Nate Koechley's Blog

I'm Back

After three fantastic months backpacking across Asia, I'm back in a cube at Yahoo digging my way out of my inbox and out from under my feed reader. (There was significantly worse net access on the road than I expected. I'm doing my best to catch up, but if you want to hear from you soon you're better off sending me a fresh email.). The trip was excellent (check out some of the pics: flickr.com/photos/natekoechley/sets/), but it's great to be back in the Bay Area.

Now for the new adventure: plug back into the world of Web Development / Front End Engineering. Care to help me out? What have I missed? Any "best of's" from the last three months? What do you see coming next? What should I be paying attention to right now? What's dead? What's hot?

Stay tuned as I try to answer those questions for myself, and please forgive me if I post anything in the next few weeks that's old news to you.

Thanks!

My New Travel Blog: Asia 90

As you may know, I've recently started a 90-day backpacking trip across Asia. I'll still be following technical topics on this, my primary blog, but will be keeping a travelogue, "Asia 90" with my travelling partner Aimee over at http://natek.typepad.com/asia90/

If you look in the right column of the Asia 90 blog, you'll see ways to add it to your My Yahoo page, your Bloglines account, as well as ways to sign up to receive email updates when new entries are published.

As you may know, we started in Hong Kong last week, and have just arrived in mainland China last night. We'll be heading from the south to the north of mainland China over the next four weeks, before spending two weeks in Thailand and Southeast Asia. After that, we're heading to the buddhist state of Ladakh in northern Himalayan India for approximately four weeks. After than, and a stop in Delhi, we'll fly back through Bangkok for the final two weeks in Kyoto, Japan.

Anyways, if you're interested in following along with the travel aspects of my life for the next quarter-year, please head over to http://natek.typepad.com/asia90/ and subscribe.

Thanks!

Carpool Conversations Vol. 2

In the second installment of Carpool Conversations, we talked about the dynamics of communication and collaboration. This image is a visualization of our thoughts.

Another thought we had, that's not represented in the chart, is that "silence is a powerful tool". It seems that speaking less sometimes gets better results, and that moments of silence are important. For one, it's important to listen and it's important to think, both of which are markedly more difficult to do while you're talking. Secondly, repeating a point has the generally-unintended consequence of reducing the potency of the idea. If you keep talking after you've made your point, you have a tendency to stray from the initial message, thereby watering it down. At the same time, your listener doesn't have a chance to absorb the idea. Know your message, deliver it as clearly, accurately and succinctly as possible, then allow it to stand on it's own and flourish.

We didn't get to talk too much today (no pun intended), because for some reason the traffic was sparse and we make good time north.

Stay tuned for Carpool Conversations Vol. 3.

Depressed Today

Not like that last several years have been happy or anything, but the headlines today really got me down:

• Senate Votes to Open Alaskan Oil Drilling - a sad day for the environment, and to me signifies that the democrats in congress and just overworked. It's horrible, but in the scheme of things isn't not even the worst. Makes me realize that BushCo is slowing numbing us to agenda.
• House OKs $81.4 Billion on War Spending - " the fifth emergency spending plan Bush has sent to Congress for wars".... how many times can you call wolf/emergency? I wish my bank account was as forgiving.
• Bush Recommends Wolfowitz for World Bank - So now, our peaceful development efforts are headed by our chief war strategist, a raging conservative hawk!? Great, that sends a nice subtle message to the world.

There's plenty more where those came from, but I can't bare it anymore right now...

And by the way, not that I'm pro-steroids or anything, but doesn't the GOVERNMENT REFORM COMMITTE have anything better to do than get autographs from a bunch of athletes? Even if steroids were the worst thing under the sun, what exactly does it have to do with GOVERNMENT REFORM? It's not like that don't have anything to do: Haven't they heard of DeLay's illegal and unethical actions, the federal government's falsification of documents related to the Yucca Mtn Nuclear Waste dump, or that BushCo is prepackaging television news in a blatant propaganda plan? (And then there's the whole "torture" and "1500 Americans dead" thing...)

May the world forgive us, and accept our apologies.

Aliens of the Deep

"Aliens of the Deep" brings some of the deepest-ever (3,500 meters, or more than 2 miles) underwater exploration to completely amazing and mind-blowing hard-core 3D IMAX film. This film has been playing at the Metreon movie theater downtown (San Francisco) for about the last two months, and literally several times a week I've talked about going to see it. Aimee and I planned on it first, then with Derek. Well, Derek and I finally went to see it yesterday, and it was worth every penny ($10).

