07

1. Are Americans Sheep?. RE: Politics.
2. Web Credibility and Good Blogging. RE: Blogging. Webs.
3. Krispy Kreme v Dunkin Donuts. RE: A v B.
4. Finished My Commenting System. RE: Blogging.
5. Ann Coulter is Just Selling Books. RE: Politics.
6. Witch Hunting and McCarthyism. RE: Politics.
7. Expecting MRAM. RE: Computers.
8. I'm the Number One George Hernandez!. RE: Blogging.
9. A Genuine Moment. RE: Personal.
10. Bye Bye Barrios. RE: Politics. Poverty.
11. Link Dump. RE: Politics.

2003-07-02t16:53:30Z | RE: Politics.
Are Americans Sheep?

Funny how Tom O'Shea's site, TheDoctorWithin.com, which is usually about holistic medicine, has taken a political bent because of the Bush administration. His article The Door of Perception: Why Americans Will Believe Almost Anything is an interesting exercise in distrustful skepticism.

2003-07-02t17:53:34Z | RE: Blogging. Webs.
Web Credibility and Good Blogging

I thought I'd post summary notes on Web site credibility and good blogging. For the fun of it I've added notes on relevance to my own site.

Old notes [2000-04-28] from Cheskin.com.

1. Seals of approvals that reassure visitors that the site is secure.  I don't usually collect info from users.
2. The business' reputation for credibility.  Reputation on the web is earned by the experience repeated visits.
3. Ease of navigation.  I navigate through my site all the time so I work hard on reducing the number of clicks.
4. A clear description of the ordering process, with information on how to get help.  I don't sell anything.
5. Professional Web design.  My design follows function. Notice how Yahoo and Google have minimized most design elements for functionality.
6. State-of-the-art Web technology.  I'm close enough without cutting myself on that leading edge.

Stanford's WebCredibility.org.

1. Make it easy to verify the accuracy of the information on your site.  I give topic specific links almost everywhere on this site. Many sites don't do this. People forget the value of a bibliography.
2. Show that there's a real organization behind your site.  It's just me and I think I come across as myself as opposed to some "personal" sites where you can't tell if it's a real person giving a real opinion or a hired mouth. What's even worse are sites that make it difficult to ascertain what organization is really behind the site (esp. political sites).
3. Highlight the expertise in your organization and in the content and services you provide.  My site itself is proof of concept. Although I'm sure some of my content merely goes to show the shallowness of my expertise.
4. Show that honest and trustworthy people stand behind your site.  Where can I find some?
5. Make it easy to contact you.  I have a contact link on almost every page. Most sites are good at this one.
6. Design your site so it looks professional (or is appropriate for your purpose).  Ah the magic of CSS. I must admit that I have a fondness for sites that look as if they were written by typewriters (EG RFC 822).
7. Make your site easy to use -- and useful. I my site use it all the time.
8. Update your site's content often (at least show it's been reviewed recently). I hope that blogging will help highlight the parts of the site that are new or have changed. I must admit I do stuff all over my site and it never warrants a blog entry (EG: Esperanto).
9. Use restraint with any promotional content (e.g., ads, offers). Bwhah-ha-ha! (Am I laughing or bawling?) My site has no ads! Almost a shame because sometimes I feel as if I'm shamelessly plugging different products or services.
10. Avoid errors of all types, no matter how small they seem. My anal retentiveness gives me no choice but to obey this rule.

     

Jeremy Zawodny's blog post on The 10 Habits of Highly Annoying Bloggers. Numbers 6, 9, and 10 are just not worthy.

