Chris Wetherell Since October 5, 2000
Massless

Archive

2006

77 posts

January

  1. Good fiction on episodic TV

    Late tonight I pretended I had free time and I tried to watch a little... TV! Yeah, sometimes it seems as alluring and fulfilling as crafting unit tests. As is common with tastes…

  2. Email belatedly.

    I've been experiencing a similar email condition to my co-worker, Matt Cutts which is to say the holidays provided little respite to work or communication and, again like Matt…

  3. Surely excluding the source?

    I rarely talk about politics since I stutter around articulation of issues, often heartfelt, which does a lot to impede interpretation and discussion. I think I'm more conservative…

  4. The ultimate Expatriate New Yorker origin reveal winner

    So, what's the best single sentence I've ever read which accurately pins the writer as a former resident of California who now lives in New York as an east Coast liberal? Did you…

  5. Keeping tools of convenience convenient.

    Hmm. I played guitar last night w/ Dealership in rehearsal after several years' absence from doing so and I struggled to remember a song we began some years ago. I assumed we would…

  6. Some trailers are mashups, too.

    One bit of remix culture which often works as standalone art for me is the cut-up cable channel promotion for upcoming or available movies, often grouped monthly. Some channels…

  7. Imaginary conversation with ABC

    ABC is broadcasting live from Google today. (Link will probably only be active for a short time.) The following conversation with them is completely imaginary . Never happened. But…

  8. links for 2006-01-24

    Who's responsible for naming the planet Uranus? Yes, it's Johann Elert Bode. But the response from the Ask Yahoo! team is pretty delightful. Fametracker, the audit of Pitt/Jolie's…

  9. Wikipedia is not the hand of Satan. Unlike some, I presume.

    A quick look at my browser history exposes my increasing usage of Wikipedia (yep, like many I'm ref'ing its own entry). Not a big surprise as it's convenient and I'm as fascinated…

  10. Gerald Ford is a billionaire?

    Update : (Heh) Not so much a billionaire - it's not the same Gerald Ford listed on Forbes as ran the country for a while. Close-reading makes winners, kids. Read on for basic Ford…

  11. The guessers.

    I'm thinking today about poor quality punditry and the high-pitched tone I'm seeing constantly as well as the pressure (succumbed to commonly) to be the first to guess. "I'm done…

  12. Heading home...to play at Bottom of the Hill with Citizens.

    Fun times. I heart Film School and both of our bands have a nice history together. (We'll always have San Luis Obispo.) We're playing with them at Bottom of the Hill tonight. See…

  13. Stun 'em with a Mamet line.

    Just reminded by late night movies flickering in the background of this line in Spartan ( script ), a David Mamet film which features my favorite "dissembling by someone getting…

  14. Another peek through Colbert's 4th wall.

    Stephen Colbert's unabashed delight at being zinged by his guest last night is pure magic to watch as he breaks character, smiles genuinely, and pats (pats!) the table. Stephen…

February

  1. Bloc Party to JV

    Recently, I went and rated a chunk of songs sitting in iTunes and didn't realize until this morning's high-rated shuffle that John Vanderslice's Promising Actress is a fitting…

  2. Pizza and You: The Hidden Dangers

    The ACLU, cribbing Reefer Madness a little, has a short film (flash required) on the perils of small businesses tailoring their service based on personal data. The concern for…

  3. I think you're probably less funny than Aziz Ansari.

    Aziz Ansari is bored . He's a comedian working in NYC who's been a commentator on VH1's The Best Week Ever and has worked with the Upright Citizens Brigade and you might've seen…

  4. On playing songs many, many times.

    It's in the word itself: even in re-creation: a moment of creation. There's a moment just before we start the first song of any set - a moment where the ambient sound in the room…

  5. Chat! I have!

    Sweet! Chat has been enabled in my Gmail account. (Yours will come soon, really - the rollout will just take a few weeks.) We've been using Gmail Chat internally for a while now…

