7/15/2000

It looks like I'll be speaking at WebDC in August, talking about how to design for community. Should be a lot of fun. I'll also be in San Fran in November, leading up a panel on Web applications and DHTML and another panel on growing online community (I led a similar panel in Chicago earlier this year, and it was a lot of fun and very instructive.)
posted 8:04 PM

7/12/2000

Well, I guess this shows how good Metallica's chances are. (screenshot from ZDNet)
posted 1:45 PM

7/11/2000

I think the person who was writing Inside Macintosh: Memory had just seen the infamous Dr. Seuss Technical Manual when they wrote this:
Even if MoveHHi succeeds in moving a block to the top area of the heap, unlocking or deleting locked blocks can cause fragmentation if you don't unlock or delete those blocks beginning with the lowest locked block. A relocatable block that is locked at the top area of the heap for a long period of time could trap other relocatable blocks that were locked for short periods of time but then unlocked.

This suggests that you need to treat relocatable blocks locked for a long period of time differently from those locked for a short period of time. If you plan to lock a relocatable block for a long period of time, you should reserve memory for it at the bottom of the heap before allocating it, then lock it for the duration of your application's execution (or as long as the block remains allocated). Do not reserve memory for relocatable blocks you plan to allocate for only short periods of time. Instead, move them to the top of the heap (by calling MoveHHi) and then lock them.
Read it aloud. It's like Joyce that way.
posted 2:06 AM
I'm not really Jason Kottke, but I do have really short hair now.
posted 1:49 AM

7/10/2000

I am Jason Kottke.
posted 1:39 PM
Last night (Saturday) Brent, Matt, Heather and I went to a tappas place downtown called the Warehouse, ostensibly to munch on some side plates before finishing the night with some beer and pool at the Stingray. We hadn't even gone in the place when some shirtless black guy walked by and bummed a cigarette from Matt, who has yet to adjust to the peculiar accent, so he may have seemed a bit taken aback. At any rate, this drew the attention of a couple of cops, who hassled the poor guy, making us uncomfortable; then one of the door people started hassling Brent about his cup of Cup a Joe coffee, saying that he couldn't bring it into the restaurant. Brent hadn't even sipped from it, so he reacted as any sane person would when she told him she could either take it from him, or he couldn't come in, but he couldn't drink it on the premises: he asked how far the premises extended, so he could finish his coffee off the grounds (sorry).

This minor act of resistance drew the attention of the cops, who started circling around him like he was some crackhead with a broken bottle. I haven't had to deal with cops very often lately, and this moderate act of aggression on their part made my heart race and the blood pound in my ears. I was freaking out, breathing heavily and all, ready to fly, but they managed to work things out. Brent crossed the street with the rest of us, where he finished his coffee in relative peace, and then we handed the (now empty) cup to the harpy at the door. It took me almost half an hour to come down from the adrenaline rush. I've got better places to go, where we don't get hassled by cops for drinking fucking coffee on the sidewalk, and where the bouncers at the door don't look like they were pulled from special forces duty or stadium security detail.

The fact that I'd spent most of the day listening to Ian MacKaye sing "distrusted; I look for wires when I'm talking to you; you'd make a great cop!" probably didn't help my mood any.
posted 1:17 AM