1. Bloggers who don't enable comments on their blogs. I'm not sure about this one. People can introvert can't they? What about all the non-blog content? Does everything need comments? Most comments are just noise. As an alternative to comments I'm considering tacking on to topics only the most interesting emails received.
2. Bloggers who rarely produce original content, instead simply aggregating links to other blogs that I already read. True. However I do appreciate people who post more obscure links. Also I think it fair to add a link to major events; this is helpful in the future to give the blog a sense of current events at the time. What I find annoying are links that give no explanation or preview about what the link is about.
3. Bloggers who spend more time blogging about blogging than anything else. Unless that blog is about blogging. I've been blogging a fair amount about blogging because I've been working on developing my own blogging system.
4. Bloggers who are FontBitches and don't care. It's amazing that any site doesn't let their users adjust the font size (EG CNN). Feel free to adjust your font size on most of my pages.
5. Bloggers who don't provide any "about me" info on their blog, or pointers to it elsewhere on their site. I like to know more about the people I'm reading. I've wasted so much time looking for an About on many sites. My About is on almost every page.
6. Bloggers who don't provide a blogroll. This habit isn't highly annoying and doesn't belong on this list. If a blogger likes another blog so much, it should be evident in the first blogger's posts. What's more annoying are people with huge blorolls of common blogs. For that, I could have gone to a blog lister like Technorati.com.
7. Bloggers who post excuses for not posting. I don't care if you're busy today. If you're not posting, fine. I'll just assume you had other things to do. True, true. There is enough noise content that we have to plow through as it is.
8. Bloggers who react but rarely act. Commenting on what other people say or do is interesting, but I'm annoyed by folks who never seem to have original material. (Yes, this is like #2 but it's not quite the same.) This is a subtle point. It is one thing to just link as opposed to linking while having an interesting comment about the link.
9. Bloggers who don't provide obvious RSS links for their blog. Yes, I know that RSS auto-discovery is great, but not all tools do it. I can hardly believe that anyone using RSS would not provide an obvious RSS link. I've never seen it myself so I don't think this habit belongs on this list.
10. Bloggers who have TrackBack but don't use it. As #9, I never seen someone who has TrackBack who wasn't using it, so I don't think this habit belongs on the list.

10 Tips on Writing the Living Web by Mark Bernstein at AListApart.com.

1. Write for a reason. Agreed. Why waste anyone's time? Less noise is better.
2. Write often. This has to be taken the right way. Write often enough so your writing gets better. This does not mean "write more crap".
3. Write tight. Amen.
4. Make good friends. Aw, do I have to? Professionals or people who like to be popular should do this. On the other hand there is nothing wrong with more friends, on-line or off.
5. Find good enemies. Ooh that's a toughie. I'm always on the look out for a worthy opponent. It's one of the best ways to learn. Some people don't get this and think that if we disagree, then it means that we don't like each other.
6. Let the story unfold. I like this one. I love a good Alfred Hitchcock or M. Night Shyamalan movie. I like the real time aspect of blogging. It is an opportunity to see a work in progress.
7. Stand up, speak out. Do it! On the other hand there are many things I like to explore that I don't know much about but would like to learn about. So do not be afraid to speak from ignorance, just make sure you acknowledge the shallowness of your point.
8. Be sexy. Uh-oh. I'm in trouble. The word sexy is very flexible. It does not necessarily mean sex. Even taking into account the different connotations, I'm afraid my writing style tends to deflate.
9. Use your archives. Not just blog archive but web archives. I do this as I see fit. On the other hand some people over link in their content: their content is so peppered with links that it makes their content almost illebible.
10. Relax! This is probably one of the more difficult tips, and is close ly tied to No. 2: Write often. It's like doing anything: in order for the music to flow from your being, you must know your tools and trust yourself.

2003-07-04t22:08:33Z | RE: A v B.
Krispy Kreme v Dunkin Donuts

I love putting things in my A v B section.

This one is so easy. It's not about the coffee... it's about the donuts.

The fine donuts of DunkinDonuts.com can't touch the heavenly creations of KrispyKreme.com. A DD KO of KK is impossible.

My vote is Krispy Kreme.

2003-07-14t04:11:47Z | RE: Blogging.
Finished My Commenting System

Bwa-ha-ha! At last my creation is complete! It took me a few days but I've completed my own commenting system.

There is a single thread for each topic. Each comment page also includes a link back to the original topic, which is a practice that should be done by all commenting systems but often isn't.

Here is the basic output of a comment:

3 of 10 | 2003-07-13t23:15 | By: George Hernandez (email)
Title of Comment
Body of comment. Body of comment. Body of comment. 

