Ian’s flying in from London, and he’s bought me a ticket to the MLS Cup in Seattle on Sunday. Going with him and Grant Neubauer; Ian and I have been watching the Sounders since they were pre-MLS and he was 8 or so. We’re going to have a ball.
Category Archives: Uncategorized
Ian’s two minutes of fame
That’s how he described this when he sent me the link
He came out to the Microsoft campus for a couple of days to shoot the video. The face of Google! I love it. Proud Dad.
Yup
“Civility” is code for “deference”.
RSS is the bomb
I have a facility in my web application to publish RSS feeds for the most “significant” events. I built it so that I wouldn’t have to build some way of integrating those events with lots of different mechanisms for lots of different users.
I demo’d it to the guy who’s taking over tech for the company I’ve been consulting to. Started by asking “do you know what RSS is?”. His response: “oh, yes, that’s really old tech” and made some analogy with a tape player in his old car.
So I fired up Zapier, and showed him how to take the feed and plug it into a Google Sheet, and into Slack so that his customer support people got pinged with new items. Oh. I could see his brain start to whir. I said something about “old tech, but still good tech”.
Thanks, @davewiner!
OK, this is weird
This morning after watching the debate, Shelley says “I’m going to send $25 to Amy Klobuchar”, and we have a discussion comparing her and Elizabeth Warren’s approach to governing.
Then I read Scripting News, as is my wont in the mornings, and lo and behold Dave has posted a message that he’s sent Klobuchar $25.
http://scripting.com/2019/10/17.html#a142939
The next blog entry he posts mentions that he had a bike accident a few weeks ago and broke a rib. I had a bike accident at the beginning of August and fractured two ribs, collapsed a lung, detached a nerve in my eye, broke a bone in my hand and separated my shoulder.
What’s going on? Am I living Dave’s life? Shelley accuses me of being the secret author of Scripting News.
Bland Liberalism
Enough with the bland liberalism
Dan Conover has had it with liberal pablum with no content.
Coup in Australia
In the ’70s, I remember Gough Whitlam, PM in Australia, was summarily dismissed by the Crown in the person of the Australian Governor-General. I never knew why it happened and just attributed it to some sort of internal politics.
Today I read that it was because Whitlam wanted to close down Pine Gap, the 5-eyes listening station in Oz, because the US and the British had been spying on his cabinet. A few discussions between the CIA and MI6, and voila.
Wow. Was it really that simple? Anybody know more?
Hong Kong
Ian expressed his alarm at the way the situation in Hong Kong is deteriorating. I think it’s just a matter of time before the Chinese government sends in troops, at which point most of the international business in HK will leave or go bankrupt.
The only pushback available is from the British government, who made the deal returning Hong Kong to the Chinese with some caveats. The only way they could credibly stand up would be with US backing. The US has already signaled directly to China that they won’t interfere (From the Independent, here), so the UK will at most splutter and at least stay silent, as they are now.
The perils of breaking alliances. Nobody now expects the US to back them up, so the biggest guy wins.
From the Café at the End of The World – [PANK]
https://pankmagazine.com/2017/09/13/cafe-end-world/
From a train running through the dreary French countryside.
The meaning of Free Speech
Very clear article.
Don’t use these free speech arguments ever again, Atlantic Monthly