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  • 1 min read

Back from spain

So as not to leave you hanging, I just want to report that we are back and had a great time in Spain. We went from Granada to Sevilla to Madrid, by plane and rail in 8 days. Spain is a very interesting and fun country.

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Great Read: Angels and Demons – Dan Brown

By sheer coincidence, the day before leaving for Spain, two people independently mentioned to me that Angels and Demons by Dan Brown was good, even better than Da Vinci Code by the same author. So, I picked up a copy at Barnes and Noble as my light reading for the trip.

This is a great, quick read. A page turner. I recommend it. And indeed I agree that it was better and more interesting than Da Vinci Code. Interesting as Angels and Demons is an earlier book, and still Da Vinci Code is the one that is selling through the roof.

In today's New York Times, there is an interesting article about 'Defenders of Christinanity' jumping in to 'rebut' the Da Vinci Code. Maybe I'm dense but when I read it, it didn't strike me as attacking Christianity.

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Hello from Spain

Geeking out from an Internet Cafe in Granada, Spain. We´re here for a short vacation, and we have a little time to kill this afternoon so I thought I´d quickly post an update for those of you who know (or care) that we are away. Granada is a nice little town in Southern Spain, with a Moorish or Middle Eastern influence. We spent hours yesterday wandering around the Alhambra, which was great, although we are paying with our feet today… Tomorrow we leave for a few days in Sevilla. See you there.

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Area codes become meaningless

A good little insight from Rafe Needleman in his new column over at ZDNet.

" The reason it won't last: If you can get a telephone with any area or country code, the whole idea of a vanity area code will eventually evaporate. It won't be like a real-world address, which for the most part still represents a physical location. While roaming cellular phones have already begun to make area codes irrelevant, VoIP will finish the job. Soon, area code will be one of those anachronistic telecom terms, like dialing, that doesn't mean anything close to what it once did. "

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Follow-up to Subservient Chicken

The true story comes out about the most excellent subservient chicken gimick. I mentioned it a few days ago when I first saw it; it was amazing how quickly it spread. Here is an article giving some background on how it was done, where it came from and what the thinking was: "In fact, CP+B came up with about 400 different actions that the chicken could do, and then filmed them in the course of a day in Los Angeles."

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[GEEK] Web Rich Text Editors (Apropos of nothing)

I've had occasion to look into what kinds of rich text editors are availble out there, and I thought I'd use this as a place to record the results, for myself, for you, and for posterity.

Basically I am looking for a Rich Text Editor that can be embedded in a browser based application. Here are the requirements:

  • Needs to run cross platform (IE, Mozilla, Safari)
  • Doesn't need to be hugely featureful
  • The less of a download the better
  • Avoid stepping into a cross platform testing quagmire

So far, here's what I've come up with:

This one looks nice, is lightweight and sufficiently functional.

This one is much heavier weight, and is very functional

I will post more results of my research as I continue. If you know of any that I should take a look at, please drop me a line or post a comment.

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Identities (WTF Series, 1)

Some say that it’s very important that they be able to use one identity while doing one thing, and a different one for another. In ‘cyberspace’ they want to be able to express themselves without that expression being tied back to them.

My gut reaction is that I don’t like this. It seems dishonest. It’s contradicts what is possible in meat space, where I have to stand behind what I say and do. Do they have something to hide? Shouldn’t they be held accountable for their statements?

Yes, but, some say, the net doesn’t forget. You can do a search on something you said or posted at the beginning of (internet) time and it will still show up. Don’t you ever say something that you later regret? Or that is innocent now but harms your reputation later?

Like many things, the speed and scope of computers and telecommunications changes things. Where in the past it was workable to consider impersonation as a bad thing, perhaps in the 21st century it is perhaps reasonable to support multiple digital identities.

Maybe. But the world works on personal relationships and reputation. I am willing to do business with you because someone I trust has told me that you are a good person.