  6. Getting the stuff later.

    Aaron's got a great post that's kind of about teaching yourself new programming tricks and identifying old ones. His example is about callbacks (a programming pattern) which he's…

  7. After-Aftershock, Law and Order

    Wrote a post a little while ago about good fictional televsion moments which I feel compelled to update to include a surprisingly moving Law and Order episode. I'm a sucker for…

  8. Happy birthday, Flickr!

    I subscribe to these. Uruandimi's Photos Andy Welsh's Photos Eris23's Photos Babsi Jones' Photos Flickr as photo-sharing software: great or greatest? (For me it's an easy…

  9. Winner of the "shit, oKAY, we'll keep the city apartment" award.

    Reading about urban development reminded me of this: "You live with the threat, you tell me you live with the threat of my extinction. Leonard, I live with it too. This is my…

  10. Mob mash

    Happily, trailers on cable remain interesting. In a rare moment when Cinemax isn't showing soft-core they aired a trailer for mob movies that included the following fun…

  11. Unintentional mashups

    The "show" query for any URL at Television Without Pity isn't primarily bound to episode data, it's bound to style and navigation. So you can wind up with the header and style for…

  12. Browse carefully: a critical Safari vulnerability

    Over at Secunia, they're reporting that the "Open 'safe' files after downloading" feature in Safari has a nasty downside as shell scripts can be executed via single clicks. They've…

  13. If WoW is the new golf then Darkon is the new PTA.

    What's Darkon? Well, it looks like Darkon is a full-contact medieval fantasy wargaming group. But more interestingly to non-members it's now a moving documentary that's screening…

March

  1. Mic control

    Ergk. Whoever controls the mic controls the show. At Dealership 's recent show at the Milk my mic was turned off the entire time. No singing for me. Though I'm happy and lucky to…

  2. A nice thing about working at Google (#71 in a #436 part series)

    Here's a quick transcript of the meeting with my new boss. Me : Great to meet you. Hey, what'd you do before this Google thing came along? Her, paraphrased : Just some work on…

  3. Tonight's Citizens show: My full brain.

    Things I will screw up tonight at Slim's with Citizens Here and Abroad by song: - The entrance into the first breakdown of Accelerator . - The entrance to Stranger . - All of Deer…

  4. A positive review

    So I think we made an okay impression on Saturday at Slim's . How could she tell? My hair? My shoes? My drumming style? A stolen moment captured on Flickr? The top-level domain…

  5. Film School's stuff was stolen.

    Just after their show at The Fire (a Philadephia dive bar) the San Francisco based band Film School parked their van behind the security gate, went to their rooms and slept. In the…

  6. The Underseen Barry Lyndon

    So you've seen Barry Lyndon , the Stanley Kubrick film? Really? Oh, c'mon, really? Seriously? I'll bet most people haven't. Barry Lyndon isn't 2001 or The Shining or Dr…

  7. Zawodny made us lose a day.

    We have a room with a door where we squeeze a few engineers that get to work on feed-related stuff for Google. Like anyone living in close quarters we're prone to passing viruses…

  8. The Me Roll Contains No Jelly

    On our way to other things the Google Reader team decided to open up sharing of labels. Basically you can have a page in Reader that will splice together feeds you choose. Or it…

  9. A thanks for the care package.

    Great presents! From earlier, Brian Greene 's book The Fabric of the Cosmos and more recently the documentary The Aristocrats . (Wikipedia has a, ahem, nice example of the joke…

  10. Web 2.0 Punchline

    She said it Sunday. I'm still laughing about this. "Look, honey. I totally mashed up this shirt with these jeans." - Mai Le (sarcastically)

  11. Cardiac Arrythmia: The downsides!

    You're saying to yourself, "I know the upsides of non-normal cardiac muscle contractions - the jungle rhythms, the backbeat, the non-stop, invasive, four-on-the-floor dance remix…

  12. Scoring The Walker? Oh, man.

    So, whom do I talk to about scoring Paul Schrader 's new follow-up to American Gigolo? How much fun would that be? Paul wrote American Gigolo (as well as Raging Bull, Auto Focus…

