Dec 2000, 54 entries

The list index now sorts by most recently modified or added lists, so it doesn’t feel like I’m just adding lists to an abyss. So, I’ve added lists for a few of the most connected blogs, including: rebeccablood.com, jish.nu, peterme.com, fairvue.com, caterina.net, bump.net, and evhead.com. Now, it appears that kottke.org is in the lead for connected-ness, being listed in 16 lists. harrumph.com and powazek.com are tied for second with 14 connections. My connections don’t count because only people that visit this site are making lists, and so of course I’d appear in the lists. I ran into interconnected.org today, which is another wiki-type site that finds connections between things, his encompasses all words, and which can also find the paths from one word to another through a series of steps.

Just got back from a night out with drunkgirl, winner’s ex-wife, K, lbj, and a friend from out of town. The friend from out of town had 4 martinis: “Another Bombay martini with two olives please,” and when we split up they were on their way to a club. I am a little worried about him, since he’s not from town and now he’s only got two of Charlie’s Angels to take care of him. Are two enough? But I guess he was saying he would be Drew Barrymore (but he insisted on not being Cameron Diaz), so it’ll be okay? We’ll see how up for another big night he is tomorrow…

Someone at work pointed this article out, which is quoted saying “Critics contend there is no link between children doing homework and doing better in school. Other experts argue, though, that homework is good for teaching students to manage their time and to study independently.” I like how critics get to think things over and work things out for themselves, and it always proves helpful for the rest of us who can’t think.

I’ve been having nightmares, the last several nights. Material for the dreams: Gladiator DVD, Blindess book, pepper spray that K bought. Product: last night K and I were in some strange country and she’d been attacked, but this guy helped her not get hurt, and then they became friends and then he wanted me to join his gang but I didn’t want to and so he started hitting me with a metal bat. The most vivid part of the dream was when I was thinking that I would definitely not fight, but I knew that they would beat me with the bat, and then, when that didn’t change my mind, they would attack K, and I didn’t know what I would do then. I considered, for several dream minutes, that I would probably have to go fight with them. I knew a guy in highschool who claimed to be killed in his dreams every night, I doubt it was true.

If you search for erik at amazon, you might see all of the sponsored results in the left column, sponsored by myself. If you don’t, or you don’t know what I’m talking about, then you’ve been chosen not to see this new thing, because you did something bad. I’ve also sponsored items for camel, happiness, lemon, and of course I have plugged K’s dad’s book with the words pat, beirut, inlaws, basketball coach, funny thing, wacky, living on the edge, best book in the world, worst book in the world, and life changing. This is a little fun. By the way, launching that was why I was at work from 10am to 1am yesterday. So far, it hasn’t made the news, since we didn’t issue a press release, but I wonder what people will think about being able to pay to have their in-laws’ books featured on whatever search terms they feel like. I wonder how long until it’s abused. Well, that’s when the fun starts anyway, so hurry up, abuse abuse.

Some other lists I made: /BYP8O1647GJI/mockerybird>Books I read before college, which I loved at the time, and my current list of /999YKRBKEBD6/mockerybird>10 favorite books, without listing the same author twice. If you make lists, let me know. I do know that /A112VKJPV224PX/mockerybird>sbird has a few lists, but the only other online person I could find with lists is /A19W5QVWQN3HKK/mockerybird>maura from maura.com. If you have lists, say so.

Tonight is one of those fun nights when I get to stay at work until 10 for a launch. Last time this happened, we brought the whole electronics home page down to launch Listmania. Same 3 of us too. Tonight is the night where we repeat history, or break the curse. This is sort of fun though, because you get free food, you get a foos ball table, and you get the fear of taking Amazon.com down to where it wanders dirty 404th street and rubs noses with pigeons that have broken software. Tomorrow, we may be in the news, but who knows which section.

This is exactly the christmas spirit that I can imagine having were I to have had a christmas spirit. Jimmy reflects on the dynamics of the christmas card. Beautifully done.

I’m reading Blindness, and at the same time have been feeling that my once reknowned good eyesight is slowly become a little fuzzy. This happened to me a couple years ago but turned out to be a false alarm. It seems real this time. The book is good. I would like to write a book. Sometimes when I’m outside I get a headache because there’s just so much space and things to see and vision, I think I’m going to need glasses. I think it would be very very sad to go blind. It’s a symptom of our love for our lives, and for living, that we would be so heartbroken to not be able to see the things we see. Like people. And other things, I’m sure. But the sadness of going blind is such an infamous sadness that we discredit its power. If I went blind, I would have trouble articulating the sadness I felt because everyone would immediately agree, “Yeah, yeah, I would hate to be blind. It must be horrible,” in their thoughts and nodding tearful frowns in their eyes. Please don’t go blind, eyes, please don’t go blind.

