Don't Back Down

This week apparently saw someone ride the falls at Niagara. No barrel, no safety devices. Just man against nature. Maybe that's the trick. All these people in barrels get thrown all over the place and are eventually pummelled to death. This guy apparently didn't have any problems, and is even shown walking away from the falls under his own power (he's also under a towel).

In any case, this is monumentally stupid. Even for Super Dave Osborne, this borders on insanity. But I don't really have a problem with that. If you want to ride the falls at Niagara, go for it. I've been there. Those are some big falls. But hey - if you have nothing better to do, it's okay by me.

What I don't understand is why this guy was taken into custody. He may be fined for his actions. For performing an "unlicensed stunt" (as I've seen one account mention)? For being a moron? For having nothing better to do one afternoon? This I don't get. If this guy generates all sorts of copycats - who cares? If someone is dense enough to ride the falls at Niagara, I say let them do it.

Why is the government trying to enforce this sort of thing? I think we ought to encourage the common sense-challenged to undertake more such opportunities. Don't we live in a country where you should be free to be as stupid as you want to be, without fear of repercussion? When the government steps in to keep you from doing something stupid, it's just not right.

Update: Apparently the guy was trying to commit suicide. Which makes it bad for him that he didn't succeed. But my point is the same. Even more so - do you think that being reminded of his inability to do it correctly by being fined for it will really help his state of mind?

I've recently been tossing around some ideas about dynamically creating syndication feeds for the blog. Most specifically I've been trying to figure out how to best keep up with comments on a particular entry. By default, the only solution is to come back and check again later. Even having a new comment list or an entire feed devoted to comments seem to be extreme solutions that wouldn't quite solve the problem.

Read "Researching Dynamic Feeds" »

First, wildly ambitious carp start jumping into boats. They knock fillings from teeth, fish-slap you upside the head and generally let you know that they aren't going to take it any more.

Well now they've taken it one step further. Another guy recently died because he got a fish stuck in his mouth. Rumors say that the fisherman in this story may have been re-enacting something he saw on TV. Don't buy it. The fish are onto us. Don't say I didn't warn you.

David Raynes put up a cryptography challenge sometime yesterday. Naturally, I didn't read about it until this morning, so I'm certain that I'm not the first one to answer the call. In any case, I did figure out the message. Stop reading here if you don't want to see the answer!

First, I browsed the links that David provided. Then I did some searching on my own. Found a very useful cryptography page through Google. I also found a very useful crossword solver page that helps you figure out if your word will work (or not).

After messing around for a while trying to count letters and such, I really only used one tip. That is the "single letter word" tip. That is, there are only two single letter words in the english language: A and I. As David's text had two of these words in it, I knew that one had to be A and the other had to be I. I simply jotted down that M = A and U = I.

When I did this, I noticed something very familiar, and that the letters were the same space apart from one another. That is to say that M is 12 letters from A while U is 12 letters from I. So I simply started substituting letters and it seemed to work perfectly. This is very similar to the common ROT-13 method used on Usenet for years. We'll call David's version ROT-12 since it only rotates 12 letters instead of 13.

So without further ado, here's the answer...

MY WIFE AND I WILL BE SETTLING ON OUR FIRST HOUSE IN LESS THAN ONE WEEK. I STILL CANNOT BELIEVE WE WILL ACTUALLY BE HOMEOWNERS. IT SHOULD BE QUITE A BIT OF FUN TO MAKE OUR MARK ON THE HOUSE.

Congratulations David!

This weekend, I was reading an article (which I now cannot find) about the continued delays to the completion of the interstate 485 loop in southeast Charlotte and how people just ignore the fact that it isn't yet open and drive on it anyway.

Read "Incesssant Impatience" »

Last night, Denise and I went out for a night on the town. We decided to take in a local production of the Rocky Horror Show. This was not the Rocky Horror Picture Show, but an actual stage production at a theater here in Charlotte.

A couple years ago, I saw a much more professional version of the show at the Circle in the Square in New York City. This was somewhat newsworthy because Joan Jett was in the show. Dick Cavett did a great job playing the criminologist, and more than once stopped hecklers in their tracks with his quick wit.

Read "Rocky Horror Show" »

With little fanfare over the last couple of weeks, SprintPCS has quietly begun shipping the Handspring Treo 600. More than one person has been raving about it. I'll just include a link to one report here. I spent 15 minutes or so on the phone with Sprint PCS last week, and they had them at that point. Reports are surfacing now that the phones are sold out.

