Slumberland

Will phone numbers replace URLs? I’m not really sure that this is a good idea. After all, domain names were invented because people have trouble remembering sequences of numbers. And now they want to go back to the numbers?

After 14 years, the Centipede world record has been broken. When was the last time you even saw a Centipede game?

The Seattle Union Record is a newspaper published by the striking Times and P-I workers. They are currently online only, but plan to have a print version available within a week, to compete directly with the Times and P-I.

A front page notice reads, “We will cover the strike like any other story, without bias. The strike is, however, the reason we are doing this, a fact reflected by the first offering of columns in the Metro Seattle section. The columnists featured today are among hundreds of people who made the two Seattle dailies what they are — or were.

Reporters will continue to cover their beats, but for the Union Record instead of their usual employer. Meanwhile, today’s Times looks relatively normal. A comment on the front page tells us that the paper was printed early because of strike uncertainty. Tomorrow’s paper is when the effects of the strike on the paper’s quality ought to start becoming more visible.

Update: the Newspaper Guild did vote to strike. The papers have hired scab temps to keep publishing, and they say that all papers will be free until news content is up to standard. This is the first Seattle newspaper strike in my lifetime.

Newspaper guild members at the Seattle P-I and Seattle Times may go on strike at midnight tonight. Here’s what the P-I has to say. It’s more interesting to read the news at the Pacific Northwest Newspaper Guild’s own site, though.

Count on eBay to list weird stuff (found on Metafilter). I have found items like this before; never thought about saving them, though!

I’m finding the whole Palm Beach Ballot issue endlessly fascinating; a fine case-study of real-world user interface design that didn’t work. Fury.com has a page showing alternative cognitive paths that voters might have followed when filling out their ballots. And here’s an article about problems with voting machine design, written well-before the current situation.

Why the Electoral College should be eliminated, and who’s really at fault by Bill Press at CNN. He blames Nader. Sorry, folks — so do I.

The Onion covers the winner of the presidential race.

The Presidential and Senate races may be up in the air, but it looks like the Monorail Initiative won a resounding victory. Now if the thing will just get built someday… this is a start, but this doesn’t mean it’s really going to happen, yet.

I am typing this on my new toy: a strawberry iMac DV/400. Yes, it is pink. Pinker than I expected, actually. I was expecting a red with a pinkish tinge, but this is definitely closer to strawberry ice cream than fresh strawberries from the garden. It’s really sort of hot pink. But at least it’s not boring.

Stay-rod.com, found via Sheila. The part that made me laugh was “A-ROD ACCESS: if you are Alex, click here!”

Reason #1,907,865 never to ship via UPS.

An Andy Warhol Apple Computer screenprint would look nice in our computer room, don’t you think? (Found via As The Apple Turns.)