Month: January 2003

One of the best ways to build something that you don’t have time to do yourself is to describe it on a blog and wait for somebody else to build it. This has happened enough times for somebody to give it a name, the LazyWeb. Names are legs for memes, and this one is off and running. I first noticed the LazyWeb concept on Steven Johnson’s site. That pointed me to Matt Jones’ site for an earlier reference to the same concept: if you wait long enough, someone will write/build/design what you were thinking about.

More recently, in an interesting fit of automemesis, the LazyWeb willed itself into existence as a site.
LazyWeb.org was created by Ben Hammersley because somebody else, invoking the LazyWeb, said it would be a good idea. Now all you have to do is say the magic word on your blog and the all-seeing LazyBot will scoop it up and deliver into the waiting brains of clever people around the world.

My USB to Mini-USB cable came in the mail yesterday (see my Froogle post of 12/31 below), and I’m very pleased to report that it works perfectly. So there’s another reason to like the svelte little Zire: no need to buy a fancy-pants custom cradle-n-cable for your machine. A $3.25 cable from PCTek Online will do just fine.

APOD has a lovely snapshot from our friends in the International Space Station of Mt. Etna spewing ash and lava across the Mediterranean.

Here’s something we’re (sadly) going to see a lot more of: digital stalking. A Wisconsin man is accused of stalking his former girlfriend by attaching a GPS device to her car. GPS device used to stalk woman (CNN.com). It’s too bad that so many creepy disaffected stalker-types are also technically skilled geeks. [Seen on Gizmodo]

It is a well-established fact that New Year’s Day (with the possible exception of Valentine’s Day) is the most depressing day of the year. It’s supposed to be filled with portent and possibility, with hope for the coming year. Instead it is filled with asinine parades, with stomach-churning hangovers and bleak dreary weather. What does it portend, besides your fat ass getting fatter and your so-called resolutions swirling noisily down the toilet? The only unalloyed good news is that you finally get to throw the Christmas tree out into the street.

An interesting question is: why do we celebrate the new year between December and January? I think the ancients got it right. Before Julius Caesar, the new year started with the springtime equinox in March, a fine time for resolutions and hopefulness. After gallantly naming July in his own honor, Caesar thought it better to move the new year’s festivities from the vernal equninox to the winter solstice. Allowing for some time to celebrate the solstice, that launched the new year on January first. A great pity. I propose that we move it back to March. Or better yet, move it to the the cross-quarter day between equinox and summer solstice, May first, indisputably the best day of the year. So my resolution for 2003 is to move the celebration of the new year from drab January to… oh never mind. I’m going back to bed.