Blog Master G

Craigslist Albany has, at long last, arrived. It must have just launched in the past few days since there’s not much activity yet. Now the goal is spreading the word around the Capital Region to make our local version of craiglist as popular and as useful as it is in San Francisco and New York.

Of course, when I first moved to the area this year, there was not a local craigslist, so I launched capitalregion.us as an interim solution. It never really picked up much, but it was worth a shot. Now that we have craigslist, though, I won’t bother renewing the domain or maintaining the site after it expires in 2006 (unless it happens to be super-popular then).

For the record, back on November 13, 2003, I was among the first to suggest that craigslist create a Capital Region site. Soon, many joined the plea.

“You’re as big a dick on your show as you are on any show,” said the Comedy Central host to the CNN host.

If you missed yesterday’s episode of CNN’s Crossfire, try to track down a copy (or read the transcript). Jon Stewart was the guest and he really put hosts Paul Begala and Tucker Carlson in their places. It was awesome.

The point that Begala and especially Carlson failed to miss is that Stewart’s show is on Comedy Central. Carlson kept telling Stewart to “be funny,” but Stewart wouldn’t. He took being on CNN seriously and was trying to point out that CNN doesn’t challenge the system, but fuels its fire and the politicians who control it. The Crossfire “hacks,” as Stewart called them, didn’t get it.

STEWART: So I wanted to come here today and say…
(CROSSTALK)
STEWART: Here’s just what I wanted to tell you guys.
CARLSON: Yes.
STEWART: Stop.
(LAUGHTER)
STEWART: Stop, stop, stop, stop hurting America.
BEGALA: OK. Now
(CROSSTALK)
STEWART: And come work for us, because we, as the people…
CARLSON: How do you pay?
STEWART: The people — not well.
(LAUGHTER)
BEGALA: Better than CNN, I’m sure.
STEWART: But you can sleep at night.
(LAUGHTER)
STEWART: See, the thing is, we need your help. Right now, you’re helping the politicians and the corporations. And we’re left out there to mow our lawns.
BEGALA: By beating up on them? You just said we’re too rough on them when they make mistakes.
STEWART: No, no, no, you’re not too rough on them. You’re part of their strategies. You are partisan, what do you call it, hacks.

Another great moment is when Stewart asks Carlson how old he is (35), and points out that Carlson wears a bow tie.

As the camera pans back and the credits begin to roll, you can hear 7Stewart say sarcastically to himself, “Wow, that went great.”

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Google has released its long-anticipated Google Desktop tool, which indexes your computer and puts the power of the Google search right on your desktop.

Installation is fast and easy, then you access it via your Web browser just like you would view any other Google tool (Web, News, Froogle, etc.). Once installed, it actually runs as a Web server on port 4664 on your own computer (http://127.0.0.1:4664). It’s a pretty slick design.

The first thing that needs to happen after installation is that your computer will be indexed while it’s idle.

I started my indexing last night and by this morning, it was finished.

It works incredibly well. Indexing happens immediately (e.g., the second you’ve sent an email via Outlook, it’s available), unlike other products like Lookout, which require an indexing period to update. You can even view the entire body of an Outlook email in the search results, along with the entire thread of hte email in context, or choose to view it in Outlook. Google Desktop is super-fast, of course, and the interface is just like a Google search. I’m really excited about using it, and it’s going to make finding the information I use in my life and in my work much more accessible. This tool is definitely in line with Google’s mission or organizing the world’s information.

Too bad it doesn’t index Trillian chats (hint, hint, Google).

The caching is awesome, and has already come to my rescue this morning, allowing me to restore a Word document that I accidentally overwrote with a new version (rather than doing a “Save As” when I started making changes). I just searched for the old version, viewed the cache stored in Google Desktop, and voila! Text is restored.

Another most excellent feature: Using your existing Google search toolbar in your browser (or doing a regular Google search, of course), you can search for documents/email/etc. on your computer, and the results are displayed at the top of the regular Web search results. Kick ass.

Note in this example how it even grabbed the Web cache from my computer from viewing this post.

I’m writing this on my PowerBook from the jetBlue terminal of JFK (how cool is that?). It’s 6am and my red-eye flight from Oakland just arrived. I spent the last 5 action-packed days in San Francisco, Emeryville, and Sacramento.

Starting with a 26-hour day last Saturday, I traveled west on just 3 hours of sleep from the night before. Upon arriving in CA, I headed straight to Sacramento with Ben and Enoch to hang out with James, Shannon, Pete, and others.

I’ll write more and post some photos later, but the trip was exhausting and awesome, and I got to spend time with my dad, mom, bro, and many of my friends. I’m really glad I got to see everyone I did. The only challenge is trying to squeeze so much into so little time.

