Well, this doesn't bode well for the plastic bag ban that's working its way through the system. If we can't even stop creating waste that serves absolutely no purpose, it's hard to see how something that at least gets used once stands a chance of being banned. My favorite bit:

Sen. Mark Wyland (R-Escondido) disputed the argument that the bill is necessary to address significant waste. He said he periodically throws away large stacks of newspapers and junk mail. “It's just one more item. It's not a big deal,” Wyland said.

Because everyone knows that there's no incremental cost to additional waste. It's not like printing more books and then throwing them away kills more trees and takes up more landfill space. It's completely binary!

Oh, and way to set a good example there Mark. Remember kids: real men throw away all their paper; recycling is for commies!

Category: Society

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I just finished applying the tips from the “What Does It All Mean” section of Mark Pilgrim's awesome “Dive Into HTML5” to this blog, so now there's even more depth and structure to my posts. At least for machines. It doesn't have any real upsides for non-metal readers, but it makes me feel better—and let's face it, that's all this is really here for. If it were about you, I'd actually post here from time to time.

Even though it doesn't really matter at the moment, it's nice to be able to turn a bunch of structural ids and classes in the HTML into something standard. As an exercise in playing with the new HTML5 elements it was definitely a success.

I also used the <audio> tag for the first time, making the sample player for Astraios's website use that instead of a plugin in browsers capable of playing back mp3 via <audio> (I didn't feel like dual-encoding to ogg to get Firefox support; at least not yet). It was amazing how easy it was; it definitely is living up to its goal of making audio as easy as images (syntactically, that is—obviously the codec situation and the browser support aren't quite there yet). Even layering it over the existing code so the other browsers still work was trivial. It's definitely an exciting time for the web!

Category: Geek

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So with all the Buzz excitement I've been thinking—and talking to various friends—about things like Profiles, publishing Buzz comments to the entire internets, and how much public information is the right amount.

Since I just missed the Facebook generation most of the people I know tend to lean toward “none”. And my first instinct when Buzz prompted me to make a Google Profile was the same. Where I've lived? Where I work? Buzz posts visibile to the whole internet, and indexed by search engines? No thanks!

But then I remembered I had a blog! (What can I say, I like setting up these straight lines for you guys—prize for the best response in the comments.) It has my name on it, my email, and enough information to find out where I've worked, probably where I've lived, and certainly where I went to college. So why should I care if that same information is on a single page instead of spread out a bit on a blog? And since I use my name for my PWA account, it's not exactly rocket science to find my public photos there... plus, those are the photos I've already decided to post publicly, so again, who cares?

Thus I've decided to take another small step toward the world these crazy kids today live in, and make a real profile instead of a totally empty placeholder. Maybe I'll even try some public Buzzing. If I'm feeling really crazy, I might even post here from time to time!

But I haven't lost all my standards: I still think Twitter is too absurd to bother with. Character limits? Please. My genius will not be constrained.

Category: Life

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