There’s this really cool [article on SI’s photography workflow]:http://www.robgalbraith.com/bins/multi_page.asp?cid=7-6453-6821 . Geez… I feel like such an amateur now… It used to be, yeah, I’m an amateur photographer… it’s just my hobby. But this article… man… now I feel *really* amateurish.
(found this article on [memex]:http://www.skillbytes.co.uk/memex/ which came up when I was looking for info on stopping spam email. Go figure.)
I saw this animated gif on one of these webboards, and I just couldn’t resist posting it. 😀
Outsourcing is a source of anxiety for several people I know. It’s been a steady trend, and it’s been brought closer to the forefront, because a slow economy pushes for costcutting measures.
On [Reason]:http://www.reason.com. there’s an article by Ted Balaker called [War Against the Machines: Why are protectionists endangering American jobs?]:http://www.reason.com/hod/tb031904.shtml . I’m not sure I buy all of the article, but it’s a good read, and thought-provoking anyway.
Consider:
> Oh, you’re afraid of layoffs? Well, just make yourself more marketable. Oh, you just got out of a master’s program from a top university? Oh, then your company won’t be laying you off– you’re young and you’ve got current skills. What? Your company is laying off people like you? Hmmm… I’m not sure what to do about that…
I think the reality is that even real talent can get laid off. Sometimes a company just can’t afford to pay for the best when they only need some simple work done. Outsourcing and layoffs… I don’t think I’ve resolved the issue for myself yet.
Soon after I learned of the concept of a wiki, I became enamored of the idea of a [using a wiki for my own personal ends.]:http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?PersonalWiki The whole concept of [accidental linking]:http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?AccidentalLinking and relatively painless and automagically organizing data was just too attractive to resist.
I had a brief fling with Zwiki runing on Zope, and stuck with it for a while, but in the end, it was just too heavyweight to for my needs. It was just too much a hog for my modest system running WindowsME (fine, make fun of me). I never kept up with it. But I have a new idea….
I can use John Wiegley’s EmacsWikiMode on local files. There are several advantages to this approach as compared to Zwiki.
* You can edit pages in a *real* editor, not a friggin’ text box in a browser.
* You can even edit those pages in a crappy editor, like notepad or vi (hahaha), though the view won’t be wikified.
* Local files are viewable without a web browser or web server.
* Local files are easy to sync in a distributed filesystem, or via [rsync,]:http://samba.anu.edu.au/rsync/ or [unison.]:http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~bcpierce/unison/
* Emacs, and thus EmacsWikiMode runs on a whole lot of platforms. So this means that I can view/edit on whatever platform I happen to be using.
There are some disadvantages:
* no multiuser (that’s okay for me)
* no cool pretty layouts (okay too)
* limited text formatting syntax (this is probably the biggest limitation)
—-
The wiki concept has a lot of derivative ideas. Hey, I wouldn’t have been drawn to TikiText in this MT blog if I wasn’t already familiar with [WikiFormatting]:http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?WikiFormatting and [StructuredText]:http://zwiki.org/StructuredText . (aside: Is there a WikiEngine that uses a TikiText derivative? It’s growing on me…)
I’ve started checking out some blogs from Iraq. Here’s a few I found interesting…
[Citizen Smash]:http://www.lt-smash.us/ blog about [Milblogs]:http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/003/840fvgmo.asp
[Magic in the Baghdad Cafe]:http://bear.typepad.com/magic_in_the_baghdad_cafe/ A Nurse stationed in the 21st CSH 8/2003 to 2/2004
[Bob Zangas]:http://zangasiniraq.militarypages.com/ Bob(RIP, sadly) worked in Public Affairs at the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq
[Baghdad Burning]:http://riverbendblog.blogspot.com/ “Girl Blog from Iraq”
[by the rivers of babylon]:http://phlebotomus.blogspot.com/ “making the most of my deployment to Iraq”
[where is raed]:http://dear_raed.blogspot.com/ Salam Pax: Iraqi from Baghdad (who? ask [slate,]:http://slate.msn.com/id/2083847/ [guardian]:http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,966819,00.html )
[turningtables]:http://turningtables.blogspot.com/ a US soldier (returned in Sept 2003) also: [his photoblog]:http://moja-vera.fotopages.com/
[Healing Iraq]:http://healingiraq.blogspot.com/ an Iraqi dentist
I saw this discussion on [Plastic]:www.plastic.com today about [Starting The Economic Race 50 Yards Behind]:http://www.plastic.com/article.html;sid=04/03/17/22184414 .
> American youths are forced to choose between good credit and the chance of upward mobility.
One of the points: Society promulgates the model of going to college and then finding a decent job to pay off your student loans. But public-service or nonprofit jobs usually don’t cut it for paying off that student debt.
Source material for the discussion was an article from the Village Voice: [The Ambition Tax]:http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0411/fkoerner.php
I came home from work, saw this on my screen, and just thought I HAD to take a screen cap. Note the “share rating” kind of in the middle on the right. Dude, I 0wnZ. hahahaha
Ever wonder how to do a “sideblog” in MovableType? No? Well, then this entry isn’t for you. Otherwise, check out [Anders Jacobsen’s]:http://www.jacobsen.no/anders/blog/ quick article about [adding a sideblog]:http://www.jacobsen.no/anders/blog/archives/2003/06/05/adding_a_sideblog_in_mt.html
Seems like a good fit for linkdumping that seems like a waste in a normal blog entry. Most of the time I don’t wanna write anything of substance (hahaha), but I stumble across interesting links all the time.
All too often do we see only one side of an issue. It often feels that the more controversial the issue, the more polarized and emotionally charged the available media. The Iraq issue is no exception.
Check out [Faith, Shame, and Insurgency: Life in occupied Iraq]:http://www.reason.com/0403/fe.sv.faith.shtml It’s an interesting look from the perspective of a reporter who decided to visit Iraq and see if his views on the situation hold up in the face of the truth there.
Here’s a [recipe]:http://www.icatoia.freesurf.fr/cuisine/tarte%20salee/60.htm for a zucchini tart/quiche-ish thing. Tasted fine, but the crust was too hard (what temperature do you bake it at, since the recipe has a typo?). One of the dishes showcased at last Saturday’s cooking extravaganza 🙂