A pair of great links this morning, one for the eyes and one for the mind.

First there's a project sponsored by Kodak. A journalist took a 3,400 mile road trip from New York, New York to San Francisco, California (Actually, to the Marin Headlands, but let's not be picky). The interesting bit is that he took one photo at each mile along the journey.

Second is a remarkable piece of journalism from the New York Times (free registration required but worth it), where a reporter purchases a young steer and over nearly two years traces the life of a typical beef steer from conception via insemination to, yes, his own dining room table. This is a really eye-opening piece on how economics has pushed the cattle industry to the extreme, endangering public health and ecology in ways I'd never considered.

(linkprops to Metafilter)

Here's a story you won't read on CNN (or Time, or any of a hundred affiliates): AOL Time Warner Merger Adds Up To Less Than the Sum of Its Parts.

Have I mentioned that I love vanilla?

Here are some of the sites I've noticed that have gone fishy today:

• Met4filter
• ebay
• Google (Check out the 'secret behind our pageranking' link)
• Fucked Company (check out the recent fuck, the buyout of pk interactive by idealab)
• Slashdot (everything you read is a lie)

Got any good April Fools sites? Share and Comment away! (oh, and be sure to put a target=new in your link tags in comments, or else the site will load in the teensy comment window...)

I was getting tired of standing on my head...

That reminds me of an old joke:

A man dies and, being on the darker side of the fulcrum of judgement, he winds up just south of purgatory.

The devil gently beckons him and tells the condemned that he is to have his choice of eternities, that he is to choose from three rooms where to bide the time until the end of days.

The Devil walks the man to the first of three doors. Opening it, the man sees thousands of people, as far as the eye can see, standing on their heads, hands at their sides, perfectly balanced on an endless hardwood floor. Some are whimpering in agony, and others cry out for mercy when they see the Devil at the door.

The man closes the door and moves to the second, which he opens to reveal a similar scene, only this time the headstanders are balanced on an eternal slab of marble. Looking closer the man sees a few red patches on the floor where skulls worn down have left their sorry marks.

Clearly the first room, for all the similarites, was a better place to endure his torment, for some eternities would be longer and more painful than others. Nevertheless, there's a third door.

Opening the third door, the man experiences a momentary shock as green sludge and writhing, half-dead fish spill over the lip of the door and on to his (real? ethereal? imaginary? convenient? He pauses momentarily to wonder. In any case, now soggy) feet and trousers. This room, like the others, stretches on for eternity, with thousands of people ensconced within, but the second thing to batter his senses (after the fish) is the barrage of smalltalk and good cheer. The people here are right-side up, carrying on animated conversations with each other, smiling, and as oblivious to the man and Devil's presence as they are to the green sludge which reaches up to their knees.

The sludge, while noisome (and wriggling), hardly seems as bad as the inverted eternity on marble or wood, and so, pausing only briefly over such a monumentous decision, the man tells the Devil, "This is the room for me."

"Are you certain?"

(hah, doesn't want me syaing here...) "Absolutely."

[sigh] "Very well, then. Step inside"

The man steps down into the sunken floor, and slogs over to a coterie of attractive people to introduce himself. The door closes, ominously. "Hi, I'm Sa--" as he's interrupted by the booming loudspeaker.

"Okay everyone; Break time's over. Back on your heads!"

Hope everyone had a good weekend and is up for a day of web shenanigans! Not that you'd ever see any of that stuff here at Fury. Heck no.

It's nearly Rabbit, Rabbit time again everyone, so don't forget on Monday. Keep in mind also that these will be the first two words uttered after the ending of Easter, so it's doubly rabbit-relevant.

If, as I would guess is the case for most of you, you have absolutely no idea what I'm talking about, follow the link and gather the luck, baby!

Roger Ebert posted a great article on upcoming 'copy-protected' Audio CDs that, among other things, won't play on Macs or DVD players.

It got me thinking about a world where music was able to reach every corner of the world without people having to buy it, where they could experience new music they wouldn't otherwise be exposed to. Oh yeah, it's called radio, and the labels love it to death. It's how they make their stars.

Radio listening at work has been dropping in favor of internet streams and personal music collections on CD or MP3 for a decade. As digital streams and MP3-CDs continue their inroads into car stereos, I wonder when the labels will realize that radio is no longer the best way to publicize their artists, and that to push awareness of new music to those with the financial resources to buy new albums, they'll have to turn to the net, even if they can't instantly monetize it.

Microsoft and Unisys are planning a massive ad campaign designed to 'save people from the evils of UNIX.' Among the reasons Unix is a bad idea, and will box you in, according to the ads:

• Unix systems are inflexible
• Unix requires you to pay for expensive experts
• Unix makes you struggle with a server environment that's more complex than ever

Okay, now anyone who's ever used a Windows server environment and a Unix environment is probably thinking 'but no, those are the things wrong with Windows, not Unix!'

In short retort:

• Unix flavors run my TiVo, my Powerbook, Google.com, and this web site. That's pretty flexible to me. NT Webservers in places I've worked have to be completely rebuilt on a regular schedule to address 'creep' problems that will otherwise bring the machine to a crawl, if not a blue screen of death.
• Unix requires you to know what you're doing, or to use tools created by other people. You can always hire an expert, but you're more likely to find a good one for less money than someone who's still trying to pay off their credit cards from the 6 months or more they took off work to get their Microsoft Certification credential. An MCSD credential means you can make bank consulting, and naturally Microsoft pushes employers to use only Microsoft Certified Engineers, so Microsoft's accusing Unix of requiring expensive professionals is a bit of hypocrisy.
• Finally, the Windows server environment is quite complex, nowhere near as modular as Unix systems, and gets more complex with each version. Also, since it's a single-vendor solution, if you don't like the way a product's development is headed, it's tough luck, or you can change systems entirely. Unix has flavors, and as they evolve, you can easily port from one to another that better suits your needs (from Solaris to Linux, for example).

It's all about the fear, uncertainty, and doubt, and Microsoft's firm belief that the decision makers in a company are the ones in air so rarified as to know little enough about technology to be brought in to Microsoft's folds by this bunch of crap.

So it's quiet in Berkeley this week. Too quiet...

It's spring break and the few friends I have who still live in Berkeley are all out of town, several are snowboarding at Whistler/Blackcomb outside Vancouver, the only ski resort in North America where you can go a full vertical mile from top to bottom, on either mountain!

Karen and Crystal had their 'Year of Culture' a year or two ago, and still manage to go hiking, vineyardhopping, or as far as their cars will take them at least a couple weekends a month, if not every weekend.

And this guy is a real inspiration. He journalled all his activities through his undergraduate adventure, and damn if he didn't find a lot of cool things to do, not to mention document them photographically.

I oughta get out more. Well, I'm going to the Exploratorium and the Tactile Dome tomorrow, and I'm sure to find something fun this weekend. I'll be sure and take pictures.