Blog Design Notes

After praising DG's innovative blogging yesterday, it's time to promote Andrew Raff's Shameless Self-Promotion. Raff's great blog innovation is the "Linky Linky" column on the right-hand side of his blog, which contains "miscellaneous links that didn't quite make the blog." What a brilliant idea! How many times do you find an article you'd like to make note of, but about which you don't really have a lot to say? Often, there's no need to say much about these articles or sites—they speak for themselves. Yet, who wants a bunch of little one-line posts that say nothing? "Linky Linky" gives you the link, but lets you off the hook for commentary.

Let's just say the days for ai's current design are numbered.

Posted 06:10 PM | Comments (1) | meta-blogging

iBook Design Flaw

In an effort to be a fair mac partisan (whatever that might mean), I just noticed a possible flaw in my otherwise wonderful iBook: The back of the screen is too transparent. This is a problem because if you use the computer in situations where bright light is hitting it from behind, your screen will dim significantly. Would this happen if the plastics behind the screen were more opaque?

See, I'm no mac fanatic. No, really, I'm not.

Posted 06:09 PM | Comments (4) | mac geek

Thank You Labor

Happy May Day, everyone. Next time you begin to doubt that labor unions are a good thing, ask yourself if you enjoy your weekends. If you only have a minute, read this short history of May Day; if you have a few minutes, there's much more to the story.

In Finland, May Day is known as Vappu and I can attest to the fact that this is a party you won't soon forget.

Posted 07:42 AM | general politics

Popdex Picks

Officials: 9/11 Was Main Reason for War: Well, no kidding? This is old news—the peace movement has been saying this for months—but at least ABC finally deems it worth serious mention.

Revealed: How the Road to War Was Paved With Lies: Yes! Yes! We know! So why doesn't this matter? Ah, gee, it's all just so complex. Let's go buy another dvd that glorifies war or promises that the American Dream is still alive. We'll think about important stuff like war and lying governments tomorrow. Perhaps instead of calling ourselves "Americans" we should call ourselves Candideians" or "Scarlett O'harans" because if we ever start to suspect that this isn't the best of all possible worlds we always seem to want to think about it tomorrow. Tomorrow may be coming faster than we think.

Gibson Kicks the Blogging Habit: William Gibson (author of the ground-breaking, perhaps genre-establishing Neuromancer and, most recently, Pattern Recognition) has given up his blog. I rarely found the time to read it, but when I did it was always worthwhile. It's ok, though; I'd rather have another book from him than a daily post on a weblog.

RIAA's Rosen 'Writing Iraqi Copyright Laws': This is rich. The leader of the "sharing is illegal" thugs is going to set up the intellectual property system in Iraq? Up next: Former Enron leaders will write the rules for financial reporting. Iraq is going to be one heckuva place to be a capitalist. But, um, perhaps Iraqis should get water and electricity first?

Posted 07:10 AM | general politics