As if you road warriors haven't suffered enough, it seems that public access terminals are the latest to fall victims to a fraud scheme. This one happened when someone installed a keyboard logging program on public terminals at Kinko's. Be careful out there.

For you construction and trivia geeks out there, it's time to update your information on the world's tallest building. No longer can the Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur lay claim to the title. This time around the crown goes to Taipei 101 in, well, Taipei (which is in Taiwan).

I've got a couple of online tests to pass along, but I haven't had time to take the tests myself yet - so I'm going to hang onto those links for another week. Maybe I'll have time to do both and will be able to give you a double next week.

Until then...

Three years and six days ago, I wrote of another farewell, this time to my own dear friend. The post was titled Goodbye, Old Friend and can still be found on the message boards of The Motley Fool. That is why you may notice references to stocks and portfolios and such. My apologies at both beginning and ending this week on a depressing note.

Read "Remembering Another Friend" »

I was in an enclosed parking deck the other day, and it actually has large vehicle spaces. Apparently this is the response to those compact cars only spaces that have been popular for a while. That's okay, fair is fair. But you have to wonder just how many special-purpose parking spaces are needed. Will the insanity ever end?

The part that really got to me was that these were the first spaces in the deck, right next to the elevators! Even the handicapped spaces were further away than these. Unlike those reserved for compact cars, these spots had signs saying you'd be towed if you weren't in a full-size truck or SUV. To be fair, I don't think too many SUVs could fit into a compact space. But that's not the point.

These days, personal vehicles are large enough to carry Robin Hood's entire band of merry men. They block your view while driving, while turning and now while parking because you have to drive past them to find yourself a space. These are sport utility vehicles, folks. Most have four wheel drive. Let 'em park outside on a hill or something. Drive over a load of rocks and park on the roof. Doesn't matter. Just get the damn things out of the way.

Really now - how big is big enough? Will we all be driving barns soon?

I'm sure you've seen those images that display a changing value in them, something that you have to read and then type into a field so that you verify that you're human (the assumption being that a machine couldn't read the image to extract the text). They're everywhere.

Do you need one? That's a question I can't answer for you. But I can tell you how to create the image. I am working on another bit to tell you how to actually use the image for verification, but since I can't quite get it working myself, I'm going to leave that part out. This just shows you how to create the image itself.

Read "Verification Image with PHP" »

Yesterday afternoon, Dave Winer published a request for comments (RFC) on how to best provide a list of feeds that are available on your site. The result of this RFC? The generation of another OPML file, somewhat akin to the use of mySubscriptions.opml. The name of this new file should be myPublicFeeds.opml.

I like Dave's proposal for at least three reasons.

#1 - I already have one. I put it together about three weeks ago for no particular purpose other than to see if I could. I simply created an index template that contains links to each of the standard feeds that I publish: The full site feeds, the monthly feeds and the category feeds. Mine was called something different, but since I never published the URL, I can easily change the name. Incidentally, I'm not the only one with such a file already. David Thomson has an OPML file for Tapestry for this very reason.

#2 - MT-Outliner, the plugin I wrote recently for Movable Type, should be able to handle this file format without any modifications to the code. I like it when that happens. New function, existing tool. Sweet. It's just an OPML file that can be imported, even one folder at a time. If you don't use MT or don't want to use the file in this way, you could even take this file and import it to your Bloglines account and use it there.

#3 - Very little needs to change. OPML exists already. True that it's a bit open-ended, as you can generally define your own attributes. But the attributes Dave has proposed are ones generally in use and understood already. It seems to me that extending something in place already might make for a bit more sense than defining an entirely new implementation.

The only other concern is one raised in a Q&A at Dave's site this morning. One thing missing from the initial proposal is a way to automatically find this list of feeds. Using the same name is fine, but then not everyone likes to do that. Perhaps adding a link tag would be the best idea. Obviously not a link tag to each feed, but a link tag to the list of feeds. Once again David Thomson has the solution in his link. He's already proposed a new link tag for the index of this new OPML file. He elaborates on the thought today. I like the idea.

As I was talking to a good friend of mine recently, he told me that his companion of many years, Huxley, had passed away. Huxley wasn't a young pup, even when I first met him, but neither would he be considered old. With Huxley, age was never important anyway. He had a zest for life that many people don't possess.

Read "Farewell to a Friend" »