accordion guy is one of the best reason to read blogs on the intanet. he posted a nude accordion performance on friday. so funny. so perfect. - ''I have decided that the I would perform the first accordion video naked. Then I decided I'd look even better if I wore my Famous Cowboy Hat. Then I decided that the most appropriate song would be Britney Spears' Baby One More Time. And all this was decided while I was sober! '' - oh yes. thank you#

joey also writes about the weirdness of the IKEA "no-photos" policy. - '' I really hate being treated like some kind of criminal by companies who then expect me to give them money. I don't like being told that I can't have a friend take a picture of me inside their showroom when I'm quite certain that they themselves are monitoring me through the store's security cameras.'' - that is pretty annoying because somethings are pretty and photos are nice. sniff.#

flight simulator as a text based game - ''*> LOOK STEWARDESS* She's hot.'' - hah#

from ten reasons why is criticism of kottke - ''Jason Kottke has fallen prey to the siren's lure of the "human readability" argument'' - and the idea that the web was help by "View Source" - ''You think the web took off fast because of "view source"? Bah! Think of what would have happened with web publishing in 1995 if there had been an effective way of publishing web sites without having to reverse engineer HTML from "view source" and hand-code your own pages. The web didn't succeed because of "view source"; the web succeeded in spite of "view source." The reliance on people who would reverse engineer HTML source and the concurrent lack of effective personal publishing tools held back the web. Weblog tools revolutionize personal web publishing because they overcome the "view source barrier;" they allow your typical, non-geek human to publish to the web simply and effectively without ever having to view HTML source to do so. Why can't we expect the same sort of transparency from tools that produce and consume RSS feeds? ''' - i think until something has become an mature standard and strategy for doing something it needs to be easy to mutate and reason about - not a "binary format that happens to be human-readable" (as someone said who's link i cannot find) - i am pundit, and unoriginal, so i have no support for this idea.#

from outside the beltway is gallagher announcing his platform for the California governor re-election (complete with slogans - the platform points are interesting, ''Because it ain't drugs and it ain't violent, let the kids cruise and show off their cars, abolish anti-cruising laws or give the kids a place to cruise. '' - and the slogans are fun, ''Why settle for amateurs? California deserves a Professional comedian. ''#

from andrew grumet is an article about hypochondria and the 'placebo/nocebo effect' - the article, ''Conventional medical wisdom holds that hypochondria is a hopeless condition and should be treated by ignoring it, because a hypochondriac's recognition of his problem does not result in a change in his symptoms or in his behavior. Indeed, doctors like to joke that a hypochondriac's symptoms will disappear only when the patient lands on a desert island—and nobody is around to listen to his whining.'' - from grumet, ''In the "placebo effect", a subject feels better because they expect to feel better, even if no drugs are involved. It's easy to get a kick out of this because, hey, if the person feels better that's just great, whatever the reason. The nocebo effected subjects, by contrast, felt worse because they expected to feel worse. Not only that, they felt worse in specific ways that they'd gone out of their way to discover. Here there is also an element of human folly, but it is at once more tragic and more delicious.''#

from raymond chen is some windows trivia - ''Why is a registry file called a "hive"? Because one of the original developers of Windows NT hated bees. So the developer who was responsible for the registry snuck in as many bee references as he could. A registry file is called a "hive", and registry data are stored in "cells", which is what honeycombs are made of. ''#

some interesting thoughts over at Peter Lindberg's blog about writing and the idea of "constrained universes of expression." - ''As you're beginning to read a new book, you're familiarizing yourself with its universe. You're getting to know it's structure, it's rhythm. Simply put, you're learning what to expect from the book, and the writer establishes the constraints of his universe of expression.'' - he mentions an article that talks about "High Concepts" - ''Simply put, a high concept is an intriguing idea that can be stated in a few words and is easily understood by all [Emphasis mine.]. An asteroid the size of Texas is hurtling toward the earth. That's a high concept. Everyone knows exactly what that means. It arouses an emotional response, and, in just eleven words, everyone knows what the movie is about.'' - this is a way having a "pre-fabbed" universe created for you so you can tell you story - think in terms of software, this is the language/tool framework that wraps up your functionality. - peter's an intriguing guy#

she who wears crimson ponders cuteness, comfort, and companionship - '' Just saw a guy I hadn't seen since I was maybe 16. It was amusing. When I said, "I wasn't this cute then," he said he remembers that I was cute back then too, which was awfully kind of him. How is it that I have the opportunity to spend the weekend with a jacuzzi, central air conditioning, a queen-size pillow top bed, and complete peace and privacy, and I don't have a - *kaff* - companion?'' - it bugs me when i see girls i used to think were cute and they've ruined themselves, or when i think about those girls who are still cute but now distant, unknown, and untouchable... why didn't i not care about embarrassment then like i do now, i could've been invincible.#

from a Just a Gwai Lo is a ''rule [that] only really applies to self-conscious nerds.'' - ''I've thought about all the potential good outcomes of it all, and I think [I] know why there won't be any of the potential good outcomes. [...] because [I] thought about them and the first rule of the female group theory is that they can't be observed and interacted with simultaneously'' - hah.#

awesome dictionary word of the day today, phantasmagoria - ''A fantastic sequence of haphazardly associative imagery, as seen in dreams or fever.''#