¦¦ Look carefully before you decide to close this window after it opens. Thanks, Sharon.

¦¦ I am friggin' tired tonight.

¦¦ I didn't know that "yo la tengo" means "I have it" in Spanish. I did know that "husker du" means "do you remember" in Norwegian and/or Danish.

¦¦ Blogging is moving into the mainstream very quickly. Now, Harvard has hired Dave Winer to head up its new Weblogs at Harvard Initiative. So the question is begged: if blogging has made it to Harvard, have blogs moved into the mainstream? If so, I'm wondering what comes next, in whatever embryonic stage it might be at this time. Will blogs become passé? I don't think so, at least not for a while. I think blogs will continue to evolve and mutate and morph into other formats. Time will tell.

¦¦ Norah Jones and Christopher Cross? Will she suffer his fate? I doubt it.

¦¦ Napster, seemingly forgotten these days, is set to return later this year.

¦¦ I was driving to work this morning, west on 23rd Avenue. I sped up a bit to catch up to vehicle in front of me, so that I wouldn't have to yield to a whack of cars about to turn north on 119th Street. As I approached my turn (from 23rd, turning right, i.e., north on 119th Street), I hit ice, and lost control of my car. It spun to the right, did a 180, jumped the curb, and slammed into the windrow of snow that had been pushed up onto the boulevard by graders a few days earlier. Wearing my seat belt most likely prevented me from slamming into the window of my door. I was lucky that another vehicle wasn't following me at that moment.

I was stunned for about a nanosecond, realized immediately that I couldn't open my door, and crawled out through the passenger door. No, I don't own a cell phone, and realized I had to walk back to Saddleback Road (approx 115th Street), and call the Alberta Motor Association to come pull me out. I left the car with the hazard lights on, praying that no one would hit it coming around the corner. Eight minutes later I reached a phone, I made the call, and started to walk back. I noticed from afar that vehicles were slowing down to a stop at the yield where I'd spun my car, and started running, thinking it might have been hit. As I got closer, I saw that another car had spun into the windrow to avoid hitting me. Three men were trying to dislodge the car from the snow for the driver, a woman, who told me she saw my car as she was rounding the corner, and panicked.

One of the men had a shovel. I had one in my trunk, so we both shovelled more snow, and then four of us dislodged her car, and she left. Then two of the men tried to help me with my car, despite the impending arrival of the AMA tow truck. Less than 5 minutes later, the tow truck arrived, and using the winch, slowly pulled my car out of the windrow (which, btw, is what we call a long row of snow piled up from grading, even though the word means a row created by wind.)

In the end I was mostly embarrassed for driving like a idiot. Trying to save myself 10 seconds, I lost 45 minutes. Lesson learned, I drove off to work. At 51st Avenue, I came upon a large pickup truck, which was stalled. The driver was trying to push it himself. I thought, one good turn deserves another, and pulled over to help him push it off 119th Street, away from the other vehicles.

¦¦ Surfing around through Kelly's site, one surf leads to another (isn't that a song?), and I ended up at Dooce.com. On Feb 26, 2002, the author of this site lost her job because of something she'd written in her blog. So I'm reading away, and notice her post from today has 131 responses, and I'm like, that's a hell of a lot of comments. So I go to put in a comment because the thread is about if you could take one song and one book as you fled the nuclear holocaust, what might they be? I look over the entire page, and can't find any place on the site that lets me submit a post. Argh! Frustration sets in.

So I start checking some of the 131 posts, and end up at Paul's Boutique, and discover that Paul (Gutman) has written the following paper: Did You Just Say That?: Blogging and Employment Law in Conflict, to be submitted for publication to the Columbia Journal of Law and the Arts. Paul writes: "While it might be pretentious and unnecessarily legal and long, I think bloggers might find this worthwhile reading if they like their jobs." I like my job (thank you, God, for tenure.) (I don't agree that it's pretentious - it is a submission to a scholarly journal. Legal, yes, but it needs to be.) In the submission, he highlights a number of well known incidents in which bloggers were fired from their jobs because of something they wrote that miffed their employers.

