alex chiang: web 6.0

 

Month: January, 2006

odometers 2006

Been meaning to write about this for a while, but kept forgetting to. I’m curious about my modes of transportation, and wanted to keep track somewhere of how I get around. So here are the current values of various odometers I own (starting from Jan. 1). I’ll revisit this in 2007 to see what happened.

car [...]

unlimited suck-shine tour

Went to Denver last night to catch the Unlimited Sunshine Tour, featuring Gogol Bordello, Tegan and Sara, Eugene Mirman, and headliner Cake.
We missed Gogol Bordello, but managed to catch about 30 seconds of Eugene Mirman introducing a video clip he made that I’d already seen (the one about drugs and smoking pot off a hooker’s [...]

sell out (google AdSense and MediaWiki)

Sell out, with me oh yea, sell out, with me tonight
Google company’s gonna give me lots of money
And everything’s gonna be all right
– adapted from “Sell Out”, by Reel Big Fish

I did the unthinkable today and added Google’s adsense code to portions of this site. Me — the guy who used to write complaining emails [...]

wtf, potty parity?

An article in the CSM today about potty parity, which is basically the idea that since women take longer in the bathroom, we should increase the ratio of men’s to women’s bathrooms so that the lines are of equal length.
Excuse me, but this idea makes about as much sense as intelligent design, which is [...]

knowledge dump

At work, I’ve got all these great new books piled up that I want to read (like IA-64 Linux Kernel: Design and Implementation, Itanium Architecture for Programmers, and Linux Device Drivers (my definition of “great” and your definition of “great” may be two different things)), but no time to read them. What to do?

Lady [...]

ni hao, ma?

Interesting article in the CSM today about how more and more Asians are learning Mandarin. I offer no additional insight, other than to point out that this is a good move, and if you ever decide to have kids, you may want them to grow up tri-lingual, with fluency in English, Spanish, and Mandarin.
Tangentially related, [...]

everybody’s got debt

First off, Tamara Draut’s publicity agent is doing a heckuva job. The agent managed to get Draut’s new book mentioned in both Slate on Monday and the CSM today. Not too shabby.
Right then, on we go. Her book is called “Strapped: Why America’s 20-and-30-Somethings Can’t Get Ahead”, and Daniel Gross over at Slate, thinks that [...]