheezy little javascript client code to handle it...

3/23/2000 05:42:23 PM | +

The "mystery person" is supposed to be a company I won't hate working for.

Does the suspect focus on spamming, stalking, and harassing users? No. Not you, you, you

Does the suspect have a nonexistent web site? No. See ya.

...mention "b2b" or "eCommerce?" Nope. Bye, it's not not you, you, or, you, or you, or you

...refuse to reveal what they're doing? No. Sorry not you

...have a big go button that didn't work? No. Are they kidding?

...have another stupid virtual store or swap meet? No, no, no, no, no, no

...talk about the importance of "synchronizing supply chains?" hell no

...do hardware? I only do software. So no, no, no, no, no, no, no

...use stupid "text graphics" instead of real text for no reason? no, no, no, no, no

...a linux nut? no, no, no

...mutter indecipherable gibberish? no, no, no, i don't care if andressen is there, no, no, no, no

...produce boring, traditional software? no

2 words - "popup window." (no)

2 more words - "corporate portal" (double no)

...miss the whole purpose of a decentralized network of information? no

...rip off Amazon's design? no

...looks, acts, and sounds like geocities? no

...helps me more easily give out personal information to evil corporations? no

...trying to do things email has been doing for thirty years? no, no

...boring financial site? no, no

...has stupid Flash4 product demos? no

...runs an illegal ponzi scheme? no

"Hey! That's not fair! Your mystery person isn't there!"

Sighs. Maybe I'm just too picky.

Honestly though, there were a few companies left over doing cool things that I don't think suck (yet) - epinions, hotlinks, scout electromedia, ihello, yodlee, tellme, xenote

And Neuromedia's vRep is the coolest thing I've seen in a long time.

Wow, I'm sure I've just lost my audience with that one. Not that anybody reads this anymore... everybody just comes here for that other 'blog. If you are reading this and have advice, suggestions, or comments on what I should do this summer please let me know.

3/21/2000 05:35:21 PM | +

On the one hand, if people put up personal, intimate details online, it seems like they should be willing to take whatever kind of feedback anybody else has, positive, negative, rude, mocking, loving, whatever. But it just seems wrong to me personally to make fun of it. If people have the courage to put their personal lives online I don't feel comfortable cutting them down for it. And it doesn't seem to fit into my vision of webloglog, which is supposed to be fun and funny, not personally vindictive.

Also it probably has something to do with my personal struggles about journals. I've been keeping an offline journal this school year. I've kept journals before, but this is the first time I've done it seriously for an extended period of time. I decided either this school year was going to be interesting, in which case I would be glad I was paying attention and took notes, or this year would suck and I would be better able to learn what went wrong if I had a journal. I think it's been a little of both. I've been typing up the entries since I got home primarily because I wanted to have an electronic copy in case anything ever happened to my notebooks, but I've been considering putting it online, or starting to put future entries online.

I'm not sure if I'm going to or not. I'm leaning towards not. First, I'm not sure it's all that interesting anyway, although there are some parts I think are really good. Second, while I appreciate the idea of putting the real "me" online, accessible to anyone, in theory, I'm not sure how well it would work in practice. Is there really much of a point in letting strangers read about my stupid life, neurotic tendencies, and inability to deal with women? And for people I know, either they already know what's in the journal because I've told them, or they don't because I haven't. And if I haven't, do I really want them to know?

My journal has always been written without an audience in mind, and I have enjoyed writing it despite (or perhaps because of) that. If I put it online, I'm afraid it might change the tone and subject matter.

I think things were easier when I just wrote smart-ass essays and columns That reminds me, I need to fix the writings section of my site.

3/20/2000 04:47:45 PM | +

When I first learned how to read, my loving and supporting parents promised me that they would always buy me whatever books I wanted. And they did.

And one of the best things about being home is that I still hold them to that promise today.

Non-fiction -

I finished the dead-tree version of Philip and Alex's Guide to Web Publishing. I've decided my (limited) knowledge of coding is enough for the time being, I need to learn about web design, information architecture, and design in general. So next up is Designing Web Usability, then the book version of Yale's Web Style Guide, then focusing on peterme's recommended readings on interface design.

I'm picking up a used Nikon FM2N this week (I think) so I'll probably pick up some photographic technique books too.

Ficiton -

I finished The Urth of the New Sun which I loved, and now I'm reading Catch-22 at the insistence of one of my friends. Then it's Dune: House Atreides - which will probably suck. Sure, it's not Frank Herbert, but it is a Dune novel, so don't I have to read it to consider myself a sci-fi geek? If I get through all that I have more dirty pleasure Battletech novels that I haven't scarfed down yet.