• 3 of 10. This indicates that the comment is the 3rd out of 10 comments on the topic. Some commenting systems give each comment their own number but I haven't seen a system that also tells you the total of number of comments too. Most commenting systems just include the number of pages of posts. I'm not expecting many comments but if I ever get lots of comments, then I'll just have to modify my system.
• 2003-07-13t23:15. A simple date and time stamp of when the comment was posted. It is the local time zone on my server. I didn't bother to code my system to save as Zulu time. This will probably bug me eventually.
• By: George Hernandez (email). If the author name was not provided, then "Anonymous" is shown. If the author URL was provided, then the author's name is also link to that URL. If the author email was provided, then a "mailto:" link is shown. Just for fun, I've made it so that the author "George Hernandez" is unique on the system, and shows up as bold.
• Title of Comment. This is required.
• Body of comment. This is required. I am not allowing fancy stuff like HTML in my comments. EG: People can type in URLs but it will appear as plain text instead of a link. I do however convert carriage returns to <br />s, and spaces into  s.

My commenting system also sends me an email whenever someone makes a comment. If for some reason I get too many comments, I'll have to turn this off and just check the database.

Other than the non-Zulu timestamp, the only other thing I regret about this commenting system is that it uses a Microsoft Access backend. I'd prefer something more robust such as SQL Server. However, I don't have that set up on my Web server. When I am absolutely certain that my startup company, Iclops.com, will succeed, then I'll put it on the company Web server and use SQL Server as my backend. :-)

For those who want to know, I do not work on a LAMP system (Linux; Apache; MySQL; PHP/Python/PERL). My current work environment is a Microsoft shop (Windows; IIS; SQL Server/Access; ASP).

Overall, I'd say I've met my requirements for a commenting system. Now I'm freed from depending on QuickTopic.com, thank you very much.

2003-07-16t16:23:12Z | RE: Politics.
Ann Coulter is Just Selling Books

Mike, one of my pro-Bush friends, described Ann Coulter as the perfect woman. He also included a link to 10 Questions for Ann Coulter, an article by Time which focuses on her book Treason. The following was my email reply.

Thank you for bringing up Ann Coulter. She is a good example of rhetorical extremity, much like Rush Limbaugh. People like razzle dazzle: it sells and if its popular, then people feel that it justifies running on their emotions instead of doing the hard and boring work of thinking about issues openly and more deeply.

I'm glad that Ann's extremism is making some conservatives like Andrew Sullivan look in the mirror. I suggest you also read his view on her book. .

Good thing some of us remember that some Democrats such as FDR, Truman, and JFK were better Americans than Ann will ever be. At least the buck stopped at Truman; with Bush Jr, the buck apparently stops elsewhere, like the CIA. It is so freaking weird that I trust the CIA more than the administration. They did their duty and accepted their role as scapegoat for Bush. However Bush is pushing it: If he messes with the ghosts more, I suspect that Bush will be in a world of hurt. (Remember that Bush has no memory of the Vietnam war.) I also love how Bush just tells us to move on like he has. What? Is he a Jedi Knight now? There aren't the droids we're looking for?

Ann's a proud McCarthyite which is an oxymoron, sort of like being a proud racist. While there are some problem elements, I'm tired of people who too easily accuse other Americans of being anti-American. There's a lot of work to be done and if you can't take a little constructive crticism on how things should be done, than you must think there is no room for improvement.

If, for example, we had been more diplomatic with getting allies to go into Iraq, we would have more international support now. As it is our forces, our family members, are there unilaterally for an indefinite period of time with little foreign support and "no-I'm-not-really-a-vet-but-I-like-to-blow-tax-money-for-jet-plane-photo-ops" Bush cuts the benefits of soldiers and the Army is spread dangerously thin and of course Bush tells Iraqis to "bring it on" which is immediately followed up by Iraqi attacks.

Let's also see if Bush takes any constructive criticism on nuclear Korea. It doesn't look like he has so far. Instead Bush does extreme things like make more nukes.

While we're at it let's see if Bush listens to any advice on the economy. Let's see War, tax cuts, and bad economy means what? Is it a $50 billion deficit in Bush math or is it more like $450 billion?

I think Bush would do better to just out right say that he wants Iraq to be to the Mid East what the Philippines is to Asia: autonomous but essentially a US post. This perpetual stream of lying crap is what turned off the UN, half of America, and half the planet.

