William Reardon’s Blog

I don’t remember where I heard it. It might have been from Ira Glass himself on This American Life, but I think it was from Sarah Vowell in one of her many wonderful books. She was re-telling an early conversation Ira Glass, her then boss, had with her about what they did on American Life. What made them different. People could have their stories told anywhere — TV, with it’s Datelines, 20/20s, and so on, was full of that.

What was different was being on the radio. On the radio you can’t see people. So when someone was telling their story, people had to pay attention to the words. They had to make conclusions about people based on their words. On their stories. On what they shared with the audience about the lives.

That is, people couldn’t make the snap judgments that we so often do, based strictly on physical appearance. You couldn’t say “Oh look, at how they’re dressed” and fill in the rest with your own assumptions. For the kid from the wrong side of town, with the wrong type of dress, the wrong type of hair cut, this was a chance for people to listen what he said. Really listen, instead of having it shouted out by what he wore.

That lack of image, lack of being able to see them, made you listen a little closer, and perhaps get to know someone, or listen to their side of the story, in a way maybe you wouldn’t have otherwise.

Whenever it was that I heard whatever it was that I actually did hear, I was just starting to get into This American Life, so it stuck with me, and was one of the things I really grew to really like about the show.

So it’s with mixed emotion that I watched the teaser of This American Life on Showtime.

Finger’s crossed it’s even half of what the radio show is — that would still make it one of the best things on TV today.

A while back, some where on the great wide Internet, I remembered reading about Firefox’s editor.singleLine.pasteNewlines setting. The advice was how to tweak it, so that if you ever had a long URL with line-breaks in the middle, e.g.:

http://outlook.example.com/Exchange2000/Bill/Weekly+Mee
ting+Of+Some+Kind+With+A+Long+Subject

You could just copy both lines, paste into Firefox, and the right thing would happen.

I.e., you’d get a working:

http://outlook.example.com/Exchange2000/Bill/Weekly+Meeting+Of+Some+Kind+With+A+Long+Subject

instead of a truncated

http://outlook.example.com/Exchange2000/Bill/Weekly+Mee

This happens a lot with long URLs in email, so sounds pretty handy, right?

I don’t remember where, but I distinctly remember reading the number value you set for it was the maximum number of line-breaks it would trim. The article recommended setting it to 3, so you’d get rid of up to 3 line-breaks.

Why 3, I wondered. Why not 4? If 3 is good, obviously 4 would be better!

This is America, baby! We go big!

So, being an American, I set mine to 4.

And it never worked.

Well it sorta did. It did remove the newlines. Only it replaced them with commas.

WTF!?!

Now, don’t get me wrong. I have nothing against commas. I like conjunctions, strings of adjectives, and prepositional phrases as much as the next guy. I just don’t like them in my URLs.

I was also a little confused about why people thought this setting was so great. After all, it clearly didn’t work. Yet, I would see it again and again and again in blog posts.

I figured it was one of two things: Either I had seriously whacked my install of Firefox somehow (which, as an Extension junkie, was quite possible) or there was a secret mass collusion out there & the entire Internet was fucking with me. I figured it was mostly the former, but I had to admit, there where times I thought it was the latter.

Anyway, bored, surfing the Internet & watching TV, I thought I’d look the setting up. So I did.

http://kb.mozillazine.org/About:config_entries

editor. singleLine. pasteNewlines
Determines the behavior when pasting content containing newlines into single-line text boxes.
0 (default in Linux): Paste content intact (include newlines)
1 (default everywhere else): Paste the content only up to (but not including) the first newline
2: Replace each newline with a space
3: Remove all newlines from content
4: Substitute commas for newlines in text box

Now, it seems to me that 3 would be the most logical default everywhere. After all, in 99% of the cases, that’s probably what the user wants to do.

I can understand 0 & 1. Well, not really. But I’ve been in enough geek flamewars to know the type of idoit logic that could result in them being seen as the preferable solution. Here I would imagine the argument to being it’s more important to do what the user literally stated (an invalid url with newlines) than what the probably meant (a valid url without newlines).

What I can’t see is how anyone ever made a case for option 4. The thing here is Firefox is open source. So not only did someone think it was a good idea, they managed to convince someone else it was a good idea too.

What I want to know is how that conversation went down.

“Listen boss, I’ve been thinking about this pasteNewlines thing.”

“Yeah?”

“Well, so far we options 0-3. But it was bugging me last night. We’re missing something. Then this morning, while taking a shower, I realized what it was.”

“Oh?”

“Commas.”

“Commas?”

“Commas. Instead of just providing variations on newlines, we should let the user have an option to replace them with commas.”

“Commas. I see it now. My boy, you’re a genius. Get this patch on the trunk asap!”

“Right away, sir!” Scurrying back to his desk.

“Checkmate, Mr. Gates. Checkmate, indeed.”

So, fine. I’m an idiot for not having used 3 like everyone else on the planet, but whoever came up with an option 4, you’re just as retarded as me.

I love witty graffiti.

Pulling an all-nighter in college with some fellow students, I needed to take a bathroom break around 3am. We were studying in Ryerson, former location of the Physics department, but now home to Computer Science. The restrooms typically used during the day were locked, so I headed up to the ones on the third floor. (Known to be unlocked for faculty working unpredictable schedules.)

Walking in, I flipped on the lights, and did my business. After washing my hands, I walked over to switch to flip the lights off again. Along side was a common, official sign saying “Please turns lights off to conserve energy.”

Only a former physics vandal had crossed it out with a big, black X and scrawled underneath, “Energy is always conserved.”

It might have been the stress of finals, but damn, was seeing that funny.

Just wondering…

I played dodgeball against Danielbeast tonight.

They beat us 5-1, but I took him out once or twice.

I wasn’t sure if it was him, especially from the other side of the court (and especially when immersed in the five D’s of dogeball: dodge, duck, dip, dive and dodge!). After the game, when the high-fives & good games where complete, he happened to look over, so I said “Hey, are you Danielbeast?”

“Yeah!”, he responded, clearly happy with the notion of being recognized.

I replied “I thought so.”, turned around, and headed home. In hindsight, he clearly was willing to talk to a fan. Maybe, dig into the storyline of lonelygirl15 a bit. After all, he’s just been kidnapped, so now more than ever before, is his time in the spotlight. Maybe pose for a fan-photo or two. An autograph. Offer to buy him a beer.

Alas, I was only curious & none of those thinks really occurred to me.

As Jimmy said “I stole his glory.”

I wonder if this is what turns celebrities against the general population. George Clooney had to go through a long phase like that. Sure he’s A-list now, but there was a long period between his start & now. A random couple on the street might have noticed him 20 years ago, “Hey, aren’t you that guy who was in a few episodes of the Facts of Life?”

“Yeah, that was me, George Clooney! Want an autograph? Or better yet, I’ll pose for a picture!”

“Um, ah, that’s okay. We only have 5 shoots left in the roll & we’re saving them for this weekend. I was just I was arguing my wife that you where that guy from the Facts of Life, but she said no, you would have had a mustache then. I told her no, she was confusing you with Schneider, the plumber from One Day at Time, and that you where you.”

George, clearly crestfallen, “Oh, okay. I understand.”

“Thanks George. Good luck with the TV acting.”

After they turned around, I’m sure George cried a silent tear or two.

No wonder now he hates the paparazzi so much. Where were they then?

Craig cracks me up.