Doc Searls makes a really good point (original) about the nature of weblogs, and I think it’s relevant to why I chose to move my daily meanderings off of LiveJournal. (Yes, I know some of you are reading them there. Don’t distract me.) He says, inspired by this comment by Clay Shirky, that weblogs are like radio. Webloggers are broadcasting to the world, rather than having a conversation with their readers. And you know, that’s pretty much true. ...

I always go through this whole painful fifteen minute searching process when trying to find Nick’s Fonts. Phil’s Fonts (original) has a place of precedence in my memory palace, so I invariably go there first after a bit of guessing. Philfonts? Philsfont? Philsfonts! Oh, wait, wrong site. So now I’m logging it. Excellent, excellent source for art deco typefaces. I love his stuff. I want it all.

I haven’t picked on Andrew Sullivan for a while, have I? (And why do I do it? Because he keeps getting held up as an example of modern conservative thought, that’s why.) Let’s start with this condemnation of Dianne Feinstein (scroll down a bit). I can swing to that rhythm. Feinstein is one of my least favorite Senators. So, she said something dumb… which Andrew inflates into a commentary on all Democrats everywhere. Sure, OK. Dianne’s a prominent Democrat. ...

My DSL is up and running, a day early (and less than a week after I ordered it). Even happier, the speed is up to snuff — a quick test suggests that I’m getting 1280/585Kbps speeds, which is darned close to the 1500/786Kbps I was promised. Since the test server is in LA, I’m not going to worry about the lossage. It’s certainly much faster than my Pacifica PacBell speeds. ...

Hm. You know, I guess it is illegal to visit the moon without permission. From the 1979 Agreement Governing the Activities of States on the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies (original): Article 14 1. States Parties to this Agreement shall bear international responsibility for national activities on the moon, whether such activities are carried on by governmental agencies or by non- governmental entities, and for assuring that national activities are carried out in conformity with the provisions set forth in this Agreement. States Parties shall ensure that non-governmental entities under their jurisdiction shall engage in activities on the moon only under the authority and continuing supervision of the appropriate State Party. ...

I want to see this movie rather badly. Bollywood remakes Reservoir Dogs? Yeah.

Having trouble with Joyce’s Ulysses? There’s hope.

It’s up! Adventure Strips went live today with Mike Barr’s Sorcerer of Fortune — set, of course, in the city of Fortune. What a great title. Also debuting is Ted Stampyak’s Jazz Age. Comics are always free on the day they go up (but subscribe anyhow, cause it’s cheap). Check it out. Athena Voltaire debuts tomorrow. Seriously cool looking stuff.

A California company has been authorized to make the first private moon landing. I have to admit I’m a bit puzzled by this, since the last time I looked it wasn’t illegal to land on the moon. At worst it ought to be necessary to get permits for the launch; why does the U.S. government care where they’re going? And how does the rest of the world feel about the U.S. claiming the right to decide who makes Moon landings? ...

I have moved over to spamprobe for all my spam filtering needs. It’s an implementation of Paul Graham’s Bayesian spam detection algorithm, which detects spam based on word frequency analysis. It requires some training before it works well; you have to feed it a collection of a couple of hundred good messages and a couple of hundred spam messages so that it can build a table of spam words. Or, alternatively, you can train it over time and put up with false negatives and positives for a little while. But once you get those few hundred messages classified, you’re golden. ...