long live the clunkers

March 14, 2004 by Eric Richardson

The mouse on my desktop gave out the other day. I was sad to see it go. Originally it came with an SGI Indy in 1994 or 1995, so it had served its time well. My keyboard is still one of the old Indy clunkers, and aside for an Insert keycap that I broke off somehow, it's still the only keyboard I'd want. You hear of people having Model M obsessions, but I think this thing holds its own. If it ever dies I've got another sitting at home ready to replace it.

tense... and release

March 11, 2004 by Eric Richardson

It's a little after midnight, and I'm on campus. In sixteen hours I have a paper due. In thirteen hours I have to be ready to present code on a conference call for a contract job I'm doing. In a little over nine hours I'm supposed to go in and get my stitches out. And right now, sitting here, I don't want to do any of it.

It's amazing how quiet it is. There's a fountain nearby, and I hear that. There's a low rumble that might be from air-conditioning in a building somewhere. Occasionally I can hear a car, far away from here. Other than that, nothing. The other night we could hear birds chirping outside our apartment. It was one in the morning. No birds here, though.

Freshman year I could write all night. I would start papers after midnight and turn them in the next morning. Then I went home for the summer, came back, and couldn't be productive past two. I don't know what changed. Now I write in the day, but not this time. I wonder if I can even do it.

And then I take a look at the syllabus and wander to the section on late papers. What do I see? An automatic five day extension, that's what. Amazing. I'll sleep tonight after all.

and it's back

March 11, 2004 by Eric Richardson

Standing on my balcony today you can barely see downtown.

Downtown is about 2 miles away from here, so that's something that gives you a little pause. Just a few days ago I could see the mountains, which are probably at least 60 miles away. That's quite a swing. Downtown and the Hollywood sign are our apartment air quality guage. Can't see the Hollywood sign, but downtown's pretty clear? That's a moderate air quality day. Both looking good? That's good air quality. But downtown's disappearing? Uggh.

they're coming for you

March 10, 2004 by Eric Richardson

In what was probably just a stroke of programming luck, Howard Stern's movie Private Parts was on Cinemax last night. I watched the last two-thirds or so of it and was struck by how topical it seemed. As you should know by now, Howard's in some hot water, as usual, but this time it looks like it could be the last straw. BuzzMachine (via blogging.la) has a good recap of the situation, and takes the controversy to its logical frightening extension:

But here's the doozie, folks: By a one-vote margin, the committee defeated an attempt to extend FCC censorship to cable and satellite.

Listen: The First Amendment should prohibit what the FCC already does to TV and radio but, of course, its regulation and censorship is kept in place by the flimsy tissue of the idea that these are the scarce "public airwaves." Well, cable and satellite are not public property; they are private property. If the government goes in to regulate and censor what happens there, then there is nothing stopping them from regulating and censoring books, music, concerts, comedy clubs... and the Internet.

The government's tried to censor the Internet in the past. They've had some wins (CIPA) and they've had some losses (CDA, others). Just last week the Supreme Court heard agruments on COPA, a 1998 act currently under injuction. Putting aside for a moment the fact that this is the Internet, a medium the government will never be able to control, this is scary stuff. This is an attempt by the FCC to hold onto their power in an environment that has worked around their limitations. The FCC has reign over broadcast, but broadcast is quickly becoming irrelevant. Wireless networks are spreading a regulation free cloud over larger and larger parts of our day to day lives.

My favorite radio station is KCRW. They've been in the news recently for their decision to fire Sandra Tsing Loh for profanity in a recorded broadcast (ummm... if you ran a radio station, wouldn't you have someone listen to pre-recorded segments before airing them?). I'm not going to get into here whether or not that was a justifiable move. But how long will it be before voices like KCRW realize that their radio license isn't that important? KCRW broadcasts three 24-hour Internet streams: simulcast, all music, and all news. They're popular enough online that they've taken to sponsoring concerts all the way across the country in New York City, solely on the strength of their online listening audience. How long before that audience is all that matters? How long before the FCC clamp-down gets so obnoxious that such a move is the only one that allows you to keep your principles?

It's going to get ugly, but it's going to get interesting.

mystery solved

March 09, 2004 by Eric Richardson

Yesterday I took a picture of a building getting demolished at the corner of Vermont and Washington. I had wondered for a while what was going in there, but today I finally figured it out. After wasting time on google for a while, finding nothing, I eventually made my way over to the City of Los Angeles site. There I used the very cool Automated Zoning Information System to take a look at information for the plots around there. Hidden deep in there was the info I was looking for... The plot will be the site of Central LA Area New HS #2.

I really should have expected that. LAUSD is building everywhere. It'll be interesting to see the site develop over the next two years and see how they fit a school into the surrounding neighborhood.

I guess the real moral of the story is that there's a lot of cool stuff on the LA site.