Hippo, birdie, two ewes...

...to bedlamhouse!!! Have a great one!!

I can haz conference plz?

Gnomedex, in Seattle, looks potentially interesting for next year. I'm not really the target demographic -- I'm a researcher, not a start-up looking for money or PR. Some of my web-related schemes, though...

Obviously, it's all just an excuse to get more time in the Seattle area, and it's out of the question for this year in any case. So that gives me a year to come up with a good excuse to go. Hmm.

(From O'Reilly Radar.) Anyone know about other conferences in Seattle in the web 2.0/social software/open source area?

Of shoes and...

Last weekend I went looking for shoes. I'm trying to replace my Keen hiking boots, which are comfortable, give me good ankle support, look good enough for everyday wear at the office, and are wearing out. I'm on my second pair, and I'm starting to fear that they've been discontinued.

I did, however, find a pair of Merrell slip-ons on sale at REI that were sufficiently cheap ($65 or so) and fit well enough that I decided to give them a try. Glad I did. I've worn them on a couple of walks now with no problems. And they look like dress shoes, so they'll be perfect for travel. All I have to add is an ankle brace or two.

Along the way I picked up two different shoulder bags: an Eagle Creek sidekick at REI, and a smaller, vertically-oriented Eagle Creek bag at Any Mountain. I've been using a sidekick for a good many years now, but it's undergone major revisions; this is essentially a whole new bag now. At first I thought it wasn't going to hold all my stuff; the front compartment (where I keep my wallet, checkbook, changepurse, and business cards) has gotten wider but lost its internal pockets. But things still fit, and fit better, if I put the cards and changepurse next to the wallet and checkbook.

The back compartment has acquired pockets for camera (looks like it's actually designed for glasses, but I don't need to pack those), cellphone, and pens. The pile of stuff that I used to keep in the front zipper pocket -- things like the backpacker's chopsticks, titanium spork, tape measure, and dental floss -- pile nicely in the bottom because the camera and phone are out of the way. The outside flap pocket is gone, but I can now use the front zipper pocket for other peoples' cards.

It's a little smaller, and sleeker. Good bag for everyday, though possibly a little too small. There still isn't room for everything I used to carry in the old one, but I wanted to cut down on the weight anyway.

The vertical bag was an experiment; I still want something I can slip into my backpack next to the CPAP for air travel, and that opens from the top so that I can get at things without taking it all the way out. It's a little small, but holds the essentials.

(ETA: have verified that the sidekick fits nicely across the top of the backpack, with enough headroom for the CPAP if I'm careful not to leave too much stuff lying at the bottom. Would need to be checked before travel, since I do leave a lot of stuff down there. Have also verified that the sidekick will hold an Asus Eee, but only with major and inconvenient re-arranging of wallet and change purse.)

I looked at a couple of larger vertical bags: the Eagle Creek guide bag and something similar from REI. Both were too wide to fit in the backpack, and neither had a detachable strap with D-rings. Maybe in another year or so Eagle Creek will redesign the guide bag? At this point I can wait.

Still looking for decent-looking, all-leather, mid-height hiking boots with wide toes. The Keen were perfect, damnit.

Note to NBC: you don't own the Olympics

Reality Check | Ephraim Schwartz | InfoWorld | NBC doesn't own the Olympics, we do | August 9, 2008 06:46 AM | Ephraim Schwartz

To NBC, MSNBC, CNBC and other commercial broadcasters around the world I say, figure out another way to make money. The airwaves, the Internet airwaves at least, belong to us.

It wasn't the opening ceremonies at the Olympics that was thrilling but rather reading the accounts of the grass roots collaborative efforts of people around the world doing an end run around the commercial sites who claimed to own the rights to broadcast the event by sharing, often over YouTube, videos of the Games.

People were not content to watch a sanitized, tape delayed version of a major global event and when YouTube owners Google played the subservient pawn in NBC's commercial endeavors we witnessed new videos pop up just as fast as they could shut down the old. And when that didn’t work users were sharing links across Twitter and other collaborative sites.

The New York Times quoted Gary Zenkel, the president of NBC Olympics, as saying "we have a billion dollars worth of revenue at stake here, so that means we're not public television, for better or worse."

Well it is going to be worse.

Putting my wife on a pedestal

Or at least a low platform. One of the projects that's been in progress, on and off, for the last couple of weeks here at the Starport has been raising Colleen's chair in the living room a couple of inches, to make it easier to get out of.

The final version consists of a 4' by 3' piece of mahogany plywood sitting on three pieces of redwood 2x4. There's a small block of 2x4 near the front to keep the chair from slipping backward -- it's a recliner, and has to stay far enough out from the wall to allow it to lean back.

Anyway, tonight being a Wednesday, we finally had enough weak minds strong backs to juggle heavy pieces of furniture, and got it done. Happy Cat; tired but happy Bear.