Disqus - Latest Comments for Prentiss Riddle

Re: TrackBack comes to hitormiss.org

Prentiss Riddle — Mon, 29 Jul 2002 06:53:11 -0000

D'ohh! I just noticed your tutorial. Never mind, and thanks...

Re: TrackBack comes to hitormiss.org

Prentiss Riddle — Mon, 29 Jul 2002 06:51:13 -0000

Any chance you'd be willing to share your code?

Re: Blog Hot or Not

Prentiss Riddle — Mon, 29 Jul 2002 18:45:20 -0000

Odd -- as of this writing, 16 people have rated my blog with a median vote of 5.69, but blog.hotornot.com gives me an "official rating" of 8.9. Is there some kind of a curve? Do they award bonus points for newbies? Is their math simply wrong?

Re: christiansforcannabis.com

Prentiss Riddle — Mon, 29 Jul 2002 14:10:36 -0000

Somehow I read that as christiansforcannibals.com. Which kinda has a ring to it: Our mission is to educate the Christian community concerning the scriptural invalidity of the prohibition on cannibalism.

Re: What Differentiates Yet Another Blog Post From A Professionally Web Published Article?

Prentiss Riddle — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 10:52:53 -0000

I find this a little confusing. The goals of quality, accessibility and usability are laudable and almost always worth keeping in mind, even if one's goal is entertainment rather than information.

However, the best bloggers can, when they choose, meet all of your criteria for a "professionally published" article. Depending on personal preference, good bloggers frequently blow away the typical professional article on one or more of your criteria (I'm thinking of some bloggers' use of original photography or bloggers who put a lot of effort into deep and wide-ranging commentary on references).

Furthermore, not all blogs are focused on breaking news: the most original bloggers are the ones who have unique insight on topics which are not the buzz of the day. In fact, I would argue that the primary value of blogs is not to shorten the news cycle (which is already too short if you ask me) but rather out there in the long tail of specialized topics and perspectives which would never have found their audience in old media.

Re: The FBI is watching what you read… | Letter Never Sent

Prentiss Riddle — Wed, 03 Jul 2002 15:33:14 -0000

In my brief exposure to library school, I learned that well-run libraries already do delete any circulation records which would identiy patrons' reading habits as soon as possible. Well-programmed library computer systems do so automatically.

However, in the light of the Arthur Andersen case, can we expect librarians to be prosecuted for destroying evidence? Especially if they heed calls to tighten their records management policies in the light of the FBI's activities?

Re: Karzai’s Edgy Special Forces Bodyguards | Letter Never Sent

Prentiss Riddle — Tue, 10 Sep 2002 16:03:54 -0000

Well, no, I don't think Karzai's difficulty staying one step ahead of assasination attempts is a particularly good indicator of the strength or weakness of his mandate. Rather I think it is an indication of the level of violence to which Afghan society is accustomed. I think he would have similar problems whether he was supported by 1%, 10%, 50%, 90% or 99% of his people, provided that his enemies are well-armed and ruthless.

I'm not very well read in political theory, but I've heard the phrase "monopoly of violence" used to describe the norm in functioning nation-states, whether democratic or not: when the police and/or the military have overwhelming firepower and are subject to a unified authority, you don't see a lot of violence in the streets. Afghanistan is a good example of a place where there is no monopoly of violence -- although it's now moving in that direction.

I have no particular belief that Karzai represents democracy in the here and now, but then it strikes me as pretty naive to think that democracy is even a possibility so soon after a "regime change" in an occupied country that's had a war within its borders for 30+ years. Karzai is supposed to be a first step in the direction of democratic institutions. You may have information about how he falls short of even that modest goal; if so, I'm all ears. But to fault him for not being democratically elected strikes me as a straw man argument.

Re: 9-11 Anniversary | Letter Never Sent

Prentiss Riddle — Mon, 30 Sep 2002 11:51:49 -0000

It's not as funny as your Avery shot, but here is a bit of found art pertinent to your 9-11 anniversary post.