3/20/2000 04:15:16 PM | +

3/19/2000 12:55:31 PM | +

The Annoying Music Show - not content annoying WBEZ and other NPR listeners over the radio, created The Annoying Music Show's The Annoying Music Show CD!. My parents are friends with Jim Nayder, the host, so I got an autographed copy. Of course, it was autographed "Muskrat Love - Jim" on the shrink-wrap covering of the cd.

I think the funniest thing about this video - "Bush" by Elwood - is that it's the censored version. The uncut version is here. Somehow, I don't think we'll be seeing this one on MTV. I mean, even if MTV still showed videos, we still wouldn't see it.

Ahh, the music of deejaycee Really, I don't know those guys. Ok, I do, kind of. But I refuse to take responsiblity for it; I wasn't there when they recorded it. Honestly. My role in post-production and digitizing was insignificant. I personally prefer "take 2."

3/18/2000 07:39:11 PM | +

The weather where I am currently spending "spring" break.

3/17/2000 09:53:39 PM | +

3/16/2000 04:07:57 PM | +

Seriously, I want to be like Matt if I grow up. (But I still love evhead!)

And that's the last pointless post of the night, I'm really leaving for spring break. Bye!

3/15/2000 12:19:51 AM | +

Long time readers of blueblog should know that at the end of every academic quarter I like to sit back, and reflect. And no, nobody other than me has been reading this long enough to remember the last one. Long personal ramblings on a weblog - how lame, I know.

So, without further ado - The Quarter In Review

Winter Quarter - "Mistakes Were Made" (scan of the Life in Hell comic this alludes to forthcoming)

Since I used to be right about everything, all the time, this quarter was a little unnerving.

Academics

IE292 - Industry Thought Leaders Seminar

• "Money is free" - Christopher Lockhead of scient
• Tech firms worry more about employee compensation and satisfaction - but only because they're afraid they'll go out of business otherwise
• If I ever hear the phrase "focus on creating shareholder value" - run
• I want to stay a techie creating cool things and avoid becoming a suit as long as I possibly can
• But in the end, it really is all about the benjamins

SOC138 - Native Americans in Comparitive Historical Perspective

• 5 unit humanities classes always have less work than 3 unit engineering classes
• Learning about the plight of Native Americans from 1400-1900 makes my own problems seem rather small

Ling35q - Computers and Human Language Seminar

• Speech recognition is really hard
• And it hasn't improved that much in 30 years
• Speech synthesis is boring
• Taking natural language and doing something useful with it is really, really, fricking hard

CS255 - Cryptography and Computer Security

• Arithmetic modulo 200 digit prime numbers doesn't make any sense - that's why it's used in encryption
• Almost every technology I use daily depends on bad, weak, sloppy, breakable, cryptographic protocols
• Graduate level cs classes - generally a bad idea
• CS grad students - not the most fun people on earth
• Withdrawing from classes after the drop deadline is not nearly as difficult as one might think

I also learned that if after winter break your "girlfriend" says she can't go out with you Friday because she needs to "study" - it is not a sign that things are going badly. It is actually a 50 foot flashing neon billboard that says "I'm going to dump you tomorrow."

3/14/2000 04:11:38 PM | +

Umm. Yeah. My own domain name. How skankalicious.

blueblog should (hopefully) be accessible at trenchant.org/blueblog/

and webloglog at trenchant.org/webloglog/

And yes, I'm still on vacation and not updating. I think. This is the last one. Probably.

3/13/2000 10:08:34 PM | +

As of now, I'm on spring break. blueblog will return to its regularly scheduled programming on March 27.

Irregularly scheduled programming may ensue depending on how lame my spring break is.

I've got some exciting surprises in the works that will be unveiled when I return. Ok, so they are not at all exciting, or even surprising. But who cares? I'm going outside to enjoy the sunshine.

3/13/2000 02:16:50 PM | +

3/12/2000 08:55:55 PM | +

3/11/2000 05:00:22 AM | +

blogger redesigned. I thought I had typed in the wrong url or something. It scared the shit out of me. I don't deal well with change.

Hmmm... despite it's problems, let's do a quick design comparison between powazek-powered blogger.com and the Davey-"designed" counterpart at editthispage.com. [Insert the obvious here.]

Anybody that sends me a blogger t-shirt will instantly be dubbed blueblog's #1 fan. And win my eternal gratitude. (Of course, after webloglog I think I may have already made fun of anyone who might have sent me one...)

3/11/2000 02:59:14 AM | +

But he eventually moved back to Israel, and now he's in the army. It always seems kind of weird to me, being able to keep in touch with people over the internet. I've been reading his journal - the parts that aren't in Hebrew. (Being a bad, pork-loving, Jew I never learned Hebrew.)

"plus, i need a life, and i need to find a nice girl who won't think i'm too apathetic or whatever it is that i am these days."

It's been a few years, but Omer and I still have a lot in common.