First of all, the concept is fascinating. At these depths, life exists completely without photosynthesis -- sunlight has never touched these areas. At these depths, the environment is as unwelcoming as imaginable: incomprehensible extremes of pressure, darkness, temperature. It would be easy to imagine that zero life exists in these environments, and yet it thrives. For the people who look to space, these environments are quite similar to what may be encountered on distant planets and moons. These environments are also quite similar to the earliest days of Earth. And so, to find life in these areas -- massive amounts are down these -- is to realize that oceans under the deep ice of Jupiter's moon Europa, or the surface or core of an ancient Mars may have identical conditions. As they say a few times in the movie, exploring [life at the] the awesome depths of the oceans is the best experience to prepare for exploring [life in] outer space.

Second, the movie is the best possible eye candy. IMAX screens are already a treat, and 3D put it way over the edge. I don't remember ever being to a modern 3D movie, but I highly recommend it. It works. It's great. Whomever's working on this stuff has nailed it. After a few seconds, your eyes calibrate and you're in for a treat. In addition to all the underwater sequences, there are several other sequences that totally max out the visual experience. One is an exploration of earth's life forms. An elephants trunk comes right out of the screen and touches you in your seat. In another, animation brings you from 10 light years distant, in through our atmosphere, through the ocean, down to the thermal ridges where the newest ocean-bottom crust is formed. It's probably a 60 second sequence, and one of the treats of the movie. I could almost feel the smoke coming out of my ears as my brain cranked overtime to process the scale, orientation, detail and 3D-ness of it all. Totally fun.

But of course the most amazing part of the movie is the underwater photography we came to see. One sequence gets centimeters away from a giant 10-foot bizzaro jellyfish creature. One of the most amazing creatures, the film is so high quality that you can see the incredibly fine network of cells that give it shape. You seem to see it nearly pulsing with energy, and it's translucent skin reveals internal organs moving around beautifully. Truly alien. Other animals life in the volcanic plumes of 750-degree superheated water that the earth's center vents through ocean-bottom chimneys along the central-ocean spine. In these areas, new crust is continually formed, representing some of the most primitive geology observable. Massive amounts of animals live in the boundaries between this awesomely-hot gassy water, and the awesomely-cold deep-ocean water.

Academy Award®-winning director James Cameron combines his talents as a filmmaker with his passion for exploration in all forms in "Aliens of the Deep," an Earthship Production presented in IMAX® 3-D by Walt Disney Pictures and Walden Media. Inspired by concepts from the field of astrobiology-the study of life on other worlds-Cameron explores the idea that the bizarre creatures living in the extreme environments found on the ocean floor might provide a blueprint for what life is like elsewhere in the universe. The director is joined in the journey by a team of young marine biologists and NASA researchers who share his interests and excitement as they consider the correlation between life under water and the life we may one day find in outer space.

"Aliens of the Deep" presents the dramatic and visually stunning highlights of a series of expeditions to deep-ocean hydrothermal vents, where super-heated, mineral-charged water gives life to some of the strangest animals on Earth-6-foot-tall worms with blood-red plumes, blind white crabs, and an astonishing biomass of white shrimp, all competing to find just the right location in the flow of near-boiling water. This adventure brings the audience face to face with what it might be like to travel far into space and encounter life on other worlds.

I wish Hollywood made more of these. Bringing exploration, understanding, big questions, and inspirational science to the big screen is good for the world. I think everybody in the audience left inspired. I'd go see a movie like this at least once a month, and I'd probably even pay 3 times as much. Nothing but the biggest props to James Cameron for putting his money into something besides his Hollywood mansion. Keep it up.

Go see it while you can. (It's only 48 minutes -- you could even check it out during your lunch break.)

Yahoo!'s Ten!

yahoo@10-17
Originally uploaded by natekoechley.

Yahoo! celebrated it's 10th birthday today (well, i guess it's yesterday now: March 2nd).

It was a big party - Yahoo has always known how to throw a big party. It started out with open bar (beer, wine), and a well-made video history. After the video, Terry, Sue, Dan R, and the founders Filo and Jerry each gave talks.

Dan brought a few groups of users on stage. First were two cute old women, who played cards on Yahoo Games. Second and third were two mothers who recounted how Yahoo Groups provided critical health information that enabled them to better care for their children, each of whom was afflicted with horrible, rare diseases. The last group was a local couple who met on Yahoo Persons. Of course, he dropped to one knee and proposed on stage.

