Just passing on a few memes.
At last week's web cafe meeting, JR offhandedly mentioned that some vigilante groups were using flying drones to patrol the borders. This seemed so incredulous as to immediately be dismissed as hyperbole at best, yet I searched Google News anyway and found:
Reactions went something like: wow, then laughter, and finally concern. If these "vigilante" groups can build and launch a reconaissance drone for $5000, it's not much of a leap to deduce that a much more nefarious group could build and launch an attack drone and deliver a very nasty payload.
What really surprised me was that I got this information by hearing about it in-person, and not online from JWZ or Boing Boing (where similar snippets can be frequently found).
Of course, not to feel left out, the Homeland Security Department is considering getting into the act (just a week after the report of vigilante drones):
First the borders and then the heartland? For some reason the prospects of a sky patrolled by unmanned (and possibly armed) drones does not make me feel any safer, and it's not just from repeatedly viewing the T3 trailer which has scenes of a sky patrolled by seriously armed drones.
In need of some comic relief after that? Go read Spiders (thanks to JWZ's recent post).
Note: A Boblbee Megalopolis backpack is too big to wear in City Lights Books.
MUNI across town to 9th & Irving and a short block to The Canvas. Sipped a strawberry iced tea while live jazz played main stage. Read to the end of Weaving the Web, which I'd only read a third of as of yesterday. Finishing a book is another thing I don't normally make time for myself to do.
The band just started their second set. A sense of completion from finishing a book, and the itch to plug in to the net is sufficient to head on home. Groovin' music but the scene is pretty weak tonight, perhaps because it's Sunday, or perhaps the holiday weekend.
Note for future reference: Open Mic at The Canvas, every Wednesday. Sign-up at 7pm: Music, Poetry, Spoken Word, Feature Artists. All welcome, all ages venue. Produced by westcoastmusicians.com.
Just had a small coffee and snack at Caffe Roma. Spent my battery (this and the next post are transcribed from paper) so time to context switch to something else like reading, and perhaps eating a real meal. A change of physical context always helps a mental context switch.
Haven't been to Steps of Rome in a while. Just a couple of blocks down Columbus. And appropriate in light of this weekend's theme of doing things I don't normally make time for myself to do. Good specials. Ordered the fettucine with salmon and spinach in a tomato cream sauce, and a glass of house white. Fresh crisp sourdough dipped in olive oil and balsamic vinegar to start. Continued reading Weaving the Web while I waited, ate, and afterwards.
As part of a weekend where my current crush told me to treat myself (she's off camping in Oregon), I saw the Matrix Reloaded for the 3rd time at the Metreon morning matinee. Note: Theater #13 is one of the bigger ones and has excellent sound. The rows on the incline have 25 seats each, so count to 13 to find the center. This time I took notes.
The Matrix Reloaded had a lot more action sequences than the first film. A lot. So much so as to both crowd out and distract from the dialogue. Everything went by way too fast (except for perhaps the drawn out underground Zion rave scene), which is saying something for a film length of 2:18. There would be a meaning-laden segment of dialogue, followed immediately with an eye-popping action sequence, leaving no time for your brain to even begin to parse, process and understand the dialogue. And that's from the first viewing. I picked up much more in the second viewing, and a bit more in the third viewing (after having read all available reviews/articles for additional analysis).
The dialogue is the key to understanding and appreciating this film (beyond simply the special FX pyrotechnics, martial arts, and freeway chases). When I searched for more Matrix Reloaded transcripts, all I found of any relevance was this transcript of the Neo/Architect conversation along with many many pages of followup analyses. IMDB provided some more snippets of quotes.
I posit that the complete transcript is actually out there, in a multitude of fragments spread across the collective masses who have seen the movie. All that remains is the publication, redundancy error correction, and subsequent reassembly of the fragments. Like a jigsaw puzzle, find all the pieces and snap them together. Here's some of mine...(post continues, with lots of SPOILERS, and some Comments)
Caffe Roma (sfstation page) in North Beach has open wifi for customers. Thanks to cheesebikini for the list (would be nice if folks could annotate each place on the list with their experiences). I actually first stopped by Golden Gate Perk but they were closed of course, and no wifi was detected from outside.