3/10/2000 07:36:34 PM | +

the current plan -

• weekend - study for final (only one. this is what happens when you only take 9 units)
• monday - take final
• wednesday - fly back back home to chicago for spring break
• buy old manual focus nikon slr
• learn how to take decent photographs
• stay offline for the whole week

3/10/2000 02:01:54 AM | +

"S.W.A.T. 3 is missing this kind of attitude. Instead of simulating tough cops, the game rewards you for being a wimp and handling dangerous situations by the book. After a long session of S.W.A.T. 3, I asked erik to join me in one of our favorite office games, 'Who Wants To Smell My Finger?' 'I don't have to,' erik said, 'The pussy smell's all over you.' That's when I knew I had to change my S.W.A.T. 3 play style."

3/9/2000 05:31:45 PM | +

I've played a lot of really weird Nintendo games thanks to the miracle of emulation - but this is by far the weirdest. AGTP released a prototype of Drac's Night Out. Just another obscure, unrelased NES game? Oh no. This is Dracula - in Reebok Pumps. You can pick up the game and read a hilarious GamePro article about it at Sardius's.

3/9/2000 12:05:54 AM | +

3/7/2000 08:00:59 PM | +

Blogger-

Matt Haughey posted a quick tutorial about using <a name> tags with Blogger to uniquely identify each post in your weblog.

3/7/2000 01:13:12 AM | +

The Pikachizer. Hours of mindless fun.

3/6/2000 09:01:56 PM | +

I never understood why people would use %7e or %7E instead of ~ in an url. Now I know why tilde should not be used in urls.

But why the hell are there tildes in the first place?

"There is hardly any explainable reason why such a convention was ever adopted. There is definitely nothing intuitive about it. How could you guess that ~ stands for 'home directory of'? Thus, people with no Unix background most probably have difficulties in realizing what the funny symbol ~ stands for."

3/6/2000 08:25:44 PM | +

3/5/2000 09:15:56 PM | +

Although Infocom is dead, interactive fiction lives on.

Anyone can use Inform or a similar development system to make interactive fiction that, just like the old Infocom games, runs on a z-machine interpretter. And you can get Frotz - a great z-machine interpretter - for just about any platform imaginable. Even untalented hacks can easily and quickly make games to mock their high school English teacher's obsession with theatre of the absurd. There are tons of inform games here, and many, unlike mine, do not suck.

But I was weaned on old Sierra AGI games - like Police Quest, Space Quest, and Leisure Suit Larry. I learned to type with Mavis Beacon when I was seven so I could play King's Quest by myself. I crave pixellated graphics to go along with my text adventures. Unforutnately, the AGI community's output doesn't seem to be in the same league as their all all text counterparts. There is a good AGI Studio to edit with, but whatever. Never mind, I lost interest. I'm going to sleep.

3/5/2000 02:55:07 AM | +

Digital Swirlee used to be a weblog, but it's since turned into more of a webloglog. Webloglog - a weblog that ceases to have links to interesting webites, and instead only has posts about other weblogs or webloggers. (Hey, I can rip on Digital Swirlee since I've been reading it forever and mostly enjoying it, and more importantly, I was one of 14 people who voted for him over the geek goddess. Shit, I'm turning this into a webloglog. Fuck. Might as well finish the indulgence.)

Anyway, Jordan notes:

"There are a lot of female bloggers. I know that, statistically, there are almost as many women on the Internet as there are men, but they've never seemed to have as much of a voice. I hope the weblog phenomenon changes that, and I think it will."

I don't know if I totally agree with all of that, but the important thing is that weblogs done by neat people are entertaining. What I'm trying to say is that while I enjoy reading the 500 billion blogs by white, 20-something, male, webmonkeys, (I love evhead!), I really think it's great that the demographics are changing. I like Coca-Coma not only because it's a tasty blog, but because sometimes it's more fun to read things writtern by cute high-school girls than jaded, angry, college assholes.

3/5/2000 01:54:47 AM | +

Personally, I don't see the point of a Tomb Raider movie since there's no way they could ever make a nude raider patch for it.

3/4/2000 10:49:35 PM | +

winerlog - Logging Dave Winer. Because Somebody Has to Do It. (via kottke)

I know Dave ripping is just too easy and I said I would stop doing it. But I never said I wouldn't wholeheartedly support people funnier than me doing it.

3/3/2000 02:55:34 PM | +

Down with hall monitors! I hated those bastards. Always asking to see your hall pass, and your school id, oppressive assholes. I can't believe I spent most of the formative years of my life in a place where I needed the express writtern consent of my "superiors" to go to the bathroom.

3/2/2000 12:45:24 PM | +

3/1/2000 05:02:12 PM | +

I assumed Michael Moore would have some interesting things to say about yesterday's shooting happening in Flint, and he does.

3/1/2000 04:57:11 PM | +

for the two or three of you that saw the skankee contest - never mind. i decided it wasn't that funny.

3/1/2000 04:48:09 PM | +

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