April 2002

Are You Sleeping? - Harry Nilsson

Finally! The latest issue of A List Apart includes a lesson on Fixing Your Site With the Right DOCTYPE. This is terrific and I’m going to fix my pages as soon as I can. ALA saves the day (again!).

Scriptygoddess is another site dedicated to showing / teaching tips and tricks about MovableType. There are some really good ones there. Check ‘em out!

I’m honored to see that this little page and its MovableType category section have been included in the MovableBlog Resources area. The MovableBlog is a blog all about cool tips and tricks for maintaining your MovableType blog. Great idea!

If you’re interested in the recent changes I’ve made to the design of this place, I’ve posted a few thoughts on the Works in Progress blog detailing the why and whatfor.

I just thought I’d post a few notes about the minor design changes I’ve made here recently.

You may have noticed the addition of mini-icons below each post. These link to what I call the “blogdata” items of each entry. They can be used for permalinking, Google-searching, commenting, and sending a link to the entry.

I’ve changed the way “the good stuff” blog works, too. “The good stuff” blog is the top ten list in the sidebar over there. If you click-and-drag the link at the top of the list (the one that says “the good stuff”) onto your menu bar, you’ll be able to use that as a side-panel Internet Explorer widget similar to the IE-embedded search panel and history panel.
[click to continue...]

by Peter Lefcourt (Editor), Laura J. Shapiro (Editor), William Goldman
I’m about 70% into this collection of essays by Hollywood authors and scriptwriters and I love it. I devoured that much of it in one sitting and then had to put it down because I wanted to savor it a bit more.

The first story - by Alan Alda of M*A*S*H fame - sets the tone for the book. Alda writes about the first time he felt the thrill of creation while working on a script for an episode of the famous Korean War television series. After Alda’s three-page story the editors deliver a barrage of mini-editorials by some of the most famous creative minds in show business. There are essays by well-known talents such as Lawrence Kasdan, Steven Bochco, and Cameron Crowe that will excite any fan of good writing.

I want to make it very clear that the book is *not* an instruction manual, a tutorial, or a “how-to”. There are no chapters detailing how much writers earn in Hollywood, how to “break into the biz”, or to what address you should send your script for “Ally McBeal”. It is simply a collection of stories written by prominent Hollywood writers about their experiences the first time they ever got paid to write. “Simply” is not a word, though, that should be used to describe this book. If you are a writer, or are fascinated by the process of writing - and by that I mean putting pen to paper or fingers to keyboard and creating a story - you will love to read about these authors’ first times.
[click to continue...]

The Clearing in the Woods (narration) - Harry Nilsson

I found a nifty tutorial on Using Microsoft’s XMLHTTP Object to Get Data From Other Web Pages at 4GuysFromRolla.com that might interest some readers. And over at ASP101.com there is a lesson on creating a shopping cart in ASP for your small business web site.

I’m finding more good links through The Shifted Librarian than I can imagine. This is a consistently excellent blog which covers a wide range of intriguing topics. In the past few days there has been some well-written commentary (and linkage) on the state of the radio/music industry in the new, digital era. Here are three of the best:

• We’ve got personality — at least for now
• Rocking radio’s world
• and When Online Got Off Base: How Mark Cuban would have–and could have?–saved the music biz

How cool is this? My girlfriend went to the V for Violet Fashion Show and Launch Party Saturday night and was photographed by the paparazzi!

I can’t remember where I found this one, but Checking Out the Checkpoints - The curious irrationality of airport security is a great editorial.

Hey! Check it out: I’m the featured site over at wander-lust.com.

“Does John Searle, in his book Minds, Brains, and Science, succeed in explaining how mental phenomena can be nothing over and above neural phenomena and yet be caused by neural activity?” - My Answer.

[click to continue...]