Q Daily News, XML-style

<?xml version="1.0" ?>

<title>Q Daily News</title>

<description>random ramblings from a geek doctor</description>

<webmaster>q@queso.com</webmaster>

<item>

<title>To Shuffle now or to Shuffle later?</title>

<description>So, say that I'm in the market to buy a half-dozen iPod Shuffles sometime in the next six weeks -- I hadn't decided between the 512 Mb ($99) or 1 Gb ($129) models, but nonetheless, a bunch of 'em. And then, say that there's been a rumor since June that there might be an upgrade coming to the iPod Shuffle line, an upgrade that you'd imagine will likely mean that the current models will disappear, and might mean that the new models will be priced differently. If you were me, would you buy now, or wait to see what happens?</description>

</item>

<item>

<title>Shuttle pitstop in Barksdale</title>

<description><div class="imageright"><a href="http://www.shreveporttimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050819/NEWS/50819009"><img src="http://q.queso.com/images/shuttle_barksdale_small.jpg" width="87" height="100" alt="shuttle ferried into barksdale, la" /></a></div> Greg Pearson, of the Shreveport Times, captured an incredibly cool image of the Space Shuttle being ferried into Barksdale Air Force Base yesterday; the shot illustrates <a href="http://www.shreveporttimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050819/NEWS/50819009">the Times article about NASA choosing to pit stop in Louisiana</a> to avoid bad weather on the flight back to Cape Canaveral, Florida. Both the picture and <a href="http://www.shreveporttimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050820/NEWS01/508200366/1002/NEWS">a related article about the excitement surrounding the unexpected visit</a> reminded me about the few times that a Shuttle <a href="http://science.ksc.nasa.gov/shuttle/technology/sts-newsref/sts-cron.html">similarly</a> <a href="http://www.chron.com/content/interactive/space/archives/88/881209.html">visited</a> San Antonio when I was a kid, and how many people knew exactly when and where the 747 and Shuttle would appear in the sky to try to catch a glimpse. (We even had a decent poor-man's alternative, too -- the 747s used to spend a little time at the Boeing maintenance facility on the edge of the city airport property, and you could drive by to take a look whenever they were in town. Sure, they're just 747s, but the huge tailfin stabilizers and the NASA logo were pretty cool to see in little ol' San Antonio!)</description>

</item>

<item>

<title>Would that make Jesus cappellini?</title>

<description>I love it -- in response to the <a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20040714030329/http://www.drdino.com/Ministry/250k/index.jsp">challenge</a> offered up by Kent Hovind, wherein he'll give $250,000 to anyone who can empirically prove the theory of evolution, Xeni Jardin and Jason Kottke have <a href="http://www.boingboing.net/2005/08/19/boing_boings_250000_.html">offered up</a> a combined <a href="http://www.kottke.org/remainder/05/08/9237.html">half million</a> to anyone who can prove that Jesus is not the son of the <a href="http://www.venganza.org/">Flying Spaghetti Monster</a>. Seems reasonable. (Oh, and you'll note that I've left off the "Dr." title for Hovind, as his <a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20010816220051/http:/www.drdino.com/FAQs/FAQmisc13.jsp">claim</a> to the title is <a href="http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/credentials.html">a Ph.D. in "science education" from a known diploma mill</a>, and apparently, a <a href="http://home.austarnet.com.au/stear/bartelt_dissertation_on_hovind_thesis.htm">godawful thesis</a> to go along with it.)</description>

