Rational calendar with 364 days, extra
week celebrating Isaac Newton

His constraints meant eight months would have different lengths than they do now. March, June, September, and December would each contain 31 days, while the other months would each get 30. To keep the calendar in synchronisation with the seasons, Henry inserted an extra week - which is not part of any month - every five or six years. He named the addition "Newton Week" in honour of his favourite physicist, Isaac Newton.

"If I had my way, everyone would get Newton Week off as a paid vacation and could spend the time doing physics, or other activities of their choice," he says.

Despite this incentive, Henry says he has encountered resistance to his plan - mainly because people would be "stuck" with a birthday that always falls on a Wednesday, for example. Henry, who is among that group, is not moved by the argument. "You have my permission to celebrate your birthday the preceding or following Saturday," he says.

Whee! I'm in Roppongi, in bar Geronimo,
celebrating my birthday. Again, Harajuku
turned out to be a deathtrap to my
wallet...

MVP Casino Announces New Player
Promotions Celebrating the Launch of its
Second-Generation Live Gaming Platform.

Bogarts Casino Announces New Player
Promotions Celebrating the Launch of its
Second-Generation Live Gaming Platform

Touchstone Technologies is celebrating
the release of their carrier-grade SIP
and H.323 VoIP call monitor and protocol
analyzer with a $1,000 one-time-only
sale!

Celebrating Its First Anniversary,
Communication Solutions Partners Brings
New Technology Out �On The Course� At
The 2004 U.S. Women's Open Championship,
Conducted By The United States Golf
Association

THAT'S
AWFULLY PERSONAL: GENIES, DECLARING WAR,
AND CELEBRATING BAD TASTE

Here are my belated answers to the last few weeks' That's Awfully Personal questions: Genies Q: A genie appears before you and says: "I am merely an apprentice genie, so I can't grant three wishes, but I have the power to change the personality of humankind. If you want me to do so, you must complete each of the following two statements with a one-word adjective that describes a human quality or character trait. The word you choose for the second question can't be the opposite of the word you chose for the first. Are you ready? (1) I wish every human on Earth was __________. (2) I wish no human on Earth was __________." The genie then waves her hand and makes it so. The question is: What are the two adjectives you would choose? How much would you, yourself, be transformed by the genie's changes? Describe a situation when you exhibited the trait you chose to abolish in statement (2), or wish you had exhibited the trait you chose to give everyone in statement (1). A: (1) conciliatory and (2) greedy. I believe we're all born fair and generous, but for most of us something happens to our egos and psyches as we grow. We get damaged, wounded, and we end up, as a defensive mechanism, unreasonable, selfish and acquisitive. If the genie could set us all right again, I think we would immediately see the answers to Earth's, and our own, problems, and be able and willing to work with others to solve them. How much would I be changed? Probably more than I'd like to admit. I try to be fair and generous, but I have far more than my fair share, I give up far too little of my time to help others, and I am very intolerant of meanness, conservatism, untruthful and unfair behaviour, to the point I can't stand to be near such people, let alone try to work with them. I regret every ungenerous act (and failure to act) and every unreasonable act of my life, of which there have been many (though fewer as I get older), and regret most of all the many times I have lost my temper, since it has accomplished nothing. Declaring War Q: You've heard about the war on crime, terrorism, drugs, high prices etc. Steve Raker thinks that this is inevitably going to lead to war on: clogged drains, rude behaviour, undercooked fish, tall vehicles in front of you, inadequate kitchen counter space, uneven tire wear, dust, computer batteries that run low too fast, and, my favourite, "War on Waiting for Someone to Get Off the Phone When All You Need is Like Two Seconds of Their Time and if They Would Just Look Your Way You Could Probably Even Do it With Hand Signals". What pet peeves do you think we should 'declare war' on? Extra points if you can provide a picture of one of them. A: War on telemarketers who start their call with "Hello, Mr/Ms (mispronounce your name), how are you this evening?" War on people who drive exactly the speed limit in the left lane. War on people who never have anything positive to say about anything, and anyone who has ever said "That's a dumb idea" or "We tried that and it didn't work". War on grudges: "If X is coming to your party I'm not coming because in 1997 his dog barked at my dog and he didn't apologize." War on f ashion slavery, especially pants that are too loose, tops that are too tight, brand names on sweatshop clothes and interminably boring colours for menswear. War on ridiculously overpriced incredibly bland Italian food served in tiny portions on gigantic plates. War on inflexible design: Houses and offices and cars should be built so you can move, add or remove walls and doors and windows, Lego-style, when your needs or family size or workteam size changes and you need less, more, or differently-configured space. War on anyone who has ever been mean or cruel to an animal or a child. War on people who cancel at the last minute. War on fences, entrance gates, and "no trespassing" signs. War on Orwellian language: Patriot Act, No Child Left Behind Act etc. War on chainsaws before noon on weekends. War on stuff that breaks before it's worn out. War on conformity. Celebrating Bad Taste Q: One of the phenomena of the 1970s was the Kitsch Party. Participants were required to wear an item or ensemble that exhibited incredibly bad taste, and to bring a household or artistic item of similarly abominable taste. You were not allowed to purchase or make tasteless items just for the occasion -- they had to be in your house, or borrowed. Everyone voted on the most tasteless items. At one such party, the 'winning' outfit consisted of a lime green and olive spandex miniskirt with ruffles, topped with a bizarre orange designer-made crop-top with a single shoulder strap. The winning household/art object was a ceramic ashtray featuring a 6" tall Jesus on the cross. If you were invited, along with a significant other, to such a Kitsch Party, what borrowed or closeted outfit would you wear, and what would you get your significant other to wear? What owned or borrowed work of art or decor would you bring? And what's the most tasteless item of clothing or art you have ever seen anywhere? Extra points if you provide pictures, and double points if you're wearing the items in question. A: My neighbours have never forgotten when I used to walk Chelsea, and often stop off and visit, wearing a pair of badly faded, very short, incredibly comfortable salmon-colour running shorts. "Don't you have any shorts of your own, that you have to wear your kids' castoffs?" I was told on more than one occasion. Clearly people do not think these are attractive on a 50-year-old man with pale, out of shape legs. So if I could find them, I would wear those wonderful shorts, along with a cutoff white frayed muscle shirt that has splotches of beige paint all over it. I wouldn't presume to suggest to my wife what she should wear to a Kitsch party. And although my wife thinks it's funny, my household/art item of choice for a Kitsch party would be one of those old "accordion" prints that look different when you look at them from opposite sides. Hers is illustrated above from both sides. If you're interested in playing That's Awfully Personal each week, the questions, and a complete explanation, can be found here .