Caffe Roma has good coffee, a minor array of decent pastries, a variety of teas, beers and juices, and a dozen flavors of gelato. No substantial food. Only saw one other laptop. Sunlight streams in from both ends of this long, narrow cafe. Entrances at both ends from Columbus and Stockton streets. Older crowd. Maybe just the tourists. A few younger types crawl in as the afternoon proceeds.
Simon Jessey transcribes the meeting between Neo and the Architect from The Matrix Reloaded. His transcription perfectly matches my memory from having seen it twice. Thanks Simon.
I found the Mini-Mizer thanks to Cecilia Cotton's recent entry Life as lego. You can find my residual self image in the sidebar.
Doug got there first, followed soon thereafter by JR. I was late to arrive, but not as late as Todd. Heather T. eventually made it as well.
Todd had warned Doug and me that Thursdays at Atlas Cafe are Blue Grass night but both of us somehow filtered that out. However, the Blue Grass became unbearable (in addition to unbearably loud) so we decided to bail.
After Doug's praise of The Canvas (who needs per-entry permalinks, not just per-day permalinks), I had to see for myself what he was talking about. The atmosphere, decor, and table layout (no pun intended) has certainly improved since I was last here.
The food looks good but be sure to get here by about 9:30pm because they close the kitchen at 10pm and their clocks run at least 10 minutes fast (or so it seemed). That's ok, Gordo's across the street is open until 10pm proper, and burritos are ideal for smuggling into a cafe that's dumb enough to stop serving food hours before closing time.
Still, the wifi seems to work reasonably well, the DJs are decent (once they get their sound fixed), the music is eclectic, and there's certainly enough of a scene to troll for chicks.
It has been nearly two months since our last cafe/wifi/web gathering. Doug, Todd and I were able to agree on a time and a place.
It's been a busy month, and we've got plenty to talk about: recent CSS standards, MSN/OSX (rumor is there might be a TiBook with MSN/OSX there), and of course recent CSS 'challenges'.
So bring it. We'll be at the Atlas Cafe, from 6pm on, this Thursday May 22nd.
And when you're done getting your geek on, head on over to the DNA Lounge for their semi-monthly installment of C0DE and get your groove on.
San Francisco is known for having cold cloudy weather. Not so the past three Sundays (including today) which graced us with blissfully temperate breezes, with nary a cloud in the sky, spent hooping, beach-bumming, and slacking, respectively.
Most of the time working on commercial software is spent working towards something, in a nearly constant state of effort and anticipation. Rare is the moment when the public sees an end result of late nights (and some weekends). Rarer still is to have several of those end results (which you've nurtured for years) emerge nearly simultanesously, in the span of a couple of days. It was enough for me to decide to take Friday off, just to reflect and take in that oh so rare sense of completion.
When most things in your life are sort of the same level of average contentedness, it's easy to lose sight that things could be a lot better (or worse). Maybe you've let yourself become content, even complacent with your situation, your life. Or maybe you've let aspects of your life slowly slide into mediocrity, forgetting how nice things used to be.
If fortune should choose to smile upon you (and fortune favors those who invite her to), something or somebody might enter your life and remind you how happy life can be. And then you can't help but look at other aspects of your life and ask why shouldn't they be better too. But that can wait until tomorrow. Tonight, I'm going to enjoy the few remaining hours of a delightful weekend.
MSN for Mac OS X contains a major update of the Tasman rendering engine.
Thanks to a new rendering engine, Web pages load faster.
And while users are primarily interested in speed, this new version of Tasman (evidence of which is broadcast in the user agent string) contains numerous bug fixes, and perhaps even implements a few more CSS features as well.
