I guess it's time to launch Daypop. I've been holding off on this since there is still so much to do, but I think it's important to just get this site out there.

Daypop searches news sites and weblogs on a daily basis. The idea for Daypop came with the realization that Google (at the time) was not indexing certain sites frequently enough. Most pages took more than a month to make it into the search results. While it looks like Google has fixed this problem recently -- indexing weblogs almost daily -- I figure there is still some value to be had from a search engine that can limit its search to weblogs only, and also limits its search to news and journals that are current.

While Daypop started off different, over time it came to resemble Google in a lot of ways... Kudos to Google for creating such an excellent search engine and for the kick-in-the-ass-that-I-needed to launch Daypop. Check it out and give me some feedback. I'll be starting work on Daypop Version 2.0 soon.

Time to release this baby into the world!

Chez Panisse, a small restaurant in Berkeley, turned 30 this last weekend. Eating at Chez Panisse is an experience to be savored. Far and away the best food I've ever had. I'm not talking about the cafe on the top floor. That's just mediocre. Make reservations for the main room on the ground floor a month in advance.

I never thought of describing Chez Panisse as hedonistic. But afterwards, you've got to remind yourself not to feel guilty of taking such pleasure in eating! Yes, it was that good.

The Dell PowerEdge 2500SC server arrived via UPS today. It weighs 99 lbs. in its box. Damn near killed myself getting it up to my loft. The thing is built like a tank.

I thought I was paying a couple hundred dollars extra by buying Dell, compared to just buying the separate parts from online discount vendors. But I was wrong. The Dell is a deal. The extra money got me an industrial strength case with six bizillion fans (enough air movement to cool my room in the summer time), redundant hot swap power supplies, six hot swap hard drive spaces and the most beautifully laid out interior of a computer I've ever seen.

Instead of a jumble of ribbons which is what my home-built systems look like, the Dell has one ribbon, nicely folded into the cooling duct (!) that is removed through thumb screws! Plus, as far as I can know, the Dell is the only computer with a ServerWorks HE-SL chipset motherboard that supports 6 DIMM slots. That means I can buy lower density, cheaper memory without worrying about using up all the slots.

Dell makes a lot of their money off memory and hard drives and options. I ordered a fairly minimal configuration and planned on adding memory and SCSI drives myself.

Installing extra memory (Crucial is excellent!) was a cinch so I'm now up to over 1GB of SDRAM. That was an easy upgrade. Waaaaaay cheaper than buying memory through Dell.

I was going to add a couple hard drives for the RAID array too but here's the catch. Ha! There's always a catch. The computer doesn't include the hot swap drive carriages, so it's not just a matter of buying the drives from say Googlegear for cheap and plugging them in. Tomorrow I've got to call the spare parts division at Dell to see if they sell the carriages. If not, or if they're expensive, then I guess I'll have to buy the hard drives from Dell at about a $100 markup per drive. This is not too bad considering things are less likely to go wrong this way.

A secret about the 2500SC. It's about $500 less than the 2500 model. What does the extra $500 get you if you decide on the non-SC model? It's "certified" for clustering. There's also the option to rack mount the 2500 for several hundred dollars more. That's it. Same machine otherwise, supposedly.

I was pretty proud of myself today at having the will power to eat lunch first before opening the box and geeking out all afternoon. "Ooooh, two level motherboard!"

Now, it's a matter of getting FreeBSD to recognize the Perc3/Di RAID controller in this monster... I haven't had any luck so far.

I've been listening to Rooty recently.
These guys are way ahead of the curve.
This is my kind of House.
The whole album is excellent,
but my fav is Track #2, Breakaway.

"Taming the Web" attacks three myths concerning the future of the Internet.

Myth #1: The Internet Is Too International to Be Controlled
Myth #2: The Net Is Too Interconnected to Control
Myth #3: The Net Is Too Filled with Hackers to Control

The main point of the article is that control of the Internet is inevitable and that we need to actively participate in determining the rules, otherwise the rules will be set for us.

via Slashdot

I want a girl who gets up early.
I want a girl who stays up late.
I want a girl with uninterrupted prosperity,
who uses a machete to cut through red tape,
with fingernails that shine like justice
and a voice that is dark like tinted glass.
She is fast,
thorough,
and sharp as a tack.
She is touring the facility and picking up slack.
I want a girl with a short skirt and a looooong... looong... jacket!

...and the mandatory drug testing that goes along with it. Including Chess as an Olympic sport is just the first step in a plan by the IOC to fish for higher ratings with competitive Jeopardy.

Actually, in this day and age, I'd expect the IOC to include QuakeCon in the Olympics. At least Quake requires immense physical skill and endurance on the part of the virtual character who runs and jumps going full bore.

OK. Why don't I just get to the point? Chess is not a sport.

Perfect.

From Scott-living-Down-Under comes this article about Ghost Sites, web sites that are still running long after its creators have abandoned them.

I watched the Ghost Sites Movie. Yes, I have nothing better to do. I swear I saw Fandango flash by. Given that every movie in L.A. is preceded by a Fandango commercial, wouldn't it be great if those commercials were paid for before Fandango went bust, and therefore are "Ghost Commercials"?

I'm not saying Fandango isn't perhaps reincarnated after receiving further funding. I just like the idea of life after death for these companies because of pre-paid web-hosting and commercial slots. These companies gather a certain momentum during operation that is able to keep them in our collective consciousness long after the last employee has left.

The web as life? Do you sense the religious overtones? Daily Radar, you will always be remembered...

There are a couple interesting comments on Dog and Pony Shows from Hell on Slashdot. Make sure you set threshold to 3 to weed out most of the crap. A couple recent stories started the discussion about faked Dog and Ponies. Here's one of them:

VisuaLABS' GroutFree(tm) technology allows LCD panels to be tiled with no visible break in the display image. Except the 42" GroutFree(tm) demo unit, supposedly four LCD panels tiled together, was actually a consumer plasma display bought at a local electronics retailer.