Software That Lasts For Years And Years

Six years!

Three Years On

Are You Better Off Now Than You Were
Four Years Ago?

buzzflash.com/areyoubetteroff
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10 Years Ago

OK - so I didn't mark this exactly with an October 12th anninversary - but it was 10 years ago that Dave Winer first 'blogged' me - rapping out my Marc's 10 Things.

In honor of this auspicious anniversary - I'd like to comment on or update many of these claims on things that the media should be covering on Multimedia and Interactive TV but isn't.

I wrote (in 1994):

Interactive Music Videos

1. Interactive Liner notes are great. Repackaged old music is fine, but MediaBand has started a new category - called Interactive Music Videos - which are original pieces that combine songs, music videos and videogames. It's a new artform that breaks down the barrier between artist, musician and programmer.

I was in the midst of pushing our 'MediaBand' interactive music video ensemble in 1994 - which put out a CD ROM, performed live, had a screenplay and had it'sd own broadband network to interact with folks - in real-time.

So I was seriously into brow beating all my colleagues who simply licensed Bob Dylan or Prince and cranked out shitty ass CD ROMs. To me - that really missed the essence of what was possible combining, music, video and interactivity.

To this day, this new artform is just kind of bubbling beneath the surface - not really making it out. Dance Dance Revolution is the sign of times - now.

BTW a young artist named Moby took some of our MediaBand Director files and added his own artwork and music to it. :-)

Kid's Content

2. Kids today see the twitchy-ness of Nintendo and they see the production values of MTV. Multimedia today is neither. We need to combine the interactivity of Nintendo with the production values of MTV.

This area certainly has matured and grown. We were in the videogame business back in '81-'83, but we never dreamed that gaming would be so 'off the hook' - as it is today.

But Mimi (my daughter) has a great time playing with the Barbie fashion Designer software - and Dora the Explorer rocks. So I'd say this category has fulfilled it's destiny. At least so far.

CD ROMs

3. We didn't call it a floppy disk industry, so how come it's a CD ROM industry? In fact CD ROM [mentality] is holding back the creativity and growth of the entire interactive digital media industry.

Just take out CD ROM and insert 'web'. Same problem exists today. This is why we have CMSs.

I call the solution to this challenge "scalable content". In fact we were using this term way back in '94. Marqui outputs scalable content - BTW.

So CMSs have matured and we don't have to convince folks to de-couple their content from their form anymore. Thank goodness.

