From the Orient

??Rod Waldhoff?? has a list of extra character keyboard shortcuts for the Zaurus to aid in speedy “on-Zaurus” coding. [via "Matt Croydon":http://postneo.com/2003/07/21.html#a2804]

JWZ on the early days of Netscape [via "Boing Boing":http://boingboing.net/2003_07_01_archive.html#200443683 ]

bq. We’ve finally announced a public beta to the net, and there are loads of bugs, and they’re hard bugs, sucky, hardware-dependent ones. Some of our private beta testers crash at startup on some SunOS 4.1.3 systems, and I’ve got what seems like an identical system here and it doesn’t crash. And scrolling text doesn’t work with the OpenWindows X server, though it works fine elsewhere. And the cache is still fucked. We’re doomed.

I’d say “Lucky OpenWindows X”. Ah, the early days when Marquee not working was a bug.

Eric Cantona’s big role:

bq. Critics in his native France have been won over by his acting abilities in the film L’Outremangeur (The Over Eater).

Blimey!

But I’m not going to delete anything. Or have I already deleted the worse stuff? Maybe I said something really horrible, I retracted ten minutes later. BTW, if anyone thought the “stiff drink” in the description was inappropriate, I didn’t think about the connection. I really did have a stiff drink. A lovely port. I won’t change it though.

Shelley’s “theory”:http://weblog.burningbird.net/fires/001356.htm on the “mentally unstable” issue doesn’t hold water with me. It only works if no one sees the post before the edit (doesn’t matter about the GoogleBot). You see the “mentally unstable” post “got out” and here it is now, ready to be grabbed by Google. In fact, a ten minute edited part of post survives long enough to be read about by me; someone who hasn’t read Dave Winer, and someone who wasn’t reading about yourself when this occurred.

Now, I’ve heard that Dave Winer called Mark an alcoholic and Mark’s recent post about not drinking suddenly clicks into place. Oh Boy!

I’m actually quite annoyed by Dave Winer now. Think about Arthur Dent getting annoyed here (I’m not like that in real life but my online persona doesn’t get annoyed often). I try to ignore him, I never read his site, I’ve even cut down on reading sites like Sam Ruby’s incase he comments there, or there is a post about his malignant bile. Must I stop reading BurningBird now? (it’s not good for my health, I have a heart condition you know, I could die).

All for one sad old dinosaur (hey he called someone a 16 year old; that’s just childish). Someone who probably reads all this and laughs; a manic Master-like laugh; insane probably; dreams of ruling the universe. If I can’t blog, then no one can blog. Mwahhha hah ha. He must love it. In other words a troll. And fuck me, if I haven’t just fed the troll. Well, bollocks, sometimes you just gotta flame.

I used to go on newsgroups a lot a few years ago. There were always trolls, and there were always people saying “Do not feed the trolls”. And then there were the sensible people who said nothing, kill filed the thread and the poster and got on having fun.

It didn’t work, because the troll kept turning up in threads that you’d be interested in. You couldn’t kill all the threads; you’d have nothing to read. In the end, you’d explode and flame the troll. He’d laugh, probably. But you’d feel better and that’s the main thing.

Well, here’s the deal. I’ve kill-filed the Troll, but he keeps appearing in threads all over the place. Everyone in my blogroll and aggregator is on three strikes or their out. Mention Dave Winer and his Dastardly Deeds three times and I unsubscribe from your blog. This holds for myself. If I mention Dave Winer twice more, I’ll quit blogging. Promise. (Unless I don’t; in which case I’ll delete that bit and see who notices. No one anyway, no one reads me).

You’re allowed to mention good things, e.g.

“Today, Dave Winer gave $10,000 to Alcolohics Anonymous as an apology for the deleted remark about Mark Pilgrim”,

or

“Today, Dave Winer told the world that he is going to work for IBM for free for a year to aid them in their syndication efforts. ‘BigCo, schmigCo’, said Dave, ‘All creatures great or small, everyone is welcome to the party. Well, if it’ll make Sam happy again.’ ”

or

“Today, Dave Winer went into a school in New York, and gave a talk on blogging to all the children. All the 13 year olds were helped to setup and use Blogger, the 14 year olds got MovableType installed for them free of charge, and the 15 year olds got Blosxom. The 16 year olds all got free copies of Radio Userland”

So, here is your mission, should you choose to except it. I want your thoughts on Catch-22. I want your interesting Python code. I want poetryfordbas.org. I want anything interesting. You’re in my blogroll because you write interesting stuff. I want you to stay in my blogroll.

This message will self-destructbe deleted in one hour.

Now I’ve written this, it sounds I bit like I’m trying to censor you. Think of it like an election. I’m giving you my requests so you I will vote for you. I’m not telling you to stop blogging. And you are welcome to continue writing about Dave Winer. I just won’t be listening. My fingers will be in my ears and I’ll be going “la la la la la”.

BBC NEWS | England | Berkshire | Police officers charged over thefts

bq. PC Pearce is charged with theft of a mountain bike, camcorder, DVD player, in-car tape player and CD player, between 1 February 2000 and 31 October 2002.

Git. I bet he stole my tape player too. In 1997, my car was broken into and my tape player was stolen. Amazingly, the police caught the bloke who did it (pissed out of his head, staggering around in his front garden, unable to get into his house, with a bag of car stereo’s over his shoulder). I went into the police station and identified the stereo, but was told it was needed as evidence for the trial. No problem.

However, months later, I’d heard nothing. I phoned the police and was told that they couldn’t find my stereo. They must have given it to someone else, the office on the phone said. I got a cheque from the police for the stereo.

Okay, the dates don’t match, and I’ve got no way of knowing for sure, but it could have been these guys.