This is serious food for thought, and I encourage you to at least scan Gutman's submission.

UPDATE (15 June 2004): The draft of Paul Gutman's article is no longer available for viewing online. It has been revised and modified, and published in v27 n1 of The Columbia Journal of Law & The Arts.

¦¦ The Captions Game, from the site, Edgecurve, is hilarious. My favorite so far is this one with the baby in the box of styropopcorn.

¦¦ Geoff and I were contacted today by Mairi MacLean, a features writer at The Edmonton Journal today. Mairi is writing a story on blogging for the paper. She interviewed each of us by phone, and her questions were thoughtful and probing. Of course, I'll be checking the paper tomorrow morning first thing to see if we made it to press!

As well, Geoff and I submitted an edited version of a 2,500 word article we wrote on weblogs and how they might work in the library world. The paper, written for Feliciter, was edited down to 1,900 words, and I'm hoping we can keep it there, and not reduce it further. As well, we've been asked to present a session on weblogging for Academic Technologies for Learning, at the U of A. This seems to be happening all too fast!

¦¦ My good friend Robert Runté has joined the blogging ranks. He doesn't disappoint.

¦¦ I have a remote starter on my car. It's great this time of year, when the temperature is -25C. I saw The Recruit tonight, and upon leaving, discovered the remote starter decided not to start. So, I'll be at the retailer tomorrow asking them to fix it quickly, and for free. BTW, it's -25C in Edmonton tonight.

¦¦ Speaking of The Recruit, I enjoyed it, despite Al Pacino's way-over-the-top performance. Colin Farrell, the current It Guy, was good without annoying me. A predictable story, but worth two hours of escape and $9.95Cdn.

¦¦ The Morning News' Guide to New York Jargon is hilarious.

¦¦ The lists on McSweeney's, brainchild of Dave Eggers, are also hilarious. Try Some Famous Names That Can Replace The Word Yesterday In The Song "Yesterday" by Paul McCartney or Actual Entries From The Scots Dialect Dictionary.

¦¦ One of the first two blogs I started reading in early 2002 was Laura's. The other was Geoff's. On Laura's site I discovered a link to brain-terminal, which "seeks to provide thoughtful analysis of the various political, social, economic and technological trends that affect our daily lives." It is the brainchild of Evan Coyne Maloney. Why he chose the horrid colour scheme will remain a myster. Whatever. Anyway, you must watch the video of his interviews with various NYC anti-war protesters from earlier this month. It reveals that they are passionate, but it many cases, clueless. Of course, leave us not forget that we are seeing only the interviews he chose to let us see. But it makes for entertaining viewing.

¦¦ Daypop is a search engine that searches "14,600 news site and weblog for current events and breaking news." You can see the top weblogs, the Amazon top wish list items, top news, and the top 40! The Top 40 "is a list of links that are currently popular with webloggers from around the world". At the top of the list is ready.gov, the US gov't site that helps their citizens prepare for terrorist attacks. The site is odd and creepy, and at best, necessary. The top search, sadly I suppose, is currently "great white."

¦¦ Terry Jones of Monty Python fame weighs in with comments about Dubya's latest reason for wanting to bomb Iraq: he's losing patience.

¦¦ The City has been cleaning our side streets for about a week. My street was
cleaned on Monday. I live in a cul-de-sac, so the grader pushed the snow into the middle until it melts in the spring. Then the little guy followed to clean up our driveway entrances.

¦¦ Read why reality tv isn't reality tv. Of course, if your cerebral cortext is functional, you already know, but I digress. (No, I've never watched any of those shows).

¦¦ Recently it was announced that editors from some of the world's preeminent scientific publications had discussed the concern of the potential use of new information published in research journals for malicious reasons, including bioterrorism. Subsequently, the editors released this Statement on Scientific Publication and Security.

