clock — watching time, the only true currency

A journal from John B. Roberts

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Entries from February 2008

Movie: Thank You For Smoking

February 25th, 2008 · 2 Comments

Nothing like a good satire to cleanse the palate. I enjoyed the title sequence almost two years ago. Friday night, I watched Thank You For Smoking. Full bore fun, riding the commercial and political system we have to the (almost logical) extent…this movie doesn’t have a (cough) filter (cough). Metacritic: 71

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Tags: Everything · Movies

Psssssttt…OpenDNS is hiring

February 21st, 2008 · 1 Comment

Engineering positions in San Francisco, available now. Even if you’re not an engineer, if you refer someone we hire, there’s a cash reward in it for you ($1K).
(Just in case good karma wasn’t enough.)

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Tags: Everything · OpenDNS

The geographic center of baseball

February 21st, 2008 · No Comments

I’ve never heard of Alex Reisner before today. My gratitude to Adam Kalsey for the link. I just now realized that Reisner’s post is from March of 2006, almost 2 years ago. But this is timeless, not timely.
What a marvelous, brief examination of history and its forces: Baseball Geography and Transportation. Effectively annotated with dated [...]

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Tags: Data · Everything · Maps · Travel · Visualization

Monday night links

February 18th, 2008 · No Comments

Rather than spend time trying to buy an airline ticket I don’t want, I’ll clean out the inbox with a few links gathering dust.
This weekend, I saw the $1 image stabilizer in action, and Rich got some great pictures of the kids. Pretty sharp!
Last year, I saw the Windows Vista packaging in person (not since, [...]

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Tags: Everything · Links

My favorite email subject line of the past week

February 18th, 2008 · No Comments

Most spam I receive is of the usual variety of supplements, etc.. Only occasionally do I get a 419 scam, but I did enjoy last week’s subject line from the “Compensation Head Office”
Dear Prominent User of the Internet
Hey, we’re all famous somewhere.

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Tags: Email · Everything

Movie: Catch a Fire

February 18th, 2008 · No Comments

The domain is already parked, and that tells you a lot about a movie that’s less than 2 years old. Metacritic gave Catch a Fire a 62, for “generally favorable” reviews. My feelings about the movie…mildly favorable, at best. Not bad, but not worth your time. Based on a true story, this apartheid-era chronicle does [...]

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Tags: Everything · Movies

Book: Treasure Island

February 17th, 2008 · No Comments

When the boy tears through book after book, I sometimes follow after him. Treasure Island is such a well-known tale, but I’m not sure I’d ever read it before. Maybe it’s not the original buried treasure story, but this is rightly the best known. Action throughout, clear language without being childish, and the hero (and [...]

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Tags: Books · Everything

You know your blog is stale when…

February 17th, 2008 · No Comments

…the wife who gives you grief for blogging mentions that your blog is getting stale. Hmmm… maybe I can clean out the inbox later tonight.

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Tags: Blog management · Everything