BAH! On my way to get coffee this morning I got stuck behind FOUR different garbage trucks. The side streets in Cambridge are quite narrow, so it’s usually impossible to get past them. Now I have this feeling that the world is out to get me today.

Over 400 teenagers (and older) were arrested for Criminal Tresspass in Houston. In this case the Police seem to have gone above and beyond the call of duty, going as far as arresting people eating at the Sonic next door.

This is where I’m baffled. Since when is even being in the parking lot of an open business criminal tresspassing? This has got to be just wonderful for K-Mart’s business.

Update:Here’s an update. The number was actually around 278. The cops went there to arrest people drag racing and when nobody was there, the Captain in charge said to just arrest everybody. Is it any surprise people don’t like cops?

A nice article in the Boston Globe about Apple and OS X nudging it’s way into more markets. In this case, the scientific computing market.

So about thirteen years ago at a school called Carnegie Mellon Jim Aspnes set up something called TinyMUD. While there had been MUDs around before (like AberMUD). This one had more a social atmosphere to it. There was no combat. People who connected to add onto the world. It had some simple building commands that let people build new rooms for people to explore as well as create puzzles for them to solve.

I discovered TinyMUD about 12 and a half years ago. A friend of mine had been playing around on it and told me I had to try it out. The rest, as they say, is history. I’ve been using MUDs ever since. I’ve watched people move away from TinyMUD to using other servers based on it. I’ve watched history be rewritten a few times. It’s weird looking back and seeing how much I’ve changed in that time, along with everyone else. When I first started we were all in college. Now we’re in our thirties (or on the verge of them) and half of us have families.

It’s been an interesting time. I wonder if I’ll still be hanging out on these things in another 13 years.

Since I can’t sleep, here’s what I’ve been watching lately:

• Inu Yasha – I’m about 15 episodes into this show. So far it’s quite good. It’s a nice mix of adventure, action, and romantic comedy, with a supernatural time travelling twist. This is a long one though. There are 82 episodes fansubbed already. Also, starting a week from Saturday, this show will be on “Cartoon Network” as part of “Adult Swim”.

• Hikaru no go – I’m ten episodes into this show and finding it much more interesting then I would have thought. There’s a lot of good drama and character interaction. Part of me wonders how long they can keep it up for though.

• Abenobashi Mahou Shoutengai – This show remains insane. They’ve spoofed a number of movie and anime genres. From scifi (the 2001 bit is great) to Hong Kong Action movies to Film Noir. And then around episode 7 or 8 it took an odd little left turn and gained a bit of a plot. I’m up to episode 10 and anxiously awaiting the last few episodes of this show.

• Chobits – With what is most likely the last major story arc the plot is really starting to pick up. The last two episodes have really given me a bunch to think about. I’m wondering how they are going to tie it up, since I think the manga is still going on.

That’s it for now. Right now I’m anxiously awaiting the next episodes of Ai Yori Aoshi and Saikano.

Ogden Nash. “People who have what they want are fond of telling people who haven’t what they want that they really don’t want it.” [Quotes of the Day]

PopCap Games, those people responsible for such time wasters as Bejewelled and Alchemy that show up on MSN Gaming Zone and Yahoo Games, have released another one that I’m hooked on: Insaniquarium. From their page: Feed fish! Fight aliens! It’s the craziest fish tank you’ve ever seen in this action/strategy hit. I gotta agree. It’s addicting too!

Boing Boing has a story up about someone being mislabeled as a spammer. There are a number of posts up on the weblog about it, including one talking about how easy it is to report someone as a spammer.

This got me thinking a bit more about services like SpamCop. ISPs supposedly pay enough attention to them that if you are labeled a spammer they don’t want you as a customer. But there’s no form of control here. Even if everyone involved gets together to show them an error, SpamCop isn’t listening. IMHO, this makes their service less effective.

On other spam fronts, I’m experimenting with the new spam filtering features in Jaguar. The latest version of the OS X Mail app lets you tag messages as spam and supposedly learns over time what is and isn’t spam. Currently I’ve turned off spamassassin and am letting Mail do its thing. So far it is doing a pretty good job. It hasn’t misreported any regular mail as spam and has caught most of the spam I’ve gotten. I’ll report more in a month or so.

One other thing I discoved that OS X Mail can do is bounce messages back to the sender saying that the message couldn’t be delivered. I’m thinking of tying this into the spam detection so that when I get spam it bounces the message back like I don’t exist. The question is if most spammers are listening for message bounces.

The Mercury Men are the Masters of nothing, Practitioners of the Art of Not Doing.

Following in other’s footsteps: Today I will manifest my dynamic being. From the Affirmation Bullsh*t Generator for Sensitive New Age Guys  [Doc Searls Weblog] [jenett.radio] [Just cheap dirt]