I made the Recently Updated list!

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Now that I've "gone public," when I make a post it goes on Blogger.com's Recently Updated list! After my previous post, announcing the auspicious public "coming out" of my Blog, the update showed up on the Recently Updated list. Woo-HOO! I'm somebody!

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Finally going "public"

(last post today, I promise)

After playing around this "Blog Thing" for nearly two years, I've finally decided to "go public."

Yes, Spaz, the world can now read about the little bits of our lives that we post on the web.

So, welcome to my humble site, whoever you are... ;-)

Today was a Good Day.

I went with Tashu, a friend and business associate, to the Drug Information association 40th Annual Meeting here in DC.

It was interesting. Since leaving Visual Analytics (I'll write about this in the near future) I've been working with Tashu and another new friend, Tom Rogers, on a start-up to address some issues in two areas: improving the quality and speed of conducting financial audits and the collection of pharmacological adverse events.

The DIA meeting was both instructive and interesting -- not to mention the excellent ratio of women to men. Being a technology guy, in an industry dominated by men, tech conferences have a much poorer ratio in this department... Let's hear it for the Booth Babes! ;-) But I digress.....

After the conference, we moseyed over to the National Air and Space Museum (ya just gotta love living in Washington, DC -- except during rush hour!) We needed to kill and hour or so before going to the monthly meeting of the MIT Enterprise Forum of Washington and Baltimore.

The Case Study company of the month was DataSource, Inc., a company transitioning itself from a services company, doing CMM Level 3 full life-cycle software development, to a product company.

They are about to release a "J2EZ" product that generates the "plumbing" for J2EE web services from a graphically-designed description of interconnected logical components (this from a short discussion with their CTO). It's an interesting application that I think will do very well in this market niche.

Hell, as a soon as it's available (early in July), I'll be heading over to their site to check it out. The tool allows a fairly inexperienced programmer to define and generate the very-difficult-to-create, repetitive minutiae that is much of J2EE development. It will allow a seasoned developer to skip the minutiae and go straight to the important stuff: solving problems for the customer.

The discussion revolved around the business decisions and challenges DataSource has faced, and will face, in its move toward a product-centric business model. The panel had a number of interesting insights on the process.

Plus, I got to rub elbows with some Washington area entrepreneurs. Cool.

So, I'd say: yes. Yes it was a Very Good Day.

Daaayaaammmmn ! Her head's too big for her body!

Have you ever noticed how some women (and men, too, I guess, but I don't keep up ;-) who get really thin, also grow bigger heads? Whazzup w'dat?

Cases in point: Laura Flynn Boyle<%=imdbLink_sm%>, Elizabeth Hurley<%=imdbLink_sm%>, Angelina Jolie<%=imdbLink_sm%> and, at the risk of being thin-clichéd, Calista Flockhart<%=imdbLink_sm%>. Poking around entertainment news sites will yield other examples. Many Hollywood starlets seem to be yearning for that oh-so-svelte Dachau look. Not a pretty site. The pictures shown on these ladies' IMDb<%=imdbLink_sm%> publicity head-shots don't illustrate what I mean. Some women get so skinny that, proportionally, their heads are just too big.

Call me shallow, but I find that I buy into the media hype that thinner is prettier than fatter. I like the fit look. Note that I said "fit." "Fit" can cover a lot of ground, and a wide range of body types. Fat is not, however, "fit." I like fit.

Still, too much of a good thing is... too much.

I don't like a big head on a bony body.

Ladies, eat something, please? You're scaring the children.

Some like that anonymity

Have you ever chatted in a public chat forum?

I don't mean where you chat with a friend or family member using an instant messaging utility, like MSN, AIM, ICQ, etc., but where you go to a web site of interest, find that they have chat available, log in and strike up a conversation with a roomful of strangers?

It's a very popular past-time on the web.

I do it, all the time. However, I'm not so sure it's All That.

Where some folks like the anonymity of it, I find the lack of secondary-channel feedback (aka non-verbal feedback) distressing.

I like to look at the folks I'm talking with. I like to see when they furrow their brows, scratch their heads, cross their arms in frustration or see the gleam in their eyes when they "get it." I like all that stuff. Online, when you're chatting (or emailing and IM-ing, for that matter), you don't get that feedback.

From where I sit, I much prefer eyeball-to-eyeball chatting. There's so much that gets sent on those secondary channels that's missing in a chat room.

Call me old-fashioned. ;-)

Babylon 5 Marathon

I just finished going through the Babylon 5 DVDs again. Five seasons of shows. Show after show after show...