In addition to being on stage, all the proceedings were carried live in all the yahoo offices around campus and around the world, and also broadcast online. (She said Yes.)

After the user's were on stage, Dan and Sue presented awards of service to those that had been at yahoo for more than 9 years of service./p>

"Sugar Ray" was the band for the day.

The usual big spread of food (sushi, carving stations, appetizers) and then, of course, birthday cake and ice cream.... And the beer/wine kept flowing.

Happy Birthday Yahoo!

Blogging and Culture at Yahoo!

Mark Jen was fired from Google for blogging. The is old news. What's interesting now is that he reports on his conversations with two prominent bloggers (and yahoo employees) about blogging at work, yahoo's policy/stance on worker-blogging, at last week's 106 Miles community meeting. It's nice to see that Yahoo gets blogs and blogging.

after dave's talk, i met russ. he apparently had been doing contract work at yahoo and just recently joined there full time. i took the opportunity to chat with him a little bit; mostly, i wanted to know why he chose to join yahoo out of all the other companies in the area. immediately, russ focused in on the culture and working environment. i thought, wow, a place that's working on bringing revolutionary web technologies to the masses and a great atmosphere? sounds like a dream come true.

then, i met jeremy zawodny. since my story had started making rounds with the press, i had been compared to jeremy and scoble, but i had never expected to meet them in person. we got to talking and he shared with me his experience at yahoo, which also sounded great. jeremy told me that yahoo is extremely blog friendly and that posting their personal work experiences was perfectly acceptable - given, of course, that confidential information and NDAs aren't breached. i left with his contact info and an invite to tour the yahoo campus.

Casual Gaming

At last week's Mobile Monday, which I attended, Anita Wilhelm (aka MobileGirl) presented a mobile-based game her startup is working on:

Caterpillar Mobile's current product is a cameraphone game called Zooke. Zooke allows its members to create challenges for all members or only members of an immediate social circle. You might be on a mission to find the best George Bush bumper sticker in Berkeley and have other game players rate your findings. It is a community-driven reality play experience that makes everyone's day a little more exciting with minimal effort.

I liked the idea of casual gaming, the idea that you can have an experience in short segments while you're going about your normal routine. I'm also interested that this represents a shift from highly time-intensive games. Well, she follows up that with a new post last week discussing Casual Gaming and thinking about an article of the same title by Tom Hume.

He captures the essence of an important shift from hard core gaming experiences to engaging play experiences perfectly! Allowing players to engage lightly in the experience throughout their daily lives is essential to creating something compelling and addictive to be used on a mobile device. Allowing players light weight games or frameworks that they can think about while on the move, but not have to interact with continually in the virtual world is essential. Giving them tools which allow them to explore and play at their will fits the affordances of the mobile device.

I remember the days of having hours and hours to play video games, but to be honest, it's a pretty distant memory. It's cool to see people working to bring games and playing back into the lives of otherwise distracted and busy peeps like me. It's also fun to watch a new medium like Mobile develop.

Cooking Thai

cooking-thai-04
Originally uploaded by natekoechley.

On Thursday night, Aimee invited a bunch of her friends over for dinner. The dinner was multi-purpose: celebrating her that-day completion of the last application to grad school; a housewarming party for her friends who hadn't seen our home; and a going away party, as she's leaving Monday night for about a month in South East Asia.

13 photos in Flickr set

Analyze HTTP Headers and Smart Keyword Search with Firefox

There are several good ways to check out a file's HTTP headers. Tonight I was using http://www.forret.com/projects/analyze/, which is just a simple web form that you enter your URL into.

I know there are more snazzy ways, including Firefox's great extension LiveHTTPHeaders, but sometimes an always-available web page is a fine solution. And, while I totally love the ability to extend and modify Firefox with the ever-growing supply of extensions, I've been trying to keep my browser as lean as possible by only installing ones I really need. For services that require a query to be submitted -- a map request, dictionary lookup, feed subscription or web search -- I've been opting lately to set up Keyword Search in Firefox (as I described several months ago).

(In addition to having less extensions, I find it's just significantly faster to trigger these actions form the keyboard.)

