False Positives

CentrSource, the unique shopping resource that is built around you, the consumer, is launching an online promotion to encourage site visits and new user registration.

If you register before June 15, 2005, you will be automatically entered into our “Ease into Summer” contest for one of forty $100 gift certificates to be used by you or that special lady at the “sumptuous, state of the art” Verity Spa, located in the elegant women’s club, Verity, in downtown Toronto (http://www.verity.ca). The National Post describes Verity, Toronto’s only private club for women, as a “luxurious oasis of French Provincial crossed with industrial warehouse.”

Click here http://www.CentrSource.com?Loc=595797479 for Contest Details and Registration.

You are automatically entered into our contest every time you forward our contest entry from within CentrSource to a friend or family member.

Also, when you visit CentrSource, don’t forget to check out the “Latest Offers” section on our homepage. There you will find scores of unique offers from leading international, national and local advertisers. In fact, you will find over 5,000 advertisers specifically selected for consumers in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA).

(Full Disclosure: I work with CentrSource Inc.)

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Automagically: a word play on “Automatically”, Automagically is when something is expected to happen or be done magically, without thought, knowledge, or care of, what is involved with accomplishing it. This is a word I’ve used for many years, most likely via a Freudian Slip, to describe users request for a computer function or process request: ” the marketing department wants the system to Automagically forecast demand for the next quarter”. Brian convinced me to document it.

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I customized Carrick Mundell’s LibraryLookup Greasemonkey script (for the Seattle Public Library) to do the same for the Toronto Public Library.

What’s it do? On any Amazon.com book listing page, the script inserts a hyper-link below the book title which, when clicked, will search for the book in the Toronto Public Library catalog.

I also made a small modification: the Library Search Url and Library Name are now separate variables to make it a little easier to customized for other Library Systems.

Here’s the Script: amazontorpllinky.user.js
Now go browse for The Confusion (The Baroque Cycle, Vol. 2)

Note: I’ve tested this on the Amazon sites for US, Canada, France Germany and Japan with success. However, it does not work for the UK site. Why? Because the UK does not use the same class element names to give it a place to insert the html rewrite link. In fact, it only uses 2 class names on the whole item page. The Style Sheet and classes are there, they just don’t use them. Weird.

This particular madness was kickoff by John Udell who started the LibraryLookup Project in 2002 (with bookmarklet’s). Many Thanks.

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Following sfsignal’s review of “Science Fiction: The Best of 2003 edited by Haber and Strahan” I read Neil Gaiman’s 2004 Hugo Short Story Winner :”A Study in Emerald” all part of Shadows Over Baker Street here’s hoping fluffcthulhu approves. (If not, then read “I CTHULHU” (or What’s A Tentacle-Faced Thing Like Me Doing In A Sunken City Like This (Latitude 47 ° 9’ S, Longitude 126 ° 43’ W)? )

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science fiction writer Charlie Stross has released to the wild his Singularity! - A Tough Guide to the Rapture of the Nerds.

Developed using Tiddlywiki, an experimental microcontent WikiWikiWeb built by Jeremy Ruston written in HTML and JavaScript, it has a slick user interface that makes me think of a Hitchhiker’s guide to the Galaxy (local or movie)- another kind of “Tough Guide“, and written with Tongue firmly planted in USB Port (do you get a tingle when you do that?). Charlie’s having fun! (Now on Boing Boing, and a few other places)

For the record, we have another name for people who are “unclear about the true nature of the Singularity” : call them “a cheap source of atomic feedstock”.

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Ok, so we just watched the end of “24“, Day 4. I think I know what’s going to happen in Day 5!

“In 1972 a crack commando unit was sent to prison by a military court for a crime they didn’t commit. These men promptly escaped from a maximum security stockade to the Los Angeles underground. Today, still wanted by the government, they survive as soldiers of fortune. If you have a problem, if no one else can help, and if you can find them, maybe you can hire: THE A-TEAM.”

I love it when a plan comes together. (Which leads me to this), Since I didn’t see any “One Armed Men”, He can’t be The Fugitive

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Richard Schwartz has hit one out of the park with Some Useful Utility Functions For Processing XML/DOM In JavaScript with came out of his Proof of Concept: Browser-Based Field Encryption With Blowfish Via Ajax. Well done Richard!

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Evening spent with fluffcthulhu, and minions feorag and autopope, along with dozen odd Torontorians (like rfmcdpei) at C’est What for drinks and a wide ranging talks. An enjoyable time, much beer, many all world problems solved, and if the world would stop spinning I might be able to remember them……possible brain munching by Cephalopod’s…..

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Via Waxy.org: Links Archives: May 2005 we have Chicago Crime, A freely browse-able database of crimes reported in Chicago, viewable by Crime type/Street/Date/Police district, Mapped with Google Maps!! They drill down to a very fine level of Detail: the block or police beat, and how about getting a RSS (RSS 2.0) feed for that Block or police beat?

The data comes from a Chicago Police Department site, Citizen ICAM, that lets the public search for recently reported crimes, update once a day with only 90 days’ worth of data and a week delay before crime reports are available online. (Do we have anything like this for Toronto?)

This might like giving a hypochondriac a encyclopedia of disease, but it’s an amazing application, and value-add to a existing set of data: Business Intelligence (BI) for the DUY vigilante. I wonder if you could re remix it with Paul Rademacher’s HousingMap remix of Craigslist and Google? Hm….Craigslist+Crime Reporting+GMaps = “Just why is that rent so cheap?”

Update:Boing Boing picked up the story. chicagocrime has linked back in Press.

And then there’s a remix of Google Maps and Gasbuddy : Cheap Gas

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Toronto’s Bloor West Village Art Tour is happening this weekend (May 13, 14, 15) with 21 Artists in 13 Locations around Bloor West, the Junction, and Little Malta.

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