KiYun's Tale

The Empty Ocean

Thu, 28 Oct 2004 15:19:42 GMT

Way back last May I mentioned putting The Empty Ocean on my list of books to read, and I have just finished it. The tale, my friends, is bleak and depressing, but I hope that we can still do something about matters. I am a consumer of fish and other seafood products, and I hope to remain so, but the devastation to sea stocks perhaps means that our children will not have the same pleasure. Apparently we treat marine life the way we treat any other resource--which means that we apply all of our skill, energy and technology into harvesting it until it is gone. Catches everywhere are decreasing (even precipitously in places) despite techniques that can harvest fish from thousands of cubic miles of ocean at a time. Read The Empty Ocean to learn about this story that is not nearly well enough known.

Electoral Vote Predictor 2004

Sat, 23 Oct 2004 17:38:45 GMT

The Electoral Vote Predictor 2004 is an excellent resource for watching what's happening with the electoral vote in this year's presidential election. As everyone knows, Al Gore won the popular vote, but George W. Bush won the electoral vote. The site has lots of useful information about the electoral college, polling and politics in general.

Back in action

Sat, 23 Oct 2004 16:42:32 GMT

After a nearly year-long hiatus, I've returned to the blogging world.

Amazon Hacks

Sat, 31 Jan 2004 15:49:37 GMT

Apparently, there's a whole industry around leveraging Amazon.com's name, starting from using Amazon's database and generating referral fees to working with Amazon's special features like recommendations and Wish Lists. I've ordered my copy of this book.

SnipURL

Sat, 31 Jan 2004 14:45:37 GMT

SnipURL is another service to turn long URLs into short URLs (that are easier to type and that don't wrap in email messages), but SnipURL is the coolest one so far. SnipURL has a bunch of extra features such as counting the number of hits to a snipped URL and easily importing data into Excel.

Perhaps not all is bleak

Sat, 31 Jan 2004 03:25:09 GMT

Robert Reich has two articles that contain some hope for those of us who fear the spectre of outsourcing. The first, "Nice Work If You Can Get It," suggests that most of the recent job losses are due to the recession and not to jobs moving abroad (I can believe that) and that "symbolic analysts" will long continue to thrive. The second, "High-Tech Jobs Are Going Abroad! But That's Okay," suggests that when high-tech jobs do move abroad, they only help the U.S. in the long run by increasing the market for innovation and innovators.

Try RealRhapsody

Sat, 31 Jan 2004 01:47:51 GMT

I've blogged about Rhapsody before. If you're connected to the Internet most of the time, as I am, then a program like Rhapsody is a great deal, because it lets you listen to as much music as you want for a low monthly cost. Sure, it costs more to buy tracks and save them to your computer, but most of the time, I don't bother with that. There's too much music in the world to buy all of it.

Amazon.com Associates Program

Sat, 31 Jan 2004 01:26:00 GMT

Today I joined the Amazon.com Associates Program, which threatens to make me rich. See, if I link to products on Amazon.com and convince my flock of readers to click on those links and buy the products, then I get a few cents now and then. Actually, the Associates Program is far more than that, but that's all I managed to glean in the few minutes before I hurriedly updated all the Amazon.com links in my existing blog entries.

Bigger Disk

Mon, 12 Jan 2004 17:28:08 GMT

Wow. I knew the day would come when we'd have a terabyte of storage, but I never imagined that it would be packaged so conveniently. I want one. I don't need one, but it'd be cool to say, "Yeah, there's my terabyte."

DynDNS

Tue, 16 Dec 2003 13:19:38 GMT

Tim Bray plugs DynDNS.org. Thought I'd do the same. I've been using it for just a few weeks. It seems to work well, and you can't beat free. I'm not hosting anything for public consumption from my home computers (yet), but DynDNS gives me access to my personal Scopeware Server.

The Matrix Revolutions

Mon, 24 Nov 2003 13:24:57 GMT

Saw The Matrix Revolutions yesterday with Hanju. I knew it wasn't going to be very good, but I had to see how everything ends. Well, it's just plain awful, but if you go knowing that its only redeeming quality is its special effects, then it's tolerable. I loved the fight scene at the Merovingian's Club, which hearkens back to a similar scene in the original Matrix (the one where Trinity and Neo enter the heavily guarded building where the agents are holding Morpheus). Otherwise, I hated the incredibly drawn-out death scenes and other melodrama in Revolutions.

Mon, 24 Nov 2003 13:01:42 GMT

Today is the first day of the rest of my life. Meaning that I'm looking for work. My old company laid off several people to cut costs. Truthfully, I understand why they did it, and I'm not bitter or anything like that. I'm looking forward to doing something new. I'd just like to know what it is!

ProFont for Windows, Mac, Linux

Fri, 07 Nov 2003 17:22:24 GMT

A small monospaced font for those of us who need or want to get as much text on to the screen as possible.

The Menu - New Haven web site

Thu, 30 Oct 2003 15:35:50 GMT

There's, like, a whole web site for this book with discussion boards and everything. I agree with one person who suggested that the book slammed Fresh Taco unjustly. Fresh Taco is not gourmet food, but it's inexpensive and tasty. It probably depends on what you get.

The Menu - New Haven

Fri, 24 Oct 2003 19:42:41 GMT

Spotted this in a local bookstore. We really do have some fine restaurants around here. That wasn't always the case--I remember when New Haven was the pits back in the 80s.