With a few keyword shortcut's set up, my hands are liberated from the mouse to the efficiency and speed of the keyboard. My browser begins to resemble a command line interface. In addition to my newest, headers http://www.yahoo.com, I use these others constantly:

sub http://natek.typepad.com

subscribed to a feed -- fastest possible way to subscribe to an rss feed with bloglines (please don't ruin bloglines Ask!)

ys northern california hiking trails

returns Yahoo Search results page -- 100s of times a day.

wiki Thomas Frank

returns Wikipedia encyclopedia entry -- lots of info types are best answered by an encyclopedia

map [[701 N First Ave, 94089]

returns a Yahoo Maps -- always need for a map

dic efficiency

returns dictionary.com definition

the excitement

returns thesaurus.com entry

by natek

returns my company's intranet (backyard) results -- for looking up coworkers

amaz Talib Kweli

returns Amazon search results -- to grab a book cover or album track listing

imdb War of the Worlds

returns an Internet Movie DataBase (IMDB) search

how to change your car's oil

returns detailed instructions from ehow.com

techno mobilemonday.com

returns blogosphere info on who's talking about http://www.mobilemonday.com/ right now?

Did you notice the ones for Bloglines (sub)? It's great. I am generally motivated to subscribe to some feed while in the midst of being excited or engaged by the content. This time of highest engagement is the time when you least want to interrupt the session to go subscribe -- this shortcut allows me to nearly-instantly subscribe in the heat on the moment.

(In case you're curious, I was looking at headers tonight to verify that the file expiration dates were distant, so that the files would be cached by the client until then.)

How Big Is Your Footprint?

"Ever wondered how much "nature" your lifestyle requires? You're about to find out."

IF EVERYONE LIVED LIKE YOU, WE WOULD NEED 4.3 PLANETS.

What's your footprint?

Creating Personalized Feeds with Delicious

I have found this a useful way to use http://del.icio.us, the excellent social bookmarking site that is based on tagging.

Let's review quickly. I post all my bookmarks to delicious. They are all viewable by the public. Mine are here: http://del.icio.us/natekoechley. One great thing about delicious is that every page on the site - every node - has an RSS feed. If all my bookmarks are viewable on the web at /username, then the feed of that content is /rss/username.

Looks like this:
http://del.icio.us/natekoechley
http://del.icio.us/rss/natekoechley

The second thing that's great about delicious is that I can quickly and easily annotate my bookmarks with tags. For example, I have bookmarked Industrial Drawings from the Smithsonian. In addition to storing the URL, I have tagged it with the following words: industrial, drawings, smithsonian, museum, design, art, history.

Each tag becomes a node.  When you are viewing my total collection of bookmarks, my username "natekoechley" is the node. It is likewise possible to view all my bookmarks for a particular tag, such as
http://del.icio.us/natekoechley/art
http://del.icio.us/rss/natekoechley/art

If you want to widen your view, you can view all "art" bookmarks for everybody on the network:
http://del.icio.us/tag/art
http://del.icio.us/rss/tag/art

There is no limit to the number of tags you can have, either in general or with a single URL.

As you can see, each node - tag - get's it's own RSS feed. This is the functionality that creates my personalized feeds.

Deepest Reef

The "deepest coral reef in the United States" is being reported by the United States Geological Survey (USGS). This find is noteworthy because it "appears to be thriving on 1-2% (5-30 microEinsteins/1m2/sec) of the available surface light (PAR) and about 5% of the light typically available to shallow-water reefs". The coral has adapted to it's environment, growing horizontally instead of vertically to maximize it's light-collecting surface area. While "hazardous to shipping" to part of the maritime definition, concludes that "Nevertheless, from the scientific perspective of a structure built from hermatypic corals, southern Pulley Ridge may well be the deepest coral reef in the United States."

I spent Christmas snorkeling in Culebra Island, Puerto Rico, so I still have a serious crush on reels and coral.

How To: Subscribing to Blogs / Feeds

Note: I sent this email to my dad this morning. It's republished here for two reasons: 1) Hopefully it will be of interest or assistance to somebody else. 2) This is, I guess, the first installment of "how to actually integrate feed reading into your daily online life" series. This one is rough, but I wanted to throw it up as-is to help me bust through my writers block on this subject.

Hey Dad,

I have a blog to recommend (many actually, but we'll start with this one). John Battelle writes about the search industry, and is very well connected to its pulse. I try to read five or six others that cover the same topic, but when I have to pick just one, it's his. As with many blogs, it serves as a proxy for it's like-minded blogs. If something interesting pops up on one, it's usually echoed or references on the others. Plus, he's a professional writer and generates lots of unique, insightful content:

http://battellemedia.com/

The process I use to subscribe to blogs follows:

1. Have a http://bloglines.com account
2. Browse to an interesting site (like http://battellemedia.com or http://natek.typepad.com)
3. Click your "Easy Subscribe" bookmarklet from either your Bookmarks Folder or, more commonly, your browsers Links Toolbar.

