I think the last three weeks constitue the longest gap in Bump’s almost two year history.(I will hit two years on November 7th.)

Some good reasons for the gap. I switched jobs, and I now work at Arthouse . It’s a great, young company. I work with, among a really talented group of people, Jack over at Saturn. My next reason was a trip out of the country. I visited St. Martin for ten days just after Hurricane Jose blessed it’s shores with 24 inches of rain. Even though it wasn’t the perfect vacation I had planned, it was good to disconnect myself for a time. I’m now slowly returning myself to my normal schedule, surfing and posting.

Dave seems to be posting more content to Scripting News on a daily basis than he has as long as I can remember. It’s an indication that there is a lot going on in the Weblog community and in Frontier development. I welcome it, but it’s taking me forever to get through all the days I missed while I was away.

Sony launched Trivial Pursuit on the Web this week. I used to love playing the board version. Too bad I don’t have enough free time right now to explore the Web version more.

On October 5th, DMOZ.org passed the million site mark.

The Beastie Boys are releasing an anthology named The Sounds of Science on November 23rd. You can also build your own two disk anthology and choose from 150 songs at this site . Ever notice that they don’t ever sell their music for television commercials?

I read the newest issue of Discover Magazine on the plane on the way back to the U.S. The cover story was a terribly scary story about Mt. Ranier’s inevitable eruption and the destruction in the greater Seattle area that would follow it. I didn’t know there were magazines still so afraid they didn’t post their whole stories to their Web site, but Discover doesn’t. Here’s a link to the one paragraph they do have up.

It appears from the light rebuttal/clarification in today’s Hear Ye! that I misunderstood/overreacted to what was written. It’s worth mentioning that I do like the site, and I went back and read several months of the archives. We actually seem to have a lot in common interest wise.(With the exception of the platform thing of course.) I have been taking myself a bit too seriously recently. Well, it happens, and a wake up call isn’t a bad thing. As a result, I’m endeavoring to check out more pages in the Everything/Nothing set this weekend. Aside from the name difference from the “Weblog” group, there doesn’t seem to be that huge a difference in the type of sites that populate the community.

It’s funny though, because he actually wrote about much the same topic in relation to Linux zealots on March 7th. It’s the same attitude that he is talking about and that he is frustrated by. Even if he didn’t have that attitude in his original post, there’s no shortage of it on the Net.

Rafe over at RC3.org mailed me about an essay he wrote in 1997 that’s relevant to my mini-essay. I remember this time for Apple quite well. The company was at a point where it could have gone either way. For people who are primarily Mac Users, it was a dark time. It’s a good explanation of why he feels the way about the tools he chooses to use. “I want to use the tools I love.” I read Rafe’s site every day. He finds good technology stories and tidbits on the Web, and he talks from a knowledgable and opinionated standpoint.(Windows lovers tread gently, He doesn’t care too much for Microsoft.)

Anyone who regularly reads Jesse Berst’s columns will be shocked by this one. Think Different? Why Jesse Wants an iMac . I think this is just an attempt to get more people to read his column by being controversial. Here’s some news for you Jesse: Macs crash about as often as Windows machines. Maybe not for everyone, but people who really push their machines will have problems no matter what they are using. The bottom line is that there isn’t the attention to quality that there needs to be in the software industry. As a side note, my new iBook has only crashed twice in the week I have had it. Both times, I was using beta software that caused the problem.(Mozilla M9)

This CNN article has the phrase “‘They’re just luscious,’ Jobs purrs.” in it. What kind of writing is that? He purred? I somehow doubt he actually purred. Later in the article, he also “gushes.”

While I’m in a critical mood, here’s a pet peeve. Why do people who put their press release online on their own site leave the phrase at the bottom that says “For more information see (insert link to site you are already on here)?” Here’s an example . To me it says “our publicity firm doesn’t get the Web.”

One really cool thing about my new employer is that they have agreed to let me put a Web server for my personal use on their network. I still have to decide what platform I want to use. It’s a tough decision.

Today’s soundtrack: The Fight Club Soundtrack (Dust Brothers)

What is the best piece of software ever written?

MacWorld reviews Photoshop 5.5. I agree, the update is a really important one for Web people. I still like Fireworks as a pure Web image tool better.

I guess I shouldn’t care, but this person rated Bump as a 4.5 out of 9. As you can see, his complaint was that Bump seemed to be more about Weblogs than anything else. Reading the last few weeks, I see a trend too. I guess my interest in the sudden explosion of Weblogs has shown itself in these pages. If you were to read back through the almost two years of entries, you’d find that I haven’t been writing about Weblogs half the time for the last two years. I give his rating of Weblogs page a 4.5 out of 9 too. Very arbitrary:-)

They’ve updated the Sleepy Hollow site to include desktop wallpaper and sketches. It’s worth a look or two.

Metascene manages to snag “most favored Weblog status” for the week with this writeup (scroll to the bottom.) I can’t believe that I’ve been doing Bump for almost two years. I also can’t believe how many new and amazing log sites have popped up in 1999. When I started doing Bump, the ranks consisted of Robot Wisdom, Scripting News, RasterWeb, Gulker’s News Page, and CamWorld (which I wasn’t even aware of at the time.) Now there are Weblogs to suit all tastes. Keep em coming.

Salon has an article about running Linux on commercially available laptops which goes into depth about the WinModem issue. I have struggled with this running Red Hat on my Gateway Laptop. I’m forced to use my one precious PC Card port for a modem in order to get Internet access. This makes me angry.

I spent the long weekend cleaning and organizing the Bump clubhouse and the rest of my apartment. As usual with these things, I’m amazed at how much junk I acquire somehow. I’m going to eBay a lot of stuff over the next month.

Evhead changes layouts. It has rapidly become one of my favorite Weblog sites.

The Crossfader noticed he’s on my reading list and notes that I’m on his. Maybe I should change the name of the blog from Bump to Yoda? Anyway, he seems to be the only blogger who likes Tribe Called Quest as much as I do. What happened to culturally positive Rap and hip-hop? You must learn!!

Bring the Rock gets a great redesign.