I added lists for prolific and supah, since they asked so nicely so long ago and I’ve been a slacker. But things are finally falling together, the index page is back up and running (I may have to limit the number of lists shown if it grows much more, it’s already pretty slow to load), and so is the list surfer, now with a bit of new functionality. You can randomly surf just the people in the current site’s list, or the people that link to the current site, or all the sites… now I’ve only got to figure out a way for us to figure out how many peoples’ lists stand between yours and any another, and make it easy to understand.

What a great weekend with k-dog. Got to see John Singer-Sergent (a wonderful name) at the Seattle Art Museum, or rather, his paintings. Got to have some wonderful sushi the size of tonka trucks at the Wasabi Bistro for lunch. Got to think back on winter vacations of the last 5 years (that we’ve known each other) and got to only come up blank on the year of 1996. We’ve decided to begin a daily game of choosing the MVP for the day, which will go to k-dog, myself, Holden, or Phoebe and will be determined by whoever makes the most outstanding play of the day. Two days ago went indisputedly to Holden when he tried to jump from our coffee table (about 2 feet off the ground) to the top our our tv cabinet (about 7 feet off the ground and 3 feet over) in order to get his favorite toy. He came about a foot too short and slammed into the side of the cabinet and fell to the ground. It was the effort that got him the MVP. Then, two nights ago the lamp (not officially since he/it’s not part of the team) did that wonderful play of scaring us to death—got us good, this is the type of thing we’re really looking for. Today, it was k-dog with her first MVP of the season when she zipped up her winter fleece jacket. The zipper had stumped us both for almost 3 minutes by refusing to connect properly with its zipper mate, and I had given up when finally k-dog got it to work. MVP all over it. That’s it for the weekend though, time for work tomorrow.

Hey dude. Well this is the first step in the redesign. I know, looks the same. But I’ve moved a few things around. I’m actually pretty nervous about this for some reason, like somehow you’ll break it, and get into my brain, and realize how easy it would be to break everything at this point. Okay, so if you break it, here’s the backup: index2.cgi.

Here are the new things, let me explain: First, you can reserve your name by creating a password for it here. I’ll explain why you might want a password later, but it’s definitely not required for anything. It’s just a small privacy thing if you are paranoid like that.

Second, you can configure how you want the boxes to be arranged on this page. So, like, you can have no boxes, or you can have lots of boxes, in different orders, and you can change your page to look like how other people have it (be careful though, right now it saves it that way, so you’ll lose whatever you had it as before… is that good or bad?). Well, you can try it out once you’ve logged in and you click here. Tell me if this is completely confusing, like I said I’m a little nervous.

Third, you can create and edit your own lists. Right now, there’s the old way that lists were done here, and then there’s the new way here. They’re not compatible so the changes you make won’t be visible in the old version. I just wanted to launch this and see if there were any major oversights on my part. I gave everyone names the first time around when I hand-built the lists, so if you see that you’re there already and you don’t want to start from scratch, either sign up or log in as that name, or let me know what you’d like it changed to by emailing me. Anyway, it’s going to look better in a week or so but it doesn’t right now. So this is why the password option was given—just in case you wanted to lock your list so not anyone that logs in as your name can edit your list. Be nice people.

I think that’s it. Soon, I’ll be adding different templates so if you hate this green you’ll have other choices. It’s just a matter of me coming up with a new layout. Now that there can be multiple though I probably won’t have the paralysis that I had before. Eventually I’ll let you create templates too so you can specify where content will go, but that’s a little complicated. It’s complicated already. My head gets an ache just thinking about it. Oh, there’s a lot of cheesy writing recently just cause I haven’t been thinking right. Christmas is fun. See you all around. Please let me know what you think, if you have the time.

Christmas Morning: Last night around 4am I woke up to a start as K clawed her fingernails into my leg. She whispered, “The light’s on!” and I looked to see that our livingroom light was on even though it should be off. Logically, there must be a bad guy in our house. I’ve done this before: check the closets, check the doors, but this time I was carrying a dream with me where I had gotten AIDS from the claws of the kittens and I had already accepted death and I really had no plan of what to do if I should find someone in my house, ready to kill. We have a cheap IKEA lamp that has a middle bulb that turns on and off occasionally of its own will, it turns out. Or maybe the AIDS dream came after. Then, I woke up to my pager a few hours later because Amazon’s site is broken. Ho Ho Ho.