¦¦ The end of my favorite comic strip, For Better or For Worse (proudly Canadian) slowly approaches. Thanks, Derryl.

¦¦ I know that most US states and Canadian provinces have official flags, crests, birds, floral emblems, trees, songs, mottos, and so on. I didn't know there were official soils. We're a bit behind in Canada, with only two provinces on board. Manitoba is apparently still debating the issue. My favorite state whatever list has got to be California. Among others, it has a state insect, state prehistoric artifact, and a state fife and drum corps. Thanks, Mike.

¦¦ In the late 1950s, as US networks began broadcasting selected shows in colour, they would preface each broadcast with a color presentation logo.

¦¦ I successfully installed Moveable Type 6.22 yesterday. The world didn't end, my web site didn't implode.

¦¦ Chris Sherman comments on Google's purchase of Pyra Labs, creator of Blogger. How will this affect blogging? How might this affect you if your blog is supported by Blogspot? The story was broke by Dan Sherman in San Jose.

¦¦The late, great band, Big Country, released an album in 1988 that remains one of my favorites, called Peace In Our Time. The title song always struck me as a powerful, simple message - can we achieve peace before we leave this earth? This past weekend, tens of millions of people on the planet let our governments know that they subscribe to this theory. Geoff noted that sadly, the US Government doesn't give a damn about public opinion regarding their foreign policy. If the voices of millions mean nothing, what must happen to make them heard? There was a rally in Edmonton to protest the impending war against Iraq, but I did not attend.

There are some interesting web sites supporting anti-war activism. In Alberta, there is wage-peace.org. In the US, check out United For Peace and Justice.

¦¦On Monday night I saw my first Almodóvar film, Talk To Her. A powerful, moving story of two men who sit next to each other at a dance concert, and meet sometime later in a hospital, one because he is a nurse attending to a woman in a coma, and the other because his girlfriend in in the hospital, also in a coma. An intense friendship develops as the story involving the comatose women becomes more intriguing and layered. Highly recommended.

¦¦Finally, I must make mention of the upcoming movie, A Mighty Wind. The movie is the latest from Christopher Guest (Best In Show, Waiting for Guffman), and is the story of the "famous" 60s folk group, The Folksmen. Guest, Michael McKean and Harry Shearer dreamed up The Folksmen subsequent to their success as Spinal Tap, and featured them in a sketch on SNL in the mid-80s. I have that sketch on tape, and never fails to make me laugh considerably when I watch it. Two songs from that sketch, "Blood on the Coal", and "Old Joe's Place", inspired me to transcribe the music and lyrics. Do not miss this movie when it opens in April. (Thanks to Geoff for posting info on this film.)

¦¦Imagine receiving a phone call from Jack Nicholson (courtesy The Morning News.)

¦¦Sunday began with dim sum, after which I returned home and fell asleep again for 90 minutes. I dragged myself to the Y for a workout, then went to dinner at a friend's place, then returned to watch Kingpin and L&O:CI. Tomorrow is a holiday in Alberta, time for more laying about and doing lots of nothing.

¦¦Earlier today, my browser (IE6.whatever) was "hijacked" by another website, searchex.com. (NOTE: DON'T go there!) The result was, whenever I opened my browser, it would default to the searchex homepage. Bastards. Anyway, I searched for a solution, and found it at Spywareinfo.com. This could happen to you at any time. I'd recommend you go to the site, which has good suggestions for preventing, fixing and removing a hijack. Among the programs recommended are SpyBot Search and Destroy, BHODemon, and Hijack This. I was running AdAware 5.0, unaware that it had been upgraded to 6.0.

I've created a Spyware/Scumware section on the computer page of my website. If you know of other good spyware/scumware programs, please let me know.

¦¦I saw Confessions of a Dangerous Mind this afternoon, based on Chuck Barris's autobiography. Whether or not he did kill 33 people for the CIA may never be known, but the movie works well, anchored by Sam Rockwell's outstanding performance.