What fixes? More than I can count or remember. Which features? That I will leave up to the community to discover. Will there be sequels? Is there another? I don't know and I don't know. You'll have to ask the oracle, if you're lucky enough to be contacted by her.
I will not post anything about the movie itself for the next two days, to avoid spoiling any of it for those of you planning to see the preview or premiere. After that, anything is possible.
Call trans opt: received. 2003-05-14T15:30:00-07:00 REC:Log>
The day has arrived.
Some of you already have your keys. Bring them.
Others who have been previously granted access will have to acquire their keys upon arrival from ThE Keyholder who has already purchased them from the Keymaker.
Contact ThE Keyholder on a secure line if you have questions.
T*E K********
Until now, the only CSS3 modules that implementers could compliantly implement to and ship, and that authors could compliantly author to and serve were the following Candidate Recommendations:
Both of these standards contain additional mechanisms to conditionally connect documents and nodes with sets of properties and values. However, neither of those contained any properties or values themselves. Today that changes.
Welcome to the first set of CSS3 properties and values. As listed on the W3C Technical Reports (TR) page:
...short runs of text alongside the base text ... used to indicate pronunciation or to provide a short annotation.
In addition, the CSS TV Profile 1.0 Candidate Recommendation has been updated to reflect minor changes in CSS3 Color.
All persons are encouraged to review and implement these Candidate Recommendations.
Finally, two more CSS3 Working Drafts have been published:
Please send comments on these Candidate Recommendations and Working Drafts to the (archived) public mailing list www-style (see instructions).
In preparation for today's event, I was leafing through a few more books, including Burning Chrome, a collection of short stories written by William Gibson and originally published before Neuromancer. The first story in this collection is Johnny Mnemonic (1981), which I discussed a bit below. The last story in this collection, Burning Chrome (1982), actually used and defined several of the below mentioned terms before Neuromancer. The opening paragraph mentions both "matrix" and "cyberspace" (though as part of a proper noun) (emphasis mine):
And here is the first defining usage of "the matrix":It was hot, the night we burned Chrome. Out in the malls and plazas, moths were batting themselves to death against the neon, but in Bobby's loft the only light came from a monitor screen and the green and red LEDs on the face of the matrix simulator. I knew every chip in Bobby's simulator by heart; it looked like your workaday Ono-Sendai VII. the "Cyberspace Seven," but I'd rebuilt it so many time that you'd have had a hard time finding a square millimeter of factory circuitry in all that silicon.
Gibson's "matrix" was much more of an abstract place, like inside the world of TRON (1982, imdb), a alternate representation of reality rather than a simulation of reality.A silver tide of phosphenes boiled across my field of vision as the matrix began to unfold in my head, a 3-D chessboard, infinite and perfectly transparent.
The matrix is an abstract representation of the relationships between data systems. Legitimate programmers jack into their employers' sector of the matrix and find themselves surrounded by bright geometries representing the corporate data.
Towers and fields of it ranged in the colorless non-space of the simulation matrix, the electronic consensus-hallucination that facilitates the handling and exchange of massive quantities of data.
Before Keanu Reeves was Neo, he was Johnny Mnemonic in a movie of the same name. It's almost too trite to ask how such a good short story was made into such a bad film (still worth having for the VR effects). However, recently a bit of the background was revealed.
William Gibson complained about how Sony butchered JM.
It seems the most obvious of ironies for a modern zaibatsu to butcher an independent work, which itself is about a zaibatsu that is trying to butcher an independent.
Each large bag of M&M's has significantly more red pills than blue pills, if three bags are considered a sufficient sampling. Does this mean that M&M wants more people to know the truth? Or that M&M employees are more likely to be taking blue pills, leaving fewer for the rest of us?
The Matrix has penetrated the mass media (and the masses for that matter) more than any other cyberpunk work to date. Yet many of the terms, concepts and even technologies from The Matrix (even the name itself) were conceived, defined and described in literary works many years ago.