Now it’s off to Penn station to hop on a train up north.

I have a theory about why the second Presidential debate is being held tonight, a Friday: During the ridiculous debate-planning negotiations, Republicans wanted it on a Friday since the viewership would be be lower (people tend to go out on Friday nights, not watch 9pm political debates; of course, I’ll be home watching), and they’ve been expecting Bush to lose the debates all along.

Tonight should be another fun show.

Of course, the thing that really cracked me up about the VP debate was Cheney’s incorrect factual reference to factcheck.com, which redirects to George Soros’ site with a large “Why We Must Not Re-Elect President Bush” right at the top. The site he meant to mention was factcheck.org, which analyzed the debate.

Excellence. Perfection. Beauty. The goal is striving for these qualities.

What happens when three perfectionists collaborate on a project? They have difficulty saying when it’s done.

After a long and exhausting week of editing, formatting, laying out, proofing, updating photos, pulling out our hair, we’ve finally finished the production of 100 Faces of Marin. Reaching the end of a major project is always a satisfying feeling, and there’s nothing like perusing the final PDF, basking in its beauty, and uploading it to the printer’s FTP server.

The problem, of course, is that book production like this has the potential to go on endlessly. There’s always going to be that extra space, the curly quote facing the wrong way, the double hyphen that should be an em-dash.

But we’ve worked hard on this intense project and the final result should be beautiful. And we’ll take pride in it. I feel proud that my name will be on this book.

The interesting thing about book production vs. Web production is this: The result of the former is final; it is printed and absolute and will end up in the hands and on the bookshelves of those who read it. I want it to look just right, and there’s nothing I can do to fix any errors after it’s finalized. With Web production, I can always go back later and make edits. Electronic text is fleeting. You are reading this now, but it is unlikely this text will ever find a home in your bookcase or collect dust on a shelf in a library. And this text will certainly never be cataloged in the Library of Congress.

Both are satisfying, but the gratification of making a book is tremendous. I can’t wait to hold it in my hands.

Dick Cheney, October 5, 2004: “The senator has got his facts wrong. I have not suggested there’s a connection between Iraq and 9/11, but there’s clearly an established Iraqi track record with terror.”

Dick Cheney, September 13, 2003: “If we’re successful in Iraq … then we will have struck a major blow right at the heart of the base, if you will, the geographic base of the terrorists who had us under assault now for many years, but most especially on 9/11.”

(Bold mine.)

In other words, as the Washington Post puts it in the same story: “Cheney argued that new evidence found in Iraq proved more ties between Hussein and Osama bin Laden’s al Qaeda organization, and he argued that Iraq was the ‘geographic base’ for the perpetrators of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.”

Despite what Cheney may think, last night on the debate floor was not the first he had met Edwards: “Vice President Dick Cheney said Tuesday night that the debate with Democratic Sen. John Edwards marked the first time they had met. In fact, the two had met at least three times previously.

“Cheney made the remark while accusing Edwards of frequent absences from Senate votes.”

Do we really want someone in office who can’t remember anything? Either that, or lies. Oh wait! He’s a politician. That’s what they do. Isn’t politics dirty? Nothing is off-limits (Edwards bringing up Cheney’s family and gay daughter; Kerry using Bush, Sr.’s own words against Bush, Jr.).

And don’t these guys at least want to give each other the decency of a handshake, no matter how much each hates the other?

Despite having the debate on the TV, I wasn’t able to watch it as closely as I would have liked (but Dan did), since we’re still hard-charging on the book production… tonight we put on the finishing touches.

You know you live in a small town when a story titled Possible hazing at Skidmore gets a giant headline like this:

Not even a confirmed hazing! What will they do when the hazing is official and beyond its “possible” status? How much bigger can they make that headline?

My favorite part: “A freshman was indicated to be extremely inebriated in his room.”

Well, yeah. It’s college. Better that he was wasted in his room than in his car, driving around and putting others’ lives at risk.

Woohoo! As of this morning, Google has incorporated my most desired feature into Gmail: Save Draft. This basic functionality was hard to live without, but I’m really glad to see that enough people asking for it has encouraged Google to roll it out.

My keyboard shortcuts and email address auto-completion seemed a little buggy this morning, but other than that, I’m psyched to see the Save Draft feature. Way to go, Google.

There is also a revamped Contacts manager, which is pretty awesome, too. You can browse or search all your contacts (which, of course, are automatically added whenever you reply to or send an email), then click on the name of any contact, and guess what? You’ll see a list of all messages you’ve sent to that contact. Good stuff.

Gmail rules.

Now if they could only work on the delayed delivery send/receipt problem…