Don over at Metroblogging DC, after being given a heads-up, posted a rather humorous note about one of his fellow Metrobloggers seen rather publicly noshing upon one of his so-called 'supermodels.' It seems said fellow Metroblogger, while apparently unembarrassed to be seen in such a public display, was rather shocked, SHOCKED! to find out that somebody had not only seen him (in the biergarten at Wonderland, which is hardly Hernando's Hideaway), they'd actually gotten notice back to somebody who could actually do something entertaining with such information.

Fellow Metroblogger whined to the appropriate person, and the post has disappeared from the indexes on Metroblogging DC's site, but for now you can still follow the link. In case the whole article goes missing, the contents are after the jump.

More ... (14:00, 27 July 2006)

After too much time as somebody else's technology adviser, I have decided to take the HDTV plunge myself. I wrote the original version of the following in response to a question from a friend who'd gotten an HDTV set for Christmas and didn't know how to go about getting HDTV programming on it. What follows is my usual sort of too-much-information dump on what is actually available and how you can get it, if local HDTV broadcasts aren't enough. Some of the information about local channels and cable service is specific to DC, but the general idea probably translates outside the Beltway.

More ... (18:00, 19 March 2006)

A long time ago I had a plan to write a little Mason app that would make photo albums for me based on image files and XML documents for short and long captions. I never did anything about it.

Along came Flickr. Problem solved.

link (10:45, 20 December 2005)

By contrast, here is the same car, a few months old, and clean:

I've looked up the Blue Book value. Indications aren't positive.

link (21:30, 22 May 2004)

What's the best thing to happen to a guy while he's broke, unemployed, and thinking of starting his own consulting business?

link (19:30, 22 May 2004)

Courtesy of the iSight on my PowerBook. I hadn't realized how ... odd ... the image can look.

link (14:30, 15 April 2004)

I recently migrated from SprintPCS to AT&T Wireless after being a Sprint customer for at least six or seven years. It might even be nine years now; I signed up so long ago I've forgotten when it even was. It's not that I think AT&T has the better network (I'm rather indifferent about that aspect these days), it's that SprintPCS -- in my experience more than any other carrier, but not by much -- is so focused on acquisition of new users that its service to existing ones suffers. If by "suffers" you mean "barely exists," that is.

AT&T Wireless appears to be slightly less byzantine, but only slightly. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

More ... (Midnight, Thursday, 8 April 2004)

I seem to have achieved some very quick notoriety thanks to my work on the Sony Ericsson GC82.

If you got here that way, feel free to look around, but there ain't much here. I'm pretty bad about the whole blogging thing. I keep losing interest.

And if you did get here that way, please check out those instructions and let me know if they work (or don't) for you, so I can work out any remaining kinks in the system.

link (A quarter to four, Wednesday 7 April 2004)

I was a freshman in high school in January of 1986. I remember being in the hallway between classes and passing Jonathon Silberlicht — a name I probably would have forgotten long ago otherwise — one day when he asked me what I thought about the Space Shuttle. He seemed rather glib, and I hadn't heard any news yet, so the weight of the question didn't sink in and I don't think I even bothered to say anything to him.

So within the next hour every TV in the school was on and we were being given an opportunity to talk about the Challenger disaster even as much of the news of what had happened and how was still trickling out. It was really significant, since that was the flight with Christa McAuliffe, and the launch had been in the news and somewhat relevant to high school students.

I remember quite a bit of the aftermath, when there were discussions of whether the Shuttle should have been designed with an escape hatch (chances are such an accident wouldn't have been survivable even if there were one), whether the Shuttle program would be restarted, the early talk of O-rings, all of it. I especially remember that President Reagan — if nothing else a great orator — had quoted from High Flight in his address to the nation, and since I'd been a night owl and a fan of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy I knew that poem well from the signoff on the Tulsa PBS affiliate (KOED).

Because of this I'm not looking forward to the inevitable statement from George W. Bush. Reagan's address was well-written and well-delivered. Bush will be lucky to have a good speech (I haven't been all that impressed so far) and it's going to be beyond his abilities, I fear, to carry it off with any sort of gravitas.

More ... (11:52 EST, Sat 1 February 2003)