Ann does more to divide and sell than to unite and solve problems.

-George

P.S. I was serious about asking for positive links on Bush or the current situation. Here's one: Winning After All. Please send me stuff so I won't feel like I'm getting reamed. Pro-Bush folks must be using Roofies because they're getting reamed too but don't know it.

I also just noticed that the Homeland Security Department is diversifying by starting up their "Predator Program". On one hand it's a good thing to target child pornographers, immigrant smugglers, etc., but does that mean that they've thoroughly done their primary job of establishing domestic security against terrorists? Have they basically said that the threat is minimal?

2003-07-17t16:42:31Z | RE: Politics.
Witch Hunting and McCarthyism

Nikos, one of my Conservative friends, made the following contribution to this recent thread on Ann Coulter.

I really like Anna Coulter. Typical of Time (showing it's true liberal bias) with it's catty comment "she has in no way mellowed with age" like she were some old grey haired battleaxe. Bottom line McCarthy was right... the country was filled with commies at all levels, and a good old fashion witch-hunt is just what was needed to root them varmints out. And when he was done (and only when he was done) the political establishment was right to get rid of him after he finished the dirty work. After all we would not want that kind of treatment to be used on decent US citizens... just the scumbags. Now that we have Muslim extremist in our midst trying to kill us, I would have no problem with another witch-hunt to root them out... just as long as the civil liberties were restored when they were done, just like we did last time.

Here was my reply.

Here is another person who used to like Ann Coulter but is now bitterly disappointed. He does a better job of discussing some of the complexities of the issue. Coulter can't even answer simple point blank questions. I keep asking for good Bush or conservative links, but please folks, there must be better stuff than either Bush or Coulter.

Defending McCarthyism and witch hunting? I wish you were joking, but I suspect that you are just plain clumsy and dangerously enthusiastic about finding potential terrorists.

Lynch mob justice is fine if you're in the lynch mob, but heaven forbid if you're a Jew in Germany of WWII, or an nth generation Japanese American in America of WWII, or the innocent in The Ox-Bow Incident movie, or an accused witch in a Monty Python movie, or had your career ruined by McCarthy black listing, or an immigrant indefinitely detained at Guantanamo Bay where the US military can accuse, try, and execute you without anyone ever knowing.

I'm curious. Here's a little survey for you folks: If you knew that one baby in a batch of 40 babies would grow up to be a bin Laden, and you could either do nothing or kill the whole batch, then what would you choose? If your son Paris was prophesied to bring your city of Troy down in flames, would you kill him?

I don't like giving up laws and due process so easily. That's what got us into Iraq unilaterally. I don't like breaking simple ethical rules such as two wrongs don't make a right. Why did Bush have to lie to do good things?

2003-07-17t17:50:00Z | Link | RE: Computers.
Expecting MRAM

I've known about MRAM for a while but now we have release dates of roughly 2005!

Magnetoresistive RAM uses magnetic states instead of electrical charges to store data. This is essentially the same physics of analog audio tapes, video tapes, and hard drives. The key difference between RAM and regular (electrical) RAM is that MRAM retains its data when the power is off whereas regular RAM forgets everything without power. This should enable computers to start up much more quickly. MRAM also has the potential to by 6x or more faster than SRAM, as well as being very dense and thus small.

2003-07-17t20:45:13Z | RE: Blogging.
I'm the Number One George Hernandez!

Most of my pages have a footer that says "georgehernandez.com". Last month a Google search for "George Hernandez" would bring me up on the 4th page with a link to my section on Video. I don't know why Google singled out my video page.

Last month I changed my footer to include "George Hernandez". So a search for me produces much better results.

• Google returns my home page as the first link on the first page!
• Yahoo returns my home page as the first link on the first page!
• MetaCrawler returns my home page as the first link on the first page!
• MSN brings up my Video page as the first link on the first page.
• Ask brings up my XML page as the 9th link on the second page.
• Technorati shows no incoming links. Pretty pathetic but its good for perspective.

