Cox Crow

CoolTown Studios and Larry Felton both just mentioned Glenwood Park. I think it’s kind of funny when two things coincide like that, even if only in the sites I read.

Have you noticed that when you’re involved with something, you see it everywhere?

RFC 793: Transmission Control Protocol:

[B]e conservative in what you do, be liberal in what you accept from others.

The Washington Post reports on radio advertisements which complain about Teresa Heinz-Kerry categorizing herself as an African-American.

Another ad attacks Teresa Heinz Kerry, who, at the Democratic convention last month cited her birth and upbringing in Mozambique and who has described herself as African American. In the radio commercial, the announcer says: “His wife says she’s an African American. While technically true, I don’t believe a white woman, raised in Africa, surrounded by servants, qualifies.”

Look, if you want to differentiate between people based on the amount of melanin in their skin, or by their ethnic origin, then don’t use a geographic category. That just makes you a moron.

Netcraft has an excellent interview with Bruce Schneier.

Denise Howell and 37Signals both point out photo.stamps.com. So does snapfish. Since Camp Binky just wrapped up, we have some pictures that need to go on stamps to the grandparents.

Perfect timing.

um, why is WordPress’s default template ugly?

I’ve given up Radio Userland’s aggregator. I had to do it cold turkey, but I did it. I tried SharpReader for a week, and while I like some of the features, like 410 GONE support, it’s much faster to read the headlines in a single long scroll than it is to click about. Same thing with Newzcrawler (and the Ouchlook integration issues), NetNewsWire, and FeedDemon. They’re all good for a leisurely read every now and again, but when you’re scanning and deleting lots of lines, they’re just too much work.

On the recommendation of several people, I’m trying Bloglines. It’s nice. It’s fast. And it fails when the network does.

Using a 56kb dial-up connection, I really notice failures in the web applications which assume network state will persist, or which have, under other circumstances, minor usability flaws.

Take JetBlue‘s ticketing process for example. All of the pages are POSTs, and don’t persist in cache, so using the browser’s back button could reissue the transaction. This is not something you want when you’re spending $800 on non-refundable tickets. This failure is aggravated when there’s a problem with the credit card, either because their systems fail or you mistype a number; they tell you to go back, but it’s not that easy. And these are nothing compared to your line dropping in the middle of a transaction like picking seats.

Song shows you the seats available on the flight before you begin the purchase, so if that’s important, you can eliminate flights with a paucity of seats.

• JetBlue has better rates. Song has iPods.
• JetBlue doesn’t show seats before you buy. Song does.

On Monday I upgraded my account at Pair Networks to include MySQL and PHP support. It just incidentally includes more disk space. My storage over-usage fees have been about the same as the pricing for the new features, so I should have done this many moons ago.

About 5 minutes ago, I installed WordPress. When it works, this shit is easy.

One thing I don’t like, and will have to address, are the post-id-based URIs.

Yahoo sends MapQuest packing:

Yahoo said Wednesday that it has stopped using AOL Time Warner online street-finder unit MapQuest and has instead created its own mapping service.
Yahoo’s service, which continues to look and operate like the one powered by MapQuest, is built on data providecnd by Navigation Technologies, Geographic Data Technology, and software application providers Telcontar and Sagent Technology.