dannyman.toldme.com

We watch The Daily Show every day. It is actually one of the very few shows we watch regularly, and so instead of spending tens of dollars a month on cable television, we download our television off the Internet. It is a little less convenient because I have to download the shows manually instead of setting up a DVR, and the video quality is often inconsistent. On the other hand, the people who upload the shows edit the commercials out beforehand, and I can copy the files to a laptop to watch on the plane.

Wired magazine publishes an interview with Daily Show anchor Jon Stewart and producer Ben Karlin:

Wired: [The Daily Show is] among the most popular shows traded online. People download and watch the whole thing, every day. Were you guys aware of that?
Karlin: Not only am I not aware of that, I don’t want to be aware of that.
Wired: Well, don’t go shutting it down.
Stewart: We’re not going to shut it down – we don’t even know what it is. I’m having enough trouble just getting porn.

Whew! (more…)

1 Comment

I dreamed that I had a donkey.
He was a good donkey. My friend.
I dreamed I had a donkey because I read a book, that featured a donkey.
That donkey’s name was Saddam,
And he was not a happy donkey.

Normally, I have nothing at all to do with donkeys. Ever.
But, you read a book, your mind goes different places.
Mind-altering substances, indeed! No wonder books are frequently banned.

I read once, that people can fly, once they forget that they can’t fly.
I find that really enchanting but sometimes,
I worry that I will forget that I can not fly.
And that makes me nervous sometimes
When I walk to the bathroom at work.
Because we are on the fifth floor.

I have no donkey, I can not fly.
It is okay to dream,
But not okay to try.

Feedback Welcome

From: “American Family Association” <afapetition@afa.net>
To: Jesus McChrist
Subject: Stop Triple X Domain

Dear Jesus,

Your help is needed to stop pornographers from having their own Internet domain.
.
.
.
In addition to having the .xxx domain, the pornographers could (and would) continue sending out billions of pornographic images on every other domain. As bad as pornography is on the Internet now, it would be infinitely worse with the triple X domain. The establishment of a triple X domain would give legitimacy to the pornographers.

(more…)

Feedback Welcome

Nextbot knows that the
Bird is the Word, that’s because
Somebody told him.

Don’t you know about
the Bird? Everybody got
a memo last week.

Papa hu maw maw
Papa hu maw maw maw maw
Papa hu maw maw

Papa hu maw maw
maw maw. Don’t you know about
the Bird? Check your mail!

Because the Bird is
the word. And now you know that
the Bird is the Word.

1 Comment

So, I wrote the Kinky campaign: (more…)

2 Comments

If you ask Timothy “Speed” Levitch:

I’ve been working to promote my idea for Ground Zero that’s embedded in the new short documentary we’ve been taking around to film festivals called Live from Shiva’s Dance Floor. It’s called “The Buffalo Idea.” It’s an idea that came about from a whole conversation of artists. And we’d like to use the land currently called Ground Zero and turn it into a Joy Park and grazing land for American Bison. The idea is that the central monument should not be an inanimate piece of stone but it should be something that’s alive, that has a heartbeat and that propagates. I think that a lot of what was felt by the people who came up with the idea is that the American Bison represents and indigenous American community that has been experiencing September 11th for 400 years. According to different statistics I’ve heard, there was something like 75 million Buffalo on the continent when the first Europeans arrived and by the 1890’s there was about 200 left. Definitely a tribe of holocaust survivors. A tribe that knows the suffering of September 11th, and the healing. I myself have had the opportunity to stand with free roaming Buffalo in the wild-a great feeling. An amazing experience, almost cosmopolitan. You’d be surprised to see how much cosmopolitanism exist within the average bison and I’m sure the average bison would be surprised to see how much wild exist in the average cosmopolitan. I think they have a lot to learn from each other. On the topic of the current plans for Ground Zero, I think it’s time for everybody to remember Cat Gilbert, the great New York Architect who designed the Woolworth building and the George Washington bridge- his definition of sky scraper was a machine that makes the land pay. I don’t think that the land should have to pay any more. I don’t think we should have to pay. I don’t think anyone should have to pay-I’m not sure what we owe. I think we’re all miraculously and unexplainably born into this and then suddenly everything has to pay. Everyone is debating over these plans, but they’re all the same to me, they’re all making the land pay.