In five days time (less for some of us) The Matrix returns. Until then, load the following programs:
Cyberspace. A consensual hallucination experienced daily by billions of legitimate operators, in every nation, by children being taught mathematical concepts. ... A graphic representation of data abstracted from the banks of every computer in the human system. Unthinkable complexity. Lines of light ranged in the nonspace of the mind, clusters and constellations of data. Like city lights, receding...
...the consensual hallucination that was the matrix.
In the nonspace of the matrix, the interior of a given data construct possessed unlimited subjective dimension...
If you read quickly, then finish the Sprawl trilogy: Count Zero and Mona Lisa Overdrive.
Of course in The Matrix there are several books mentioned, directly or indirectly, sometimes briefly. The most obvious references:
There are sites that point out additional obscure, barely applicable references. Run a search if you're interested.
The following books were written about The Matrix and published in the years hence.
Now, there are two ways to acquire these books, one is through a local bookstore, the other is an online vendor. You take a chance either way. I leave it to you.
Solid :C0DE @ DNA last night. Booted with Shank's groovin' d&b/jungle mix. Many square flyers were compiled into origami boxes. The first live PA didn't hold the crowd and the upstairs back lounge got cozy and warm. Chris and Jake showed up and promptly confirmed that X-Men 2 didn't suck. Amber and Dragn'fly smacked a 2x4 set across the crowd and they begged for more. When he found out about the open wifi, Chris couldn't stop himself from livepalmblogging with his Tungsten C. The final act kept the techno going well past 2.
It's well after 3am and you're home wide awake, limber and warm from hours of tearing up the floor. Three hours of sleep is so unappealing, you decide to steal the time to cleanup and organize the haphazardly piled shelves which have been annoying you for months. And somewhere you read something about a 20 minute nap every four hours being perfectly sufficient. As you lay down for the briefest of night time rests, you can't help but smile, smile at the shelves. Minutes pass like seconds, the alarm rings and you're still smiling.
Taking a Caltrain requires minimal brainpower and wakefulness, unlike driving a car. Chalk up another win for public transport. The gently rocking train relaxes you with vibrations barely audible through your noise-canceling earphones. Björk sings a sweet hyper-ballad and teases you possibly maybe. And you think, yes, possibly, definitely maybe.
Blink. Millbrae. Blink. Redwood City. Blink. Palo Alto. Time to ease off the time dilation, here comes the exit.
A few months ago, Mark Pilgrim wrote a frank criticism of XHTML 2.0. I grabbed the torch and lobbed it into www-html, titling it "XHTML 2.0 considered harmful". Nearly four months and two working drafts since that 120 message firestorm, the W3C HTML working group has published the 6th May 2003 XHTML 2.0 working draft, with some key changes that offer hope for the future of HTML.
We interrupt this post for a disclaimer: I am Microsoft's representative to the W3C HTML working group. Just try and untangle the set of biases that just popped into your head. However, everything on tantek.com, including this web log is my opinion and may not reflect the views of my employer, the working groups I serve on nor anyone else for that matter. Your mileage may vary. No warranty express or implied. But you already knew that.
A few glimmers of hope:
<cite>.<cite> back, as Mark predicted, and further realized in the 31 January 2003 XHTML 2.0 working draft.
style' attribute rescued.style attribute is back. Welcome to the XHTML 2.0 Style Attribute Module.<blockcode> introduced.<pre><code>...</code></pre> to approximate this meaning in my own documents (view source on months past) and for one am quite happy to see this new tag. In my opinion, a <blockcode> is not merely some code styled as display:block. A block of code can reasonably be expected to contain whole lines of code, whole statements (rather than just a fragment),
and might even properly parse/interpret/compile.There is still much work to be done on XHTML2, as the inline feedback/issues in the document indicate.