  13. Waiting for the man.

    So, what industry are we working in again? We got a message from our supplier who said he'd send the stuff. He sent the stuff. But it was the wrong stuff, totally bogus, we…

  14. Greenspan: Great banker, partymeister.

    Saw the following via Wikipedia's society portal page . So, did you know "...that the former chairman of the US Federal Reserve, Alan Greenspan was made a Freeman of the City of…

April

  1. Incredible actress day: Kathryn Joosten

    I'm in awe of late bloomers, of the people whose success is comparatively latter-day, and I like to hope I'll have a similar experience someday. This thought pops up occasionally -…

  2. Superman II had two directors?

    I didn't know this - A couple of decades ago Richard Donner was fired from the production of the movie Superman II after allegedly having completed 80% of filming. (How would this…

  3. Cafe 2.0, the discount card.

    Present to your nearest baristi or bariste for discounted items.

  4. Splicing fun and Google Calendar

    The experiment I'll be mentioning in this post is called Break In Case Of Boredom . (music-ish happenings) I like playing with discovery mechanisms. Yesterday I had a nice time…

  5. First concerts thread.

    A few of us at Google we're discussing Hammer's blog over email and it came to light that his was the first concert one of us attended. Other Googlers joined in as Billy Joel…

  6. Musicians should have feeds. (Citizens has one now.)

    I like seeing music live. But most of my favorite artists can't tour as frequently as they'd like. Finding if they're playing in town means I have to rely on frequent visits to…

May

  1. IE7 defaults to AutoSearch not MSN.

    I wish Internet Explorer 7 made it dead simple for people to change their search defaults. (It's not as easy as it is in Firefox.) That said, I think our position as reported seems…

  2. Wish list, reluctantly.

    I've never been comfortable with making a wish list for presents. Hubristic? Presumptuous? Well, I recognize that's hardly fair and that my reaction says more about me than people…

  3. In Living Meme-ory

    On May 30 Births 1964 - Tom Morello, American musician (Audioslave, Rage Against The Machine) 1966 - Stephen Malkmus, American musician (Pavement) 1981 - Devendra Banhart, American…

  4. Sarah, my traveling companion.

    On the plane to Mai 's brother's wedding I continued my place in yet another Sarah Vowell book. I'm happy to believe Ms. Vowell will outlive me - which leaves the chance that I…

June

  1. The best by anyone, anywhere, they say.

    This is not the Best Blog in the World . (Obviously.) But the journal in my head is something else. Each entry is wisdom's cream. Were I to actually publish this in-my-head blog…

  2. What you're doing this weekend.

    You're going to see Zardoz at The Roxie at 12:30pm on Saturday afternoon. (June 9.) You will watch an oily, hairy, mid 40s Sean Connery bravely wade through a turgid, psychedelic…

  3. The language (and test) of Matsui.

    Despite the group's hurried exigency in Ocean's Twelve , Linus failed to impress Matsui. I'll explain. In Ocean's Twelve, the beleaguered criminals find themselves searching for…

  4. Quotations from Fictional Code Reviews That Indicate The Programmer Suffers From Schizophrenia.

    "I'm uncomfortable in general with this node traversal. It's a lot like throwing a hand grenade into a group of children." "Your ProfileManager class would be greatly improved if…

July

  1. Testing against sentience.

    At Google, we face some unique technical challenges. For instance, we occasionally worry that this big ball of code we're working on will actually turn sentient. This week we've…

August

  1. Enjoyed watching Lady in the Water.

    A few days ago, our shitty, grind-core world had again been borrowing recipes from Hell's cookbook , so some escapism seemed menu-appropriate. Dodging thoughts on the ongoing…

  2. Aesthetic Quality and the Heuristic Mystic

    So ... the last few days have been filled with UI evaluation and I always find myself considering aesthetic considerations during either lab inquiries or heuristic evaluation. But…

  3. Cities have secrets.

    In backyards and alleys and beyond bay windows are complete, and occasionally secret, worlds. Back in April, Dunstan took us around back of his apartment ... The 3rd and 4th photos…

  4. A small break.

    We're having a spliced view of Greece . We'll be available, also, by runner . (I've made that joke five times by now.)

