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MaisonBisson

a bunch of stuff I would have emailed you about

Nevada Considers Atomic Testing License Plate, Again

The first license plate to remember Nevada’s history as the host of the US’s nuclear testing grounds drew criticism for featuring a mushroom cloud (see the plate on the right, above). Now it appears folks are at it again, this time with a plate that depicts the site’s area and includes the classic illustration of […] » about 100 words

Font Friends

You’ve got to love a friend who emails you when she finds fonts like Orange Whip and Comic Strip Exclaim and say they remind her of you. » about 100 words

Casey Bisson

Barstow California

What didn’t work out because of our problems with the hotel was our drive to Barstow to see Sandee’s friend Joanne.

I don’t know much about the town, but Wikipedia told me to look out for the original Del Taco, Rainbow Basin Natural Area (site not loading now, try this instead), Calico Ghost Town, and the old Solar One solar energy generating experiment. Along the road, however, is the the World’s Tallest Thermometer, in Baker, California.

Atomic Liquors

I convinced Sandee to join me at Atomic Liquors on Fremont Street, just beyond the Western Hotel Casino in what the Las Vegas Sun calls the “gritty underbelly of Las Vegas.” Owner Joe Sobchick and his wife Stella started business in 1945 with a cafe called Virginia’s. They converted it into a bar in 1953, […] » about 200 words

Welcome To Fabulous Las Vegas…with your host, Casey

The wind along Las Vegas Boulevard was blowing hard, so it hides the fact that I’m currently sporting one of the worst haircuts of all time. I’ve been meaning to take a picture of this damn sign for years — and more so after seeing beatnickside‘s collection of Vegas photos. welcome sign, welcome, sign, neon, […] » about 100 words

What You Lose In The Whirligig…

Nobody’s saying what caused it, but things didn’t go as planned at the MGM Grand Sunday night. We were told our room wasn’t ready when we tried to check in a little before midnight, so we ambled over to the cafe for a midnight breakfast on the house. Then at 3 AM, when our rooms […] » about 200 words

Last Minute Gift Idea

My friend Joe loved his chickens, though a fox did them in this last fall. He’d planned to leave the coop empty for the winter and start fresh in the spring, but his surfing lead him to mail order chickens (adoption card pictured above). So…what better a gift for a friend than a chicken by […] » about 100 words

The War On Christmas

I like Christmas as much as anybody (well, anybody who likes Christmas), but I’m a “happy holidays” guy. Why? because Christmas and the holidays aren’t about me, they’re about the way we spread happiness and joy to others, no matter how they celebrate. So while I quietly hope for my own merry Christmas, I resist […] » about 100 words

Blogging the Office Party (mostly because they suggested it)

I don’t work for central IT anymore, but they still invite me to their holiday party. And no office holiday party would be complete without a yankee swap. I brought a sort of crappy battery operated screwdriver that seemed to be popular (but keep in mind that we have really low standards for these things), […] » about 200 words

The Sungard/SCT Luminis Content Management Suite Demo

We got the demo yesterday of Sungard/SCT‘s Luminis Content Management Suite (sales video). I mentioned previously that the sales rep thinks Pima Community College and Edison College show it off well. Here’s what we learned in the demo: It started with the explanation that data is stored as XML, processed by JSP, and rendered to […] » about 800 words

Institutional and Academic Repositories

MIT has DSpace, their solution to save, share, and search the collected work of their faculty and students (in use by 115 public sites). Now Royce just shared with me this presentation by Bill Hubbard, the SHERPA project manager at University of Nottingham.

What’s SHERPA? The name is an acronym for Securing a Hybrid Environment for Research Preservation and Access, but it’s a project intended to archive the pre and post publication papers and other research products.

They’ve got some advice for those interested in these things. Including some help with dealing with publishers. Bill reported some analysis in his presentation that found that 93% of the publishers they deal with at Nottingham allow authors to self-archive their work in publicly available repositories.

Related to this, I previously reported on arXiv.org. The intent there is slightly different, as Henry Farrell explains:

[I]ts effectively replaced journal publication as the primary means for physicists to communicate with each other. Journal publication is still important — but as an imprimatur, a proof of quality, rather than a way to disseminate findings to a wider audience.

Kim’s CMS Shortlist

With 1,800 CMS vendors in the marketplace, we’re mining what we know or know-of as a way to shorten the list. Kim named the following four:

  • Joomla, a derivative of Mambo
     
  • Collage appears to have good content reuse features
     
  • OmniUpdate has a good list of higher ed clients
     
  • Drupal: open source and turning heads

Ryan Eby’s Pursuit of Live-Search

Ryan Eby gets excited over LiveSearch. And who can blame him? I mention the preceding because it explains the following: two links leading to some good examples of livesearch in the wild.

Inquisitor is a livesearch plugin for OS X’s Safari web browser. It gives the top few hits, spelling suggestions where appropriate, and links to jump to other search engines.

Garrett Murray’s ManiacalRage is an interesting blog on its own, but he’s also doing some good AJAX on his search interfaces. Look first at the archive search. But also take some time to appreciate the new content search. Sure, you’ll have some complaints, but it’s his site and not yours and there are some ideas there that are pretty interesting and useful.

Simon Mahler Audioproduktion

Simon Mahler did the audio for Benjamin Stephan and Lutz Vogel‘s Trusted Computing movie. The movie is good, but I realized I was letting it play in the background just to hear the soundtrack, so I finally looked up Mahler’s fotone.net and found the three free song downloads.

It’s good stuff, but I’m wondering where the album is…

Cop Tasers Cop

Two cops: he wanted a soda, she didn’t. She had the wheel, he had a Taser. Details from this Associated Press story:

HAMTRAMCK, Mich. — A police officer has been charged with using a Taser on his partner during an argument over whether they should stop for a soft drink.

Ronald Dupuis, 32, was charged Wednesday with assault and could face up to three months in jail if convicted. The six-year veteran was fired after the Nov. 3 incident.

Dupuis and partner Prema Graham began arguing after Dupuis demanded she stop their car at a store so he could buy a soft drink, according to a police report.

The two then struggled over the steering wheel, and Dupuis hit her leg with his department-issued Taser, the report said. She was not seriously hurt.

Hamtramck police union lawyer Eugene Bolanowski said he expected Dupuis to hire a private lawyer.

Hamtramck is a city of 23,000 surrounded by Detroit.