What an amazing work.

Originally aired from 1993 to 1999, the core concept of the show was to write a five-year story line, a novel for television, so to speak. Each season was a chapter of that novel. I won't go into the story line, as you can find that all over the web by doing a Google search. I'll say only that the story is epic in scale, but human in execution.

To me, this show is unique. It's an overwhelmingly character-driven sci-fi show, where the main characters are flawed, struggling, every-man (-woman) types, caught up in galaxy-changing events. They are driven by enlightened self-interest, seeking, for the most part, despite their flaws and weaknesses, to Do the Right Thing.

J. Michael Straczynski, the show's creator, primary writer and executive producer, wire-walked five seasons of stories while juggling a galaxy-sized story arc; complex, approachable and compelling characters; the requirements of creating a plausible and interesting "hard sci-fi" universe; CGI that had never been seen on TV before and a fan-base that became a force that made networks and studios take notice. The effort, as JMS says, is a once in a lifetime event. Surely, along the way, he occasionally drop the ball, but I can't think of anything.

If you've never seen B5, you should. I think you'll thank me.

And then we lose a President

Lately, the posts here have been.... gloomy.

It started back in April with the loss of my Uncle Don. Then I came across some links about Sonia, who also left us in April. Then came the passing of Rick Biggs, of Babylon 5 fame.

Now we've lost Ronald Reagan, the 40th President of the United States. It's a sad thing, indeed, to lose a President, even at the almost-dead-anyway age of 93 years.

The body of the Mr. Reagan will come here tomorrow, to lie in state the rest of the week. The biggest part of the news here in the Washington, DC, area is that tomorrow's traffic will be even worse than usual. When he gets here tomorrow, they're going to cut the city in half with street blockages, for his procession.

Oh, and federal employees are looking forward to having Friday off.

Still, it's a shame to lose Mr. Reagan. He was a popular man.

Sad news in the Bablylon 5 world...

While watching the Babylon 5 fifth-season episode "Day of the Dead," and then embarking on a web-hunt for information about some of the guest players (Marie Marshal, Ed Wassar and Fabiana Udenio), I ambled over to my first stop on such travels, Lurkers' Guide to Babylon 5.

At the top of the page, in the newsflash section I found a notice that Richard Biggs (who played Dr. Stephen Franklin) passed away on May 28, 2004. He was 44 years old.... My age.... (yikes).

This is very sad news. I know that you can't really learn very much about actors, personally, from their performances. However, I believe that some small part of an actor's true self seeps into every performance. His character was intelligent, honorable and principled. His performances seemed to me to be heartfelt and genuine. Mr. Biggs also provided commentary on a couple of the episodes on the Babylon 5 full-season DVD collections. In this context, he seemed to have a quick wit and a good sense of humor.

I didn't know him. Nonetheless, I feel a keen sadness and some grief over his passing.

Some of the B4 cast and crew are sharing their thoughts. J. Michael Straczynski, Babylon 5's creator, said some kind words about Mr. Biggs in the B5 Newsgroup. Patricia Tallman (who played Lyta Alexander), left a note on her Galactic Gateway site.

There are a number of other sources on the web that talk about Mr. Biggs, and B5, and allow the grief of the B5 fanbase to be expressed. The B5 Newsgroup, above, is very active. You can Search Google for information about Mr. Biggs. The Galactic Gateway, a B5 fan site, has a forum called, appropriately, the Zocalo. There's even a sub-forum for Mr. Biggs' fans to leave messages for his family.

My heart goes out to Mr. Biggs' family and friends. As has been said elsewhere:

"If I don't see you again here, I will see you, in a little while, in a place where no shadows fall" Delenn to Sheridan, in Confessions and Lamentations, Babylon 5, Season 2

Aesthetic - Epitonic.com: Hi Quality Free and Legal MP3 Music

Once again, I've run across an interesting site that I believes needs sharing: epitonic.com. On their "About Us" page, we read:


Aesthetic - Epitonic.com: Hi Quality Free and Legal MP3 Music:

"Epitonic.com is a site for sore ears. We are a campaign - a group of individuals who share a zealous lust for music - music that invades our thoughts, music that propels our bodies - music that allows us to revel in passion and pleasure....

"Our goal is to exalt the unexalted, to bring you goth, noise, electronica, techno, punk, indie rock, darkwave, no wave, jungle, hardcore, world music, and things we would dare never even classify. Utilizing the liberated mp3 format, Epitonic.com aspires to live up to our neologistic moniker, the center from which waves of disruptive purity emit."


You gotta love a site with a mission like that!