brentashley

Able Baker Charlie Delta Echo Foxtrot… in some places it’s pretty easy to spell things over the phone, because they use a spoken-letter convention – military, aviation, medical.

I like having fun with them by substituting some of my own:

A as in “aesthetic”
C as in “cite”
K as in “knight”
M as in “mnemonic”
O as in “Oedipus”
P as in “ptarmigan”

I’ve decided to extend the BlogChat beta period at least through the summer to give us time to thoroughly investigate some things. So, everyone can continue to yak away unfettered. Send comments and new beta participation requests as usual to beta@blogchat.com.

I wanted to generate some reasonable passwords but make them rememberable. I looked into pronounceable passwords, but they relied on dictionaries or other support files, so I came up with a new approach – the Sport Score password. These passwords are designed to be remembered as a College sport score, for instance: Password KY5MA9 is remembered as Kentucky 5, Massachusetts 9.

50 states x 50 states x 10 x 10 = 250,000 unique passwords, good enough for many needs.

Here’s the PHP code…
Read the rest of this entry ?

When I lived in the UK in the early 80’s, I had the pleasure of living in a small village near Maidstone, Kent, called Platt’s Heath. Quite a different way of life, each village has a real identity. Various members of my wife’s family live in small villages and hamlets in the northeast of England, so I’ve had occasion to sample the village life there as well. Up until recently, I was a fully paid member of the Seghill Workingmen’s Club in Seghill, Northumberland, near Newcastle upon Tyne.

Simon Warrick has built a really neat website at villages.co.uk where villages can register their websites and become part of a larger village life community.

What a great place to go to take a virtual trip through the countryside and plan what would surely be a memorable holiday.

I became aware of the site because Simon uses my JSRS library to fill dropdown lists from the server without refreshing the page.

Armin starts on his World Tour of Scotland soon. It promises to be adventure-filled.

Dave chuckles at the hexadecimal nature of 0xDECAFBAD.

This year is the last year for some time that I’ll be able to fall back on hexadecimal as the obfuscator of my antiquity, for today, I turn 0x29.

I can cry far and wide:

But next year I turn 0x2A. Maybe that’s why 42 is the meaning of life, the universe and everything. I won’t be able to use the hex trick again until April 17th, 2009, when I turn 0x30.

There’s gotta be a term for those years of lost hexadecimal innocence between (decimal) 42 and 47. How about The Alpha Years.

Louise Kehoe at the Financial Times is “particularly intrigued” by BlogChat. Quite a few people have had similar I can’t quite put my finger on it but it’s somehow marvellous impressions.

I have to say, if someone came to me and said “Hey, there’s this new CHAT app you gotta try!”, I’d roll my eyes heavenward and say no thanks. Yecch. Age/Sex/Location? Gimme a break. Anonymous chat brings out the worst in people.

But….

BlogChat is a chat connected to YOU, to your own voice, not to some anonymous identity void. People coming to hear what YOU have to say and to engage you in conversation about your common interest, about your blog, your hobby, your business. Close enough to talk to. Not so close that they become your IM buddy.

My blog used to be a static display of my work and musings. Now it’s a tradeshow booth. Sail on through or stop to ask me something or tell me I’m a goof – it’s up to you.

Dan Gillmor, another journalist hep to the blogging world, was in for a visit too, and we’ve had a few fairly prominent bloggers express an interest in the beta.

Come on in, folks. The water’s fine. Give it a try, see if it fits your style.

Sharing a thought from Snowdeal:

“You’re not a designer, you’re not a writer, and you’re not an editor!”

Exactly. Poo-poo Kaka!! My bottom stinks! Wugga wugga! I have no editor, no proofreader, no design committeee constraining my expression.

I’m as much of a thoughtful, insightful sage or ridiculous puffed-up bogus self-aggrandized twat as I wanna be.

Caveat emptor. Beware the blog content, for it may be ridiculously slanted and/or hopelessly amateurish. And that’s a Good Thing (TM).