April 21, 2001

As you can see pretty clearly, I've changed the site layout, and pulled the open letter over here to another page. This lets me do a few things:
  1. Write the letter in advance, and automate it showing up when it's supposed to.
  2. Condense the front page a little bit.
  3. Artificially elevate my page-loads, by sending letter-readers to a second page.

Thanks for all your feedback (back in March) about the redesign. I don't think anybody who emailed me actually wanted me to move the letter to another page, reinforcing my opinion that I'm not crazy--everyone else is. It's a good thing I don't work in a useability lab, or reality and I would have to have words about this.

Now that the obligatory "site-redesign announcement" is out of the way, I've got something fun for you. You may have seen it already, because I think it's making the rounds, but if not, click here and get a good laugh out of it. It's a stick-figure martial arts movie in Flash format (1.4MB). I ran it over my 28.8 connection at home, and it took about 15 minutes to come down. It was worth every second. (If you've already seen it, then you probably got it from Barry over at Angst Technologies, and hence you do not need a link to his excellent strip because you already get daily laughs over there)

For science buffs, the current storyline about haunted plumbing might induce you to research actual space plumbing. Go on, then. Read up on the plumbing they've got in place (and planned) for Space Station Alpha (AKA the ISS, FWIW). Learn about terms like "grey water."

This reminds me of the time Spider Robinson scribbled some notes on the Skylab toilet diagrams, and sent the notes to Ben Bova. To paraphrase (for the kiddies), "As near as I can tell, it's SUPPOSED to hit the fan."