But my point is, in response to undesirable changes in preliminary drafts, the community spoke up, and in at least one instance ('style' attribute), changes occured in response to the well-informed preponderance of that feedback. And, more and more folks are understanding that just because XHTML2 can break backward compatibility, doesn't mean it should.
If you care about the future of (X)HTML, I strongly suggest you thoroughly read the latest XHTML2 working draft and send well-reasoned feedback to www-html.
The HTML working group is listening.
And one more thing, in my message to www-html last January, I noted that I'd rather "see efforts spent on HTML4/XHTML1,1.1,Basic errata...". You know how they say be careful what you wish for. Yes, appropriately enough, I've been tasked with going through HTML4 issues and helping write an updated errata document.
Ti Couz rendezvous more than a month since. Return of the socks. English breakfast tea, shared crepes chased with a Cafe Liegeois. Casual conversations laced with humor and playfully snide remarks.
A quick perusal of the Adobe Book Shop just down the street, where particular attention was paid to the art displays in the front, along the tops of the inside walls, and in the back room. Comparing a piece to something a three year-old might of done is apparently an "art world faux pas". Picked up a used book for half the price.
Short walk to the corner. An exchange of hugs, thanks, and friendly intentions to meet again. Goodbyes as we turned to walk our separate ways.
In Golden Gate park with friends. Having passed up the opportunity last weekend, I decided to give it a try today (well, yesterday, the 4th). Thanks to Vera and Philo (who I finally met) for organizing the second meeting of the as yet unnamed SF Hooping Club, for bringing the hoops and the boombox which played everything from breaks to French lounge to tribal house. Along with Amber, Wendy, and Byrne, I actually hooped.
The day was simply gorgeous, perfect for spending an hour or more in the park. There is definitely something oddly liberating about hooping outdoors in the sun.
Afterwards a late lunch at Crepes while sipping Illy coffee. Browsing the clearance electronica at Amoeba with, as Chris put it, SF's hottest DJ.
Two hour season ender of Alias with a really annoying ending. Quick powernap and a little ice cream with magic shell to boost the blood sugar for the drive home. Third night in a row up 'til 4 (and not from partying).
Happy Cinco de Mayo!
Last month I gave an example of why I live in the City. Here's another.
I can walk to Escape From New York Pizza, 10 minutes to 2am on a Saturday night and get a hot slice of mushroom and cheese pizza. And the place is packed with all manner of locals and tourists.
I'm sorry, I just could not resist the temptation to pass this on (no pun intended).
We're destroying words -- scores of them, hundreds of them, every day. We're cutting the language down to the bone. George Orwell, "1984"
Apparently the principles of newspeak are universally appealing to the left and the right. Of course they are. Both sets of groups are easily "offended" by certain concepts and thus the sets of words used to communicate those concepts. The left is offended by frank discussions of race, disability, gender, or any other form of difference. The right is offended by frank discussions of sexuality, evolution, or any other form of free-thinking.
And now these groups have managed to strip text books down to the bone: Sun Times review of The Language Police by Diane Ravitch.
Near the end of last year I updated my blog to be more accessible in response to some feedback from David Engel.
One of the things I didn't change was my use of the sharp character "#" for permalinks. I'm not sure why I've chosen now to change. Perhaps simply the passage of time was all that I needed to be convinced. Perhaps it was seeing more and more blogs using a simpler and more accessible technique.
The real reason for change was not merely accessibility (as I pointed out in that previous post, consistent use of the same text for hyperlinks can actually improve usability). The real reason was that it became more and more apparent to me that the use of an extra sharp character "#" to indicate a permalink was purely presentational, and added no additional semantics.
Instead, I have decided to follow the example set by the following folks:
and simply hyperlink the headings for each day, post and category to the permalink IDs of their respective sections and subsections.
So we say goodbye to sharp looking permalinks. Besides, why follow the convention of someone who whines about valid RSS but he himself has an invalid (or unvalidatable) blog? Why take a whole paragraph to troll when a couple of sentences clearly suffice?
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