  5. Tanned, rested, ready.

    The Sun Gods, as worshipped in San Francisco, are a collection of djinn who are known to respond to summons by hiding mischievously in fog banks and past the sea, blowing a frigid…

  6. Since U Been Gone: Missing Jason Goldman of Blogger.com

    My friend Jason's making a leap from employment to a greater unknown . I'm always a bit in awe of this maneuver, it's personal-life parkour even at the best of times, and is just…

September

  1. We are Sparta.

    There has been a printout hanging above each urinal I've used in Google this week. It is a warning. It warns against dangerous assumptions noting we should be careful when…

  2. Suspendus sarcastimus... and still Spartan.

    I'm issuing a temporary writ of suspendus sarcastimus . At least as regards my writing on making software. That last post " We are Sparta " may have sounded like a boast since I…

  3. My blogging tools: Twitter, Blogger, Vox, Flickr.

    Thanks to The Day Job , I occasionally ask some odd questions of myself like "where's my identity being most self-shaped online?" though I probably express it as "shit, how many…

  4. Releasing a record and playing tonight

    There are these day and night thingies and I recalled too late that I was expected to sleep during one of them. So, I'll be heading into tonight's Citizens Here and Abroad show…

  5. Violently Ill

    Following the show Saturday (which went really well) we made plans to take the instruments back to our studio. On the way there, with Dan driving, I had a fever spike and I threw…

  6. Time Magazine, America's Online Newspaper of Record?

    I really like looking at archived magazines. Snooping in on the past's reaction to the past is enjoyably voyeuristic for me. I once had a collection of music reviews that were…

October

  1. Programmers feel strongly.

    Some fun (of the non-scientific kind) with Google Code Search. Browsers "ie sucks": ~8,000 results (Update: Something weird happened. The search for "ie sucks" no longer returns a…

November

  1. Seeing Massless mass update? Just a migration.

    Hi. If you're reading Massless in a feed reader and suddenly see a bunch of old posts that look new ... please accept my apologies for the mess as I'm a tester for the migration to…

December

  1. From my online life. Around Dec 01, 2006.

    Links from a recent trip around the World Wide Web. saladwithsteve , Scaling data on the cheap Like Anna Karina's Sweater , Speak, Memory Mashable! , Breaking: MySpace Debuts…

  2. From my online life. Recently.

    Links from a recent trip around the World Wide Web. Cool Hunting , Art Hotels kottke.org remaindered links , Sketchfighter 4000 is a gorgeous video game with a hand-drawn look this…

  3. While I was sleeping. (Links.)

    Links from a recent trip around the World Wide Web. Pruned , The Machine WorldChanging , From Prodem to Pragati - ATMs for the Poor Defamer , Murphy Ready For 'Beverly Hills Cop 4…

  4. Leslie Harpold and and ... fuck.

    Shit. Leslie Harpold has died . Like others, I met her only a few times, but was influenced by her wit, passion, thoughtfulness, and work and strived (succeeding much less often…

  5. Perspectives from teh interweb. (Dec 14, 2006)

    Starred. Marginal Revolution , Do the poor need jail? Just a quote from Sudhir Alladi Venkatesh's "Off the Books: The Underground Economy of the Urban Poor" which I want to read…

  6. Perspectives from teh interweb. (Dec 18, 2006)

    Starred. Drowning Kittens In A River Full Of Cash , And I Am Not Lying, For Real Jeff Simmermon recently wrote about his feelings toward AOL before and after being laid off. He…

  7. The linx. (Dec 20, 2006)

    Starred. The New Version of Blogger , Blogger Buzz Pete Hopkins, a wonderful programmer, thanks dogs and ferrets and makes a Battlestar Galatica syllogism in his post announcing…