Saturday, August 06, 2005

3:40PM Central: Arrived safely in Brainerd, MN. 

Look at how pretty this OPML site is.  

Pictures: Duluth skyline from Barker Island in Superior. 

I was going to launch the Jiwire Hotspot Locator to see if they knew about any in Duluth or Superior, and what do you know, there's a free open wifi link. I'm sitting in a parking lot, looking out at Lake Superior, with a great view of the Duluth skyline in the distance, outside the Barkers Island Inn & Conference Center. Gorgeous day. Very fortuitous. 

I checked out the Inn, to see if it might be a candidate for the Wired Resort Network™ (it's in a kickass location) but it doesn't qualify. As soon as you walk in you are confronted with a huge reek of cigarette smoke. Aside from that, it looks great on the outside, but very 60ish on the inside. Needs a remodel and a thorough cleanout. I'm surprised they have wifi (for which I am grateful). 

Kosso came up with an icon for changes.opml.org. 

Da Tourist Trap is "one of the seven wonders of Yooperland." 

I have to remember to put changes.opml.org in the right margin of Scripting News. 

IBM has a podcast feed and a plain text RSS feed on its investor relations site. Look down the right edge. On the podcasters mail list, Gareth Trent suggests it might bother me that they used blue icons instead of orange ones. Just a teentsy little bit, perhaps, but I'm delighted that they're using the technology in such an effective way. Good work! 

Political nothingness 

No matter what I say I offend someone. For example, yesterday I said I was plotting a route around the eastern megalopoli of the US, and someone writes to whine that it's too bad I missed Chicago, because it's a pretty nice city.

It happens all the time. The first 80,000 times it happened it got my blood chemistry going, but nowadays, it's a no-op. I said something. Of course it offended someone.

That's why the logical conclusion of mass media is nothingness. Or sameness. Management says they can't afford to piss anyone off. So the edict comes down to the media artists: Don't piss anyone off. So everyone has a veto, so no one can say anything. This leaves us open to being taken over by people who are good at saying nothing, but all the while doing something.

The need to do nothing is why Microsoft waited six years to do RSS, and why when they finally get around to doing it, to be politically neutral, they dumb it down. And they have their own internal naysayers to please. (And the only way to please them is to either agree with them, or do nothing, so you do nothing.)

I mention this just because I realized it, not to piss you off, by the way.

And I've been to Chicago. I kind of like the Cubs because they kept the Mets company in the cellar in the 60s, but I did my share of driving through it, going from Madison to NYC, you have to go through Chicago, and I did that a lot. And they don't understand pizza in Chicago, but they think they do. Heh.

Why do we laugh? 

Rex Hammock shares a bit of wisdom about laughter.

Here's my two cents. Most laughs can be translated into this simple statement: Ain't it the truth! When we laugh it's because something is so true (for us) in such a deeply felt way that our body erupts. When we laugh together it's because we share that feeling.