recursion

I'll be visiting my family this week in Pennsylvania for Christmas, so no more posts from me for a while.

Ry4an got me a Bill of Rights Security Edition for Christmas. I'm flying tomorrow, but I'm too scared to use it. I don't want to miss my flight or get arrested for being a "wise guy". What kind of patriot am I if I'm afraid to carry the nation's own Bill of Rights?

It's no secret that Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox has been going downhill for a while. In the past, it's been a valuable source of useablity advice. However, today it basically exists solely to hawk Norman-Nielsen Group reports and seminars.

Fortunately, Top Ten Web-Design Mistakes of 2002 (today's column) bucks the trend. While it repeatedly links to NN Group wares, it has solid advice and charming cartoon illustrations.

Viva Alertbox!

Here's a little marketing blurb I wrote to talk about the results from the first month of the Lessig Challenge.

Inspired by Lawrence Lessig's OSCON remarks, Lessig's Challenge is a way for people concerned by the attempts by the entertainment industry to close off the net to fight back. The challenge is to spend more on those who fight for the open network than you do on its enemies. Since it appeared on Slashdot last month, 10 people have joined me and we've raised over $2300 for good causes (organizations like the EFF, the ACLU, the FSF, along with free software/open source programmers and online artists). And that's just the ones I know about! Cory Doctrow wrote to tell me that many people were inspired by the challenge to join the EFF. If you want to do your part, now's a good time -- you can still get a tax break in 2002 by donating before the end of the year. Check out the list of suggested recipients.

Two of the Twin Cities' news orgainizations have blogs now. The Star Tribune has 2cents and the City Pages has the Twin Cities Babelogue.

It's good to see more weblogs from real journalists.

Danny emailed me back about my CC: post, where I tried to remember what carbon paper was. Quinn (his daughter's mother) pointed out a wonderful alternative expansion of "cc". At the Creative Commons launch, she asked him, "Wouldn't it be a great future if we had to work really hard to dissuade our daughter that Cc: didn't stand for Creative Commons?"

A lovely future indeed. And I see no reason why a few RFCs couldn't be modified to make it true. :)

I'm sure everyone is tired of reading my spam, but I just keep getting funny ones I want to share. Check this one out -- somebody's looking for love (or valid email addresses) in all the wrong places!

Hi. My name is Kara, I saw your profile on the internet and was wondering if you were interested in maybe going out and doing something some time. I'm new to the area so I really don't know any of the hot spots around town, so if you're interested e-mail me at kara_532@hotmail.com and I will send you a picture of myself. I hope to hear from you soon. -Kara

2810wiaS3-014WMke1053hPxU8-080sKfN1699fmZg9-097hRVH4142IZl54

Too bad these aren't real! Love the tracking number at the end, that's totally classic.

This month's Lessig Challenge results are up. The recipients of this month's contributions are the Free Software Foundation (I'm now associate member #78) and the ACLU (of which I am now a "card-carrying" member). Take that, Ashcroft!

For all you hordes of Word Unmunger users out there, I've got a tasty new feature for ya.

Word Unmunger now features a batch mode, so you can process many files at once, instead of one at a time. Hurray! You could've done this before with a shell script, but I had a user request to add it to the program. Next thing you know, it'll be able to send email.

I'm seriously considering moving in on the demoroniser's turf for my next release. I'm getting annoyed with the Microsoft-isms that remain in the HTML (like "smart" quotes and Microsoft-only emdash).