Smoof Blog: Archives for May 2006

Bruce Schneier has a really great article about DRM, spyware, and who's trying to take control of your computer away from you. I really think anyone who uses a computer should read it. Non-computer-geeks often don't understand why DRM is so bad. Schneier does a good job of explaining to a general audience one of the reasons that it's in everyone's best interest (not just geeks) to oppose and boycott DRM.

I love this guy:

Conrad Barski made it so lisp would have a "powerd by" logo.

I discovered a RSS reader that doesn't suck today.

I made a brittle but effective rss feed for The Pain -- When Will It End?.

Update: There's an official one now, so use it instead of mine (assuming anyone besides me was actually using it)

Did you know Virginia calls route 1 "Jefferson Davis Highway"? Sheesh.

The National Arboretum has some really amazing bonsai trees. I would have taken more pictures but my battery ran out. They had some incredibly ancient ones too. I think one was 400 years old.

They also have a bizarre arrangement of Corinthian columns that were once part of the US Capital building. I guess someone couldn't stand the thought of throwing them out, but didn't know what do do with them. Kinda like my supercluster.

Meghan and I went out boating with Adam and Dana today on the Potomac and Seneca Creek. It was really cool at first; All you can see is river and trees. It's like people never existed. There was a blue heron on one of the little islands. Unfortunately the Potomac up there is way too shallow. We ran aground and pretty much wrecked the propeller.

You can't see it all that well in that cell phone picture, but it's pretty bad. It hit all sorts of rocks and got totally bent out of shape. Meghan and Dana jumped in the river to push the boat out of the shallows. I could have gotten it out with the boat stick but they jumped in anyway. I think they just wanted an excuse to go swimming.

I've succumbed to another internet fad. I added captions and a search to my photo album. Once I go through all the photos and caption them appropriately, it'll be easy to find all the photos with a particular person in them, or a particular cat, or whatever.