Steel White Table

I had dinner at my aunt’s house last Sunday. I was distracted the whole time I sat at the table. I kept looking at a fish bowl on her kitchen counter, specifically the lonely little fish inside the bowl, one of those betta fish. I video taped him from different angles and put this 1-minute [...]

Firefox 1.5 was released today. I installed it on my work laptop with no problem. After I installed it at home, Firefox wouldn’t start. I used Process Explorer to see what was going on and I noticed it did start, but it immediately killed itself. I had to uninstall it and [...]

I finished reading Pierre Berton’s The Joy of Writing, and it’s a good book. In it he tells the story of his writing life, all the ins and outs of being a professional writer. Even when he’s talking about stuff that may not seem interesting, such as how to get a good agent, he makes [...]

One of my two friends has a dilemma:
My morning routine is always to get up, shower and then go downstairs and have my oatmeal while I read the paper. Generally, I go to the front door at around 6:50AM and my paper is there. For the past 2 weeks my paper has not been waiting [...]

It must be a slow day for CNN: they’re reporting about Canadian news on their front page: Kickback scandal brings down Canadian government
The government of Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin fell Monday evening when opposition parties united to topple him with a no-confidence vote. Martin’s center-left Liberal Party has been dogged by a corruption scandal, [...]

Learn Jazz Piano is an excellent site providing free lessons:
Want to learn some blues licks? We’ve got ‘em- just go to the Blues Licks room. How to harmonize melodies? That’s here too. Jazz piano scales, jazz piano chords and jazz chord progressions, jazz piano theory- it’s here. All the tricks of the trade that professional [...]

Tags: jazz, music lessons, piano

Star Wars Auditions:
Kevin Spacey plays Christopher Walken as Han Solo and the late Walter Mattau as Obi Wan Kenobi. Darrell Hammond plays Richard Dryfus as C-3PO. Classic sketch from SNL spoofing behind the scenes footage of “Star Wars, the 20th Anniversary Home Video.”
This originally aired in 1997, I think.

Penn & Teller’s television show, Bullshit!*, is about debunking myths, sort of like Mythbusters without the science experiments and with a lot more profanity:
…Penn & Teller have been dying to do a show like this. Confirmed skeptics and pro-science atheists (they refer to God as “an imaginary friend”), these magicians are big fans of the [...]

A Basic Science Fiction Library:
The first year I [James Gunn] offered the Intensive English Institute on the Teaching of Science Fiction, a teacher… asked me how many books a teacher should read in order to have a sound background for the teaching of science fiction. I said, offhand, about a hundred books and gave her [...]

How much money would it take for you to kill a puppy with your bare hands? The link opens to a Quicktime video that features interviews with people asked that question. The lowest I heard was fifty cents; and if not a puppy, how about a rat?
It’s not that sick to watch. [...]

The Federal Aviation Adminsitration’s (FAA) Airplane Handbook:
The Airplane Flying Handbook is designed as a technical manual to introduce basic pilot skills and knowledge that are essential for piloting airplanes. It provides information on transition to other airplanes and the operation of various airplane systems.
Save thousands of dollars in lessons and just study this book! [...]

Steel White Table is better than The J-Walk Blog, according to Silktide:
About 4,740 other websites were found linking to this website. (450 quality links, out of 4740). The website is extremely well linked to.

Their report is obviously screwed up.
(via The J-Walk Blog, whose score is 7.9)

“So you’re a writer,” an examing physician remarked jovially to the late, great novelist Margaret Laurence. “When I retire, I intend to become a writer myself.” To which Margaret replied, cheerfully, “Yes, and when I retire, I intend to become a brain surgeon.”
That’s from Pierre Berton’s The Joy of Writing, which I began reading [...]

I just created my own website! Trying Not To Sneeze is hosted on wordpress.com, a free service created by the makers of WordPress, the free software used to create SWT’s blog and thousands of other sites. It took me a minute to register and create the site. Its interface is simplified and [...]

Today’s Foxtrot made me chuckle:

In case you just came out of a coma, the Sony DRM controversy started with Mark Russinovich’s post about it.