Monthly Archives: February 2005

Quote of the day

Clint Eastwood’s a star, OK? Tobey Maguire’s just a boy in tights.
— Chris Rock, the 77th Academy Awards, 27 February 2005

Beauty for the day

Work safe? Yeah, but… helloooooo nurse!

Pausing of an era

Sasha Castel, whose blogging has been in low gear for quite some time as it was, has made an announcement:
I suppose this is as good a time as any to officially put this blog on hiatus.
Surely, those of you who are still reading will have noticed that my posting has become very sporadic as of [...]

On the other hand…

The below piece was good reporting from the Guardian, but this one just stinks with the Grauniad’s wonted bias:
The island of Galveston, just off the Gulf coast of Texas, does not have a happy place in American history. In 1900 it was the site of the worst natural disaster in US history, a hurricane that [...]

Muslim Girls Gone Wild!

Freedom is intoxicating:
For one 22-year-old medical student, university wasn’t just a few years of her life, but her only opportunity to live out her entire life. “I only chose to study medicine,” she says, “because the course is longer. I wanted to be away from home for longer. I know I have to live out [...]

You know, I like to think I’m a science dork, but…

…reading the following sentence causes me to question my dorky credentials:
A [re-]definition [of the kilogram] based on Planck’s constant could mean scientists would determine a certain number of photons of light of a certain frequency would correspond to a kilogram.
To which I can only say “huh?” I mean, I realize that photons have mass, [...]

Attention comment spammers

You’re not getting through. I moderate comments, okay?
And what is the deal with the personal insults? You think that saying “Interesting, but you are obviously not highly educated” is going to increase the odds of your granny-porn link getting posted? No.
In short: get bent. You’re not getting spam onto Banana [...]

Yes, yes, I got Lektora reinstalled!

Since I even got the author of the program reading the blog now…
I had to go into a hidden directory and trash all of Firefox’s extensions (not a big deal really, I’ve got their sources all bookmarked, and needed to lose a few others anyway), and this was after a program uninstall/reinstall for Firefox. [...]

Man is the animal that rationalizes

There is no problem that can confront a leftist, no matter how large, thorny, or difficult, that he will not first attempt to solve by playing with words and avoiding the problem altogether.
We can see a prime example of this process in a recent post by one Mr. Steve Lovelady, taking a break from his [...]

Sage

I’m sorry, but I just don’t like it.
It is, I should note, quite a bit more stable than Lektora (which is a beta, after all).
But apart from that, and the fact that its feed list is kept in Firefox’s bookmarks (redundancy is a good thing!), I am frustrated by much of how it chooses to [...]

No, this isn’t the redesign

I just got tired of looking at the blue blob.
What you’re seeing is part of a Shanghai street scene from, I think, the 1920s.

Drat the luck

I upgraded to Firefox 1.0.1 because of the security issue, and now my RSS reader doesn’t work! I even tried re-installing! Oh, Lektora, why hast thou abandoned me?
Ah, well, this will give me the chance to try out sage.

Way late Best of 2004 list

Took me a while to catch up with the flicks I wanted to, though there are others I still haven’t seen (Sideways, e.g.).
Still, here’s what I deemed the best of last year:

Million Dollar Baby — I’m an unabashed partisan for Eastwood the director. Sure, he’s made bad movies, but who hasn’t. This is [...]

Disarrayed mental processes

If I were smart, I would bust out the redesign into three stages: structure, layout, and design.
But, since I’m not awfully, terribly smart, it’s all just one big hodgepodge in my noodle right now. What I think is going to happen is that, once I set a structure, that will be the groundwork [...]

Quote of the day

She lives on Pony Street,
they should scatter flowers at her feet.
But when they come calling,
I think it’s appalling,
they’re sober and they’re polite.
They’re deeply respectful
when I would expect them
to keep her out all night.
— Elvis Costello, “Pony St.”