It’s 4:04 on 4/04.
Yes, sometimes I am easily amused.
The Race for Eslen
After working my way through The Briar King in bits here and there, I made time for The Charnel Prince. I finished the second book Tuesday evening, and I’m currently 100 pages into The Blood Knight.
Meanwhile, I’ve been talking about the books (Greg Keyes’ The Kingdoms of Thorn and Bone) a lot, trying not to drop spoilers in case Katie might read them at some point in the future. The night I finished book two, I had come home to find her on the couch, reading the first book. Since she not only reads faster than I do, but has more time on her hands these days, she’s caught up.
It’s nice to really be able to talk about the books, especially since I remember so little of the one we’re both currently reading.
The funny thing is, at this rate, she’ll probably finish the series before I do!
Tori Comics
So, what comic book event of the summer has me the most excited? Is it Marvel’s Secret Invasion? DC’s Final Crisis? The release of The Flash Companion? Geoff Johns returning to The Flash for Rogues’ Revenge?
Well, that last one is close, but it’s actually Comic Book Tattoo, the upcoming ~500-page anthology of comic book stories inspired by Tori Amos’ music announced last December, and Comic Book Resources has a huge article about the project, including art.
(as last time, via Colleen Doran)
Flocking from Netscape
When AOL first announced they were discontinuing Netscape, they recommended Firefox (a logical choice for many reasons). Since then, they’ve also started heavily promoting Flock—to the point of offering seamless upgrades from NS8 to Flock. (In theory, anyway; I fired up the copy I had for testing and couldn’t get it to do anything but update to the most recent 8.x version. Confirmed. I let it sit open in the background for a while, and it eventually popped up the offer for 1-click Flock migration.) Netscape 9 has an update notice that offers to download Flock or Firefox.
The key issue, of course, is moving as many users as possible from a discontinued browser—there’s no doubt that security holes will be found in it over time—to one that is actively maintained.
Why Flock, specifically? Well, sticking with the same toolkit and user profile makes migration easier, so that narrows the field to Firefox and Flock. (Not sure about SeaMonkey’s profile.) Since Netscape 8 and 9 were big on integrating with websites, Flock’s “social browser” seems a slightly better fit. And it turns out most of the Netscape 8 team went on to build Flock. Talk about social networking!
Foolish Links
IE9 to include alternative CSS.2012 standard instead of following anything remotely like the rest of the world.
Social tagging initiative from WaSP to physically tag bad web designers.
Opera hits 106/100 on Acid3 after discovering an Easter egg in the test.
The openSUSE mailing list announced OpenSUSE 4.1, with KDE 4.1, GNOME 4.1, MP41 support, OpenOffice 4.1, XEN 4.1, VirtualBox 4.1, and a 4-in-1 CD install.
Added: The Electronic Frontier Foundation has sent out a newsletter detailing its findings on a Congressional Listening program (apparently they monitor citizens for their opinions—who knew?), plans to move the EFF offices to an armored zeppelin, an NSA-sponsored social networking site (to “allow ordinary Americans to instantly share their private data with the government”), and Homeland Security’s conclusion that Wikipedia is a “Larger Threat Than Terrorism, Dixie Chicks Combined.” Sadly, the newsletter does not appear to be archived on the website.
Added: Virgle, a Virgin/Google joint venture to establish a permanent colony on Mars. Now seeking applicants for Martian pioneers. Takes the Google moon base from 2004 to the next level.
Added: A co-worker pointed out that all of YouTube’s featured videos are Rickrolls today. And it looks like Google is going all-out with some 15 hoaxes today. *whew!*
The Internet Storm Center is keeping a list as well.
California Craziness
Here are some interesting/amusing signs we spotted on our trip to Northern California last month.
This seemed appropriate for a trip to a comic convention. And like the Sylar Industries sign I posted earlier, all it needed was a little adjustment. Can you get a room with the power cosmic? Found in San Simeon, across the highway from our motel. (Keep in mind as you read on that the one on the right is the only doctored photo in the post.)
My personal favorite was this one in Sunnyvale. It’s always nice when city planners (or anyone making a sign, really) have a sense of humor.
Perhaps Mr. Speeder was frustrated by driving this street, somewhere near San Luis Obispo:
Techno-weird Links
CNET UK presents The 30 dumbest videogame titles ever, including “Spanky’s Quest,” “Ninjabread Man,” “How to Be a Complete Bastard,” “Touch Dic” and “Attack of the Mutant Camels.” (via Slashdot).
Cowboy Bebop at His Computer — examples of media articles (especially about pop culture) in which the reporters (and editors) clearly didn’t do their research. The title comes from a caption on a still from Cowboy Bebop. That’s not the character’s name, and the character in question is female. It probably is her computer, though.
Archeophone Records: Actionable Offenses: Indecent Phonograph Recordings from the 1890s. Comedians telling bawdy stories, recorded on wax cylinders. The write-up is PG, though the track list looks to be at least PG-13. Looked up after reading NY Times’ article on voice recordings from 1860 (recorded with ink on paper), which is also worth a read. (via Slashdot)
Edit: Forgot to list the (temporary) resurrection of 1994-era home.mcom.com, the website of what was then Mosaic Communications Corporation and would soon be renamed Netscape. Subsequently picked up by Boing Boing and Slashdot. For more old web browsers, check out the Browser Archive at evolt.org. (via Justin Mason)