In a fit of automation, I have abused the excellent MTMacro plugin to create an tag. <amazon title=”Monster Manual II” asin=”0786928735”> would be blithely transformed into the appropriate link to Amazon. I do this, yes, because I’m too lazy to build affiliate links by hand each time. The macro code, for those even lazier than I: <MTMacroDefine name="Amazon" tag="amazon"> <a href="https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/<MTMacroAttr name="asin">/unofficfengshuih/ref=nosim/"><MTMacroAttr name="title"></a> </MTMacroDefine> Mind you, I’m also too lazy to implement this in all the site templates, so until I get unlazy and do a bunch of editing, the feature’s pretty worthless.

Somehow I missed the news that John Malkovich was playing Ripley in an upcoming adaptation of Patricia Highsmith’s Ripley novels. Excellent casting choice; I have to remember to keep an eye out for this.

49% of Americans think the First Amendment goes too far. (original) No, there’s not really anything I can add to that.

The road signs are marked with secret codes which instruct the military where to go when it’s time for the coup. Quintessence of the Loon has more of the same.

The Hugo Award results are in! BEST NOVEL (486 ballots cast) The Curse of Chalion by Lois McMaster Bujold (HarperCollins/Eos) American Gods by Neil Gaiman (Morrow) Perdido Street Station by China Mi

I watched Magnolia again last night. Well. Part of it; I had forgotten, unsurprisingly, how harrowing it can be and it was rather late, so the whole three hours was not in the cards. I actually hadn’t seen it since the first time I saw it, in the theater. After that three hours, I said to myself, “It’s going to be a while before I can watch this again.” I still agree with myself. On the other hand, I’m also even more certain that I need to, and that I want to, and that I want to think about Magnolia much much more. ...

I have very fond memories of The Westing Game. Today, I stumbled across a link to an Ellen Raskin page (original) of rare quality. Turns out she was a graphic designer and an illustrator as well. The page includes scans of her original manuscript for The Westing Game and a pretty extensive discussion of her typesetting directions. Good reading. There’s also, of course, a bibliography and biography.

Ernie the Attorney made an offhand comment about programmers as artists (original) the other day, which got me thinking, although I half suspect it was meant to be tongue in cheek. Still… artists? I’m not sure; I think the various tribes of computer professionals (programmers, system administrators, network administrators) are more akin to court wizards. We are comfortable and fluent with devices that almost everyone’s forced to interact with every day. It’s a prestigious position; the unwashed are constantly reminded how much they need us. It’s also a set of occupations that until fairly recently has been taught in the medieval style. All the best sysadmins I know learned from other skilled masters. We have no formal apprenticeship system, but the trappings are all there. ...

Giving into temptation, Popone now has a stats page. I mention this because it led to an important Weblog discovery: you aren’t a real weblog until you’re getting more hits from Googlebot than from Netscape browsers.

Simone is a pretty good science fiction comedy, and I’d recommend seeing it before it leaves the theaters. I’d been looking forward to it for a while; Andrew Niccol directed Gattaca, which was one of the better SF movies of the 1990s. Since then, he wrote The Truman Show, confirming my belief that he has an understanding of deep SF themes. One big difference between Simone and Gattaca is that Simone’s a comedy. Niccol had trouble getting into the rhythm of comedy early on, but fortunately he had Al Pacino (as Viktor Taransky) and Catherine Keener (as Elaine Christian) to smooth over those rough bits. The pair of them carry the movie over the early awkwardness, and the core themes of the movie take us the rest of the way. ...