tim bray on not being a gamer - to which don park responds as does james robertson - the basic idea of these posts is that online games are great because it's a nice way of to find companionship and adventure in a way that doesn't necessarily become addicting and real-life sucking (although it can) - i like james' advice to try a family-oriented board game and i would add that if you're in an RPGy mood then there's HeroQuest which is a nice Low-Overhead RPG Board Game and the Fudge RPG System that is really good for playing short, one-time games with simple rules. (The advantage of the low overhead is if you don't want to allocate a lot of people's time and still have fun)#

simplebits links a neat article about this guy Todd Rundgren who is a musical pioneer and techy. read on.#

kieth links a presentation on The Why and How Blogging - it's pretty interesting, if not kind of introductory.#

tim bray writes about metadata and how it relates to searching. he points out that there is no cheap meta data whether it's computationally intense (and error prone) process on the search engine's end or on the source's valuable time. i like this: ''you can start a fistfight in the bar at any XML or Content-Management conference about what\u2019s data and what\u2019s metadata.''#

moxie is not amused when got shows are perverted for american audiences. she offers this funny idea: ''What's next? Survivor 1 remakes with John Travolta staring as Richard Hatch and Ryan Seacrest as Jeff Probst?''#

tony writes about freedom and truth and how we may think we have it but we really don't. ''i want to hit the road. i want to show people that On the Road was a pile of shit written by a guy who wasnt honest about anything in his life.'' - on that note i goto school in lowell, where kerouac is from, and it's like blasphemy if you say something bad about him in any class... kriticism is key to kwalitee.#

peter lindberg writes about what "grammar" really is to a language. he says primarily that ''grammar describe languages rather than define them. Languages emerge and grammar classifies and describes what has emerged.'' - i think of it like this, it's form and function. the language is the whole thing. the grammar is the form, and the function is the semantic meaning. so the old standby, "form should follow function," supports the idea that a language should not start with grammar - perhaps a reason why Esperanto wouldn't really work? but like the structure of anything, grammar is useful for learning it from the outside in. when you're a native speaker, the language "grows again" within you (which is how languages evolve, the grow differently each generation) but when you are not a native speaker you need to study the form of another language and adapt it to your language's functional aspect. i'm no linguist but this makes sense to me.#

al3x gives a personal rule of thumb - i have another, if a corporation, organization, or individual has to take out a paid advertisement to tell you that they are performing well financially or otherwise, then they are definitely not. Someone said that if Google ever tried to IPO they wouldn't buy because it would mean that they were starved for money - that's the origin of my rule.#

al3x writes on the full disclosure dilemma. it's survival of the fittest essentially, if you don't fix your software, you get hacked, people don't buy your stuff. except reality isn't so great, and people keep using sendmail and microsoft. he follows up later with some stories of a misguided youth.#

rory writes that being a contractor is like being a nanny. you can get attached but they're never really your kids. from rt#

i have this quote on a wall next to my desk. Alan Kay: "The best way to predict the future is to invent it."#

wisdom from the buddha, is applicable everywhere in life, including the Online.#

brian hess blogs on punk and the sex pistols. he says ''Thankfully, they made room for bands like The Clash who were, I think, far more talented and had a lot more to say than did the Pistols.'' - on the story of clash, there's a radio excerpt where Joe Stummer is talking about how he was unsure about being in a band and then he heard the Sex Pistols and decided that it didn't matter if he was talented or not and he could just get up and do something. word.#