web-goddess

Check out the iApology at SorryEverybody.com. (Scroll down halfway.) Note the track number as well as the time elapsed/left in the song. Very clever, eh?

Here’s a glowing review of Delicious Library, which I downloaded a few days ago. It’s an OS X program that helps you maintain your collection of books, movies, CDs, and video games. That sounds boring, but it’s actually pretty jaw-dropping. I was just messing around with it, playing with the demo collection, when I hit the “Scan Barcode” button. My iSight popped up a black-and-white video window with laser scanlines on it. Curious, I held the nearest book up in front of it. Five seconds later, my computer said (actually said, mind you): “The Complete Novels of Jane Austen.” And there it was, sitting on the little virtual shelf with all the data loaded in from Amazon! I was like, “Get OUT!” That is pretty damn sweet. I figure I’ll wait til we get back from the trip to drop the $40 on the license and give the thing a real workout.

See? I can shill with the best of them. Too bad in this case it’s because I actually like the product, and I’m not getting anything in return. Take that, Warner Brothers!

I’m conflicted. Remember how I was ranting about the new Wonka movie? Well, I just got an e-mail from someone at Warner Bros. asking me to plug the movie on my Dahl site. They’ll send me a poster if I do. So here’s the conundrum: This is information about a Roald Dahl adaptation, and presumably most of his fans will be interested in it. So I should just post it, right? On the other hand, to me the movie looks like it’s going to piss all over the original story. I’d rather not act as a shill for that. So should I do it? The principled bit of me says no; the not-so-principled bit is shrieking “Maybe they’ll invite you to the Sydney premiere and you can meet Johnny Depp!” over and over. Stupid, I know.

Um, so if any of y’all are looking for a last minute wedding gift for us… we’ll take this. Seriously. That would be sweet. 🙂

The Tale of Creepy Jesus Lady
This happened on Saturday afternoon. This hippie-lookin’ lady came in about ten minutes before closing and immediately gave off the you’re-going-to-be-here-for-another-half-hour vibe. Great. I also noticed that she was wearing a big circular cardboard pendant around her neck with “JESUS” written on it in ink pen. Things did not look good. She grabbed a basket and started loading up (but without any particular sense of urgency). I was busy helping a few stragglers so I lost track of her for a bit. Eventually I noticed her pestering Albert up at the other counter. She’d heard me mention that the new store will have a coffee shop and she decided that she had the perfect name for it. It was so long that she actually had to write it down. It was something like: “Tapestry Craft Total Tea Shop Creative Coffee Cafe.” (As she put it, “So you could just refer to it as the TCTTSCCC!”) Albert somehow managed to keep a straight face and launched into a great performance of “How to Deal with Crazy People.” He thanked her and said he’d give her a call back about it. He grabbed a piece of paper to write down her contact details. “What name should I put?” “Jesus.” Say what? We both looked at her. “Or you could put YESHUA,” she happily announced, turning over her cardboard pendant to reveal that very name on the other side. Uh-huh. Albie high-tailed it out of there, leaving me to deal with her as she finalized her purchases. As I was ringing her up, I went into the standard store patter of asking how she’d heard about our sale. “Oh, I didn’t know about it,” she said. “I don’t get out much, but I’m a CHRISTIAN, and I pray for EVERYTHING. It was a MIRACLE from CHRIST that I made it here for the sale today.” Really? “Yes, the last time I came you were closed. So it was a MIRACLE from JESUS that you were open today.” Wow, most folks just read the sign with the opening hours on the door. I just kept nodding and smiling. With a flash of inspiration, I asked if she went to any knitting groups. “No! But I’d love to. Where do you find out about that stuff?” she asked. “The Internet,” I answered solemnly. “Are you on the Internet?” Regretfully, she said she was not. And thus I was able to ascertain that it was safe to talk about her on my website. Clever, no? I can’t wait to see what happens when she finds out that we passed on her TCTTSCCC suggestion.

Sorry Everybody. Americans apologize to the rest of the world for not ousting Bush. Some of those photos are great.

OS-tan: Japanese fan-created anime girls that personify various computer operating systems. Geeky but fascinating.

Um, did any of you Hoosiers notice – and you might not have* – that the actual Cousin Happy of Happy’s Place left a comment here yesterday?!

* You probably didn’t see it because it’s an old post, so comments don’t show up immediately. That’s part of my anti-spam efforts.

I really, really hope that the upcoming Hello Kitty Online Role-Playing Game is available for Mac, because that much cuteness and shininess combined would rock my world.

The comment-spammers have claimed another victim: John has taken down all commenting at his blog. This sucks. I’m not immune either; w-g now regularly gets batches of hundreds of spam comments a couple times a week. (This is even more remarkable considering that I’m using homemade blogging software, which means some effing spammer actually went to the trouble of programming a special case for my site.) I’m doing what I can to fight back. Archived posts are still open to commenting but anything older than two weeks must now be approved before being visible on the site. I’ve just added some code that checks to make sure that my site is the proper referrer for any form submissions. And I’ve also written up some tools to make blasting the damn things on the backend easier. Please let me know if any of this creates issues for you (real people) commenting. I’m just trying desperately not to have to resort to some sort of registration system.

Oh, and I got rid of the BackLinks (my version of TrackBack) too. I was getting hundreds of spams via that route too but I decided that the net benefit just wasn’t worth it. Nobody pays attention to TrackBacks anyway nowadays, do they?