2003-07-25t11:47:16Z | RE: Personal.
A Genuine Moment

If I didn't have this chain of thought, I would have gone back to sleep. Instead, as the thought progressed, it became clear that I had to pull myself out of bed and write about because it had to be done. So I left my two children in the bed. (Thank goodness they're still asleep). Then I went in here, unfolded my laptop, plugged it in, and booted it up. Dang thing took way too long. Make me want MRAM again. At least my old habit of keeping pen and paper everywhere for these moments was a solution that provided the possibility for nearly instantaneous thought capture. Then again I could have left my computer on like I usually do.

I was thinking about genuine moments. Everyone loves genuine moments, critical points. It's like you're just going along and then all of the sudden, you have a genuine moment... time slows... you hold your breath... your mind bumps, your heart skips a beat, you barely have time to say "oh shit this is it",... the moment goes on for a bit... you revel in it... then regular time presumes. You're back in regular life. That memory of genuine moments was what pulled me out of bed this morning.

Those moments are the gist of life. Those are the moments that we want to replay in our memories. Those are the moments that every creator wants to capture. In a recording, you rewind and replay those moments. In writing, you reread that paragraph. In drawn art, you look and look and look. In performing, you try to re-do it over and over again. In viewing live art, it's just like I described: waiting, coming, being, going, and gone. A creator tries to capture or recreate those moments: that is what makes the repitition, the reworking, the practice all worth while.

My memory of writing my journal was that I would try so hard to only write genuine moments. The best journaling was when I was having a moment, and I had the opportunity to write it down immediately because, if I was lucky, the writing would help continue the moment, or if I was somewhat less lucky but still fortunate, then I  had the chance to capture the moment.

Back when I was into heavy journaling, I knew, as I wrote, when I was capturing a genuine moment, and when I was just writing. There is nothing wrong with "just writing" or "just conversation" —regular content is the norm— but it is possible to have more genuine moments. One of my favorite quotes is "Do all your work as though you had a thousand years to live, and as you would if you knew you must die tomorrow." [By Mother Ann Lee, a Shaker of Hancock, MA] A person who frequently has genuine moments is gifted.

I often forget about genuine moments, especially when life get chaotic. That is why it is important to have the discipline, the faith, to maintain habits that foster genuine moments.

2003-07-28t14:54:55Z | RE: Politics. Poverty.
Bye Bye Barrios

I heard on the radio this morning that Chicago has significantly reduced the number of the concentrated poor. There seemed to be a number of causes but the one that seemed most significant was the reduction in the number of public housing projects, which we in Chicago refer to as the "Projects". Poor people need access to cheap housing but everyone needs to break the cycle of poverty.

Concentrating the poor into Projects or barrios or shanty towns, or whatever you call it is a bad idea. The concentrated poor develop tunnel vision and all the world seems poor and hopeless. It's like putting on dark glasses that colors everything poor. People living in those areas form a mentality, a life style, a habit of poverty.

Sweeping the poor under the rug to keep them out of sight and mind is a bad idea. The segregation dehumanizes the lower class and insulates the other classes, thus widening the class gap even further. Segregation, whether by economic class, race, or education, will occur naturally—it does not need to be forced upon people.

The politically minded will say that these ideas are left, liberal, socialist, or even communist. However even the right and the conservatives have moral and ethical obligations to reduce poverty, homelessness, and hunger. Helping the bottom does not harm those in the middle or the top, so why not do it? Take tax cuts for example. Tax cuts for the rich is fine. Some on the right say that the poor make virtually no tax contribution. So then why not give tax cuts to the poor as well? How does helping the bottom harm those in the middle or the top? [I'm sorry I did not intend to make this a political or anti-Bush post but it just came naturally.]

I think the Cold War had such a great effect of cementing the concept of Capitalism v Communism, that people forget that we it is OK to have social services. This does not mean that we go all out social services but certainly we can make good choices. Concentrating the poor into Projects is a bad idea, but Chicago's alternative of Section 8 funding that allows people to live elsewhere is a good idea.

2003-07-28t18:51:36Z | RE: Politics.
Link Dump

There will be no American Empire. Emmanuel Todd. Don't take this the wrong way: just use it to improve the current situation.

Conservatism: resistance to change, simplistic black and white ethics, and the acceptance of inequality. I'm sure the conservatives will love this one.