Author: Aaron Weber

Conan, what is good in life?

I still get a lot of search strings for the phrase “Conan, What is Good In Life” so I guess it’s fitting that today I wrote up a plan for world domination. It’s really quite simple, only five pages or so.

For what it’s worth, Conan’s view of what is good in life is “to crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and hear the lamentations of their women.” In contrast, my view of world domination begins with community outreach teams identifying, engaging, and recruiting thought leaders.

This is something like the difference between the US and EU ethics rules. European labor laws specify that your boss isn’t allowed to spy on you, so European divisions don’t have to sign the complicated code of business ethics that our company has for US divisions. However, they still have to obey the rules of general human decency and ethics, though– I think the ethics rules are also generalized in EU labor regulations, or something. US teams sign the code of business ethics and as far as I know obey it to the letter. But hey, I’m in marketing, it’s kind of my job to ignore whatever general rules of human decency aren’t actually spelled out in the rules.

Other excitement: Several of us in the office got together and bought a gallon of chowder to go from Legal Seafood. It came in a giant bag. It was a giant bag of chowder. It looked hideous but it was delicious and high in cholesterol.

The City of Somerville has declared an indefinite state of emergency. It’s like martial law, except it only applies to parking rules.

Word Choice

No Name-Calling Week is a … well, it’s a dumb name. But “tolerance” is basically ruined for progressives, just as the word “liberal” is. I mean, better call it “Don’t Be A Jerk” week, or have a “Be Nice For Once Dammit Parade” than to promote something as vague as “tolerance.”

I’m just surprised that people are opposed to an anti-bullying initiative, as counterproductive as it may be (I mean, come on, what most of these kids want is to run and hide, not be mentioned or singled out by authority for any sort of praise or defense. That’s the worst thing that can happen to a kid– being liked or defended in public by the school faculty or staff.) What, you’re in favor of being mean to kids?. Oh, wait, you’re part of the religious right. Of course you’re in favor of being mean to kids– you also want them to be ignorant about science, particularly biology and astronomy, and to live in fear of being struck by lightning for having a crush on a rock star or taking too long in the bathroom.

Assortment

Robert S. Boynton article on intellectual property in the latest Bookforum, which Bookdwarf brought home for me. The print version has a great picture of DJ Danger Mouse.

The resurgent The Minor Fall, the Major Lift points us to the occasional hilarity of electrocuted puppies on Prozac. Now, in Boston, dogs and people sometimes get electrocuted by the street as well– usually from standing or peeing on manhole covers that have been accidentally touched to live wires. But few of the dogs are on Prozac.

Presumably, their owners consult CrazyMeds, which is the best mental health consumer resource I’ve ever seen. It’s run by a bipolar epileptic and some other crazy people and they provide a mixture of common sense advice (“side effects suck, but being psychotic sucks more!”), glosses and explanations of the drug warning sheets, and general commentary and user reports (“This one works for me, but it totally did nothing for my buddy Tom. I suggest a low dose at first.”) on drugs, mental health practicioners, and the experience of depression, mania, epilepsy, narcolepsy, neuropathy, and whatever else ails them, their friends, and their readers. Could use a better layout, but quite the site nonetheless.

No Logo (TM) brand accessories

This Magazine (yes, that’s the name of the magazine, “this magazine”) has a neat little explanation of why the ideology of “anti-consumerism” is such a failure: it’s not an ideology, it’s a fashion statement.

Brands are useful to me. They are blocks of meaning which I can use to navigate the material world. I can assemble them to communicate with others (“I’m a badass!” “I’m a young professional!”).

Maybe my couch is “just a couch” and maybe it’s the symbol of all my aspirations for comfort and luxury. Maybe it’s lumpy and just stained and uncomfortable and I want something I can work from when it’s snowy out and I am so not tromping to the office in knee-deep slush.

Yeah, I’m afraid of the rat race. I’m afraid of dying and having my obituary explain that I was the author of such classics as “Product Marketing Statement” and “Installation and Administrator’s Guide.” I’m afraid of wasting the fruits of my labor on shiny things that won’t make me happy.

I still want a motorcycle though. Triumph Bonneville, of course. It’s shiny and tells people that I’m a badass, yet sophisticated.

Real Estate, Yet Again

Courtesy of John Fleck, a pointer to an article in which Dan Gillmor comments on the California Housing Bubble. Now, my parents were living in CA in the sixties and decided that buying a house was a risky investment. Their little bungalow that they rented for, oh, fifty dollars a month, and could have bought for a pittance, became a $1M teardown, and is now a $5-10M gated palace you can’t drive near. But it’s hard to make that kind of judgement in advance: nobody knew then that San Diego would become anything more than a pretty little Navy backwater. After all, there’s plenty of sunshine all over the country.

People want to live in desireable parts of the world. Manhattan, California, Boston, Northwestern DC. But the fact is, if Tokyo, with all its limited space, can have a crash, anyone can have a crash.

Look at it this way: it doesn’t have to be worthless to be overvalued. Lots of people still live in Tokyo, and lots of people still want to live in Tokyo. It’s still insanely expensive to live there. It’s just not as expensive as it was in 1998.

Or take Gold for example. It’s valuable. Everybody loves gold. There is an increasing demand for it as increasing numbers of people in the world want shiny things. Is it worth $500 per ounce? Or $400? It can be overvalued even if its intrinsic value is high and will continue to rise.

As my own experiences have taught me all too well, love and real estate tend to drive people to totally irrational economic decisions.

How not to write instructions

There are two lines of actual description in the esd (Enlightened Sound Daemon) manual page. I know this is not useful or constructive criticism– and I don’t know enough about how they’re supposed to work to begin to help with these documents. I just want to point out a bad example for you to avoid emulating as you go about your own development.

DESCRIPTION
esdcat pipes data from a pipe to the sound device

USAGE
esdcat [“-s” server] [“-n” name] [“-b”] [“-m”] [“-r” freq] < file

Let me count the ways this is bad. I’m not talking about how it should have an “OPTIONS” section where the options are described, although to fit standard manual page layout, it should. I’m talking about basic, basic failure to write anything at all useful to anyone other than the developers.

-s server: So, we’re specifying… the host or destination for our audio data?

-n name The name of the pipe? The name of the server? The audio device? The user?

-b and -m I think that -b and -m mean 8-bit and mono, because they’re used for that in other related applications. But the manual page doesn’t explain them here.

-r frequency Setting frequency with -r is strange– Maybe you meant -f? Or did you mean sample rate? Other esd-related commands use -r to set the sample rate. Maybe in this application it’s set in Hertz rather than bits per second. Or is it samples per millisecond? Or does it set the frequency of the sound you want to hear come out of the speakers, so you could put in audio recordings of a concert and have them come out as a single, even tone. Or you could increase or decrease the pitch by the frequency specified?

< file What kind of file? Is this the file used for output? Input? Probably a named pipe or a device of some sort, since esd doesn’t handle any audio file formats directly.

Esdctl and the rest of the esd docs are almost as vague.

Type Design Makes Good

Sure, we all hate Comic Sans. But this is a truly heart-warming story of typeface design where it really counts. Let us all give thanks for the typefaces and graphic designers in our lives.

No, really, I mean it.

Dammit, you don’t believe me when I say something sincere, do you?

OK, I think it’s funny. But it’s also really cool. It’s saving lives through graphic design. That’s really useful and good and beautiful.