July 2004
Monthly Archive
Shyamalan
Posted by phil on 31 Jul 2004 | Tagged as: Uncategorized
‘I’m going to die, I’m going to die, I’m going to die.’
-Me thinking to myself in the theatre tonight.
The Village rocked. Incredible; best movie I’ve seen all year.
Hacking School
Posted by phil on 29 Jul 2004 | Tagged as: Uncategorized
Paul Graham has an interesting article on the dynamics of the American school system. In it, he asks, ‘Why don’t smart kids make themselves popular? If they’re so smart, why don’t they figure out how popularity works and beat the system, just as they do for standardized tests?’
Reading this and watching ‘high school teen movies’ like the excellent Mean Girls kind of make me wish I could go back and play the system. Of course in my life now no such system exists since it requires rather gullible people to believe things like popularity matter. Anyway, being a hacker, I’m interested in the way systems work, especially one that has such a profound effect on so many peoples’ lives. Hmm….
Plan to throw one away
Posted by phil on 27 Jul 2004 | Tagged as: Uncategorized
Check out my prototype designs for the new Academy site. Long overdue for a rehaul, it’s now my main project. I cooked these up in a coupla late nights…. fun stuff. The colors on the second one need work, but I think I may be getting the hang of this whole design thing.
In closing, 
.
Thanks, Dan and Pete.
blam
Posted by phil on 24 Jul 2004 | Tagged as: Uncategorized
I’m not very good at looking at art, but for some reason when I saw this it really struck me deeply. I think that is the most beautiful thing I’ve seen all week. It was kind of like in Surprised by Joy when C.S. Lewis describes looking at the biscuit tin garden of his brother.
Role Reversal
Posted by phil on 22 Jul 2004 | Tagged as: Uncategorized
More Neal Stephenson:
even after the introduction of Windows, the underlying differences endured; when a Windows machine got into trouble, the old command-line interface would fall down over the GUI like an asbestos fire curtain sealing off the proscenium of a burning opera. When a Macintosh got into trouble it presented you with a cartoon of a bomb, which was funny the first time you saw it.
And these were by no means superficial differences. The reversion of Windows to a CLI when it was in distress proved to Mac partisans that Windows was nothing more than a cheap facade, like a garish afghan flung over a rotted-out sofa. They were disturbed and annoyed by the sense that lurking underneath Windows’ ostensibly user-friendly interface was—literally—a subtext.
For their part, Windows fans might have made the sour observation that all computers, even Macintoshes, were built on that same subtext, and that the refusal of Mac owners to admit that fact to themselves seemed to signal a willingness, almost an eagerness, to be duped.
What’s funny about this piece is that the complete opposite is true now. Apparently one of the “improvements” to Windows’ recent “ease of use” is the denial of the non-visual. So what used to be one of the greatest weaknesses (for a power user) of Macs has wormed its way into Windows, while Macs have vastly improved things. (Yes, ResEdit was cool. But gcc is way cooler.)
Ready to Rokk?
Posted by phil on 19 Jul 2004 | Tagged as: Uncategorized
Legislating the way to Romance.
Posted by phil on 19 Jul 2004 | Tagged as: Uncategorized
"Dr. Finian Tan, co-chair of the [<a href="http://www.romancingsingapore.com">Romancing Singapore</a>] festival's "task force," told Radio Singapore International that one of the main efforts of the yearlong celebration is to make the country more "romantic." Claire Chang, another task force co-chair, explained that the government is "teaching people how to love." To that end, the SDU produced an official eight-page guidebook called "When Boy Meets Girl! The Chemistry Guide." According to Seah Chiang Nee of The Malaysia Star, the book "teaches busy engineers and IT nerds how to court a girl, where to go, and what to do on a date.""<br />
-Crux News on
dealing with Singapore’s declining birth rate.
Jubilee Church
Posted by phil on 16 Jul 2004 | Tagged as: Uncategorized
Richard Meier, the architect who designed the Getty Center is Los Angeles, was commissioned by the Roman Catholic Church to build this chapel in Rome to celebrate the 2000th anniversary of Christianity.