Daily Archives: 6/27/2005

Sage Words from Wil

Great minds think alike. Here’s a nice quote from Wil Wheaton:

Here is the most important thing I can tell you: You do not need the so-called traditional channels of distribution to get your work to an audience, and you’ll probably be happier and more successful by not going through those channels. I’ve done it both ways, and self-publishing and distributing was more fun, more creatively satisfying, and much more financially rewarding than the indescribably frustrating process of doing it the other way.

Rock on, Wil. And good luck in the WSOP.

Boffins create zombie dogs

Beware of the pitter patter of little zombie feet!I had to look up the word “boffin”. Seemed timely given the release of Romero’s Land of the Dead. News.com.au reports that scientists at Piottsburgh’s Safar Center revived dogs that have had their blood replaced with very cold saline for three hours. This basically seems like a form of induced hypothermia. Their hope is that it might save humans with traumatic injuries.

Okay, but if I hear the words “T-virus” come up, I’m gonna go fetch my gun.

Why Blog about Random Stuff?

I do monitor various weblog indexers to see who is linking to this blog. Most of the time, they are really good at finding my own inter-site links, but occasionally I find out that I get links from unexpected sites. What was really cool was to discover that The MacAlba linked to me as one of the inspirations for his (successful) attempts at dropping some weight. Cool, and congratulations to Gordon.

I haven’t given an update to my attempts at weight loss recently, largely because there has been so little motion in that regard. I’m currently in a plateau. In fact, it’s more than a plateau, it is a plain, stretching as far as the eye can see. I had my weight down as low as 258 for a while, and am now (courtesy of some vacationing in Napa) bouncing around 264. To help snap the plateau, I’m beginning to augment my cardio workouts (which I do four times a week) with a short amount of strength training. I’m also trying to rededicate myself to journaling all the food I eat, and monitoring portion size.

Weight loss has never been harder or more discouraging than it is now. Still, I’m not gaining weight (at least, not much), I guess I’m not doing too badly.

I checked my BMI the other day, and found that I’m right on the borderline betweeen “overweight” and “obese”. Yahoo.

Life is better at 264 than it was at 323. I have to remind myself of that.

Supreme Court Rules in Grokster

Well, I haven’t had a chance to read the ruling yet, but it appears that the SCOTUS has unanimously gutted the Sony decision and made software companies potentially liable for infringing uses of their software, regardless of whatever significant non-infringing uses their might be.

I’ll post again when I have something in the way of analysis.

Addendum: I’m probably overreacting by claiming it gutted the Sony decision. My initial skim of the decision has only served to confuse me on what practical importance (if any) today’s decision had. It definitely seems to make companies which promote copyright infringement to be dangerous to fund, but I’m not sure it goes beyond that, and it is far from clear that even a company like Grokster would qualify.

Addendum2: The best discussion I’ve found so far was here, on the SCOTUSblog.