Paul Ford bucks the trend, complimenting the New York Times for its plan to charge $49.95 a year for archives and the op-ed section:

Look at the quality of premium cable TV over the last two decades, when compared to the quality of network TV over the same timespan, to see what happens to content when advertisers are the main source of cash.

Interesting comparison, but I think it's far easier for HBO to beat six broadcast networks than for the Times to beat a teeming horde of free online papers and bloggers.

Journalism · 2005/05/21 · 1 COMMENT · Link

Stevie Does Dallas

Steve Nash and Dirk Nowitzi are best friends. While together in Dallas, they liked to hit dive bars to eat Tex-Mex food and knock back enough beers to produce photos like this, which I presume helps them reconstruct their activities after a blackout. I think they're holding hands for structural support.

There ought to be a smoldering crater where the American Airlines Center in Dallas once stood, with a sign next to it that reads "Steve Nash was here."

How do you back off Nash at the three point line, leading by three points, with five seconds left? A Dallas playoff game hasn't ended with a move that boneheaded since Derek Harper ran out the clock against the Lakers in 1984 in a tied game, thinking the Mavs were up by one.

This has to be the most devastating defeat ever dealt to Dallas fans by one of our former heroes. It's like Roger Staubach coming back with the 49ers to throw The Catch to Dwight Clark.

Insert Charlie Brown "Auuuugh!" here.

I agreed with owner Mark Cuban's decision that the price for resigning Nash was too high. Now the only thing that stops the guy is catching something antibiotic-resistant from his disturbing habit of licking his fingers before free throws and while he drives the ball up the court.

Sports · 2005/05/21 · 2 COMMENTS · Link

Old-Time Radio, Way-Nu Format

I'm helping Yesterday USA, the first old-time radio station on the Internet, start podcasting its programs.

The station has been produced for 22 years as a labor of love out of the home of Dallas audio engineer Bill Bragg, who's better known these days as the voice of Big Tex.

YUSA broadcasts 23 shows that already sound like podcasts. They're 30- to 90-minute programs created by listeners who briefly introduce the old-time radio shows and music they love, with little editing, polish, or pro-radio fakery. One of the longtime hosts is the singer Ronnie Millsap.

In order to podcast, YUSA needs a Visual Basic component that converts WAV files to MP3 and then uploads the resulting files to a web server.

I don't code much in VB, so I'm having trouble trusting the free code I've found on the Internet to perform the MP3 conversion.

An ActiveX component from United Research Labs looks promising, as you can see from the documentation for a WaveToMp3 function.

Before I encourage YUSA to shell out $299 for the license, I'd like to find some Visual Basic coders who can tell us if there's a cheaper alternative.

Visual Basic · Podcasting · 2005/05/19 · 9 COMMENTS · Link

Let's Put Everything on the Table

Of all the insults I received for popesquatting, the ones that stung the most were about my web skills, such as this comment on MetaFilter:

Eh, his website needs work. The text overflows the white box and he must've used the nowrap attribute as there is a hideous amount of rightwards scrolling. pls fix ur website b4 u sho it to teh whirled, pls ok tks.

Ouch. F U 2.

I like three-column designs, so I lay out my sites with HTML tables, often putting ads in the rightmost column. This lends itself to a creative trick some cranks like to employ -- putting a really long word in a comment to hose my layout and push ads way off the page, depriving me of money I need to put food on my family.

I'm currently moving the 14,000 weblog entries and 232,000 comments on the Drudge Retort from Movable Type to my Wordzilla PHP/MySQL software, so I wanted to solve this long-word problem.

I can't use PHP's wordwrap() function, which breaks long words that exceed a set maximum, because my weblog comments include hyperlinks. Any URL longer than the maximum would be broken.