The movie, directed by George Clooney, is interspersed with short clips of interview with people associated with The Gong Show, The Newlywed Game, and The Dating Game, including Gene Gene, The Dancing Machine, The Unknown Comic, and Jim Lange. During the Gong Show's heyday, Barris was accused of dumbing down entertainment before the term "dumbing down" existed. I watched the Gong Show occasionally, and loved it when Gene Gene, The Dancing Machine would interrupt proceedings, and get stuff thrown at him. I remember one time he started dancing, and stuff was getting tossed at him, when from stage left came a photocopy machine rolling towards him. Someone threw a photocopier at him! One of the funniest moments I remember on television. You can watch Gene right here, and if you need more, go to iFilm and check out other GS clips. You will no longer wonder when civilization began to decline.

¦¦ Spam seems to be getting worse by the day. This morning my work e-mail Inbox had at least two XXX-rated messages waiting for me, along with the daily e-mail from Nigeria asking for money, offers of mortgage and loan assistance, and a note to help me get my Bachelor's degree from home. In the 9 feb 2003 edition of the New York Times Magazine, James Gleick, author of Chaos, Faster: The Acceleration of Just About Everything, and most recently, What Just Happened, examines the worsening spam epidemic, and what's being done to (attempt to) deal with it. Mentioned in his article are SpamAssassin, and SpamSieve, two programs that attack spam on your computer.

¦¦ Sometimes you discover a site on the 'net, and you start singing the line, "I've got...too much...time on my hands". (Not that I admit to having ever been a fan of Styx.) Anyway, here is such a website that put the song in my head: ticketstubs.com. The deal here is that you upload an image of a ticket stub from an event you attended - could be a movie, live theatre, music, standup, what-evah. Together with the pic of the stub, you tell a story surrounding the event. The site is new, so there is but one story from Canada to date. Now that I think of it, this may be a cool idea. Still, the creator must've had, well, too much time on his hands...

¦¦ Mike sent a link to this article on blogs as social networks. The author examines blogs as a social network, using power law distributions. Some of his conclusions are interesting, including how the A-List bloggers may eventually morph into mainstream media-types as their audiences grow. He also suggests that the term "blog" itself may drift into the background as blog technology becomes a platform for other types of online publising.

¦¦ It seems like a lot of "serious" bloggers are now analyzing blogging in their blogs - does this sound a bit redundant? I thought this was supposed to be all kinds of fun!

:: Yes, it's been snowing here quite a bit lately. The last 48 hours have seen between 5-10 cm of snow fall to the ground. This afternoon I visited friends who are moving to Toronto, and just had a baby. I drove back and forth in front of the house where the reception was happening, finally parking and immediately getting stuck. When I went to leave, it took four men to help me push the car out of the ruts in the street. Very frustrating. I grew up in Winnipeg in the 50s-70s, and was spoiled by the snow removal there - in weather like this, graders and front-end loaders would be on all the streets within hours. In Edmonton, side streets and minor throughways are ignored by the City, which tends to clear the main drags only. What a drag.

:: I've returned to a three-column template, and I've been experimenting with light background colours. As you can see, I'm having some difficulty lining up the right-side column with the body of the page. Any suggestions from you CSS/HTML/MT wizards out there?

::Geoff and I are near completion of the first draft of an article we are submitting for publication in the journal Feliciter, on the topic of blogging in libraries. Meanwhile, more and more articles are appearing in mainstream newspapers and magazines on this burgeoning phenomena. Web of blogs, a typical article designed to make readers aware of this new web activity, appeared recently in the The Journal News, the newspaper for New York’s Westchester, Rockland and Putnam counties. In Pittsburgh's Post-Gazette is an interesting piece on how blogging (almost) changed journalism (thanks, Mike). For some, blogging is an unrelenting assault on journalism.