   ("Bookmarklets" or "favelets" are special links that -- generally containing a small bit of Javascript instead of a URL -- perform little tasks. As with any bookmark, you simply drag a link to your Bookmarks Folder or Links Bar.) This page has the Easy Subscribe links to drag to your toolbar (depending on browser) and more of a description: http://bloglines.com/help/easysub)

4. Choose which of the available feeds to subscribe to.
   • Sometimes there will be a "full articles" feed, a "summary" feed and sometimes a "comments" feed. (I always go for the full feed.). Of all the options you're presented with, this is the only one that really matters since it actually represents different blocks of content.
   • Other times, as seems to be the case with the first two options on battellemedia.com, they're just different technical formats (.xml, .rss, .atom, .rdf). If this is the case then it's pretty trivial -- they're all basically the same -- and you're safe picking ANY of them.
   • Other times (this is the case with the 3rd and 4th battellemedia options) they are third-party-generated feeds. In this case, these are provided by Technorati and Feedburner. If given a choice, I try to get the official feed from the site itself. But it's pretty trivial again, and any of the four options will get you the same content.
5. Enter your preferences (like which folder to store the blog in, notification preferences, descriptions, etc)

That's it. Pretty soon you'll be reading scores of feeds like me. (view my blogroll -- a blogroll is the term for the list of blogs somebody subscribes to.

Other Ways to Subscribe

If you're using bloglines but not the Easy Subscribe Bookmarklet you can go directly go to http://bloglines.com/sub and enter the URL of the site or feed. This is less efficient for me, because I have to leave the interesting site to subscribe to it... On the other hand, if you have the bookmarklet on your toolbar you just click-subscribe immediately from any cool site.

Part of the thing with reading blogs is that I'm always discovering interesting new feeds to subscribe to. The easier it is to subscribe the better! The downside is that I sometimes end up with tons and tons of blogs. To combat this, I keep a special folder that new feeds go into as a form of initial probation: "Blogs I'm Considering". If I continue to be interested in that feed on the next weeks, it gets upgraded to it's rightful place in my personal hierarchy of feeds.

OR, If you prefer to read your feeds on http://my.yahoo.com you can go to http://e.my.yahoo.com/config/cstore and enter the URL of the feed or site. After adding it, it'll show up on your personal My Yahoo page.

Responsible Fish, Responsible Shopping

Even though the Monterey bay Aquarium is within driving distance of my Bay Area home, their wonderful Seafood Watch cards are known across the country. One of my friends just got back from a few months in Florida, and she had acquired one of the handy cards down there. The convenient wallet-size cards tell you which fish and seafood is caught and farmed in ways that are healthy for you and for the environment.

Staying with the theme of "Information is Power" comes the Blue Christmas campaign. Did you know that the Hyatt hotel chain game 87% of it's political donations to Democrats, while Marriott gave 76% of theirs to Republicans? Jet Blue Airlines gives to Democrats; Southwest gives to Republicans? Nordstroms gives to Democrats; Mays gives to Republicans. Bed Bath & Beyond gives to Democrats; Bath & Body Works gives to Republicans.

Educate yourself. Understand the effects of your actions. Be mindful. Make informed decisions.

What does a front-end web developer do?

My business card says I'm a Senior Web Developer. I've been asked a million times what I do, what that title means. It's not easy to explain.

I tell my Grandmother that I'm in publishing. Close enough for somebody in their 90's.

Sometimes I say I'm a Technical Designer or just a Designer. Other times I describe the Web Project Triangle: Project Management on one end, Design (visual, experience) on another, and Engineering (databases, servers) on the third. I say that Web Developers sit in the middle of that triangle, giving and receiving deliverables, and often acting as liason between those groups and practices.

Occassionally I say that "we're the people with the most software", which is really just another way of saying that I'm in the the middle of the Triangle. I often have MS Project, Word and Excel running to look at project plans, Gantt charts and task lists from Project Management. Add to that some combination of Photoshop, Illustrator, Viseo and maybe InDesign to handle deliverables from Design. From the Engineering world, I always have a local web server running with PHP and MySQL running, as well Unix utilities, bug tracking software, debugging suites... So there's all that, plus all the software native to Web Development. (Scores of browsers, Homesite, screen rules and color management tools, diff-ing and testing software, and more....