I was reminded of this by Jeff.

Feedback Welcome

So, I’m not alone in this crazy fantasy . . .

I have been thinking that I’d like a web-based aggregator that doesn’t suck. Bloglines is all about the frames, Rojo is all about not actually working right, and Yahoo! and Google “ig” are just little sticky-notes-in-a-portal . . .

And I was thinking about back-end storage of data. Multi-master replication? BAH! And then I said, well, there’s always NNTP. NNTP is a system of multi-master replication for the ancestors of blog posts . . .

So, you’d need: (more…)

1 Comment

I’m not superstitious.

A while back, a server crashed, and shortly before the page hit my sidekick, I dreamt that a server had crashed.

I just took a call from a guy who says I won a free lunch. (more…)

1 Comment

Ever try to read the Bible? It can take a lot of effort. The original version was in Biblical Hebrew, and had no vowels. Later scholars “interpreted” this source material, filling in the vowels. This was in turn translated into Latin, which informs much of our English translation of the Good Book.

I was thinking, just for fun, to run the Book of Genesis through Babelfish to Japanese and back again. Just to see if the “Engrish Bible” might be at all entertaining. “I barely understood the Japanese translation in Japan,” said Yayoi. I think the English is hard to follow.

Without further ado, the Book of Genesis, as translated into Engrish. Just remember, if you think this version is messed up, the version you are used to has been translated twice, and originally had no vowels! (more…)

1 Comment

We carpooled down from Oakland. “Ah, the old country,” I remarked, as we sped south down 101 past San Antonio Road. Mountain View was home to so many of us when we first moved to California, during the boom.

The Google campus is at the edge of the Shoreline recreation area. There’s a tranquil view of Shoreline’s rolling yellow hills, which must provide a pleasing hint of seasonality when the rains green them in the spring.

Entering the Google Campus was like stepping into a land of enchantment comparable for geeks to Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory. Every building has its variant of the free snack pantry. I gobbled a few malted milk balls, and later some chocolate peanut clusters. Yum! Matt remarked that at Yahoo! The snacks aren’t free but the coffee is manned by professional baristas, which might be cool, if he drank coffee. (more…)

2 Comments

                    !!! SUNDAY SUNDAY SUNDAY !!!

                     !!! NOON 'til WHENEVER !!!

     Danny and Yayoi will host a laid-back open house and birthday
     party at their new (as of last November) apartment in Walnut
     Creek.

     Whose birthday?  Yayoi!  How old?  A PRIME NUMBER!

     Friends, neighbors, friends of friends, neighbors of friends,
     friends of neighbors, children, grandparents, and other
     generally good people are welcome to drop by and participate.

     We will feature:
     - BIRTHDAY CAKE
     - SNACKS
     - BEVERAGES
     - A picturesque view of MOUNT DIABLO
     - Furniture

     Of course, if you like to bring stuff, you are welcome, but
     you are in no way obligated.

     Yayoi likes to play fun strategy games, so, we might spend
     some time playing "Settlers of Cataan" or "Ticket to Ride" so
     if you like that sort of stuff, there ya go.

     Depending how things shake out and who shows up and when and
     whatnot, we might wander off to eat, drink, make merry
     elsewhere, or we might eat pizza.  You never know, do you?

     Nitty gritty:
     - If you plan to come, maybe just maybe let us know?
     - dannyman@toldme.com OR yayoi@toldme.com
     - <Contact us for tele ###s>

     Directions:
     <Contact us for directions.>

     We look forward to seeing you whenever we do see you.

Feedback Welcome

Recently, as in the past half year or so, I read that early on in the development of life, a long long time ago when we were all just primitive, one-cell organisms, with only the most basic cellular structures, or maybe we were only basic cellular structures, but way back then, we exchanged genetic programming like people exchange ideas today — we just passed the DNA right from one organism to another.

It worked pretty well, of course, because we were mostly very similar. I think I read that some of the most basic life forms extant today still do this . . . at the viral level, or so, they can just pop off a bit of DNA and another organism will pick it up and try it out.

This blew my mind, because it compared philosophically with memesis. That, a long time later, we develop language, and when we have enough organisms that share the same lingual code, we can form ideas into coded chains of syllables and pop them off to try and influence the function of other organisms. (more…)

2 Comments