Speed spray!
Mood:  quizzical
Now Playing: Bonnie Prince Billy

First, there was the Pringles can WiFi antenna booster to gain distance and power. Now, an innovative way to increase your bandwidth. Be sure to read the fine print!

Linux World day 2
Mood:  sharp
Now Playing: KUSF 90.3

Linux World again, here in the computer cluster roped off especially for media and (apparently) one woman in a black backless cat-suit.

Man oh MAN is this place geeky! It's great, don't get me wrong, but there's a busload of Sweedish teens from a Stockholm Linux User Group here, all of them smiling and waving their Tux dolls with glee. Not to mention about seventeen dead ringers for the Comic Book Guy from the Simpsons. Windows? Worst Operating System Ever! Now make like my pants and split!

The Red Hat booth was more crowded than ever today. They were showing a demo that I could barely pay attention to because of the size of the crowd. Also, a big line over at XandrOS yesterday. They were handing out copies of their new distro (I got one!) for free.

Met Scott of Laughing Squid, a person I've known over email for about three years but never met in the flesh. Also, had a conversation with a woman from North Carolina about the possibility of the Webmonkey Golden Banana award of excellence. Can't decide what to give the award FOR exactly, but the possibility of one such award existing excites her. Sorry, but we're going to have to think about it.

Oh, and to the person who wrote yesterday about how we should write tutorials on all of those technologies... there already is a Firewall article on WM from 2001, and the best MySQL tool money can buy is your local text editor. Hehe, sorry. Had to say it. Your comments are appreciated!

New article tomorrow, and a Linux World wrap-up soon after. See you then!

hello (linux) world
Mood:  on fire
Now Playing: cell phones and air conditioning

It's Mike here, and I'm at the LinuxWorld Expo at San Francisco's Moscone Center. I've only been here about 25 minutes and I can already tell you that it's super geeky. There are little tux the penguins running around (actually guys in sweaty penguin suits) and plenty of pony tails. I'm going to be wandering around today, asking questions and listening to speeches. I'm trying to sniff out the latest in the Web technology field. Maybe a new server package, a new MySQL tool, a new open source firewall... we shall see. We'll be drawing up a full report on the conference at the end of the week. Which way to the MUD room?

The fifth beatle
Mood:  hug me
Now Playing: please, please, please

Just in case you've always been a skeptic, or just in case you find the need to proclaim yourself the Eggman a little too often, here is definitive proof that Paul McCartney was killed and replaced with a look-alike in 1966.

So, put on Magical Mystery Tour and at the end of "Strawberry Fields" when the trolley part comes on, crank up the stereo real loud and listen, man. You'll see! Doubt no more!

New Word Alert
Mood:  happy
Now Playing: laughter
We have coined a new word here at Webmonkey. We were in the park playing hipster bingo at lunch, and Evany inquired as to whether or not Mike's MUNI hat was an ironic trucker-cap. Well, it certainly isn't a trucker cap, because trucker cap implies mesh and foam construction. But it is sort of ironic. Let's just say it's quasironic. New Word!

new article over at Webmonkey
Mood:  accident prone
Now Playing: cody chesnutt
Hey! Ex-Webmonkey producer and really fine human being Jason Cook has written a piece all about the nuttastic things going down in the meta space. It's called "Metadata, Mark II," and it just may change your life.

Dave Eggers would be proud!
Mood:  not sure
Now Playing: son house
Courtesy of Burris T. Ewell, here it is, the keyboard for pirates.

Avast.

Tux takes a bath
Mood:  sharp
Now Playing: KUSF, 90.3 FM
Some interesting developments over the weekend. First on our minds is that the 2003 Tour de France is really kicking. Lance is in yellow and the climbers put on an amazing show in the Alps. I can tell you that Jay and I are pretty weary from waking at 6:00AM every morning to watch the live race coverage. Not to worry, the bike race is exciting enough to get us nice and pumped before work. Then we spend our first fifteen minutes in the office talking about it. Follow along on OLN or on the Web at VeloNews.com

Oh yeah, technology and Web development, right. Have you seen this?? Quite funny.

Reach out and touch some one
Mood:  party time!
Now Playing: The sound of leaf blowers

Happy 4th of July to one and all. We're spending the day at a big fancy house in Marin, grilling up soy-based bratwurst and drinking hearty ales with names we can't pronounce.

But seriously folks, did you see the Wired News story about the recording and transmission of touch over the Internet? The applications are endless, for sure. The technology is known as haptics, and it involves some gloves, some software modelling, and a little bit of imagination.

Does anyone remember the stink that a couple of companies made a few years ago when they announced the ability to transmit smell over the Internet? The devices never took off, so hopefully the haptic technology will. Finally, we can rent movies and watch them in Feel-A-Round. Imagine the Matrix.. ugh!

El Camino
Mood:  smelly
Now Playing: random britpop stream
Good day, intrepid Web geeks. How are you??

Last week was pretty huge in the Apple universe. All those new announcements, Panther (aka MacOS X 10.3), a new browser out of beta, and developers soaking up the flavor. Heck, we even posted an article about all the hype. This morning, I was perusing my favorite RSS feeds when i came across an odd factoid on Pinkerton's blog.

Seems as though Apple never fully tested Camino (??) under Panther. Maybe they were too caught up high-fiving themselves over Safari? Pinkerton updated his post this morning by noting that it's just the trunk builds of Camino that won't run on Panther. Version 0.7, the most recent build, works fine. However, run an older build and the browser doesn't load any pages. Nothing, just a blank screen. Try to open a tab and the browser crashes horribly. Very interesting. So, Panther kids, download the latest Camino now!