hello, typepad

A Few Lunch Time Favorites

Over at Alaina's NYC Eats, I've posted a summary of some of my favorite lunch spots.

Lovely spam, wonderful S Spam,

I've got a few pretty old e-mail addresses, and I get a lot of spam (although not as much as Brad.) I've received the fake Microsoft Virus spam, the Nigerian spam, the penis enlargement, viagra, free sex, college dorm and sales motivation spam. But today, I received spam from my friend "postmodern," and this makes me sad.

Here's $100,000

Unlike most urban legends, the one about the Iranian exile stuck at the Paris airport for 15 years is true. Surrounded by a mountain of his possessions near the Paris Bye Bye lounge at Terminal 1 in Charles de Gaulle International Airport, Merhan Karimi Nasseri is still there after all these years -- a celebrity homeless person.

To the pilots, airport staff, fast-food merchants and millions who have passed through the terminal on their way to somewhere else, the 58-year-old Nasseri has become a postmodern icon -- a traveler whom no one will claim. Little do they know that he is on his way to becoming a Hollywood icon, too. Inspired by Nasseri's intriguing tale of lost identity, bureaucratic limbo and persistence, Steven Spielberg has bought the rights to his life story as the basis for the new Tom Hanks vehicle, ''The Terminal.''

We all know the story, but it never gets old. There is wifi in Charles de Gaulle International Airport. Someone buy Nasseri an iBook and get him blogging. In exchange for the laptop, take half the Google TextAds revenue.

The Dean Mob

Good morning. Have you seen this? It's exactly what I'm afraid of.

Update! Good morning again. Apparently, it's worse than I feared. (thanks, Alaina). So when do we nominate G.B. Trudeau?

Here's the Blog for America entry and oh, by the way, Michael Moore's near-endorsement of General Wesley Clark:

But right now, for the sake and survival of our very country, we need someone who is going to get The Job done, period. And that job, no matter whom I speak to across America -- be they leftie Green or conservative Democrat, and even many disgusted Republicans -- EVERYONE is of one mind as to what that job is:

Bush Must Go.

I guess this means that (thankfully) Nader won't be running.

9/11

9/11 on randomWalks (start at the bottom) and mnftiu.

a wee housecleaning

11pm, Saturday night - the TypeList export was broken. I filed a trouble ticket and two hours later Ben Trott had delivered a fixed version of the requested XML file to my inbox. (How's that for service??) Two weeks later, I've finally gotten around to moving all of the "Hello, Links" and "Hello, News" archives over to my new "low threshold links" project: randomwalks.com/dj. Even though the usual tell tale signs of a "blog" are backgrounded - permalinks, commentary, categories, comments and trackback - they're still there. Here at "Hello," the absence of sidebar links loosens up the layout a little bit. I also got to play with a bunch of Perl modules we're using at work on our new (yet to be launched) youth media distribution Web site.

I work with filmmakers and non-profit workers - people on a budget who usually can't afford computers, and when they can, don't have the luxury of time to explore all the latest and greatest technologies. That's where we Bloggers come in. Six Apart may have a tiny staff, but they (and other Blogging software companies) have an extremely loyal customer base that is constantly testing, tinkering and pushing. The result is a lot of tools and methodologies that are good enough and still improving. When my boss asks me why blogging is important, I can show her a partner's RSS feed that's easily integrated into our site, or make a wholesale change to our website with a CSS tweak.

Adriana in Deep Concentration

When Adriana concentrates, she makes that face and starts using one hand on each keyboard. Why? I don't know. Here she is seen recategorizing randomWalks. Happy Birthday, Adriana!