</item>

<item>

<title>Swimming update</title>

<description>Today marked a milestone -- the first day that I swam two miles in a single workout. For the past month, my goal workouts have been 10 sets of 300 yards, for a total of 3,000 yards or 1.7 miles; about two weeks ago, I vowed to convert the last set of 300 to a 400, and then when that felt fine, to do the same for the second-to-last set, and so on. Today was the day that I aimed to move up to three sets of 400 at the end, for a total of 3,300 yards, but at the end of that, I still felt good and decided to add an eleventh set, also a 400. That put me at 3,700 yards total, or 2.1 miles -- and that felt great. (It also feels good that I passed the two-marathon mark at the end of last week.) This week also made me remember the whole slow/fast pool thing from the swimming meet pools of my childhood. I normally work out at a pool that's in a college gym just next door to my hospital, but the whole gym is closed for three weeks for pre-schoolyear maintenance. That put me in my local pool this week, and after a few laps, I realized that the pool feels just plain slow. Part of it is certainly the lane lines that are anchored a little above the waterline at the ends of the pool, allowing pretty big waves to make their way from lane to lane; I'm sure that there are other reasons, but swimming there is definitely a little more of a struggle. I'm anxious to get back into the college gym pool to see if my suspicions are correct.</description>

</item>

<item>

<description>Oh, wow -- with the unleashing of <a href="http://www.rss3.org/">RSS 3.0</a>, there are sure to be some interesting fireworks. (For those of you who don't know what I'm talking about, you should thank goodness that you have lives and normal blood pressures.)</description>

</item>

<item>

<title>NASCARs in Hotlanta</title>

<description><div class="imageright"><a href="http://flickr.com/photos/queso/33759724/in/set-748789/"><img src="http://q.queso.com/images/nascar_me_99.jpg" width="250" height="181" alt="me and nascar #99" /></a></div> After this past weekend, I can officially check something off of my lifetime to-do list: push a NASCAR well over 100 on a regulation track. Holy crap, was that fun. The story is this: as a celebration of my brother-in-law John's 30th birthday, my sister planned an elaborate trip for eight of us to go to Atlanta and have a blast. The plan was for us to fly down on Friday, get up early Saturday morning and make our way to the <a href="http://www.atlantamotorspeedway.com/">Atlanta Motor Speedway</a> to spend a few hours with the NASCARs, bolt off to a Braves game, enjoy dinner at a good steakhouse, and then fly back Sunday. Throughout the week beforehand, a not-insignificant number of emails flew back and forth between the eight of us, some frothing with excitement at the NASCAR opportunity and others hesitantly expressing amazement that it's even legal for schmucks like us to be put behind the wheel of <a href="http://auto.howstuffworks.com/question588.htm">750-horsepower beasts of cars</a>. (Of course, there was also one or two that mocked the New Yorker of the group who never bothered to get a driver's license, or to learn how to drive for that matter, and thus had to be excluded from the NASCAR part of the weekend.) <div class="imageleft"><a href="http://flickr.com/photos/queso/33759506/in/set-748789/"><img src="http://q.queso.com/images/nascar_warning.jpg" width="100" height="137" alt="nascar dashboard warning" /></a></div> Due to some roadwork (and the fact that the Atlanta Motor Speedway isn't anywhere near Atlanta!), we ended up being about 20 minutes late getting to <a href="http://www.tospeed.com/">the racing school</a>, and walked into a room of about 50 people who were all there to drive the cars. There was a half-hour lecture, a quick fitting for our racing suits and helmets, and then we were all given a van tour of the track (during which we learned that not only were there taped-down marks on the track to help us find the best course, but that the actual NASCAR drivers prefer having the marks on the track during races to help them out too!). After that, we were all put into cars with instructors riding shotgun to give us four-lap lessons; we made no friends by, after being late, then being the first people pulled out onto the track. (It turns out that my sister had amazingly arranged with them to help get us to the Braves game on time!) That session was when I learned the following things: (a) NASCARs have toggle switches instead of ignition keys, are louder than you think by an order of magnitude, and don't have speedometers; (b) the only time that a NASCAR is out of fourth gear is when it's accelerating up pit row; and (c) instructors aren't scared to grab the wheel with one hand and redirect the car at 80 miles and hour, all while flicking the ash off of their cigarettes with their other hand. <div class="imageright"><a href="http://flickr.com/photos/queso/33759289/in/set-748789/"><img src="http://q.queso.com/images/nascar_everyone_8.jpg" width="250" height="145" alt="all of us with dale jr's car" /></a></div> After waiting for the other students to run through their training sessions with the instructors, we were given the go-ahead to climb into our cars sans instructors and pull out onto the track. During the training, we were asked to keep the cars around 3,000 RPM (which ended up translating into around 70 or 75 miles an hour); once out on the track solo, there weren't any limits to what we could do. I went out with my older brother, my brother-in-law, and his older brother, and it quickly became clear that with youth came stupidity. John and I gunned it right from the start, pushing the cars hard on the straightaways and only slightly less hard in the turns -- by the end of our 15 laps, we both ended up lapping our older brothers one or two times. It was a total blast, through and through. There were four cameras in every car, so once we were all done, we went to the media trailer to buy the DVDs with the footage of our races -- just to learn that my sister had again taken care of everything, having arranged for the DVDs to be shipped overnight to their New York apartment so she could distribute them to everyone herself. (In the mean time, I have <a href="http://flickr.com/photos/queso/sets/748789/">a few pictures of the outing up on Flickr.</a>) We rushed back into Atlanta and enjoyed a Braves victory, relaxed at our hotel for a little bit, <a href="http://www.frommers.com/destinations/atlanta/D35767.html">ate a fabulous steak dinner</a>, slapped each other around at ESPN Zone for a little bit, and crashed hard. All in all, it was an awesome mini-vacation, and I'm itching to figure out how I can work another trip to Speedtech racing school into the next few years!</description>