First, read the criticism, and flame up inside. Like a gas burner that you turn the gas on first, and then strike a match—you see the flame catch a bit, then a split second later you see the rest of the gas catch in a small explosion. Poof. Next, think of revenge. How to make the poor sucker pay. This step is the fork in the road, which I’ve taken both ways recently. To react to criticism poorly, act on these thoughts of revenge, call them a loser, stoop to their level, be what we expect you to be. Or, instead of trying to make the sucker pay, imagine that somehow you yourself had come up with the criticism, and that you were just pondering it for a bit. Would it be as offensive. Why make a sucker pay when they’re offering you something for free. If the sucker’s goal was to take you down a notch, what would be the best revenge than to actually take the criticism for what it is worth and first see if you should go down a notch (that would solve a lot of problems just by actually taking the person’s advice, because some of the time they’re right to some degree). What’s so bad about the notch below that I get all snobby and self-righteous when someone tells me to go there. No, usually, I stay on my notch and pretend like I’ve gone down, see like now, I’m still sounding exactly the same as I’ve always sounded, and I can understand how it can sound pretentious. ... This is getting dull. The next step, after all this nonsense, is to of course give some outward sign of how you’re going to respond to the criticism, with either a mean email, or a smoking post, and then people come to your defense and the critic retreats, most likely to watch on for a bit in hate and then to move on, la la, what’s the point of all this. Well, if I’m going to sound pretentious I should at least try to back up my grand assumption of myself with some proof, and that will be happening soon, in the form of the redesign and with bustercafe. If at that point I still sound lame, then something will have to change.

Thanks for all the well wishings of christmas-time, I wish you the same of course—although if there has to be some well of christmas-time spirit that I must draw my wish to you from, I’m afraid I don’t have enough for all if any of you. For, I don’t feel very christmassy. I am not someone who breaks out the tinsel and lights for my own sake, or who needs to relive the childhood christmases of the past. Not that there’s any value in that attribute of myself. Maybe I’m a grinch. Although I take the eggnog lattes and hot toddies without a flinch. To me, this weekend will commence the 4 days of k-dog, as K’s birthday is on the 26th.

My friend jimmy is now living my dream—he’s out of school and writing full time (except for a few measly hours at work). His latest story is hilarious and good. How good it is to have friends that can create.

When the lights go out unexpectedly is there a brief second where you wonder if you have died? That the rapture has come and taken away all the good people and left you and a few others down here to survive with the devil? That happened to me just now.

The redesign (which has turned into more of a rewrite) is moving along. I’ve now made modules for each of the features on this page (as well as a few others) so that I’ll be able to determine their attributes (like color, number of items in the list, who’s list, la la la) as well as their order and position. Also, I’ve rewritten the way lists works so that people will be able to add, and remove their own lists. Also, I’ve made it so there’s an optional password that you can give yourself if you want to reserve your name and prevent others from editing your list, speaking in the conversation, or asking questions in your name. None of this is up yet, but just thought I’d give a progress report. I now need to create some templates for the different pages, and try to make it a little faster.

I was thinking about the miniature I was going to write on the bus to work this morning, but I just couldn’t get the energy to open my bag and get out the paper. Struggling with my will, I forced myself anyway, but then I saw a story my friend had wrote, and I read that instead. But out of guilt, in the back of my mind, I was thinking about the miniature, what I would have written, if I had written anything at all. And it would’ve been about how, when I was a kid, I would look at the ocean and see how the boats would sink into the water the further away they got, evidence that the world was round. And I would take the finger of my imagination and try to trace the line of the earth forward, to note it’s very subtle slope, and then trace it all the way around the earth. But it was frustrating because I always felt that I wasn’t tracing the line close enough. I couldn’t project my imagination that far forward with any level of accuracy. And so, on the bus today, I realized that the frustration was due to the fact that I knew that the smallest underestimate or overestimate on the curve of the earth could drastically shrink or expand the size of the earth several orders of magnitude. I just couldn’t be satisfied that the curve I had found was in fact the real curve, because it always felt like I was just a little bit off, and by implication, my world was either much to big, or much too small.

I just wrote to waferbaby for the first time, and actually was not promptly ignored. Of all the people I’ve seen so far, this guy is doing it the closest to right. Excellent site, good content. If I had to answer this question again, I’d have to say that waferbaby was it.

Also, I’ve got my own theme on his site, go to prefs and choose ‘mockerybird.com’ from the menu, and shield your eyes.