For another take on the same question, read"What does a front-end web developer do?". Author Christian Heilmann is the mind behind Unobtrusive Javascript and all the other great tools at onlinetools.org.

Undoing the Industrial Revolution (Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox)

Undoing the Industrial Revolution (Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox).

I don't always read Jakob's writing, but this one caught my attention. He makes a case that rings true for me. What do you think?

Summary:
The last 200 years have driven centralization and changed the human experience in ways that conflict with evolution. The Internet will reestablish a more balanced, decentralized lifestyle.

Word of the day: Syntax Candy

Yesterday at one of our company Tech Talks, a prominent engineer giving the talk used the term "syntax candy".

Syntax Candy

Computer code or markup (syntax) that is "very nice and sweet"

...that makes data easier to digest or manipulate

...additions that make things run smoother

Vote!

The vote is the most powerful instrument ever devised by man for breaking down injustice and destroying the terrible walls which imprison men because they are different from other men.

Lyndon B. Johnson

Let us never forget that government is ourselves and not an alien power over us. The ultimate rulers of our democracy are not a President and senators and congressmen and government officials, but the voters of this country.

Franklin D. Roosevelt

Ballots are the rightful and peaceful successors to bullets.

Abraham Lincoln

The average man votes below himself; he votes with half a mind or a hundredth part of one. A man ought to vote with the whole of himself, as he worships or gets married. A man ought to vote with his head and heart, his soul and stomach, his eye for faces and his ear for music; also (when sufficiently provoked) with his hands and feet. If he has ever seen a fine sunset, the crimson colour of it should creep into his vote...The question is not so much whether only a minority of the electorate votes. The point is that only a minority of the voter votes.

G. K. Chesterton

Hong Kong!

I'm flying to Hong Kong tonight. I'm excited. Expect fewer posts the 7 days I'm away.

Earthquake Ratings

I'm from the Midwest, so earthquakes aren't part of my DNA. The several 4's and 5's I felt since moving to the Bay Area five years ago don't bother me too much. (No, Fate, that's not a challenge.) There are pretty interesting though, and I thought I'd share a memo at work that I would never have received if I was still working in Madison.

Question: Do the [[my company's campus]] buildings have Earthquake Ratings; and if so, what size of earthquake should they be able to withstand?.

Answer: According to the structural engineer who consulted on the construction of the [[campus]] complex, the buildings were built to comply with the Uniform Building Code 9097. They should not sustain any damage in an earthquake measuring up to 5.5 on the Richter scale and they should not collapse in any quake.

The amount of damage, if any, in an earthquake greater than 5.5 would obviously depend on the magnitude, epicenter, and characteristic of the quake. There are too many variables to produce a definitive damage projection for something larger than 5.5.

Earthquakes and Volcanoes

Last time we felt a small earthquake at work I dug up some resources. Well, we felt another one this morning:

In the last 24 28 minutes, there have been at least 21 29 earthquakes on the San Andreas fault about 135 miles south-east of where I work. The strongest had a magnitude of 5.9. Another was 5.0, with the remainder between 1.9 and 4.7... They're all within a few miles of Parkfield California.

It's interesting to note that there has been up to One or Two Quakes a Minute in Washington where Rumbling at Mount St. Helens Triggers Alert:

Seismic activity at Mount St. Helens has changed significantly during the past 24 hours and the changes make us believe that there is an increased likelihood of a hazardous event

Meanwhile, about 150km north-west of Tokyo, Mt Asama erupted again on Thurdsay after burst back into life earlier this month in its biggest eruption in 21 years.

Check out the global seismic monitor to remember that disasters aren't always man made.

I Quit! (11,562 ciggs ago)

I quit smoking 578 days, 2 hours, 11 minutes and 25 seconds ago on Tuesday, February 25, 2003.In that time, I've NOT smoked a disgusting 11562 ciggs, saving 2 months, 28 days, 7 hours of my life expectancy, and $3,034.50.

Track your own stats on http://www.quitnet.com/, a service of Boston University School of Public Health. It was a good source of support and pride for me.

Hillman on Canal Street - A Certain Type of Penetration

I was in NYC over the Fourth of July weekend. Hopping off the from-Brooklyn subway, I popped onto Canal Street looking for some mix tapes. They have all the bootleg software booths too, and as I paused to look at one at one of the displays, I saw my coworkers face staring back at me for a book cover.

I guess that when your book makes it to the carts on Canal Street you've penetrated pop culture to a special degree.

As previously noted, I'm working on a project with Hillman Curtis, who's book it is.