Re: University of Texas Student Government Opposes Iraq War

Prentiss Riddle — Thu, 31 Oct 2002 17:56:07 -0000

What disappoints me is that the vote was 20-17. A 54-46% margin isn't much of a mandate. The people who proposed the resolution meant well, but their "victory" is a bit underwhelming. I suppose it's a start.

Re: One question | Letter Never Sent

Prentiss Riddle — Mon, 03 Feb 2003 21:20:52 -0000

Easy: optimists get to be happy, pessimists get to be right.

Seriously, I recall hearing about some sort of study which claimed that depressed people were more accurate in their predictions about the future than non-depressed people. Being right didn't make the depressed people less depressed. Perhaps depression is simply a malfunction in an organism's naturally occuring bias toward optimism. If a person (or a coyote or a manatee or a mole rat) is realistic rather than optimistic, surely that interferes with his or her chances of reproducing.

Re: Now why haven’t I seen this anywhere? | Letter Never Sent

Prentiss Riddle — Mon, 03 Feb 2003 21:27:12 -0000

"Four distinct sounds" is not "language ability". I'm sure one could train a cat or dog to make "four distinct sounds" to get four distinct treats. Language requires grammar, syntax, and the creation of novel utterances. Even Koko and other signing apes barely start to get into the bottom end of this realm, and never develop the vocabulary or grammatical sophistication even matching those of a small child.

Sigh. When will the press start to get this stuff right?

Re: The Fray | Letter Never Sent

Prentiss Riddle — Mon, 10 Mar 2003 21:18:18 -0000

It was good to meet you, too. Hey, I was in a fairly dark mood myself (which may or may not have been why I felt like Fray Cafe wasn't as good this time around). Too bad we weren't wearing little black cloud lapel pins or something so we grumped out folks could recognize each other.

Re: Incredible Flaming Mechanism | Letter Never Sent

Prentiss Riddle — Mon, 30 Jun 2003 10:11:29 -0000

Obviously he listens to so much Abba because there was a sale on at Sound Warehouse.

Re: Yikes

Prentiss Riddle — Mon, 30 Jun 2003 10:17:13 -0000

Seriously, I heard recently about some psychiatric research which indicates that sleep disturbance always plays a role in depression. That is, according to the theory something causes a particular kind of sleep disturbance which in turn triggers the biological mechanisms of depression. It could be a crock, but it's an interesting idea.

Re: Best friends forever? I think not. | Letter Never Sent

Prentiss Riddle — Wed, 30 Jul 2003 20:48:26 -0000

My best friend in kindergarten was a girl, I guess before the whole "When Harry Met Sally" rule against cross-gender best friendships kicked in. We lost touch in the first grade when she was in a different classroom. About 20 years or so later my sister claimed to have learned that my former best friend was working as a stripper and offered to put me in touch. I didn't know what that was supposed to accomplish beyond embarassing me and amusing my sister, so I declined.

Re: Last night’s Dream Motifs | Letter Never Sent

Prentiss Riddle — Wed, 30 Jul 2003 21:04:57 -0000

That's the kind of dream journaling we should encourage. Dreams in 25 words or less. Dream haiku!

Actually, Slow Wave does a pretty good job of what I'm talking about.

Re: Glowing mice and fish | Letter Never Sent

Prentiss Riddle — Wed, 30 Jul 2003 21:14:25 -0000

The best idea about genetic engineering and mosquitoes that I've heard comes from one of Bruce Sterling's recent books: genetically engineer people to have blood that's poisonous to the mosquitoes. Yeah! That could wipe out malaria, dengue and a bunch of other tropical diseases in one swell foop. (Not to mention making Texas a hell of a lot more pleasant in the summertime.)

Re: Geopolitical forecast | Letter Never Sent

Prentiss Riddle — Wed, 30 Jul 2003 21:52:36 -0000

Very entertaining, but presented in this format without a lot of analysis behind it, it reminds me of Nostradamus.