Scalable Content

4. Scalable content is an important concept when developing interactive media today. You don't want to design yourself into a corner, letting the technology define the content. Ideally you'd let the content define the technology. Scalability means downsizing through compression, it means user interfaces that work with both single and multiple users, it means getting ready for Interactive TV.

OK - so I just correlated how CD ROMs 'holding back' creativity were similar to what happened with 'the web'. And I said that we called that Scalable Content.

Now let's take my definition of Scalable Content (back then in '94) and extend that to mean 'dynamic user interfaces' - that adjust themselves to who you are, what level of technology you feel comfortable with and what content you've created yourself.

It's amazing to me to read what I said in 1994, and see how these words influenced my thoughts and ideas over the past 10 years and how some of these ideas remain unchanged, while others have morphed and adapted themselves to world today.

The word 'scalability' is just so malleable that you can twist and turn it to mean anything you want it to mean. But is IT clear - that us humans need to be in charge much more of our user experiences - and THAT's a key part of 'activity based computing'.

Audio

5. The classic line is "Audio is the orphan child of multimedia" - why do people still say this? What is behind the hodge-podge of audio - especially on the PC? How come it's taken so long for manufacturers to include audio on their motherboards? In 1984 it was $3 in parts!

MIDI II?

6. What about MIDI? How many people know what that is? Why isn't there an advanced MIDI format in place? The original MIDI frequency standard (32k) is based a 1Mhz crystal readily available in 1982.But what's the problem today? Why hasn't MIDI evolved and grown?

RAM

7. RAM apparently is not following along the path of Moore's Law. The price is still where it was 5 years ago and systems are suffering. Today MPC II is still speced at only 4M - MediaBand needs 8M. Standard business systems should have at least 16M TODAY!

Tee Hee Hee.

You see I'm a musician by training and we put out the first music product for computers that had a piano timeline notational system, qurter note and eigth notes and a piano and real-time interaction. That was 1984.

So 10 years after that - in 1994 - I was bitching about.... well it's now 10 years later and we still don;t have clean audio solved. But we're getting pretty close. Podcastign is evidence of that.

Time stamp - Dec. 2004 - $60 for a 128M MP3 player. Retail price.

MIDI II got usurped by all sorts of things - including OSC - I keynoted at their conference this summer.

Amd I just love to see Shawn Fanning appear in "The Italian Job" and just adore the notion that Mark Cuban sold broadcast.com for $5.6B.

All this is evidence that they'll be plenty more Googles, Netscapes and Eminems.

Set top tests waste of time?

8. The whole industry hopped when John Malone announced he was going to deploy one million set top boxes with MPEG chips in them. Once it became clear that he was practicing FUD, everyone backed off of their predictions, delayed their test trials and are now waiting for the next thing to react to. The tests going on (or planned to start soon) are not based upon the same technology or even marketing premises. What good will these tests do? Will any of these tests actually grow into a real service network.

Interactive Commercials

9. What exactly is an Interactive TV commercial. Lots of people talk about it, but no one does them.

This one is dedicated to Om Mailk. I hope to see him tomorrow night at the Geek Dinner.

I spent allot of the 90's waiting for and explaining why set top boxes suck. They still do. Oh well.

Set top boxes have always been a kind of thorn in my side. In fact I hope to get a Comcast PVR setup in time for the Alias 2 hour season premiere on Jan. 5th. Wanna guess how long it'll take to get?

And the Interactive Ads future - is in John Battelle's able hands. Search meets ads in the valley of the targeted consumer. It's finally here.

Support?

10. Where's the support? As the industry moves towards 900 # support and low priced consumer software, what happens to support? Dealers obviously can't supply it. Is this a new growth market?

Well we're still looking for good Support.

I don't think that will ever change.

OK - so that's it - my 10 year update. I hope you enjoyed it.

Also - how symbolic that Dave's post show's my old Applelink address which went back to 1985. We were the 10th Mac developer. That's why I was D0010.

Seven years

I started kottke.org seven years ago this week. I forget the anniversary until after the fact every year even though I know it's sometime in March (for whatever reason almost everything important in my life has happened in March, at least for the last few years). Seven years is way longer than I would have guessed keeping the site going on a near-daily basis...it's the longest I've ever done anything, even longer than all but a handful of friendships. So happy birthday, old friend, it's been fun. (0sil8 started in March as well...nine years ago.)

Three Years Since

4AD - The First 20 Years (brief)

fedge.net/~desiderata/4ad20.html
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Four more years

Celebrating Ten Years Of BeOS