Prof. Froomkin passes along the link to a fascinating little applet that lets you fill in a form containing all 50 states and the District of Columbia. The result is an HTML-formatted list of states using the following key: bold for states you’ve been to, underline for states you’ve lived in, and italics for the state you’re in now…

Here’s my list (I don’t count a state if I’ve only changed planes there):

Alabama / Alaska / Arizona / Arkansas / California / Colorado / Connecticut / Delaware / Florida / Georgia / Hawaii / Idaho / Illinois / Indiana / Iowa / Kansas / Kentucky / Louisiana / Maine / Maryland / Massachusetts / Michigan / Minnesota / Mississippi / Missouri / Montana / Nebraska / Nevada / New Hampshire / New Jersey / New Mexico / New York / North Carolina / North Dakota / Ohio / Oklahoma / Oregon / Pennsylvania / Rhode Island / South Carolina / South Dakota / Tennessee / Texas / Utah / Vermont / Virginia / Washington / West Virginia / Wisconsin / Wyoming / Washington D.C /

If you’re the visual sort, you might prefer to create a map like this one (red for states I’ve visited):

I haven’t spent much time in the South or the Midwest, have I? And I was really surprised to see I’ve never been to Michigan or Ohio.

Here’s a similar tool to create a map of countries you’ve visited:

I suspect my older brother’s map would look very different from this one.

The J-Walk Blog is still off-line. (“Maintenance,” he claimed yesterday before the site went completely dark today. Problems with MySQL? Maybe. I think a team of RIAA commandos parachuted in and took him prisoner until he agrees to join the BMC Music Club and buy at least two copy-protected CDs in the next year.)

But anyway, to pick up the slack, I present these links for your amusement:

George W. Bush’s Gettysburg Address:

A score of years ago–forty years ago, it’s forty, I know that–Americans gave the world democracy. And because of that we’re free. The world knows that. And equal. No matter who you are in America, you’re an equal American. [Applause]

And now we’re in a war. And this war is a lot like a test you have to take. It’d be a test for anybody, a test of their leadership. I’m a war leader, and I know it’s hard. You have to endure. But we’re going to see it through because, see, in a democracy that’s what you do. See through things. And I’m going to do that. It’s the right thing to do.

Go read the rest. I can actually hear the President saying these words. (Via World O’Crap)

“The first-ever cellular telephone for pets”

The PetsCell™ will allow pet owners to talk to their pets as well as allowing owners to request assistance should they become incapacitated and require help. In addition, and perhaps more valuable, pet owners will have a peace of mind that if their pet is lost and someone finds their pet wandering the streets, with a simple press of a button on the PetsCell™, the auto dial function will dial the owners home alerting the owner to retrieve their pet.

While on vacation, at work, or on the road, pets can be contacted by that friendly recognizable voice of their owners.

I know people who will seriously consider buying this. (Via Doug Klippert)

Teh Tw0 T0werz

Tolkien in leet-speak:

[Aragorn, Gimli and Legolas are running across Rohan]
Gimli: “FFS speed hax!”
Legolas: “LOL, N00b!”
**Aragorn spots the fallen broach
Aragorn: “Sif teh leaves of Lorien fall. They give +2!”

[At Isengard, Saruman is with a group of Wildmen of Dunland]
Saruman: “Teh Rohirrim are tards!”
Dunlander: “Sif leet! Damn retards!”
Saruman: “Joo bring teh pwn. Go and pwn those n00bs!”
Crowd of Dunlanders: “WOOT!”

It may not make sense unless you’ve read F3ll0wsh1p of teh R1ng first.

(Via Boing Boing)

I did not remember that the character of Uncle Duke (based on Hunter S. Thompson) made his first appearance in Doonesbury in 1974. I would have guessed much later.

Of course, I don’t remember much about 1974.

(Via Paul Boutin)

As some of you may know, I live in Arizona, where this year’s wet weather (third wettest February in a century) means a bumper crop of wildflowers. The hills around here are spectacularly green, and the color is already appearing. Desert Wildflower Watch is a great place to go for details and pictures like this one, taken just a few miles from my house:

The Arizona Report is here. All these pictures make me want to go for a hike right now.

Thanks to New Mexiken (“Half Wisdom, Half Whimsy, Half Wit”) for the pointer.

Google’s new toolbar (which is still in beta) has caused a bunch of kerfuffle with its new AutoLink feature. AutoLink does to Web pages what Microsoft wanted to do with its Smart Tags nearly five years ago. Every time you visit a page, the toolbar checks to see whether anything on the page looks like an address, or a book’s ISBN number (which identifies it in online catalogs), or a FedEx or UPS tracking number.

If it finds anything in those classes of information, it changes the AutoLink toolbar button to read Show Map or Show Book Info. You click the button on the new Google toolbar and – auto-magically! – it changes the addresses, ISBN numbers, or what-have-you to links. Book links take you to Amazon.com, map links take you to Google Maps (unless you open the Options dialog box and change the setting to point to Yahoo Maps or Mapquest instead).

Just for fun, I visited the Web site of Book Soup, a wonderful independent bookseller in Hollywood. The home page lists more than 50 top-selling signed books, each with an ISBN number in the write-up. Links at the top of the page take you to listing of in-store evenets, including upcoming book signings that feature Joan Collins, Jane Fonda, and Lauren Bacall. Each write-up has a biography of the author and an ISBN number for the book that author will sign. In my browser window, a few pixels above the Book Soup logo on each oif these pages, is the Google toolbar with its enticing button that reads Show Book Info. Click it, and all of the Book Soup ISBNs get turned into links to the same book at Amazon.com. If you owned an independent bookstore, how would you like someone giving your visitors a tool that fills your carefully designed pages with links that point to your biggest competitor?

Continue reading “An easy solution to the AutoLink mess” →

If you’re a Boomer, you probably remember Mad magazine. I’m not sure exactly when I started reading Mad, or when I stopped, but I sure do remember a lot of the issues pictured at Doug Gilford’s Mad Cover Site. When I was a kid, I bought lots of the paperback compilations so I could catch up on the ones that were published when I was too young to read.

Jon Stewart probably owes his job to Mad.

(Via Research Buzz.)

Lawrence Lessig: “Another mistake, Mr. Orlowski. Will you correct this one?”

Hey, get in line!