</item>

<item>

<title>The polluted commons of Wikipedia</title>

<description>Over in the little kingdom of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/">Wikipedia</a>, a war is brewing that's just pissing me off. There's <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Sleepnomore">a specific user</a> who seems to have <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Sleepnomore">an enormous, overarching hatred of Ajax</a> (the web development technology encompassing asynchronous JavaScript, the Document Object Model, and DHTML), and in the furtherance of his hatred, appears to be absolutely hellbent on pissing all over everything related to it on Wikipedia. (He even chose his name to be a pun on the name of a well-known user who is proficient in Ajax technologies.) The user has been involved in huge revert wars on the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ajax_%28programming%29">Ajax article itself</a>, and recently has also started monomaniacally adding a critical section to <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesse_James_Garrett">the page of Jesse James Garrett</a> (the author of the <a href="http://www.adaptivepath.com/publications/essays/archives/000385.php">article coining the Ajax name</a>). Whenever anyone challenges his edits, the user throws a tantrum, makes wild accusations, and reverts the page to the last version he had defaced. (For example, when I <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Jesse_James_Garrett&oldid=20950762">edited his section</a> to remove a falsely-attributed quote, remove a bit of bile, and delete a pointedly unbiased link to the defacer's own website, he just <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Jesse_James_Garrett&diff=20965793&oldid=20950762">called my edits "vandalism" and reverted them</a>.) As of today, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Zscout370#24SevenOffice">he's managed to get an administrator to lock both pages from further edits</a>, freezing them in a state that includes his vomitus. To me, this highlights my biggest frustration with Wikipedia -- that in an effort to allow communal access and editing of the encyclopedia, it makes the entire product susceptible to childish wailing and harrassment, and only pages that become high-profile develop enough community defense and generate enough community discussion to keep the miscreants at bay. When the pages aren't high enough profile, such as the the case with the pages on Ajax and Jesse James Garrett, users with grudges might be able to pull the wool over the eyes of a gullible administrator and get him or her to intervene, lock the pages, and prevent anyone else from having an opinion. It's all just screwed up beyond belief. What can you do? I'm not all that sure. For now, you can go over to the relevant pages -- the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Jesse_James_Garrett">discussion page on the Jesse James Garrett article</a>, the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Ajax_%28programming%29">discussion page on the Ajax article</a>, and the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Zscout370#24SevenOffice">talk page for the admin user who locked the pages</a> -- and engage in reasoned discourse on why this whole mess is stupid. Perhaps logic and discussion might help (although I doubt it, since I've been trying for a week or two without much success). If that doesn't work, perhaps others can try to bring this in front of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Arbitration">the arbitration committee over at Wikipedia</a>, since I'm rapidly losing both the energy and the interest in saving Wikipedia from itself. Maybe someone else has a better answer, though; I certainly don't. Update: a nice user dropped me an email that comments were totally broken; it's fixed now.</description>

