Binary by Accident Archives

Sir Winston Churchill. "It is a good thing for an uneducated man to read books of quotations." (Courtesy: Quotes of the Day)

6:10:27 AM

James M. Barrie. "Life is a long lesson in humility." (Courtesy: Quotes of the Day) 6:28:34 AM

Thomas A. Edison. "We don't know a millionth of one percent about anything." (Courtesy: Quotes of the Day) 6:24:42 AM

I'm terribly behind on my reading the last few days...must be all the time I'm spending with this guy (blatant plug ;) 8:38:24 PM

Thanks for all the well wishes! Hopefully, Maureen and Christopher will be coming home tomorrow.

We're all still exhausted, but I've managed to get 2 pictures posted. It's amazing how quickly they change...these pictures are from the first 15 minutes of his life. He looks nothing like this anymore!

Later: It even validates as XHTML 1.0 Strict ;)

Later still: Whoops - the pictures above were from ~2 hours after birth

9:36:52 PM

At 3:07 this afternoon, we welcomed Christopher Michael Simoni into our family. He is 21" long and weighs 8 pounds, 2 ounces.

Both mom and baby are doing fine and sleeping at the moment. I'll post pictures sometime this weekend when I:

• bring the camera and disks home
• have some energy to put them out there

9:39:54 PM

George Orwell. "All animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others." (Courtesy: Quotes of the Day)

Orwell is best known for 1984, but for my money, Animal Farm (source of the above quote) is much better.

6:25:04 AM

Amy Vanderbilt. "The modern rule is that every woman should be her own chaperon." (Courtesy: Motivational Quotes of the Day)

Maybe it's the man who needs the chaperone.

6:15:14 AM

Go out and get a piece, son!. Right-wing moralizers wink at boys' sexual foibles -- it's unfettered female sexuality that they think is leading us into perdition. (Courtesy: Salon.com)

Damn, I wish I had known that I had a biological excuse (or is it a right?) for being irresponsible just because I'm a man. To think it was up to the ladies to keep me in line.<end sarcasm>

Misogyny is still quite rampant.

9:13:26 PM

Richard M. Nixon. "Sure there are dishonest men in local government. But there are dishonest men in national government too." (Courtesy: Quotes of the Day) 6:26:44 AM

Over at Jeff Cheney's other blog comes a story that is highly amusing and has me oh so slightly altering Monty Python - "Sit on my fleece, and tell me that you love me..." 11:07:53 PM

Leo J. Burke. "People who say they sleep like a baby usually don't have one." (Courtesy: Quotes of the Day)

Or have a wife who has gone past her due date!

6:14:03 AM

George Sewell. "Fear is the tax that conscience pays to guilt." (Courtesy: Motivational Quotes of the Day) 7:28:19 AM

"It's Frederick's of Hollywood for preteens and teenagers." (Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, via Adam Wendt) 9:20:47 PM

For Iron Chef fans: "...Morimoto's new restaurant in Philadelphia is attracting large crowds of diners who are probably more familiar with the city's signature "cheesesteak" than with Morimoto brainstorms like Crab Brain Dip." (Courtesy: Razor) 9:06:47 PM

The unfortunately-named Volokh Conspiracy has become a must-read for me. It's a 4-person blog, led by Prof. Eugene Volokh, a law professor at UCLA. It's quite conservative in tone, but clear thinking and reason are the order of the day, not blind ideology. Lots of discussion about the 2nd Amendment. 8:40:26 PM

Horace Mann. "Resolve to edge in a little reading every day, if it is but a single sentence. If you gain fifteen minutes a day, it will make itself felt at the end of the year." (Courtesy: Motivational Quotes of the Day) 9:55:03 AM

Oscar Wilde. "There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written or badly written." (Courtesy: Quotes of the Day) 6:23:08 AM

Clare Booth Luce. "Censorship, like charity, should begin at home; but, unlike charity, it should end there." (Courtesy: Quotes of the Day) 6:12:56 AM

Dorothea Salo is showing how an all-table site is changed to proper XHTML with CSS. Excellent! 7:09:52 PM

Macromedia wins $4.9m in Adobe patent suit. Point. Counterpoint (Courtesy: The Register)

What a waste - both of you go back to work and make something useful for your customers. Leave the litigation business model for companies without viable products.

