¡Huevos!

There’s a sweet little desktop app for OSX called Huevos.

It’s tiny and free, and it’s a search helper. You pick a search site, type in your search, and your browser of choice fires up and searches. I recommend it!

You can drop in your own searches, so I took out the ones I didn’t need and put in somei new ones. In case anyone is interested, my new ones were:

Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/s?index=blended&field-keywords=%@

Blinkx: http://www.blinkx.com/videos/%@

Google Video: http://video.google.com/videosearch?q=%@&sitesearch=

IMDB: http://imdb.com/find?s=all&q=%@&x=0&y=0

Powells: http://www.powells.com/s?kw=%@&x=0&y=0

flags and tags

The LJ “flag content” and age restriction policy isn’t shocking or unusual. It’s surprising that they’ve gone so long without it. If it’s done properly, content flagging is the best way to deal with the problem of adult content and people who don’t want to see it.

Note that online video sites, Craigslist, Flickr, and just about every other social network have mechanisms like this. It can be poorly implemented or need incremental improvement but I think outrage is misplaced.

Flagging can be misused, especially if it’s done wrong, and Digg-like behavior ensues. If LJ fails to code this right there will be problems, and possibly very bad problems. Ideally it should work the way Craigslist does, or AIM’s “zapping,” where one person can’t cause a lot of damage.

The tag problem is worse. They should have set an arbitrary limit when tags were launched, but they didn’t think about scaling and now they have to do it retroactively and annoy people. I would guess (and hope) that their engineers will find a better way of handling tags and the limit will be raised or removed at some time.

I’m not talking out my ear here. I’ve been on both ends of this argument since 1991, on a variety of services that serve radically different audiences. The “flag content” system is imperfect and sometimes maddeningly broken, but top-down approaches are a far worse failure. Letting the community flag things based on their own biases and then sorting out the disagreements is the only think I’ve seen work, at all.

With the current U.S. legal environment I doubt LJ has many alternatives. If someone wanted to check out the LJ code and build one in Belarus or something, it might take off as a refuge from this kind of thing.

I don’t think I’ll be feeling the noiz today thanks

On the occasion of Kevin DuBrow’s death, an anecdote:

I used to work with the king of copy editors, A. He was perfect at his job: knew everything, meticulous, obstinate. A very nice guy outside of work also. He was slender and carried himself in an effeminate way, and had long brown hair parted in the middle.

A. was also seriously into heavy metal music. This was the late 80s, when metal and glam and pop-metal were king, and he was way into that scene. Aside from the long hair it’s not something one would have expected, but A. was full of unexpected.

One day someone mentioned Quiet Riot and he said “Oh, I have a story there.”

Years and years previous, A. had been shopping at the Ralphs market on Sunset at Poinsettia in West Hollywood. This is colloquially known as the “Rock ‘n’ Roll Ralphs” because it’s right next to the Strip and all the guitar stores.

A. was pushing his cart along looking for peas or something when he noticed a rocker dude trying to get his attention. The guy was very excited and grinning widely.

“Hey!” he said. “Do you play an instrument?”

A. said “Uh yes. I play bass. why?”

“I’ll tell you why. I’m Kevin Dubrow and I’m starting up the best heavy metal band in history. You’ve got the look and the attitude I want. YOU WANNA JOIN UP?”

There was a pause of about five seconds and A. declined the offer politely. Dubrow roared on off to find his next perfect metalhead.

I asked A. if he regretted not getting on the Quiet Riot ride and he said no, he couldn’t handle the lifestyle as much as he loved the music.

A. only wore tailored clothes and spoke with a refined, aristocratic accent. He was able to pass as gay well enough to work for years at a gay publication, but from what I heard his dating preference was for the Pamela Anderson type. Oh! And he’d been a pool shark previously in life, but had to give it up because he was too small to collect.

The passing of a radio hero

Mitchell Harding was one of the radio voices I would listen to at night in my bed through the earphones, late at night, after my parents were in bed. He was a voice on the legendary Hour 25 science fiction program at KPFK and later a constant voice on KCRW, where he did news programming.

I can hear his fatherly voice in my head even now. He was good to me over the airwaves. Rest in peace, sir.

http://www.laobserved.com/archive/2007/11/mitchell_harding_la_radio.php