Last time I started a new job, as a copy editor at a newspaper, after a number of years as a senior editor at magazines, I was faced with a lot of new experiences. New software, new workflows, even new ways of writing headlines.
For instance, whereas the magazines all used story headlines referred to as “label heads,” such as “The Joy of Skiing Cross Country,” newspapers use “sentence heads” or “subject-verb heads,” like “Skiers Find Joy in Cross Country Skiing.”
I got into a little email dustup recently with some people over McCain and Palin. In reply to some of the glowing testimonials to Gov. Palin that had been sent me, I made the point that she has been the governor of Alaska, an entire state with fewer people in it than the single city of San Francisco, for less than two years. And if that so-called “executive experience” was so great, then former New York Mayor Rudi Giuliani, who for eight years ran a city with 12 times the population of the entire state of Alaska, should REALLY be something special. (And frankly, I would much rather have Rudy Giuliani a beat away from John McCain’s 72-year-old heart than Sarah Palin.)
I got back this:
I picked this up from StupidEvilBastard, which he found at Beyond Binary:
The auto-suggest feature of Google’s new Chrome browser does more than just help users get where they are going. It will also give Google a wealth of information on what people are doing on the Internet besides searching.
Provided that users leave Chrome’s auto-suggest feature on and have Google as their default search provider, Google will have access to any keystrokes that are typed into the browser’s Omnibox, even before a user hits enter.
What’s more, Google has every intention of retaining some of that data even after it provides the promised suggestions. A Google representative told CNET News that the company plans to store about 2 percent of that data–and plans to store it along with the Internet Protocol address of the computer that typed it.
In theory, that means that if one were to type the address of a site–even if they decide not to hit enter–they could leave incriminating evidence on Google’s servers.
I’m trying out Google Chrome, the new web browser. 
So far, I’m a little bit iffy about where it puts the bookmarks folder, but it may be that I’m doing something wrong.
That said, I LOOOOVE the simplicity of the browser window — the lack of that cluttered “everything and the kitchen sink” that takes up so much real estate in other browsers. I love the tabs that you can peel off into new windows. I love the top-bar where you can park your most-used web addresses. I love the ease with which you can create a new tab, just by clicking on the little plus next to the existing tabs. I like the combined URI and search window. I love the way the browser works with you once you start typing into that window. And the opening window that has 9 icons of your recently visited sites? Wonderful. And so far, it seems really fast.
I’m experimenting with something internal, and some interesting stuff is coming out of it.
You know that “little voice” we all have? Or maybe it’s little voices, plural, since the thing is characterized in cartoons as an angel and devil on opposite shoulders, both telling you to do different things.
I may have said this in the past here, but I think of us humans as having “humany” and “beasty” parts. (That second one is correct as spelled; it’s not “beastly.” And yeah, I make up my own words sometimes. Hey, I’m a writer.)
The beasty part is the part that deals with innate drives – sex, hunger, love, anger, allegiance, etc. The humany part is the part that deals with reason and … well, wisdom.
I came across an article a few days ago, entitled “What Would You Do If You Knew You Could Not Fail?”
That set me to thinking about the changing of habits, as it applies specifically to losing weight.
Typically, when you think of something like losing weight, you see it as requiring a very large effort of will, an ongoing tooth-gritting, fist-clenching determination.
You prepare yourself for losing weight. You set a date. You build up to it. You plan strategies. The herculean task looms, and you fear another failure. Then you get into it. You hold yourself back. You deny yourself. You agonize over how badly you want to eat, how badly you want to just give in and rest from this awful, horrible chore.
And yet …
I was thinking about my life a few days ago, the things I’ve lived through, and I’m writing to tell you some of what I was thinking.
In my time, we have the musical scores of greats such as Ludwig von Beethoven and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart – I do hope you still remember them – but we don’t have any actual recordings of their own original performances.
On the other hand, musicians such as Elvis Presley, The Beatles and Bob Dylan were all alive in my lifetime, and I can listen to their actual performances any day.
It was hot, the day the coyotes danced.
It was about 1990, and I was ranch-sitting at the Schober Ranch in Bishop, California. The owner was up in the mountains all summer, but there were cattle at the ranch, and somebody needed to be there to look after them.
In this particular case, ranch-sitting was a minimalist job. The cattle were out in a pasture with plenty of water and grass, and cattle don’t need much more than that. Really, all I had to do was walk the pastures once a day and make sure nobody was sick or injured or dead.
I don’t know why I haven’t heard more about the “Cone of Silence.” I chuckle every time I think of John McCain sitting under it in a room by himself.
It brings to mind THIS.
I can just all-too-easily picture McCain under there when the hostess comes in to tell him it’s his turn to go on stage for his interview. He sits there going “What? … What?” in a bewildered Maxwell Smart voice.
In fact the more I think of it, the more I’m convinced that John McCain IS Maxwell Smart.
Let the meme go forth.
I was at a Revolutionary War re-enactor event just a couple of weeks back, and I had a … well, call it a re-epiphany.
Some years back, while watching my friend Carl Buell, a natural history illustrator, paint a prehistoric scene, I had the original epiphany. I compared what Carl was doing with a brush with what I did with a camera, and I realized this: No matter how good I am with a camera, there are things in my photos that get there by accident.
A picture of a trail through a bower of fall colors might contain a bright red leaf lying in the leaf-strewn duff on a forest floor, and yet that particular leaf might never catch my attention, either before or after I took the picture. I might have the picture printed and framed for 30 years over my desk, and never notice that specific leaf.
Hello to the year 3008!