6:22:09 AM

Mary Hirsch. "Humor is a rubber sword - it allows you to make a point without drawing blood." (Courtesy: Motivational Quotes of the Day) 6:01:18 AM

Stock tip: April is a great time to buy Hallmark - if they are publicly traded (I'm too lazy to look it up).

In May, I have my parent's anniversary, my anniversary, my dad's birthday, Mother's Day, and, any day now, a kid's birthday. I guess I'll have plenty of reminders to buy gifts/cards each year...

2:06:06 PM

Phil Ackley: "The management is getting tough on us worker bees."

The perils of working for a Fortune 500 company!

9:09:51 PM

Douglas Adams. "The ships hung in the sky in much the same way that bricks don't." (Courtesy: Quotes of the Day) 10:26:56 AM

Mark Pilgrim: PONAR or bust!

In all seriousness, the working draft for the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0 are just what I've been looking for. I'm trying to figure out how to build accessibility into the intranet pages I'm responsible for at work.

8:37:34 PM

Oscar Wilde. "A little sincerity is a dangerous thing, and a great deal of it is absolutely fatal." (Courtesy: Quotes of the Day) 6:30:02 AM

David Brin. "It is said that power corrupts, but actually it's more true that power attracts the corruptible. The sane are usually attracted by other things than power." (Courtesy: Quotes of the Day) 6:29:32 AM

Since that Top 10 list of cheesy songs was inaccessible to some (another reason MS gets a bad name), here goes:

• Air Supply - "All Out of Love"
• Extreme - "More Than Words"
• Vanilla Ice - "Ice Ice Baby"
• Huey Lewis - "If This Is It"
• Toto - "Africa"
• Barry Manilow - "I Write the Songs"
• Richard Marx - "Hold on to the Nights"
• Corey Hart - "I Wear My Sunglasses at Night"
• Leo Sayer - "You Make Me Feel Like Dancing"
• Kenny G - "Songbird"

6:23:56 AM

Just stumbled across a list - Top 10 Cheesy Songs. I like every single one of them (yep - even that one!) 10:12:57 PM

New O'Reilly Book on Weblogging!. O'Reilly book on Weblogging Technology (One of the authors: Burningbird) 9:13:02 PM

Voltaire. "A witty saying proves nothing." (Courtesy: Quotes of the Day) 6:22:21 AM

Dan Gillmor: "What if this means Microsoft is party to a U.S. government back-door into Windows, for spying and surveillance purposes, that the government understandably wants to keep secret?"

Now, I'm not a Microsoft hater at all. I couldn't function the way I care to each day without their software on my computers. But, this is a very reasonable question about the proposed settlement that deserves an answer. Note me not holding my breath.

8:41:18 PM

This is completely disgusting. It should be illegal. There should never be a need to declare your absolute and unwavering loyalty to a political party, "or else". (via Gretchen Pirillo) 7:05:48 PM

Woody Allen. "Interestingly, according to modern astronomers, space is finite. This is a very comforting thought-- particularly for people who can never remember where they have left things." (Courtesy: Quotes of the Day) 6:17:19 AM

Doing my good deed for the day: Verisign 9:48:17 PM

Stan Lee, co-creator of Spider-Man, isn't shy about media appearances. His co-creator, Steve Ditko, won't go near them. As an avid Spidey fan, this article simultaneously taught me a lot and nothing about him.

<very mini-spoiler alert>

Speaking of, we went to see the movie last weekend. We both enjoyed it immensely, again because Spider-Man was part of my weekly/monthly life for 20 of my 30 years. The movie was as close to following the actual history as laid out in the comics as could be expected. And those changes probably made for a better film. It would have sucked the life out of the movie-goers if the love-interest died, right?

</very mini-spoiler alert>

9:22:14 PM

Jeff Cheney: "If you're puzzled by Clifford Pickover's ESP Experiment, then I'm available for hire."

