Speak Stiltedly and Wear a Yellow Shirt

This is your final reminder about the Stargate SG-1 Fan Awards 2004. The polls close tomorrow. I shouldn’t talk, since I haven’t had time to read or vote…

My brief review of “Walk in Silence” by Catherine Asaro was linked as a dissenting positive opinion in Nicholas Whyte’s roundup of the 2004 Hugo Nominees. I’d tell you to vote early, vote often, but it’s too late to register to vote now.

[Update: It was too late for nominations a while back. I’m not sure about voting.]

Tiger (otherwise known as Mac OS 10.4) won’t be out until next year, but some forthcoming features were revealed at the developers conference. Dashboard looks scrumptious. It also looks like Konfabulator, a resemblance which has caused many snide remarks like the one up on their homepage, but John Gruber explains that the concepts behind Dashboard go way, way back.

He’s right about Konfabulator being an unbearable resource hog, yet it’s the web-page basis of Dashboard that’s its biggest appeal. I made my own Konfabulator widgets, but it sounds far more pleasant to use HTML, CSS and JavaScript to make a Dashboard gadget. Look for a color wheel gadget once I get my hands on Tiger.

I have a couple of Safari links outstanding. I was looking for a WordPress spellchecking plug-in, but in my searching I discovered that you can spellcheck in Safari just by checking Edit | Spelling | Check Spelling As You Type. Now as I type this blog entry, it’s getting spellchecked.

Todd Dominey linked a preview movie of an RSS reader being built into Safari for OS 10.4.

If men were ever in a state in which they did not want to know or could not perceive truth (facts or evidence), then Fantasy would languish until they were cured. If they ever get into that state (it would not seem at all impossible), Fantasy will perish…
–JRR Tolkien, “On Fairy-Stories” in Tree and Leaf

Now I want to write a story about fantasy perishing.

Jerie pointed out a rec of one of my SG stories. The person who claims to have sent feedback really did send feedback. As for the rest of you…

People have criticized the movie The Day After Tomorrow for its sudden freeze, though frozen mammoths may be evidence of rapid climate changes in the past. Richard B. Cathcart gives the real reason why the movie is scientifically impossible.

I’ve had my first comment spam in WordPress - insidious comments that look relevant, and only the URL field is used for spam purposes. I recognized it as spam since it all came from the same IP, though the URLs varied. (I didn’t visit them.)

So I’m trying out the built-in spam blocking. In WordPress 1.2, just go to Options | Discussion and add IP addresses, URLs, or keywords to the textbox at the bottom of the page, and hit Update.

One hundred years ago today, Helen Keller graduated from Radcliffe with honors. I’m no so surprised that she did it despite being blind and deaf, as that college students were still in school in June in 1904.

It’s a lovely filk I wish I’d filked myself, but instead Mustang Sally sings the last word on fanfic hate.