As for the powerful Indian American lobby, I'll believe it when I see it. Indians are far more fragmented than the Jews to whom Sheth compares them. Not only in terms of language, religion, etc. but more to the point, in terms of what such a lobby might work toward. About the only issue I can imagine most Indian Americans agreeing on is immigration policy.

Re: Interesting article | Letter Never Sent

Prentiss Riddle — Wed, 30 Jul 2003 22:01:56 -0000

Typical response -- hear about a security hole, shoot the messenger.

Amory Lovins and others have been talking about the security vulnerabilities of our energy system for decades. But who listens to them?

Re: Momma-la | Letter Never Sent

Prentiss Riddle — Wed, 30 Jul 2003 22:04:02 -0000

And what a nice boy, to call his momma "gorgeous"!

Re: Quotations from J.W. Goethe | Letter Never Sent

Prentiss Riddle — Wed, 30 Jul 2003 22:06:26 -0000

Or as somebody restated it 150 years or so later: "I'll be mellow when I'm dead."

Re: Some interesting bits | Letter Never Sent

Prentiss Riddle — Wed, 30 Jul 2003 22:07:42 -0000

You ask me, the world could use a few more no-fly zones. And some no-SUV zones while they're at it.

Re: Glowing mice and fish | Letter Never Sent

Prentiss Riddle — Thu, 31 Jul 2003 13:19:50 -0000

Looking back, I don't think I put enough irony markers in that mosquito item. If I don't trust Monsanto to genetically engineer my food, I sure won't trust Terminix to genetically engineer my blood. Side effects would be a major concern, as well as the likelihood that mosquitoes (with a zillion times the reproductive cycle of us humans) would just mutate to get around the poison.

Re: Boredom Strikes On Twitter With Color!

Prentiss Riddle — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 11:22:51 -0000

You left out @sepiateam ("All other colors will fade!") and also @meatteam, @teamcoffee, and an anatomically pink team that I won't name.

Re: Boredom Strikes On Twitter With Color!

Prentiss Riddle — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 19:13:29 -0000

If the Brazilians show up, then @teamVerdeAmarelo will kick all our asses.

Re: Got a Flock invite!

Prentiss Riddle — Thu, 10 Nov 2005 11:15:08 -0000

I, too, am wondering what happens to the tags in the Blog Post form. Is this a stub for functionality to come?

Re: Readymade ZG

Prentiss Riddle — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 19:48:57 -0000

"Usable products don't make smart users."

- Engineering proverb

Re: Photosynth

Prentiss Riddle — Sun, 31 Aug 2008 09:48:06 -0000

And, surprise, it doesn't support Mac.

Re: Why Boston is Bloggiest

Prentiss Riddle — Sun, 23 Sep 2007 13:06:44 -0000

I hope you're joking about the "most excellent graphical snapshots" bit. Talk about chartjunk! Decorative elements that add nothing and bars with misleading areas (i.e., widths that vary without connection to the data). These people seriously need to read some Tufte!

Re: Tip: Using Time Machine and Parallels

Prentiss Riddle — Sat, 14 Feb 2009 09:30:38 -0000

After excluding Parallels from Time Machine you could back up your VM to an external drive as you suggest.

Or alternatively, you could make a separate folder which still *is* covered by Time Machine and periodically save a Parallels snapshot there. That way Time Machine wouldn't get bogged down with hourly backups of your VM but would still get your daily/weekly/whatever snapshots and you wouldn't need the hassle of a separate drive just for Parallels.

Right?

Re: For Blogomaniacs

Prentiss Riddle — Thu, 27 Jun 2002 05:33:00 -0000

I'm another Freshblogs user. I like it, but I must say they need to put a
bit of effort into documentation. None of their publishing methods is
self-explanatory (I ran into the same apparent bug with munging the host
and path in the FTP upload). When I realized that the watchlist is not
behind a password I wrote my own cronjob to pull my watchlist rather than
relying on them to push it with FTP or HTTP.