I saw this (or something similar) a couple of years ago...I'm ashamed to say it took me about 15 minutes to figure it out. Check out the comments - that's the really funny part.

8:40:42 PM

Minor frustration - when finding ths blog's home page on Google, the text that accompanies the link is alt text for an image that is well down the page as rendered. I thought it would use the text at the top of the markup (which is my main content div). Anyone know how to "fix" this? I want the search results to include useful information. Am I doing something wrong?

Update: I'm an idiot - of course you see the search term. So, everything is working the way it's supposed to.

8:31:54 PM

Johnny Carson. "I was so naive as a kid I used to sneak behind the barn and do nothing." (Courtesy: Quotes of the Day) 6:17:43 AM

Jon Udell: "...we're living through an odd historical moment in which web pundits, simply by virtue of abnormally large web surface area, wield disproportionate influence."

It makes sense that in an emerging information space that there are certain growing pains that skew the available resources. As the medium matures, I would expect web searches to be more inclusive of subject-matter experts, be they web pundits or not.

10:39:15 PM

Playing games with free speech. A federal judge says computer games don't deserve First Amendment protection. His decision is wrong, stupid and dangerous. (Courtesy: Salon.com)

As soon as the government steps in and determines what is or is not valid speech, we start down a very slippery slope. While I find many games, movies, and music disgusting and disturbing, I always have my own option to ignore them. And, as in this case, when the group to be "protected" are minors, I suggest that parents be the ones to decide what is acceptable or not. A novel concept these days.

6:14:39 PM

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. "Enjoy when you can, and endure when you must." (Courtesy: Motivational Quotes of the Day) 6:19:10 AM

Burningbird: Weblogging Community. "Technology is an enabler of community in weblogging, but, ultimately, it is dependent on the community rather than the community being dependent on it."

The technology is what got me to start a weblog and explore this particular community, but it is the community itself which keeps me coming back.

I was going to plunk down my $40 for Radio regardless of my intent to keep at blogging, because the software was neat and I support that. However, once I dove in and found the voices, thoughts, and hearts of some exceptional people (as found in the blogrolls to the left), I was hooked. Without that amazing community that's out there, I would have stopped using Radio.

Instead, I have a tool I enjoy helping me get my community fix. It also helps me spout off about my spelling/grammar fixation!

9:29:03 PM

Jonathon Delacour: Netscape 4.x users. Enough already!. 9:53:04 AM

Gregor: Dave Winer, you are a very bad man! (Link via Dave Winer, Scripting News) 7:12:09 PM

Mark Pilgrim: The Q Tag.

Now this is good, useful stuff.  Bad IE - unfortunately it's my prefered browser...I know, I know, but it's frustrating to use another browser and find sites all over the place that look just awful in other browsers. That's one of the reasons that I try to make my site look good in all browsers by using standards.

7:04:02 PM

Clyde B. Aster. "When someone tells you something defies description, you can be pretty sure he's going to have a go at it anyway." (Courtesy: Quotes of the Day) 6:21:00 AM

Hot damn - we're partially working again! 4:20:59 PM

Consider a Credit Union. Can your local credit union save you a lot of money? (Courtesy: The Motley Fool)

Absolutely - we have one with an office and a free ATM at work and it's ten times better than a bank. Now, I operate as cashless as reasonably possible, so ATM availability is not an issue with me.

6:22:06 AM

Dan Quayle. "The future will be better tomorrow." (Courtesy: Quotes of the Day)

I always get a laugh these days when somebody says "...in past history..."

6:19:49 AM

Post pulled due to some moron hitting "post" twice. 6:19:38 AM

You are a Doc Searls.
You enjoy writing, linking to interesting technologies and being an all-round smiley guy.
Take the What Blogging Archetype Are You test at GAZM.org

Uh...no I'm not! They shouldn't insult Doc like that.

8:37:37 PM

Don Marquis. "When a man tells you that he got rich through hard work, ask him: 'Whose?'" (Courtesy: Quotes of the Day) 6:19:36 AM