I found a nice open source PHP script by Brian Huisman, htmlwrap, that solves this problem:

htmlwrap() is a function which wraps HTML by breaking long words and preventing them from damaging your layout. This function will NOT insert br tags every "width" characters as in the PHP wordwrap() function. HTML wraps automatically, so this function only ensures wrapping at "width" characters is possible. Use in places where a page will accept user input in order to create HTML output like in forums or blog comments.

Wordzilla · Php · Mysql · Movable Type · Html · 2005/05/19 · 6 COMMENTS · Link

Dismembering the Eighties

SoapNet airs reruns of the cancelled soap Another World, digging 16-year-old episodes out of the Procter & Gamble archives.

They've reached June 1989, and every time I hit this show during a channel surf I can't find my way back out -- it's a hypnotic time capsule of excruciatingly bad '80s fashion. Movies that mock the decade, such as The Wedding Singer and 200 Cigarettes, don't come close to how ridiculous we looked. There may be no more unseemly spectacle than men in feathered mullets, Member's Only jackets, and wedgie-tight acid wash jeans looking for love from women in shoulder pads, molasses-thick mascara and giant Dee Snider hair. If not for beer goggles, my generation would have single-handledly cured overpopulation.

I was reminded of this when I saw old photos of Tina Fey, who sang at a blogger's wedding.

Fey, who may top the list of attractive female celebrities with corrected vision, appears in wedding photos wearing a flowery Homer Simpson mumu under a dense hair helmet. The only recognizeable feature is her wry lockjaw smile, the universal gesture that tells the world I'm not sure I flossed.

Television · Soaps · 2005/05/18 · 1 COMMENT · Link

The online magazine Slate, now a part of the Washington Post Company, has developed an anal fixation.

A line from David Edelstein's Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith review:

With his lisp and his clammy little leer, he looks like an old queen keen on trading an aging butt-boy (Count Dooku) for fresh meat -- which leaves Anakin looking more and more like a 15-watt bulb.

Jack Shafer:

I've been called many ugly things in my life -- neo-con, without decency, Michael Kinsley's butt boy -- but school monitor, never.

Dana Stevens:

Things quickly escalated into a full-scale food-fight. Carlson accused Stewart of being John Kerry's "butt boy" and "sniffing his throne."

Journalism · Jargon · 2005/05/18 · 1 COMMENT · Link

I've Been Owned

I live in a neighborhood governed by a community association, which means I pay several hundred dollars a year for the privilege of being ordered by strangers to drag my trash cans into the garage.

Like any government, the association has found it much easier to expand its authority than to occasionally unclench, review the rules, and get rid of the more nettlesome ones.

In some ways, it's kind of entertaining, like having a busybody in-law who can't repress the desire to micromanage your life. My actual in-laws are delightful people I got to know for the first time when they took me to an Orlando nudist camp against my will. It would take a lot of neglect for this free-spirited pair to object to the condition of my home. Even then, they'd be more likely to drag the trash cans in than put their concerns in writing. I wish all my problems could be solved by annoying other people until they fix them.

I was informed by mail today about my unclean mailbox and four other "compliance issues." The letter, copied to the Compliance Committee, is worded masterfully, suggesting that I must make things right within 10 days or find myself in a world of hurt:

Perhaps you have already started to address the problem or are having difficulty in doing so. In either case, would you please call our office ... and let us know the status? ...

Otherwise we will assume that you are taking care of this problem and will make a note to check again in 10 days to see how you are progressing.

The complaints were so specific -- "treat turf for weeds on right side of driveway" -- I'm surprised I didn't see someone walking my yard with pencil and pad.

Centuries after our forefathers tamed a wild verdant frontier, I can't help but think they'd be ashamed at what's become of the land they killed millions of indigenous people to acquire.

I'm thinking about flying one of the "Don't Tread on Me" Gadsen flags in my yard -- a giant mustard yellow symbol of America's unquenchable thirst for freedom.

I just have to get it approved by the Architectural Committee first.

Politics · Jacksonville · Florida · 2005/05/16 · 10 COMMENTS · Link

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