I'm still mystified as to what causes the watchlist to be updated; they
say elsewhere that
they do watch weblogs.com but supplement that with "trained monkeys
implementing a top-secret algorithm". Which I would find an adequate
explanation except that my watchlist has stayed static all morning, when I
can see for myself thatsome sites have had updates since the times
reported by Freshblogs. The trick they mention in their FAQ of using Edit Template to
force the watchlist to be "re-serialized" doesn't seem to have any effect.

Hopefully it's all stuff that will shake out shortly.

Re: For Blogomaniacs

Prentiss Riddle — Thu, 27 Jun 2002 05:47:00 -0000

Of course, about ten minutes after I posted that, my watchlist updated
itself. Go figure.

Re: Wanted: Malvo and Mohammad

Prentiss Riddle — Thu, 24 Oct 2002 21:06:36 -0000

`You have indicated that you want us to do and say certain things. You asked us to quack like a duck. "Quack, quack." We understand that hearing us say this is important to you.'

Re: comments on rel-tag microformat

Prentiss Riddle — Tue, 26 Jul 2005 17:44:07 -0000

I'd seen a couple of other people criticize this scheme as too Technorati-centric and bought it until I read the part of the spec about "tag spaces":

"Since the only part of a tag space URL of which any structure is required is the last segment, a tag space URL can be hosted at any domain."

http://microformats.org/wiki/reltag#Tag_Spaces

Maybe a URL-free version of this idea would have been better, but it's not true that Technorati has excluded other players on this point.

A question: what tag spaces are people actually linking to out there? I'm guessing it's mostly Technorati and a smattering of Wikipedia and del.icio.us; any other significant targets?

Re: 2008/08/26/anarchist-democratic-convention-michelle-malkin/

Prentiss Riddle — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 08:52:42 -0000

Here's one more Austinite who's very familiar with our local political wacko Alex Jones. He is indeed a libertarian who makes common cause with right- and left-wingers as it suits him.

I say he's a wacko not because he's a libertarian (although that certainly helps) but because of his conspiracy theories, from the 9/11-was-an-inside-job delusion to his belief that all past and sitting presidents joined a cult at Bohemian Grove.

People in Austin have an amused affection for Alex, which is why he pops up in such places as Richard Linklater's "Waking Life." But most of his political bedfellows, from his associates at hard-right pirate radio to lefty antiwar demonstrators, would be appalled if they actually listened to him.

Re: Adriene Mishler

Prentiss Riddle — Sat, 04 Apr 2009 19:01:35 -0000

Well, small world... Congrats, Adriene!

Re: SXSW Interactive Day 2: Audience Revolt at the Metrics Panel

Prentiss Riddle — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 10:30:50 -0000

Sounds like the panelists were doing the audience a disservice and deserved what they got, but I hope there emerge better protocols for audience feedback than earpieces or mass confrontations.

Most of the panelists at SXSW are experts (or simply enthusiasts) on their topics and not professional newscasters or TV emcees. This is as it should be. It's cognitively a great deal to ask of amateur speakers that they pay attention to their planned talk, their co-panelists, the people who formally ask questions at the microphone, and (if we're lucky) the visible and audible reactions of the audience. To add an earpiece to the mix or ask speakers to monitor a chat channel as they talk would make most speakers do worse, not better.

A traditional way to handle audience response is to have audience members write questions on cards and have a moderator select among them. Usually this is used to stifle the audience (i.e., so they won't ask tough questions) but in digital form it can be used to manage volume rather than content. I've heard of this method being adapted in both hybrid Second-Life/real-life conferences and in radio talk shows so there's a panel participant designated to report questions and comments that emerge from audience chatter.

Maybe it would be worth some formal experiments in this vein at next year's SXSW?

Re: Why did Candice cross the road?

Prentiss Riddle — Sat, 08 Nov 2008 11:14:17 -0000

My suggestion: paint balloons.