</item>

<item>

<title>Printr!</title>

<description>It looks like the time is (finally) just around the corner when <a href="http://www.powazek.com/2005/08/000535.html">I'll be able to order photo prints from Flickr</a>! (I don't think I'm going too far out on a limb saying that <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/fraying/33034769/in/set-734081/">this photo</a> provides the not-so-subtle hint <a href="http://qoop.com/">Qoop</a> will be providing the printing services.) I love <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/queso/">Flickr</a> to death, and am generally unfazed by downloading high-res versions of pictures I like and printing them on <a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B0002YH8AY/qdailynews?creative=327641&camp=14573&link_code=as1">our home inkjet</a>. But the lack of a click-print-and-ship service has been the one thing that's stood in the way of me converting friends to the goodness of Flickr -- a good half of the people I coax into joining look at me, say "but how do I order prints?", and leave for the safety of <strike>Ofoto</strike> Kodak EasyShare Gallery. It's not too surprising that being able to order prints is the killer app of the online photo industry, and soon, Flickr will be on the same playing field as the big boys.</description>

</item>

<item>

<title>A reflection on the Space Shuttle program</title>

<description>I finally got around to reading <a href="http://www.idlewords.com/2005/08/a_rocket_to_nowhere.htm">Maciej's lament of the Space Shuttle Program</a> tonight, and it pains me to say that there's a lot of wisdom in his observations. As my three regular readers know, I'm a downright romantic when it comes to space flight, and even more so when it comes to manned space flight. (Hell, if it wasn't essentially mandatory that you join the Air Force in order to be granted the privilege of strapping yourself to a huge bomb and being ramrodded into low earth orbit, I might be up there myself right now.) All that being said, I can definitely wrap my head around the idea that spending half our annual space budget on getting the Shuttle in and out of orbit safely (or unsafely, as the case may be) isn't all that logical, and is done at the detriment of being able to spend money on unmanned missions that might have a much higher scientific yield. Unfortunately, we now have an incredibly self-referential system whereby the Shuttle and the International Space Station justify each others' existences without necessarily having strong independent reasons for hurtling around Earth, so it's going to be that much harder to back off on pouring time, money, and effort into both programs. (Note that my feeling is based on taking at face value a lot of what Maciej says about the process by which the Shuttle system was designed; his use of <a href="http://del.icio.us/maciej/shuttle/">an unenumerated, 51-item del.icio.us link list</a> as his sourcelist makes it reasonably tough to verify every claim. But he seems trustworthy enough!)</description>

</item>

<item>

<title>Ibrahim Ferrer, 1927-2005</title>

<description>Well, isn't this sad news: <a href="http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/pop/apmusic_story.asp?category=1403&slug=Obit%20Ferrer">Ibrahim Ferrer died at the age of 78 today</a>, having been in declining health for the past few months. Ferrer was one of the most recognizable lead voices of <a href="http://www.pbs.org/buenavista/">Buena Vista Social Club</a>, and will likely always be one of my favorite musicians. Shannon and I were fortunate to get to see him at the Beacon in New York back in November of 2001, one of the more memorable concerts in my life. Sadly, our government didn't see Ferrer in the same light, <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/3464801.stm">denying him a visa last year</a> (calling it "detrimental to the interests of the United States" to let Ferrer into the country) and thus preventing him from accepting a Grammy award. Ibrahim, you will be missed.</description>

</item>

</channel>

</rss>