An interesting article in the USC Online Journalism Review compares media versus meta-journal coverage of the Columbia disaster. The author asserts that the meta-journal coverage is more complete, and notes that "It's no accident that these columns are in weblog format, and that they have loyal industry followings." The Review also examined mainstream media coverage of the Columbia, noting the power of the Internet and blogging.

Far and away the most detailed coverage I've seen on this event was posted by Steve McLaughlin in his blog, Saltire. His first entry includes details about the shuttle itself, possible scenarios, and debris reports. To appreciate his coverage, check each entry since February 1st. I am overwhelmed by the amount of detail he has offered since Feb 1, and frankly, I wonder how he does it.

Next up is wireless blogging. Meanwhile, academia is begging to recognize blogs and their impact, now and beyond. Check out the education weblog called Weblogg-ed.

A few interesting sites to occupy your mind, in one way or another:

::Check out the Anagrammy Awards, for best anagrams.
::Giant squid attacks French boat.
::NASA offers the Astronomy Picture of the Day. There are some spectacular shots to see.
::Does your phone number spell a word? Mine doesn't. :-(
::A short, concise history of the Internet, from 1945-1995.
::Chickens Traumatized by Mass Egg Abductions.
::The Beloit College's Class of 2003 Mindset List. Although the list is based on the American experience, we can relate to most of it in Canada too.
::This is an online American Sign Language Browser. It is very cool. You need Quick Time to view it on your screen. Pick a word, and a short film clip is shown of a woman creating the sign for you, repeating so you can practice. Brilliant.
::One of the most controversial and powerful post-September 11th essays on that tragedy is The Rage and The Pride, by the writer and interviewer, Oriana Fallaci.

This was a good weekend, a sad weekend. Sad because of the space shuttle tragedy. Good because I spent time on Saturday night having fun with friends, ate a damn fine dim sum today, saw The Pianist, the amazing new movie from Roman Polanksi (note: site is in French), and enjoyed a 90 minute full-body massage on Saturday afternoon. The weather warmed up as well, making life easier to take for a change.

The Pianist is based on the true story of Polish pianist Wladyslaw Szpilman, who lived in Warsaw at the time of the German occupation in WWII. He escapes deportation to the death camps, lives for a time in the Warsaw ghetto, and then escapes, living in the ruins of the city until the war's end. The movie features a career performance by New York actor Adrien Brody, in the title role. Attention to detail is meticulous, especially scenes of deserted neighbourhoods in Warsaw, devestated by bombs and artillery. It was in such a neighbourhood that Szpilman hid to survive.

This is a long movie, and for a while, I found myself edgy and impatient for things to pick up. The pace of the story seems to slows once Szpilman escapes from the ghetto and hides in Warsaw, first in deserted apartments where he is locked is for his own safety by members of the underground, and then when he is forced to leave and live in a deserted hospital, and then a mansion. But afterwards, I realized that these lengthy scenes were important, because it helped me feel the isolation and impatience that he must have felt, waiting for the moment when he might be a free man again. Highly recommended.

Aside: The voice-over for the trailer for the movie pronounce it The Pee-ANN-ist. In North America, we would say The PEE-ann-ist. Perhaps they wanted to avoid having it sound too much like penis?

I'd like to welcome an old friend to the world of blogging: Michael Hall, currently of Ft McMurray AB. Mike and I met as members of Winnipeg science fiction fandom in the mid-1970s. Toys and Cookies was a phrase we used many times in those days.

I awoke at 8:00 am this morning to a phone call from my brother telling me about the shuttle. I sighed and went downstairs and watched CNN for 40 minutes, until I could take no more. Tragedies like this are wearing me out. Now I'm wondering: when the Challenger exploded, if I recall correctly, the investigation took months, and the next flight wasn't for a couple years. This time, though, that can't happen. Why? Because there are people working on the space station who will need to be returned to Earth sometime soon. How will we feel when that shuttle is set to land? I don't want to know, and I hate that this has happened again.

I will defer to William Gibson's thoughts about what happened this morning.