Slug: machine-tags Date: 2007-07-28 Title: Machine Tags layout: post Jeremy Keith and I had a geeky chat this morning about machine tags, rel=tag, and the like. A while back I was thinking about how to encode “via” information in a blog post/tag, so that eventually I’ll be able to do more interesting things with where I’m getting my links/inspiration. Jeremy and I talked then as well, and the idea of using a machinetag came up, and we came up with a format: blog:via=<permalink> Since then I’ve tagged a few posts with this format, but haven’t been really comfortable with mixing the machinetags in with my usual tags (I confess mostly this was because they did not break properly and made my layout look janky). So I pinged Jeremy and we talked it over. Eventually he gave me the piece of information I was missing: machinetags are not related (no pun intended) in any way to rel=tag. They just happen to confusingly share the label “tag”. Aha! This freed me to implement my machine tags separately from the normal post tags, as you can now see on this post about the FontBook. In this case I created a WordPress custom field for them. I may continue to tweak the presentation a bit, but I like what I’ve got. Further Reading:

• Machinetags.org wiki
• Machine tags and ISBNs
• Machine Tags: Tagging Revisited
• Adactio: Ghost in the Machine Tags
• Flickr API - by which some of these machine tags are gaining usefulness

Slug: subtraction-one-book-to-specify-them-all Date: 2007-07-27 Title: “Subtraction: One Book to Specify Them All” layout: post

It’s billed as “the largest typeface reference in the word,” and just a single flip through its 1,500 pages leaves one with no reason to doubt that claim.

Slug: equilibrium Date: 2007-07-27 Title: Equilibrium layout: post

Slug: better-off-dead Date: 2007-07-25 Title: Better Off Dead layout: post Jodi and I are big John Cusack fans - I can think of only one movie of his we’ve seen that we didn’t like (1993’s superbly casted but poorly written Identity). So in filling our recently acquired NetFlix queue, I snagged Better Off Dead, which I missed when I was 14 but which Jodi and I watched in the last few days. What can I say… Better Off Dead is a typically hysterical Cusack black comedy, full of neurotic and existential angst. What it also is filled with is odd bits of off-beat animation, both traditional and claymation, strange non-sequiters like the psychotic paperboy, and characters too weird to explain at all (i.e. Lane’s mother and younger brother). And we laughed all the way through it. Moments of particular merit (or pure mind-boggling “wha”-ness):

• Cusack doing Frankenstein
• an unexpected character in an aardvark-fur coat
• the skiing paperboy

Slug: iphonemobilesafari-vulnerability Date: 2007-07-24 Title: iPhone/MobileSafari Vulnerability layout: post

Slug: floating-boxes-in-rows Date: 2007-07-24 Title: Floating Boxes in Rows layout: post

Slug: driving-under-the-influence-of-awesome Date: 2007-07-24 Title: Driving Under the Influence of Awesome layout: post

Slug: great-review-of-rem-working-rehearsal-in-dublin Date: 2007-07-20 Title: Great Review of R.E.M. "working rehearsal" in Dublin layout: post

Slug: angrynegative-people-can-be-bad-for-your-brain Date: 2007-07-18 Title: Angry/negative people can be bad for your brain layout: post

Slug: netflix-welcome-to-the-new-millenium Date: 2007-07-11 Title: “NetFlix: Welcome to the new Millenium” layout: post